Caesar's Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar's Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome (38 page)

through the streets of Rome rather than drove in a
quadriga
—he’d already celebrated a Triumph in Rome the previous May for his German victories.

Arriving in Syria a few months ahead of Germanicus, Governor Piso had gone around the four legions of the Syria command to win their loyalty and support, removing their stricter tribunes and centurions and replacing them with men who were in his debt or who would follow his wishes for a price. Piso then had legion discipline relaxed, allowing the legionaries based in the province to lead an easy life inside and outside camp. The more dissolute legionaries began to call Piso “father of the legions,” and the men of the 6th in particular showed strong allegiance toward him.

Meanwhile, Germanicus completed his business of state in Armenia and marched down into Syria, sending Piso an instruction to meet him at the winter quarters of the 10th Legion at Cyrrhus. The shabby, lazy legion Germanicus found at Cyrrhus was a far cry from the elite and famous 10th of Julius Caesar’s day.

The pair sat down at the legion’s permanent base in what was outwardly an amicable meeting. But behind closed doors Germanicus wanted to know why Piso had disobeyed orders. They parted coolly. Their relationship only went downhill from there.

Antioch, Germanicus’s new center of operations, was the empire’s third-largest city after Rome and Alexandria, with a population of several hundred thousand, including forty thousand Jews. A crossroads between East and West, it was a commercial hub, a prosperous city boasting fine buildings in brick, stone, and marble; broad avenues; and lush gardens. Prevented from decorating his own kingdom of Judea by the religious con-straints of Judaism, King Herod had bestowed lavish gifts on the city, including golden paving decoration from which we derive the saying about streets being paved with gold.

The Governor of Syria had his palace in Antioch, and living here in a.d. 18 with Governor Piso and his wife, Plancina, as their guest was Vonones, a former king of Armenia. A Parthian who had been raised in Rome as a hostage, Vonones had been expelled from Armenia by King Artabanus of Parthia a few years back and had ambitions to reclaim his throne. Vonones showered expensive gifts on the governor’s wife, and plotted with Piso for a return to Armenia. Their plans were thwarted by Germanicus. Not only did he place the son of the king of Pontus on the Armenian throne, he also soon had Vonones removed to Cilicia and kept under house arrest. Vonones escaped, but was caught and killed by a retired legion veteran.

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Piso was already fuming at being dressed down by Germanicus and at having to play second fiddle to him. Germanicus even superseded him as chief judge in Syria, so that Piso had to watch the young prince dispense justice in his stead, doing so, according to Tacitus, with a sour scowl on his face throughout the court sittings. And now Piso’s plans for power-broking in his region had been destroyed.

Piso’s growing hate of Germanicus came exploding out at a banquet given by the king of Nabataea, who presented Germanicus and Agrippina with heavy golden crowns, and lesser ones to Piso and the other Roman officials present. Throwing his crown to the ground, Piso jumped up and raged that the banquet was being given to the son of a Roman emperor, not of a Parthian king, before launching into a lengthy diatribe against luxury. Germanicus patiently let him rant, which probably annoyed Piso even more.

Early in a.d. 19 Germanicus visited Egypt as a private citizen, touring the historic sites like a modern-day tourist. This provoked outrage among Tiberius’s closest supporters in Rome, because Germanicus was breaking the laws of Augustus that prevented Romans of senatorial rank from entering Egypt without the emperor’s express permission. As men spoke against him in the Senate, Tiberius himself publicly acknowledged his dis-pleasure with Germanicus for his act.

On his return to Antioch, Germanicus found that all his decrees regarding provincial government and the activities of the legions of the East had been ignored or countermanded by Piso in his absence. Germanicus apparently finally lost his cool with Piso, displaying a rare bout of temper. It was obvious that before long one or the other would have to go.

One way or another.

Germanicus tried to calm the waters, inviting Piso to a banquet in his palace at Epidaphna outside Antioch and giving him the most honored place on his dining couch beside him. Shortly after the dinner, Germanicus fell gravely ill. Merchants traveling by sea to Italy took tidings of his illness to Rome. Just as the assassination of JFK stunned the world, so this news stopped Romans in their tracks. People throughout the empire waited anxiously to hear more about the state of his health, and there was universal relief when reports arrived that he had recovered fully.

But before long Germanicus was again floored by an illness that had all the hallmarks of a poisoning. And then the thirty-four-year-old prince died, in great pain, with his wife and friends at his palace bedside vowing to seek vengeance. Just before he died, Germanicus dismissed Piso from his post as governor. Although Piso and his wife, Plancina, were the chief c19.qxd 12/5/01 5:39 PM Page 203

suspects in what Germanicus’s friends were sure was a case of murder after incriminating evidence was found at the governor’s palace, the accused couple was already sailing away when Germanicus died. Piso lingered at the Greek island of Cos, and there loyal centurions from legions of the Syria command, including the 10th, caught up with him bearing the news he had apparently been waiting to hear.

Piso openly celebrated, and made plans to return to Syria and take back his command. To be on the safe side, he sent General Domitius Celer, one of his friends, ahead in a cruiser to prepare the way. But as soon as Celer stepped ashore in Syria, he was arrested by the commander of the 6th Victrix Legion. So Piso decided to take back his command by force.

Landing on the coast of Cilicia, in southern Turkey, he established himself at the castle of Celenderis and pulled together a rough-and-ready force.

He armed his own slaves, brought in auxiliaries from allied kings in the region, and waylaid a group of recruits marching by on their way to join their unit in Syria. We aren’t told which unit they were bound for, but as this was the winter of a.d. 19 and two of the legions stationed in Syria—the 4th Macedonica and the 6th Victrix—were due to undergo their latest discharge and reenlistment in the new year, these were probably Greek or Spanish recruits for one or the other of these legions who were roped in by Piso.

In all, Piso managed to bring together five thousand men at Celenderis. As he was assembling his little army, Lieutenant General Gneius Sentius, a close friend of Germanicus who had been at his deathbed and taken command in Syria on his chief’s demise, marched up to Celenderis with a force comprising the 6th Victrix Legion, almost certainly the 10th, and possibly also elements of the 4th Macedonica. After a brief skirmish outside the walls of the fortress, Piso surrendered, and was sent back to Rome to face trial in the Senate for Germanicus’s murder.

Piso would die, apparently committing suicide, in the middle of the high-profile trial the following year, just as it emerged that his wife, Plancina, had for some time been on intimate terms with the emperor’s mother, Julia Augusta, who arranged to have Piso’s wife pardoned. There were many, including the historian Tacitus, who would go to their graves convinced that Piso was murdered before he could implicate the emperor in Germanicus’s death. But there was no way of proving the widely held suspicion.

Ambition was not a quality associated with Germanicus. Cassius Dio was to say that he was one of the few men of all time who had neither sinned against his fortune nor been destroyed by it. Despite this, in the c19.qxd 12/5/01 5:39 PM Page 204

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immediate future, links with Germanicus would not prove beneficial, and within a few years most of his friends had either been destroyed by Tiberius or his Praetorian commander Sejanus or deserted Germanicus’s family to save themselves. But the ordinary people never forgot their hero and in due course transferred their affections to his descendants. After the death of Tiberius eighteen years later, Germanicus Caesar’s son Gaius—

Caligula, as we know him—Germanicus’s brother Claudius, and his grandson Nero would each successively become emperor of Rome. But as much as the people of Rome hoped for it, not one of his kin proved to be a Germanicus.

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XX

:

KNOCKED INTO

SHAPE BY CORBULO

any considered Lieutenant General Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo one of Rome’s finest soldiers since Caesar. He was certainly the
M
toughest. When he arrived in Germany in 47b.c. to take command of Rome’s Army of the Lower Rhine, he summarily executed a legionary who was digging a trench without wearing his sword belt. After centurions read aloud to their men the regulation requiring troops to be armed at all times while on duty, a soldier was found digging a fortification wearing his weapon belt and nothing else. Corbulo had no sense of humor—the naked legionary was also put to death, for insubordination.

General Corbulo arrived in the East in a.d. 54 to take up an assignment as Governor of Galatia and Cappadocia, but with a secret brief from the new emperor Nero and his chief ministers Seneca and Burrus to return Armenia to the Roman fold after the Parthians had installed their own king in the mountainous country. Tacitus describes Corbulo as “an old and wary general” at this juncture. It’s likely he was promoted to major general prior to a.d. 21, making him in his sixties by the time he took up his eastern appointment.

Some modern historians have postulated that a Domitius Corbulo mentioned by Tacitus in about a.d. 21 may have been General Corbulo’s father. This Corbulo, a “former praetor,” was affronted by a young noble who had not given place to him at a gladiatorial show, and demanded and received an official apology. Tacitus says this Corbulo also objected to the state of Italy’s roads, which he blamed on the dishonesty of contractors and the negligence of officials, and went on to personally take charge of road maintenance. The roads of Italy were soon no longer in ruin, but the determined Corbulo managed to ruin numerous Italians previously involved in the road business by attacking their property and credit through
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a series of convictions and confiscations. So if he was Corbulo’s father, it seems his son inherited many of his traits, but it’s just as likely this was none other than the pragmatic general himself.

In any case, General Corbulo arrived in the East with a reputation for ruthless efficiency in both civil and military administration. Determined to keep his preparations low-key, he quietly recruited new auxiliary units in the region. Some were destined to support Corbulo’s legionary army; others were stationed at a series of border forts, with orders not to provoke trouble in Armenia. And Corbulo chose two legions currently with the Syria command to spearhead his Armenian project—the 6th Victrix and the 10th.

That both were Spanish legions was probably no coincidence. As we know from Josephus, the reputation gained by Julius Caesar’s Spanish legionaries had lingered long after their exploits had seen them labeled Rome’s best troops in the 1st century b.c. But General Corbulo was in for a shock. He obviously chose the legions before he saw them.

What Corbulo found when he arrived at the base of the 10th Legion at Cyrrhus were lame fifty-five-year-old second-enlistment men lazing around barrack rooms. The younger thirty-five-year-olds were busy in town running businesses and standing over the locals. “Sleek moneymaking traders,” Tacitus calls them, perhaps echoing Corbulo’s own remarks.

The disease of indiscipline introduced by Piso all those years before had become an epidemic facilitated by decades of inactivity. “Demoralized by a long peace” is how Tacitus describes the legionaries Corbulo discovered in Syria.

Many soldiers of the 10th Legion had sold their helmets and shields.

There were second-enlistment men of the 10th who in all their time with the legion had never dug a trench or thrown up the wall of a marching camp, who had never done picket duty or stood guard in the lonely hours of the night. Corbulo soon fixed that.

General Corbulo dismissed the sick and the lame, and the remaining men of the legion were very quickly pulled back into line. Transferring the two legions up from Syria to his base of operations in Cappadocia, the general implemented a training regimen that would have seen his flabby legionaries doing twenty-five-mile-route marches day after day, digging entrenchments, undergoing hour after hour of weapons drill. When the winter arrived he marched the men of the 10th and the 6th Victrix up into the mountains of Cappadocia and made them camp out in their flimsy tents until the spring, on ground covered with ice and swept by bitter winds. It was so cold that some men suffered from frostbite. Several c20.qxd 12/5/01 5:40 PM Page 207

froze to death on night guard. Deserters, when caught, were executed immediately, and not given a second or a third chance, as in the past. The desertion rate within Corbulo’s units quickly plummeted.

But Corbulo endured the same hardships he imposed on his men. He camped with them through the snow and the blizzards. He marched on foot and bareheaded at the head of the column wherever he took them.

He would have eaten what they ate, and presumably if they didn’t eat at all because of supply problems, then neither did he. Tacitus says that throughout this period Corbulo had praise for the brave, comfort for the feeble, and was a good example to everyone. And as the legionaries toughened up, they acquired a grudging admiration for their old son-of-a-bitch general.