Our archenemy today was an indomitable man, a passionate defender of the freedom of his wild lands against the greedy invader, a born leader who kept the Roman garrisons in check until the emperor Tiberius himself ordered that it be eliminated forever. In the long time that the Roman world lasted, I do not remember any other tribal leader who monopolized the attention of four different proconsuls, and less than that three of them celebrated their triumph in the streets of Rome for defeating an enemy who, in reality, , they had not won.
Twenty-sixth installment of “Archienemies of Rome “. Collaboration of Gabriel Castelló
Let's start at the beginning... Who was Tacfarinas ? His Latinized name comes from the Berber original, Tikfarin . Because of the few classical sources that address his rebellion, mainly Tacitus in the Annals of him , it follows that he did not come from a noble or wealthy family. Like many other young Musulani , one of the nomadic tribes of pre-Saharan Numidia, he ended up enlisting as a horseman auxilia over the legions. Already in the time of the Barca, the best light cavalry of Antiquity came from the North African steppes:Getuli, Numidians and Garamantes nourished the wings of the legions since the Second Punic War.
Numidian Horsemen
But… How did this nondescript man raise such a vast territory against Rome for years? Since the fall of Carthage, North Africa has always been a very appetizing morsel for Rome, as coveted as it was subsequently exploited. Our subconscious leads us to think of the south of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya as desolate, semi-desert places, places forgotten by man and the gods, but in the time of the Scipios, or of Augustus in this case, they were not like that. What Rome called Proconsular or Nova Africa, which today would correspond more or less to Tunisia and eastern Algeria, was the main breadbasket of the western Mediterranean. The territory had more population than Britain at that time, around one and a half million inhabitants. Between Sicily, Egypt and Africa they produced enough wheat to support the entire Empire. The severe desertification of these lands comes from the late Middle Ages. The world suffered a very serious climatic deterioration in those times, the north became so cold that it forced the Germanic peoples of the Baltic to seek the heat of the southern lands, while extreme heat in Africa ended up drying out the steppes of Libya and Algeria. The descriptions of these territories by Greek and Roman geographers tell us of irrigated land, olive trees and wheat fields, where today we only find oases and sand.
Perhaps the lack of systematic pressure on the indeterminate southern border meant that, after the successful expedition of L. Cornelius Balbus , Cadiz and proconsul of Africa, against the Garamantes in 19 BC, only one legion controlled such a vast area, the III Augusta , camping near Theveste (Tébessa, Algeria) The landholdings of the late Republic expanded inexorably across the grazing lands that supported the nomads, forcing them to retreat further and further into the dry south. This submission to landowners or forced displacement caused innumerable small conflicts, such as the one resolved by Balbo, which resulted in more than five thousand indigenous victims after successive Roman repressions.
Theveste
The greed and ruthlessness of the various governors helped create the perfect setting for a full-scale rebellion. The spark jumped from the very ranks of the auxilia. After spending years of service to Rome, Tacfarinas defected. Perhaps it was due to an impulsive decision in the face of some injustice, perhaps because his insurgency plan was already mature. This happened in AD 15; Tiberius he had only been succeeding the long and "peaceful" mandate of Augustus for only a year and, according to my personal hypothesis, I am sure that the news of the Teutoburg disaster would have reached Africa. and the death of Varus his three legions at the hands of the Germanic Arminius , another native auxiliary like himself who had decided to switch allegiances and take revenge for Rome's affronts, an event only six years before his defection. The fact is that soon his Muslim countrymen gave him their full support, creating with their combat experience under the Eagles a gang of professional robbers who began to harass Rome's interests in the region. He was not alone in those wastelands. Another local leader, Mauro Mazippa , joined forces with him, as this tribal ruler maintained his personal dispute with the puppet king of Mauritania, Juba II , a personal friend of Augustus and regent of that client kingdom. While Tacfarinas organized his infantry in the Roman style, Mazippa was in charge of creating a formidable cavalry corps with which to provide cover for his colleague and a thousand headaches for the proconsul of Africa.
The governor in question, Marco Furio Camilo , fed up with the angry protests of the landowners whose fields were looted in the recurrent raids of Mazippa, mobilized the III Augusta in the spring of 17 and his auxiliary corps, altogether about 10,000 men, ready to do battle with the rebellious Numidian. The confrontation ended in his favor, Tacfarinas fleeing into the desert after being defeated by the iron heavy infantry of the legions. Camilo won a victory, but the problem was not averted, it was only postponed.
Shortly after this Camilo celebrated his victory to cheers and applause, Tacfarinas returned to the fray, continuing with his guerrilla strategy, so typical in African and Hispanic lands. The protests continued and the next proconsul for the 18th, Lucio Apronio , was forced to resume the campaign against the insurgents. Tacfarinas was emboldened after making several successful hit-and-run raids, enough to lay siege to a camp by the Pagyda river. in which a cohort of the III Augusta remained fortified. A centurion named Decrius it was the primus pilus in command of that contingent and, as Tacitus tells us, “he considered it shameful that the Roman legionnaires felt besieged by a mob of deserters and vagrants ”. Decrius led an exit ready to break the siege, an action that failed due to the numerical superiority of the Numidians. The brave centurion, wounded by an arrow in one eye and several other parts of his body, shouted at his men to continue advancing, but those, frightened by the ferocity of the indigenous, left him to die alone and withdrew to the shelter of the walls of his fort. Tacfarinas, pressed by the arrival of Apronius and the reinforcements, raised the siege, but the proconsul, when he freed the fort and learned of the ignominious and cowardly conduct of that cohort, ordered that the worst disciplinary punishment in the Roman army be applied:the tithe . One in ten men was beaten to death by his own companions...
Kingdoms in North Africa
The warning of the Pagyda river was a relentless stimulus for the Roman troops. Shortly after, the III Augusta engaged the Tacfarinas at Thala (Tunisia, the same place where another memorable Numidian, Yugurta, was defeated 120 years earlier ), again defeating the indigenous tribes in the open field. This Roman victory made Tacfarinas confirm his enormous difficulty in defeating a Roman legion according to the rules of conventional warfare, forcing him to continue insisting on his guerrilla plan that had given him such good results up to that moment. To make matters worse, during his withdrawal towards the coast he was surprised by a detachment commanded by the proconsul's son, L. Apronius Caesarius , skirmish of the managed to escape and take refuge in the Montes Aurès , but at the cost of the young tribune seizing all the spoils of war that he had amassed after three years of raids. Apronius father exhibited it through the streets of Rome in the triumph that the Senate granted him for such a feat. Again, the problem was partially resolved... but only partially.
Shortly after this triumph, Tacfarinas sent an ambassador to Rome, willing to meet with Tiberius himself and claim land for himself and his family within the province in exchange for a total armistice. The letter, more than an offer of peace, was a blackmail, since Tacfarinas warned the emperor that, if he did not accept said agreement, he would maintain his hostilities permanently in an endless war against Rome. The Numidian's offer was serious, but Tiberius flew into a rage when he heard it. Tacitus records in the Annals of him that the emperor, whose sanity and emotional stability worsened, and a lot, with his age, said:
Not even Spartacus dared to send messengers
Tiberius's anger, outraged that a stinking deserter from the legions, for him an infamous bandit, treated him as an equal, proposing state pacts, made him spare no resources to annihilate such a madman once and for all. Obviously, the offer was rejected and the emperor commissioned the Senate to choose a capable commander to solve such an ugly matter. The chosen one was the uncle of Lucius Aelio Sejanus , the "sinister" right hand of Tiberius, called Quinto Junio Bleso , a veteran of the legions with experience ruling troubled provinces like Pannonia . In addition to the III Augusta installed in Africa, Bleso took with him the IX Hispana and the XV Cohors Voluntariorum from the limes of the Danube. Between the two legions, the cohort and his help, Bleso joined nearly 20,000 men in his African adventure. His first provision was simple:indiscriminate forgiveness for those who deserted the revolt, for all but one: Tacfarinas . The new proconsul, with twice as many troops as his two predecessors, changed his strategy. He did not seek a pitched battle in which to win without exterminating the rebels, but instead divided his forces into three columns that entered the Numidian lands in three different places, creating a swarm of permanent forts with which to cut off the movements of the insurgents. The tactic of harassment and siege paid off for him. In the 22 there were new confrontations, the brother of Tacfarinas was imprisoned and the popular dissidence dissolved like a sandstorm. After withdrawing his troops during the winter, Bleso returned to Rome in the spring of 23 and had his triumph, the last awarded to someone outside the imperial family; Tiberius was satisfied, but again the problem remained unresolved.
The new proconsul of 24, Publio Cornelio Dolabella , he found the sad reality. Tacfarinas continued to swarm through the vast border territory that extended to the southern limit of the province, sheltered by an army of dissidents, and looting and raids continued to take place with absolute impunity. Tiberio and Bleso had been optimistic and had not stopped to think that the great strength of the rebel leader resided in the immensity of the desert and its leathery inhabitants. Not only did he count among his ranks the Libyan, Numidian or African refugees, but also groups of Getulos and Garamantes from the arid south, ethnic groups ancestors of the current Tuaregs, collaborated with him. Even the Mauros dissatisfied with the servility of the young and pro-Roman king Ptolemy, the heir of Juba II, went over to the Numidian cause. They attacked and disappeared into the sands before the Roman garrisons could react. The cohorts did not yet use camels at that time and to enter the inhospitable interior of Libya was an adventure beyond the reach of a proconsul, however intrepid. To further boost the revolt, the departure of the IX Hispana from Africa was used by Numidian propaganda as an incentive to add troops, arguing that the serious problems of the Empire in the far north forced them to withdraw their troops from Africa. The time had come to liberate Numidia from the Roman yoke.
Numidians
This whole situation made Tacfarinas much more enthusiastic and laid siege to the Thubuscum square. (Khamisa, Algeria), but Dolabela's quick intervention dismantled the siege, causing a new indigenous defeat before the disciplined infantry of the III Augusta . The proconsul, more skillful than his predecessors, did not consider his simple victory definitive until he had captured the rebel leader and undertook the pursuit of him in person. Using the support of his ally Ptolemy , in whose territory the Numidian had taken refuge, he mounted four well-nourished army corps of Maurian horsemen ceded by him and combed the south of the province valley by valley. A local informer told the proconsul that Tacfarinas was hiding in the ruins of a place called Auzea (Sour el-Ghozlane, Algeria) The area was wooded and undulating, ideal for approaching unseen with a small expedition. So did Dolabella. He got there, waited all night in silence, and before dawn broke, the unsuspecting Numidians were jolted awake by the horns and shouts of the legion. It was a butcher shop. The Roman infantry, as effective as it was ruthless, slaughtered the insurgents like rabbits, still half asleep or half naked, dismounted and poorly armed. The men of the III Augusta had no mercy:the rancor accumulated after eight ungrateful years of war was unleashed that bloody dawn. Following strict orders from the proconsul, the centurions led their men towards Tacfarinas. First his bodyguard fell, then his son and, in the end, alone and cornered, he himself impaled himself on the horns of the legionnaires who tried to capture him.
With the death of Tacfarinas, the last breath of independence in the lands of the Musulami vanished. , remaining integrated until the arrival of the vandals within the province of Africa. P. Cornelius Dolabella, the true victor of the Numidian insurgent, claimed his victory to the Senate, but his proposal was rejected by order of Tiberius. Tacitus intuited the long shadow of Sejanus after that unjust decision, because if there was someone who deserved the triumph over Tacfarinas, it was Dolabela, although this would have brought shame to Bleso, and worse still, to Tiberius himself.