Legions of Rome

by Stephen Dando-Collins

  While Numidian cavalrymen in the Roman army were famed for their ability to ride bareback and even without bridles, it was Batavian cavalrymen from the lowlands of Holland who became the most valued to Rome. With his homeland often flooded, the Batavian developed the ability to swim his horse across rivers with full equipment and then immediately go into action. They proved particularly successful in operations in Britain.

  Battle experience showed that cavalry without infantry support could be vulnerable, so the Roman army also developed mixed cohorts of both auxiliary infantry and cavalry. These cohortes equitatae were both quingenaria and miliaria in size.

  By the second century, specialist lancer units were also deployed, to move in close among the enemy and wreak havoc with lances which they kept close to their horses’ flanks for added strength and impact. In AD 135, Arrian reserved his lancers for the chase once the enemy had been forced by the infantry to retreat. [Arr., TH, 43]

  With chariot-racing obsessing even a number of emperors, Rome’s chariot-racing corporations operated vast stud farms throughout the empire. They had tens of thousands of employees and even more horses, and always had first call on the best animals, ahead of the army.

  XIX. CAVALRY EVOLUTIONS

  To keep their skills honed, Rome’s cavalrymen took part in mass exercises, or “cavalry evolutions.” [Tac., A, II, 55] Under laws promulgated by both Augustus and Hadrian, all Roman cavalry units were required to carry out route marches and training evolutions three times every month to sharpen their skills. Route marches were of 20 miles (32 kilometers), in full equipment, on the flat, on broken ground and in mountainous territory. Cavalry evolutions included the pursuit, and the retreat, followed by a 180-degree wheel-about and counter-charge. [Vege., I]

  Cavalry alae often performed day-long evolutions watched by an audience of the provincial governor and invited guests. Flavius Arrianus—Arrian as we know him—governor of Cappadocia during the reign of Hadrian, in AD 137 wrote a detailed description of these cavalry “games.” [Arr., TH, 34–44] The senior and most exceptional horsemen wore gold-plated bronze face masks, molded to the shape of their faces, with just slits at the eyes through which to see. The purpose of these eye-catching masks, said Arrian, was to single out the riders for audience attention during the exercises. [Ibid.]

  To Arrian’s mind, precision riding was all well and good—and he trained his cavalry to execute very complex unfolding drills. But to him, accurate missile throwing was the most important skill his troopers could possess. “I would acknowledge the turma which proves most suitable in javelin-throwing as truly trained for war service,” he said. [Ibid., 42]

  XX. CAVALRY OF THE LATE EMPIRE

  By the fourth century, while maintaining light cavalry in the mode of the original Roman auxiliary cavalry, the Roman army had also copied the cavalry styles of its chief opponents, in particular the Persians, by creating units of horse archers, and of heavy cavalry in which both horse and rider wore armor.

  Of the heavy armored cavalry, the cataphracts and their mounts wore iron mail armor. The clibanarii wore heavy segmented armor from head to foot, including metal face masks fitted to their helmets which entirely covered their faces. Their title came from the Greek word meaning “oven,” which no doubt described how it must have felt inside these suits of armor which presaged the armor of the knights of the Middle Ages.

  Late Roman historian Ammianus saw clibanarii entering Rome in AD 357 as part of the escort of the emperor Constantius: “Fully armored cavalry, whom they call clibanarii, all masked and equipped with protecting breastplates and girt with iron belts, so that you might have thought them statues polished by the hand of Paraxites, not men. Thin circles of iron plates, fitted to the curves of their bodies, completely covered their limbs, so that whichever way they moved their limbs, their garment fitted.” [Amm., XVI, 10, 8]

  FOURTH-CENTURY ROMAN HEAVY CAVALRY TROOPER OF THE LATE EMPIRE

  Rome’s Clibinarii cavalrymen of the fourth century and their steeds were heavily armored. Their helmets were even known to cover their faces completely, making them the forerunners of medieval knights.

  XXI. CAMELS AND WAR ELEPHANTS

  The Roman army fielded several auxiliary camel wings, the alae dromedarii. Corbulo used a camel column to carry his grain supply when he went to the relief of Paetus and his troops trapped in Armenia in AD 62. Trajan raised a second camel wing for his AD 114–116 campaign against the Parthians. By AD 135, the 1st Dromedarium Ala was serving in Arabia, while Trajan’s unit, the 1st Ulpia Dromedarium Ala, a miliaria or “thousand-strong” unit, was based in Syria. [Hold., DRA, ADITROH] Records show that an equitata auxiliary cohort serving in Egypt early in the second century contained, in addition to infantry and horsemen, several camel riders.

  Sixty-four trained war elephants were captured by Caesar from King Juba in Tunisia in 46 BC. Taken to Italy, they were used for Triumphs and spectacles. Some authors have speculated that the Roman army’s Ala Indiana, which served in Britain, was an elephant wing, because the term “Indian” was applied by Romans to the mahouts who rode elephants. In fact, the Ala Indiana Gallorum was an ordinary cavalry wing which was raised in Gaul in AD 21 and took its name from its founder, Julius Indus, a Treveran noble. [Hold., RAB, 2; App.]

  In the first century, a troop of elephants was maintained at Laurentum, just outside Rome, for use in spectacles. All were tusked males; female elephants instinctively ran from bull elephants. In AD 43, the Laurentum troop was put on standby for Claudius’ invasion of Britain, against British chariots, but there is no evidence that they ever crossed the Channel. Marshy conditions and numerous river crossings precluded their use in Britain.

  In AD 193, elephants were brought to Rome from Laurentum by the emperor Julianus, to take part in his defense against the legions of Septimius Severus, who was marching from Pannonia to claim the throne. But the whole affair became such a shambles that it brought Dio and fellow senators to laughter. “The elephants found their towers burdensome” and threw them off, he said. “[They] would not even carry their drivers any longer, but threw them off, too.” [Dio, LXIV, 16] Severus’ son and successor Caracalla, who reigned between AD 211 and 217, formed an elephant corps for his Parthian campaign, in the course of which he was assassinated in Mesopotamia by his own troops.

  During the fourth century, the Persians used war elephants against Roman troops in the East, but there is no record of the Roman military ever having any success with elephants in battle.

  XXII. THE EVOCATI

  In times of emergency, retired legionaries could be recalled from their homes to serve behind their old standards—which they appear to have taken into retirement with them. This militia, called the Evocati, was controlled by the governor of each province. Paulinus used Evocati to help him defeat Boudicca in Britain in AD 60. Nero sent Evocati to Egypt in AD 66 for an invasion of Ethiopia that had to be aborted because of the Jewish Revolt. Mucianus, the governor of Syria, set off for Italy in AD 69 to depose the emperor Vitellius with an army which included 13,000 Evocati from the East. Vitellius fielded Evocati from Britain and the Rhine when his army opposed Vespasian’s army.

  Historian Tacitus was to say that in AD 59 most of the legionaries discharged that year “scattered themselves in the provinces where they had completed their military service.” He complained that “whole legions were no longer transplanted, as in former days, with tribunes and centurions and soldiers of every grade” to create new colonies “so as to form a state by their unity and mutual attachment,” with the result, he lamented, that the latest discharges “became a mere crowd rather than a colony.” [Tac., A, XIV, 27]

  The Evocati were still in existence by around AD 230, in the time of Cassius Dio, who said that “they constitute even now a special corps, and carry rods, like the centurions.” He added, “I cannot, however, give their exact number.” [Dio, LV, 24]

  XXIII. THE PALATIUM

  Rome’s central command

  The Pal
atium was the name for the residence of the Roman emperors on the Palatine Hill at Rome, and from it today’s word “palace” has derived. Augustus was the first emperor to make his home on the Palatine Hill, and his was the first Palatium. Numerous members of the family of the Caesars also built residences there, all of which were interconnected. As Josephus said: “While the edifice was one, it was built in several parts by those persons who were emperors.” [Jos., JA, 19, 1,15]

  In the first century, Tiberius, Caligula and Nero all built separate palaces on the hill, with Nero famously creating his vast Golden House below it. Domitian substantially remodeled and extended Augustus’ original palace, which had become known as the Old Palatium. Domitian’s Palatium even included a private chariot-racing stadium. Various members of the imperial family used the palaces on the hill as their private apartments; Marcus Aurelius was offered Tiberius’ old palace by his adoptive father the emperor Antoninus Pius, for example.

  More than just a residence, the Palatium was also the civil and military administrative hub of the Roman Empire—in effect a combined White House and Pentagon. With a large staff of freedmen clerks and secretaries, the Palatium managed the military and civil appointments and legion movements ordered by the emperor. The leading members of the Palatium staff in the first century were the chief secretary, the secretary for finances, the secretary for petitions and the correspondence secretary, whose “outward” department became known as the Sardonychis—the name of the emperor’s seal affixed to all outgoing mail.

  From the fourth century, once various emperors began using Milan and Ravenna as their capitals, Rome’s Palatium fell into disuse. In AD 403, the poet Claudian would rejoice that the young emperor Honorius ventured to Rome and spent a little time at the Palatium. Seven years later, Rome and her sprawling Palatium were sacked by the Visigoths.

  III

  THE BATTLES

  “The announcer stands at the general’s right hand, and asks them three times, whether they are ready to go out to war or not. To which they reply as often, with a loud and enthusiastic voice, saying, ‘We are ready!’”

  JOSEPHUS, WITNESSING AN ASSEMBLY OF VESPASIAN’S LEGIONS.

  The Jewish War, 3, 5, 4

  Crushing victories, and devastating defeats. The fate of the campaigns of Rome’s legions determined the fate of her empire. In the first century, military successes such as the invasion of Britain and reduction of Jerusalem far outweighed occasional and temporary reverses such as Arminius’ destruction of Varus’ legions in the Teutoburg Forest and the Jewish Revolt. Trajan likewise turned the martial disasters of Domitian’s reign into victory in Dacia in the second century. Yet, after Trajan, Rome was forever on the defensive. Her wars became longer, her defeats more frequent, her victories more hard-won. The stories of the legions’ battles chronicle the very rise and fall of imperial Rome.

  29 BC

  I. ROUTING THE SCYTHIANS

  The 4th Legion earns a title

  In 30 BC, as Octavian, sole ruler of the Roman world following the defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra that year, distributed the twenty-eight legions of his new standing army, he sent one of his two 4th legions to Macedonia.

  The following spring, a new Roman governor arrived to take charge in Macedonia. Marcus Licinius Crassus, a consul in 30 BC, and grandson of Crassus the triumvir who had perished leading his army to disaster at Carrhae in 53 BC, had supported Antony during the civil war. His Macedonian appointment was an opportunity to impress Octavian with his loyalty and ability. He planned to do that by carrying out a military campaign using the recently deployed units of his new command, one of which was the 4th Legion.

  From their northern homeland between the Vistula river and the Carpathian Mountains, King Deldo and his Bastarnae tribe had pushed over the mountains, crossed the Danube, and were threatening Thrace and Macedonia. As Cassius Dio reports: “The Bastarnae … who are properly classed as Scythians, had at this time crossed the Ister [River Danube] and subdued the part of Moesia opposite them.” [Dio, LI, 23] Initially the Romans did not react, but when the Bastarnae “overran the part of Thrace belonging to the Dentheletic, which was under treaty with the Romans, then Crassus, partly to defend Sitas, king of the Dentheleti, who was blind, but chiefly out of fear for Macedonia, went out to meet them.” [Ibid.]

  The Bastarnae, sometimes also called the Peucini in Roman literature, “were like Germans in their language, manner of life and mode of settlement,” according to Tacitus. They generally lived in squalor, Tacitus said. Their nobles were lazy and the people had the “repulsive appearance of the Sarmatians”—the slanted eyes typically noted of Scythians. [Tac., Germ., 46] To meet the invaders, Crassus led an army almost certainly made up of the 4th and 5th legions, with the 10th Fretensis Legion possibly also involved; another former Antonian legion, it was stationed in Macedonia sometime after the end of the Civil War, but precisely when it arrived in the province is not recorded.

  As Crassus’ well-drilled legions approached the Bastarnae in full battle array, the invaders retreated out of Thrace in panic. Crassus pursued them into Moesia. There, when his advance guard was assaulting a fortress, local Moesian warriors attacked the Roman besiegers, forcing them to give ground. But when Crassus came up with the bulk of his army, “he hurled the enemy back and besieged and destroyed the place.” [Dio, LI, 23]

  The Bastarnae, meanwhile, had regrouped at the Cedrus (Tzibritza) river, and “after conquering the Moesians, Crassus set out after them also.” [Dio, LI, 24] Bastarnae envoys came to Crassus, who plied the Scythians with wine and made them drunk, “so that he learned all their plans. For the whole Scythian race is insatiable in the use of wine and quickly become sodden with it,” according to Dio. [Ibid.] Armed with this intelligence, the Roman general moved his army toward the encamped Bastarnae, quietly taking up positions in a forest in the night, at the same time posting scouts beyond it.

  “When the Bastarnae, believing the scouts to be all alone, rushed to attack them and pursued them as they retreated into the thick of the forest, [Crassus] destroyed many on the spot and many more in the rout that followed.” The Bastarnae were hindered by their wagons in the rear, and were anxious for the safety of their wives and children in those wagons. In the chaos, Crassus personally slew Deldo, the Bastarnae king. [Ibid.]

  Some of the remaining Bastarnae took refuge in a grove, which Crassus’ legionaries surrounded and set alight, burning the Scythians to death. Other survivors retreated to a riverside fort, which Crassus’ troops quickly overran. Many of the fort’s Bastarnae occupants committed suicide by jumping into the Danube; the remainder were made prisoners, to become slaves or die fighting in the Roman arena.

  The remnants of the tribe occupied what Dio called “a strong position,” probably on a hilltop, from where Crassus’ wearied legionaries were unable to dislodge them. Crassus was then joined by Roles, king of a Getae tribe, and a number of his warriors. Bolstered by these allied reinforcements, Crassus’ legionaries launched a new attack on the last stronghold of the Bastarnae, and in Dio’s words, “destroyed them.” [Ibid.]

  This was Rome’s first major battle of the imperial era, and for his successful campaign against the Bastarnae, which secured the Macedonia/Thrace frontier, Crassus was voted a Triumph by the Senate, while Octavian was hailed imperator. With emperor and general receiving the highest honors, it seems highly probable that the 4th Legion, which had been at the forefront of the defeat of the Bastarnae, “who are properly classed as Scythians,” as Dio stressed, were also honored in recognition of the victory. It was either granted the title “Scythica” by Augustus, who would, within several years, be granting titles to other legions, or the men of the legion appropriated the “Scythica” title for themselves, just as earlier legions had done without official blessing.

  One way or another, from that time forward the legion was known as the 4th Scythica, as coins and inscriptions surviving to the present day testify.

  29–25 BC

 
; II. THE CANTABRIAN WAR

  Securing northern Spain for Rome

  Within a year of the 30 BC deaths of Mark Antony and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra in Alexandria, Octavian had built up a Roman army in Spain which would involve as many as eight legions, for a war that would drag out over an entire decade.

  By this stage, only the fierce tribes occupying the Cantabrian mountains of northern Spain had yet to be conquered on the Iberian peninsula. Octavian’s plan, to drive the tribes from their mountain homes, would prove difficult to execute. Under his generals Gaius Antistius and Titus Carisius, the legionaries and auxiliaries involved in the Cantabrian campaign set up three bases, in the East at Segisima, modern Santander; at Asturica (Asturias), covering the central region; and at Bracara Augusta (Galicia), in the west. Numismatic evidence reveals that the legions that served in Spain at one time or another during the period of the war were the 1st, the 2nd (later the 2nd Augusta), the 4th Macedonica, the 5th Alaudae, a 6th (the later 6th Victrix), the 9th Hispana, the 10th Gemina and the 20th.

  In the spring of 29 BC, the legions moved up into the Cantabrian mountains. The next four summers involved costly attempts to dislodge the outnumbered Spanish tribesmen from mountain hideouts. These were “heavy campaigns conducted with varied success,” said Velleius Paterculus, who served as an officer in the Roman army later in the reign of Octavian/Augustus. [Velle., ii, xc]

  In 25 BC, the 37-year-old emperor arrived in Spain to take personal charge of the frustrating war, bringing a large part of the Praetorian Guard with him. Two years earlier, the Senate had bestowed the title Augustus, meaning “revered,” on Octavian, and it was by the name of Augustus that the emperor was known from this time forward. With his army reinforced by the Praetorians, Augustus launched a fresh campaign against the Asturians and the Cantabri.

  “But these peoples would neither yield to him—because they were confident on account of their strongholds—nor would they come to close quarters because of their inferior numbers,” according to Dio. Because their primary weapon was the javelin, said Dio, the tribesmen were at their most effective at a distance, letting fly and then running away. [Dio, LIII, 25] It was only when the legions forced the Spanish into close combat that the legionaries’ swords brought them success.