4TH SCYTHICA LEGION
LEGIO IIII SCYTHICA
4th Scythian Legion
EMBLEM:
Bull.
BIRTH SIGN:
Capricorn.
ORIGIN OF TITLE:
Adopted after defeating the Bastarnae, a Scythian tribe, 29 BC.
FOUNDATION:
Stems from a late republican legion of Pompey the Great.
RECRUITMENT AREA:
Originally Italy, then Spain.
POSTINGS:
Macedonia, Moesia, Zeugma, Balkis, Zeugma, Sura.
BATTLE HONORS:
Defeat of the Bastarnae, 29 BC.
Jewish Revolt, AD 66.
Trajan’s Eastern Campaigns, AD 114–116.
NOTABLE COMMANDER:
Septimus Severus, future emperor, AD 181–183.
EARLY SUCCESS PROVES HARD TO EMULATE
Winning its title against Scythian invaders of Moesia and Macedonia early in Augustus’ reign, it would become a bulwark of the Euphrates defense line.
Legions with the number IIII were traditionally raised in Italy. By the time of Pompey the Great this legion was stationed in Spain. It seems to have fought for Pompey against Caesar in eastern Spain, and surrendered to Caesar there in 49 BC. Cohorts of the legion are believed to have then escaped to Greece with Afranius (some of the “Spanish cohorts” referred to at Pharsalus by Caesar), then escaped after Pharsalus to North Africa, where the depleted legion is known to have taken part at the Battle of Thapsus—with its ranks augmented by slave recruits, to the disgust of the legionaries—finally surrendering after the defeat of republican forces there.
Octavian subsequently raised a new 4th Legion, probably using some of Pompey’s former men as its core. There were 4th legions in the armies of both Octavian and Antony at the time of the 31 BC Battle of Actium, and in 30 BC Octavian posted Antony’s former legion, now calling itself the 4th Macedonica, to Spain, while he sent the second 4th Legion to Macedonia, where it would be joined by the 5th and 10th legions.
In Macedonia and Moesia in 29 BC, under the province’s ambitious new governor, Marcus Licinius Crassus (the grandson of Crassus the triumvir who had perished with his army at Carrhae in 53 BC), the legion destroyed the invading Bastarnae, a Scythian tribe, during a series of battles. For this comprehensive victory, Crassus was voted a Triumph by the Senate, and Octavian was hailed imperator. Officially, or unofficially, the 4th Legion adopted the title 4th Scythica following its defeat of these Scythians, by which title it was known for the rest of its days.
By AD 9 the legion was stationed in Moesia, and over the next half century it moved between Moesia and Macedonia. By AD 62, the 4th Scythica Legion had been shipped to Syria, to take part in the push into Armenia by Caesennius Paetus. The legion landed at Laodicea, and, commanded by Funisulanus Vettonianus, was led into Armenia by Paetus, together with the 12th Fulminata Legion.
Several forts were taken, “and some glory as well as plunder” gained. [Tac., A, XV, 8] But the dilatory Paetus allowed his camp at Rhandeia in Armenia to be surrounded and besieged by the army of the Parthian king Vologases. Months later, with his starving troops reluctant to go on the offensive, Paetus agreed to humiliating terms, then led his bedraggled legions from Armenia, leaving behind their baggage and heavy equipment for the enemy.
Rome did not forgive this poor performance. The 4th Scythica was posted to remote Zeugma on the Euphrates, today’s Balkis in Syria. There it would remain for hundreds of years. In AD 66, following the outbreak of the Jewish Revolt, the legion contributed several cohorts to the army led to Jerusalem by Cestius Gallus, which subsequently retreated all the way to Caesarea. Again the 4th Scythica was associated with defeat, and the subsequent Roman commanders against the Jews, Vespasian and then his son Titus, ignored the legion when selecting units for the counter-offensives that finally terminated the revolt.
The legion also contributed cohorts to the Roman operations that put down the Second Jewish Revolt of AD 132–135. In AD 218, a centurion of the 4th Scythica captured the 10-year-old son of the deposed emperor Macrinus when the boy arrived at Zeugma en route to seeking asylum with the Parthians following the defeat of his father by Elagabalus.
By the late fourth century, the 4th Scythica legion was shown in the Notitia Dignitatum still based in Syria, but at Sura.
5TH ALAUDAE LEGION
LEGIO V ALAUDAE
5th Crested Larks Legion
EMBLEM:
Elephants.
BIRTH SIGN:
Cancer (possibly).
FOUNDATION:
The 5th Legion was founded for Julius Caesar in 48 BC in Spain. Alaudae auxiliaries were raised in Transalpine Gaul in 52 BC, formed into a legion by 43 BC, and later folded into the 5th.
RECRUITMENT AREA:
The 5th originally in Further Spain; the Alaudae originally in Transalpine Gaul.
POSTINGS:
Hispania Tarraconensis, Germania, Vetera, Dacia.
BATTLE HONORS:
Germanicus’ German campaigns, AD 14–16.
A HISTORY OF DISASTER:
Lost its eagle to the Germans in 16 BC.
Wiped out by the Dacians in AD 86.
FATED TO FAIL
From favor under Julius Caesar and carrying the elephant emblem for its victory at Thapsus, it would lose its eagle on the Rhine in 15 BC and be wiped out by the Dacians during Domitian’s reign.
In 185 BC, the Roman Republic had a 5th Legion serving in Spain [Livy, XXXIX, 30, 12] where Keppie suggests legions 5 to 10 were always stationed. [Kepp., MRA, 2] In all probability a 5th legion was one of the unidentified Pompeian legions that surrendered to Caesar in Nearer Spain in 49 BC. In the following year, on Caesar’s orders, his governor of Further Spain, Quintus Cassius Longinus, “enrolled a new legion, the 5th” [Caes., CW, IV, 50], the new legion seemingly being enrolled in the recruiting grounds of Pompey’s disbanded 5th.
This 5th Legion was subsequently shipped to North Africa to take part in Caesar’s campaign against the republican forces there, and at the Battle of Thapsus on April 6, 46 BC, the legionaries of the 5th, split over the two wings of Caesar’s army, took on and turned the sixty war elephants of King Juba of Numidia. According to Appian, the men of the 5th had asked to be pitted against the elephants. “As a result, this legion bears elephants on its standards even now.” [App., II, 96]
As for the “Alaudae” background of the legion, two years after the 5th Legion’s participation in the last great battle of the Civil War, Munda, and a year after the murder of Caesar in Rome, Mark Antony was making a play for power in Italy. His troops were ranging the countryside looking for supporters of the “Liberators,” Brutus and Cassius. From late 44 BC to early 43 BC, Marcus Cicero, famed orator and author, wrote that troops of Antony’s Praetorian Guard and “the Alaudae Legion” were looking for him, on Antony’s orders. [Cic., Phil., i. 20, v, 12; XIII, 3, 37; Att., XVI, 8, 2]
Was Cicero referring to the 5th Alaudae Legion? Many modern authors believe so, and suggest that Cicero was merely unfamiliar with the legion’s full name. Yet Cicero was a former consul and general who had led legions in battle and had been voted a Triumph; he had an intimate knowledge of the Roman military. Had the legion that was looking for him been called the 5th Alaudae, Cicero would surely have identified it as such.
Available evidence suggests that in 43 BC the 5th and the Alaudae were two separate legions. Suetonius wrote that during the Gallic War Caesar raised a legion in Transalpine Gaul “called the Alaudae, Gallic for ‘The Crested Lark,’ which he trained and equipped in Roman style. Later, he made every Alaudae legionary a full citizen.” [Suet., I, 24] Caesar himself only wrote of raising twenty-two cohorts of auxiliaries in Transalpine Gaul. Raising a legion of non-citizens was then illegal. There is no mention of this Alaudae Legion during the Civil War, so perhaps the men of the Alaudae were originally among these auxiliaries, helping to keep the peace in Gaul during the Civil War.
At some po
int during the years 45 BC to 30 BC, the 5th Legion and Alaudae auxiliaries merged to form the 5th Alaudae Legion. The combination of a number and a name in a legion’s title was, prior to this, unheard of. It was only after Caesar’s death that it became widespread.
The general who created this combined legion may have been Ventidius, who provided Antony with several legions; the 5th Alaudae went on to march for Antony. By 30 BC, the 5th Alaudae was certainly one of the legions retained in Octavian’s standing army, and was posted to Spain, where it served during the 29–19 BC Cantabrian Wars. By 17 BC it had been transferred to the Rhine.
In 16 BC, under the governor of Lower Germany, Marcus Lollius, the 5th Alaudae Legion collided with invading Germans of the Sugambri, Usipetes and Tencteri tribes, west of the Rhine. The three tribes had swept across the river, repulsed a cavalry force sent by Lollius to intercept them, then surprised the 5th Alaudae as Lollius was advancing them. In the fierce fighting that followed, the legion was deprived of its eagle by the Germans. Lollius and the 5th Alaudae’s survivors fell back, but when the Germans heard that Augustus himself was in Gaul and hurrying toward them with a large army, they withdrew across the river, subsequently sealing a peace with the emperor by providing hostages. But the damage had been done to the 5th Alaudae Legion’s reputation; the stain of losing its eagle would remain with it forever.
By AD 14, the unit was stationed at Vetera with the other three legions of the army of the Lower Rhine, and took part in the victorious battles of Germanicus Caesar’s AD 14–16 campaigns in Germany. In AD 28, under the governor of Lower Germany, Lucius Apronius, the 5th Alaudae was victorious in battle in a campaign against the Frisii in which 1,300 auxiliaries died: “The soldiers of the 5th sprang forward, drove back the enemy in a fierce encounter, and saved our cohorts and cavalry.” [Tac., A, IV, 73]
The legion remained at Vetera until AD 69, when some of its cohorts went to Italy for Vitellius. Those that remained at Vetera were savaged in Civilis’ rebellion and the legion was almost exterminated. From AD 70, the legion probably served in Pannonia and Moesia. In AD 86, it was almost certainly the legion wiped out in Dacia with Praetorian Prefect Fuscus. It was never again mentioned in Roman records, and never reformed.
5TH MACEDONICA LEGION
LEGIO V MACEDONICA
5th Legion of Macedonia
EMBLEM:
Bull.
BIRTH SIGN:
Not known.
FOUNDATION:
By Octavian, prior to 42 BC
RECRUITMENT AREA:
Initially, probably Spain. Under Nero, it became Moesia.
POSTINGS:
Macedonia, Oescus, Pontus, Armenia, Judea, Jerusalem, Egypt, Oescus, Dacia, Troesmis, Syria, Potaissa, Oescus.
BATTLE HONORS:
Macedonian campaigns, 30 BC–AD 6.
Corbulo’s Second Armenian campaign, AD 62.
Jewish Revolt, AD 66–71.
Trajan’s Second Dacian War, AD 105–106.
Second Jewish Revolt, AD 134–135.
Marcus Aurelius’ Eastern campaign, AD 161–166.
NOTABLE SECOND-IN-COMMAND:
Publius Aelius Hadrianus, future emperor, AD 96.
THE WELL-TRAVELED FIFTH
Gaining its title in Macedonia, fighting in Armenia for Corbulo, it put down the First Jewish Revolt in Judea and besieged Jerusalem, then came back to Europe to serve in Trajan’s Dacian Wars, before marching in the East again under Marcus Aurelius.
Few imperial legions changed bases as frequently as the 5th Macedonica. Stemming from Octavian’s 5th Legion of the triumviral period, it served in Macedonia from 30 BC to AD 6, and seems to have gained its title from service in that turbulent province, quite probably during the same battles that earned the 4th its Scythica title.
The 5th Macedonica was subsequently based in Moesia, at Oescus, today’s Gigen in Hungary. By AD 62, having just filled its empty ranks with a new enlistment of Moesian recruits, the legion was transferred by Nero’s Palatium to the East, to take part in the next Armenian campaign. [Tac., A, XV, 6]
Shipped across the Black Sea from the Danube by Rome’s Pontic Fleet, it was left in Pontus by the commander-in-chief of the Armenian operation, the over-confident Caesennius Paetus, who embarked on the operations with just two legions. After Paetus and his troops were forced by the Parthians to withdraw, the 5th Macedonica was summoned by Domitius Corbulo for his operation in the region, with Corbulo’s impetuous young son-in-law, Vinianus Annius, as its commander.
The legion was subsequently transferred to Alexandria in Egypt. From there it joined Titus for the successful but bloody AD 70 Siege of Jerusalem, which ended the main phase of the First Jewish Revolt. By AD 71, the legion was back at Oescus in Moesia. While based there it fared badly attempting to counter a raid by King Decebalus of Dacia, in which the provincial governor was killed. The 5th Macedonica had its revenge in Trajan’s Dacian Wars of AD 101–106, after which the legion returned to Moesia, to be based at Troesmis, modern-day Turcoaia in Romania.
By the spring of AD 135, the legion, or a large vexillation from it, had been shipped from Moesia to Palestine for the last stage of the Second Jewish Revolt. It took part in the successful Siege of Bethar, headquarters of resistance leader Shimeon bar-Kokhba, in the spring and summer of that year. [Yadin, 13] Once Bar-Kokhba was eliminated and the revolt quashed, the 5th Macedonica men returned to their home base in Moesia.
Between AD 161 and 166, the legion took part in Marcus Aurelius’ eastern campaigns. On its return to Europe, the legion was stationed in Dacia, at Potaissa in the mountainous north. In AD 274, when Dacia was surrendered to the barbarian tribes, the 5th Macedonica was withdrawn south of the Danube, returning to its former station at Oescus.
By the end of the fourth century the legion had been split up. One part was still in Moesia, with its cohorts divided between four different locations as border defense units. Another part of the 5th Macedonica Legion was stationed in Egypt, along with three other legions and a large number of auxiliary units. [Not. Dig.]
6TH FERRATA LEGION
LEGIO VI FERRATA
6th Ironclad Legion
ORIGIN OF TITLE:
Apparently adopted after surviving the Civil War, first against Caesar, later for him.
EMBLEM:
Bull.
BIRTH SIGN:
Gemini (she-wolf and twins).
FOUNDATION:
Originating as Pompey the Great’s 6th Legion in Spain.
RECRUITMENT AREA:
Originally Italy, later Spain.
POSTINGS:
Laodicea, Raphanaea, Rome, Arabia, Judea, Legio (Caparcotna), Africa, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Legio (Caparcotna), Arabia, Legio (Caparcotna).
BATTLE HONORS:
Corbulo’s First Armenian campaign, AD 54–58.
Corbulo’s Second Armenian campaign, AD 62.
The March on Rome, AD 69.
Defeat of the Sarmatians, Moesia, AD 69.
Conquest of Commagene, AD 73.
Trajan’s Eastern campaign, AD 114–116.
Second Jewish Revolt, AD 132–135.
CAESAR’S IRONCLADS
Famous as Caesar’s “Ironclads,” a legion that spent most of its career in Syria, it marched to Rome to make Vespasian emperor, fought in the last battles of the Civilis Revolt, then, based in Galilee, took the brunt of the Second Jewish Revolt.
The 6th Legion was one of six legions stationed in Spain under the control of Pompey the Great while Caesar was conquering Gaul. During the Gallic War, Pompey loaned the 6th to Caesar for service in Gaul; Cato the Younger protested: “He sent Caesar a force of 6,000 men into Gaul, which Caesar never asked the [Senate] for, nor had Pompey obtained their consent to give.” [Plut., Cato] This was several years before the incident when Caesar and Pompey each contributed a legion to a later aborted mission to the East, after which Caesar’s legion, the 15th, was handed over to Pompey, along with Pompey’s unit, which in that instance was the 1st Leg
ion.
Because the 6th Legion was Pompey’s, Caesar relegated it to mostly rear echelon duties. Pompey took it back by 50 BC as tensions rose between Caesar and the Senate, finally erupting into the civil war initiated by Caesar in 49 BC. The 6th was one of the republican legions that surrendered to Caesar in Spain in 49 BC, but apparently, along with cohorts of the surrendered 4th Legion, escaped from Spain with Pompey’s generals Afranius and Petreius and joined Pompey in Greece. Seven combined cohorts from these two legions, “the Spanish cohorts, which, as we have said, were brought over by Afranius,” in Caesar’s own words, fought for Pompey in the 48 BC Battle of Pharsalus. [Caes., CW, III, 88]
Following the republican army’s defeat at Pharsalus, cohorts of both the 4th and 6th were among 18,000 Pompeian troops who escaped to North Africa to fight on, leaving just under 1,000 men of the 6th Legion among the troops who surrendered to Caesar. When Caesar’s own men at Pharsalus refused to fight on, he sent them back to Italy with Mark Antony, and negotiated a deal with the men of the 6th. They signed up to march for Caesar, becoming the core of the Caesarian army which conquered the Egyptians then overcame Pharnaces’ chariots at the Battle of Zela in Pontus. Finally, the 6th took part in Caesar’s defeat of Pompey’s sons in Spain. No wonder they called themselves the “ironclads”; in surviving, and winning, against enormous odds, they would have thought themselves impregnable.
Meanwhile, the remaining men of Pompey’s 6th Legion fought on the losing side at Thapsus in North Africa. This second 6th Legion would be fighting for Octavian by 31 BC and eventually became the 6th Victrix.
Following Caesar’s assassination, the 6th Ferrata Legion marched for Antony until the Actium defeat, then became part of Octavian’s standing army. Octavian sent it to Syria following the death of Antony, and it was based at Raphanaea in southern Syria for much of the next one and a half centuries.
In AD 66, the legion contributed four cohorts to Gallus’ disastrous march to and from Jerusalem after the outbreak of the Jewish Revolt. Three years later, the legion marched on Italy with Licinius Mucianus, governor of Syria, plus auxiliaries and 13,000 recalled Evocati militiamen, to dethrone Vitellius and install Vespasian. On the march, news was received that Sarmatian raiders had stormed into Moesia and overrun several auxiliary forts. Mucianus swung north toward the Danube and, taking the raiders by surprise, the 6th Ferrata destroyed the Sarmatians.
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