Disgrace, Defeat, and the Loss of Legionary History

CHAPTER 13 “By Any Other Name”: Disgrace, Defeat, and the Loss of Legionary History Graeme A. Ward The history of Legion XII Fulminata of Rome was nothing for its soldiers to boast about in the mid-first Century CE.1 In 62, the legion was trapped and defeated in Armenia by the Parthian king Vologaeses. Rumor had it that its soldiers were subsequently forced to pass under a yoke (Tac. Ann. 15.15, Suet. Ner. 39). Four years later, Jewish soldiers ambushed and badly defeated the legion at Beth Horon, a battle in which the unit lost its eagle-standard, the aquila (Suet. Vesp. 4, Joseph. BJ 2.540–55). In 70, the future emperor Titus gave the legion a chance to redeem itself during his siege of Jerusalem, but again it fared poorly. When Titus redeployed Rome’s eastern forces after his victory in 73, mindful of the legion’s earlier defeat by the Jews, he finally transferred the unit from Syria to Cappadocia (Joseph. BJ 7.18). These accounts tell us that the histories (successful or not) of individual legions in the Principate were often remembered. What is more, those histories often formed part of a unit’s identity. As Augustus transformed the Roman military of the late Republic from conscripted armies to a standing, profession- al force under his own authority, the legions acquired specific designations, including insignia, numbers, and honorific titles. The titles XII Fulminata, V Macedonica, and VII Gemina were not informal nicknames, but established designations that represented a legion’s traditions, including its battles, the nature and origin of its recruitment, and other characteristics.2 In advertising these designations or in bestowing new ones, Roman emperors also tried to associate themselves with conquests that were crucial to bolstering their own prestige. Costly defeats to foreign enemies or support for an emperor’s internal rivals, however, were both equally a blow to an emperor’s prestige, and certain legionary designations became disgraceful or dangerous if they recalled defeat and internal strife instead of success and stability. The imperial response to this problem was characteristically ad hoc. Individual legions that suffered catastrophic losses in war were often not reinforced and reconstituted— 1 All following dates are CE unless otherwise noted. 2 Maxfield (1981) 218–19, 233–34; Webster (1998) 103–109; Keppie (1998) 132–40. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��8 | doi ��.��63/9789004355774_0�4 DISGRACE, DEFEAT, AND THE LOSS OF LEGIONARY HISTORY 285 rather, they could become extinct. Others were disbanded, whereby they were stripped of their standards and title, and their soldiers redistributed among other legions. On still other occasions, a legion’s traditional designations and honors themselves were substituted or discontinued. Legionary traditions and identity, therefore, could themselves become casualties of war and political expediency to preserve the integrity of the imperial house. While many published works have catalogued the great victories of the Roman legions, far fewer have analyzed their defeats. In the last thirty years, however, historians have begun to address this disparity with studies on a range of topics, beginning with Rosenstein’s analysis of the impact of military losses on the careers of Rome’s political elite of the Republic. He has been fol- lowed by studies on a range of political, social, and literary responses to defeat in both the Republic and Principate, including attitudes towards Roman prisoners, public diversion of blame, or transmutation from defeat to victory.3 Others have examined the varied ways by which Romans chose to commemorate (or not commemorate) their war dead through monument and text.4 A third line of inquiry focuses on specific defeats and contemporary reactions to them in order to gauge their impact on Roman policies or ideology.5 This attention in recent years to defeat and war losses at Rome has dovetailed with studies on the significance of memory in Roman society. Of particular interest here is damnatio memoriae, a modern term used to describe official attacks on the memory of Rome’s emperors or ruling class, such as the erasure or damage of names and faces from public inscriptions and portraiture. Damnatio memoriae, however, is but one example of what have been described as “memory sanctions,” a wide spectrum of deliberate practices that attempted to change understanding or memory of the past in the Roman world, both publicly and privately.6 It is in the context of both memory sanctions and imperial responses 3 Rosenstein (1990); Sordi (1990); Cheung (1998); Kath (2010); Turner (2010); Wardle (2011); Rich (2012); de Libero (2012); Clark (2014) For Roman responses to disasters more generally, see Toner (2013) and Golden (2013). 4 Amiotti (1990); Hope (2003); Cooley (2012a); Turner (2013); Östenberg (2014). See also Low et al. (2012). 5 See Benario (2003). For Cannae, see Daly (2002) and Beck (2006). For Carrhae, Traina (2010). Rome’s disaster in the Teutoburg Forest is well documented: Clementoni (1990); Pagán (2002); Wells (2003); Murdoch (2006); and see also Östenberg and Turner (this volume). Adrianople has received less attention; Lenski (1997). 6 Flower (2000) and (2006). See also Hedrick Jr. (2000); Benoist (2004); Carroll (2011) 65–90; Cooley (2012b) 310–20. On military commemoration at Rome, see also Hope (2003); Hölscher (2003). Melville (this volume) discusses an interesting parallel in the case of Sennacherib’s representation of his father..

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