by Gwyn Morgan
XV PRIMIGENIA: one of the two legions created by Caligula, probably in 39, it appears to have been stationed first at Bonna (Bonn) in Lower Germany. It was moved to Vetera (Xanten), also in Lower Germany, probably in 43 as part of the reshuffling that accompanied Claudius’ invasion of Britain, and there it occupied a camp jointly with V Alaudae. A detachment accompanied Valens on his march to Rome. The balance of the legion was massacred at Vetera during Civilis’ revolt (Hist.4.60) and the unit was disbanded by Vespasian. In 69 Munius Lupercus was the legionary legate probably of XV Primigenia, possibly of XVI (Hist. 4.18.1).
XVI: formed originally by Octavian, the legion was stationed at Mogontiacum (Mainz) in Upper Germany in 23. It was transferred to Novaesium (Neuss) in Lower Germany in Claudius’ reign, to replace XX Valeria Victrix, and it was still there in 69. A detachment accompanied Valens on his march to Rome. The balance of the legion was caught up in Civilis’ revolt and was cashiered by Vespasian afterwards, though survivors may have been drafted into the new unit XVI Flavia Firma. The legionary legate in 69, if not Munius Lupercus, may have been Numisius Rufus (Hist. 4.22.1 and 59.1).
XX VALERIA VICTRIX: stationed originally in Spain, the legion was based in Lower Germany in 14 and was involved in the mutinies attending Tiberius’ accession. One of the four legions moved to Britain when Claudius invaded, it was still there in 69, winning its title Valeria Victrix for its part in the suppression of Boudicca’s revolt. The detachment of (probably) 2,600 men it sent to Vitellius joined him only after Bedriacum and fought at Cremona. The balance of the men proved the most reluctant of the troops in Britain to abandon Vitellius for Vespasian, but it is unclear whether they were following or defying their legionary legate, Marcus Roscius Coelius (Hist. 1.60 and 3.44). In either case, Mucianus replaced Roscius in 70 with Tacitus’ father-in-law, Agricola (Agr. 7.3).
XXI RAPAX: stationed in Lower Germany in the early principate, it was one of the prime movers in the mutinies of 14. The unit was shifted to Vindonissa in Upper Germany (Windisch in Switzerland), probably around 50, when XIII Gemina was transferred to Poetovio (Ptuj) in Pannonia. Although XXI Rapax played no clear part in Vitellius’ elevation, it formed the core of Caecina’s column (Hist. 1.61.2), fought at Bedriacum, and was sent with I Italica to hold Cremona against the forces of Antonius Primus (Hist. 2.100.3 and 3.18.1). Returned to Vindonissa immediately after Cremona’s sack (cf. Hist. 3.35.1 and 4.70.2), it was one of the units used by Petillius Cerialis to suppress Civilis’ revolt (Hist. 4.68.4), being stationed then at Bonna (Bonn) in Lower Germany.
XXII DEIOTARIANA: in origin a force raised and trained in the Roman manner by King Deiotarus of Galatia, it was incorporated as a regular legion when his kingdom was made a province in 25 B.C. By 8 B.C. it was stationed in Egypt, and from some point in Tiberius’ reign through 69 it occupied the double camp at Nicopolis, outside Alexandria, with III Cyrenaica. As happened also with III Cyrenaica, a detachment of unknown size served under Corbulo in 63, and a detachment of 1,000 men joined Titus for the storming of Jerusalem in 70.
XXII PRIMIGENIA: one of the two legions created by Caligula, probably in 39. From the start, it seems, until 69 it was stationed with IV Macedonica in the double camp at Mogontiacum (Mainz) in Upper Germany. A detachment accompanied Caecina in his march on Rome and fought at Bedriacum. The rest of the legion escorted Vitellius to Italy (Hist. 2.89.1 and 100.1), marched with Caecina to Hostilia, and fought at Cremona (Hist. 3.22.2). Immediately after, it was sent to Carnuntum in Pannonia, replacing VII Galbiana as the garrison (cf. Hist.3.35.1). The legionary legate in 69 was Gaius Dillius Vocula, but he remained behind in Germany (Hist. 4.24.1), and was murdered by a deserter during Civilis’ revolt (Hist. 4.59.1). After the revolt it occupied the new camp at Vetera (Xanten) in Lower Germany, its place at Carnuntum being taken by XV Apollinaris.
NOTES
Introduction
1. There is no valid way of setting up equivalencies between Roman and modern money, but I have attempted to convey orders of magnitude by converting every specific sum into sesterces (abbreviated HS). For sesterces the reader can substitute dollars, pounds, or euros to get the general effect.
2. Romans cut off the heads of prominent enemies for two reasons. First, there was identification. Before photography, this was the easiest way to ensure that the man in question had been killed. Hence Dio’s story of the aristocrat who evaded the clutches of the emperor Commodus and was never found, “even though many heads said to be his were sent to Rome.” Second, there was the humiliation of having one’s corpse mutilated. This was redoubled if the victim’s head became an object of sport, as happened not only to Galba. Gaius Trebonius was the first of the Liberators to be caught and killed by Julius Caesar’s heirs. The soldiery cut off his head and “for amusement bowled it from one to another along the city streets like a ball, until it was wholly unrecognizable.” Fabia’s comment is taken from his paper “La journée du 15 janvier 69 à Rome,” Revue de Philologie 36 (1912), 102–3.
3. For a striking example of the widespread failure to grasp what Tacitus is saying and how he says it see my “Greed for Power? Tacitus, Histories 1, 52, 2,” Philologus 146 (2002), 339–49.
4. Many of the horrendous errors of fact in Suetonius’ Life of Vitellius are the result of an attempt to arrange and present the material artistically. See Paola Venini, “Sulle vite svetoniane di Galba, Otone e Vitellio,” Rendiconti dell’Istituto Lombardo, classe di lettere 108 (1974), 991–1014.
Chapter 1
1. Under the imperial system, the two consuls who took office on 1 January, still gave the year its name, no matter how briefly they served, and were known as consules ordinarii. The rest were consules suffecti (replacements). The evidence for the senate under the emperors has been assembled by R. J. A. Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome (Oxford: University Press, 1984).
2. On the seven cohorts of the watch (cohortes vigilum) see P. K. Baillie Reynolds, The Vigiles of Imperial Rome (London: Oxford University Press, 1926); J. S. Rainbird, “The Fire Stations of Imperial Rome,” Papers of the British School at Rome 54 (1986), 147–69. Paramilitary units, they played little part in the story of 69. But their commander, the praefectus vigilum, more than once moved up to become prefect of the praetorian guard.
3. For a fascinating discussion of the tensions created in the minds of senators able to distinguish between forest and trees, whether they accepted or opposed their ruler, see the introduction to V. Rudich, Political Dissidence under Nero (London and New York: Routledge, 1993). He may overestimate the number capable of such discernment.
4. By 68/69 the number of praetorian cohorts had risen to 12, the number of urban to six, and they were numbered sequentially. Three urban cohorts remained in Rome, but the other three were distributed between Ostia (cohors XVII: see chapter 5), Puteoli, and Lugdunum (cohors XVIII).
5. Assessment of Verginius’ motives would be more difficult, if we were to accept Plutarch’s claim that the troops proclaimed him emperor before Vesontio. But his account is muddled. Dio’s statement that the proclamation followed the battle is far more plausible.
6. If, as J. P. V. D. Balsdon once suggested, Galba’s four legions were XIII, XIV, XV Primigenia, and XVI, the case would work just as well. In 68/69 there would have been no anti-Galban legion in Upper Germany, since XXII Primigenia would not have been involved, but there would have been two in Lower Germany, XV and XVI, and it was in Lower Germany that one of the most persistent malcontents was stationed, Fabius Valens.
7. Plutarch, our main source for the donative (Galba 2.2), reports that not only were 7,500 denarii promised to individual guardsmen, but also that 1,250 denarii was the sum offered to “those outside” (τοῖς ἐκτός). This has been taken to denote the armed forces all over the empire. It more likely means “those forces in Rome outside the praetorian guard.” First, Nymphidius engineered a coup and needed support only in Rome. Second, Tacitus limits complaints about the nonpayment of the donative to the praetorians, ne
ver bringing it up in relation to the Rhine legions, although they were equally aggrieved. And third, Polybius 36.2 uses the phrase in a similar context to mark the distinction between “those in the senate” and “those outside the senate but in Rome.” See F. W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius, vol. 3 (Oxford: University Press, 1979), 654.
Chapter 2
1. Macrobius preserves three jokes about Galba’s father (Saturnalia 2.4.8 and 2.6.3–4). The most telling asserts that his physical disability put his audiences off so much that it ruined the effect his oratory might otherwise have had.
2. See the excellent discussion by T. P. Wiseman, “Legendary genealogies in late-republican Rome,” Greece & Rome 21 (1974), 153–64.
3. Later, so Suetonius remarks, it was considered significant that Galba, consul ordinarius for 33, followed Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus (Nero’s father) as ordinarius for 32, and was himself followed by Lucius Salvius Otho (the father of his murderer) as suffectus for 33. He does not add that Aulus Vitellius, the emperor’s uncle, and Lucius, his father, also appeared in the sequence, as suffectus in 32 and ordinarius in 34 respectively. That would have ruined the effect. The pattern proves only that these men were all of the same generation, advancing at much the same pace.
4. Though exaggerated, the reports were not baseless. There was trouble in Rome (Nymphidius was fomenting it). Clodius Macer was withholding Africa’s grain supplies. There was trouble in Germany. And until late in 68 Licinius Mucianus, governor of Syria, was feuding with Vespasian in Judaea (see chapter 8). But as this is one of the few chronological hints Plutarch provides, Nymphidius’ dwelling on the mutinous state of the troops in Germany could perhaps be held to suggest that Galba had not yet made his way north from Narbo Martius.
5. These details help explain Galba’s ordering the execution of Cingonius Varro, the senator who wrote the speech, and they underline Nymphidius’ inferior status and capacities. A senator worth his salt did not get others to write his speeches, nor did he deliver them from a script, whether or not he had gotten the words by heart beforehand.
6. For this stimulus-response interpretation of emperors’ activities see especially Fergus Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977); for the gaps in the surviving evidence, G. P. Burton, “The Roman Imperial State (A.D. 14–235): Evidence and reality,”Chiron 32 (2002), 249–80. The former point may be illustrated by the new constitutions forthe provinces Africa and Cappadocia that Otho put into effect. These could have been items inherited from Galba: Africa probably needed reorganization after the antics of Clodius Macer, and Galba reorganized Galatia and Pamphylia, a step likely to have affected arrangements in Cappadocia too. But if this is correct, Galba failed to carry out these “policies” before his murder.
7. Galba’s ties with other senators are discussed by Ronald Syme, “Partisans of Galba,” Historia 31 (1982), 460–83, reprinted in his Roman Papers 4 (Oxford: University Press, 1988), 115–39. As he admits, the evidence is slight and the links tenuous. It is arguable, for example, whether Marius Celsus was ever Galba’s friend, even though he won fame for his loyalty to him as emperor.
8. Though marines were not allotted quarters in Rome before the Flavian era, detachments from the fleet at Misenum carried out assorted duties in and around the city in the Julio-Claudian period, for example, managing the awnings stretched over the theaters to shade the audience from the sun. Rome’s deleterious effects on troops stationed there was a commonplace.
9. The basic work on the recruitment of legionaries is Giovanni Forni, Il reclutamento delle legioni da Augusto a Diocleziano (Milan and Rome: Fratelli Bocca, 1953), updated by his study “Estrazione etnica e sociale dei soldati delle legioni nei primi tre secoli del impero,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, vol. 2, part 1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1974), 339–91. The troops’ diet is discussed by Roy W. Davies, “The Roman military diet,” Britannia 2 (1971) 122–42, reprinted in his Service in the Roman Army (Edinburgh: University Press, 1989), 187–206.
10. This is discussed by Ramsey MacMullen, “The legion as a society,”Historia 33 (1984), 440–56, reprinted in his Changes in the Roman Empire (Princeton: University Press, 1990), 225–35. He stresses the positive effects on unit cohesion, not the negative effects of isolation.
11. See chapter 4. Suetonius signals what he is doing by stating explicitly that “the troops took no account of the day or the time of day” (Vitellius 8.1). For the belief that the day following the first of the month was a “black” day, on which one should not start anything new, see Varro, de lingua Latina 6.29; Livy 6.1.12; Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae 25; Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 5.17.1–2; and Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.16.21. The idea that evenings were to be spent “off duty” is a commonplace: for two more examples see chapters 5 and 10.
Chapter 3
1. Tacitus and Suetonius report, each in his own way, that the people bandied about the name of a third possibility, Vespasian’s elder son Titus. But both dismiss him as a genuine candidate. What occasioned the gossip was his being sent from Judaea to Rome in the winter of 68/69. He never reached Rome (see chapter 8).
2. Originally scouts, speculatores by the end of the republic were élite troops, attached closely to a general and used for special missions. In the praetorian guard 24 of them seem to have been carried on the roll of each cohort, though they were not regarded as actual members of the cohort.
3. According to Tacitus, “some believed” that Laco had pressed hard for Piso’s adoption, having met and formed a friendship with him at the house of Rubellius Plautus. Given what we know about the characters of the two men (honesty was the one virtue they shared), the friendship seems unlikely. And those who told the story (as Tacitus also says) explained the lack of evidence by claiming that Laco never revealed this, craftily speaking in Piso’s behalf as if the young man were unknown to him.
4. One Tacitean speech is demonstrably based on fact, Claudius’ address to the senate in 48. We have a fragment of the original, on a bronze tablet found at Lyon in 1524. See E. Mary Smallwood, Documents illustrating the Principates of Gaius, Claudius and Nero (Cambridge: University Press, 1967), no. 369. Tacitus’ version is much briefer and snappier (Annals 11.23–24).
5. Claudius had given the praetorians a donative when he declared Nero his heir in 50, but it is arguable whether this was customary yet (see below, chapter 7 and conclusion).
6. Vinius, ironically, seems not to have offered Otho money, only moral support and the hand of his daughter. Whether Otho wanted to marry her is moot. According to Suetonius (Otho 10.2), in his last days he was meditating a match with Statilia Messallina, previously Nero’s third and final wife.
7. Tacitus has two terms for common soldiers: gregarius miles denotes a private pure and simple; manipularis miles, the term applied to Barbius and Veturius, refers to a ranker at any level up to centurion. So these two were noncoms. Suetonius tells a different story, interesting primarily for the specific figures he gives (probably unreliable): “initially the business was entrusted to five speculatores, then to ten others, two of whom were picked by each of the first five. To each of the 15 men 10,000 sesterces were paid cash down, and 50,000 more were promised.” The annual pay of an ordinary soldier in the praetorian guard amounted to HS 3,000 before stoppages.
Chapter 4
1. There is one early Vitellian gold coin, an aureus struck in Spain, that honors “the Senate and People of Rome” (SENAT P Q ROMANVS), but this legend was almost certainly taken over from Galba’s issues on the initiative of the local mint-master.
2. See especially Valerie A. Maxfield, The Military Decorations of the Roman Army (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981), chapter 4.
3. A detachment (vexillatio) drawn from a legion could vary in size. The four Balkan legions that Otho summoned to his assistance each sent on ahead a detachment of 2,000 men, and 1,000 and 2,000 were the standard numbers. But the detachments from the three Br
itish legions that joined Vitellius totaled 8,000 men, near enough to 2,600 men apiece. We could remedy this supposed anomaly by assuming that Tacitus thought Britain contained four legions at the time, but he also says explicitly that the detachments from the five eastern legions put under the command of Licinius Mucianus totaled 13,000 men, once again 2,600 men apiece.
4. It is often said that Tacitus overestimates the size of both forces by as much as a third, since he gives Valens 40,000 armed men altogether and Caecina 30,000. But German tribal contingents under their own chiefs (as distinct from auxiliary units officered by Romans) were attached to both columns. And both probably included large numbers of camp-followers, as well as soldiers’ slaves. They too could be reckoned combatants. As is pointed out by M. P. Speidel, “The soldiers’ servants,” Ancient Society 20 (1989), 239–48, one of the slaves’ tasks was to defend the camp when the troops marched out to give battle. So the numbers may not be greatly exaggerated.
Chapter 5
1. There is only one hint of this idea in Tacitus, in the speech he gives Otho just before his suicide, and that is discussed in chapter 7.
2. Suetonius’ description of Augustus illustrates the point. He was short, “but this was concealed by the proportion and symmetry of his limbs, so that one recognized it only from the contrast with anyone who was taller.”
