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AD69: Emperors, Armies and Anarchy
Por Nic Fields
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The author of God’s Viking brings to life “a period in Roman history that provides many twists and turns as Rome emerged from the period of rule by Nero” (Firetrench).
With the death of Nero by his own shaky hand, the ill-sorted, ill-starred Julio-Claudian dynasty came to an ignominious end, and Rome was up for the taking. This was 9 June, AD 68. The following year, commonly known as the “Year of the Four Emperors,” was probably one of Rome’s worst.
In all previous successions, the new emperor had some relation to his predecessor, but the psychotic and paranoid Nero had done away with any eligible relatives. The new emperor had to secure his legal position and authority with regards to the Senate and to the army, as well as to those who had a vested interest in the system, the Praetorian Guard. Because imperial authority was ultimately based on control of the military, a player in the game of thrones had to gain an unshakable command over the legions. Of course, this in turn meant that the soldiers themselves could impose their own choice.
It was to take a tumultuous year of civil war and the death of three imperial candidates before a fourth candidate could come out on top, remain there, and establish for himself a new dynasty. Nic Fields narrates the twists and turns and the military events of this short but bloody period of Roman history.
“We appear to meet more people than the cast of Game of Thrones (with about the same mortality rate!) but with the added bonus of this being history, not fiction . . . hugely entertaining.”—Miniature Wargames Magazine
With the death of Nero by his own shaky hand, the ill-sorted, ill-starred Julio-Claudian dynasty came to an ignominious end, and Rome was up for the taking. This was 9 June, AD 68. The following year, commonly known as the “Year of the Four Emperors,” was probably one of Rome’s worst.
In all previous successions, the new emperor had some relation to his predecessor, but the psychotic and paranoid Nero had done away with any eligible relatives. The new emperor had to secure his legal position and authority with regards to the Senate and to the army, as well as to those who had a vested interest in the system, the Praetorian Guard. Because imperial authority was ultimately based on control of the military, a player in the game of thrones had to gain an unshakable command over the legions. Of course, this in turn meant that the soldiers themselves could impose their own choice.
It was to take a tumultuous year of civil war and the death of three imperial candidates before a fourth candidate could come out on top, remain there, and establish for himself a new dynasty. Nic Fields narrates the twists and turns and the military events of this short but bloody period of Roman history.
“We appear to meet more people than the cast of Game of Thrones (with about the same mortality rate!) but with the added bonus of this being history, not fiction . . . hugely entertaining.”—Miniature Wargames Magazine
Acciones del libro
Comenzar a leerInformación sobre el libro
AD69: Emperors, Armies and Anarchy
Por Nic Fields
Descripción
The author of God’s Viking brings to life “a period in Roman history that provides many twists and turns as Rome emerged from the period of rule by Nero” (Firetrench).
With the death of Nero by his own shaky hand, the ill-sorted, ill-starred Julio-Claudian dynasty came to an ignominious end, and Rome was up for the taking. This was 9 June, AD 68. The following year, commonly known as the “Year of the Four Emperors,” was probably one of Rome’s worst.
In all previous successions, the new emperor had some relation to his predecessor, but the psychotic and paranoid Nero had done away with any eligible relatives. The new emperor had to secure his legal position and authority with regards to the Senate and to the army, as well as to those who had a vested interest in the system, the Praetorian Guard. Because imperial authority was ultimately based on control of the military, a player in the game of thrones had to gain an unshakable command over the legions. Of course, this in turn meant that the soldiers themselves could impose their own choice.
It was to take a tumultuous year of civil war and the death of three imperial candidates before a fourth candidate could come out on top, remain there, and establish for himself a new dynasty. Nic Fields narrates the twists and turns and the military events of this short but bloody period of Roman history.
“We appear to meet more people than the cast of Game of Thrones (with about the same mortality rate!) but with the added bonus of this being history, not fiction . . . hugely entertaining.”—Miniature Wargames Magazine
With the death of Nero by his own shaky hand, the ill-sorted, ill-starred Julio-Claudian dynasty came to an ignominious end, and Rome was up for the taking. This was 9 June, AD 68. The following year, commonly known as the “Year of the Four Emperors,” was probably one of Rome’s worst.
In all previous successions, the new emperor had some relation to his predecessor, but the psychotic and paranoid Nero had done away with any eligible relatives. The new emperor had to secure his legal position and authority with regards to the Senate and to the army, as well as to those who had a vested interest in the system, the Praetorian Guard. Because imperial authority was ultimately based on control of the military, a player in the game of thrones had to gain an unshakable command over the legions. Of course, this in turn meant that the soldiers themselves could impose their own choice.
It was to take a tumultuous year of civil war and the death of three imperial candidates before a fourth candidate could come out on top, remain there, and establish for himself a new dynasty. Nic Fields narrates the twists and turns and the military events of this short but bloody period of Roman history.
“We appear to meet more people than the cast of Game of Thrones (with about the same mortality rate!) but with the added bonus of this being history, not fiction . . . hugely entertaining.”—Miniature Wargames Magazine
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Vista previa del libro
AD69 - Nic Fields
procul hinc, procul este, severi
Ovid Amores 2.1.3
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by
Pen & Sword Military
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS
Copyright © Nic Fields 2014
ISBN 978 1 78159 188 8
eISBN 9781473838147
The right of Nic Fields to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Contents
List of Plates
Maps and Graphics
Prologue: Imperial Illusions
Introduction: The Curse of Remus
Chapter 1 The Twisted Emperor
Chapter 2 The Septuagenarian Emperor
Chapter 3 The Hundred Days’ Emperor
Chapter 4 The Epicurean Emperor
Chapter 5 The Emperor Maker
Chapter 6 The Fourth Milestone
Chapter 7 Conflict with Civilis
Chapter 8 The Victorious Emperor
Chapter 9 The Eternal Emperors
Epilogue Winners and Losers
Appendix 1 Provinciae Imperii Romani
Appendix 2 Principate Army – Origins
Appendix 3 Principate Army – Organization
Appendix 4 Principate Army – Equipment
Appendix 5 What Roman Soldiers Ate
Appendix 6 How Many Legions?
Appendix 7 Key to Legionary Titles
Appendix 8 Artillery Shield of IIII Macedonica
Appendix 9 Imperial Succession
Appendix 10 The Cult of Iuppiter Dolichenus
Appendix 11 Ancient Authors
Notes
Abbreviations
Bibliography
List of Plates
1. Silver sestertius, the obverse of which bears a laureate bust of a rather heavy, not to say bloated, Nero (Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico di Bologna). Actor-Emperor, the First Beast, the Antichrist, psychotic post-adolescent, take your pick, the wicked (and doomed) Nero has been called them all. In AD 54 the fifth and last emperor of Augustus’ dynasty succeeded his stepfather (and cousin), Claudius, supplanting Claudius’ legitimate son Britannicus, who was conveniently done away with the following year. He had killed too many senators to please the ancient historians, who mostly had senatorial sympathies, and he had killed too many Christians, and led too outrageous a private life, to win the favour of Christian posterity. In the popular psyche, he gave Rome fiddlers, fear and fire. Nero’s principate was one of the most unfortunate Rome had known. (© Esther Carré)
2. Marble portrait bust of Galba (Stockholm, Antiques Museum, Royal Palace). For a brief time the commander-in-chief of the army, he ended up its pathetic victim, the sword of a common soldier having inflicted an inglorious and pointless end upon him. His life was finally cut off in classical tragic style by the conventional divine vengeance for the conventional Greek sin of arrogance. He believed he was the right man to restore the law and order that had fallen by the wayside under Nero. As Tacitus rightly said, Galba would have made a good emperor if only he had not been one. (© Wolfgang Sauber)
3. Marble portrait bust of Otho (Houston, Museum of Natural Science). He was by turn husband, lover, debauchee, governor, general, and emperor; he mingled with courtiers, actors, whores, soldiers and royalty, with natives of Italy and Iberia, and was at home with them all. During his brief principate he did not display those faults for which he had been despised earlier in life but acted in accordance with the dignity of the office. Otho, much like Othello, killed himself with a dagger. Loyal soldiers carried his body off and buried it, some of them, overcome by grief for their beloved emperor, stabbed themselves to death on his grave. His suicide was considered an honourable and noble answer to continuing civil war, and was celebrated as such. Otho’s peace was to be short lived, however. (© Ed Uthman)
4. Portrait bust of Vitellius – plaster-cast copy (Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico di Bologna, inv. 99) of the ‘Vitellio Grimani’ (Venezia, Museo Archeologico, inv. 20). Here we see the fat neck, the huge jowls of the man – fat, florid, at ease – who was known as the greatest gourmand of his day, apparently once attending a banquet in his honour in which 2,000 exotic fish and 7,000 game birds were happily consumed. Even in plaster, the hog-like Vitellius looks hungry. This portrait echoes Suetonius’ statement, reputedly made by Galba, when the emperor appointed Vitellius legate governor of Germania Inferior: ‘A glutton was the sort of rival whom he feared least’ (Vitellius 7.1). What little did he know. (© Esther Carré)
5. Marble portrait bust of Vespasianus (Thessalonika, Museum of Archaeology, inv. 1055). Vespasianus was a plain, blunt man who had kept a local Italian accent. Like the elderly Tiberius before him, he was a proven soldier with experience of the provinces both east and west. Yet he had none of Tiberius’ touchiness or patrician pride, and even his portrait busts, like this one, show a plain ‘Italian’ style of realism, not the classicizing ideal look of Augustus or Nero. In truth, he has the type of face you would not expect to see again this century. Who would have believed that he was to have so high a destiny? Yet is not it said, ‘men never look like what they are’. (© Nic Fields)
6. Stylized terracotta bust of Marcus Antonius Primus (Toulouse, musée des Augustines, inv. 49195), made by the artist Marc Arcis between 1674 and 1677. This is an appropriate homage to a Gaul from Tolosa, ancient Toulouse, and his nomen Antonius suggests the enfranchisement, during Marcus Antonius’ Gallic period in 43 BC, of a Tolosan family supporting his warring faction against Octavianus. Whatever else might be said about him (and there was a great deal to be said) his personal fortitude was never seriously at issue. Indeed, he was brave even to excess, and in the name of Vespasianus, Antonius Primus desired the short, sharp, conclusive campaign against the Vitellians, not the long, drawn-out agony of attrition for attrition’s sake. He was a man bristling with pugnacity, the most martial of the Flavian generals. (© Esther Carré)
7. One of the low-cut reliefs (Mainz, Mittelrheinisches Landesmuseum) decorating the column bases from the principia of Mainz-Mogontiacum. This one shows two legionaries in action, one behind the other. The front legionary is hunkering down behind his cylindrical scutum, his gladius held horizontally and close. Such a posture does not minimize the risk of being wounded by a projectile penetrating his shield. That would be achieved by bearing his shield away from himself. He is, however, ready to perform that most effective of Roman battle drills, the punch-jab. The legionary behind has his pilum resting on his right shoulder, and he seems to be holding his scutum high as if he is protecting his comrade in front. Curiously, though the two of them wear the Imperial Gallic (aka Weissenau) type helmet, a pattern common in our period of study, they lack body armour. (© Nic Fields)
8. Another of the low-cut reliefs (Mainz, Mittelrheinisches Landesmuseum) decorating the column bases from the principia of Mainz-Mogontiacum. This one shows a legionary in full marching order and the junior officer known as an optio (others suggest he is a signifer). To help run his century, a centurio was assisted by a second-in-command, an optio, so named because under the Republic centuriones ‘adopted’ (viz. adoptandum, Varro de lingua Latina 5.91, Festus 201.23) their own optiones. Here we clearly see the ‘badge of office’ of an optio, a stout staff (hastile), which was extremely useful in forcing any wavering men back into line. In battle, the optio traditionally took up station at the rear of his century. (© Nic Fields)
9. Yet another of the low-cut reliefs (Mainz, Mittelrheinisches Landesmuseum) decorating the column bases from the principia of Mainz-Mogontiacum. This one shows an auxiliary infantryman with a flat oval shield, clipeus, and a Coolus type helmet. With its wider cheek pieces and neck guard and the addition of a brow-guard, the Coolus helmet started to replace the old Montefortino pattern that had been commonly worn by legionaries of Caesar’s legions. This helmet pattern, inspired as before by Celtic influence, is so named for the find made near the village of Coole in the Marne basin. As well as a lancea in his right hand, he carries two spares in his left behind his shield. This fighting man was in no way inferior to a legionary, despite his non-citizen status, and certainly not lightly equipped either. Note the detail of his open-style footwear, caligae. Juvenal (Satire 3.248, 16.24–5 Green) warns civilians about encountering a soldier on the street with his hobnailed caligae, and advises against provoking them as they might well kick their shins in retaliation. (© Nic Fields)
10. Full-size manikin of an auxiliary trooper (Cirencester, Corinium Museum). A characteristic feature of Roman cavalry helmets is the extension of the cheek-pieces to cover the ears, commonly shaped as simulated ears. The model is also wearing a Gallic-type mail shirt with shoulder-cape fastened with S-shaped breast hooks. He carries the typical flat oval shield, clipeus, of the auxilia. Made of plywood, covered in rawhide and edged in bronze, it was only slightly lighter than a cylindrical scutum, its greater height compensating for the latter’s greater width. His spatha – the longer, slimmer sword type based on the La Tène sword and commonly used by Roman cavalrymen – is carried in the unorthodox position on the right swinging from a wide baldric. (© Nic Fields)
11. Soldiers of the Praetorian Guard, bas-relief (Paris, musée du Louvre) from the Arch of Claudius erected in AD 51 in honour of the successful invasion of Britannia in AD 43. The heads of the front row of figures are restored. Above is a large aquila-standard. The praetorians themselves are depicted in richly decorated equipment, perhaps on guard or on parade, though the Attic style helmets with thick crests housed in long crest-boxes are almost certainly an artistic convention. The central figure, with the gorgon-head on his breastplate, is probably a tribunus, an equestrian officer commanding one of the cohortes praetoriae. However, in parade uniforms or not, the events of AD 69 suggest that these men were more than just ‘carpet soldiers’, those creatures of monarchs more useful at court ceremonies rather than in combat conditions. (© Nic Fields)
12. At the twentieth milestone on the Via Postumia. Bedriacum was a hamlet on the Via Postumia roughly midway between Cremona and Mantova and commanding a road junction. The name of this tiny spot, as insignificant as its modern successor Tornata, was to be famous – and ill-omened – in Roman history. Some eight Roman miles west of here on the Via Postumia took place (probably) on 5 April AD 69 the first of the three civil war engagements fought here. This was the cavalry skirmish between the Othonians and the Vitellians. The photograph was taken close to the twentieth milestone on the Via Postumia – the original road would have continued straight ahead – with the church tower at Tornata visible in the middle distance right. The Othonian camp would have been somewhere in the vicinity of the farm buildings. (© Nic Fields)
13. Viewing the battleground of First Cremona. In the rich, level plains of Gallia Cisalpina the dominating natural feature was the great river Padus (Po) with its series of snow-fed Alpine tributaries flowing southwards in parallel – the Sessites (Sestia), Ticinus (Ticino), Addua (Adda), Ollius (Oglio) and Mincius (Mincio) watercourses. To any attacker coming from the west, with the Alps to their north and the Po to their south, these waterways appeared to present a formidable series of water obstacles. Here we view the battleground of First Cremona as it appears today from the campanile of the Cattedrale, piazza del Comune, Cremona. We are looking southeast towards the Po, which can be seen in the distance to the right. In the spring of AD 69, the flat landscape around Cremona would have been planted with millet and barley as it is now with rice and maize (especially for that yellow maize porridge, polenta), and well-watered by small but numerous watercourses, muddy ditches rather than gushing streams, meandering towards the Po. Here and there would have been copses and the occasional vineyard, albeit enough of them to restrict both movement and visibility. (© Nic Fields)
14. Via Postumia, the still functioning Roman road that traverses the battle site of Second Cremona. Now a minor though handy country road, in the first century AD the Via Postumia was the main highway connecting Plancentia, Cremona and Verona. The road itself was not raised on an embankment above the surrounding countryside as Tacitus, probably misled by the word agger in his eyewitness accounts, seems to imply and as some (armchair) historians assert. The term rightly alludes to the presence of drainage ditches on either side, which still survive in one shape or another to this day. Such topographical blunders only underline the need for students of battles to visit the sites for themselves. In this photograph we are looking at the point where XVI Gallica positioned its artillery, the tree line in the middle distance being the position of the Flavian centre and left: XIII Gemina on the road, VII Galbiana (and praetorians) tree line centre, and VII Claudia pia fidelis tree line right. (© Nic Fields)
15. The battleground of Second Cremona, where a head-on collision between total legionary forces on each side took place, recalling Pharsalus, Mutina, Philippi and other fearful names of civil strife. The civil war battle of Second Cremona was the critical engagement that decided the outcome of the year of four emperors. Early on the morning of the 25 October AD 69 the Vitellian legions were famously and bloodily defeated at the fourth milestone east from Cremona, thus setting in train the end of not just ten months of Vitellius’ principate but a year-and-a-half of civil war with all its attendant horrors. In this photograph we are standing at the position of XIII Gemina looking towards the Vitellian centre, which would have been in the location of what is now the Cascina Malongola seen in the middle distance. The Via Postumia is just to the left. (© Esther Carré)
16. What is now the Casa de’ Marozzi was then the probable site of Marcus Antonius Primus’ battlefield headquarters at Second Cremona. We are looking at the brick farm building from the nearby railway line, which links modern Cremona with Mantova (ancient Mantua) and Bologna (ancient Bononia). The Via Postumia runs just behind us and the initial Vitellian positions are way off to our left. The initial Flavian battleline, from centre to left, would have run from the Via Postumia to the line of poplars in the distance, XIII Gemina, VIII Augusta, III Gallica and praetorians. (© Esther Carré)
17. The point of contact, Second Cremona, looking south-south-west from just above Cassinetto. The large farm buildings in the left middle distance belong to the Casa de’ Marozzi, beyond which is the Via Postumia. Today, the nature of the battleground is patchy; in places it is heavily cultivated, frequently dissected by ditches, partially covered with copses. The terrain is scattered with solidly built farm buildings and has few roads. The Flavian battleline from its right flank to its centre (III Gallica and praetorians, VIII Augusta, XIII Gemina) would have stood on the left. The Vitellian battleline from its left flank to its centre (vexillationes XXII Primigenia, I Germanica and XVI Gallica, vexillationes II Augusta, VIIII Hispana, XX Valeria Victrix, XV Primigenia and legio V Alaudae) would have stood on the right. The point of contact between the two sides would have been roughly along the strip of stubble. (© Nic Fields)
18. The site of the Vitellian camp, just outside Cremona, looking towards the modern sports stadium, with Via Brescia to the left and Via Mantova to the right. The camp itself had been built at no great distance from the walls and suburbs of Cremona on the northeast, between the converging road from Brixia and the Via Postumia, and near their junction. When the main (southern) gate of the camp was finally forced, the surviving Vitellians threw themselves down from the ramparts and took shelter in nearby Cremona. Despite a show of surrender, the inhabitants of this affluent town fell victim to indiscriminate rape and slaughter. (© Nic Fields)
19. Embossed bronze facing of a scorpio shield (Cremona, Museo Civico San Lorenzo) once belonging to legio IIII Macedonica, unearthed in 1887 some fifty metres outside the Porta Venezia, Cremona. The find-spot lies between the walls of the Roman town and the site of the Vitellian camp, and nicely explains and collaborates eighteen hundred years later the brief narrative of Tacitus, who tells us that in the wild stampede for safety the ‘entire space between the [Vitellian] camp and the walls of Cremona were filled with slain’ (Historiae 3.29.2). Thus, in the panic to escape, an artillery piece or two was abandoned. Anyway, originally this artefact was believed to have been the bronze facing of a wooden strongbox belonging to the said legion, the aperture through which the bolt was shot the keyhole. (© Nic Fields)
20. The Roman soldier may have been adorned with various pieces of killing hardware, but each also carried one of these, a mess tin, patera (Cremona, Museo Civico San Lorenzo). These three were found in Via Armando Diaz, just within the old town walls of Cremona, and date to the mid-first century AD. It is possible these particular paterae were lost during the sack of the town by the Flavians in October AD 69. A patera consists of a ladle-shaped dish with a flat bottom, sloping sides, and a long, flat handle with a hole punched in the end. A patera, including the handle, was spun and formed from a single sheet of bronze. Much like a modern mess tin, the Roman version not only gave the soldier something that served both as a cooking pot and eating/drinking container, but like its modern counterpart it had many other uses too. (© Esther Carré)
21. Grave stele of Quintus Sertorius Festus (Verona, Museo Lapidario Maffeiano, inv. 28161), dated c. AD 42–69. It was discovered in 1789 at Cisolina, province of Verona. The inscription (CIL v 3374 = ILS 2339) informs us that he was a signifer and then the aquilifer in legio XI Claudia pia fidelis, finally earning his honourable discharge from the same legion as a curator of veterans. He wears a corselet of squamae over an arming doublet with a single-layer kilt and upper arm defences of pteruges, which may have been of either leather or stiffened linen. The scales of the corselet shown in the stele do seem rather large, and would have been smaller in fact, the sculptural representation having been so cut for ease of execution. This was the Danube legion that missed the day at Second Cremona. (© Esther Carré)
22. Grave stele of Lucius Sertorius Firmus (Verona, Museo Lapidario Maffeiano, inv. 28160), dated c. AD 42–69. As for the stele of Sertorius Festus, they were in fact brothers; this was also discovered in 1789 at Cisolina, province of Verona. The inscription (CIL v 3747) informs us that he was a centurio in legio XI Claudia pia fidelis. He is depicted in ceremonial dress. He wears lorica plumata, a mail shirt overlaid with tiny scales ‘ribbed’ for extra strength, complete with scallops and pteruges. Over this composite armour is a leather harness bearing his military decorations, six (possibly seven) phalerae and two torques. On his head rests a corona (civica or aurea), an award for a single act of bravery and generally reserved for the rank of centurion and above. The decorations would have been worn in battle, but not so the crown. He wears a pair of finely embossed greaves, which were peculiar to the centurionate, as was the twisted-vine stick (vitis), that over ready badge of rank, as legionaries knew all too well. (© Esther Carré)
23. From the fort at Croy Hill on the Antonine Wall, we have two fragments of a sculptured relief carved on a slab of red sandstone (Edinburgh, National Museums of Scotland). Associated with these two fragments is an inscription (RIB 2158), which is even more fragmentary than the relief but bears the line I · O · M · DOLICENO.... (in Latin epigraphy Iuppiter Optimus Maximus was abbreviated to IOM). Now heavily restored, the relief depicts Iuppiter Optimus Maximus Dolichenus, who stands on the shoulders of a bull, dressed in a Phrygian cap, a Roman-style muscle cuirass and senior officer’s half boots, and armed with a sword supported by a baldric passing over his right shoulder. In his hands he holds his weapons par excellence, a three-pronged thunderbolt and a double-headed axe, bipennis. Opposite him, on the right, his consort Iuno Dolichena is depicted similarly mounted upon a corresponding animal. This was a mystery stellar cult directly associated with the creation of weapons with iron, which naturally attracted devotees from the Roman military. (© Nic Fields)
24. Silver denarius (RIC I Vitellius: 53) issued by the imperial mint at Lugdunum (Lyon). The obverse bears a laureate bust of Vitellius with an orb at the point, with the legend A(vlvs) VITELLIVS IMP(erator) GERMAN(icvs). The reverse depicts clasped hands, with the slogan FIDES EXERCITVVM, ‘Loyalty of the Army’. Whereas some coin inscriptions glorify legions or even the whole army, others such as this example disseminate the military themes of imperial propaganda, particularly when the emperor is not very confident of it. (© Nic Fields)
25. From Brussels and woven around 1530–50, this Flemish tapestry (Marsala, Museo delgi Arazzi, Tapestry 5) is decorated with a scene depicting the unchaining of Josephus on the orders of Vespasianus. When Iotapata fell Josephus fled to a nearby cave with a small band of followers. Here he was discovered after all but one of his men had dispatched each other in a suicide pact rather than surrender to the Romans. Dragged grovelling before Vespasianus, the future Flavian chronicler claimed to be a herald of things yet concealed by the future and so ‘prophesied’ Vespasianus’ elevation to the throne of the world. (© Nic Fields)
Caricature credits
Chapter 1: Caricature of Nero by the author, based upon a rough sketch of the head of Nero and signed TVLLIVS ROMANVS MILES (Tullius Romanus, soldier), which was found in the basement of the Domus Tiberiana on the Palatine Hill, Rome.
Chapters 2–4 and 8: Caricatures of Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasianus by Pedro Llorente, based upon various busts of the aforementioned emperors.
Maps and Graphics
1. Location of the legions, early September AD 69
(* = depleted by the dispatch of vexillationes to Italy)
Rome
Praetorian Guard (sixteen cohortes)
urban cohorts (four cohortes)
e classicis legio (perhaps sailors recruited from classis Misenensis)
2. Organization of a Neronian legion
Legio
The chief tactical unit of the Roman army, the legio was divided into ten cohortes, all of which, during the Iulio-Claudian era, were officially 480 strong. Attached to a legio was a body of mounted legionaries, known as the equites legionis and 120 strong.
Cohortes I – X
The primary tactical unit of the Roman army, the cohors was subdivided into six centuriae of eighty men. Each centuria was led by a centurio who was assisted by an optio, signifer, and tesserarius.
Centuria
The centuria was the smallest unit of the Roman army. An administrative arrangement that served no tactical purpose, a centuria was divided into ten contubernia, ‘tentfuls’. Each contubernium consisted of eight men, contubernales, who messed and slept together, sharing a leather tent on campaign and a pair of rooms in a barrack block. In the period from Augustus to Nero, a legio had sixty centuriae.
VITELLIANS
Full legions: I Italica, V Alaudae, XXI Rapax
Vexillationes: II Augusta, VIIII Hispana, XX Valeria Victrix (from Britannia), I Germanica, IIII Macedonica, XV Primigenia, XVI Gallica, XXII Primigenia (from Germania)
FLAVIANS
From Pannonia: VII Galbania, XIII Gemina
From Moesia: III Gallica, VII Claudia p.f., VIII Augusta
HQ of Antonius Primus
Prologue: Imperial Illusions
In the harrowing year of four emperors, Otho, whose principate is a byword for its unpeaceful brevity, struck gold coins that proudly displayed the sugary words PAX ORBIS TERRARVM – ‘Peace of the World’ – on their reverse side.¹ Nothing, of course, was said of the blacker side of the picture, since one rightly expects the message on coinage, like other political propaganda, to concentrate on heartening uplift. Still, what is remarkable about Otho’s coinage is the total dissociation of its inscription from what was really going on at the time of its issue. The truth was otherwise. To the contrary, there was no peace, and we can only assume that the message of the new emperor in Rome, who was not long for this world, to the populations of his vast and heterogeneous empire was a pious hope, unless of course it was wishful thinking or just a downright lie.
So much for numismatics.
If there was one message that was being rapidly and painfully learnt, by those who did not surmise it already, it was the hard fact that in this long year of violent fluctuations of fortune and favour the provinces were not merely conquered territories but were places with Roman governors who could supplant Roman emperors chosen at home. Galba had come and gone. In three months the same fate would befall Otho, and in twelve months it would happen to Vitellius too. It is as if these three evanescing emperors had lived in an atmosphere of conventions created by themselves. In truth, they had found themselves drawn willy-nilly into the increasingly confused and violent politics of the game of thrones. The inevitable futility of this cycle of violence and intrigue was best summed up in Tacitus’ epigrammatic remark on the murder of Galba: ‘a crime which is always avenged by the murdered man’s successor’.² If we only look backward, to this very singular year, it seems as though upon that sizeable stage upon which the historical drama of a nation is being played out, a group of provincial actors, availing themselves of a vacant corner, were playing out a vulgar quick-change vaudeville act. Thus it is, where there can be no agreement between two societal camps, the issue is settled in the old violent way, by civil war, a civil war fated to rob fathers of their sons and sons of their fathers.
So gentle readers: I invite you to read this book without illusions. This book will concern itself with a gruesome time in Roman history, a time with a great deal of unpleasant violence. What is more, most (if not all) of the Roman characters in it are unsympathetic and unlikeable – there are no imperishable heroes, nor are good and evil to be found in sharp, unreal contrast. Patriotic fools, pious followers, petty cheats, perfect knaves, every civil war, especially in its first stages, invariably raises on its crest all these human varieties. It is said a ruler is always in peril, no matter what, but it is a well-known fact that Chinese emperors were tea enthusiasts, some even having the leisure to contemplate the sacred art of tea and compose in beautiful calligraphy their celestial musings. Tea or no tea, this was not a luxury enjoyed by their Roman counterparts. You will see how this figures soon enough.
Historians generally like to encourage us to remember Rome as a glorious font of western civilization. I find it difficult to agree with this proposal. Rather than be dazzled by its so-called glory, Rome is better seen as ‘that immense monument of human arrogance’.³ So from here on, abandon any notions about the glory that was Rome or the noble legacy it ostensibly left us. If you hold misapprehensions on that score, let them be dispelled right here and now. Of course some would say the world was greatly different then. How tangled truth becomes. Rome was an empire, which it must be understood, was painted in colours far too warm and rich by the glowing imagination of dewy-eyed western romantics. Like Gibbon (but without his extraordinary talent) we identify this sort of sentiment as Eurocentric cultural imperialism.⁴
We Europeans have always had a tendency to exaggerate the achievements of some cultures and to denigrate others.⁵ This is shameless, unbridled and prideful propaganda. We are as guilty, are we not? People only remember and see things that suit their preconceptions and fit their stereotypes. Their view is therefore incomplete and unbalanced. Behind this insidious European attitude lies the vested interests of those who seek to dominate and exploit other peoples (popular belief to the contrary notwithstanding, not everybody thinks like we think, or wants what we want). Obviously this attitude needs to be changed. No one culture is as good (or bad, for that matter) as any other. Perhaps our current version of Rome needs some serious quality control. We certainly need to make room for those dripping crosses of the Via Appia. This sort of talk may go against the grain with the academic purist perched on his or her podium in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of academe, but I write purely from a pragmatic, realistic angle. No apology is made if this flies in the face of conventional wisdom. With that said, I have lots to tell you.
So, let me set the stage. Nero is dead and four men, candidates of the provincial armies rather than of the Senate and people of Rome, seize the empire and then defend their theft with civil war. As in chess, the attacker must destroy his victim. The battle is always fought with the same single objective: the elimination of the enemy king. A dramatist or a novelist could not have written this one, which is one way of looking at it.
The story has been told before (Henderson, Greenhalgh, Wellesley, Morgan), the whole long catalogue of horrors, horror upon horror, and the reader has perhaps had enough of that kind of narrative. But it is essential to tell it as it relates to and includes the rôle of the provincial armies. My aim in this book is to inspire readers to reflect on the nature of our own societies. A parable for our own times: the cannibalism of high politics, the evil of war, the arrogance of power, the loneliness of leadership, and the comfort of comradeship. I give you the story of the year AD 69. Thus, a single year is the scene – sufficiently large and varied – of this narrative. It is all there: courage and cowardice (moral and physical), charity and selfishness, humility and hubris, sloth and industry, petty jealousies, greed, envy, self-seeking and aggrandisement, love and hate, the old sermon topics. Indeed, traits, good and bad, which lurk within us all to one degree or another. Lest we forget the most important thing of all – history would have no value if it taught us nothing, and Clio, its Muse, has never been a peacenik. Judge for yourselves, but I warn you, there be dragons.
Introduction: The Curse of Remus
‘The young men went off to war with enthusiasm – because they had never been to war.’¹ How true. At the outbreak of war, eager would-be heroes have an unpleasant habit of daily flowing into recruiting centres, mere lads brimming with ebullience swallowed by the army. Intelligent lemmings? Why must every generation have its war? Satisfactory answers seldom consider the fact that war is folly, its only victors the arms dealer and the undertaker. As they say, some die in war, and some make profits out of it. As Thucydides rightly says, young men rush off to war with an enthusiasm born of the ignorance of the horror of war. For politicians (and many historians) war may be about the conquest of territory or the struggle to recover a sense of national pride, but for soldiers warfare is more brutal, more bloody, more personal, than this. ‘What’s the problem with war?’ asks the old soldier. ‘It’s too violent,’ he answers.
Of course, wars are not the creation of soldiers: wars are the result of calculated strategy or just simply failed statecraft. They say, ‘this time it will be different’, as people usually do when they set out to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors. Contrary to popular belief, people do not learn by experience. Instead, they sluggishly respond to a particular stimulus in a predictable way, and this repeatedly. Again, again, and again, generation after generation, the dismal message reappears like writing on the wall. Nothing changes. The basilisk may die, but another egg hatches.
The politicos inform us that the foe is bad, but we are too. It is a very sad state of affairs when you consider what a highly selective memory these war hawks possess, for a war does not begin in a vacuum. It is an end result of a series of happenings that occur or begin when two cultures find they have real or imagined differences and they react in accordance with preestablished behavioural patterns, unfailingly mobilizing a deep-seated animosity between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Armed force is a blunt instrument in high politics, liable to do more damage than good unless aimed with extreme precision, just about an impossible task to accomplish. At best, it buys time and space for the politicians to repair the political mistakes that had led to violence in the first place. And how many of our most recent foreign wars have been started by lies and motivated, as ever, by those age-old motives, this cause or that greed? Still, as Europe is no longer bled regularly by war and we Britons pride ourselves on the fact that we live in an enlightened epoch, few people have any real experience of warfare at all, let alone any firsthand experience of people trying to kill them.
Certainly no one in government knows what modern warfare is really like – it is techno-industrial mass murder involving indiscriminate and impersonal weapon systems – and so warmonger politicians can commit the nation to the gore of war without knowledge of what they are committing the nation to. The politicians make it noble to do your duty for the expired idea of ‘Queen and Country’. For on entering the world of politics, it seems they have shaken the dust of the real world off their feet as completely as if they have never belonged to it at all. And so, while their cannon fodder line up in strictest discipline, these magnificent servants of the people sit so high in their saddles they will never stoop low enough to see the grass their horses are eating. The Te Deum of the high and the mighty are often the De Profundis for the private citizens.²
Having prepared the political setting, the politicians are prepared to express their schemes in blood and iron if necessary. So words past to deeds as the political climate deteriorates, each side looking for an excuse to publicly rebuff the other, each side attempting to shift the responsibility onto the other. With that, diplomacy begins its ponderous, grimly inevitable march to war. However, regardless of these schemes, the primary burdens and hardships of war fall not on the shoulders of the politicians at home, but on the backs of the soldiers in the field. While soldiers can parrot these schemes when asked (invariably by the top brass or the mass media), they do not pretend to know what the overall ‘big picture’ is. The army exists to fight; its job is not to get mixed up in politics.
Thus, the main priority of the ordinary soldier, as with most soldiers in most wars, is not to worry about the politics that got them there in the first place, or to change the course of events, but to fight as best they can, support their comrades in a firefight, and to return home to their families safe and sound. Nonetheless, if it is not for soldiers to think about politics, they do know how to fight and how to die. This is more than can be said of the politicians who sent them to war, hidebound personages who have never been in a soldier’s skin and who do not understand the life and conditions of existence of an army. Politics is a form of peaceful contention, and war is organized violence. All participants survive a political defeat (unless the victor is a tyrant, at war with his own people), whereas many participants do not survive a military defeat – or a victory either. War kills, our soldiers sacrificed to the betise of generals and the bullheadedness of politicians. That said, long gone are the days when the poor pariah, unshod and unclothed, became a soldier from starvation and cruel need. In truth, less than 2 per cent of the eligible male population have direct experience of military life; in a nation of millions the British Armed Forces are Lilliputian and in more recent years usually over the seas and far away in distant lands.³ Most Britons, it seems, have little real contact with the military, while war is something in which other people are involved. The puzzled reader may ask what a population that has had no direct experience with war since the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 has to do with ancient Rome. Let me explain.
The nature of societies that raise armies, the economic resources available to the state, and the nature and aims of the wars that the state wishes to, or fears it must, wage, are all mutually dependent. In terms of the three elements that make our kind of total war possible today – the ability to mobilize the entire male population for war, the resources that makes that degree of mobilization possible, and the technology – only the technology was obviously missing in ancient Rome. Thus, for the last two centuries of its existence, the Republic kept an average of 10 per cent of its entire citizen population under arms, or half or more of its military-age males.⁴ This was an unprecedented accomplishment, made possible in a pre-industrial world only by mass plunder of the Mediterranean world – directly, by tribute, and through the exploitation of slave labour – and a very high degree of social cohesion.
When some fifty thousand of its
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