Authors: Stephen Dando-Collins
The Quadi, seeing that the Romans were preoccupied slaking their thirst, suddenly charged the legion line. Some legionaries who had lowered their curved shields to drink, or held them up to catch the rain, were felled by German spears. As the Quadi closed in for hand-to-hand combat the Roman defense was shaky. But the storm increased in intensity; hail now lashed the two armies, the hailstones pounding down like slingers’ bullets. The legionaries, in helmets and armor, could withstand the hail, but the unprotected Germans took the full force of it. The Quadi broke off the attack and ran for the cover of trees.
The storm intensified. Thunder boomed in the heavens, lightning bolts lanced down into the trees, with terrifying results. Not only did trees burst into flame, Quadi warriors and their weapons, too, were struck by lightning. Said the poet Claudian of the scene: “Spears glowed, molten by lightning, and swords vanished suddenly into smoke.” Here a Quadi warrior “sank down beneath his fire-wasted helmet,” there a cavalryman was left trembling on the smoking back of his charger. [Claud.,
SCH
, 341–6] The terrified Germans, some of them on fire, ran from the trees and to the Romans, begging for their aid and protection. The battle disintegrated into a disaster for the Quadi. By the time that the storm had passed, the battle was over, and many Quadi, including King Ariogaesus, had been taken prisoner.
Claudian, writing two and a half centuries later, said that while some attributed Marcus Aurelius’ famous victory in a thunderstorm to “Chaldean seers” and “their
magic spells” he was of the opinion that “Marcus’ blameless life had the power to win the Thunderer’s [Mars’] homage.” [Ibid., 347–50] Marcus himself seems to have attributed the victory to the legionaries of the 12th Fulminata Legion. It would have been pointed out to the emperor that the legion was known as the “Thundering 12th.” Now, the 12th had truly become the thundering legion, defeating the Quadi in a thunderstorm summoned by the Egyptian priest. According to Dio, Marcus now officially conferred the title Fulminata on the legion. [Dio,
LXII
, 9]
In a later interpolation to Dio’s work, a Christian writer replaced the reference to Arnuphis and his prayers to the Roman gods with a passage that made all the men of the 12th Fulminata Christians, and it was they who did the praying, he wrote. This was historically impossible. During Marcus Aurelius’ reign, Christians were crucified if they did not repent and sacrifice to the Roman gods. An entire legion of 5,000 men could not have been Christians at that time. It would be hundreds of years before Christianity had such a hold in the Roman military. Intriguingly, Claudian, a man of consular rank, writing in around
AD
400, eighty years after Constantine the Great had made Christianity the official State religion, still spoke of the Christians as a mere sect, and gave full credit for the 12th Fulminata’s
AD
174 victory to Mars, god of war.
At an assembly convened by the emperor following the victory, the men of the 12th Fulminata hailed Marcus Aurelius imperator. Normally, said Dio, Marcus would not have accepted such an honor before the Senate voted it to him, but this time he felt that Heaven had made his victory possible, so he sent a dispatch to the Senate telling them that the Quadi had been vanquished and that he had accepted the title of imperator from the troops. [Ibid.] The Senate, in its gratitude, not only confirmed the emperor’s latest grant of the imperator title—he had previously received it six times for his generals’ victories—it granted the influential empress Faustina the title of
Mater Castrorum
, or Mother of the Camp.
As for the captured Quadi king, Ariogaesus, Marcus sent him to Britain, to live out the remainder of his days in exile there. Twenty thousand Roman soldiers were now stationed in the Marcomanni and the Quadi homelands, to ensure that the Germans could not assemble in number. [Dio,
LXXII
, 20]
Marcus could now concentrate on the Iazyges, the last German combatants left in the ring with Rome. As soon as the Iazyges heard of the defeat of the Quadi by a single legion, one of their two kings, Banadaspus, sent envoys to Marcus seeking peace. But Marcus was not interested in signing a treaty. After the Quadi had broken
their promises and again gone to war with him, he would not trust their cousins the Iazyges; Marcus saw just one solution—he “wished to annihilate them utterly.” [Dio,
LXXII
, 13] Once the Iazyges heard that Banadaspus’ peace feelers had been rejected, they locked him up, threw their support behind second king, Zanticus, and prepared to receive the full weight of Marcus’ legions.
AD
174–175
LIII. BLOOD ON THE ICE
Victory on the frozen Danube
Over the winter of
AD
174–175, Marcus’ best general, Publius Pertinax, led a Roman army from Pannonia toward Iazyge territory above the Danube. The Iazyges had been expecting this offensive, and King Zanticus sent a large mounted column to confront the Romans, crossing the ice on the frozen Danube to engage Pertinax in Roman territory. The initial battle, in bitter winter conditions, went against the Iazyges, with Pertinax using cavalry and infantry to combined effect, forcing the Iazyge cavalry to withdraw in disorder to the northern side of the Danube.
With the enemy on the run, Pertinax and his legions hurried in hot pursuit, but on the far side of the river German leaders were able to reform their riders. The Roman legionaries began to slip and slide as they gingerly made their way across the frozen Danube; it was then that regrouped Germans attacked. “Some of the barbarians dashed straight at them, while others rode round to attack their flanks, as their horses had been trained to run safely even over a surface of this kind.” Yet the Roman troops “were not alarmed, but formed in a compact body, facing all their foes at once.” [Dio,
LXII
, 7]
Pertinax’s legions formed the square, also called the brick and the box by Romans, a standard formation for defense against cavalry attack, and still used by infantry to counter cavalry as late as the 1815 Battle of Waterloo. The legionaries stood many ranks deep to create a large hollow square, with each man facing outward, and with the cavalry, auxiliaries, standards, non-combatants and senior officers inside the square.
On command, “most of them laid down their shields [on the ice] and rested one foot on them, so that they might not slip so much.” As Iazyge cavalrymen closed
with their lances, some firm-footed legionaries grabbed the bridles of horses. Others grasped the shields and lance shafts of German riders. Often, horses were dragged off their feet on the ice, or riders were dragged from their mounts. If a legionary lost his footing, he kept his grip on his opponent and dragged him to the ground with him. Countless wrestling matches took place on the ice. More than once, Roman soldiers used their teeth as weapons in these desperate tussles. The barbarians were overwhelmed by these unorthodox tactics, said Dio, and “few escaped out of a large force.” [Ibid.] With the ice stained crimson with blood, the battle on the Danube was a decisive victory for Pertinax’s legions.
As Pertinax invaded their homeland, and deserted by all their German allies, the Iazyges saw the futility of continued resistance. King Zanticus and his fellow Iazyge leaders came to Marcus at Carnuntum, suing for peace and seeking to restore the old alliance with Rome. Zanticus even prostrated himself before the emperor. But Marcus did not trust the Iazyges, and still wished to “exterminate them utterly.” [Dio,
LXXII
, 16] The Iazyges were saved from extermination by disturbing news that now reached Marcus from Martius Verus, governor of Cappadocia. Marcus’ friend Avidius Cassius, governor of Syria, had declared himself emperor of Rome. Worse still, the provinces of Syria, Cilicia, Judea and Egypt and the troops they contained had all hailed Cassius emperor.
Cassius had seemed the most loyal of Marcus’ adherents. Three years earlier he had marched an army down to Egypt to relieve the resident 2nd Traiana Legion which was under siege at Alexandria by Egyptian partisans led by a priest named Isidorus who opposed Marcus’ rule. Why, now, had Cassius suddenly decided to usurp Marcus?
AD
175
LIV. CHALLENGING FOR MARCUS’ THRONE
The accidental pretender
Avidius Cassius had declared himself emperor of Rome because he believed that Marcus Aurelius was dead. This had arisen out of a misunderstanding involving Marcus’ wife Faustina, a powerful behind-the-scenes player. Marcus had not been well for some time, and in
AD
175 his health worsened. He himself was to say this
same year that he was “already an old man and weak, unable to either take food without pain or sleep without anxiety.” [Dio,
LXII
, 24]
The empress Faustina had thought that Marcus was close to death, and, deciding that Cassius would make a better successor as emperor than Marcus’ unpleasant son Commodus, she had sent Cassius a secret message urging him to take the throne for himself as soon as Marcus died, promising to support him. Cassius had subsequently received a report that Marcus was dead, and had immediately claimed the throne. But Marcus was still very much alive. Even when Cassius learned the truth, he would not recant; he had already shown his hand.
At Carnuntum, treating with Iazyge peace envoys when he would have preferred to exterminate the tribe, Marcus knew that he had to march to the East to put an end to the usurper’s claim. And to do that, he could not afford to have a Danube war continuing behind his back. As the 12th Fulminata Legion received orders to prepare to return to the East with the emperor, Marcus reluctantly sealed a peace agreement with the Iazyges.
Marcus granted the Iazyges similar peace terms to those enjoyed by the Marcomanni and Quadi, with several exceptions. He stipulated that the Iazyges must live twice as far away from the Danube as their former German allies, and must contribute 8,000 of their most superior surviving cavalry to the new alliance. These men would be posted to the fringes of the empire—5,500 would go to Britain as members of numeri units, for example. In this way Marcus deprived the Iazyges of their best fighting men, and of their capacity to go to war against Rome again. The Iazyges also gave up all Roman captives taken during the ten-year war.
Even after some prisoners had died in captivity and others had escaped, the Iazyges still held 100,000 captive Roman civilians, who were now returned. [Dio,
LXXII
, 16]
Rewarding Pertinax, his most successful and loyal general, for his “brave exploits” with a consulship for the year, the emperor set off east to confront Cassius, taking along the empress Faustina and a large body of troops. [Dio,
LXII
, 22] En route to the East, Marcus received word that Cassius was dead. Just three months after declaring himself emperor, Cassius had been assassinated. One of his own centurions had stabbed him, then galloped off, leaving him seriously wounded. A decurion, apparently from Cassius’ escort, had finished the job. Cassius’ severed head was sent to Marcus.
Marcus continued on to the East to cement the loyalty of the legions there before he returned to Rome. When he did finally return home in
AD
177, he conducted a Triumph through the streets of the capital for his victory over the Germans, and erected a triumphal arch in Rome. Marcus Aurelius’ Danube wars had come to an end. But the peace he had won was not to last long.
AD
177–180
LV. MARCUS AURELIUS’ LAST CAMPAIGNS
Victory and death
The empress Faustina had passed away in
AD
176 while she and Marcus Aurelius were returning to Rome from the East. Her death shattered Marcus, and back in Rome the following year he threw himself into public business. At the same time, he declared his 16-year-old son Commodus his co-emperor.
By this time, Rome was again at war with northeastern neighbors. Not the Germans, but a Scythian tribe from east of Dacia that had crossed the Danube into Lower Moesia. The brothers Quintilius, Maximus and Condianus, were apparently the governors of Rome’s two Moesian provinces at the time. The talented pair, who uniquely shared everything, including official appointments, and, eventually, death by the sword, had consolidated Rome’s position on the Danube during Marcus’ absence but “had been unable to end the war” for the emperor. By
AD
178, “the Scythian situation again demanded his attention.” [Dio,
LXXII
, 33]
At Rome, the sickly Marcus hurled the bloody spear kept in the Temple of Bellona, in a traditional ceremony that signaled he personally was going to war in
foreign territory. As Marcus set out for the Danube, to base himself in Pannonia, as before, he sent Palatium secretary Tarrutenius Paternus ahead with the main force to reinforce the Quintilius brothers and aggressively prosecute the war against the Scythians.
Paternus and the army arrived just as the legions of the Quintilius brothers were locked in a battle with the Scythians. The battle site is likely to have been north of the Black Sea mouths of the Danube, above Troesmis, base of the 5th Macedonica Legion prior to its transfer east for the Parthian campaign. Here Hadrian had built a line of fixed defenses, the
limes
, manned by auxiliary units. But no legion had replaced the 5th Macedonica at Troesmis, leaving this sector exposed to barbarian inroads. Alternatively, the fighting could have taken place on the Dacian border north of Novea; Hadrian had also built a line of walls and forts there. Both locations would have come under attack during this period. Once Paternus’ army reached the disputed territory and joined the fighting, the Scythians held out for a full day before being wiped out. For Paternus’ victory, Marcus was hailed imperator for the tenth time.
But this was not the end of hostilities. Other barbarians had avaricious eyes on Rome’s Danubian territory, among them the Buri Germans from the River Oder, who began raiding into Dacia and dragging many Roman settlers back to their homeland. Other German tribes possessing peace treaties with Rome also became restive. Three thousand men of the Naristi tribe, disturbed by talk of war, deserted their bellicose leaders and came over to Marcus, who settled them in Roman territory.