14

Epilogue

My thesis has been that intelligence has been practiced in some form throughout Roman history. As ancient as human conflict and warfare themselves, intelligence activities can be traced back as far as primary sources will allow. Sources may allude to Roman intelligence work without labeling it as such, but nevertheless intelligence efforts, in all their manifest forms, are there for the historian to see. Whether it be the performance of primitive religious rites to “consult the gods” on what action should be taken, or in a sophisticated diplomatic mission with a clandestine agenda, Rome’s intelligence requirements had to be met. This is not to say that they were met successfully or efficiently, but nevertheless tentative efforts were always made to provide a base for some sort of intelligent decision-making. And when these requirements were not met, intelligence failure ensued – sometimes with dire consequences.

The Romans took many centuries to develop the kinds of institutions that would later be combined into what we would refer to as their security intelligence apparatus. They never established a service devoted exclusively to intelligence tasks, but overt institutionalism has little bearing on our argument. Intelligence work does not require modern-style intelligence services to conduct it. Sometimes all that is needed is for a ruler or commander to instruct a trusted slave to perform an assignment connected with the conveyance of timely intelligence back to headquarters. From the early days of the Republic, the Roman Army had slowly but progressively picked up the rudiments of reconnaissance, installation security, and counterintelligence. As a small agricultural settlement, Rome’s first intelligence requirements were fairly modest, mostly raid alerts and low-combat intelligence for their citizen-soldiers. Yet when forewarning was not received, as in 390 bc on the approach of the Gauls, the price Rome paid was enormous – in money, lives, and psychological damage.

From their defeats and hard-won victories, the Romans learned lessons about how to procure the intelligence they needed, and positions were created specifically for the collection and transmission of this intelligence. The speculatores and exploratores became the first military intelligence specialists in an age when such a trade was uncommon in the West. Rome’s contact with foreign powers was limited in the first three centuries of the Republic, and innovation thus came through their own painful experiences on the battlefield rather than by borrowing tradecraft from the intelligence experts of the Near East. Mostly equipment and routine, that is, armor and tactical formations, were modified after conflicts with such formidable opponents as the Gauls, the Etruscans, and the Samnites. As Rome grew in strength, size, and importance and acquired overseas territories, Roman consuls needed strategic intelligence – information on the enemy beyond the battlefield. Finally, as Rome became a world power with an empire, intelligence was needed to help national leaders formulate state policy.

As for the acquisition of political intelligence, the Romans were less adaptive to the notion of specialized employment: they made do with the same institutions throughout the Republican era. The consuls, praetors, quaestors, aediles, and priests, along with the Senate, conducted the affairs of state, using whatever sources and methods were at their disposal to collect intelligence and perform delicate diplomatic missions. These sources were not always adequate. There was, of course, the army, but in the civilian sector no specific officials were assigned intelligence duties, and we cannot therefore speak of a Roman secret service or a Roman intelligence service that functioned as an autonomous specialist body. The closest Rome came to constituting such an entity was in the later Empire, when Diocletian formed the agentes in rebus. And yet even this outfit was primarily concerned with internal security, and it had many other functions that were outside the orbit of intelligence. This by no means implies that political intelligence was not being collected, only that it was not the exclusive charge of one particular branch of government. In a sense, anyone might be called upon to perform a task that today would be termed an “intelligence function”.

Early Roman leaders were especially sensitive to their public image in the aftermath of undercover action, and their propaganda began to reflect a desire to disavow such conduct. Passages from later Roman historians sanctimoniously portray their ancestors as eschewing secretive behavior and piously extol the upright Romans of yore. But the days in which the Romans could act both openly and naively in the international arena ended quickly. To play its role as a world power, Rome needed a full range of diplomatic and military options in dealing with the Hellenistic East and a growing number of hostile tribes on the borders. Moralizing propaganda notwithstanding, the Romans never doubted their right to seek whatever information they thought they required, nor were they squeamish about the means by which they obtained that information.

Much of the spying that went on in Republican Rome was done by nonprofessionals. The use of private spies by senators formed an intelligence network throughout the city. One of the most notorious threats to the Roman government, the Catilinarian Conspiracy, was foiled by Cicero with the help of “wide-ranging espionage and private bodyguards.”¹ In fact, his principal source of information was the mistress of one of the conspirators, a man who was acting as a double agent. The Romans were no strangers to espionage on a personal level: Livius Drusus was expressly asked by his architect whether he wanted his house built in such a way that he be sheltered from public gaze, “safe from all espionage,” and that no outsider could look down into it.² Every Roman aristocrat had a private network of business associates, informers, clansmen, slaves, or agents (male or female) who would keep him up to date on the latest happenings in the Senate house or his own house. Be it political gossip from the Forum or business gossip from his estates, each pater familias presided over a personal intelligence network that enabled him to keep on top of his professional and familial concerns. Naturally, political ambitions would also be served by awareness of what other such patri were doing.

When many such men united in the Senate, a certain class loyalty was brought about that allowed the state to press its interests and expand overseas in the name of the Senate and the Roman people (SPQR). There was intense personal competition among individuals and families for the wealth and glory that such conquest brought. Furthering these parochial ends also entailed knowing what competitors were planning, and so private intelligence networks were essential to the advancement of individual careers. We can only guess at what the equivalent of a Watergate break-in might have been, but we can be certain that political scandals played their part in launching, as well as torpedoing, senatorial careers. Much of the behind the scenes cloak-and-dagger work of senatorial politics is forever lost to us, but it is not hard to imagine what forms it took.

Such a conglomeration of individual interests would not have been fertile ground for spawning a single institution that would monitor Rome’s overseas interests, as well as segments of Roman society itself. Even if that organization were to be assigned only foreign targets, there may have remained a residual fear that sooner or later such an apparatus would be abused to promote the interests of one group over those of another. The interservice bickering in modern times, between intelligence groups, the military, and other branches of government, does not instill much faith that affairs would have been any different in Roman times, especially when responsibilities were overlapping and not clearly defined. Information has always been a mighty weapon that can be wielded in many directions, besides the original purpose for which it was procured. The tendency of the Roman nobility to preserve the status quo kept the old system in place, unchanged for many centuries. In a society where “new things” (res novae) literally meant “revolution,” the creation of a novel, centralized, potentially powerful, and quite possibly dangerous intelligence organization was not unthought of, but rather unthinkable.

Those who believe that Roman society loved its Republican liberties too much to establish a secret service should consider to which segments of Roman society this idealized view might apply. Certainly not to the slaves who comprised one-third of the population and whose every move was likely scrutinized.³ And not to freedmen who were very often employed as freelance informers by their erstwhile owners and whose own sphere of activity was severely restricted. Nor to the Italian allies whose status Rome controlled and whose rights were doled out by Rome so sparingly that only a bloody Social War would earn them full enfranchisement in 89 bc. The Roman ruling class, which constituted but a tiny percentage of the population, had no illusions about dispensing freedoms to anyone except itself. All the instruments of control, including surveillance, economic restraints, and overt military force, were used without hesitation to keep an ever-growing population loyal to Rome’s political elite.

In short, the Republican nobility spied on everyone, including itself. What the senators passed off as freedom was actually a regimen of checks and balances that prevented any one group from dominating. The same system that kept Romans “free” also kept any change from occurring in the governmental structure and precluded the enfranchisement of too many outsiders. But constant expansion demanded such reforms, and individuals learned how to accumulate enough power to overrule the old senatorial factions and move the state in new directions. First Pompey, then Caesar, used a combination of political skills, military might, wealth, and private intelligence networks to hold the reins of power tightly in their own hands. When Caesar declared himself dictator for life, he was able to set up an intelligence network that could, for the first time, be termed “national”. His plans, however, were cut short by assassination. How ironic that a man so sensitive to intelligence and early warning should have a list of the conspirators thrust into his hands on his way to the Senate – and pay no heed. Had he read the message, and acted on the timely intelligence, the subsequent history of Rome might have been dramatically different.

Augustus followed through on Caesar’s ideas, perhaps adding some of his own. There were several models that Augustus could emulate, and we cannot tell with certainty which ones he chose as prototypes, but without a doubt his modernization of Republican communications and revamping of the military machine were long overdue. A centralized communication/intelligence system, the cursus publicus, laid the solid foundation for Rome’s intelligence collection capacity in later years. Private intelligence networks were gradually replaced by a state apparatus whose function it was to keep the emperor safe on his throne. The nationalization of the intelligence business must have reinforced the realization of the Roman nobility that it had lost its Republican freedoms forever.

Military reorganization under the Empire made the collection and dissemination of intelligence more efficient. A single ruler, with a professional army, now had a permanent pool of soldiers who were assigned intelligence duties. To the exploratores and speculatores were added the frumentarii. During the imperial period, the Roman Army progressively undertook more police functions. It served as an internal security force that helped control the many and varied populations of Rome’s cosmopolitan Empire. No one has yet studied the effect that using so many soldiers for internal security may have had on the reserve of military manpower available for strategic and tactical operations against external enemies.⁴

Politically, private informers, or delatores, were to be found in profusion around imperial headquarters, ready to turn in anyone suspected of treachery. And the frumentarii doubled as political spies. New treason laws, protecting the safety and majesty of the emperor, provided the legal basis for prosecutions on the evidence of these ubiquitous sycophants. Laws that attempted to ban or seriously curb their activities were never completely successful. Selection for clandestine work was contingent not so much upon the position one held, but on the trust that was placed in the individual. We see during the downfall of Tiberius’s praetorian prefect, Sejanus, how cautiously the men were picked who communicated the intelligence of his arrest to the Praetorian Guard. Roman emperors chose with care the men who would carry out their intelligence operations, as in the case of Caracalla, who employed Ulpius Julianus and Julianus Nestor – not highly admirable men, but nonetheless trustworthy.⁵

Our sources on military intelligence activities are much less informative about the imperial period. Campaigns were not as frequent when Rome owned most of the known world, and the historians of the Empire, especially senatorial ones such as Tacitus and Dio Cassius, show little interest in describing military expeditions with as much detail as Livy and Polybius had done. The position of a historian was a particularly difficult one during the Empire. It was extremely hard, even for those living under “good” emperors, to determine what had or had not happened. The blanket of obscurity descended with particular effectiveness over conspiracies and military plots. On the other hand, several military manuals of the imperial period help fill in the gaps left by political historians. While we may never be able to ascertain exactly how intelligence tradecraft was passed down from generation to generation, we can at least say that there was some attempt at professionalization among generals, and the space devoted to intelligence in training manuals such as those of Frontinus and Vegetius clearly indicates that this function was considered an essential aspect of a commander’s responsibilities, one that might contribute to his success in the field.⁶

Internal security

The major concern of every emperor since Augustus was personal safety. Loyalty, and especially the loyalty of army personnel, was a constant preoccupation. The main thrust of intelligence efforts was, therefore, in the sphere of internal security. Augustus was one of the few Roman emperors to die naturally in his bed, but this was not for lack of people who tried to see that he met a violent end. Fears of disloyalty, whether among the senators or senior military officers, plagued him all his life. Even a ruler’s closest friends had to be mistrusted for this was precisely the circle whence the fatal blow might come. Suetonius tells that Augustus “nipped in the bud at various times, outbreaks, attempts at revolution and conspiracies, which were betrayed before they became formidable.”⁷ We are completely in the dark as to how plots were compromised, and we know little of Augustus’s secret police and military intelligence. Not until the later emperors does more extensive information become available. We cannot even be sure, when a plot was revealed, that there ever was a plot. The accusation of conspiracy was an easy way to rid oneself of annoying rivals. As Tacitus emphasized, truth was one of the first casualties of the imperial regime. False accusations were only part of the problem. Bad reporting was another. Historians were too flattering of emperors while they were alive, and too vituperative toward them after their deaths.

Since the emperor did not have one specialist security service to rely upon, he was obliged to pay private informers, and these varied markedly in ability and veracity. Although informers and private prosecutors had long been a recognized institution, an emperor had to be prudently skeptical about whom to believe. Domitian, one of the more suspicious rulers, complained that it was an uphill battle to convince the public that there truly was a plot until it had actually succeeded – and by that time it was too late.⁸

Plots, and alleged plots with military implications, continued to occur under good emperors as often as under reputedly bad ones. In ad 79, when Vespasian’s health began to fail, his government uncovered a conspiracy that was both real and dangerous. Among its leaders was Titus Clodius Epirus Marcellus, who had twice held the consulship. He had the military backing of Aulus Caecina Aelianus, whose troops were allegedly standing by, ready to take part in the uprising.⁹ It was Titus, as praetorian prefect, who claimed to have seized a speech that Caecina had prepared for addressing the troops – the document was written in the conspirator’s own handwriting.¹⁰ On the very day the rebellion was supposed to have begun, Titus invited Caecina to dinner and arranged for him to be stabbed to death in the palace. Epirus Marcellus was condemned by the Senate, and committed suicide.

Domitian was popular with the army, but even he did not take any chances. One aspect of the counterintelligence function, that of personal security, was taken over by a new bureau. To monitor the loyalty of army officers during their service career, more stringent measures of control were introduced. To that effect Domitian instituted a senior personnel bureau where the records of every centurion in the Roman Army were retained and scrutinized with special care.¹¹ The emperor himself could now exercise control over all appointments, promotions, and transfers.

Even surveillance over the supernatural was sought. Fortune tellers, soothsayers, and astrologers were closely watched for any attempt at maleficent magic or unsettling predictions, which were all prohibited by law.¹² These, along with disloyal writings and abusive speeches, came under the jurisdiction of the secret service, which was empowered to suppress such practices. Furthermore, the state set out to police the abstract – ideas, fears, and religious beliefs. The famous description by Epictetus aptly catches the mood of the day:

In this fashion the rash are ensnared by the soldiers of Rome. A soldier, dressed like a civilian, sits down by your side, and begins to speak ill of Caesar, and then you too, just as though you had received from him some guarantee of good faith in the fact that he began the abuse, tell likewise everything you think, and the next thing is – you are led off to prison in chains.¹³

The Senate

As a body politic, in a very real sense, the Roman Empire had no government. That is to say, there was no team of persons formally elected or appointed who in effect had the executive responsibility for decision-making.¹⁴ With the passage of time, the Senate played a less and less important role in relation to the emperors. Although it dealt with a variety of legislative and administrative business, it never was the governing assembly of the Empire. Decisions were the prerogative of the emperor, and although he might surround himself with advisers, he was not bound by their recommendations. Nor, it might be argued, would a political assembly as large and as public as the Senate have been a suitable body to oversee or direct intelligence efforts. This prerogative remained firmly in the hands of the executive office.

Since the emperor was now all-powerful, he more than ever needed to be well informed, and we can only assume that he believed the offices he created to keep himself up to date were satisfactory. However, the same shortsightedness that characterized Republican intelligence gathering often plagued the Empire. As Republican senators had frequently paid more attention to their political careers than to developments overseas, so too the emperors became obsessed with their own power and safety, often to the detriment of foreign policy. This self-centered attitude impaired the ability of the Roman government to collect adequate foreign intelligence and had deleterious effects on the wellbeing of the Empire.

The primitiveness of the Roman Senate as an institution of decision-making in foreign affairs was already obvious in the middle Republic. The coordination of Roman strategy in the Senate was problematic. Senators did not employ staffs of trained experts, nor was there an independent civil service in Rome to provide the Senate as a whole with regular information and analysis concerning international developments.¹⁵ Indeed many, though not all, Roman embassies charged with handling or investigating specific problems probably reported back to the Senate orally and not at all in writing. These reports would not have been available for later consultation, if necessary. In such cases, policy makers were dependent on the recollections of the report, such as they were, among the senators. This could even have been true of the formal presentation to the Senate of a commander’s official report, upon his return to Rome from his assigned province. The situation was further complicated by the fact that, in the early and middle Republic, no official records were kept, even of senatorial proceedings themselves. The existing diplomatic archives were both rudimentary and disorganized. Retrieving information from the record-keeping system must have been extremely cumbersome.

The emperor’s consilium was no more than a loosely knit group of advisers that any emperor could plainly choose to ignore. Research into the influence of the consilium, to find broad currents of imperial policy that appear to transcend the bounds of individual reigns, and to relate these policies to the ideas of men who at one time or another made up the consilium, has proved fruitless. We lack the memoirs, letters, or treatises that might give us insight into these men’s notion of government.¹⁶ And if we did have that information, what we would find is that Roman foreign policy was conducted by men with no expertise in economics, political science, or military theory. Or, as Susan Mattem has recently referred to them, “wealthy but otherwise relatively ordinary men.”¹⁷

There was no centralized decision-making body and there was no unified policy except for short periods of time. Since decisions regarding war and peace under the principate were made by the emperor, with very little advice or pressure from other groups, his own motives should take precedence. There may have been strategies, even the occasional “grand” strategy, but so much of what Rome did was mere reaction to immediate crises. Roman reaction was no more meticulously considered than the Roman economy. The Roman Empire grew by conquering and absorbing neighboring peoples one by one. Roman frontier policy was intermittently but persistently aimed at expansion. Modern authors may differ in their views on what was the prime mover of Roman imperialism, but they do agree on the rudimentary nature of the decision-making process, the incoherence of policy, and the inefficiency of intelligence collection.¹⁸ We may work on the assumption that whatever happened was partly or mostly the result of consciously formulated decisions made by emperors and a Senate that was cognizant of its own interests as it saw them. But we cannot and should not presume that the choices of those in power were wholly rational, well-planned, or consistent. From a geographical perspective alone, the magnitude of the errors upon which Roman ambitions for world conquest were based should deter us from calling their actions well informed.¹⁹ In most cases the emperor’s twin motivations were safeguarding his position and magnifying his glory. We may not deem these reasons sufficient by modern standards to warrant major campaigns, but to the Romans they were.

As long as “military glory” was an acceptable motivation, attempts would be made to conquer new provinces, no matter how impractical they were. Roman citizens expected the emperor to provide them with military protection and, if possible, resounding victories in foreign lands.²⁰ In his quest for such victories, the emperor might initiate the acquisition of a territory that in due course seemed a foolish choice once the hard intelligence about geographic, political, social, and economic conditions were known.²¹

The impact each emperor had on foreign policy was inevitably limited by time and circumstance.²² The pacification of a new province could take years, client arrangements only remained stable for so long, and barbarian pressure on the frontiers had to be constantly monitored. Some emperors tried to affect dramatic changes in the direction of foreign policy, as Augustus did in the Balkans, Trajan in Parthia, Claudius in Britain, or even such attempts as the Emperor Gaius’s (Caligula) in the north. Most emperors, however, continued the projects they had inherited from their predecessors, or responded to changing circumstances by working out new solutions as the occasion arose. However, very little intelligence was being routinely collected along the frontiers or beyond, unless the emperor had a campaign in mind. What we know about campaigns and geography is mostly from reports delivered after the war had ended. Their chronic dependence on local guides only reinforces this impression that the Romans could indeed embark upon major military ventures without elementary information about the area of destination.²³

Communications

The weaknesses inherent in the Roman decision-making process were compounded by communication difficulties. Judged by preceding ages, Roman communications were highly developed, especially if the schemes described by David Woolliscroft discussed in Chapter 11 were actually functional. But relative to the tasks the Empire set, the communications system was still far too primitive. The emperor may have wanted to impose his will in frontier areas, but he had to rely heavily upon the ad hoc decisions already made by Roman commanders in the field. These decisions, made by men such as Nero’s general, Corbulo, formed the basis of Roman foreign policy, and the more remote the province, the more likely this was to be the case. Paradoxically, such decentralization, although hardly a matter of choice, did have a distinct advantage in that it allowed those men with knowledge of local conditions, that is, the Roman governors or the field commanders in the theater, to have a strong de facto influence on official decisions to be later formalized in Rome.²⁴ To try and analyze the conduct of a Roman government operating on such ad hoc principles in terms of the establishment of elaborate “frontier systems” (or even worse, the establishment of “scientific frontiers”) and techniques of border management, is to give the Romans much more credit than they deserve for sophistication and restraint.²⁵

Because of these rudimentary and minimal means of communication, we can see why overschematic analyses of how the defense of the Empire worked are not feasible. Envisioning the Roman emperors as conscious policy makers employing modern concepts and calculations may be an anachronism of the worst kind. Such a mindset sees Trajan’s conquest in Dacia as a logical salient that separated the hostile tribes of Iazyges and Roxolani, and the same strategic purpose convincing for the emperor’s Parthian campaign. Old-fashioned predatory Roman expansionism, however, may still be the best explanation.

The Roman Army was organized to manage and secure its own communications rather than to interdict the movement of others. There is no indication that the Roman Empire systematically collected or interpreted information far beyond the territories it controlled. Frontier border stations were used as launching platforms for intelligence activities in the immediate areas. The Romans used them to widen the distance between themselves and the barbarians beyond. Dio Cassius says that the Sarmatian and Germanic tribes bordering on the Danube were asked to leave several miles near the Roman border uninhabited and deserted, and that they were also forbidden to sail boats on the river.²⁶ From Tacitus we learn that foreigners were free to cross the frontier only in daytime, that they were instructed to deposit their arms at frontier posts, and that they could proceed further only under military escort, for which they had to pay.²⁷ Ammianus confirms that similar regulations were in force on the Persian border.²⁸

Life beyond the border was mostly in the nature of barbarian tribal activity, except in the East. There were no sophisticated governments to infiltrate, except the Parthian, Armenian, or the Persian. Therefore, if there was apparent reluctance to extend the Roman intelligence service on a large scale beyond the Roman frontiers, we would have to ask who would they have infiltrated, and how? What took place some miles beyond the Limes might often be unknown to the Romans, unless a befriended tribe, in the interests of its own security, disclosed to them the activities of the barbarians moving closer to the border, eager to share in the wealth that had accumulated in Roman provinces where civilization and commerce flourished. This was a dangerous habit that they had acquired early in their history. As a means of intelligence collection, it always carried a risk. Should the tribe decide to change its loyalty, as did the Areani in the Great Barbarian Revolt in Britain in ad 367, then Rome’s intelligence-collecting capabilities and indeed security might simply collapse. After six centuries of political and military experience the Romans sometimes still relied on the goodwill of their allies to provide the intelligence upon which their survival depended. Dependence on foreigners for intelligence had proven many times to be unhealthy. Collecting intelligence through one’s own initiative and efforts was the only viable policy.

Roman intelligence: success or failure?

As to the effectiveness of the Roman intelligence system, one need not make value judgments about the Romans being “good” or “bad” at the intelligence game. I have described the elements of their system, showed how the system worked, and shown how the system sometimes failed. My point is that intelligence activities long predate intelligence services. Even in the most primitive military organizations, intelligence in various forms (reconnaissance, counterintelligence) was an indispensable feature of warfare and defense. Given that intelligence will be collected and processed in any event by anyone engaged in hostilities, so much the better if institutions are established that can be entrusted with such tasks professionally, the hope being that at least the quality of the product will then improve.

By modern standards, all ancient intelligence organizations seem primitive. By ancient standards, the Romans were neither the best nor the worst at intelligence operations. In the thousand years of their history, one would expect to find some intelligence failures, no matter how efficient their system may have been. The longevity of the Empire, however, may certainly be cited as evidence that Rome’s intelligence services were doing their job properly, but this is not to say that it was the sole determining factor in Rome’s military or political dealings. Even timely intelligence carries no guarantees.

The noted intelligence historian, David Kahn, has advanced a principle that gives us some insight into the relationship between intelligence and strategy. Perhaps we may test his hypothesis on the Romans. Kahn’s Law²⁹ states: “Emphasizing the offensive tends toward neglect of intelligence.”³⁰ Kahn believes that the relative value of intelligence is different in offense and defense. Although intelligence is pertinent to both, it is essential to victory only in defense. The difference between intelligence in the two modes is that between a defining characteristic and an accompanying characteristic. Intelligence is a defining characteristic of defense; it is only an accompanying characteristic to offense. Clausewitz articulated basically the same theory. What is essential, he wrote, is surprise, or denying information about one’s own plans to the enemy. This further implies that intelligence, meaning knowledge of enemy intentions, is necessary for success in defense. In other words, while intelligence is integral to the defense, it is only contingent to the offense.³¹

When the Romans had the overwhelming superiority in brute force, they did indeed tend to neglect intelligence. Their opponents, being not as well organized and on the defensive, needed intelligence to achieve surprise or deception and to outwit the Romans. This would explain why deception was a tactic more often employed against Rome than by the Romans. Military commanders choose to deceive because they expect significant potential benefits from doing so. If one can achieve success without it, this is also a legitimate option. A Roman commander might have resorted to deception because he was personally predisposed or conditioned to apply indirect tactics. Such conditioning may be an outgrowth of one’s culture or past experience with deception, the type of political system within which one operates, or the availability of techniques and apparatus for executing deception.³² But as a whole the Romans, operating from a position of strength, simply did not rely much on deception in the framework of their strategic outlook.

There are two corollaries to Kahn’s Law. The first says: “Emphasizing the offensive tends toward an emphasis on counterintelligence.”³³ Because the Romans were, more often than not, the offensive party, they also showed greater interest in counterintelligence – watching for signs of treachery, and on the lookout for revolts against the Empire. Until the late Empire, threats from across the borders were minimal, and the Romans concentrated on quelling the major revolts of subject peoples, such as the Pannonians or the Jews.

The second corollary to Kahn’s Law states: “In situations of stalemate, both sides tend to emphasize intelligence equally.”³⁴ Such stalemates occurred when the Parthians or Germans could fight the Romans to a standstill, and then the emphasis shifted to diplomatic measures rather than military enterprise. But this did not lessen the need for sound intelligence. For those concerned with the peaceful settlement of conflict and the prevention of war, lack of intelligence can lead to failed diplomacy, not only failed military action. The most profitable period of Augustus’s diplomatic initiatives in Parthia coincides exactly with his most intensive use of agents in place, covert action, and delicate clandestine diplomacy.³⁵ Augustus used techniques which, in modern times, have become common features of the covert action repertoire: secretly influencing key government leaders, or members of a foreign court who may one day become leaders; placing and cultivating agents of influence; influencing powerful factions that would cooperate with Rome; and influencing public opinion with propaganda – all the outer trappings of imperial domination.

Thus Kahn’s Law and its corollaries reinforce what we already observe in the Roman military system. Although the Romans did not always enjoy exceptionally capable generalship, tactical superiority on the battlefield, or advanced weapons technology, an opportune combination of these ingredients enabled them often enough to beat their opponents, and this reputation for force was used to manipulate subjugated peoples as much as the use of force itself. Rome was able to harness the military might of the Empire for political ends, and this doctrine did not require a strategy that hinged on surprise attack, deception, or other practices for which prior intelligence is imperative. In the third century ad a Roman commander could still say: “You will… prove to Rome and the world… that you did not violate a truce unjustly by trickery or deceit but that you won by superior force of arms.”³⁶

The Romans designed and built a large and complex security system for their Empire that skillfully integrated troop deployments, static defenses, road networks, and signaling facilities. We should be very careful, however, in assuming that this system always functioned as a coherent whole. The problem with speaking of the Romans as combining diplomacy, military forces, road networks, and fortifications that served a single overall purpose is that such a picture assumes a rational guiding hand. The Romans had all the components of the system; it is the comprehensive coordination of these elements that has yet to be proven. A national intelligence system demands a balance between the positive intelligence and counterintelligence aspects within the intelligence cycle of direction, collection, processing/analysis, and dissemination. Rome failed to develop an effective intelligence system in that there was no real doctrine, organization, or person who could have implemented and regulated a balanced intelligence cycle that served a common purpose except the emperor. Success stories in Roman intelligence history are confined to specific leaders and their efforts, or certain groups of men in the internal security services, neither of which operated in the context of the balanced, systematic concept I have just outlined. And a word of caution about judging a system by its failures: intelligence operations, by their very nature, are most successful when they remain undiscovered. We are therefore much less likely to learn of them when the Romans had a striking success, than when a blown operation became public knowledge. Nor does highlighting these failures present a distorted picture of Roman history. An intelligence failure can easily set the tenor of a war – be it Pearl Harbor or the clades Variana. Such incidents begin wars and affect policy decisions for generations to come.

The Romans were very fortunate in that their enemies took so long to combine against them in any great numbers. One of the most important functions of a Roman intelligence system would have been to keep Rome informed of tribes uniting against it, and to detect preparations for external attacks during times of internal turmoil. When Rome indulged in civil war during the Republic, or struggles for the throne in the Empire, it left its frontiers wide open and at the mercy of external powers. As Sallust pointed out, “Our frenzy has brought it about that Roman armies are pitted against each other, our arms turned away from the enemy and against ourselves.”³⁷ That Roman generals and soldiers could turn one against another seemed to Roman writers an invitation to all hostile foreigners to conspire jointly to invade Roman territory. And it is because the Romans themselves thought so much in terms of their own territorial aggrandizement that this seemed such an utter waste – all this foreign territory could have been won for Rome and yet the Romans, by infighting among themselves, had senselessly squandered it.³⁸ All effectual military action against external enemies was paralyzed by internal dissension. To give but one example, during the revolt of Sertorius, Mithridates, Rome’s greatest foreign foe, tried to strike a bargain with him. Luckily for the Romans, Sertorius was unusually high-minded and was not about to cede Roman territory to a foreigner. Yet it remained a constant nightmare that, tempted by Rome’s civil turmoil, her disparate enemies would join forces against her. It is remarkable, in fact, how rarely they ever did so. But these fears haunted Roman strategic thinkers for centuries.

Finally there is the inability to forestall revolts and invasions. Does this represent a malfunction of the intelligence apparatus? Persistent strategic failures do not necessarily point to a lack of intelligence capability, but sometimes rather to an inability or failure on the part of the consumer to make good use of the intelligence received. Intelligence may be timely and accurate, but that does not mean anyone will listen to it or act on it. This problem has been endemic to many governments, and not only ancient ones. Recent intelligence histories of the western democracies in World War I and II have made this point painfully clear.³⁹ In many cases, intelligence was not the deciding factor, but rather other strategic and tactical factors. Revolts are not entirely preventable, and surprise attack is virtually unavoidable.⁴⁰ The principal justification given to the Romans for the existence and costs of their Empire had always been its role in offering military protection and maintaining peace. Success in that role depended to a large degree on the Roman reputation for victory in war, which in turn necessitated constant reminders to retain its validity. The emperor was responsible for upholding that tradition. He had to respond to invasion or rebellion as well as to make decisions about levying troops, appointing or deposing client kings, and altering or leaving intact the status and size of territories ⁴¹ He was also the ultimate intelligence consumer. How he set up his intelligence staff, or whether he chose to listen to it, are interesting questions which we would like to be able to answer case by case. Unfortunately, we cannot.

When the Romans recovered from the terrible crisis of the third century, their intelligence apparatus was expanded, but more importantly their whole world had changed. Not only was their approach to intelligence matters different in the late Empire, but their entire approach to empire in itself was different. The transformation of the Roman Empire into an oriental monarchy became even more advanced in ad 284, with Diocletian. Because in a sense the ground rules were altered with the beginning of the dominate, I have elected to leave the subject of Roman intelligence in the late Empire for a separate volume. Diocletian abandoned all Republican traditions and undertook a reorganization of the civil and military administration. The process was continued by Constantine and his successors, until the government was metamorphosed into a bureaucracy in the hands of a limited number of high officials. The Empire had grown too large to be ruled by one man, and eventually it was divided into two parts. The purpose of this division and consequent increase in the number of administrators was to prevent any one official from accumulating sufficient power to instigate a revolution and interfere with the regular succession to imperial power. An additional means to the same end was a sharp division between civil and military authority. The old system of internal security had collapsed and a new one had been devised in its stead. The agentes in rebus and notarii assumed the role once played by the frumentarii. The new officials, with their own jealousies and rivalries, were in constant competition with each other, since their areas of responsibility were not always clearly defined. Subordinates of these higher officials were appointed by the emperor to spy on their superiors. All of this was closely watched and reported to Augustus by his corps of secret service men. The Empire was again made safe, but it would never again be free.

Romans experienced a full range of success and failure during their long history. Their mistakes have a certain universality about them. Although the immediate circumstances of their intelligence failures are specific, the causes are the same ones that plague governments today. A modern historian has written:

The blinders self-imposed by a sense of superiority, the rash or overcautious tendencies of generals, the frailties of intelligence, the fickleness of publics, the faithlessness (or anyway, self interest) of allies, and the uncertainty of luck – ancient and modern, offer reference points for each other.⁴²

Two millennia of technological progress have not invalidated the lessons to be learned from intelligence failures.

Notes

1. Grant, Army of the Caesars, p. 12; Sallust, War with Catiline, pp. 26, 28–9, 41.

2. Veil. Pat. 2.14, F.W. Shipley translation, Loeb Classical Library edition.

3. K.R. Bradley, Slavery and Rebellion in the Roman World 140–70 bc (London: Batsford, 1989), p. 19.

4. F. Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labor in the Roman Empire from the Julio-Claudians to Constantine,” PBSR 52 (1984), p. 127.

5. Dio Cassius 79.15: each had been princeps peregrinorum and were “men who possessed no excellence at all, but… had been of great assistance to him in satisfying his unholy curiosity.” E. Cary translation, Loeb Classical Library edition.

6. On the professional training, or lack thereof, for Roman commanders, see Campbell, “Teach Yourself How to be a General,” pp. 13–29.

7. Suetonius, Augustus 19.1.

8. Dio Cassius 54.15.1.

9. Dio Cassius 65.16.3.

10. Suetonius, Titus 6.2.

11. This system was operated under the Latin Secretary in the palace (ab epistulis Latinis).

12. Macmullen, Enemies of Roman Order, p. 163.

13. Website: Epictetus, Discourses 4.13.5, W.A. Oldfather translation, Loeb Classical Library edition.

14. F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World 31 bc to ad 337 (London: Duckworth, 1977), p. 52.

15. Astin, Politics and Policies in the Roman Republic, pp. 14–15.

16. J. Crook, Consilium principis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), p. 115.

17. S. Mattem, Rome and the Enemy. Imperial Strategy in the Principate (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), p. 2.

18. Eckstein, Senate and General; Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome; Isaac, Limits of Empire.

19. See Isaac, Limits of Empire, pp. 416–18; contra Campbell, Emperor and the Roman Army, pp. 133ff.; pp. 382ff.

20. Millar, Emperor in the Roman World, p. 11.

21. B. Levick, Claudius (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 139 makes this suggestion about Britain, although recent work has shown that the exploitation of metal resources and the fact that troops were raised locally for the defense of Britain would have made the province profitable. On the motives for campaigns in the East, see Mattem, Rome and the Enemy, passim.

22. M. Griffin, Nero. The End of a Dynasty (London: Batsford, 1984), p. 225.

23. Isaac, Limits of Empire; p. 402.

24. As Eckstein, Senate and General, p. xxii points out, this was true not only for the Romans. See J. Benyon, Proconsul and Paramountcy in South Africa (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1968), esp. pp. 332–42, with its thesis that the development of British policy often depended upon the “exertion of the free will of key individuals” in the colonies.

25. See S. Mitchell’s comments in his review of S.L. Dyson, The Creation of the Roman Frontier, in Journal of Roman Studies 76 (1986), pp. 288–9. Cf. J.W. Rich’s review in LCM 11,2 (February 1986), pp. 29–30.

26. Dio Cassius 71.15.16; 73.3.

27. Tacitus, Histories 4.63–65.

28. Ammi. Marc. 18.8.

29. Or so it is dubbed by G.J.A. O’Toole, “Kahn’s Law: A Universal Principle of Intelligence?” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 4, 1 (spring 1990), pp. 39, 46.

30. Kahn, Hitler’s Spies, p. 528.

31. Website: Ibid.

32. D.C. Daniel and K.L. Herbig, Strategic Military Deception (New York: Pergamon Press, 1982), p. 356.

33. O’Toole, “Kahn’s Law,” p. 40.

34. Website: Ibid., p. 41.

35. R.M. Sheldon, “Clandestine Operations and Covert Action: The Roman Imperative,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 10, 3 (fall 1997), pp. 299–315.

36. Herodian 4.14.8. in a speech by Macrinus to his troops when facing the Parthians. C.R. Whittaker translation, Loeb Classical Library edition.

37. Sallust, Histories, frag. 1, 55, trans Grant, Army of the Caesars, p. 11.

38. Lucan, Pharsalia 3.93ff.

39. See W. Wark, The Ultimate Enemy: British Intelligence and Nazi Germany 1933–1939 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985).

40. E. Kam, Surprise Attack (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 213–33.

41. Griffin, Nero, p. 222.

42. R.E. Neustadt and E.R. May, Thinking in Time (New York: Free Press, 1986), p. 233.