Caesar's Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar's Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome (37 page)

Octavian didn’t too look kindly on the 10th Legion. This famous unit, which had once been Caesar’s favorite and most loyal legion had, after all, gone over to Antony and marched against Octavian, and it seems that when the 10th’s discharge fell due in 29 b.c. he held off sending the men
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of the 10th home. According to Suetonius, they rioted to press their demands, after which Augustus dishonorably discharged the entire legion.

But this wasn’t the end of the 10th Legion. As a non-Italian unit, the 10th would continue, in name at least, as one of the twenty-eight legions in Octavian’s new army, and he must have immediately issued orders for a fresh enlistment of the legion to be raised without delay in its old Spanish recruiting grounds.

Octavian was determined to make his new legions lean, mean, killing machines. As recruiting officers scurried around western Spain rounding up new recruits for the 10th Legion in 29 b.c., some basic administrative changes were put in place. As with the other remaining legions, the 10th Legion’s numbers were reduced. Cohorts now contained 480 men, not the 600 of Julius Caesar’s day, with the 1st Cohort being of double strength.

The legion also now included a small cavalry unit for reconnaissance, courier, and escort duties made up of 120 of its own legionaries in 4 squadrons of 30 troopers, commanded by 4 decurions, or lieutenants, who each had an
optio,
or sergeant major, from the ranks as his deputy. The main cavalry role would be left to mounted auxiliary units in
alae,
or wings, some of 500 troopers, some of 1,000.

The legion still had 60 centurions—fifty-nine in ten grades, plus the
primus pilus,
the chief centurion. And the duties of its six tribunes were radically changed. Octavian had seen that in practice the legion was commanded in battle by its centurions, and that the rank and file had little respect for the wealthy young colonels who were supposed to command the legion and the cohorts. Now, five of the six tribunes of every legion would be officer cadets, tribunes of the thin stripe. Staff officers, they would work at headquarters and act as colonels of the watch and aides to the legion commander, but in battle they would have no power of unit command. Serving a six-month cadetship from age eighteen, these lieutenant colonels would then move on to the next step on the promotional ladder.

By the reign of the emperor Claudius, who came to power in a.d. 41, that promotional ladder had been formalized. After serving their cadetships as junior tribunes, young men of the Equestrian Order would become prefects, with the equivalent rank of colonel, commanding auxiliary troops.

Initially they had command of an auxiliary infantry cohort. Every legion now had its own attached auxiliary light infantry cohorts and auxiliary cavalry squadrons, but some auxiliary units also served independently of legions.

Later the ambitious prefect could be appointed to command an auxiliary cavalry wing, or a mixed unit containing both auxiliary infantry and cavalry.

After commanding a cavalry unit, a prefect could be promoted to the rank of senior tribune, tribune of the broad stripe, a senior colonel who c19.qxd 12/5/01 5:39 PM Page 197

was second-in-command of a legion. The journey from junior tribune to senior tribune customarily lasted ten to twelve years. A tribune of the broad stripe was called a “military” tribune, to distinguish him from the post of civil tribune, the tribune of the plebs, at Rome. Names of the units with which a Roman officer served as a senior tribune and prefect might be listed on his tombstone, but the unit with which he trained as a junior tribune was not identified.

Octavian also implemented the process whereby each legion now had its own dedicated commander of general rank. The legate, equivalent to a modern brigadier general, was normally a young senator in his early thirties who’d climbed the promotional ladder to senior tribune before entering the Senate at age thirty. Under Octavian—or Augustus, as he became—the legion commander’s tour of duty would last one to two years before he moved on to another assignment. In the reigns of later emperors, legion commanders frequently kept their commands for up to four years.

The next step up the ladder was appointment as a praetor, which would involve service in Rome as a magistrate or a prosecutor, and, because a praetor had the equivalent military rank of major general, it could be followed by a senior military role. A praetor aimed for appointment to consul, which brought with it the equivalent military rank of lieutenant general. Once he’d served a consulship, a lieutenant general could be appointed to govern a province, which entailed command of all military units in that province, or to the command of a field army.

We don’t know the name of the brigadier general who became the 10th Legion’s first permanent commander, but we do know that the 10th was left disdainfully in the East by Octavian following the death of Antony and Cleopatra, as one of four legions stationed in the province of Syria; the 4th Legion was one of the others, and it’s likely that all were former Antonian units. As the 10th’s new recruits marched overland from Spain in 29 b.c. to join the legion in Syria, Augustus began operations in the Cantabrian Mountains of northern Spain, personally leading seven legions—units that had remained loyal to him in the conflict against Anthony—on what he hoped would be a short and profitable campaign that would finally bring all of Spain under Roman control. That campaign, although ultimately successful, would drag on for ten years.

The 10th moved into a new permanent winter base at Cyrrhus in northern Syria, not far from Commagene and the Euphrates River—sta-tioned there quite deliberately with a sentinel’s eye to the old enemy the Parthian Empire east of the river.

The legion had a relatively quiet time of it in Syria during this enlistment. Most of the surviving veterans enlisted by Caesar himself back in c19.qxd 12/5/01 5:39 PM Page 198

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Córdoba in 61 b.c. had left the 10th in its ignominious discharge of 29 b.c., but several centurions would have been brought back for a third enlistment. Aged between forty-nine and fifty-two, these tough veterans had an incredible record behind them—they’d marched with Caesar in Portugal as raw recruits, they’d conquered Gaul, invaded Britain twice, then fought throughout the civil war for Caesar: the lightning campaign in Spain, the Battles of Dyrrhachium and Pharsalus, Thapsus and Munda.

They’d fought for the triumvirs at Philippi and for Antony at Actium.

And yet they still had plenty of service left in them—a centurion of the 1st Italica Legion the next century was well into his third enlistment when he died, still in harness, at age sixty-six.

The 10th was still stationed in Syria in the winter of 14–13 b.c., leading up to its latest discharge and reenlistment. During that winter the discharged Spanish legionaries of the legion settled at the ancient city that was to grow into the modern Lebanese metropolis of Beirut, which was then in the province of Syria. Going back to Old Testament times, the city, whose Canaanite name was Be’erot, meaning “wells,” sat on the Mediterranean coast between several hills where underground wells provided ample fresh water. It was granted Roman colony status by Augustus in 14 b.c. to accommodate the discharged 10th Legion veterans. Augustus dedicated the colony to his wife, Livia, officially the empress Julia Augusta, giving the town the name of Colonia Julia Augusta Felix Berytus—liter-ally, “Julia Augusta’s Fruitful Colony of Beirut.”

Ten years later, in 4 b.c., on the death of King Herod the Great, there was considerable unrest in his former kingdom of Judea. The Governor of Syria, Lieutenant General Publius Quintilius Varus, assembled three of his four legions, including the 10th, and marched down to Jerusalem from Antioch to restore order. Once the unrest was quelled, and leaving the 10th Legion with his deputy, Procurator Sabinus, to garrison Jerusalem, General Varus returned to Syria with the other legions.

Trouble soon brewed again, as troops from the late king’s army joined with Jewish partisans in an uprising. The men of the 10th Legion and three thousand royal Jewish troops who remained loyal to Rome found themselves cut off and under siege inside the Antonia Fortress, beside the Jewish Temple, in company with Procurator Sabinus. After Sabinus managed to slip mounted messengers away at night who galloped up to Syria, General Varus put together a relief force apparently made up from the 4th, now known as the 4th Macedonica, the 6th Victrix (the original Spanish 6th Legion, which apparently was given this sobriquet, meaning “Conqueror,” by Augustus in about 25 b.c. for its work in the Cantabrian War), c19.qxd 12/5/01 5:39 PM Page 199

and 12th Legions, plus auxiliary infantry and four squadrons of cavalry, and hurried south to Judea.

As General Varus and his force approached Jerusalem, burning villages in his path, the partisans besieging the Antonia Fortress melted away, and Varus was able to link up with the 10th Legion without difficulty. With the situation corrected, and leaving the 10th stationed permanently in Jerusalem, Varus took the other legions back to Syria.

In a.d. 4, as the 10th Legion underwent its latest discharge and reenlistment, its new recruits in western Spain found themselves signing up for a twenty-year enlistment, as opposed to the old term of sixteen years.

Back in 6 b.c., Augustus had decided to extend the enlistment period of all twenty-eight of his legions, and the longer enlistment was introduced to each legion as its discharge fell due in subsequent years. By now, too, the enlistment age for all legionaries was twenty, raised from the minimum of seventeen of Caesar’s day. A legionary was still paid the same, just nine hundred sesterces a year, but this was an era when inflation was unheard of and there was no need to keep pace with rising costs—the prices of goods and services remained the same for a hundred years.

The 10th Legion remained in Jerusalem until a.d. 6, when Judea was made a Roman province by Augustus. To mollify the Jews, who apparently had no liking for the 10th after its ten years in their homeland, Augustus transferred it out, sending it back up to Syria, and replaced it with the 12th Legion, in a reversal of roles that saw the northern Italians of the 12th march down from Syria to Judea and make their headquarters at the newly designated capital of Roman Judea, Caesarea. (See appendix C for details of the uniqueness of the legion commands in Egypt and Judea.)

:

In the winter of a.d. 18, a new commander in chief for the Roman East arrived in Syria—Germanicus Caesar, grandson of Mark Antony, and in many respects the JFK of his day. Adopted son and heir of his uncle the new emperor Tiberius, who’d replaced Augustus when he died in a.d. 14, and grand-nephew of Augustus, Germanicus was a charismatic and talented thirty-three-year-old lieutenant general. He was famous throughout the empire and beyond it for his dashing performance in the Pannonian War of a.d. 6–9, when he’d led flying columns with spectacular success while still only in his early twenties, and more recently for his three-year
blitzkrieg
in Germany against the German rebel leader Arminius, or Hermann, as the Germans called him.

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To cap his military skills, good looks, and charming personality, Germanicus was a talented poet and playwright. And not only did his family background give him blood ties to both Mark Antony and Julius Caesar, he also had an intelligent, supportive wife in Agrippina the Elder, daughter of Augustus’s great general and admiral Marcus Agrippa and a grand-daughter of Augustus himself.

But most of all, Germanicus was famous for giving Romans back their pride. In a.d. 9, Hermann had wiped out three entire legions—identified as the 19th and two others, probably the 25th and 26th Legions—in the Teutoburg Forest east of the Rhine, legions led by the same General Varus who’d commanded the 10th Legion as Governor of Syria a decade before, legions that were never re-formed, so great was the disgrace of their destruction. Teutoburg was the biggest Roman defeat since Carrhae. Germanicus had gone on to reclaim two of the eagles of Varus’s annihilated units and devastated the Germans in several major battles at the head of eight legions, paying the German tribes back for the humiliation of the Varus disaster. And now he was heading for a new headquarters in Syria.

Tiberius had given him supreme command in the Roman East.

Such was Germanicus’s repute that even the much-feared Parthians would soon send ambassadors to him, offering to sign a formal peace treaty.

His power in the East should have been unchallenged, but even before he reached Syria he was embroiled in a bitter feud, not with foreigners, but with the Roman governor of the province of Syria, Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso.

Piso, in his sixties, a consul in a.d. 7, was an irascible and haughty lieutenant general who bowed to no man. And from the outset he seemed determined to make life difficult for Germanicus. According to many at the time, Piso did so at the prompting of Tiberius, who was jealous of his popular heir, having been forced to adopt him by Augustus. Piso ignored Germanicus’s orders to send several Syrian-based legions, including the 10th and the 6th Victrix, marching up to Armenia to back him in his planned coronation of a new Armenian king.

Accompanied by just his personal staff, Germanicus nonetheless marched into Armenia, which had long been a country disputed over by Rome and Parthia. There, in the capital of Artaxata, his authority guaranteed by nothing more than his reputation, he crowned a king friendly to Rome, Zeno, son of the king of Pontus, naming him King Artaxias. For this deed, and for organizing neighboring Cappadocia and Commagene into Roman provinces
en route,
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