Legions of Rome (53 page)

Some of Agrippa’s cavalrymen were let into the temple by pro-Roman priests, while others joined the Roman defenders of Herod’s Palace in the west of the city. The Temple, Antonia Fortress and palace were soon isolated. For eight days, battle raged, before attackers managed to trick their way into the Temple and take it over. Most of Agrippa’s troops there escaped and fought their way to the legionaries at Herod’s Palace. The rebels then concentrated their assault on the massive but lightly defended Antonia Fortress. Two days later, the 250 men of the 3rd Gallica defending the Antonia were overwhelmed by tens of thousands of besiegers and wiped out.

Meanwhile, Jews of the fanatical Zealot faction had hurried to attack other Roman garrisons. Roman troops were stationed at Masada beside the salt lake called the Dead Sea, south of Jerusalem. With these troops unaware of the uprising, the partisans were able to trick their way into the fortress and massacre them. In taking Masada, the rebels gained access to an arsenal for 10,000 men and extensive food stocks stored there since the time of Herod the Great. Most of the conquerors of Masada then hurried back to Jerusalem, where their leader, Menahem, demanded and received the leadership of all partisan forces. Menahem then led a resumed offensive against the 3rd Gallica legionaries holding out at Herod’s Palace.

After King Agrippa’s troops made an agreement with the partisans and withdrew, the men of the 3rd Gallica were on their own. Soon, with his men out of food, water and ammunition, the senior Roman centurion, Metilius, offered to capitulate if his life and the lives of his legionaries could be saved. The rebels agreed, on condition that the Romans left the palace and disarmed. To seal the agreement, both sides exchanged oaths. Shortly after, the surviving Roman soldiers, probably around 200 of them, emerged from the palace and laid down their weapons. Partisan leader Eleazar then gave a signal, and his men fell on the unarmed Romans and slaughtered them. One Roman was spared, centurion Metilius, who begged for his life and swore to convert to Judaism and submit to circumcision.

Men of the 3rd Gallica garrisoning the fortress at Cypros near Jericho were also caught off guard and exterminated by the partisans. But the 3rd Gallica cohort stationed at the fortress of Machaerus, to the east of the Dead Sea, was prepared for the Jews who surrounded their outpost. The partisans therefore agreed to let these legionaries depart in peace if they surrendered the fortress. Fully armed still, this cohort managed to reach Caesarea intact. By August, most of Judea had been lost, with 1,500 men of the 3rd Gallica Legion killed.

A Roman counter-offensive was inevitable. After three months’ preparation, Syria’s governor, Cestius Gallus, departed from Antioch to terminate the revolt. According to Josephus, Gallus marched south with the 12th Fulminata Legion and four cohorts from each of “the others,” meaning the other legions stationed in Syria: the 4th Scythica at Zeugma, the 6th Ferrata at Raphanaea and the 10th Fretensis at Cyrrhus. On reaching Caesarea, Gallus would also have added four surviving cohorts of the 3rd Gallica to his force, which also included six auxiliary cohorts and four cavalry wings. King Agrippa of Chalcis joined him with 3,000 foot and 1,000 cavalry. King Antiochus of Commagene sent him 2,000 cavalry, 3,000 foot soldiers and 3,000 archers, and Sohemus, king of Emesa, brought 4,000 men, a mixture of cavalry and foot archers. [Jos.,
JW
, 2, 18, 9]

After securing Galilee and destroying the Jewish city of Jotapata, Gallus’ army climbed up into the Judean Hills and reached Jerusalem in November
AD
66. But after a half-hearted, five-day assault on the city, Gallus unaccountably pulled out his force. On the Beth-Horon road, retreating to the coast, his troops were constantly harassed by the partisans. In this embattled retreat, with fighting going on for days and with 400 Roman volunteers sacrificing their lives at a Beth-Horon village to
give the army time to escape, the eagle of the 12th Fulminata Legion was lost to the partisans. Gallus’ failed mission cost 5,680 men. He himself died shortly after. And the Jews still controlled much of Judea.

AD
67–69
XXIII. VESPASIAN TAKES COMMAND
Rolling back revolt

In December
AD
66, Nero, who was then in Greece, appointed Titus Flavius Vespasianus to lead a new counter-offensive against the Jewish rebels. The 57-year-old Vespasian, renowned as commander of the 2nd Augusta Legion during the invasion of Britain twenty-four years earlier, left the imperial party in Greece and hurried away to put together a task force. At the same time, he sent his eldest son Titus, then a tribune, to Egypt to bring him troops stationed there. At Ptolemais in southern Syria, Vespasian assembled 60,000 men. Ignoring most of the troops involved in Gallus’ morale-sapping venture, Vespasian based his force around the 5th Macedonica and 15th Apollinaris legions from Egypt, the Syrian-based 10th Fretensis Legion and the 3rd Gallica’s remaining cohorts. The same kings who had supported Gallus’ failed expedition also contributed to Vespasian’s army, with Malchus, king of Arabia, also supplying 2,000 cavalry and infantry. [Jos.,
JW
, 3, 4, 2]

It took until June
AD
67 before Vespasian’s army had completed preparations and was marching into Galilee, where the Jewish defenders were led by 30-year-old priest Josephus, the later historian who would write the story of the Jewish Revolt. After the walled town of Gabara swiftly fell, the Roman force swung south and marched on Jotapata. After a grueling forty-seven-day siege, it too fell, and Josephus, one of 1,200 survivors, surrendered to Vespasian and changed sides. A total of 40,000 Jews had died in the Jotapata siege. [Ibid., 3, 7, 36]

When Jewish forces regrouped in Galilee in August, Vespasian, who had sent his legions into winter camp, led them out again to do battle. The city of Tiberias, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, swiftly surrendered, and Vespasian’s son Titus led a cavalry force which took Tarichaeae on the southern shore. Vespasian then marched on Gamala, a Jewish city in dry inhospitable territory near Al-Karak in present-day Jordan. With the town built into a hillside, its buildings sat almost
on top of each other up the slope. Three massive Roman battering rams went to work on the walls of Gamala, and after weeks of effort all three broke through at the same time.

The legions stormed through the breaches, but in the narrow hill-town streets partisans charged back down the slope and halted the advance in its tracks. As legionaries attempted to clamber over rooftops, houses collapsed under them, and Romans were buried in the rubble. Several nights later, Titus led a party which crept over the town wall and opened the way for a full-scale assault, and Gamala was taken. It now being December
AD
67, the legions were again sent into winter camp.

In the spring of
AD
68, the Palatium transferred the surviving men of the 3rd Gallica Legion out of Vespasian’s army. These Syrian 3rd Gallica legionaries had been at the forefront of Vespasian’s offensive as they strove to wreak revenge on the Jews for the deaths of their comrades at the revolt’s outset. As the mauled 3rd Gallica went marching away to a new station in the province of Moesia in Europe, the remainder of Vespasian’s army resumed the offensive against the Jews.

The 10th Fretensis Legion advanced down the banks of the Jordan, taking Jericho in May. Not far from the Jewish monastery of Qumran, the curious Vespasian tested the Dead Sea’s famed buoyancy by having Jewish prisoners thrown in; they floated. In 1947, the now famous Dead Sea Scrolls were found, located in eleven caves behind the ruins of Qumran, hidden there during Vespasian’s offensive. It was only June, but Vespasian ordered a halt to operations. In Rome, Nero’s rule was increasingly shaky. In Spain the governor, Sulpicius Galba, was raising the new 7th Galbiana Legion and planning to march to Italy to take Nero’s throne, having written to all provincial governors and Vespasian seeking their support.

For the moment, Vespasian suspended his offensive. Until the political air cleared, and with Jerusalem, the last major target in the Roman offensive, still in rebel hands,
Vespasian’s legions went into camp: the 10th Fretensis at Jericho, the 5th Macedonica at Emmaus in the Judean Hills and the 15th Apollinaris at Caesarea. A year later, Vespasian’s legions still had not moved.

AD
69
XXIV. THE ROXOLANI BATTLE
3rd Gallica’s greatest victory

Snow was still on the ground in Moesia in February when “To Arms” was trumpeted throughout the Danube camp of the 3rd Gallica Legion. The legion, which had been at its new posting for less than a year, was ordered to march at once. Led by their legate Fulvius Aurelius, the 3rd Gallica hurried to intercept a force of many thousands of Sarmatian cavalry from the Roxolani tribe that had crossed the frozen Danube to raid northern Moesia. To counter the Roxolani, both the 3rd Gallica and 8th Augusta legions had been ordered out by Moesia’s governor, Marcus Aponius Saturninus.

The 3rd Gallica, several cohorts down after being savaged in the Jewish Revolt in Judea, would have been keen to spill some blood after being transferred away from Vespasian’s command. Their Sarmatian opponents were from the Volga river. Natural horsemen who originated in Asia and migrated to the Ural Mountains from today’s Iran, the Sarmatian tribes had overwhelmed the Scythians, the original
inhabitants, to control what is today southern European Russia. Fierce fighters, Sarmatians wore fish-scale body armor and conical helmets, and used long lances and bows but not shields. The sword of the Roxolani Sarmatians was so long that it was worn in a scabbard strapped to the back and was drawn, two-handed, over the shoulder.

Roman cavalry scouts located the Roxolani camp; on ice-covered ground, it extended over a wide plain close to frozen marshes. The Roxolani built no defensive camps. Their hundreds of wagons spread across the landscape, with their thousands of horses tethered in groups. The 3rd Gallica camped some distance away, and lit no fires. Rather than wait to be joined by the 8th Augusta, legion commander Aurelius decided to attack at dawn while he had the element of surprise.

Come morning, with mist overlying the silent countryside, the men of the 3rd Gallica silently moved into position. The mist had risen when Roman trumpets sounded “Charge.” The Sarmatians, with no sentries, were caught entirely off guard. Desperately they tried to pull on their armor, to saddle their horses, to mount and to fight. Tacitus said of Sarmatian cavalry: “When they charge in squadrons, scarcely any infantry line can stand against them.” [Tac.,
H
,
I
, 79] But the Roxolani had no chance to mount a charge. Legionaries employed their javelins as lances, and used their shields to knock heavily armored opponents off their feet, then quickly dispatched them with the sword. The Roxolani were, says Tacitus, virtually defenseless once knocked to the ground, as the weight of their armor made it difficult to rise again. [Ibid.]

Those Roxolani able to mount found their horses slipping under them on the icy ground. With Roman troops pressing in, the long Sarmatian lances were useless. Many Roxolani were hauled bodily from the backs of their horses and thrown to the ground. And once brought down, the Sarmatians’ courage vanished. “No soldiers could show so little spirit when fighting on foot,” said Tacitus of them. [Ibid.]

A handful of wounded Sarmatians escaped to the marshes, only to freeze to death overnight. Every last member of the Roxolani force was killed—9,000 men. The 3rd Gallica’s losses were not even worth counting. For this victory, commanders Aurelius of the 3rd Gallica, Tettius Julianus of the 7th Claudia and Numisius Lupus of the 8th Augusta were all awarded purple consular ensigns by the Palatium, while provincial governor Aponius was awarded Triumphal Decorations.

AD
69
XXV. YEAR OF THE FOUR EMPERORS
Legion versus legion

“A year … which well nigh brought the commonwealth to an end.”

T
ACITUS
,
Histories
,
I
, 11

From the moment that 70-year-old Emperor Galba was assassinated in the Forum by a legionary named Camurius from the 15th Apollinaris Legion, on January 15,
AD
69, Rome was destined for a year of turmoil.

Even as Galba’s successor Otho was being hailed emperor by the Praetorian Guard at Rome, the legions on the Rhine were preparing to march on the capital to install their choice for emperor, Aulus Vitellius, governor of Upper Germany, on the throne. Three separate task forces marched for Italy in Vitellius’ name. From the Rhine came vexillations of between four and six cohorts from each of the 1st Germanica, 4th Macedonica, 5th Alaudae and 15th Primigeneia legions, as well as the entire but under-strength 21st Rapax Legion. From Lugdunum in Gaul came the Italian recruits of the recently created 1st Italica Legion. With these legionaries came as many auxiliaries, so that 75,000 men marched into Italy at the beginning of April, bent on dethroning Otho.

On April 14, these units clashed with an army taken north from Rome by Otho, at Bedriacum, above the Po river in Italy’s central north. Otho’s army, commanded by his brother Sextus, comprised cohorts of the Praetorian Guard, the newly formed 1st Adiutrix Legion, the Evocati militia, plus several cohorts from the 13th Gemina and 14th Gemina legions which had just marched all the way from Pannonia.

In the battle, Otho’s 1st Adiutrix seized the eagle of the 21st Rapax, only for the Rapax to regroup and overrun the Adiutrix’s youngsters and kill their general.
Otho’s 13th Gemina gave way to a charge by the 5th Alaudae, exposing the famous 14th Gemina, which had triumphed over Boudicca but which was now surrounded and forced to fight its way back to the Othonian camp. Otho’s army negotiated a surrender, and Otho committed suicide. Once Vitellius’ generals had secured victory, he himself came down from the Rhine, in July entering Rome and taking the throne. But he soon learned that this very same month the legions in the East had hailed their commander-in-chief, Vespasian, as their emperor.