The Ancients - Tacfarinas: The Desert Hydra

Episode Date: August 17, 2021

He was one of the greatest rebels of Rome from the 1st century AD, but his name is not one you might initially think of. Derided by Roman historians as being little more than a bandit, the truth is very much the opposite. For several years, between 17 and 24 AD, Tacfarinas led a revolt against the Romans in North Africa, sending the province into turmoil and becoming the bane of all troops stationed there to fight him. Several times the Romans believed they defeated Tacfarinas and his Berber followers. Several times they were proved wrong as time after time Tacfarinas emerged from the desert with a new force to wreak havoc on wealthy North Africa. For too long, Tacfarinas’ name has been side-lined in favour of more famous 1st century AD Roman rebels such as Boudica, Arminius and Caratacus. Now we’re going to right that wrong. Joining Tristan on today’s podcast is Dr Jo Ball, an Ancients veteran having been on the show twice before. Together Tristan and Jo talk through the incredible story of Tacfarinas and why he really was ‘the Desert Hydra.’

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is arguably just, if not more, extraordinary than all of those figures listed above. And this is someone who I like calling the Desert Hydra, the Berber rebel, the auxiliary turns defector who was Tacferinus, the nightmare of the Emperor Tiberius in North Africa. He is an extraordinary figure. He rises up again and again and again to become this bane of Rome in North Africa. Now to talk through what we know about the campaigns, the guerrilla war of Tacferinas against Rome, I'm delighted to say that I was rejoined by Dr Jo Ball. Jo seems to be a good luck charm for the ancients. Whenever she comes on the podcast, that podcast proves to be one of the most popular to that date on the pod.

We've had her on to talk about the Teutob the pod. We've had her on to talk about the Teutoburg Forest. We've had her on to talk about Roman prisoners of war. And now she's here to talk all things Tacferinas. So without further ado, here's Jo. Jo, always a pleasure. Great to have you back on the podcast. Thanks very much for inviting me. You're very welcome indeed, because this is a topic that I've been wanting to cover for a long time. One of the rebels of Rome, Tacferinus, I call it the Desert Hydra. I mean, Jo, when we think of these first century AD rebels of Rome, you might immediately think of Boudicca, Caratacus, figures like this.

This one is almost a figure who sometimes is overlooked. But Tacferinus, Joe, he really annoys the Romans, doesn't he? He is a real thorn in their side who just keeps coming back and back and back. He absolutely does. Not only is he a very effective rebel against the Romans in the early years of Tiberius's reign. So while you're still coping with it, with this sort of regime change, and you've got all of these problems going on elsewhere in the empire, all of these political consternations going on in Rome. And then you have this upstart deserter turned rebel in Africa who just, he won't be beaten. Every time you beat him in the field, he just goes off, recruits more men and comes back. And he doesn't even have the decency

to be from a tribal elite. He's just an ordinary man, ordinary soldier. And yet somehow just manages to keep attacking the Romans so effectively in Africa. So much so that it takes four different pro consuls to eventually defeat him. He's just this fantastic rebel figure, and yet he's so underappreciated, I think,

in terms of talking about rebel leaders in the first century AD. He really doesn't get this credit that he deserves. He's overshadowed, as you say, by people like Boudicca or somebody like Arminius in Germany. And despite that, he manages to amount just as effective a campaign against them, probably kills less Romans than either of those two people. But otherwise, he's a great rebel leader, but not one of the particularly well-known ones, unfortunately for him. His story is absolutely fascinating. He keeps coming back, hence the Hydra

image that you really do get, don't you? But let's get the background sorted. First of all, you mentioned the reign of the Emperor Tiberius. So early Roman imperial period, Jo, what's the situation in the Roman Empire at this time? So at this time, you've got, you know, Augustus, the person who had founded the Roman Empire, this great statesman who'd shepherded the Roman world from the Republic to the imperial system. He's now gone and power has been left with his adopted son, his stepson, Tiberius, who has his own issues, doesn't particularly, according to a lot of the ancient historians, doesn't particularly want to be Roman emperor, but has found himself in this position. And not only that,

people are not just letting him go and write poetry in the palaces of Rome. They're actually popping up in the provinces and causing him problems. And so he's got to balance all of these intrigues in Rome with these problems in the provinces as well. And it's particularly surprising for him, I think, when something starts happening in Africa, because this is supposed to be quite a settled province at this time. It's not got a huge amount of activity going on. It does have a legion stationed there. The Lego 3rd Augusta is stationed there, but really only to kind of administrate the grain supply. They're not there in expectation of fighting anybody. But all of a sudden in Tiberius's reign, when he's got loads of other things going on,

Tacforinus pops up and causes the problems that he does. It begs the question then, if this province, this Roman province, obviously Carthage is now long, long gone, has been in Roman hands for a long, long time, it begs the question, Joe, what causes this sudden change? Why do we then see the emergence of this rebel figure and followers of him at that time in that part of the empire? So as you say, Carthage is long gone history at this point. It's been almost 200 years since the Romans essentially deleted Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War. So they finalised that in 146 BC. And so the Romans have been a presence in kind of northwestern Africa for almost 200 years by the time Tiberius comes to the throne, the imperial throne. So what we've got in this situation in northwest Africa at the time

is the province of Africa Proconsularis. And this has been built up really over time, over these sort of 200 years since the fall of Carthage, incorporating various different areas in the northwest of Africa to kind of the countries now that would be Tunisia, Algeria, parts of Libya, parts of Morocco, that kind of area, or the Maghreb area, as some people call it now. So we have this province of Africa Proconsularis that's overseeing events in Africa. It's a fairly peaceful province in many ways. This area becomes a big grain supplier for the Roman Empire. So a lot of their grain comes from Egypt, but even more of it comes from the area of Africa Proconsularis. So it's a wealthy province as well. But a lot of the land, almost all of the land,

as far as we can tell, it's owned by absentee Roman landlords back in Italy. You know, it's not managed on the ground by people that actually live there anymore. It's been taken over really by the Roman authorities from top to bottom, really. You know, they rule the land, they own the land. The only thing they don't do is work it, that's what the local people do. And it's a senatorial province, even though it's one of the frontier provinces, so you'd expect it to be one that comes under direct imperial control, it's not. It's one where the senate is in charge of appointing a proconsul to oversee events, who usually serves for one year, unless there's a pressing reason for them to serve a little bit longer. So the whole impression is of a fairly settled province at the time when Tiberius inherits the empire. As I said before, it is garrisoned by a legion, the Thoid Augusta,

but as I said, they're largely there just to make sure that the grain supply gets safely to Rome. They're not there particularly expecting to do any major fighting. And by the time that Tiberius comes to the throne, you see increasing levels of Roman development in this province. So you have they're starting to build roads across it so they can facilitate military traffic and the grain supply. They're beginning to sort of take registrations of the land. They're beginning to think about setting up boundaries of territory. This doesn't always go down very well. So in the ancient historians, we pick up evidence of at least five miniature uprisings or Roman campaigns between the kind of the indigenous population of the region and the

Romans between about 21 BC and AD 6. So whilst you get this idea of this generally peaceful province, we do get indications that maybe things aren't that simple. And certainly when you put this against people like Tacferinus and his followers, they're growing up in this kind of atmosphere of general Roman encroachment, increasing Roman control, but this background hostility against the Romans as well. And all of this kind of culminates in AD 17 when Tacferinus' revolt breaks out in earnest. And just before we delve into this revolt and the figure of Tacferinus himself, I must ask about our main source for the events that we are going to discuss, because we have one main source, one particular source for these

events, don't we, Jo? We do. And unfortunately, that's always a slightly tricky situation when you're talking about Roman history. It's never that good when you're talking about relying on one source and one source only. But at least the source that we have is a historian that we have some idea of how he operates and how he writes. So our main source, our only real source for Tacferinus' revolt is Tacitus, the Annals, where there are scattered references to different phases of Tacferinus' seven-year campaign against the Romans, scattered throughout books two, three and four of the Annals. Unfortunately, it's not maybe as detailed as we would have liked. It would have been nice if we could have had some supplementary references in other historians.

But unfortunately, Tacitus is the one that we have to rely on. But you can still get an overall sense of the narrative from this and the major events that happen in Africa under Tacitus. But we always have to bear in mind with Tacitus in particular, with stuff that happens in the reign of Tiberius, we always have to remember that Tacitus brings an awful lot of baggage to the table when he's talking about anything that happens on Tiberius, just because he dislikes Tiberius so much. So we always have to remember that. Can I also make a point here, a suggestion, well not a suggestion, I mean I did a podcast a few few months ago with David Mattingly, Professor David Mattingly, all about the Garimantes, these people who lived next to the Romans in North Africa, modern-day Libya, and he was saying how,

and we see it in the literature, how these people are often portrayed as people who couldn't live in cities, they were backward, they were nomadic tribesmen, they were complete opposites almost to the Romans. This quite striking appearance, depiction, which the archaeology is starting to tear down, looking at the irrigation, the agriculture, etc, etc, etc. And is this also something we need to be wary of with Tacitus when we're going to be talking about the people of Tacferinas, these people who lived next to the Roman Empire or in the Roman Empire itself in Africa? Do we need to be wary of how Tacitus portrays them, Jo? Very much so. And I mean, this is something, again, that goes through so many Roman historians. So they have sort of an inbuilt xenophobia almost

of people who don't live exactly as the Romans do, but almost one that is engendered just from the fact that these people don't embrace Roman ways of life as soon as it is offered to them. So sort of the sheer act of offering any resistance to the Romans shows automatically that you are backwards and a problematic people. So yes, as you say, the region, it's got a fairly substantial tribal population, mostly Berber tribes at the time that we're talking about around the first century AD. And yes, there are some ones which are still nomadic, some which are semi-nomadic, but yes, there's a far more complex kind of lifestyle and patterns of living than were possibly appreciated at the time by Roman writers. At the same time it may be that we're

actually talking about literary constructs that are put into the historical sources because Roman historians know that that's how their readers expect people in Africa to live. So it's not necessarily that these were, you know, these barbarian tribes who run scuttling at the idea of a house, that actually it's just that this is how they were expected to be, just as in the same way as when you have Roman writers talking about kind of northern barbarians, as they think of them, where they say that they're all meat eaters or cannibals, and that they say that they're barbarians, that they don't make cheese, things like that. They have their set ideas about how non-Roman people are, and the historians may just

be playing up to this idea. Certainly, there's no evidence for the people in Roman North Africa being particularly backwards in and of themselves, but to Roman perceptions, that's how they want to portray them very much. Absolutely. So let's delve into our main protagonist today, the main man in this story. Jo, who was Tacferinus? Tacferinus is a fascinating character that you should all go out and read as much about as possible after listening to this podcast, but I will try and give you the most interesting information now. He's an absolutely fascinating character, one of these early first century rebels against Roman expansion in his area. He's probably one we don't know as much about him as we might like, and certainly historians haven't

paid as much attention to him as they have to the Arminius' or the Boudiccas of the world. And this is partly because Tacitus doesn't give us that much information about where Tacferinus comes from, about his background or his family. Really, Tacferinus only comes into existence as far as the Roman historical record is concerned in AD 17, when he starts being too much of a problem for the Romans to ignore. But we can reconstruct some things about him from the references in Tacitus. So we know that he is a native of Northwest Africa, a Berber tribesman, probably one of the Numidian Berbers, and probably he's part of the Musulami kind of tribal coalition. Certainly, that's the tribe that he ends up ruling later on due to the

power that he accrues under his rebellion. We can say he's not born into the elite of his tribe or his tribal coalition. He seems to just be an ordinary person until the revolt takes place. We don't know much about his family. We can gather that from Tacitus that he has a brother and that at some point he has a son, but we don't know who he gets married to, whether this is a dynastic marriage or not. But one of the important things from the Roman perspective is that we do know that he serves as an auxiliary in the Roman army. Now, we don't know whether he serves in the infantry or the cavalry. We don't know whether he did this voluntarily or whether he was conscripted, but certainly the Roman army by this time is making use of Numidian recruited troops.

As far as we know, there's a huge preference for Numidian cavalry operating. That's a particular specialism, but there are also Numidian infantry troops as well. And he serves in the Roman army for an undetermined number of years. It doesn't seem like he enlists straight away and then leaves. But at some point between him enlisting and him completing his service, he deserts from the Roman army. Unfortunately, we don't know how old he is when he does this or how long he's been serving for, because we just don't have enough information to do that. because we just don't have enough information to do that. But we know that he's, as we say, from this Berber Numidian tribe, serves in the Roman auxiliary, and then deserts at some point

before AD 17. Now, Jo, that point there is really, really interesting. You mentioned that he was a deserter. And the Romans, I know you're a Roman military expert, the Romans, they do not view deserters kindly. They see them as perhaps lowest of the low. Absolutely. And when you look at the way that they talk about Tapharinus over the course of his revolt, he never achieves any respect in Roman eyes. When you look at how they speak about other provincial rebels, you know, sort of Arminius, Boudicca, even earlier ones like Viriathus in Lusitania, they all over time gain some kind of grudging Roman respect for the military successes that they have against the Romans, even though the Romans obviously don't wish them well in any way.

But they gain grudging respect in a way that Tacferinus never really does. He never achieves status higher than that of kind of a bandit. They recognise the conflict that he rages against them as being a war, but he's never treated really as a proper war leader. He's always just a bandit that is conducting this. And I think that is largely because he gets no respect from them because he has deserted from the Roman Empire, sorry, from the Roman army. And he probably takes a fair few men with him, I suspect as well. So exactly, if he takes a few men with him, this disillusioned former auxiliary, do we know anything about what happens next, Joe? Do we know about him gathering his forces, or do we know anything about the happens next joe do we know about him gathering his forces

or do we know anything about the forces that he would have gathered as we say after he's deserted from the roman army again we don't know how long he's sort of operating on the fringes of africa pro consularis building his force but tacitus makes it clear that what he does is that he's and then he starts to recruit other people as well, but not people that Tacitus seems to have any respect for. He says that he gathers sort of vagrants and no hopers and kind of the lowest of the low, really. And he begins to form really what is a private army. And it seems from the sources that originally when he starts doing this, there's no greater cause to this. There's no sort of overall grandiose aim of freeing the people of Africa pro consularis from Roman rule. What he seems to be doing at the start, or at least according to the Roman sources, is he's essentially forming a private militia that he's sending out for the purposes of raiding. So he just goes and he raids predominantly within we think, Roman settlements in Africa Procontolaris, and he's just trying to get as much booty as he can and wreak as much destruction as he can. So he recruits what seems to be a significant number of men. So later on in

Tacitus' account, under the first Procontol that troops against him, the Romans lead probably around about 10,000 men against him, the Romans lead probably around about 10,000 men against him and they are outnumbered, which suggests that Tacferinus has a fairly substantial force even at this early stage of his attacks on the Roman territories in Africa. So, you know, this isn't an insubstantial amount of people to recruit, even if they are vagrants and undesirables, as Tacitus says. But what he does from this early stage is he handpicks the men that he thinks have the greatest potential. So he almost forms an army within an army. He has his army that he sends out. They go

in raid settlements, they kill people, they set fire to them, you know, that are going out and doing the damage. But then he's also got kind of a handpicked core of men that he starts training as if they're a Roman army. He uses his military training, his military experience from his time in the Roman auxilia, and he trains very well a core of troops. And he trains them to operate like a Roman army. He trains them to operate in Roman battle formation. He drills them in Roman style. He even goes out and he trains them to operate like a Roman army. He trains them to operate in Roman battle formation. He drills them in Roman style. He even goes out and he arms them in Roman equipment. So the activity is far more complex than just a simple bandit going around and raiding Roman settlements. This is somebody who is an effective leader. He's drawing people to his banner.

And he really, it never stops being a desirable army to attach yourself to. He never runs short of recruits throughout his seven years in action against the Romans. He never really suffers from a manpower crisis. He just keeps drawing people in. Some probably by money, but later on, maybe by slightly bigger causes as they begin to hope that they maybe can drive the Romans out of North Africa. All right, well, let's keep on year one for the moment, AD 17. During these early stages, Jo, talk me through this first stage of Tacferinus' military story, shall we say, against the Romans. It starts fairly dramatically, as a lot of these provincial campaigns do. And there's no real consensus on why Tacferinus' revolt breaks out in the way that it does,

or why it happens, why it sort of tips over in AD 17. So we don't really know why Tacferinus kind of takes this action against the Roman Empire, or even if he intended this to be the long-running seven-year war, was intended to be the outcome when he first took arms against a Roman army. There's no real consensus among historians now about why the revolt broke out. So Tacitus implies that it's to some degree, in the early stages, it's just about raiding, it's just about acquiring booty. Later on he suggests that maybe Tacferinus and his army, they're looking for maybe freedom from Roman control. They want to be granted land and peace but that comes much later in the conflict narrative.

So other people have suggested that maybe the revolt breaks out just because the tribes are feeling threatened by Rome, that their way of life is going to be changed. The Romans are beginning to develop the province. So they're beginning to build roads across traditional tribal grazing areas and traditional migration areas. Particularly in the years before the revolt, there's a road that's built from Amidara to Takapai on the coast. And that cuts straight through Tacferainis' tribal grazing lands. And while there's no evidence that at the time that this limited the tribal access to these lands, it seems pretty obvious that at some point, if you're going to be moving Roman armies and Roman

grain along these roads, that some kind of territorial control is implied. Others suggest that maybe there were murmurings about a tax starting to be imposed on the region and that people didn't want that. Or we also have suggestions that maybe it's that old favourite of provincial revolts, that Romanisation is happening too fast in the province. This is cited for why Arminius and the Germans rebel. This is cited in Britain, in various different provinces, that the Romans are just trying to change traditional life too quickly. And we do notice an intensification of activity in Roman North Africa under Augustus, particularly after 27 BC, as he's beginning to kind of consolidate his territory. So we can see that maybe the revolt breaks out, maybe it's a combination

of all of these different factors, but also taking into account that maybe it happens in AD 17 because Tacferinus is there because they finally have a leader that's actually going to be able to help them lead this resistance unfortunately of course we only as always have the Roman perspective for why this broke out we have nothing from Tacferinus or his men as to why they fought. Sorry, do you want to talk? Well, all I can say is that you're absolutely right there. I mean, you can see parallels, can't you, with, let's say, Colchester, Roman Colchester, Camuludinum, the building of the Temple of Colchester, and perhaps a worry that that building in particular became a symbol of Rome's rapidly growing influence over eastern England, southeast

Britain, which seems to be a prime cause of Boudicca's revolt at that time. And so you see these similarities perhaps with this road in North Africa. So as you have brilliantly said right there, Jo, you can see some wonderful parallels in the first century AD revolts and why they may have occurred. So what we see happening in AD 17, how long Tacferinus has kind of been niggling around the Roman consciousness, we don't know by AD 17. And I'm sure, as you say, there are other revolts going on. This isn't the only one that happens in this period. And I'm sure that certain people in the Roman hierarchies are aware that you want to stop these things becoming too big of a problem. You don't want another Teutoburg forest on your hands. You want to be able to take these problems on before they grow out of your control.

And I think that's what the Romans are deciding to do in AD 17. This is during the proconsulship in Africa of Marcus Furius Cumillus. And it's strange in some ways that he's the one who takes the first action against Tacferinus, because we don't get an impression from the Roman historical record that he's a great military leader. He seems to just be more of an administrator who's put there really to oversee the grain supply. He's not somebody that you would expect to be put in charge of a major campaign against a provincial uprising, which suggests that maybe they're not intending at that point to take action against Tacferinus, but the events move on and they're

forced to engage in this activity. So what Tacferinus is doing, as I said before, what he's done, he's kind of split his army into two he's got his raiding parties and then he's got his well-trained roman-like soldiers his core of people and they're just intensifying their raid and going further and further into roman territory raiding more and more settlements and obviously at some point camillus just decides right this is enough i'm going to have to take action against this. So he musters his legion, the 3rd Augusta that he has, and the accompanying auxiliary units, and he decides to take them into the field against Tacferinus. He's got round about 10,000 men at his disposal.

Tacferinus has more, or at least he seems to, because as I've mentioned, Tacitus says that the Romans are outnumbered when they're in the field at this early stage. And you get the impression that Camillus just feels that he has to act. So Tacitus says that Tacferinus' raiding forces, they're bringing fire, slaughter and terror to the Roman people of Africa Proconsularis, and this is something really that has to stop. So Camillus takes his men out into the field and he's hoping to defeat Tacferinus in open battle. So at this stage Tacferinus is using guerrilla tactics but is able to be drawn into an open battle against the Romans. Camillus wants to

do this because this is how the Roman army is going to operate most effectively. So he hopes that he can get Tacferinus to come into a pitched conflict because Tacferinus has so many more men than Camillus does. And this works. So Tacferinus does engage with the Roman army in open battle and he loses. So he's obviously hoping that his strength in numbers and the fact that he has some well-drilled Roman-style troops at his disposal will be able to defeat Camillus' Roman army in the field, but it doesn't work. Tacferinus loses. We don't have any narratives of the battle, unfortunately. Tacitus just doesn't include the narrative of the battle.

He just says that Tacferinus' men break in battle and they flee into the desert and so the Roman army emerges victorious and Camillus takes this as a great victory he's lauded as this person that has stopped the great rebel Tacferinus in his steps and he's awarded triumphal honors by Tiberius even though Tacferinus is not dead he's not conclusively defeated and he's still got lots of his men at his disposal. He's just withdrawn temporarily, as it turns out. But Camillus is still awarded triumphal honours by Tiberius, as if the revolt and the war is over. But they will learn very soon that it's not. But Jo, as you rightly say, this is not the end of Tacferinus. He rises again the following year. He does. So this is something that we'll notice is a bit of a habit with Tacferinus,

of that he comes out, he fights. Ultimate, he loses against the Romans. He withdraws to the desert, recollects himself and emerges again to fight the Romans once more. And we'll notice he has a particular fondness for doing this. So as you say even though he's been defeated in the field by Camillus that he's tried this open battle against the Romans and he's lost and he disappears into the desert kind of regroups himself potentially replenishes his forces a bit and then essentially he just carries on razing again. He's learned at this stage to be wary of fighting the Roman army in battle again. So what he does is he intensifies his raiding. He seems to do this on a much bigger scale than he was doing before, hitting settlements very quickly, capturing any valuables from them,

destroying them, and then disappearing rapidly before any Roman response can get there. and then disappearing rapidly before any Roman response can get there. So he avoids ever encountering the Roman army at this point. And as they're trying to do this, he's beginning to build a reputation as somebody to be feared, as a frightening figure that sort of emerges from the desert and attacks you, and then disappears without trace. And we get the idea that he's building up this terrifying reputation because a disgraceful, from the Roman perspective, event that happens within this year. What caused the anarchy? How did medieval migrants shape the language I'm speaking right now?

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Subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts We've got to go on to this event in detail right now because it is a great event joe over to you what is it it is a shocking event really from a roman perspective where a roman cohort stationed at somewhere on the pagoda stream we don't know exactly where that is, unfortunately. But this Roman cohort that's commanded by a man called Decrius, they are surrounded essentially by Tacvarinus' men. He's deciding, he's getting bolder, Tacvarinus, and he's starting to think about raiding Roman military installations as well as Roman kind of civilian settlements. And they come to this area where this Roman cohort is stationed and the Roman commander Decreus doesn't like this and he doesn't like the idea of just sitting in the installation

and holding off Tacvarinus and his men or waiting for them to withdraw. Decreus decides that what he will do with his men is that they will come out and they will try and face Tacvarinus in battle because this is the much more honourable thing to do, rather than wait for the Africans to go away. So he offers battle, and perhaps surprisingly, Tacferinus takes the opportunity and is willing to meet this Roman cohort in pitched battle. And this turns out to be a great move for Tacferinus, terrible move for the Romans, because as soon as the battle starts, the Roman soldiers turn and they run away. They run away from what Tacitus calls the undrilled men and deserters of Tacferinus's army. Not necessarily all of them run away but certainly an awful lot of them seem to just they

turn around and they high-foot it in the opposite direction and they do seemingly get away for what we'll see happens to them shortly afterwards. But their commander Decris, he's disgusted with their cowardice. He refuses to quit the field of battle. He ends up being quite gravely wounded. He's got wounds to his face. He's got an arrow in the eye. He's got all sorts of wounds, he ends up dying on the battlefield. And this goes down very badly with the Roman authorities. So by this stage Camillus has been replaced as pro-consul of Africa by a man named Lucius Apronius. Apronius is disgusted by the conduct of this Roman cohort and exceptionally for this period he decides to decimate the cohort.

So he picks one in ten of them, aflobs to death by their fellow soldiers as a punishment for the disgrace that they've brought on themselves by running away from Tacferinus and his men. Tacitus makes it very clear that this is to punish the disgrace of the Roman army rather than because they were defeated. It's not because the enemy beat them in battle, it's because the Roman soldiers acted so disgracefully in running away in the way that they did. And this really is a rare punishment by this stage. I mean, it's a rare punishment in general in the Republican period. By the time we get to the Imperial period, even Tacitus admits that this is a fairly archaic punishment to be bringing on the soldiers of this cohort. It's only used one more time in all of

Roman history under Galba, I think in AD 69, and that's to some impetuous Marines that he doesn't particularly like, rather than for something in battle. So this is the last time that people are punished like this for running away in battle. And it's an exceptional thing to do, but it does the job. Tacferinus later then attacks another Roman fort, one called Thala. And this is being held by a very small cohort of less than 500 veteran soldiers at this point. And so they know they've got to stand their ground. And so they're so determined that they won't run away from Tacferinus, but they managed to repulse this attack of potentially thousands of men. And these 500 veterans are said to have held off Tacferinus' attack in quite exceptional

circumstances, really, even to the degree that one soldier called Helvius Rufus, he ends up being awarded civic honours both by Lucius Vipronius, the proconsul of Africa, but also by the Emperor Tiberius directly because he saved a Roman life in battle. He's awarded a civic crown for doing so. Well, that's all very interesting there. So Tacferinus, he's got this one victory and then he gets cocky, shall we say,

for the second victory, but he doesn't manage to get it. What happens following this setback for Tacferinus, he's got this one victory and then he gets cocky, shall we say, for the second victory, but he doesn't manage to get it. What happens following this setback for Tacferinus, Jo? So after this, I think Tacferinus has worked out that maybe that battle where the Roman soldiers ran away is maybe going to be the exception rather than the rule. And so he reverts back to his tried and trusted guerrilla tactics. reverts back to his tried and trusted guerrilla tactics. So he abandons the idea of attacking Roman military installations, and he goes back to kind of raiding Roman civilian settlements and destroying them and killing the people in those instead. And again, this works very well for him, causes a lot of disruption in the Roman province. It seems to have a significant impact on the grain supply to Rome as well. It causes all sorts of problems.

And they seem to amass quite a lot of booty during this year of campaigning, this summer of campaigning. So much so that they overburden themselves with a massive baggage chain that they're trying to move around their campaigning province and their campaigning territory now. And so because of that, a Roman force manages to catch up with them in the field because they're trying to drag all of this treasure around with them and they get attacked by this Roman force and they get defeated and Tacferinus and his surviving men they withdraw into the desert once more and that ends that campaigning phase for this year and Lucius again even though once more he hasn't won a conclusive victory against Tacferinus and you would think that Tiberius would have learned that he's just

going to withdraw into the desert and come back again but this doesn't seem to make any impact because Lucius Sopronius is also awarded triumphal honors for his successes against Tacferinus which seem to be that he has captured his baggage train and just sent him off into the desert once more. And that's really the extent of it. But he becomes the second pro consul in a row to get triumphal honours, pretty much for just ending that campaigning season. I mean, absolutely. Two triumphal honours already for someone who the Romans depict, or especially Tiberius, especially as we're going to get onto soon, regards as a mere bandit. It is quite interesting. It is quite extraordinary when you do think of that.

Now, this second period of fighting has now come to an end, as it were. And in the interim, before we get to the next real period, Joe, it seems like the Romans, they are expecting more trouble now. They've seen Tacferinus come back once before. And so they decide to send a bit more military help to that part of the Roman Empire. They do. So they decide to strengthen the force available in Africa, Procontularis. They decide to send the infamous 9th Hispana Legion to Africa. So this is well before it's stationed in Britain

and has its mysterious disappearance in Scotland or Europe or the Middle East or wherever. But the infamous Ninth end up being transferred to Africa to deal with this problem. And this is quite a good move on the Roman part because essentially it doubles the manpower force that the proconsul has at his disposal. And as we'll see, this enables them to kind of to fight Tacferinus' tactics by being a lot more mobile and a lot more present in the landscape themselves. So rather than being fixed at one location, now that they've doubled their manpower, they can cover more than double the territory than they were able to cover before. And this starts to give them what seems like an edge against Tacferinus,

although it doesn't last too long, and it's a little while before it becomes a comprehensive advantage. And unfortunately, the Knights don't stay for quite long enough. But Tiberius is recognized by this point that a little bit more manpower is going to be needed against Tacferinus. This isn't something where one legion is going to be able to stop everything. needed against tactfulness. This isn't something where one legion is going to be able to stop everything. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program,

they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not, just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best And so there are now two legions in North Africa. And first of all, Joe, before we really go back into the the campaigns themselves of tap for enos you did mention earlier how this past north africa it is important to the romans with the grain with the trade and all that it's all hypothetical because i'm sure you would say we don't know for sure we can't tell from the sources the detail isn't there but could it possibly be do you think there might be a little bit of worry from the romans that if this revolt in north africa did get out of hand let's say if there was just one legion there and Tacferinus

does come back and he is really powerful, that it could threaten, let's say, the grain shipments, the grain trades going to Rome itself? Very much so. And we know that this is definitely something that is at the forefront of Tiberius' concerns in Rome. It's not something that you can put aside and hope that things will turn out OK. So we see in AD 19, there were riots in Rome over grain supply. And this has been strongly associated with the disruption that Taperinus is causing in Africa, that the grain supplies just aren't getting through to Rome in the quantities that they should be. You also have a few court cases come up in this period as

well for Romans who are active in Africa, who are actually taken to court under accusations that they are supplying grain to Tacferinus instead of supplying it to Rome as they should be doing, and that they're essentially that they're war profiteering. Most of them get acquitted, but largely because the respective proconsuls of Africa speak up on their behalf. But it's definitely a worry that something is going wrong with the grain supply. And I think most authorities in Rome, certainly Tiberius, would have been aware that your position, if the people in Rome are starting to go hungry because you're not dealing with this revolt in North Africa very effectively, that it's not going to be too long before people start wondering if you're the right

man to be in charge and that this starts to undermine your kind of your authority and your popularity among the people in Rome. If they're going hungry because you can't get your acts together and put down this bandit, this deserter bandit in Africa. Absolutely, the possible repercussions are very interesting to discuss as you've just mentioned there. Two legions in North Africa now, the third and the ninth and as the Romans seem to predict, rightly so, Joe Tacferinas, he does come back a third time. He does. So this is his third proconsul of Africa that he is now going to be fighting. So he comes back in the proconsulship of Quintus Junius Blythus, an appointment who is maybe another sign that the Romans are beginning to take this revolt a little bit more seriously.

So before some of the appointments were maybe just people who were administrators working their way up the career ladder, Blythe says he is a military man. He becomes an elite, a member of the Roman elite, but he's a novus homo. He's not one of the traditional Roman elite families. He brings himself up by his bootstraps and by his ability and becomes part of the Roman elite. And he's appointed to Africa because Tiberius has acknowledged, now you need a proconsul that's got some military experience. And Blasius has served previously in Pannonia. He served during the Great Illyrian Revolt. So he has experienced not just of military campaigning, but also against provincial insurrections and uprisings. And he has experience in guerrilla warfare as well. So he's a good candidate to pick. Tiberius had also

wanted somebody who was in good health and who was going to be able to conduct a difficult campaign out in the field. It also didn't hurt his prospects that he's Sejanus's uncle. So Sejanus is the close friend and advisor of the Emperor Tiberius at this point. And later he'll turn against him and execute him. But at this point, Sejanus is in Tiberius's good books. And so when he recommends his uncle to the proconsul of Africa, Tiberius is only too happy to oblige. And there is another candidate who has put his name forward to be proconsul of Africa. But as soon as he hears that Sejanus' uncle wants the position, he withdraws and says, no, there's no point in me trying to go for this. Blythes is just too well connected. I'm just not even going to bother trying to get this position anymore.

Well, Blythes is the proconsul of Africa, this military man. But let's keep focusing on Rome and Tiberias for a bit longer, Jo, because I think this is the time where Tacferinas, he goes on the diplomatic offensive, as it were. He sends an actual embassy to Rome. He does. And it's an unusual move at this point. And it's quite exceptional in a way. You know, you don't hear of sort of Boudicca or anybody trying to do this. But yes, so Tacferinus, he sends an embassy to Rome directly to Tiberius, almost talking as if they're equals. You know, Tacferinus is a leader in Africa and Tiberius is a leader in Rome. And he asks him for a settlement. It's essentially it's a broaching of peace. And he says, if you give us a settlement of land that's free from Roman control, and if you agree to respect that and to cease hostilities, then we will end the war too. If you don't, then we will escalate this war and we will just keep going, keep causing problems.

And so essentially it's up to you. And whether Tacferinus thinks that this has any real chance of being accepted or not is debatable. But Tiberius is furious to receive this embassy. He sees it as a huge insult to him that essentially this deserter bandit, which presume to come directly to the Roman emperor and say well what I want from you is I want you to give me Roman land in exchange for not fighting you anymore and Tacitus describes it as one of the greatest insults that has ever been given not just to Tiberius but to the Roman empire at all he describes it as one of the most disgraceful things that's ever been offered to the Roman Empire. And unsurprisingly, Tiberius turns this embassy down. You do feel sorry for whoever that messenger was, if there indeed was a messenger who sent

by Tacferinus to the court of the Roman Emperor and has this horrific response. I mean, I know it doesn't say in the sources, but I wouldn't be that surprised if that messenger didn't come back alive. So kudos to that person who went to see the very angry Tiberius. Now, Blythes is in command of North Africa at this time. And Tacferinus has come back. How does Blythes go about conducting his war against Tacferinus? So Blythes, at least, he has the advantage now of knowing how not to act against Tacferinus, I think. He knows, really, that there are a few things that aren't going to

work against him. A conventional campaign is not going to work. The Tacferinus is unlikely to meet you in open battle. Again, he's been taught too many times that that isn't going to work. He's also learned, essentially, that Roman manpower isn't necessarily going to be enough to win this war if Tacferinus won't meet you in battle. What he needs instead is to counter Tacferinus' tactics by almost adapting Roman tactics to this guerrilla warfare that Tacferinus is offering. So he's got twice as many men as either of his predecessors did. So in addition to the 3rd Augusta, as we see, he's now also got the 9th Hispana. So he's got about 20,000 men to play with now. He also decides that he's going to try and even the scales a little bit by chipping away at Tacferunus' manpower base. So he offers early on amnesty to anybody who defects from

Tacferinus back to the Roman side. So whether that's individuals or whether that's tribal peoples, he says you can defect from Tacferinus and there will be no punishment for it. So he's trying to kind of undermine Tacferinus' support in the region and maybe minimise the recruits that he's going to be able to replace any losses with. And what he decides to do as well, which is probably more of a priority under Blytheson than it was previous pro-consuls, is he knows that Tacferinus is key. He knows that he's either got to capture him or he's got to kill him, that there will be no end to this conflict whilst Tacferinus is free.

So you cannot let him escape into the desert again, or ideally you shouldn't do. So Blythes uses his larger amount of manpower and he adapts his army to non-traditional Roman campaigning techniques. So he splits his force into three different groups covering different regions of the province. He's recognised that taking all 20,000 and concentrating them in one place isn't going to work if Tac Farina won't meet you in battle. There's no point. What you need is to be quick. You need to be able to respond when Tac Farina is seen in a region and go out and harry him. And you need to follow him. You need to cover as wide a territory as possible. So he splits his force under different commanders. He takes the central

regions and he appoints two other experienced commanders to take other regions of the province. And he counters Tacferinus' raiding. So he founds a lot of small forts in the landscape, garrisons and with small groups of men under the control of very experienced centurions. And so they respond quickly. Whenever they hear of Tacvarunus being in an area, they go out and they harry him. They make sure his raiding can't be done as completely as it would be, that they can't take as long as they'd want to. He exhausts them. And quite crucially as well, Blythes, he doesn't withdraw his men over the winter. Usually Roman soldiers would go back to winter quarters and they wouldn't campaign from sort of September through till about the spring of the following year.

They don't do that against Tacferinus. They stay in the field and they keep campaigning. They keep harrying. They managed to capture Tacferinus's brother. They're still trying to catch Tacferinus, but they don't manage it, unfortunately, for them. But they exhaust Tacferinus' troops, they've limited his recruitment and his manpower, they're slowly chipping away at the size of his force. Essentially, they're doing what he had done to them and what a lot of provincial armies did against the Roman

army, just turning Tacferinus' tactics against him. And after a couple of years of this, the worst of the revolt is now seen as being over. So, Blasius, because of his great successes, is another one who's given triumphal honours, but he's returned back to Rome. Essentially, the worst is over. It's more or less done. So, he's withdrawn from Rome. He's given his triumphal honours. And Tiberius makes plans then to withdraw the ninth Hispana from Africa. It's seen as that the job is over and it's done. Tacferinus again withdraws into the desert and it seems like maybe they've drawn the sting from his rebellion and at this point it seems like a lot of the military

people in the Roman world knew that this wasn't going to be over because Tacferinus is still alive, but that nobody has the courage to tell Tiberius, the emperor, that it's not over. It is kind of head and hands moment, isn't it? It's like it's deja vu repeating again and again and again. Tacferinus, he is the critical head of the Hydra. And as you say, he is still alive. And we are guessing that this is going to happen. He comes back again, doesn't he, Jo? A fourth time. He does. You know, who would have guessed it that this man who keeps going into the desert and coming back would go into the desert and come back? But it seems to be that Tiberius at this point is the only person in the Roman world that is surprised by the fact that Tacferinus comes back once more, launches another campaign. So we're up to AD 24 by this point. And this is his fourth Roman proconsul that he's going up against. So he's now pitting himself against Publius Cornelius Dolabella. And this is really, as you say,

head in the hands type of just going, how many times do you have to get the idea that you have to kill Tacferinus? It doesn't matter. If he's left with one man and he goes into the desert, he will come back the next year with an army. And we can see that he is still attracting recruits to his cause. And the Romans have kind of helped him in terms of replenishing his manpower at this point. So Tacferinus is able to put across to the disaffected native population of North Africa that the ninth Hispana being withdrawn is a sign of Roman weakness he spreads talk that the Roman empire is weak that it's crumbling that there are other uprisings elsewhere in the empire that are

beginning to chip away at Roman power and that essentially that the empire is on the verge of collapse and this is the time to take advantage of it. So he puts this across. Now, Dolabella, the pro-consul of Africa, he's well aware that really he needs the ninth Hispana to stay in Africa, partly because the job isn't done and partly to counter these rumours that Tacvarenes is putting around. But according to Tacitus, he just doesn't dare to tell Tiberius that Tiberius is wrong, that the war is still going, and that he needs the legion still. So the legion is withdrawn. There's also the suggestion that maybe Tacferinus uses the fact that King Juba II, the king of Mauritania, dies in AD 23, leaving his inexperienced and quite ineffective son Ptolemy as king of Mauritania. And so this is also seen as kind of diminishing

of Roman influence in the region, that perhaps there are cracks beginning to appear in the Roman control of North Africa, and that this is maybe the time to drive them out of the region. And so this is when you start seeing in Tacitus more of an idea that Tacferonus' revolt becomes about more than just raiding, more than just acquiring booty and pillaging and destroying Roman settlements, and that it becomes more about provincial freedom, about maybe driving the Romans away from North Africa for good. And so this is where we finally see him come in alignment with some of the other provincial rebels in the first century AD, where they're fighting not just for prestige or for reward,

but they're fighting kind of for provincial freedom. Fighting for provincial freedom. So it's the whole hog now. Tacferinus, he's motivated these troops up for another go at the Romans. So how does Dolabella go about trying to counter this revived Tacferinus and his followers with less soldiers at his disposal and a juvenile might be the wrong word, but an inexperienced king, an inexperienced ally, as is perhaps his only ally in North Africa at that time. Yeah, so I mean, he's well aware that he's at a manpower disadvantage at this stage with the loss of his second legion. So he's just got the third Augusta at his disposal. So he calls Ptolemy of Mauritania into the conflict as a client king. He demands that troops from Mauritania come to kind of supplement the Roman forces in the region. But what Dolabella has learned most importantly is that finally the message has got through,

that you have to kill Tacferinus. And he goes out and he knows that he is not going to stop until either he is dead or Tacferinus is neutralized either killed or captured so what he does is that he knows he has to press all of his victories he has to harry Tacferinus and he has to try and get him into a stand piece a final battle at which you know you're either going to kill Tacferinus or you're going to have to give up and abandon North Africa, I think. So Tacferinus, again, he revives his tactic of attacking settlements and installations. He starts to besiege a town called Tobiscum. The Romans quickly go and raise this siege to remove Tacferinus from the area.

Tacferinus is fairly easy to shake away from this siege at this point because he's learned that he doesn't want to face the Romans in open battle and so every time that becomes a possibility he kind of withdraws from the situation. So Tacferinus again he's roaming kind of around the landscape and what Dalla Bella does is he sends out scouts into the landscape to make sure that he knows where Tacferinus is, so that he's hoping to pin him down in a situation where Tacferinus won't be able to escape and will have to fight. And Tacferinus helps him incredibly in this, in taking his army to a location called Ausaea. We don't know exactly where that is. It's probably somewhere within modern Algeria, but we don't know exactly where it was. He camps his army there while he's preparing for the next stage of his rebellion campaign against the Romans.

He thinks he's fairly safe in this region. He doesn't think that the Romans know where he is. He's also reassured by the security of the position. So he's surrounded by woods apart from one direction. So he thinks that this is a fairly safe place for his army to encamp and Tacitus tells us that he's so secure in this being somewhere that's safe from the Romans that he doesn't even set scouts out or a watch properly around his camp. But unfortunately Dolabella has found out where he is and dispatches a Roman force out there, a rapid response unit almost, to go to Ausea, this

position where Tacferinus is encamped with his army. And by cover of night, they sneak their way up through the woods to this encampment. And as dawn rises, they attack. So Tacferinus' men, they're still asleep. They're attacked in their beds, they don't have their weapons, they're not in any kind of battle order, they're essentially raided. Again, the Romans are using Tacferinus' own tactics against him in a way that we don't really associate with the Roman army operating very much. You know, it sounds quite unusual to say, oh yes, the Roman army sneaked through the night under cover of darkness and woods and then attacked a military camp at the crack of dawn. We don't really think of that as being a Roman tactic, but they use it against

Tacferinus and finally they get the victory that they were looking for. So they slaughter a lot of Tacferinus' men before they've even got a chance to respond to the attack, before they even really know that an attack is happening. And Tacitus says that a lot of these men are dragged to their slaughter or captivity like cattle. So you get this idea of this very chaotic battle that's happening. And it turns into a very brutal battle where Roman troops have been frustrated over seven long years of this guerrilla warfare against Tacferinus. They take out their frustrations. They don't take prisoners. They hack people to bits. They don't listen to mercy. They hate Tacferinus. They hate

his men. And finally, finally, they can take revenge against them. So even though Tacferinus is remnant of his men, they try and offer some kind of resistance. They seize their weapons. They try to escape, but they don't manage it. Tacferinus, his bodyguard is killed. His son is captured. It says that he sees his son in Roman chains on the battlefield. And Tacferinus, this is where he's finally been pinned down. After seven long years, the Romans have finally got him where they want him. They probably want to try and capture him so they can put him on display in Rome and then execute him publicly. But Tacferin is being likely aware of this fate. He decides that he's not going to try and survive this battle.

And seeing his bodyguard gone, seeing his son and other people captured, he throws himself on Roman spears and essentially commits suicide on the battlefield. And thus ended the revolt of Tacferinus. Thus ends Tacferinus. It's an incredible end to his story, Joe. And I know you've done a lot of work on Roman prisoners of war. And it sounds very much like Tacferinus throwing himself to his death at that battle was probably the best option for him compared to what could have happened if he was taken alive by the Romans. Absolutely. I mean, Roman captivity for an enemy provincial leader of a rebellion, you really don't want to end up in Roman hands if you can possibly avoid it. And when we see

from the handful of leaders who do end up in Roman captivity after leading a rebellion, it's a very sorry end for them. They get taken to Rome, they're kept in captivity in terrible circumstances whilst they're awaiting being displayed in a triumphal parade to mark the victory of the campaign. And then they're usually executed publicly in a very unpleasant way. So we see this, for instance, with Vercingetorix, the leader of the Gallic resistance against Julius Caesar. We see this with leaders in Judea. So it's unsurprising that we see with Tacferinus,

he joins the list of rebel leaders who instead decide to kill themselves rather than end up in Roman captivity. So joining people like Cleopatra and Boudicca and people who would really rather stay out of Roman hands, quite advisedly, I think. Absolutely. And Jo, just to wrap it all up, let's look at Tacferinus in the context of these provincial revolts that we do see throughout the first century AD across the Roman Empire, whether that's Boudicca, whether it's Beto, whether it's the Jewish revolt, or whether it's Arminius or the Batavians, etc, etc, etc.

Because they do seem to be, when you look at the motives, when you look at the Roman response, when you look at the end of the prime figures in revolt there are sometimes some really striking parallels aren't there especially if we focus in on Tacferinus and compare him to other revolts at this time. That's it I mean it's a very interesting period for kind of looking at resistance to the Roman Empire. I mean obviously we see examples of provincial revolts throughout the Roman imperial period. It's not a phenomenon that's limited to the first century AD. But what you see in the first century, particularly in the first half of the first century AD, is you see these provincial revolts that are led by people who lived before the Roman conquest of their provinces. People who, they remember what life was like before

the Romans got there. They've often been raised in situations where there's a lot of hostility to the Romans, where the Romans are seen as outsiders that have come in and have changed life, usually for the worst, for these early generations. And so Tacferinus very much takes his place among these rebels, despite Tacitus trying to suggest that he's just a bandit and a figure that's not worthy of respect, that he's just a deserter from the Roman army that's worried about plunder and pillage. But I think he's much more comparable with somebody like Arminius or Boudicca in figures who they are taking arms against the Roman Empire. They're winning against the Roman army. They're showing the vulnerability of the Romans at a time where probably the provinces weren't as secure

as they came to seem later. And probably the inevitability of Roman victory in the provinces didn't seem that inevitable at the time that these revolts were going on. And I think even when you have a writer who's relatively close to these events, such as Tacitus, I still don't think that you can get the sense of how frightening these must have been to the Roman regime at the time, and how potentially dangerous they must have seemed. And it's also interesting with Tacferides. I think that he highlights, again, what probably seemed like a

very dangerous way for the Romans, the vulnerabilities of opening up the Roman army to provincial recruited auxiliaries. That what you're doing, in most cases, it's going to be fine, but you're bringing people in to your army, you're essentially teaching them how to fight with your kind of weaponry, and you're teaching them how the Roman army responds in certain situations. You're essentially teaching them how to fight with your kind of weaponry and you're teaching them how the Roman army responds in certain situations. You're teaching them how to be effective against you. And just like Arminius a few years before him, I think Tacferinus very cleverly uses this knowledge of how the Roman army operates to exploit their weaknesses. army operates to exploit their weaknesses and he manages to sort of orchestrate his campaign around things that he knows the Roman army aren't set up to deal with and he sort of exploits these weaknesses and it's only in the later years of the Roman response against him under Blythus and

Dolabella where you see that the, they only have success against him because they fight like him, because they become unexpected and they start doing things that he can't predict. And so for most of the time, yes, recruiting soldiers to the auxilia, it's fine. It's going to help inculcate them into the Roman system. They're not going to betray you and they're just there to earn a denarius and get out with citizenship at the end. But when you have somebody like Tacferinus, just like when you have somebody like Arminius, it highlights the potential dangers of training provincial leaders in Roman tactics. I think Tacferinus shows that just as well as Arminius does.

Joe, absolutely. This has been a wonderful chat. It's so great to finally shine a light on this incredible character that is Tacferinas, who is sometimes overlooked. Just before we really finish wrapping up, Jo, how can people go and learn more about your work? Twitter that's the most engaging and interesting thing you can follow me at Twitter at Dr. J.E. Ball or you can follow my research on ResearchGate or academia.edu as well I put lots of stuff up on there. Absolutely whether it's Prisoners of War or Arminius or Tacferinus etc etc etc. Jo it only goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast. Thank you. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell Tacferinus' story to all your wonderful listeners.