On the Date of the Defeat of C. at Author(s): Maurice Platnauer Source: The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 8 (1918), pp. 146-153 Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/370157 . Accessed: 28/07/2013 14:13

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By MAURICE PLATNAUER. What may be called the orthodox view of the chronology of the revolt of Gaius Pescennius Niger during the early years of ' principate is roughly as follows:- Some time in the late springof A.D. I93 both Septimiusand Niger, then governors of Pannonia and Syria respectively, assumed the imperial title. The war occasioned by these rival claims opened in the neighbourhood of somewhere in the autumn of the same year and consisted in a- series of engagements of which the most noteworthy took place at Cyzicus, Nicaea, the Cilician Gates and Issus, ending with the total defeat of Niger on the last-named field. This defeat occurred in the autumn of I94 and was followed by the pursuit and death of the unsuccessful claimant on the banks of the Euphrates in the early winter of that year. This chronology is adopted both in the general histories, for instance those of Schiller,1 Stuart Jones,2 and Domaszewski,3 and in the monographs4 dealing with the reign of Septimius, and has until quite recently been unimpugned. A new view is put forward by Mr. G. A. Harrer in his Studies in the History of the Roman Province of Syria (University Press, Princeton, I9I5), which, as he himself admits, finds no support in authority and which, were it not for an obiter dictum of Wilcken, could claim entire originality. According to Mr. Harrer the accepted chronology is nearly a 'year wrong. The war between Septimius and Niger began indeed in the summer or autumn of I93 but was over before the end of that year. The decisive battle at Issus is, then, to be put in the late autumn or winter of I93 and not, as is the usual view, towards the end of I94. The arguments upon which Mr. Harrer rests his case are, as is to be expected, drawn mainly from epigraphic and numismatic sources, for literary testimony is much too vague to be any sort of guide on such a point. He instances a coin of Gabala5 in Syria dated in the 240th year of that city (i.e. I93-I94) which gives Septimius as emperor, a similar one of Tavium6 in Galatia of the year I93, and again a coin of Caesarea7 in Cappadocia, minted apparently in I94,

I Gesch. der ram. Kaiserzeit, i, p. 71 1. Quaest. Sev. pp. 9 and 24; Platnauer, Life and 2 Rom. Emp. p. 240- Reign of L. Sept. Sev. p. 9I. 3 Gesch. der ram. Kaiser, ii, p. 252. a hIunt. Coll. iii (I 905), p. zoo, 6. 4 Ceuleneer, La Vie de Sept. Sev. p. 6i ff; Fuchs, 6 Gesch. Sept. Sev. p. 43 ff; Hofner, Untersuch. zur Brit. Mus. Cat., Galatia, p. 25, nos. 9 and I4- Cesch. des Kaisers L. Sept. Sev. p. i63; Wirth, 7 Op. Cit. p. 73 if. nos. 219, 222, 235.

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which mentions Septimius' . 3', and argues that this Severan coinage of I93, as he considers it, proves that before the end of that year 'Septimius had converted the pro-Nigerian East by his final and conclusive defeat of Niger at Issus. Now of two of these three coins the dates are by no means certain. The Syrian specimen may well have been minted in I94, while the date of that from Tavium depends upon the date of the New Year's Day in vogue in the Province of Galatia, which may or may not have been October i, as was the case in Syria, or at least in . We know, moreover, that the Governor of Galatia, Fabius Cilo, was a staunch supporter of Septimius, 1 which makes the existence of a pro-Severan coinage in his province even before victory had declared itself for that general more or less what one would have expected. As for the Cappadocian coin, supposing Septimius' T. o' to have run from spring till September 30, I93, T f' allows up to September I94 for its minting-a date by which, on any showing, Septimius was master of Asia Minor. It is surely im- possible to deduce from the fact that October I, I93-September 30, I94, is regarded as Septimius' second year of reign the argument that therefore Septimius must have defeated Niger before September 30, I93. Even Mr. Harrer would shrink from dating Niger's final defeat so early as this. The legend r. p' on a coin of Septimius minted, say, in June I94, possibly implies that at that time Septimius was well on the way to victory but does not lend itself to any deduction as to the state of the struggle in the previous year. But a more general consideration is this: that the mere existence of a locally minted Severan coin of the year I93 or I94 by no means proves that Septimius had gained a decisive victory or a series of decisive victories over Niger before that particular date. All it -means is that the city in question chose to throw in its lot with an imperial claimant in whose ultimate success it had faith enough to trust. Another piece of evidence cited by Mr. Harrer is a Syrian mil- liarium2 which records the repair of roads under the legate Venidius Rufus, and which gives Septimius the titles (inter alia) of TRIB. POT., IMP. III (? iiii), Cos. II. ' It would be very strange,' says Mr. Harrer, 'to find a Governor already repairing roads in I94 if the revolt was not over till near the end of the same year.' In the first place this inscription does not seem one on which to rest any chronological argument, since it contains a contradiction in itself. TRIB. POT. should date it as before December IO, I93, while cos. ii attributes it as decisively to I94, it being an undisputed

1 Schiller, op. cit. i. p. 709; Stout, Govs. of Septimius is referred to as r6v t[5] *aopowr?pa xac M$1oesia,p. 33; Platnauer, op. cit. p. 83, note. e6ep-yelp in a Galatian inscription. Cf. Inscr. Gr. ad res Rom. pert. iii, 147, wh.ere 2 L'Ann. Ep. I9IO, no. io6.

This content downloaded from 147.26.11.80 on Sun, 28 Jul 2013 14:13:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions I48 ON THE DATE OF THE DEFEAT OF C. PESCENNIUS NIGER AT ISSUS. fact that Septimius entered upon his second consulship that year. To add to this, the reading of the imperial title is uncertain; it may be III or it may be iiii. But again, there seemsto me no strangenessin the decision of a Governorof Syria(or SyriaPhoenice 1) somewhere about, say, July I94, to remain faithful to Septimius' cause even though that cause had not yet received the seal of final victory. The same criticismholds good for the Arabian inscriptions2 of I94 quoted by Mr. Harrer. Indeed-in this case Mr. Harrer has himself supplied the probable explanation. ' The Governor of Arabia,'he says (p. 84), ' P. Aelius Severianus Maximus, appointed at least as early as the reign of , is found confirmed in his position, in i94, by Severus.' It is therefore impossibleto suppose that the praetorianlegate of Arabia, who was also in command of leg. iii Cyr.3 stationed at Bostra, could have fought for Niger. The fact that this legion subsequently declared for Albinus4 is no proof that it was from the first opposed to Septimius as monographson the subject have hitherto taken for granted.5 The confirmationof Aelius Severianusin his office seems to me yet another indication that the East as a whole was not so unanimouslyin favour of Niger as has been generally supposed. When we turn to papyri it must be admitted that Mr. Harrer can produce one which at first glance considerablyshakes our faith in the accepted chronologyof the period. This papyrus6 is dated as in the reign of SeptimiusOc'O x' 'Er. y' (i.e. SeptemberI7, I94) and gives the Emperorthe titles of ArabicusAdiabenicus. Now the generally accepted view is that, Niger having been disposed of by about December I94, Septimius started from Syria on his eastern campaign in'the spring of I95. It is therefore obviously impossible to put the assumption of the titleS ARAB. ADIAB. earlier than I95 seeing that the war to the vict'orioustermination of which they were due did not start till about February or March of that year. This papyrus, Mr. Harrer contenas, proves that the eastern war was begun early in I94 and successfullyconcluded before September I7 of that year. There are, I think, two possible ways of meeting this argument. One is to suppose that in this case ?r. y' refers to the third full year of Septimius'reign, i.e. that instead of reckoningx. oc' as extending from his original acclamation to August 29, I93 (this date being the start of the Egyptian year) it is to be takenras covering from August 29, 193, to August 28, '94. This makes w6Ox r. y' =September I7, I95,- a date by which the titles of ARAB. ADIAB. had undoubtedly been assunied. This not altogether satisfactory

1 Mr. iHarrer believes the Provi'nce to have been. 4.Spart. Sev. iz, 6. divided in 194. -'My own included (p. 79, note). Cf. Hofn. p. iz6, and Ceul. p. 63, 'Pour la leg. iii Cyr. nous 2 C.l.L. iii, 14169, 14172, 14174, 14176. en avons une quasi-certitude, vu qu' elle se prononc 3 Domaszewski, Rangordnung,p. I73; Marquardt, plus tard pour Albin.' Staatsver. i, 431. 5B.G.U. 1, 199,l. 2o ff.

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solution is actually suggestedby Mr. Harrer as a possible explanation of anotherdated papyrus1 which giveshim trouble. A morereasonable supposition, as it seems to me, would be to take . y' as frankly a mistakefor T. 8'. After all, the new year was only three weeks old, and who has not accidentallyfilled in the wrong year on a cheque even as late as January 2I ? In any case we have here a solitary example of the titles ARAB. ADIAB. dating from the year I94 as against scores of instances of inscriptions and coins of that year without these titles which in every other instance first make their appearance in I95 accompanyingIMP. V.2 The coin (Cohen, Sept. no. 364) and the inscription(C.I.L. vi, IO26) coupling IMP. iv with ARAB. ADIAB. are certainly curious, but they -do not strengthen Mr. Harrer's hypothesis, for they are neither of them datable as belonging to the year I94; indeed Mr. Harrerrefers3 to the latter as belonging to ? the early part of I95 ' and admits that the line containingthe titles forms a later addition to the original inscription. Doubtless the originalwording dates from early in I95 and the addition was made on the news of the Emperor'seastern victories without the alteration of IMP. iiii into IMP. v ; an alterationwhich from a practicalpoint of view would not be an easy one to make. As to the coin we can either with Wirth4 take it to be a forgery, or else suppose that Severus' assumption of the titles ARAB. ADIAB, was known of in Rome before the news of the fifth imperial acclamation had reached the capital. Another papyrus5 cited by Mr. Harrer is one dated February 21, I94, which mentions Septimius as Emperor. This, Mr. Harrer would have us believe, shows that by that date Egypt, which (as a whole) supported Niger, had perforce recognised the Principate of the victorious Septimius. To set against this there is another papyrus6 dated March I94, containing the name of Niger as Emperor. Mr. Harrer cites this papyrus but gives its date as 9 Choiach (December 5), I93, which is, as a matter of fact, the date of anotherpapyrus (B.M. iii, 704) mentioning the Principateof Niger. A papyrusstill more disturbingto Mr. Harrer'stheory is that men- tioned above, viz. B.M. ii, 345. This is dated as in the reign of Septimius T. ot and must therefore refer to a time anterior to August 29, I93. It should follow, on Mr. Harrer'sshowing, that Septimius had defeated Niger before the end of August 193-a conclusionwhich Mr. Harrer very naturallyhesitates to draw, pre- ferringto regardSeptimius' T. ot' asAugust 29, I93-August 28, I94. The truth is that these seeming anomaliesare not to be explained

I Brit. Mlus. ii, 345; wrongly referred to by 4 Quaest. Sev. p. Z4. Mr. Harrer as 35I (p. 85, note 6I). 5 B.G.U. i, 326, col. 2, I. I2. 2 Eckhel, Doctr. Num. vii, p. I7z; Cohen, Mid. 6 Harrer, op. cit. p. 79, note i6. It is dated in Imp. iv, p. 8, etc. the month 4ayvdO6=Feb- 25-Mar. z6. The 3 p. 8I. papyrus is Grenf. Gk. Pap. ii, p. 95, no. 6o.

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by the whole-hearted adhesion of the entire Province to Niger until the time of his defeat at Issus (whatever the date of that battle) and the subsequent recognition of Septimius as Emperor, but to the fact that Egypt, like Asia Minor, was not in its entirety a supporter of either pretender, and certainly not unanimously in favour of Niger. 1 This becomes still more explicable when we remember that though the Egyptian legion (ii Traiana) was pro-Nigerian2 yet there was, in all probability, a vexillatio of the African legion (iii Aug.) which remained faithful to Severus at this time in Egypt safeguarding the'interests of that prince. 3 We find also, as Mr. Harrer himself points out, the prefect of Egypt, L. Mantennius Sabinus, who was appointed under Pertinax, still holding office in April I94. 4 We cannot suppose that the ordinary Egyptian provincial felt any keen'interest in the fate of the Governor of either Pannonia or Syria and his loyalty to one or other would-be Emperor must have been decided by the presence of pro-Nigerian or pro-Severan troops in the vicinity of his home. Besides the arguments reviewed above, Mr. Harrer endeavours to gain support for his theory from an examination of the imperial salutations of Septimius, and here again he departs from the generally accepted view. Hitherto it has been supposed5 that the second, third and fourth salutations are to be dated approximately springy summer and late autumn of I94 and belo'ng respectively to Septimius' three victories over Niger at Cyzicus, Nicaea and Issus. IMP. VS which does not occur before I95, has been regarded as the first of the three imperial salutations given to the Emperor on the occasion of the defeats inflicted by him on the Osrhoeni and Adiabeni. With -IMP. V is, as we have seen, connected the title ARAB. ADIAB. Consonantly with his view that the revolt of Niger was crushed before New Year I94, Mr. Harrer attributes to the Civil War only the second and third salutations, the latter being given, he holds, after the final battle at Issus. IMP. iv. is thus transferred from the war against Niger to the war in the East and is connected with the assumption of the title ARAB. ADIAB. We have already seen that as against many instances where IMP. iv is not so connected and many more in which these titles are found with IMP. v, Mr. Harrer can only set one very remarkab-lecoin6 and an inscription7 in which, on his own admission, the titles in question are a later addition. This being the case I cannot see how, setting aside special pleading, Mr. Harrer can claim " to have ' connected the titles ARAB. ADIAB. with Severus IMP. IV.'

a 1 In my Life and Reign of Sept. Sev. p. iz2, Wirth, op. cit. p. 24; Liebenam, Fast. coS.1 I say that Egypt's partisanship of Niger 'had been p. 1og; Platn. op. cit. p. 32. 6 unanimous and whole-hearted'. This statement Cohen, Sept. Sev. iv, no. 364; Eck. (vii, 172) I herewith retract. refers to an inscription (not a coin) in Muratori's 2 Eck. iv, 8 I. collection. 3 Platn. op. cit. p. 6z, note. 7 C.I.L. vi, ioz6. 4 Domasz. in Rhein. Mus. liii, p. 638. 8p. 8I.

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In the same way, in spite of numerous inscriptions and coinsL the evidence of which goes to shiow that cos. ii and IMP. iii are always found together, and that in consequence the year of the third salu- tation was I94, Mr. Harrer bases his argument on one admittedly very puzzling diploma2 dated January 3I, TRIB. POT. II (i.e. I94) IMP. iii. Supposing,as he does, that IMP. III is to be connected with the , Mr. Harrer argues from this diploma that the date of that battle must be about December 193. Now here Mr. Harrer is confronted with another difficulty which he does not seem to me to face. If the third imperial salutation is really to be placed before January3I, I94, it follows that IMP. ii must belong to the year I93, for it is scarcely possible to set the acclamation of iNIP. iii posterior to December 193 if it found its way into print, as it were, by January I94. But unfortunately for this theory there is no instance of IMP. Ii in conjunction with cos. (i) or with TRIB. POT. (I), whereas there are many instances in which IMP. II, Cos. II and TRIB. POT. II are found together. 3 It seems, then, an unavoidable conclusion that the second, third and fourth acclamations all belong to the year I94. In support of his theory that IMP. iII is to be connected with the battle of Issus and IMP. iv with some victory gained in Septimius' Eastern campaign, Mr. Harrer points out that whereas such legends as 'MART. VICT., 'IOVI VICT. are to be found on coins of the first two imperial acclamations, the peace type is first found with those of the third. I can, however, only find two coins of this kind (Coh. no. 308, 'MARS PACATOR' : no. 359, PACI AVGVST. ') and the credibility of the evidence drawn from them is somewhat shaken by the fact that there exists a ' MARS PACATOR ' coin of the fourth acclamation (Coh. no. 309). Now according to Mr. Harrer this acclamation is the first in the Eastern War, and without any doubt IMP. V, vi and vii find their cause in the same campaign. Mr. Harrer cannot therefore claini that the minting of what he calls a peace type coin necessarily marks the termination of a war, and it is at least as reasonable to suppose that hopes ran high enough after the battle of Nicaea for Rome to strike a peace coinage as it is to think that the government accounted the Osrhoeni and Adiabeni ' pacified ' by the end of 194 when as a matter of fact victories involving two more imperial acclamations were to be gained before the not very satisfactory termination of the war at least six months later. Further, there i) a coin of the fourth acclamation (Coh. no. 646) with the legend ' SECVRITAS PVBLICA', which might, one would think, with equal justice be claimed as a peace type. The whole of this theory seems to me to be built up on a few

1 e.g. E.ck.vii, I7i; Coh. Sept. Sev. nos. I50 3 Eck. vii, i ; Coh. Sept. Sev. nos. 3I s3 I i6, 335, etc. 331, 686, 691.7I 2L>/nn Ep.19)8, 146.

This content downloaded from 147.26.11.80 on Sun, 28 Jul 2013 14:13:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 152 ON THE, DATE OF THE DEFEAT OF C. PESCENNIUS NIGER AT ISSUS. pieces of epigraphic evidence arbitrarily selected from a mass of testimony running counter to it and not in themselves of unassailable credibility. With the exception of the diploma which, it seems to me, must rather unsatisfactorily be taken as a forgery or a mistake, there is no coin, inscription or papyrus cited by Mr. Harrer in support of his theory but can be otherwise explained. Further, even this diploma is of as little use to his suggested chronology as it is to that generally accepted, for all it goes to show is that Septimius was saluted imperator for the third time before January 194. That this third acclamation is to be connected with the battle of Issus is a further assumption which receives no support from the diploma in question, and the argument that the regular discharge of veterans could not take place during a war is not likely to carry conviction. But besides this negative criticism there seems to me to be one positive argument-over and above the mass of epigraphic and numismatic evidence above referred to-in favour of the old view that Niger was not finally defeated until the autumn of 194. This is merely the question of time. We know that Septimius was in Rome at least as late as June 27, 193,1 and if the evidence of a rescript be doubted a simple calculation should satisfy the sceptic that starting from Carnuntum after April I3 2 Septimius is not likely to have reached the capital before Jufie,3 the journey from Pannonia being 8oo miles in length. Giving Septimius a month in Rome, then, he could not have set out against Niger before July. Septimius, let us suppose, leaves the capital on July i: according to Mr. Harrer he has defeated Niger before the end of the year. Let us put the battle of Issus on December 3I. Both these dates, it will be observed, are extreme ones. It seems to me more likely that Severus left Rome towards the end of July than that he did so at the beginning; while, if the construction put upon the diploma by Mr. Harrer were correct, a month would be a short period to allow for the news of victory's returning to Rome and its finding expression on a diploma. 4 However, taking these extreme dates, we have to suppose that Severus and his army tr'avelled from Rome to Issus in 184 days. Now the route taken by the Emperor was almost certainly that by way of Interamna (we know he travelled by the Via Flaminia),5 Bononia, Aquileia, Siscia, Sirmium, Naissus, Philippopolis to Byzantium-a matter of 1,380 miles. Thence he probably crossed the Propontis to Cyzicus (a 70 mile voyage) and from Cyzicus advanced via Prusa to Chius, thence to Nicaea where was fought the second engagement of the war. From Nicaea Septimius probably passed through Dorylaeum,

1 Cod. Just. iii, 8, I; Platn. p. 84, note. 4The news of the battle of Munda reached 2 For the date see Spart. Sev. 5, I. Rome in 35 days (Barth, Quaestiones Tullianae, 3 We know, moreover, that Didius Iulianus was p. zo) and Issus is even as the crow flies 250 miles executed on June i, and that Severus had not further from Rome than Munda is. reached Rome by that date. Cf. Platn. p. 68. ? Spart. Sev. 8, 9.

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Pessinus and Tyana and so reached the Cilician Gates. Having forced these he must have arrived at Issus by way of Tarsus and Epiphania. From Cyzicus to Issus by this route (and it is at least as short as any he could have chosen) is just over 700 miles. According, then, to Mr. Harrer,Septimius and his army completed a journey of z,I60o miles (70 of it by sea; had the army marched round the Propontis it would have taken them even longer) in the incredibly short space of 184 days, averaging, that is, nearly iz miles a day. How impossible this is, how impossible it would have been even with no enemy to bar their way and with no battles to be fought, is immediately obvious and becomes more so'by comparisonwith any known rate of progress on the part of an army. Theodosius, for instance, in 379 advanced from Scupi to Vicus Augusti in 27 days,1 thus averaging9 miles a day, and nine years later the same Emperor averaged barely 6 over the 40 miles separating Scupi from Stobi.2 That an average distance of i z miles a day could be covered by an army advancingcontinuously for the space of six months, and that in the face of considerableopposition, is, one would think, an impos- sibility sufficientlypalpable to ruin any theory which involved it. There may, however, be those whom this theory satisfies ' credat JudaeusApella.'

' 2 Camb. Med. Hist. i, p. 236. Op. cit. p. 213.

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