Legions of Rome (78 page)

After Severus had defeated Niger, he brought his Danube legions and the Praetorian Guard to Gaul to take on Albinus, also sending word to the legions on the Rhine to send troops south to join him. As legions from the Rhine, commanded by Virius Lupus, neared Lugdunum ahead of Severus’ army, Albinus led the majority of his forces from Lugdunum to intercept them. At Tinurtium, today’s Tournus, 40 miles (64 kilometers) up the Saône river from Lugdunum, Lupus’ force were repulsed by Albinus with heavy loss. When Severus himself approached with his main army, the
victorious Albinus withdrew, leading his army back to their camp outside Lugdunum to consolidate his forces.

Now, on February 19, the battle that would decide who would rule the Roman Empire took place outside the city. For this battle, both Severus and Albinus would be actively involved. Both men knew that this battle would make or break them. Albinus’ legions formed up in battle order outside their camp. Severus’ army then marched out of its camp on the plain and formed up in battle lines opposite them.

Both Severus and Albinus were experienced generals. Severus was a self-made man. A native of Leptis Magna in the province of Africa and son of an Equestrian, he had overcome his provincial background with a steady rise through the military ranks to become a consul in
AD
190 at the age of 43, before taking up the post of governor of Upper Pannonia. Albinus, on the other hand, came from a good senatorial family and was well educated. He had made a name for himself commanding a victorious Roman army in campaigns against invading barbarian tribes east of Dacia during the reign of Commodus. In the opinion of Cassius Dio, who knew him, Severus was “superior in warfare and was a skillful commander.” Just the same, Albinus had more experience at the head of his troops in battle, while Severus had previously let subordinates lead his armies. [Dio,
LXXVI
, 6]

The Battle of Lugdunum was long and drawn out, with numerous shifts of fortune. It opened in time-honored fashion. With both sides lined up facing each other in numerous ranks, both charged forward. Prior to the battle, probably in the night, the men on Albinus’ right wing had been able to dig a long pit, unseen by the other side. This pit had been given a covering, apparently of hides, with an overall layer of earth to conceal it. At the battle’s commencement, Albinus’ men here on his right dashed forward to the edge of the hidden pit, launched their javelins, then withdrew, as if through fear. This had drawn Severus’ left wing forward, on to the pit. The covering gave way, and both men and horses of the first line tumbled into the hole, which would have been equipped with pointed stakes. The second line could not stop its momentum, and many of its men also went into the pit. Troops in the next lines not only stopped in their tracks, they withdrew in horrified disorder, forcing their own men behind them over the edge of a cliff.

On the opposite wing, the fortunes were just the opposite. After hectic hand-to-hand combat, Albinus’ left wing gave way under pressure from Severus’ more experienced right-wing troops. Men from this wing fled back to Albinus’ camp, with Severus’ troops in pursuit. The gates could not be closed in the crush of panicking men, allowing the pursuers to force their way into the camp, where they slaughtered those inside and looted their tents.

Severus had been holding the Praetorian Guard in reserve. Seeing his left wing in trouble at the pit, he led the Praetorians into action on the left. But Albinus’ troops succeeded in pushing the Guard back. The fighting “came very near destroying the Praetorians,” and Severus’ horse was killed beneath him. [Ibid.] Finding himself on the ground, Severus, seeing his men fleeing the fight, threw off his heavy riding cloak, drew his sword, and ran among the fugitives, intending to either turn them around or die fighting. After halting the flight of many of his men and reforming them, he led a counter-attack that cut down many of those who had been pursuing Severus’ troops, and forced the others to retreat.

At this point Severus’ general Maecius Laetus intervened with the cavalry. According to Dio, Laetus had ambitions to himself become emperor and had been holding Severus’ cavalry back in the hope that both Severus and Albinus would be killed, after which he would claim the vacant throne for himself. But seeing Severus’ troops having the better of Albinus’ men, Laetus brought the cavalry into play to support Severus. [Ibid.] This turned the tide, and allowed Albinus’ army to be overrun. Albinus fled the battlefield, and took refuge in a farmhouse beside the Rhône. But he was followed, and the house was surrounded by Severan troops. Rather than fall into Severus’ hands, Albinus took his own life.

Albinus’ body was brought to Severus. After taking in the corpse, and angrily denouncing the dead man for opposing him, Severus ordered his head severed and sent to Rome to be displayed on a pole; the rest of the body was discarded with neither burial nor cremation. When Severus returned to Rome he would execute a number of senators who had supported Albinus. Meanwhile, Severus’ loyal general Lupus received Albinus’ former post of governor of Britain, while the ambitious Laetus was sent to the East to become governor of Mesopotamia.

Because Lugdunum had supported Albinus, Severus allowed his victorious troops to loot the wealthy city. He would have been all the more incensed at the city’s disloyalty because his son Caracalla had been born there, yet still its people had turned against him. Severus’ 1st Minervia Legion, which had been located at Bonna on the Lower Rhine since the reign of Trajan, was now detached from Severus’ army and based at Lugdunum. Treating it as an occupied enemy city, the legion would remain at Lugdunum until
AD
211, after which it would return to Bonna. Lugdunum would never regain its previous prestige or importance among the cities of the empire. [Pelle.]

With this battle outside Lugdunum, the brief civil war was brought to an end, but the Roman army had been devastated by the internecine conflict. “Countless numbers had fallen on both sides,” at Lugdunum. “Even the victors deplored the disaster, for the entire plain was seen to be covered with the bodies of men and horses,” Dio lamented. “Roman power suffered a severe blow.” [Dio,
LXXVI
, 7]

But Severus was not finished with making war. Once he was back in Rome, news reached him that the Parthians, knowing that the Romans were fighting among themselves in the West, had launched “an expedition in full force.” After invading and capturing most of Mesopotamia from the Romans, the Parthians were laying siege to
the governor, Laetus, at Nisibis. [Ibid., 9] Severus issued orders for a major campaign in the East. Not only did he plan to throw the Parthians out of Mesopotamia, he set his sights on achieving what Julius Caesar had dreamed of doing, what Hadrian had abandoned after Trajan’s brief excursion east of the Euphrates, and what Commodus had failed to achieve—the conquest of Parthia and the elimination of the Parthians as a future threat to Rome.

AD
197–203
LVIII. SEVERUS’ PARTHIAN WAR
An eastern disaster

In the light of the massive losses sustained by all the legions taking part in the battle outside Lugdunum in February
AD
197, Severus ordered the raising of three new legions. So that there was no doubt about their purpose, he named them the 1st Parthica, 2nd Parthica, and 3rd Parthica legions—Parthica meaning “of Parthia.” All three legions took the centaur as their emblem. As the mythological centaur was said to have originated in Macedonia, it is thought likely that all three legions were in the main raised there and in neighboring Thrace. [Cow.,
RL
AD
161–284
]

Using the Misene and Ravenna Fleets, and taking with him some of his existing European-based legions and part of the Praetorian Guard, all of which had suffered heavy casualties in the February Battle of Lugdunum in Gaul, Severus set off for the East late in the year, departing from the port of Brundisium in southern Italy. [Starr,
VIII
] The three new Parthica legions would have marched from their recruiting grounds to nearby Byzantium, where they were probably collected by ships of the Pontic Fleet to be ferried around the eastern Mediterranean to link up with Severus in Syria.

By the spring of
AD
198, Severus was leading his army north into Mesopotamia to relieve Nisibis, modern Nusaybin in southeast Turkey. This ancient city, surrounded by massive walls, had been under extended siege by the Parthians. The approach of Severus and his army forced the Parthian king, Vologases, to withdraw back into central Parthia. Severus’ general Laetus, a “most excellent man,” according to Dio, who was acquainted with the general, had defiantly held out through the siege for many months. “In consequence, Laetus acquired still greater renown.” [Dio,
LXXVI
, 9]

The scenes on the carved panels on the Arch of Septimius Severus, erected in
AD
203 not far from the Senate House in the Forum in Rome, show Severus then going to war once again with the kingdom of Osroene, which had been an age-old ally of the Parthians and several years before this had rebelled against Severus. According to the panels on Severus’ arch, he employed elaborate “war engines” against Edessa, the capital of Osroene.

Some of these engines—massive mobile towers, catapults and cranes—were designed by the engineer Priscus of Bithynia. Priscus had been involved in the defense of Byzantium during the siege of that city by Severus’ forces, building exotic war machines that had made life difficult for the besiegers. Severus had ordered that Priscus be spared when Byzantium fell, and subsequently took him east with him. [Dio,
LXVV
, 11] Severus’ arch in Rome shows the city of Edessa surrendering to Severus, and then Abgar, the king of Osroene, also surrendering.

Dio says that, using timber from a forest beside the Euphrates, Severus’ legions then constructed boats which they launched on the river, and down the Euphrates the Roman army sped, with part—the baggage, no doubt—on water, and part marching along the riverbank. [Dio,
LXXVI
, 9] Severus’ arch shows Vologases, king of the Parthians, fleeing on horseback ahead of Severus. Dio reports that when Severus reached Seleucia, the city on the Tigris previously destroyed by Trajan, he found it totally abandoned. [Ibid.] Marching south, Severus found ancient Babylon also abandoned.

The Parthians put up a fight for their capital Ctesiphon, and again Severus brought in war engines. Despite the surrender of the city’s defenders, Severus allowed his legions to enter Ctesiphon and loot it. Severus then pulled out of Parthia—partly, said Dio, due to a lack of provisions. It seems that he withdrew all
the way to Nisibis, where he would spend the winter. His army, again partly in boats and partly on land, also followed the Tigris river to winter in the north.

In the spring of
AD
199, having prepared large stores of food and built numerous war engines, Severus launched a new campaign. This time he marched across the desert to the city of Hatra, capital of the Atreni Arabs, to which he laid siege. Hatra may have been remote, but it was a rich city, for it was the famous center of the worship of a sun god and contained numerous valuable offerings and vast amounts of money. Eighty-three years before, Trajan had also besieged Hatra; he had given up in disgust after both the defense and the locale had proved too much to overcome. Ammianus, a Roman officer who was to pass this way with a Roman army 164 years later, wrote that Hatra lay in the midst of desert, and that on the desert plain here it was possible to march for 70 miles (112 kilometers) and find that the only water available was “salty and ill-smelling.” [Amm.,
II
,
XXV
, 4]

Despite the conditions, Severus was determined to take the city, which was surrounded by a series of high walls, employing a range of war engines against it. Again Priscus of Bithynia created massive engines for the attack, as did the legions’ own engineers. Many of these war engines were destroyed by fire arrows shot from the city walls, to Severus’ frustration. “His siege engines were burned, many soldiers perished, and vast numbers were wounded.” [Dio,
LXXVI
, 11] Severus withdrew, and set up camp in a more hospitable area for the winter.

Over the winter, Severus had supplies stockpiled for a protracted campaign in the new year, and had numerous new
war engines constructed. There was obviously a mood of dissatisfaction in Severus’ camp at the human cost of the campaign to date, for Severus lashed out at those around him. Maecius Laetus had become his most successful general; more than that, Laetus had gained great popularity with the troops and the public; now Severus had him arrested, and executed. Then, when it was reported that one of the tribunes of the Praetorian Guard, Julius Crispus, had quoted a line from the poet Virgil that “we are meanwhile perishing all unheeded,” Severus took it as seditious criticism of his leadership, and had the tribune executed. The soldier who had informed on Crispus was promoted into the tribune’s post. [Ibid., 10]