Legions of Rome (13 page)

With the unit’s official commissioning by Galba, the name of the 1st Adiutrix Legion was formalized, as was its emblem, Pegasus the flying horse. In mythology, Pegasus was the son of Neptune, god of the sea, which would seemingly make the flying horse an appropriate symbol for a legion whose first recruits had come from the navy. Yet, as Starr points out, the seamen of Rome’s battle fleets showed no inclination to worship Neptune. [Starr,
IV
, 2] Neither did they worship Castor and Pollux, the patron deities of merchant sailors. In fact, the men of the fleet at Misenum venerated Isis, the patron goddess of sailors in Hellenistic times, who was believed to control the weather. [Ibid.]

Another new legion to adopt the Pegasus emblem, the 2nd Adiutrix, was raised the following year. This unit would also have a connection with both Vienna and the Roman navy. Apart from these two units, only one other imperial Roman legion is known to have employed the Pegasus emblem, and that was the 2nd Augusta Legion—a long-established and renowned unit known to use Gallia Narbonensis, a maritime province, as a recruiting ground. It may be that, rather than as a symbol of veneration of Neptune, both Adiutrix legions instead took Pegasus as their emblem in emulation of the 2nd Augusta, the “home” legion of Narbon Gaul, where they began life.

The 1st Adiutrix Legion spent that winter at Misenum, using the fleet’s quarters. Less than two months after the seamen officially joined the unit, the legion was ordered to prepare to march; its first battle was just weeks away. Ironically, the 1st Adiutrix faced the 1st Italica Legion, which it had been founded by Vienna to counter, in its first battle in April
AD
69. It fought for Otho against Vitellius’ army at the First Battle of Bedriacum in northern Italy. Otho’s army lost; the 1st Adiutrix surrendered, after which Vitellius sent it to Spain.

In
AD
70, the new emperor Vespasian transferred the 1st Adiutrix from Spain to Mogontiacum on the Rhine. Domitian stationed it in Pannonia. By the reign of Nerva it was at Brigetio, on the Danube. From there it took part in both of Trajan’s Dacian Wars, after which Trajan took it to the East for his Parthian campaign. From the reign of Hadrian the legion was back at Brigetio in Lower Pannonia, where it remained for the next 200 years defending the Danube.

In
AD
193 the legion joined the march to Rome by the Pannonian legions that installed Septimius Severus on the throne after the Praetorian Guard murdered the popular soldier emperor Pertinax.

The Notitia Dignitatum shows the legion still in existence early in the fifth century, as part of the army of the Eastern Roman emperor, and stationed in the center of modern-day Hungary under the command of the Duke of Valeriae Ripensis.

1ST GERMANICA LEGION

LEGIO I GERMANICA

Germanicus’ 1st Legion

OTHER TITLES:

Augusta; withdrawn 19 BC

EMBLEM:

Possibly Pompey’s lion with sword in paw symbol.

BIRTH SIGN:

Capricorn (probably).

FOUNDATION:

Stemmed from Pompey the Great’s most elite legion.

RECRUITMENT AREA:

Originally Italy. Later Spain.

POSTINGS:

Hispania, Gallia, Colonia Agrippinensis, Bonna.

BATTLE HONORS:

Cantabrian War, 29–20 BC.
Tiberius’ German campaigns, 15–5 BC.
Battle of Idistavisus, AD 15.
Battle of the Angrivar Barrier, AD 15.
Battle of Long Bridges, AD 15.
First Battle of Bedriacum, AD 69.
Battle of Old Camp, AD 70.

A PROUD LEGION DISGRACED

Descendant of Pompey the Great’s most elite unit, winning and losing the “Augusta” title in short order, it gained fame and the new “Germanica” title fighting Arminius’ Germans for Germanicus, only to turn traitor and be abolished in disgrace
.

The 1st was Pompey the Great’s most elite and loyal legion, fighting against Caesar in the major civil war battles at Pharsalus, Thapsus and Munda. The imperial 1st Legion of Augustus is likely to have been the direct descendant of Pompey’s 1st. From 29
BC
, the 1st Legion fought in the Cantabrian War in Spain, and in around 25
BC
the emperor granted it the title “Augusta” in recognition of its meritorious service. But in 19
BC
, after the war flared up again in the Cantabrian Mountains, Marcus Agrippa stripped the legion of its title, for cowardice. It was transferred to Gaul the same year.

By
AD
9, the legion was based at the future Colonia Agrippinensis (Cologne) on the Rhine with the 5th Alaudae, as part of the army of the Lower Rhine. In
AD
14, it participated in the Rhine mutiny, before taking part in Germanicus Caesar’s campaigns in Germany. In the
AD
15 Battle of Long Bridges against Arminius and the German tribes, the legion saved army commander Aulus Caecina at a critical
juncture. Following this, the legion took to using the honorific “Germanica.” As none of the other seven legions which fought in these German campaigns adopted the Germanica title, it is likely that the title was bestowed on the 1st by Germanicus for the unit’s spirited performance at Long Bridges.

On January 1,
AD
69, the legions on the Rhine were called upon to make the annual oath to the emperor—in this case Galba, who had taken the throne by force the previous summer. But at Cologne, “the soldiers of the 1st and 5th were so mutinous,” said Tacitus, “that some of them threw stones at the images of Galba.” [Tac.,
H
,
I
, 55] Fabius Valens, the commander of the 1st Germanica Legion, subsequently led the movement which saw the legions all along the Rhine soon hailing Vitellius, commander of the army of the Upper Rhine, as their emperor, in opposition to Galba.

After Galba was assassinated and replaced by Otho as emperor, several cohorts of the 1st Germanica marched to Italy with Valens to overthrow him. Meanwhile, the legion’s other cohorts remained on the Rhine. The cohorts of the 1st in Italy were in Vitellius’ victorious army, which defeated Otho’s army at Bedriacum in April
AD
69. But in the autumn the legion’s cohorts on the Rhine were caught up in the Civilis Revolt and by early the following year had surrendered to the rebels. Meanwhile, the cohorts in Italy had been defeated at Bedriacum and Cremona by Vespasian’s legions.

In
AD
70, as Petilius Cerialis’ army pushed up the Rhine, driving Civilis’ rebels ahead of it, the 1st Legion’s Rhine cohorts there defected back to Vespasian and took part in the defeat of the rebels at the Battle of Old Camp. But this did not satisfy Vespasian; disgusted that a Roman legion could murder its generals and surrender to rebels (
see
the Civilis Revolt
), he disbanded the 1st Germanica that same year.

1ST ITALICA LEGION

LEGIO ITALICA

1st Italian Legion

INFORMAL TITLE:

Phalanx of Alexander.

EMBLEM:

Boar.

BIRTH SIGN:

Capricorn.

FOUNDATION:

AD 66, by Nero

RECRUITMENT AREA:

Italy.

POSTINGS:

Gallia Cisalpina, Lugdunensis, Novae, Dacia, Novae

BATTLE HONORS:

Battle of Bedriacum, AD 69.
Dacian Wars, AD 101–106.
Marcus Aurelius’ German Wars, AD 167–175.

AN ITALIAN LEGION DEVOURED BY THE INVADERS

Created by Nero for his later aborted invasion of Parthia, the first legion raised in Italy proper in a century, successful in its first battle, defeated in its second, it would fight losing battles to fend off the Germans, Sarmatians, Goths and Huns
.

“Nero organized the 1st Legion called the Italica,” said Dio. [Dio,
LV
, 23] Nero had plans to launch two simultaneous military operations, which, if they had gone ahead, might have changed history. One was to be a push south into “Ethiopia” from Egypt, the other, the invasion of Parthia, which Julius Caesar had been planning at the time of his death. The 1st Italica Legion was raised in
AD
66 for the latter, the first legion founded and recruited in Italy for a hundred years. Nero specified that the legion’s recruits were all to be 6 (Roman) feet tall, and equipped in the manner of a Macedonian phalanx.

With the Parthian operation aborted because of the Jewish Revolt, the 1st Italica was sent to Lugdunum in Gaul in
AD
67 to keep order in the wake of the Vindex Revolt. The unit swore loyalty to Vitellius in
AD
69, and first saw action for him as victors in the First Battle of Bedriacum. Subsequently posted to Novae in Moesia,
the legion remained based there, apart from service in Dacia during Trajan’s Dacian Wars, until the fourth century.

In
AD
471, long after the 1st Italica Legion had departed, Novae became the headquarters of Theodoric, the Christian king of the Ostrogoths, who had been driven out of the Ukraine by the Huns. In 489, Theodoric led his Ostrogoth army into Italy, and with the support of the Visigoths defeated the forces of Oadacer, its Christian barbarian ruler. Theodoric made himself king of Italy, with his capital at Ravenna. “Military service for the Romans he kept on the same footing as under the emperors.” [Vale., 12, 60] But this was an Ostrogoth army, all of Italy having been occupied. The power of Rome, like her 1st Italica Legion, had disappeared.