Legions of Rome Read online

  LEGIONS OF ROME

  THE DEFINITIVE HISTORY OF EVERY IMPERIAL ROMAN LEGION

  STEPHEN DANDO-COLLINS

  New York • London

  © 2010 by Stephen Dando-Collins

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  ISBN 978-1-62365-201-2

  Distributed in the United States and Canada by Random House Publisher Services

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  For Louise, who soldiers at my side,

  and Richard, who always fights the good fight.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  I. THE MEN

  I. Where It All Began

  II. Soldiering for Augustus

  III. Enlisting and Retiring

  IV. Special Duties

  V. Discipline and Punishment

  VI. Legionary Pay

  VII. Comparative Buying Power of a Legionary’s Income, First–Second Centuries AD

  VIII. Military Decorations and Awards

  IX. Legionary Uniforms and Equipment

  X. The Legionary’s Weapons

  XI. Legionary Training

  XII. Legionary Rations and Diet

  XIII. Furloughs and Furlough Fees

  XIV. Legion Musicians

  XV. The Standard-Bearer, Tesserarius and Optio

  XVI. The Decurion

  XVII. The Centurion

  XVIII. The Camp-Prefect

  XIX. The Tribunes

  XX. The Prefect

  XXI. The Quaestor

  XXII. The Legate

  XXIII. The Praetor

  XXIV. Senior Officer Rank Distinctions

  XXV. Senior Officers of the Late Empire: Prefects, dukes and counts take command

  XXVI. Auxiliaries

  XXVII. The Use of Multipart Names by Roman Auxiliaries and Sailors

  XXVIII. Numeri

  XXIX. Marines and Sailors

  II. THE LEGIONS

  I. Legion Organization

  II. Lawrence Keppie’s Legion Number Formula: Explaining the origins of the 5th to 10th legions

  III. The Legion Camp

  IV. Watchwords and Trumpet Calls

  V. On the March

  VI. Baggage Trains and Non-Combatants

  VII. Artillery and Siege Equipment

  VIII. Legion, Praetorian Guard and Auxiliary Standards

  IX. The Vexillum

  X. The Draco, or Dragon Standard

  XI. The Commander’s Standard

  XII. Legion Emblems and Birth Signs: Caesar’s bulls and other myths

  XIII. The Triumph

  XIV. Unit Histories: Rome’s imperial legions and guard units

  XV. The Emperor’s Household Cavalry

  XVI. The Imperial Bodyguard: The German Guard and its successors

  XVII. Legions of the Late Empire

  XVIII. Cavalry

  XIX. Cavalry Evolutions

  XX. Cavalry of the Late Empire

  XXI. Camels and War Elephants

  XXII. The Evocati

  XXIII. The Palatium

  III. THE BATTLES

  I. Routing the Scythians

  II. The Cantabrian War

  III. Rome Invades Ethiopia

  IV. Second Cantabrian War

  V. The 5th Alaudae Loses its Eagle

  VI. Conquering Raetia

  VII. At the Altar of Peace

  VIII. The Pannonian War

  IX. The Varus Disaster

  X. The Struggle at Fort Aliso

  XI. Invading Germany

  XII. Battle of Long Bridges

  XIII. Battle of Idistavisus

  XIV. Battle of the Angrivar Barrier

  XV. Tacfarinas’ Revolt

  XVI. Scribonianus’ Revolt

  XVII. Invading Britain

  XVIII. Corbulo’s First Armenian Campaign

  XIX. Rioting in Jerusalem

  XX. Boudicca’s British Revolt

  XXI. Corbulo’s Second Armenian Campaign

  XXII. First Jewish Revolt

  XXIII. Vespasian Takes Command

  XXIV. The Roxolani Battle

  XXV. Year of the Four Emperors

  XXVI. The Civilis Revolt

  XXVII. Losing the Rhine

  XXVIII. Rome’s Rhine Response

  XXIX. Battle of Rigodulum

  XXX. Battle of Trier

  XXXI. Battle of Old Camp

  XXXII. Besieging Jerusalem

  XXXIII. Machaerus and Masada

  XXXIV. The 6th Ferrata Takes Commagene

  XXXV. The Chattian War

  XXXVI. Battle of Mons Graupius

  XXXVII. Decebalus the Invader

  XXXVIII. Saturninus’ Revolt

  XXXIX. Retreat from Dacia

  XL. First Dacian War

  XLI. Overrunning Dacia

  XLII. Between the Dacian Wars

  XLIII. Second Dacian War

  XLIV. Trajan Annexes Arabia

  XLV. Trajan’s Parthian War

  XLVI. Disappearance of the 9th

  XLVII. Second Jewish Revolt

  XLVIII. Arrian Against the Alans

  XLIX. A Legion Destroyed

  L. Cassius’ Parthian War

  LI. Marcus Aurelius’ Danube Wars

  LII. The Thundering 12th

  LIII. Blood on the Ice

  LIV. Challenging for Marcus’ Throne

  LV. Marcus Aurelius’ Last Campaigns

  LVI. Severus Versus Niger

  LVII. Battle of Lugdunum

  LVIII. Severus’ Parthian War

  LIX. Severus’ Scottish Invasion

  LX. Executions at York

  LXI. Killing Caracalla

  LXII. Macrinus Against Elagabalus

  LXIII. For and Against Maximinus

  LXIV. Valerian Captured

  LXV. The Palmyran Wars

  LXVI. Constantine Fights for the Throne

  LXVII. Battle of the Milvian Bridge

  LXVIII. Constantine Against Licinius

  LXIX. Julian Against the Germans

  LXX. Battle of Argentoratum

  LXXI. Surviving the Siege of Amida

  LXXII. Losing Mesopotamia

  LXXIII. Battle of Adrianople

  LXXIV. Stilicho Saves Italy

  LXXV. The Fall of Rome

  LXXVI. Why Did the Legions Decline and Fall?

  Plates

  Key to Sources

  Bibliography

  INTRODUCTION

  The Roman legion of the imperial era was a triumph of organization. Its basic structure was so effective that it continues to be used to this day, by armies whose squads, platoons, companies and battalions reflect the contubernium, century, cohort and legion of old. The imperial legion created by Augustus was like a giant Lego set, with each component, from heavy infantry to cavalry, artillery to supporting auxiliary light infantry, fitting neatly together to form a solid, self-contained military machine.
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  The fearsome effectiveness of the organizational structure, training, and tactics of the legions were so universally acknowledged that several of Rome’s greatest foes used them against her. Men who had formerly served in Rome’s army and went on to raise rebellions against her not only organized their own forces along Roman lines, their intimate knowledge of how the legions operated allowed them to employ tactics which exploited their few weaknesses. As a result, Arminius destroyed Varus and his three legions in Germany’s Teutoburg Forest, Tacfarinas was able to terrorize North Africa for years, and Civilis took the Rhine and seven legions from Rome and threatened to remove all of Gaul from Roman control.

  The legions’ make-up, originally homogeneous as a result of mass enlistments in specific provincial areas, became increasingly ethnically diverse, with men from opposite ends of the Roman world bringing greatly varying customs, dialects, and religious observances to their legions without any detrimental effect to the serviceability of the overall unit. This can be put down, in part, to the fact that, like a modern military unit, legions had for centuries possessed a strong corporate identity, with the battle honors of previous enlistments being cited by commanders to rouse their troops to greater battlefield deeds.

  It is remarkable that even though all the imperial legions sprang from common roots and used common training and equipment, their performance varied. Some were consistently reliable while others were fated to disappoint. Others that had once failed later grabbed glory with spectacular victories. Others still did not live up to earlier reputations. The legions destroyed with Varus in the Teutoburg Forest, for example, had been, up to that time, considered by Velleius, an officer who served with them on the Rhine, among Rome’s best and bravest. Yet clever tactics by their attackers and poor leadership by their commander led to their destruction.

  The question of leadership emerges time and again in the history of the legions. The 12th Fulminata Legion, for example, poorly led in Rome’s initial confounded attempt to put down the first-century Jewish Revolt, disgraced itself by losing its eagle standard to the rebels. A century later, this same legion regained its reputation by standing firm in a thunderstorm to save its leader Marcus Aurelius from surrounding German hordes. Vastly outnumbered but under firm leadership, the 14th Gemina Martia Victrix Legion similarly gained fame, by defeating Boudicca’s rebels in Britain.

  The first century and the early part of the second century represented the golden age of the legions, when massive armies of up to 100,000 legionaries and a similar number of auxiliaries swept all before them, and a legionary could expect to retire rich with the spoil of conquest. From the death of the emperor Trajan in AD 117, the situation changed. Stretched thin along porous borders, Roman forces were forced permanently on to the defensive. Internal divisions would soon regularly rend the empire. Central control was frequently lost, reasserted, and lost again.

  In the process, the quality of the men and their units declined, as their leaders increasingly adopted foreign mercenaries and foreign methods, created ever more new units, and changed the legions’ organizational structure. And with change came regular defeat, stimulating even more debilitating change. Only the occasional emergence of a great commander stemmed the tide of decline and even offered hope of a return to the glory days, but always just for the duration of his lifetime.

  The long existence of the Roman Empire had everything to do with the legions. While the legions were strong, Rome was strong. Conversely, the disintegration of the Late Empire had everything to do with the disintegration of the legions as effective fighting forces. At the end of the fourth century, the Notitia Dignitatum listed several hundred legions and auxiliary units of the day, yet these units were small, with many no more than border police and some perhaps existing only on paper. Even the most elite units then in existence paled in comparison to the Augustan legions. Vegetius’ plea to his emperor Valentinian, just prior to the creation of the Notitia Dignitatum, for a return to the legion structure, weapons and training of old, fell on deaf ears.

  When, in AD 398, Rome’s last great general, Stilicho, son of a Vandal cavalry commander, put together a task force in northern Italy to wrest Africa back from rebel governor Gildo, the state of the legions then mirrored the state of the empire. Stilicho’s force was organized from Mediolanum (Milan), which had superseded Rome as imperial capital in the West, and it sailed from Pisa in Tuscany, not from one of the old imperial naval bases of Misenum or Ravenna. This army consisted of legions including the Jovian, Herculian, and 3rd Augusta, plus several auxiliary units—although the distinction between legionary and auxiliary had blurred since Commodus’ AD 212 decree had made Roman citizenship universal.

  Yet, this task force’s seven units totaled no more than 5,000 men, most of them Gallic veterans. Rome’s once proud legions had shrunk to complements of some 1,000 men each, less than a fifth the size of the Augustan legions. Training, equipment, and tactics had also changed drastically since the days of Augustus. Legionaries were now using light equipment and light arms. Not long before this, entire units had thrown away their armor and helmets, claiming they were too heavy, to fight unprotected, with predictably fatal results.

  Stilicho’s task force won back Africa without having to lift a sword—the very sight of their disciplined ranks caused the rebel governor’s troops to run. But it would be a different story just three years later, when Alaric’s Visigoths invaded Italy. Stilicho’s legions, withdrawn from Britain and the Rhine to save Italy, would, under his inspiring leadership, fight bloody battles and conduct gritty sieges, driving the Visigoths out of Italy. Yet once Stilicho died, soon after, those same legions were devoured by Alaric, who, in AD 410, achieved his ambition of sacking Rome.

  This, then, is the comprehensive story of Rome’s imperial legions. From the army molded by Augustus through the heady early phase of the empire’s expansion, with its conquests, revolts, and self-destructive civil conflicts, to the long, grinding decline as the quest to maintain the gains of old sometimes stemmed the barbarian tide but inevitably gave way to it.

  Despite their inglorious end, the legions remain to this day, thousands of years after their creation, the most preeminent example of how detailed organization, tight discipline, and inspiring leadership can take a group of individuals and turn them into a winning team.

  STEPHEN DANDO-COLLINS

  March 2010

  I

  THE MEN

  “Every country produces both brave men and cowards, but it is equally certain that some nations are naturally more warlike than others.”

  VEGETIUS, De Re Militari, FOURTH CENTURY

  Down through the centuries, millions of men served with the army of imperial Rome; half a million during the reign of Augustus alone. The history of the legions is the collective story of those individuals, not just of Rome’s famous generals. Men such as Titus Flavius Virilis, still serving as a centurion at the age of 70. And Titus Calidius, a cavalry decurion who missed military life so much after retiring he re-enlisted, at the reduced rank of optio. And Novantius, the British auxiliary from today’s city of Leicester, who was granted his discharge thirteen years early for valiant service in the second century conquest of Dacia. Any analysis of the legions must begin with the men, their organization, their equipment, and their service conditions.

  I. WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

  The origins of the legions of Pompey, Caesar, Augustus, Vespasian, Trajan and Marcus Aurelius go back to the Roman Republic of the fifth century BC. Originally, there were just four Roman legions—Legios I to IIII (the legion number 4 was written as IIII, not IV). Each of the two consuls, “who were charged both singly and jointly to take care to preserve the Republic from danger,” commanded two of these legions. [Vege., III]

  All legionaries were then property-owning citizens of Rome, conscripted in the spring of each year into the armies of the two consuls. Legio, the origin of the word “legion,” meant “levy,” or draft. Service ordinarily ended with the Fe
stival of the October Horse on October 19, which signaled the termination of the campaigning season.

  Men of “military age”—16 to 46—were selected by ballot for each legion, with the 1st Legion considered to be the most prestigious. Rome’s field army was bolstered by legions from allied Italian tribes. Legionaries of the early Republic were appointed to one of four divisions within their legion, based on age and property qualifications. The youngest men were assigned to the velites, the next oldest to the hastati, men in the prime of life to the principes and the oldest to the triarii, with the role and equipment of each group differing. By Julius Caesar’s day, the conscripted infantry soldier of the Republic was required to serve in the legions for up to sixteen years, and could be recalled in emergencies for a further four years.

  Originally, republican legions had a strength of 4,200 men, which in times of special danger could be brought up to 5,000. [Poly., VI, 21] By 218 BC and the war between Rome and Carthage, the consuls’ legions consisted of 5,200 infantry and 300 cavalry, which approached the form they would take in imperial times. From 104 BC, the Roman army of the Republic underwent a major overhaul by the consuls Publius Rutilius Rufus and Gaius Marius. Rutilius introduced arms drill and reformed the process of appointment for senior officers. Marius simplified the requirements for enrollment, so that it was not only property owners who were required to serve. Failure to report for military service would result in the conscript being declared a deserter, a crime subject to the death penalty.

  A legionary would be paid for the days he served—for many years, this amounted to ten asses a day. He was also entitled to the proceeds from any arms, equipment or clothing he stripped from the enemy dead, and was entitled to a share of the booty acquired by his legion. If a legion stormed a town, its legionaries received the proceeds from its contents—human and otherwise—which were sold to traders who trailed the legions. If a town surrendered, however, the Roman army’s commander could elect to spare it. Consequently, legionaries had no interest in encouraging besieged cities to surrender.

  Marius focused on making the legions independent mobile units of heavy infantry. Supporting roles were left to allied forces. To increase mobility, Marius took most of the legionaries’ personal equipment off the huge baggage trains which until then had trailed the legions, and put it on the backs of the soldiers, greatly reducing the size of the baggage train. With the items hanging from their baggage poles weighing up to 100 pounds (45 kilos), legionaries of the era were nicknamed “Marius’ mules.” Until that time, the maniple of 160–200 men had been the principal tactical unit of the legion, but under Marius’ influence the 600-man cohort became the new tactical unit of the Roman army, so that the legion of the first century BC comprised ten cohorts, with a total of 6,000 men.