CAVALRY:
1st Ala Augusta Gemina Colonorum. From Lesser Armenia, formed by combination with another existing unit, this wing had fought in the Second Jewish War. It is probable that casualties in that conflict had been so high that it had been necessary to combine this wing with another.
1st Ala Ulpian Dacorum. Raised in Syria during the reign of Trajan; these troopers had also fought in the Second Jewish War.
2nd Ala Gallorum. Raised in Galatia.
2nd Ala Ulpian Auriana. Raised in Spain by Trajan.
Getae allied cavalry, strength unknown. Commanded by a tribal leader.
INFANTRY:
1st Cohort Apula CR. Italian light infantry; former slaves. Commanded by the Roman prefect Secundius.
1st Cohort Bosporanorum Sagittaria. Foot archers, raised in the kingdom of the Bosporus.
Commanded by Lamprocles, a Bosporan who, like many of his countrymen, descended from Greek settlers.
1st Cohort Germanorum. A milliaria equitata unit from northern Gaul, of approximately 1,000 light infantry and mounted infantry. Although labeled Germans, the men of this unit were described as Celts by Arrian. Their mounted element was led by a senior centurion from one of Arrian’s legions.
1st Cohort Italica Volunt CR. Former slaves, recruited in Italy. Commanded by the Roman prefect Pulcher.
1st Cohort Ituraeorum Sagittaria. Arabian foot archers. Their ancestors had been nomads.
1st Cohort Numidarum Sagittaria. Equitata unit of foot archers and horse archers from Numidia in North Africa. Commanded by the Numidian prefect Beros.
1st Cohort Raetorum. Spearmen from Raetia, raised in the mountains of the Tyrol. Commanded by the Greek-born prefect Daphnes of Corinth.
3rd Cohort Augusta Cyrenaica Sagittaria. Foot archers from Cyrenaica in North Africa.
3rd Cohort Ulpian Petraeorum Sagittaria. Horse archers from Arabia Petraea.
Unspecified light infantry cohort of from Trapezous (modern Trabzon) on the Black Sea coast of Pontus. Could be any one of three units known to then be stationed in Cappadocia.
ALLIED INFANTRY AND ARCHERS:
Armenian horse archers. Unspecified number. Under their chieftains Vasakes and Arbelos.
Lesser Armenian slingers. Unspecified number.
Unspecified number of allied spearmen from River Rhixia, east of the Black Sea.
AD 161
XLIX. A LEGION DESTROYED
Overrun by the Parthians
On March 7 in the year AD 161, 74-year-old Antoninus Pius, Roman emperor for the past twenty-two years, died peacefully in his sleep. His death uniquely left Rome with two emperors—his adopted sons Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. Seeing this as a time when Rome could be expected to be weak and indecisive, Vologases iii, king of Rome’s age-old enemy in the East, Parthia, gathered his forces and invaded Armenia, which had been within Rome’s sway since the time of Trajan.
An unidentified legion, at that time stationed at Elegeia in Armenia and commanded by Publius Aelius Severianus, stood in the way of the Parthian invasion. Given no warning, the legion was surprised at or near its base by the Parthian invaders. Scholars are divided as to which legion this was, as several legions disappeared from the records during this century. It is most likely to have been the 22nd Deiotariana, which had been stationed in the East since its inception 191 years before.
On an inscription in Rome from later in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the 22nd Deiotariana Legion was missing from a listing of the twenty-eight legions then in existence. [ILS, 2288] The other possible candidate for destruction at Elegeia, the 9th Hispana Legion, had been last heard of forty years before on the far side of the Roman world, in Britain. The weight of evidence supports an old scenario that the 9th Hispana was wiped out in Scotland in AD 122. [See Disappearance of the 9th] It is likely that the 22nd Deiotariana had been based in Armenia ever since Arrian’s defeat of the Alans in Lesser Armenia in AD 135, removed from the backwater of Egypt to front-line Armenia by the defensively minded Emperor Hadrian as a deterrent against further barbarian incursions.
Vologases commenced the invasion of Armenia by “hemming in on all sides the Roman legion under Severianus,” wrote Dio, “then shooting down and destroying the whole force, leaders and all.” [Dio, LXXI. 1] Cataphracts, heavily armored cavalrymen whose powerful horses also carried armor, formed the core of Parthian armies. But the Parthian mainstay was the mounted horse archer, who, with small nimble mounts, galloped in to launch a quiver of arrows before darting away again. Infantry opponents caught in the open could be mown down by their hail of arrows, and this appears to have been the fate of the 22nd Deiotariana Legion.
Once the news reached Rome that a legion had been annihilated by the Parthians, and that the “powerful and formidable” Vologases was advancing against the cities of the province of Syria, 40-year-old Marcus Aurelius acted quickly, dispatching his 31-year-old adoptive brother and coemperor Lucius Verus to the East to take charge. [Dio, LXXI, 2] Lucius sailed to Syria from Brundisium, taking several legions and a large part of the Misene Fleet with him; the warships would remain in the East throughout the coming war. [Starr, VIII]
The European legions accompanying Lucius for this operation were the 1st Minervia from Bonna on the Rhine, the 2nd Adiutrix from Aquincum on the Danube, and the 5th Macedonica from Troesmis in Moesia. All three seasick legions had landed at Laodicea in Syria by the end of AD 161. They would be away from their home bases for five years.
Lucius appointed the governor of Syria, Gaius Avidius Cassius, to command the counter-offensive, and over the winter Lucius “made all the dispositions and assembled all the supplies for the war,” knowing that with the new year Vologases would launch a major attack on Syria aided by allies from east of the Euphrates. [Dio, LXXI, 2]
AD 162–166
L. CASSIUS’ PARTHIAN WAR
Conquering for Marcus Aurelius
A Syrian, born at Cyrrus, Gaius Avidius Cassius was the son of a Greek freedman, Helidorus, who had been Hadrian’s secretary of correspondence and later served as Prefect of Egypt. Exhibiting great ability and loyalty, Cassius had risen above his father’s freedman status to enter the Senate, becoming a praetor and serving as a consul before receiving the governorship of Syria, the most prestigious and highly paid of the provincial postings.
Cassius could potentially draw on eleven legions for this operation against Vologases. There were the three legions that Lucius had brought with him from Europe, as well as the two legions based in Syria, the 3rd Gallica and 4th Scythica, plus those stationed in nearby provinces—the 3rd Cyrenaica in Arabia, 10th Fretensis in Judea, and the 12th Fulminata and 15th Apollinaris in Cappadocia. Some of the eastern-based legions would take part in the offensive complete, others would send vexillations while leaving some cohorts garrisoning their frontier bases. Perhaps the 2nd Traiana at Nicopolis in Egypt was the only legion left undisturbed.
The eleventh legion in the region, the 16th Flavia, had been based at Samosata in southwest Armenia ever since Trajan’s Parthian War. Dio writes that Marcus Statius Priscus, imperial legate in Armenia and commander of the 16th Flavia, placed a “garrison of Romans” at the “new city” in Armenia immediately after Vologases’ invasion. [Dio, LXXI, 3] In the northeast, the city of Artaxata, Armenia’s ancient royal capital and today’s city of Yerevan, had been destroyed in AD 64 by Roman general Corbulo when he had overrun Armenia during Nero’s reign. King Tiridates of Armenia, given his throne by Nero on condition that he swear loyalty to Rome, had built a new city on the ruins of Artaxata, calling it Neronia in honor of Nero. This was Dio’s “new city.”
It is clear that, on hearing of the Parthian invasion of Armenia, and of the fate of the 22nd Deiotariana, Priscus had marched 16th Flavia Legion north from the Samosata legion base to the new city at Artaxata. Leaving the majority of the legion’s cohorts to garrison the city, Priscus and the remaining elements of the 16th Flavia escorted the king of Armenia, Sohaemus, out of the country to safety in Syria
. Those 16th Flavia cohorts had been cut off at Artaxata ever since, with the Parthian army between them and Roman forces to the south. Part of Cassius’ task now was to push a relief force through to the legionaries trapped at Artaxata. But first, he had to stop the rampaging Parthian army in its tracks, before it ravaged the wealthy cities and mini-states of Syria.
For two years, beginning in the spring of AD 162, Cassius and his legions fought the Parthians on Rome’s Syrian doorstep. This “noble stand” by Cassius’ legions tested the patience of Vologases’ allies, many of whom, by early AD 164, had deserted the Parthians, and Vologases begrudgingly “began to retire” from Syria. [Dio, LXXI, 2] Now Cassius could go on the offensive.
The Roman general divided his army in two. One part he gave to legion commanders Publius Martius Verus, whose task was to drive northeast to Artaxata. With him went exiled King Sohaemus and his entourage. “This general,” said Dio, referring to Martius Verus, “thanks to the terror inspired by his arms and to the natural good judgment that he showed in every situation, kept pressing vigorously forward” against the Parthians to the north. [Dio, LXXI, 3]
Not only did Martius Verus have the ability to overpower the enemy with his force of arms, said Dio, he was also a brilliant strategist who anticipated and outthought his opponents at every turn. This was “the true strength of a general,” in Dio’s opinion. But, if necessary, the general also parlayed with the enemy, giving them promises and gifts. [Ibid.] In this way, sometimes fighting, sometimes parlaying, Martius Verus and his legions ground north through mountain valleys on a slow but determined advance toward Artaxata.
At the same time, with the Parthians distracted by Martius Verus’ advance and throwing the majority of their forces against him, Cassius led the balance of the Roman army east into Parthia. Throwing a bridge of boats across the Euphrates, he protected it with wooden towers and screens. Legion catapults on the towers, and archers behind the screens, drove off a force of enemy spearmen on the far bank, allowing tens of thousands of Roman troops to pour across the Euphrates. Cassius then turned southeast, and followed the river toward the city of Seleucia, and the Parthian capital, Ctesiphon.
Now Vologases was forced to divide his forces in an attempt to counter both Roman offensives. Martius Verus, facing weakened opposition, drove on to Artaxata and relieved the 16th Flavia garrison. He arrived just in time; the 16th Flavia legionaries, cut off for two years and starved and deprived of their commander, had mutinied against their officers by the time Martius Verus reached the city. “He took pains, by word and by deed, to bring them to a better temper,” said Dio, and, reunited with their commander and the rest of the legion, they returned to the command of their officers. Verus now reinstalled King Sohaemus on his throne and “made this place [Artaxata] the foremost city of Armenia.” [Ibid.]
To the south, Cassius’ army drove to the Tigris river in today’s central Iraq, where he camped for the winter. The following year, AD 165, after marching 800 miles (1,290 kilometers) since leaving Antioch, Cassius took Seleucia. The city held a population variously estimated at between 300,000 and 600,000, including a large Jewish community and many people of Greek extraction. The legions sacked and razed the 500-year-old city, which would never be rebuilt. Among the spoils removed from burning Seleucia was a massive statue of Apollo Comaeus torn from its pedestal in a Parthian temple. Taken to Rome, it would be installed in the temple to Apollo on the Palatine Hill. [Amm., II, xxiii, 6, 24]
Crossing the Tigris river, Cassius’ army fought its way into nearby Ctesiphon, looted Vologases’ palace, then put it to the torch. But this was the extent of the Roman conquest. Trajan had reached Ctesiphon in his AD 114–116 campaign, only to withdraw. And so it was with Cassius. In inhospitable country, a long way from support and with vulnerable communications, after coming all this way Cassius turned his army around, and set off back to Syria.
But it would not be an easy passage for Cassius. “In returning,” said Dio, “he lost a great many of his soldiers through famine and disease.” With Roman corpses lining the route of his withdrawal, Cassius eventually “got back to Syria with the survivors.” Coemperor Lucius, waiting anxiously at Antioch, was overjoyed at Cassius’ success. Overlooking Cassius’ high casualty rate, “Lucius gloried in these exploits, and took great pride in them.” [Dio, LXXI, 2]
Armenia had been reclaimed, the eastern frontier stabilized, and the Parthians punished, but at the price of a legion lost and many thousands of other casualties. As Lucius was celebrating at Antioch an urgent dispatch arrived from his coemperor Marcus Aurelius—bring back the European legions at once, for the Germans had flooded across the Danube frontier.
The three legions that returned to their bases on the Danube and Rhine in AD 166 took back more than just spoils from Parthia; they brought back “the germ of that pestilence,” said Ammianus Marcellinus, “which, after generating the virulence of incurable diseases in the time of the same [Lucius] and Marcus [Aurelius] polluted everything with contagion and death, from the frontiers of Persia all the way to the Rhine and Gaul.” [Amm., II, xxiii, 6, 24] The plague brought back by the victorious legionaries would sweep through Europe.
AD 166–175
LI. MARCUS AURELIUS’ DANUBE WARS
Decade of death
Marcus Aurelius could not wait for the return of Lucius and his legions from the East. To counter German tribes now threatening Italy, he urgently raised two new legions, in Italy, the 1st Italica and 2nd Italica. By the end of AD 165, both new legions were stationed at the city of Aquileia in northeastern Italy. This was the first time in 200 years, apart from the civil war of AD 68–69, that legions had been stationed in Italy, and the move signaled the seriousness of Rome’s situation.
As soon as the seasonal winds had brought Lucius and his three depleted legions back to Italy by sea, Marcus and Lucius sat down to plan how they would counter the German tribes pressuring the northern frontier. Dacia, the only Roman province north of the Danube, and with just the 13th Gemina Legion at Apulum, stood particularly exposed. The 5th Macedonica Legion had been based at Novae in Moesia prior to going to the East; now, Marcus and Lucius sent it to Dacia, to establish a base at Potaissa.
That summer of AD 166, 6,000 Suebi of the Langobardi and Obii tribes from along the Elbe in northwestern Germany crossed the Danube into Pannonia. But their incursion was cut short by Praetorian Prefect Marcus Macrinus Vindex. Sent north by Marcus and Lucius with a cavalry column, Vindex intercepted the Germans and delayed the enemy until joined by infantry. “The barbarians were completely routed,” said Dio. As a result, King Ballomarius of the Marcomanni, and ten other German leaders met with the governor of Pannonia, Jallius Bassus, to discuss a peace treaty. [Dio, LXXII, 3]
The Marcomanni and their cousins the Quadi and Iazyges had been allies of Rome since the reign of Augustus, with just one blemish on their record when the Marcomanni had made a pre-emptive strike into Pannonia during the reign of Domitian. Time and again over two centuries, the Marcomanni had sided with Rome for the sake of peace. As for the Iazyges, they had not even complained when Trajan kept a parcel of their territory won from the Dacians and incorporated it into the province of Dacia. The German leaders now ratified a peace treaty with the Roman governor, the raiders withdrew across the Danube, and all seemed well again on the frontier.
But in AD 167, more German tribes came flooding down through Raetia, Noricum and Pannonia and into northern Italy. This time, intent on plunder and unimpressed by Rome’s imperial duopoly, the Marcomanni, Quadi and Iazyges joined the surge. Crossing the Danube at various points, they stormed into Rome’s Danubian provinces. In times past, Rome had even placed kings over these nations, and, in AD 98, Tacitus had written that the Marcomanni and Quadi “occasionally received armed assistance from us; more often financial aid.” [Tac., Germ., 42] But Rome was no longer seen as the power it once was, and its Danubian underbelly offered a tempting route to riches.
The German invaders reached northern Italy
, besieging the Italian city of Aquileia, sweeping over the Venetian plain, and, 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of today’s city of Venice, the Germans sacked and destroyed the crossroads town of Opitergium, modern-day Oderzo. Countless Roman civilians were killed throughout the region, and many more taken captive as a dozen German tribes ravaged the countryside and drove off thousands of head of stock. It was as if the gods of Germany had announced open season on Roman territory; the people of Rome were in terror of the barbarians reaching the very gates of the capital.
To counter the invasions, Marcus and Lucius deployed legions under Publius Helvius Pertinax and Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus. A 40-year-old praetor, Pertinax was famously the son of a freedman, while Pompeianus was the husband of Marcus’ daughter Lucilla. Both generals would distinguish themselves in the campaigns ahead. This war also served as the baptism of fire for the two new Italica legions. It would be “a mighty struggle,” said Dio. [Dio, LXXII, 3]
Called the Marcomanni Wars by later historians despite the fact that many German tribes including the Marcomanni, Quadi, Iazyges, Buri, Vandili and Naristi took part, the conflict would be better described as the Danube Wars. With only the occasional pause, the fighting went on for a decade, and was all embracing, for both sides. When the Romans took the fight across the Danube and into Bohemia, even women warriors clad in armor were found among the German dead. Marcus’ coemperor Lucius did not live to see the end of it; he died in AD 169; as the result of poisoning, according to Dio. The following year, several lesser German tribes sued for peace, but it was when the Quadi came to the treaty table that year that it seemed as if “a brilliant victory” had been gained by Rome. [Ibid.]
To be closer to the battlefront, Marcus had relocated from Rome to Carnuntum, modern-day Petronell in Austria, 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of Vienna. Carnuntum was a pleasant if undistinguished Pannonian village in rolling hills south of the wandering Danube. The permanent stone-walled base of the 14th Gemina Martia Victrix Legion stood here. Marcus’ wife, the empress Faustina, who was the daughter of the previous emperor Antoninus Pius, joined Marcus at Carnuntum.
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