Legions of Rome

by Stephen Dando-Collins

  AD 360–363

  LXXII. LOSING MESOPOTAMIA

  Singara and Bezabde fall

  With the emperor Contantius rushing troops to the East to try to fill the void left by the seven lost legions, Antoninus’ plan for the Persians to invade all the Roman East was held in abeyance. But in the spring of AD 360, the Persians and their allies returned to Roman Mesopotamia, their numbers bolstered by new recruits and bringing new siege equipment with them. Shapur and his men had acquired a taste for victory and for plunder, and before they looked beyond the Euphrates there were many Roman fortresses with which to deal.

  The first objective was Singara, which Shapur had besieged several times in the past fourteen years. This time, he was determined to deprive the Romans of the city permanently. The 1st Parthica Legion had been based at Singara ever since the end of Septimius Severus’ Parthian campaign in AD 199. After the Persian wars had begun in AD 337, the 1st Parthica was joined by the 1st Flavia Legion, a probable creation of Constantius or his father Constantine—the first name of both was Flavius—and more recently also joined by a few cavalry.

  After several days of fighting at the walls of Singara, Shapur brought up “a ram of uncommon strength” at twilight. This went to work against a round tower that had been breached in the last Persian assault on Singara, twelve years before. The breach had been repaired by the Romans since then, but Shapur reasoned that the tower would have been weakened by the previous destruction, and this proved to be the case. The massive battering ram brought the tower tumbling down, and Persian hordes poured through the wreckage. The city was quickly taken. Most of the men of the 1st Parthica and 1st Flavia legions were taken alive. They were “led off with their hands bound” to become slaves in the farthest reaches of Persia. [Ibid., XX, 6, 6; 8]

  The Persians then moved on to the town of Bezabde near the Tigris (today’s Cizre in southeastern Turkey), which was then a hilltop town with strong walls. Bezabde was defended by the 1st Parthica’s brother legion, the 2nd Parthica. This unit had been tipped out of its comfortable base at Alba Longa, outside Rome, by Constantine the Great in AD 312, following his victory at the Milvian Bridge. They were then sent to the farthest reaches of the empire in punishment because of their support for Constantine’s opponent Maxentius. At Bezabde, the 2nd Parthica was joined by the 2nd Flavia, and another relatively new legion, the 2nd Armenia. The garrison also included a large number of archers of the Zabdiceni tribe, whose territory around Bezabde this was.

  After a surrender offer was rebuffed by the Roman defenders, the Persians launched a siege of Bezabde, and attempted to bring a number of battering rams into action. On the difficult sloping ground, and against determined opposition from defenders raining down stones, arrows and firebrands, it was only the largest of the rams, which had a covering of wet bull hides that could not be set alight, that succeeded in doing damage to the wall. Inevitably, the ram, “with its huge beak,” weakened a tower in the wall, which crumbled and fell. [Ibid., XX, 7, 14]

  As usual, Persians attackers surged through the opening created by the fallen tower. “Bands of our soldiers fought hand-to-hand with the enemy,” said Ammianus. [Ibid.] Vastly outnumbered, the defenders were overwhelmed, as the Persians ran amok in the city, killing everyone who fell into their path, male and female, as Bezabde was mercilessly plundered. But unlike Amida and Singara, the city was not leveled; Shapur decided to retain and strengthen Bezabde as a Persian fortress. Meanwhile, from the surrendered legions and civilian survivors of Bezabde, “a great throng of captives” was led off to the Persian camp. The 2nd Parthica Legion and the other units with it ceased to exist.

  The Notitia Dignitatum, which is believed by some scholars to have been updated, in part, in around AD 420, still showed the 1st Parthica and 2nd Parthica legions as part of the garrison under the Duke of Mesopotamia at that time, together with twelve cavalry units and two cohorts of auxiliary foot soldiers including the Zabdenorii. Ammianus shows that these legions perished at Amida and Singara. The listing in the Notitia Dignitatum for Mesopotamia actually appears to reflect the situation there prior to Constantius’ Persian wars—that is, prior to AD 337. Because, at the time the Notitia Dignitatum was said to have been last amended, the Roman province of Mesopotamia had not existed for many years.

  In AD 361, Constantius arrived in the East with a large army. Having blamed Count Ursicinus for the losses in Mesopotamia and dismissed him from office, Constantius personally led his army into Mesopotamia. He wept over the ruins of Amida, and attempted to lay siege to Persian-held Bezabde. But unlike the Romans before them, the Persian defenders held out. With the rainy season approaching, the Roman army, unable to achieve what the Persians had achieved at the very same place a year earlier, gave up the siege of Bezabde and withdrew to Syria.

  Constantius died in AD 361. He was on his way back to the west at the time, for his cousin and deputy Julian had been hailed as emperor by the troops in Gaul in opposition to Constantius. Julian, victor against the Germans at Argentoratum in AD 357, became the undisputed new emperor. Called Julian the Apostate by later historians because he personally renounced Christianity, he removed Christians from the Roman army, with whom he was enormously popular. Julian would take up where Constantius left off in the East, leading an army to recover Mesopotamia.

  But on June 26, AD 363, after just twenty months as emperor, 31-year-old Julian died while leading a Roman army of 65,000 men in a bloody but ultimately indecisive battle against Shapur the Great’s army deep inside Persia. Rushing into the fight without his armor, Julian was mortally wounded by a flying spear from a Persian cataphract that pierced his liver.

  Finding itself in the heart of Persia with neither leader nor direction, the Roman army hastily hailed as Julian’s successor 30-year-old Jovianus, or Jovian, who had little claim to the throne, being a middle-ranking commander of the bodyguard and son of a retired count. Jovian immediately agreed to the demands of those around him that the Roman army pull out of Persia and Mesopotamia.

  So it was that, in the summer of AD 363, four years after the end of Amida and three years after the fall of Singara and Bezabde, the new Roman emperor Jovian surrendered five Roman provinces in Mesopotamia and southern Armenia to King Shapur the Great, and gave up all claim to fifteen key fortress locations including those at Nisibis and Singara. Harried by the Persians all the way, the Roman army withdrew beyond the Euphrates.

  Eight months after ascending the throne, Jovian himself was dead, to be succeeded in turn by Valentinian, who had served as a cavalry tribune under Julian at the Battle of Argentoratum. But the damage in the East had been done; Roman Mesopotamia ceased to exist, just as the legions that had unsuccessfully attempted to defend it ceased to exist.

  In just three sieges in AD 359 and 360, the Persians had deprived Rome of twelve legions. Many authorities believe that by this time the number of men in each legion was substantially less than had been the case in early imperial times. Gibbon spoke of legions of this time being “of the diminutive size to which they had been reduced in the age of Constantine.” Legions of 2,000 to 3,000 men by this time seem the norm. [Gibb., XIX]

  Such losses of manpower and equipment to the Persians, combined with the number of Roman fighting men lost in the interminable revolts within the empire in the fourth century, could not be sustained. Within half a century, the drain on Roman resources would mean that there would not be the men to spare from distant provinces when crises arose in the west. The Roman East had its own battles to fight. Only brilliant generalship would keep the empire’s countless enemies off the road to Rome.

  AD 378

  LXXIII. BATTLE OF ADRIANOPLE

  Valens’ legions destroyed

  “The diminished legions, destitute of pay and provisions, of arms and discipline, trembled at the approach, and even the name, of the barbarians.”

  EDWARD GIBBON, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XIX

  Ever since AD 364, Flavius Valens had been Rome’s coemp
eror for the East, based at Antioch in Syria, while his elder brother Valentinian I had been emperor in the West. Valentinian had spent most of his reign based in Gaul fighting off Germanic invaders.

  Valens had led Roman armies with mixed success in the past. Twice, in AD 367 and 369, he had defeated the Visigoths north of the Danube, in what had once been the Roman province of Dacia. And in the East he had won a victory against the Persians in Mesopotamia before having to concede territory and withdraw. Now, 49-year-old Valens was intent on defeating the Visigoths once again, as they ravaged Thrace and threatened nearby Constantinople.

  Driven across the Danube river by the territorial expansion of the Hun people from beyond the Volga river, the Visigoths had in AD 376 come to an arrangement with Valens’ generals, who had permitted them to settle in Roman Moesia and Thrace south of the Danube. But in Thrace the locals had resented their presence, and Valens had decided to move the refugees to Asia. The Visigoths, whose religion was anchored to the Danube, which they considered sacred, had refused to move. So the people of Adrianople in Thrace decided to take matters into their own hands. Adrianople, also called Hadrianopolis—it was named after the emperor Hadrian—is the modern-day town of Edirne in European Turkey. The Adrianopolese attempted to forcibly remove the Visigoths who were settled nearby. This backfired, badly, with the Visigoths rising up, laying siege to Adrianople for a time, and ravaging rural Thrace.

  Twice, Valens’ generals fought the itinerant Visigoths, with bloody but indecisive results. As the Visigoths received reinforcements from their cousins the Ostrogoths and other allies from north of the Danube, and turned their attention to Constantinople, Valens marched from Antioch to Constantinople with much of the eastern army, sending to the west for Roman reinforcements.

  The Roman emperor in the west by this time was Valens’ nephew Gratian, who had succeeded Valentinian on his death in AD 375. Now 29 years old, Gratian had been making a name for himself in Gaul by leading his army in repelling the Alemanni, who had recently made a fresh incursion across the Rhine. Just prior to receiving his uncle’s plea for support, Gratian had decisively defeated the Lentiensi, a branch of the Alemanni, at Horburg beside the Rhine. From the Rhine, young Gratian set off for Thrace, planning to lead part of his army to link up with Valens in Thrace for a decisive combined offensive against the Goths.

  In July, with the main body of the Visigoths known to be encamped near Adrianople, Valens’ senior general Sebastianus was marching to Adrianople with the advance element of Valens’ army. He had detached 300 men from each of his legions and sent them ahead to destroy a large band of Visigoth looters spotted by his scouts. The legionaries achieved the objective, and recovered so much plunder from the butchered Visigoths that there was not enough room for it all inside Adrianople. The emperor Gratian, meanwhile, while hastening east with his troops to link up with Valens, was delayed in Pannonia when his column was attacked by Scythians of the Halani tribe.

  According to the Roman writer Ammianus, who had been an officer of the Roman army under the three previous emperors, Valens was jealous of his nephew’s military success against the Alemanni, and even jealous of the initial success of his own general Sebastianus on the road to Adrianople. [Amm., XXXI, 12, 1] He therefore set off with the bulk of his army, intending to demonstrate his prowess in controlling the Goths. As he approached Adrianople with his troops marching in square formation, his scouts reported that a slow-moving column of Gothic wagons had made its way through the hill passes to the north and was 15 miles (24 kilometers) from Adrianople. According to the scouts, there were 10,000 Gothic fighting men with the wagon train along with their family members.

  On reaching Adrianople in the first week of August, Valens had his troops build a camp outside the town, with ditch and rampart topped by wooden stakes, in the old Roman manner. There at the Adrianople camp, while impatiently awaiting the arrival of Gratian and his army, Valens was joined by Richomeres, a count commanding Gratian’s household troops. Count Richomeres brought a letter from Gratian in which the emperor of the west assured his uncle he would soon join him, and urged him not to venture anything before his arrival.

  On a hot August day, a council of war took place in Valens’ pavilion at Adrianople, as Valens sought the opinions of his subordinates on what to do. Should he wait for Gratian, or should he attack the Goths at once? Sebastianus urged him not to wait, but launch an attack on the Goths immediately, a view supported by a number of others. But Victor, Valens’ Sarmatian-born Master of Cavalry, counseled his emperor to wait for the arrival of Gratian’s army from Gaul, and he was supported in that view by numerous other officers.

  In reality Valens did not want to share a victory with his nephew. He wanted to attack at once. He chose to accept the advice of Sebastianus, perhaps reminding his courtiers that Constantine the Great had won a great victory near Adrianople in AD 324, against his rival Licinius, to make himself emperor of the entire Roman Empire. That famous victory probably encouraged the hawks among Valens’ counselors to think that this would be the place where Valens should similarly gain great glory. Orders were therefore issued for the army to prepare for battle next day.

  As preparations were under way, a Christian elder came as envoy from the Theruingi tribe’s Fritigern, king of the Visigoths, and presented Valens with a letter from Fritigern saying that if Valens would grant his people all of Thrace, together with its crops and flocks, he would guarantee a lasting peace between the Visigoths and Rome. Valens sent the envoy away.

  At dawn on August 9, Valens’ army passed out of the gates of its camp outside Adrianople in battle order. According to some modern authorities, that army numbered 60,000 men. [Warry, WCW] With the cavalry taking the roads and the infantry marching over open country, “a suitable guard of legions” was left behind at the camp, which contained Valens’ imperial treasury, the emperor’s personal insignia, the individual packs of the soldiers and all the army’s baggage. [Amm., XXXI, 12, 10] These legions would also be guarding the arms in the Adrianople arsenal, for Adrianople was one of thirty-four cities across the empire which then housed a state arms factory. [Gibb., DFRE, XVII]

  Valens had received a report from his scouts that the enemy had formed a vast circle of wagons on a hill some miles away. It was toward this hill encampment that the army marched all morning, over rough ground and in intense heat. At around two o’clock in the afternoon, the men of the Roman army could see the massive Gothic wagon circle on the hill ahead, perfectly formed and looking like a wall of wood around the slope.

  Although his men had been marching for something like eight hours, and were tired, thirsty and hungry, Valens ordered battle lines to be formed. Roman trumpets sounded the order, and the infantry spread into lines, taking positions allotted to them at that morning’s assembly. The leading elements of the Roman cavalry moved to occupy the right wing. Other troopers assigned to the left wing were still coming up country roads, so that the left was not yet properly filled out. In the center, the Roman infantry stood glaring across the parched expanse of earth separating them from the Visigoths who, summoned by their horn-blowers, were taking position at their wagons in their thousands. The Romans began to clash their javelins and lances rhythmically against their shields.

  From the Visigoth encampment, King Fritigern again dispatched envoys seeking peace, but Valens sent them away, saying that a peace agreement could only be negotiated by men of rank. So Fritigern sent a message to say that the Romans should send several high-ranking Romans to his encampment to discuss peace terms. Valens did not know that Fritigern was playing for time. The Visigoth cavalry, led by the kings Saphrax and Alathe of the Greuthingi tribe, was absent from the camp, apparently only gathering fodder in the vicinity, and as soon as the Roman army had been spotted approaching, Fritigern sent messengers galloping to find them and bring them to the aid of their people. The Roman leaders discussed who should go as envoy to Fritigern, and Richomeres, the count from Gratian’s household command, volunteer
ed to go to the Goths’ camp.

  As Richomeres was about to ride up to the massive circle of wagons on the hill, some of Valens’ mounted troops, apparently stationed on the Roman left, lost patience and commenced an attack of their own accord, urged on by their over-confident officers. These men, Armenian horse archers of the Comites Sagiittarii Armeni led by the tribune Bacurius of Hiberia, from northern Armenia, and cavalrymen of a Scutarii squadron led by a tribune named Cassio, charged up to the wagon line and engaged the Visigoths. But they were met by such a hail of arrows and other missiles that they turned tail and galloped back the way they had come before many minutes had passed, which did nothing for the confidence of the remainder of the Roman army.

  Now, the Goth cavalry under Saphrax and Alathe arrived, accompanied by Halani allies, and thundered into the rear of the Roman army. Valens had not put out cavalry patrols to warn him of the approach of enemy reinforcements—which meant that he and his army were taken completely by surprise as the Goth cavalry charged into his stationary army and mowed down Roman soldiers in their path. The charge broke up the Roman lines and a number of battles followed.

  Roman infantry and some cavalry were locked in combat with the Goth cavalry. On the left, the Roman infantry advanced of its own accord all the way to the wagon line. But the Roman cavalry on the left had been so disorganized by the rash charge by the horsemen of Bacurius and Cassio that the infantry lacked cavalry support. They were met by a wave of Goths that came out of the wagon line like water from a breaking dam and washed over the Roman left. The Roman infantry here was so crushed together that “hardly anyone could draw his sword or pull back his arm.” [Ibid., 13, 1] The fighting raised a dust cloud which cut visibility dramatically. This prevented Roman infantry from spotting Gothic arrows that came in clouds from the wagon line, killing or wounding them in their thousands.