Legions of Rome (36 page)

From the fourth century, once various emperors began using Milan and Ravenna as their capitals, Rome’s Palatium fell into disuse. In
AD
403, the poet Claudian would rejoice that the young emperor Honorius ventured to Rome and spent a little time at the Palatium. Seven years later, Rome and her sprawling Palatium were sacked by the Visigoths.

III
THE BATTLES

“The announcer stands at the general’s right hand, and asks them three times, whether they are ready to go out to war or not. To which they reply as often, with a loud and enthusiastic voice, saying, ‘We are ready!’”

J
OSEPHUS, WITNESSING AN ASSEMBLY OF VESPASIAN’S LEGIONS
.
The Jewish War
, 3, 5, 4

Crushing victories, and devastating defeats. The fate of the campaigns of Rome’s legions determined the fate of her empire. In the first century, military successes such as the invasion of Britain and reduction of Jerusalem far outweighed occasional and temporary reverses such as Arminius’ destruction of Varus’ legions in the Teutoburg Forest and the Jewish Revolt. Trajan likewise turned the martial disasters of Domitian’s reign into victory in Dacia in the second century. Yet, after Trajan, Rome was forever on the defensive. Her wars became longer, her defeats more frequent, her victories more hard-won. The stories of the legions’ battles chronicle the very rise and fall of imperial Rome
.

29
BC
I. ROUTING THE SCYTHIANS
The 4th Legion earns a title

In 30
BC
, as Octavian, sole ruler of the Roman world following the defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra that year, distributed the twenty-eight legions of his new standing army, he sent one of his two 4th legions to Macedonia.

The following spring, a new Roman governor arrived to take charge in Macedonia. Marcus Licinius Crassus, a consul in 30
BC
, and grandson of Crassus the triumvir who had perished leading his army to disaster at Carrhae in 53
BC
, had supported Antony during the civil war. His Macedonian appointment was an opportunity to impress Octavian with his loyalty and ability. He planned to do that by carrying out a military campaign using the recently deployed units of his new command, one of which was the 4th Legion.

From their northern homeland between the Vistula river and the Carpathian Mountains, King Deldo and his Bastarnae tribe had pushed over the mountains, crossed the Danube, and were threatening Thrace and Macedonia. As Cassius Dio reports: “The Bastarnae … who are properly classed as Scythians, had at this time crossed the Ister [River Danube] and subdued the part of Moesia opposite them.” [Dio,
LI
, 23] Initially the Romans did not react, but when the Bastarnae “overran the part of Thrace belonging to the Dentheletic, which was under treaty with the Romans, then Crassus, partly to defend Sitas, king of the Dentheleti, who was blind, but chiefly out of fear for Macedonia, went out to meet them.” [Ibid.]

The Bastarnae, sometimes also called the Peucini in Roman literature, “were like Germans in their language, manner of life and mode of settlement,” according to Tacitus. They generally lived in squalor, Tacitus said. Their nobles were lazy and the people had the “repulsive appearance of the Sarmatians”—the slanted eyes typically noted of Scythians. [Tac.,
Germ
., 46] To meet the invaders, Crassus led an army almost certainly made up of the 4th and 5th legions, with the 10th Fretensis Legion possibly also involved; another former Antonian legion, it was stationed in Macedonia sometime after the end of the Civil War, but precisely when it arrived in the province is not recorded.

As Crassus’ well-drilled legions approached the Bastarnae in full battle array, the invaders retreated out of Thrace in panic. Crassus pursued them into Moesia. There, when his advance guard was assaulting a fortress, local Moesian warriors attacked the Roman besiegers, forcing them to give ground. But when Crassus came up with the bulk of his army, “he hurled the enemy back and besieged and destroyed the place.” [Dio,
LI
, 23]

The Bastarnae, meanwhile, had regrouped at the Cedrus (Tzibritza) river, and “after conquering the Moesians, Crassus set out after them also.” [Dio,
LI
, 24] Bastarnae envoys came to Crassus, who plied the Scythians with wine and made them drunk, “so that he learned all their plans. For the whole Scythian race is insatiable in the use of wine and quickly become sodden with it,” according to Dio. [Ibid.] Armed with this intelligence, the Roman general moved his army toward the encamped Bastarnae, quietly taking up positions in a forest in the night, at the same time posting scouts beyond it.

“When the Bastarnae, believing the scouts to be all alone, rushed to attack them and pursued them as they retreated into the thick of the forest, [Crassus] destroyed many on the spot and many more in the rout that followed.” The Bastarnae were hindered by their wagons in the rear, and were anxious for the safety of their wives and children in those wagons. In the chaos, Crassus personally slew Deldo, the Bastarnae king. [Ibid.]

Some of the remaining Bastarnae took refuge in a grove, which Crassus’ legionaries surrounded and set alight, burning the Scythians to death. Other survivors retreated to a riverside fort, which Crassus’ troops quickly overran. Many of the fort’s Bastarnae occupants committed suicide by jumping into the Danube; the remainder were made prisoners, to become slaves or die fighting in the Roman arena.

The remnants of the tribe occupied what Dio called “a strong position,” probably on a hilltop, from where Crassus’ wearied legionaries were unable to dislodge them. Crassus was then joined by Roles, king of a Getae tribe, and a number of his warriors. Bolstered by these allied reinforcements, Crassus’ legionaries launched a new attack on the last stronghold of the Bastarnae, and in Dio’s words, “destroyed them.” [Ibid.]

This was Rome’s first major battle of the imperial era, and for his successful campaign against the Bastarnae, which secured the Macedonia/Thrace frontier, Crassus was voted a Triumph by the Senate, while Octavian was hailed imperator. With emperor and general receiving the highest honors, it seems highly probable that the 4th Legion, which had been at the forefront of the defeat of the Bastarnae, “who are properly classed as Scythians,” as Dio stressed, were also honored in recognition of the victory. It was either granted the title “Scythica” by Augustus, who would, within several years, be granting titles to other legions, or the men of the legion appropriated the “Scythica” title for themselves, just as earlier legions had done without official blessing.

One way or another, from that time forward the legion was known as the 4th Scythica, as coins and inscriptions surviving to the present day testify.

29–25
BC
II. THE CANTABRIAN WAR
Securing northern Spain for Rome

Within a year of the 30
BC
deaths of Mark Antony and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra in Alexandria, Octavian had built up a Roman army in Spain which would involve as many as eight legions, for a war that would drag out over an entire decade.

By this stage, only the fierce tribes occupying the Cantabrian mountains of northern Spain had yet to be conquered on the Iberian peninsula. Octavian’s plan, to drive the tribes from their mountain homes, would prove difficult to execute. Under his
generals Gaius Antistius and Titus Carisius, the legionaries and auxiliaries involved in the Cantabrian campaign set up three bases, in the East at Segisima, modern Santander; at Asturica (Asturias), covering the central region; and at Bracara Augusta (Galicia), in the west. Numismatic evidence reveals that the legions that served in Spain at one time or another during the period of the war were the 1st, the 2nd (later the 2nd Augusta), the 4th Macedonica, the 5th Alaudae, a 6th (the later 6th Victrix), the 9th Hispana, the 10th Gemina and the 20th.

In the spring of 29
BC
, the legions moved up into the Cantabrian mountains. The next four summers involved costly attempts to dislodge the outnumbered Spanish tribesmen from mountain hideouts. These were “heavy campaigns conducted with varied success,” said Velleius Paterculus, who served as an officer in the Roman army later in the reign of Octavian/Augustus. [Velle., ii, xc]

In 25
BC
, the 37-year-old emperor arrived in Spain to take personal charge of the frustrating war, bringing a large part of the Praetorian Guard with him. Two years earlier, the Senate had bestowed the title Augustus, meaning “revered,” on Octavian, and it was by the name of Augustus that the emperor was known from this time forward. With his army reinforced by the Praetorians, Augustus launched a fresh campaign against the Asturians and the Cantabri.

“But these peoples would neither yield to him—because they were confident on account of their strongholds—nor would they come to close quarters because of their inferior numbers,” according to Dio. Because their primary weapon was the javelin, said Dio, the tribesmen were at their most effective at a distance, letting fly and then
running away. [Dio,
LIII
, 25] It was only when the legions forced the Spanish into close combat that the legionaries’ swords brought them success.

As spring turned to summer, the rapid victory that Augustus had anticipated had not come about. The well-led tribesmen always sought to claim the higher ground, and, as Augustus came up with his legions, were constantly “lying in ambush for him in valleys and woods.” [Ibid.] Dio said that the sickly Augustus was greatly embarrassed by his lack of success, and, falling ill “from over-exertion and anxiety,” he retired from the campaign and withdrew to Tarraco, capital of Nearer Spain, remaining there in poor health as his generals continued the war. [Ibid.]

Gaius Antistius now managed to overcome the Spanish, not because he was a better general than Augustus, said Dio, but because the tribesmen “felt contempt for him.” [Ibid.] Made over-confident by the news that the Roman emperor had withdrawn from the fray, and assuming that Antistius would be even easier to dismiss, the Cantabrians made the mistake of meeting the Romans in a set-piece battle, which they lost. Soon after, the legions under Augustus’ other general, Titus Carisius, succeeded in taking Lancia, principal mountain fortress of the Asturians, after the tribe had abandoned it, and “also won over many other places.” [Ibid.]

By summer’s end, with thousands of Cantabrian and Asturian prisoners being led away into slavery and the tribal leaders suing for peace, Augustus was able to declare the Cantabrian War won. He now discharged long-serving Praetorians and legionaries, founding a colony for them in Lusitania which he called Augusta Emerita; it would become the modern city of Merida. His teenage stepson Tiberius, then a tribune, and his nephew Marcellus had accompanied Augustus on this campaign, and as he set off back to Rome he left them behind to organize exhibitions of gladiators and beast fights in the three legion camps, to celebrate victory in Cantabria.