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Dando-Collins, \'Legions of Rome\'
#9
Quote: (a) legio X Fretensis and legio X Gemina were the same thing (despite the fact that they served in different parts of the Empire simultaneously)

Wasn't his idea that X Fretensis was founded on the original Caesarian legion, rather than Gemina as usually assumed? Thus providing a good excuse to write about the Jewish war in his first book...

I've been highly critical of Dando-Collins in the past, although when I had a look through Legions of Rome I found what initially seemed quite an interesting and even (gasp!) persuasive theory that Legion X Gemina were not the Caesarian tenth, and that X Fretensis were not named after a sea battle off Sicily. See what you think:

Dando Collins on X Fretensis

I think the inscription in Rome to 'X Gemina Equestris' (upon which the connection largely rests) has been queried elsewhere. It actually reads: leg / legion(is) eius pe [leg(ione)] / X Gemina eque / centuriones e[t ] / clupeum aura[tum] / M(arti) U(ltori) v(otum) [s(olverunt)] (AE 1934, 152). Might this actually refer to 'centurions and equites' of X Gemina? Or is that ungrammatical?

Anyway, I quite liked this as an exercise in scepticism, even if D-C doesn't mention Suetonius's note about Augustus disbanding the tenth legion in disgrace, or the tombstones to discharged veterans of X Equestris at Patrae - important aspects of Mommsen and Keppie's theory. However, D-C then gets carried away and goes on to suggest that the Fretensis part comes from the Straits of Otranto, and a sea battle in 42BC - that there's really no more evidence for this than for Mommsen's Sicilian idea seems not to concern him.

He compounds the black mark with a highly disingenuous endnote in which he implies that Keppie, amongst others, disagreed with Mommsen's identification of the 10th (which he did not), solely because he'd disagreed with another point Mommsen made about Augustan legion origins... This is just bad journalism.
Nathan Ross
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Messages In This Thread
Re: Dando-Collins, \'Legions of Rome\' - by John1 - 02-09-2012, 08:57 PM
Dando-Collins, \'Legions of Rome\' - by A_Volpe - 01-05-2014, 03:46 PM
Re: Dando-Collins, \'Legions of Rome\' - by Nathan Ross - 01-06-2014, 02:30 PM
Dando-Collins, \'Legions of Rome\' - by Marius - 01-06-2014, 02:32 PM
Dando-Collins, \'Legions of Rome\' - by Renatus - 01-08-2014, 10:34 AM

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