Legions of Rome

by Stephen Dando-Collins

  Constantine entertained Licinius at a banquet that night, after which Licinius was sent to Constantine’s headquarters at Thessalonica. There, Constantine “had him murdered.” [Ibid., 29] While praising Constantine’s “excessive humanity,” Christian bishop Eusebius neither condemned the murder of Licinius, nor that of Licinius’ generals and chief advisers that followed on its heels, because those men had all worshipped Rome’s old gods. Bishop Eusebius felt that Constantine acted “according to the laws of war” and consigned Licinius and his subordinates to “fitting punishment.” [Eus., EH, XI; XVIII]

  With his brother-in-law out of the way, Constantine was now the Roman emperor of both the West and the East. “In commemoration of his splendid victory,” he renamed Byzantium, calling it Constantinople, after himself. He “adorned it with great magnificence and wished to make it equal to Rome.” But he “lavished such wealth on the city that in doing so he all but exhausted the imperial fortunes.” [Vale., 6, 30]

  To refill his empty treasury, Constantine forbade the worship of idols and ordered all the temples of the Roman gods throughout the empire to be looted of their statues, sending around parties of his “friends” to perform the task. Marble statues of the classical gods were removed to Constantinople to add to its adornment. Gold, silver and brass statues were melted down on the spot. One or two temples were completely razed—Constantine had a special dislike of the “foul demon” goddess Venus, and her temples were particularly singled out for destruction. With others, he merely removed their doors or their roofs, leaving them derelict. [Eus., EH, LIV–LVI]

  Constantine also ordered that Romans were to observe a day of rest, in the Jewish fashion. But instead of adopting the Jewish Sabbath, which runs from Friday evening to Saturday evening, Constantine inaugurated Sunday as the Christian Sabbath. This was not coincidental; Constantine had long venerated Sol Invictus, the Roman sun god, and Sunday was the day in the Roman calendar dedicated to him. For a number of years to come, Constantine’s coins depicted Sol Invictus, and some authorities believe that the divinity that he venerated while emperor was a blend of Sol Invictus and Christ.

  Constantine also required that his soldiers observe the day of rest, even giving them a short prayer to be recited on Sundays. Christians in the ranks were given time off on Sundays to offer prayers. But Constantine did not require his troops to convert to Christianity. He probably realized that it could lead to unrest among his legions, even revolt—Gibbon estimated that at that time no more than 5 percent of the population of the Roman Empire was Christian. [Gibb., XVI] There were probably even fewer Christians in the army than in the general population. In fact the army would prove slower than civilian society to adapt to Christianity over the coming decades.

  In the second half of this same century, noted Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus, himself an officer in the Roman army, would venerate the classical Roman gods in his writings and almost totally ignore the followers of the Christian faith, which he would describe as a sect rather than as the state religion. Likewise, seven decades after Constantine, at the beginning of the fifth century, leading Roman poet Claudian, who chronicled in verse the brilliant career of the last great Roman general Stilicho, wrote in celebration of the old Roman gods, and noted that he gave public recitals at Rome’s temple of Apollo, where he received the award of a statue in recognition of his talent.

  As further evidence of the lack of penetration of Christianity into the Roman army of the Late Empire, the Notitia Dignitatum, which was last updated around a century after Constantine’s death, reveals that Christian symbols had almost entirely failed to find their way into the army. Apart from two angels incorporated into the shield emblems of the two household bodyguard units of the emperor of the East of the Late Empire, there were no identifiably Christian symbols on any of the hundreds of unit emblems depicted in the Notitia. On the other hand, some of the old pagan legion symbols such as the eagle survived, and pagan symbols including the wheel of the goddess Fortune and symbols associated with Bellona, Roman goddess of war, were common among unit emblems depicted in the Notitia.

  Whatever Constantine’s personal view of Christianity, he knew that his popularity with the troops could only be maintained by retaining a corporate continuity that did not threaten the security of his men. Meanwhile, he kept his soldiers busy—there were no more civil wars during the thirteen years of his sole reign, but there were foreign wars aplenty. A soldier at heart, Constantine personally led campaigns against the invading Goths and the Sarmatians, and when he died in AD 337 at an imperial villa outside Constantinople, he was preparing to launch a war against the Persians.

  That Constantine was a brilliant soldier there is no doubt. In his later years, he gave himself the primary title of Victor, and headed his letters with an astonishing string of titles in which he claimed victory over, among others, the Alemanni, the Goths, the Sarmatians, the Germans, the Britons and the Huns. He was never defeated in battle. But during his reign, tens of thousands of Roman soldiers died in civil wars, with no doubt just as many perishing in the wars with the barbarians. The Roman legions that Constantine left to his sons and successors when he died had been weakened by decades of internal strife and eternal wars with barbarians. They had also been diluted by foreigners, and, with Constantine’s organizational restructuring, changed beyond recognition from the legions of the first, second and third centuries.

  Constantine’s leadership qualities, his personal physical and mental strength and his ruthlessness, had won him sole power. On his death, his legions decided among themselves that they would recognize as equal coemperors his three surviving sons, Constantius, Constantine and Constans—their jealous father had executed as a threat to his throne his popular eldest son and heir Crispus. “And these resolutions they [the legions] communicated to each other by letter, so that the unanimous desire of the legions became known.” [Eus., EH, LXVIII] Once again, through the agency of the army, the empire was opened up to rule by division.

  AD 355–357

  LXIX. JULIAN AGAINST THE GERMANS

  Countering the Alemanni

  On a wintery day in the second half of December AD 355, a small mounted column trotted into the city of Vienna (today’s Vienne) in southern Gaul. At the head of the column rode 23-year-old Flavius Claudius Julianus, the new Caesar, or deputy emperor; he would be referred to by later historians as Julian.

  The bearded young man, of medium height but broad-shouldered and with a strong face, had been studying philosophy in Greece when he was summoned to Milan by his cousin, the emperor Constantius II. [Amm., XXV, 4, 22] The third son of Constantine the Great, Constantius had become sole emperor after the death of his brothers Constantine in AD 340 and Constans in AD 350. On November 6, Constantius had presented Julian to the household troops at Milan, his imperial capital—Rome had ceased to be capital of the Roman Empire the previous century—and announced the youth’s appointment as Caesar. As a sign of approval, the assembled troops had rapped their shields against their knees. [Ibid., XV, 8, 15]

  Young Julian had set off for Gaul on December 1 with a small retinue. His mission was to rally the forces in Gaul and counter the invasion of the Gallic provinces by a coalition of Franks and Alemanni German tribes. That invasion had resulted in the sacking of forty-five famous Rhine and Gallic cities, including modern-day Tongres, Trier, Strasbourg and Worms, and the burning of many of them. [Gibb., XIX] Just prior to Julian’s departure from Milan, word had reached the emperor that a lengthy siege of Cologne by the Franks had resulted in that city’s fall and destruction. The German invaders had penetrated as far as central Gaul, and the mood that Julian found in Vienna was one of fear and dread. Despite the dire situation, his arrival served to buoy local spirits, even though the new deputy emperor had absolutely no military experience and very little military training.

  Julian remained at Vienna until the spring of AD 356. Sending orders to the Roman units stationed in the region to assemble at today’s Reims with pr
ovisions for a month, he then advanced north, aiming to relieve the city of Augustodunum, today’s Autun on the Arroux river in central France, which was under siege from the Alemanni. He marched with cataphract heavy cavalry and an artillery unit whose ballistas were mounted on two-wheeled carts. After linking up with the main army at Reims, Julian marched for Autun with a force of little more than 13,000 men. On a misty day, Alemanni forces attacked the two Roman legions forming the column’s rearguard as the column approached Autun. Those two unnamed legions were cut off from the column and “would nearly have been annihilated,” said Ammianus, had not allied troops rushed back to relieve them. [Ibid., XVI, 2, 10]

  Autun’s besiegers withdrew as Julian approached, and Autun was relieved on June 24. Julian then swung east, and near the town of Brumath, in eastern Gaul, a force of Germans met Julian’s advance and offered battle. Forming his army into a crescent formation, Julian closed on the over-confident Germans, who were swiftly overwhelmed. Julian continued on to the Rhine, and entered the ruined city of Cologne—the invaders had no interest in occupying cities; they preferred to live in huts in the countryside. From Cologne, Julian made a peace pact with the kings of the Franks, then moved to Senonas (modern Sens), to spend the winter.

  Julian distributed his troops among Sens and neighboring towns, and when the Alemanni learned this from Roman deserters they surrounded Sens and laid siege to it. All through this siege, the Roman Master of Horse, Marcellus, who was at a nearby town, made no attempt to collect his cavalry and come to the young deputy emperor’s aid. If Julian had not realized it before, he would now have been under no illusion that Rome’s established military commanders were his friends. When the emperor Constantius learned of Marcellus’ behavior, he dismissed him from office. After a month, the Alemanni tired of the siege of Sens, and withdrew.

  For the AD 357 campaign against the Germans in Gaul and on the Rhine, Constantius made Julian his co-consul for the year, and sent to him 25,000 troops under Count Barbatio, Master of Infantry, whose father was a Frank. As soon as spring arrived, Julian, knowing that Count Barbatio was drawing near, advanced his army down the Rhine toward the Batavian “island,” at the North Sea mouth of the Rhine in today’s Holland. His plan was for Barbatio to take a different course with his army, with both Roman forces meeting at Batavia in a pincer movement to catch the Alemanni in a trap.

  As the two arms of the pincer closed on Batavia, the Laeti, an Alemanni tribe, slipped between them both and drove down to Lugdunum. That city just managed to close its city gates in time to keep out the Germans, who ravaged the surrounding farms and villages before withdrawing. When Julian heard about this he sent three squadrons of light cavalry to watch the three roads the Laeti were likely to use on their way back to the Rhine. One of these squadrons was commanded by the able 36-year-old tribune Valentinianus, who was destined to become the emperor Valentinian I in seven years’ time. Sure enough, one of these squadrons ambushed the returning Germans and slaughtered them, recovering all the booty from the Lugdunum raid.

  Master of Infantry Count Barbatio was another officer determined not to help the young Caesar. First, he allowed the few survivors from the ambushed Laeti column to slip by him, and then when Julian sent orders for Barbatio to provide him with seven of the ships he had acquired on the Rhine as part of a planned bridge of boats to the eastern bank, Barbatio disdainfully burned them.

  Young Julian had wanted to use the ships to ferry his troops to the islands held in the Rhine by the Alemanni. Undaunted, he gave the Germans of several Cornuti auxiliary units the task of crossing the river; according to the Notitia Dignitatum these were the Palatine auxiliary units the Cornuti Seniors and the Cornuti Juniors. The Cornuti had a custom of swimming rivers on their wooden shields, and in this manner Julian’s auxiliaries successfully crossed the Rhine. Landing on the island, they wiped out every man, woman and child of the Alemanni living there. News of this was enough to terrify the other Alemanni settled on Rhine islands, and they quickly withdrew to safer territory east of the river.

  This allowed Julian to occupy and rebuild a fortress at Savernes previously destroyed by the German invaders. But after Julian’s troops had collected winter supplies in the district, Count Barbatio’s men confiscated their foodstuffs, burning what they could not use themselves. Even though it was still only midsummer, Barbatio proceeded to distribute his troops to various winter quarters and then retired to Milan. The rumor soon spread that Barbatio was doing all this on the paranoid orders of Constantius, to ensure that Julian was defeated and would cease to be a threat to his throne. [Ibid., XVI, 11, 13]

  The Alemanni tribes soon learned from a Roman informant that Barbatio had departed for Italy, and that Julian only had 13,000 men with him. Seven kings of the Alemanni—Chonodomar, Vestralp, Ur, Ursicin, Serapio, Suomar and Hortar—decided to combine for an attack on Julian while he had such an inferior force at his command. [Ibid., 12, 1] From former Roman territory east of the river, the Black Forest and the so-called “Rhine re-entrant” area previously annexed by Vespasian and Domitian, the kings wrote to Julian, ordering him to depart from the western Rhineland, which they considered theirs by conquest. Julian ignored the demand, and prepared to counter the invasion of a combined Alemanni army that he knew must follow on the heels of the kings’ demand.

  AD 357

  LXX. BATTLE OF ARGENTORATUM

  Decision at Strasbourg

  It was early August when Roman scouts reported that an army of Alemanni tribesmen had made camp not far west of the Rhine between Argentoratum, today’s Strasbourg, and Drusenheim. Camped 21 miles (33.8 kilometers) away, Julian, Rome’s young deputy emperor, gave the order for his army to move. The sun was just rising as Roman trumpets sounded the order to march and the troops tramped from their camp. As the infantry led the way, cavalry units fell in beside them to guard the column’s flanks.

  This was a very different Roman army from those that had marched this very road in centuries past: the armies of Julius Caesar, and of Drusus, Tiberius and Germanicus Caesar, and of Cerialis, the general who had put down the Civilis Revolt here on the Rhine. Four centuries earlier, those Roman armies had comprised as many as fifteen legions plus auxiliaries, with well over 100,000 men. Julian’s army totaled just 13,000.

  Of Julian’s units only two legions are known. One was the Legio Primani, or 1st Legion. This may well have been the former 1st Minervia Legion, with the pagan goddess stripped from its title in these (officially) Christian times. The 1st Minervia, unlike the 1st Legion, was not to be listed in the Notitia Dignitatum, compiled shortly after this; but the 1st (or Primani) Legion was. The 1st, a Palatine legion, came under the control of the 2nd Master of Military Readiness. It was one of six legions and thirty cavalry and auxiliary units making up a “ready” force which was supposed to be thrown into any trouble spot in a hurry.

  Julian’s other known legion was the Legio Regii, a reasonably recent creation of unknown provenance. The Regii was one of thirty-two legiones comitatenses, or “escort” legions, and was subject to the Master of Infantry. No other legions in Julian’s force are identified, if indeed there were any others. The majority of Julian’s troops were auxiliary units. There were one or more cohorts of Batavian infantry—both the Batavian Seniors and Batavian Juniors came under the control of the Master of Infantry. And Julian’s force also included several cohorts of Germans of the Bracchiati and the Cornuti tribes.

  For cavalry, Julian had at least three squadrons of light cavalry including one commanded by the future emperor Valentinian. Julian also had the Equites Cataphractii, a heavy cavalry “ready” squadron whose men and horses both carried extensive mailed armor. Also coming under the Master of the Military, this unit appears to have accompanied Julian to Gaul from Milan, where the ready cavalry units were based. In Julian’s force the unit was led by a tribune by the name of Innocentius. Julian’s deputy was Severus, the emperor’s Master of Horse.

  Despite the summer heat, Julian’s little a
rmy made good progress on the march during the morning. Just before noon, not far from Argentoratum, Julian called a halt, for his scouts had just warned him that the enemy was over a rise ahead. From the back of his horse, Julian addressed his troops. They had marched all morning, he told his men, so he now proposed that they build a marching camp with ditch, walls and palisade, and attack the Germans first thing next morning after a good night’s sleep. But his troops disagreed, and rapped their javelins on their shields to let him know it. They did not want rest, they wanted to come to grips with the enemy, now.

  Julian’s troops, many of whom had come off the worst against the Alemanni in previous encounters, had come to respect their young commander after his successful campaigning of the past two seasons, and considered him a lucky general. [Amm., XVI, 12, 13] Even the civilian administrator of Gaul, the Praetorian prefect Florentinus—Praetorian prefects having become financial officers since the abolition of the Praetorian Guard—urged the young Caesar to give the men their head and lead them to battle without delay. Seeing that his troops could not be dissuaded, Julian gave the order to recommence the march.

  The standards went ahead with the troops of the vanguard, bunched together in time-honored fashion, with the first rank centurions of the legions marching with the standard-bearers. [Ibid., 12, 20] The gentle hill climbed by the marching Roman army was covered with ripened wheat wafting in the late morning breeze. On the summit ahead, three mounted German scouts and several comrades on foot were watching the Romans approach. But the scouts lingered too long. As Roman light cavalry suddenly burst from the marching column and galloped toward them, the mounted Germans realized their danger, turned and rode off, leaving their unmounted companions to fend for themselves. All but one of the running Germans was sufficiently fleet of foot to get away; the odd man out was snared by Julian’s cavalry, and brought to Julian. Under questioning, the prisoner revealed that German forces had been crossing the Rhine for the last three days.