Topic summary
Bellum Batonianum
200,000 infantry
9,000 cavalry
10–15 legions
70 auxiliary cohorts
15 alae
Thracian allied cavalry
Veterans, freedmen and volunteers from Italy
Classis Pannonica
The Bellum Batonianum (Latin for War of the Batos) or Great Illyrian Revolt was a military conflict fought in the Roman province of Illyricum in the 1st century AD, in which an alliance of native peoples of the two regions of Illyricum, Dalmatia and Pannonia, revolted against the Romans. The Roman historian Suetonius described the uprising as the most difficult conflict faced by Rome since the Punic Wars two centuries earlier.
The rebellion began among native peoples who had been recruited as auxiliary troops for the Roman army. They were led by Bato the Daesitiate, a chieftain of the Daesitiatae in the central part of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, and were later joined by the Breuci, a tribe in Pannonia led by Bato the Breucian. Many other tribes in Illyria also joined the revolt.
Velleius Paterculus called it the Pannonian and Dalmatian War because it involved both regions of Illyricum.
The four-year war lasted from AD 6 to AD 9 and witnessed a large deployment of Roman forces in the province, with whole armies operating across the western Balkans and fighting on more than one front. In AD 8, the Breuci of the Sava valley surrendered, but it took a winter blockade and another season of fighting before the surrender in Dalmatia in AD 9.
Bato the Breucian betrayed Pinnes which later became the Ruler of the Breucians by the Romans.