Spying in Roman Times

The Romans were very proud people. Being the most dominant force in Europe at the time, they prided themselves on being an unstoppable military force, claiming they won all battles "the hard way". The writers of the Roman era boldly claimed that the Roman armies did not use any forms of trickery of deceit to win battles. Although this statement is mostly true, there was still a significant amount of espionage. 

It is certainly tough to find evidence of secret intelligence that happened more than two thousand years ago. However, the business of secretly collecting information is as old as the human race. Because of this, it is fairly simple to find traces of espionage.

Preceding modern data collection with wires, bugs and cameras, people who wanted information had to get it-without any perks like hidden mics-in order to survive. Simple eavesdropping usually did the trick in those times. Spies can be remarkably valuable to leaders who want to keep playing leader their whole lives. However, if the information collected is not analyzed and used quickly, it can ultimately lead to failure anyways. A famous example of this in the Roman times was the event in which a list of conspirators was thrust into Julius Caesar's hand shortly before he was assassinated. Caesar's intelligence network had done its job. Had the dictator read the message and acted upon it, he might have survived. If the commander or statesman has all the information yet makes a bad decision, it is not an intelligence failure but incompetence or poor judgment on the part of the intelligence consumer.

Rome certainly did not lack enemies to target. Neighboring clans kept the Romans constantly at war. Collecting intelligence about these surrounding tribes and discerning whether they would be friendly or hostile in a given situation was probably a full-time job. During the Etruscan wars, the consul Fabius Maximus sent his brother disguised as an Etruscan peasant into the Ciminian forest to win over the local Umbrians to the Roman cause. The brother was both fluent in Etruscan and a master of disguise. He was sent to reconnoiter areas into which Roman agents were said never to have penetrated. The mission was a success, and Rome was able to bring Umbrian tribes into an alliance.

The Romans continued to use intelligence as they conquered the peoples of the Italian Peninsula. They used scouts on regular assignments against the Samnites and Gauls, and because of advance intelligence they could often catch their enemies by launching surprise attacks and rout their camps.

When Rome leaped into the international arena against the Carthaginians, however, it learned a lesson about how effective advance intelligence could be in the hands of a skilled opponent such as the Carthaginian leader Hannibal. During the Second Punic War (218­201 b.c.), Hannibal placed spies in Roman camps and in Rome itself. We know this because one of those spies whom the Romans caught had his hands cut off, then was released as a warning to other spies. The Carthaginian general's ability to disguise himself, to forge documents, to send secret communications, and to surprise the Romans became legendary. And his agents are said to have had secret hand gestures that they used as a means of recognizing one another. Hannibal used such ingenuity to lure the Romans into traps, as at Lake Trasimene, where he caught the Roman army between the lake and the surrounding mountains. This ruse cost the Romans fifteen thousand killed and an equal number taken prisoner. His famous victory at the Battle of Cannae was another trap–a victory for Hannibal that cost the Romans dearly in lost manpower. 

Not only did Hannibal emphasize good intelligence, he exacted a high price from agents who did not perform well. A scout who had mistakenly taken him to Casilinum and into a trap, when he had been directed to take him to Casinum, was crucified as punishment for his error. Hannibal had the advantage of being sole commander of his forces. As leader of the Carthaginian army and its allies, he was his own chief of intelligence for fourteen years. It was not until the Romans put a single commander, Scipio Africanus, in charge of their armies that they were able to emulate Hannibal's efficient tactics and win the Second Punic War.



I will either find a way, or make one.

Among other ploys, Scipio directed spies to reconnoiter enemy camps. A legate (general in Rome) named Gaius Laelius was fearful the plan would be exposed–that one of the disguised spies, Lucius Statorius, might be recognized since he had previously visited the camp. To protect his agent's cover, Laelius had him publicly caned. The persuasiveness of the action went upon the fact that only peasants and lower-class people would be subjects of corporal punishment. This is another example of how the Romans well-utilized spy tactics to win battles.

By the time Rome conquered the Hellenistic kingdoms in the East and fought the Third Punic War, the republic on the Tiber River had become the center of a Mediterranean empire. What truly surprises people today about the empire was how it managed to prevail with horrible infrastructure. For example, there was no postal-communications system, no government intelligence service, no permanent foreign service, and no decision-making body other than the three-hundred-man Senate. The Romans had nothing resembling a diplomatic corps. They did not even install occupying forces in the East prior to the late second century b.c. 

The main way that the Romans established relations and controlled places that were overseas was by sending embassies, groups of people to places that were overseas. We can assume that they sent them so they could covertly gain intelligence about their subjects. However, every single one of the countries that the embassies visited believed that they were spies. For example, Tiberius Gracchus, when we was touring the East was referred to by Greek historians as a kataskopoi, or spy. However, Rome never truly developed a formal intelligence service, instead using small groups of privately selected people to do spy tasks.

Part of the reason Rome did not want to make the intelligence was because of the way the government developed. The Senate, composed of groups of wealthy, upper-class families, acted with a certain amount of class loyalty that allowed the state to push its interests and expand overseas. But the senate was not of one mind. There was always tremendous personal competition among individuals and families for the wealth and glory that such conquest created. In order to further their wealth, these men needed to know what others were doing and planning, and so they used their private intelligence networks to advance their own 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. Certainly political scandal played its part in launching as well as sinking the careers of numerous senators.

The Romans had no qualms about using espionage on a personal level. Every Roman aristocrat had his private network of business associates, informers, clansmen, slaves, or agents (male or female) who could keep him informed on the latest happenings in the Senate or his own home. Even Roman architects built private homes with counterintelligence in mind. Livius Drusus' architect asked him whether he would like his house built 'in such a way that he would be free from public gaze, safe from all espionage and that no one could look down on it.'

Espionage on a small scale became espionage on a national scale when the nobility took its family interests into the foreign-policy arena. But because each senatorial family had its own private intelligence network, no one group would have sanctioned the creation of a single central intelligence organization that might fall into the hands of a rival faction. Such a collection of individual interests was simply not fertile ground for spawning a single institution that would monitor Rome's overseas interests plus segments of Roman society itself. Even if such a centralized intelligence body were assigned only foreign targets, there might have remained a residual fear that sooner or later such an apparatus would be used to advance the interests of one group over another.

The fact that the intelligence networks were privately owned and operated can be seen clearly in the late republic. Sallust, who wrote an account of the Catiline conspiracy, one of the most notorious threats to the late republic, said it was put down by Cicero using bodyguards, who learned of it through the consul's wide-ranging espionage network that included bodyguards. Pompey and Caesar each had intelligence networks that they used against each other in the civil war that ultimately brought down the republic.

Caesar's agents in Rome kept a close watch on his enemies. Cicero, for example, mentions in a letter that his epigrams were reported to Caesar, who could distinguish between the authentic ones and those falsely attributed to him. As long as Caesar held control of Rome during the civil war, the city's population rejoiced with his victories and mourned his losses, at least publicly. They knew full well there were spies and eavesdroppers prowling about, observing all that was said and done. Caesar's military couriers, the speculatores, were kept busy delivering intelligence but were also given espionage assignments.

Caesar coordinated his intelligence assets well. In this he stands out as an individual who could make the best of the republican system. He established a rapid message and information transport system via couriers, and he also had scouts and spies who used counterintelligence techniques, such as codes and ciphers, to prevent his military plans from falling into the hands of the enemy. 

Quite frequently intelligence couriers doubled as political assassins. The emperor Gordian sent a secret letter that is described by the historian Herodian as having been folded in a manner that was 'the normal method used by the emperor to send private, secret messages.' No further details are given, but evidently such messages were sealed in a certain way and carried by special messengers. In Gordian's case, the message was sent to the governor of Mauretania Caesariensis as part of a covert operation. The agents were disguised as messengers from Maximinus, the emperor's enemy. The governor, Vitalianus, usually went to a small room, off the public court, where he could scrutinize the dispatches carefully. The agents then were instructed to inform him that they were bringing secret instructions from Maximinus and to request a private audience in order to pass these secret instructions on personally. While Vitalianus was examining the seals, they killed him with swords hidden under their cloaks.

Despite their protestations to the contrary, the Romans were heavily involved in espionage, but it cannot be said that they ever established a formal intelligence service. The closest they came was in using groups like the frumentarii and the agentes in rebus for various internal security tasks. Protecting the emperor and keeping him on the throne became so crucial after the third century that most of Rome's intelligence activities were focused inward. Ironically, the Romans were better at spying on each other rather than spying on their enemies.



Map showing the growth of the Roman Empire