04-24-2010, 06:52 PM
Hello Miles - thanks for joining in. (This reminds me of the Conn Iggulden thread from years back, if anyone remembers that 'authorial intervention' :wink: )
A few comments on some of the interesting points in your post above:
The Fronto quote is from a letter to Marcus Aurelius, written in the aftermath of the Elegeia disaster, I think, and intended as consolation - Fronto mentions various comparable recent disasters to Roman arms. It's problematic though - Stanier (1965) writes "the whole passage is corrupt, and the Latin of this particular passage is suspiciously tortuous'. In addition, these are rhetorical questions - it's not clear what 'great numbers' are being talked about. A whole legion is not mentioned in any case. As far as I know, there's no actual evidence for the loss of a legion in Judea - Dio just say 'Many Romans... perished in the war' (Roman History 69.14.3). The loss of a legion was surmised to explain the disappearance of XXII Deiotariana from neighbouring Egypt around the same time. Not a bad surmise, but to then surmise from this that a legion was also lost in Britain is a bit tenuous.
Very reasonable, I'd say. There was, I think, coinage issued for a victory in Britain c119 (which I now realise invalidates my note above about the lack of retributory measures for the 'loss' of an eagle :? ) - your point about the slighted head of Hadrian might fit here too. One other suggestion - Juvenal (Satires 14) has a father advising his son to go and 'destroy the huts of the Mauri and the Brigantian forts', in order that he might one day 'get an eagle' (ie become Primus Pilus, presumably). Juvenal was probably writing late in Trajanic or early in Hadrianic times - it's anecdotal, but suggests that at this point the Mauri and the Brigantes were known enemies of Rome. There is, I think, evidence from diplomas of unusual troop movements to Mauretania at this same period (vexillations sent from the Danube?), so it might be more than a flight of poetic fancy).*
However, having a Brigantian revolt around 119 or so doesn't equate to the loss of a legion at this point. There may well have been fighting, but only Fronto's letter mentions heavy casualties, and as noted above this doesn't mean a whole legion being destroyed.
Any theories about the loss of the legion would still have to account for those officer inscriptions - Aemilius Karus, Novius Crispinus and Sextius Florentius can't be made to go away. At a push, they may all have served in the legion at more or less the same time as tribunes and legate, around 120 or so at the earliest, and had extraordinarily protracted political careers, but the probability is that they didn't - to insist on it would be to try and force the evidence into the hypothesis, rather than the other way around!
* Incidental note on Juvenal - the line from Satire 4 about Arviragus and his chariot, often cited on web pages and suchlike about the disappearance of the ninth as evidence for a war in Britain early in the second century is nothing of the kind. Juvenal was writing in the Trajanic era, but the dramatic date of the satire is c.82 (Jones The Emperor Domitian) - the references are all Domitianic, as is Mr Arviragus: the British war in question is that of Agricola. Whether Arviragus really was a British leader of the day - a sort of Calgacus figure - or just a suitably British-sounding name concocted by the satirist is unknown...
- Nathan
A few comments on some of the interesting points in your post above:
Quote:3) large numbers of (unamed) units were lost in Britain early in the reign of the emperor Hadrian as Marcus Cornelius Fronto, writing in the 160s AD, noted: “what great numbers of soldiers were killed by the Jews, what great numbers by the British” (Fronto Parthian War 2, 220). The Jewish wars of course we know about, thanks to numerous contemporary references, but the number and extent of British losses remain shrouded in mystery. Fronto’s reference must relate to a significant event (otherwise why would he have mentioned it?) and it probably involved Legions, for auxilliary losses would not, I think, have registered on the imperial radar.
The Fronto quote is from a letter to Marcus Aurelius, written in the aftermath of the Elegeia disaster, I think, and intended as consolation - Fronto mentions various comparable recent disasters to Roman arms. It's problematic though - Stanier (1965) writes "the whole passage is corrupt, and the Latin of this particular passage is suspiciously tortuous'. In addition, these are rhetorical questions - it's not clear what 'great numbers' are being talked about. A whole legion is not mentioned in any case. As far as I know, there's no actual evidence for the loss of a legion in Judea - Dio just say 'Many Romans... perished in the war' (Roman History 69.14.3). The loss of a legion was surmised to explain the disappearance of XXII Deiotariana from neighbouring Egypt around the same time. Not a bad surmise, but to then surmise from this that a legion was also lost in Britain is a bit tenuous.
Quote:4) Early on in Hadrian's reign for we hear that when he “took over the government” in August AD 117, he discovered that “the Britons could not be kept under Roman control” (Scriptores Historiae Augustae Hadrian, 5, 1). The geographical vaguary is annoying, but the Britons being refered to are described in the same breath as the Moors, the Sarmate and “those peoples Trajan had subjugated”, his major spheres of conflict being against the Dacians and the Parthians... Is it reasonable then, given the phrasing, that the Britons who could not be kept under Roman control were operating within the province of Britannia: say Brigantia or somewhere further south?
Very reasonable, I'd say. There was, I think, coinage issued for a victory in Britain c119 (which I now realise invalidates my note above about the lack of retributory measures for the 'loss' of an eagle :? ) - your point about the slighted head of Hadrian might fit here too. One other suggestion - Juvenal (Satires 14) has a father advising his son to go and 'destroy the huts of the Mauri and the Brigantian forts', in order that he might one day 'get an eagle' (ie become Primus Pilus, presumably). Juvenal was probably writing late in Trajanic or early in Hadrianic times - it's anecdotal, but suggests that at this point the Mauri and the Brigantes were known enemies of Rome. There is, I think, evidence from diplomas of unusual troop movements to Mauretania at this same period (vexillations sent from the Danube?), so it might be more than a flight of poetic fancy).*
However, having a Brigantian revolt around 119 or so doesn't equate to the loss of a legion at this point. There may well have been fighting, but only Fronto's letter mentions heavy casualties, and as noted above this doesn't mean a whole legion being destroyed.
Any theories about the loss of the legion would still have to account for those officer inscriptions - Aemilius Karus, Novius Crispinus and Sextius Florentius can't be made to go away. At a push, they may all have served in the legion at more or less the same time as tribunes and legate, around 120 or so at the earliest, and had extraordinarily protracted political careers, but the probability is that they didn't - to insist on it would be to try and force the evidence into the hypothesis, rather than the other way around!
* Incidental note on Juvenal - the line from Satire 4 about Arviragus and his chariot, often cited on web pages and suchlike about the disappearance of the ninth as evidence for a war in Britain early in the second century is nothing of the kind. Juvenal was writing in the Trajanic era, but the dramatic date of the satire is c.82 (Jones The Emperor Domitian) - the references are all Domitianic, as is Mr Arviragus: the British war in question is that of Agricola. Whether Arviragus really was a British leader of the day - a sort of Calgacus figure - or just a suitably British-sounding name concocted by the satirist is unknown...
- Nathan
Nathan Ross
