As the Romans broached the hill, they saw the German army spread not far below them on the river plain, formed up in close-packed wedge formations and waiting for them. The Roman vanguard halted, and spread in a solid line. Auxiliary units formed a front line. The legions came up and took the center of a second line, flanked by more auxiliaries. As had been the case for hundreds of years, the standard-bearers took their station between the lines, accompanied by the trumpeters. At Julian’s command, all his cavalry wheeled to one side and formed up on his right, for his scouts had warned him that the Germans had dug trenches on his left.
As was their custom, the Alemanni had elected two of their kings to act as generals for this campaign. The commander-in-chief was Chonodomar, and the Romans could see him riding along his left wing mounted on a massive charger—it had to be a large horse, for Chonodomar was a huge man, tall and of “mighty muscular strength” despite his immense weight. He wore shining armor, and a gleaming helmet distinguished by a red plume. In the opinion of Ammianus, who was then a junior officer in the imperial bodyguard, Chonodomar was both a tough fighter and the most skillful general in the Alemanni ranks. [Ibid., XVI, 12, 24]
Chonodomar’s deputy was his brother’s son, Serapio, a young man who had yet to successfully grow a beard yet who possessed ability and maturity well beyond his years. Serapio’s father, previously a hostage of the Romans in Gaul for many years, had changed the boy’s name from Agenarich to Serapio after studying the Greek-Egyptian mysteries involving the all-powerful god Serapis, who was variously likened to a bull and to the sun. Young Serapio had command of the German right wing. The clans and tribes of the army were led by the other five Alemanni kings and ten princes. Around them spread the German wedges, made up of 35,000 warriors drafted from the various tribes. [Ibid., 12, 26]
Chonodomar and his fellow German leaders knew that their fighters outnumbered young Julian’s army by close to three to one. And as they spied the Roman units forming up on the rise, they recognized many of the unit emblems on their shields as belonging to the same units that had run before them in battles in Gaul over the past few years. [Ibid., 12, 6] The confidence of the Germans, already high, soared.
Julian had taken up his position. Trumpets blared orders on both sides. Julian’s left wing began to advance down the slope. Severus, the Roman commander on the left, was aware that trenches dug by the Germans lay in the path of his advance. The Germans had planned to spring out of the trenches and assault the Romans when they came close, but Severus, anticipating this, ordered his troops to halt well short of the Alemanni trenches.
Julian, accompanied by a bodyguard of 200 cavalry, moved along the front of the stationary Roman lines at the center, stopping every now then to give a brief speech to the troops in front of him. Each speech was a little different from the last. “The real time for fighting” had come, he told one group. When another part of the line called on him to give the signal to attack now, he urged them not to ruin their coming victory by disobeying orders and chasing the enemy too far on the one hand or in giving ground on another. To men in the rear ranks, he said, “Fellow soldiers, the long hoped for day has arrived.” It was time “to wash away the old stains and restore majestic Rome’s due honor.” [Ibid., 12, 31–2]
As Julian was still talking, a roar went up from the German ranks. As one, the Alemanni called on their kings and princes to fight on foot with their men. Without hesitation Chonodomar sprang from his horse, and his fellow royals followed suit and sent their horses away. Trumpets sounded. Missiles were exchanged by both sides for a time, with the air filling with arrows, javelins, spears and stones. And then, with a deep-throated roar, the long-haired, bearded warriors on the German left dashed forward to engage the stationary Roman cavalry, wielding their massive swords in their right hands as they ran. “Their flowing hair made a terrible sight, and a sort of madness shone from their eyes,” said Ammianus. [Ibid., 12, 36]
The Roman cavalry closed up. Auxiliary infantry moved close to protect their flanks. The Germans surged into their line. All the Roman infantry used their shields to protect their heads from the raining sword blows, jabbing back with their swords and hurling darts when they could. Soon, clouds of thick dust were raised by the struggling combatants. As the Romans stood their ground, forming a solid barrier with their oval shields, whose bottom edges sat on the ground, Germans used their knees in an attempt to push the shields back while they swung their swords at the same time. Behind the combined weight of the Germans, some front-line Roman infantry on the right began to give a little ground.
On the Roman left, impatient Germans in the trenches had sprung out and launched themselves at Severus’ stationary front line. But Severus’ infantry beat them back, and, on Severus’ command, began to slowly advance in tight formation, wheeling a little to the right to avoid the trenches. With triumphant shouts, Severus’ men pushed into the German center.
On the right, the hard-pressed Roman cavalry, unaccustomed to standing and fighting in the one spot, lost its nerve, and broke. Many riders fell back, only to be confronted by the men of closed-up second-line infantry, who refused to let them through. The Roman cavalry officers were regrouping their formations when the cataphracts saw their commander Innocentio sustain a wound, and then a cataphract’s horse went down, catapulting the rider over its head to the ground. The heavy cavalry panicked, infecting all the Roman cavalry, which attempted to scatter. Again the second-line Roman infantry held their positions, and refused to let their own cavalry break their close-knit ranks.
Seeing the cavalry disperse this second time, young Julian kicked his horse into motion, and rode into their path, urging them back to the fight. Behind him rode his standard-bearer, with his purple draco standard streaming in the breeze. The tribune of one squadron, coming face to face with the deputy emperor, paled with guilt, turned his horse around, and dived back into the fight.
The Alemanni on the Roman right, having dispersed the cavalry, threw themselves on Julian’s front-line infantry, the Cornuti and the Bracchiati. These German auxiliary units gave their national battle cry, which, said Ammianus, “rises from a low murmur and gradually grows louder, like waves dashing against the cliffs.” [Ibid, 12, 43] But the Alemanni, taller, stronger and fiercer than their opponents, succeeded in encircling the Cornuti and Bracchiati, who seemed to be in dire trouble as the Germans repeatedly crashed their swords against the raised Roman shields, attempting to hack through them as they would hack through a forest. Among the Cornuti who now fell was a tribune commanding a cohort.
The Roman second line had been waiting and watching. On Julian’s command, the Batavian auxiliaries, and the “formidable” troops of the Regii Legion, who bore the emblem of a thirteen-pointed star on their oval shields, advanced in formation at double quick time, and smashed into the Alemanni, to “rescue” their comrades. [Ibid., 12, 45; & Not. Dig.] But the Alemanni would not give way. Some were seen to drop to their left knee in their exhaustion, yet from that position they would continue to flail at the nearest Romans with their long swords.
In the center, a “fiery band of nobles” burst through the Roman first line, and dashed to the second line. These Alemanni nobles ran on to the immovable orange shields of the 1st Legion. The legion had taken up a close-packed formation called Praetorian Camp—a square—and with their shields locked together and employing iron discipline that kept them rooted to the spot, these men created an impregnable barrier. Through gaps in the shield line the Romans jabbed at the Germans’ unprotected torsos, and soon Alemanni were piled in front of them; the ground flowed with blood that made it difficult under foot for the next wave of Alemanni that came up to replace the first.
As the blood flowed, despair began to flow through the Alemanni ranks. The Romans held firm and dealt out death with each passing minute. Here, a German warrior broke and fled the battle, there another. Soon, it was an epidemic. The Germans were turning and running in their thousands. The Romans gave chase, overtaking man
y and slashing them down from behind. Now, the Germans’ size counted for nothing; it merely meant that they made larger targets for Roman weapons as they ran. Piles of corpses soon blocked retreat. Many Germans ran to the bank of the Rhine. A number jumped into the river to escape their Roman pursuers, and in the water some were transfixed by Roman spears, while others were swept away and drowned. Thousands of Alemanni swam the river, others floated away clinging to their shields. On the bank, Julian and his officers yelled to their men not to go into the river after the enemy, for that would be a death trap.
And then it was all over. The Battle of Argentoratum, or Battle of Strasbourg as some modern historians dub it, was at an end. For the Roman soldiers, who had not tasted success against the Germans for a long, long time, Argentoratum was a total victory. Roman losses were 243 rank and file and four tribunes including the commander of the cataphracts. Six thousand Alemanni dead were counted on the battlefield; many more had been killed in the Rhine. [Ibid. 12, 62] King Chonodomar was tracked by a Roman cohort to a wooded hill beside the Rhine. There, the Alemanni leader surrendered, together with three close friends and 200 men.
On the orders of the emperor Constantius, King Chonodomar was subsequently sent to Rome, where he was kept a prisoner at the Castra Peregrina, the Caelian Hill barracks used by allied troops based in Rome. Chonodomar would end his days there. Young Julian’s reputation as the general who had dealt the previously unstoppable Alemanni a bloody defeat, and restored the Rhine frontier, swept throughout the Roman world. Within four years, Julian would be emperor of Rome.
AD 359
LXXI. SURVIVING THE SIEGE OF AMIDA
100,000 Persians, 73 bloody days
From a clifftop, two Roman officers and their Armenian guide watched in awe as the Persian army of 100,000 men passed below them, filling the plain for 50 miles (80 kilometers). Out in front rode Shapur the Great, Persian “king of kings,” tenth ruler of the Sasanian dynasty that had overthrown the Parthian kings to rule the former Parthia. Shapur was leading his army on a campaign to invade the Roman Empire’s eastern provinces.
The senior of the two Roman officers observing the slowly passing Persian multitude was 29-year-old Ammianus Marcellinus, a young gentleman of Greek ancestry and a native of Antioch in Syria. As a teenager, at Mediolanum in Italy, Ammianus had become a junior officer with the Protectores Domestici, or Household Protectors, the personal bodyguard of the emperor Constantius II. Five years later, in the year 353, Ammianus had returned to his home town of Antioch to join the staff of Ursicinus, who had been the comes, or count, in overall command of the military in the Roman East since AD 348. Ammianus had been the count’s faithful aide ever since.
Just a week or so before this, as spring edged toward summer and there was no news of Persian intentions, Ammianus had been sent into enemy territory by Count Ursicinus, accompanied by a centurion, to gather intelligence on Persian movements. A local satrap friendly to Rome had told the pair to occupy a certain escarpment, and wait. Sure enough, after Ammianus and his companions had camped on the ridge for two days, the Persian army had appeared on the horizon and moved across the plain before their eyes. To Shapur’s left, Ammianus could see King Grumbates of the Chionitae, an old and shriveled man “but of a certain greatness of mind and distinguished by the glory of many victories.” [Amm., XVIII, 6, 22] To the right of the Persian monarch rode the king of the Albani, the tribe that then peopled modern-day Georgia.
The rulers and their entourages of generals and bodyguards were followed by a multitude of troops of every kind—infantry spearmen, foot archers, wave after wave of horse archers, men of the cataphract heavy cavalry in armor from head to toe, a camel corps of light cavalry and even lumbering war elephants whose fighting towers filled with spearmen swayed from side to side on the elephants’ massive backs with each step the animals took. These eastern troops had been “chosen from the flower of the neighboring nations and taught to endure hardships by lengthy continued training.” [Ibid.]
Ever since the year AD 337, Shapur had regularly sent his army across the Tigris river against Roman strongholds in Armenia and northern Mesopotamia, trying to force the Romans out of the region. Over thirteen years of sieges and skirmishes in which the countering Roman army had been led by the emperor Constantius himself, the Persian king had achieved some successes, notably the razing of the Roman fortress at Hileia in AD 348. In that same year there had also been a battle at the fortress of Singara in Mesopotamia (modern-day Sinjar in northern Iraq), where, Ammianus was to write, a “furious contest took place at night and our troops were cut to pieces with great carnage.” The Romans had lost a great many men at Singara, but had either retained, or soon after reclaimed, the fortress, with both sides touting victory in the contest. [Ibid., 5, 7]
Yet Shapur had not reached the prize city of Edessa or seized the bridges across the Euphrates that acted as the gates to the rich Roman provinces further west. A few small fish, tasty though they may be, do not a banquet make. Besides, following Rome’s disasters of AD 348, a new Roman commander had arrived in the East—Ursicinus. And ever since Ursicinus had taken command, the legions of the East had fought without loss. [Ibid., XVIII, 6, 2]
Tired of the contest with Rome, and stymied by Ursicinus, in AD 350 Shapur had suspended his war against Rome to concentrate on subduing troublesome neighbors. This had allowed Constantius to return to Europe and deal with Vetranio and Magnentius, a pair of usurpers who had led uprisings against his rule in his absence. Magnentius, a barbarian-born officer in the Roman army, had killed Constantius’ brother and coemperor Constans in his bid to seize power.
Eight years later, as Ursicinus was on his way home to Italy to accept promotion to the post of Rome’s Master of Infantry, having handed over command in the East to his successor Sabinianus, King Shapur launched his latest initiative against Rome. For by that time, the Persian ruler had made his regional enemies his allies, and had prepared and trained a vast army for the new enterprise. Shapur also knew that Ursicinus had departed, and that Constantius and much of the Roman army were tied up in a bitter campaign in Illyricum against Sarmatian, Quadi and Suebi invaders from beyond the Danube.
Shapur had begun by writing to Constantius to demand all territory held by Rome in the East as far as Macedonia, which he claimed was historically the property of Persia. Constantius had declined to oblige. Suspecting that Shapur was intending to launch a new campaign, Constantius had sent a message to Ursicinus ordering the general to turn around and go back to the East to counter whatever Shapur attempted.
Ursicinus, on his way to Italy, had just arrived in Thrace when the emperor’s dispatch reached him. Ammianus had been with his general when he opened his orders, and he saw that Ursicinus had been deeply troubled by them. The emperor was leaving Sabinianus in overall command in the East, so, technically, Ursicinus would be answerable to him. Neither was the emperor permitting Ursicinus to take any troops apart from his bodyguard to the East with him. Ursicinus knew that these orders had been framed by his enemies at court; he was, it seemed, being set up to fail.
Nothing is known about Ursicinus’ background. Many senior Roman commanders of this era had barbarian blood: Vandal, Frank and German. And there was a king of the Alemanni Germans named Ursicinus at this same time, so it is quite likely that Ursicinus was also of German extraction. He had clearly shown great military skill over the past decade, but at the same time had made many enemies at the court of Constantius. Yet he had never wavered in his loyalty to the emperor. “The most valiant of men,” in the opinion of his aide Ammianus, Ursicinus could not disobey his emperor, and neither could he allow Shapur to go unchecked. Taking Ammianus and the remainder of his staff and his escort from the Household Protectors with him, the general reversed his course and hurried back to Syria. [Ibid., XVIII, 5, 4]
Over the winter of AD 358–359, as Ursicinus and Ammianus were returning east, a Roman official by the name of Antoninus had crossed the Tigris river in the dead of night
in a Persian fishing boat. With the help of the Persian governor on the eastern bank, Antoninus took his entire family with him, and was conducted to the winter quarters of King Shapur.
Antoninus was a former wealthy merchant who served on the staff of Rome’s Duke of Mesopotamia. A financial scandal had erupted in the province, implicating Antoninus. When Ursicinus had been in charge in the East he had been sympathetic to Antoninus’ plea of innocence, but Ursicinus’ successor Sabinianus had ignored Antoninus’ appeals that other, much more powerful men were responsible for the fraud, and had laid down a date by which he must personally repay the missing money. As that date approached, Antoninus had determined to have his revenge. After making careful note of all the Roman military dispositions throughout the region, he had defected to the Persians.
Serving as an adviser to King Shapur, the defector Antoninus was riding with the Persian army as the two Roman officers watched from their hilltop observation post. Antoninus had been welcomed by the Persian king and given a turban that denoted him as a satrap entitled to vote with the king’s other advisers. The Roman defector had urged Shapur to forget his old policy of reducing Roman strongholds one at a time. Instead, Antoninus had said, producing the details of the location of Roman units and arsenals, the Persians should drive to the Euphrates river, cross it to the west, and then push up through Roman provinces all the way to the west coast of Asia before the Romans had time to organize. It was a plan that Shapur had enthusiastically endorsed.
Once the Persian army had passed, Ammianus and his centurion companion came down off their hill and trailed the enemy at a safe distance as the Persian horde followed the Tigris river. The two Romans were able to observe the Persian king and his adherents sacrificing in the middle of a bridge of boats across the Anzaba river (today’s Greater Zab in northern Iraq), with their army formed up beyond the river. There were shouts of joy from those on the bridge, indicating that the priests had found the omens auspicious for a campaign against the Romans, and the Persians had commenced to traverse the bridge. Estimating that it would take at least three days for the entire Persian army to cross the river, Ammianus and the centurion slipped away. [Ibid., 7, 1]
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