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Thread: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

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    SeniorBatavianHorse's Avatar Tribunus Vacans
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    Default [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

    This is an AAR which will follow several scattered units and their commanders as they are slowly drawn into the Persian invasion launched by the Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus around 366 AD.

    The mod is Imperium Julianorum v3 found here

    I will be playing H/H and will adhere to the following rules:

    I will never autoresolve.

    I will be playing 4 tpy.

    I will only re-play if and when the result fatally compromises the AAR and then only for no more than 3 attempts. The third attempt will always stand for the will of the gods.

    I will play character traits as best I can given the overall strategic aims.


    As everyone knows (!), Julians' attempt to invade the Sassanian lands ended in tragedy but now this mods allows another attempt and hopefully will see a reborn pagan Roman Empire emerge instead!

    The background to the enduring conflicts between Rome and Persia may be read here as this will give you, my esteemed reader, some grounding into why two ancient superpowers remained locked in conflict for so long.

    But first, let us meet an author who's work we remain indebted to:

    The End Of The Line

    By

    Prof. Edward Charlton

    Introduced by Escher and Holbein


    Over the last twenty years or so, the rise of the social history of war has now become firmly entrenched in historical and archaeological circles. Ground-breaking works such as Carlton’s Going To The Wars and Marshall’s seminal Men Against Fire have allowed a whole host of other works to entrench themselves in academic circles to the extent now that it is almost impossible to conceive of studying war without taking into account the experiences of the men on the ground. In a field where such voices remain recorded long after the conflict is over, it is relatively easy to amass and study the diaries and reports from these soldiers and low ranking officers and place them against the strategical views of the politicians and generals who dictated the war and the battles. However, in more distant eras such voices are at best provisional or at worst absent and much of the research is therefore circumstantial or imagined. Prof. Charlton’s work however, while painstaking and lengthy, goes some way to redress this issue and it is with pleasure that we here cite in full his ground-breaking study on the impact of battle on the soldiers and officers of the later Roman army – in this case, troops from the Eastern provinces during the Sassanian Wars under the reign of Flavius Claudius Julianus.

    His paper – introduced last year at the Vienna Dominate Conference 2008 – rightly caused a stir and has now seen a swell of social historians brave distant waters to unearth and record the ‘little voices’ of war in the Roman period. Prof. Charlton spent the better part of twenty years in Iraq, Iran and the Kurdish highlands, often in very dangerous circumstances, involved in archaeological digs and also archival work at the Antioch UNESCO Site, once the administrative capital of the diocese of the Oriens. Charlton had amassed some forty five documents and inscriptions (many previously unseen) relating to army units deployed in and around the East during the years 366 AD onwards, when the fighting was most bitter. These range from papyrus fragments, epistles, inscriptions to faded-out graffiti. What emerged was a startlingly detailed account of some of the units stationed in the East of the Roman Empire and their fate in the face of the Sassanian Wars of Shapur, the Shahanshah of the Persian Empire. The stir such a paper caused is justly famous and it is with some pride that we publish now for the first time his paper in full.

    Introduction

    Corbulo, Praefectus, drills his men like a lazy Aegyptian eunuch.

    I still remember over twenty years ago stumbling over that graffito in rough vulgar Latin. It was inscribed on a pottery shard unearthed from Dig No 17a at the Antioch UNESCO site back in a hazy Summer. It was one of a number of pottery shards which had been recycled as writing surfaces and probably circulated among the low-level tenements which serviced off-duty soldiers and adventurers in this decadent and volatile region of the Roman Empire. The terse humour captivated me and without realising propelled me on a life-long quest to track and record these ‘little voices’ which History in its grand epic often ignores. And so I fell away from Tacitus and Ammianus and Procopius and took up residence with a hundred other names all minor and insignificant and found in their rough humour and laconic comments another Rome, a darker and less civilised Rome, which paradoxically seemed much closer to our own world now with its cynical mores and lax moral attitudes. These were real men (and women – yes, the reader may be surprised to read later) who did not act out the fine passions of Homer or Virgil; or embody the upright ethics of Cicero or Marcus Aurelius – but instead lived a rough-and-tumbled world where everyday concerns revolved around pay, equipment, loved ones, relatives and the petty laws of discipline and taxes. These were names which bore Syrian, Persian, Greek, Coptic and Saracen antecedents and where Latin remained an imposed language, steeped in officialdom and legalese.

    To say, I was drawn into this world would be an understatement. Little did I realise, as I embarked on that research project twenty years ago, just how many stories were to emerge in this underbelly of Roman history but in time I came to know these names better than some of my own colleagues here in the University of Glasgow.

    And as for Corbulo, that lazy officer, whose graffito started me off so many years ago, I will only say now that had those words been the only testament to his remote character then History herself would have bowed her head in shame . . .



    Last edited by SeniorBatavianHorse; July 02, 2009 at 11:26 AM. Reason: spelling - duh

  2. #2

    Default Re: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

    good cant wait for this



  3. #3

    Default Re: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

    Interesting. I always enjoy your scholar's point of view.

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    Julianus Flavius's Avatar Campidoctor
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    Default Re: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

    Your AAR's are always really good, will be looking forward to updates!
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    What have the Romans ever done for us?? apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?
    Some of my favourite quotes:
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    ~ Hypatia, as represented in the film 'Agora'

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    julianus heraclius's Avatar The Philosopher King
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    Default Re: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

    Oh! at last I say. Great news SBH. I will follow this with great anticipation.

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    Default Re: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

    YES!!! Are you going to take better care of u're cities than in The Lost Expedition? It would be nice if Flavius Claudius Julianus have something to return to, after his (hopefully) succesfull campaign.
    "Retreat? We're just advancing in another direction!"

    "Woe to the vanquished" Brennus


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    SeniorBatavianHorse's Avatar Tribunus Vacans
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    Default Re: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

    We'll see, Warburg! I am playing the whole main 361 AD Campaign but focussing only on the Persian invasion to keep the AAR focused! At the moment, the treasury is amassing over 20,000 solidi per turn which is quite healthy for the late period . . . Thanks for the encouragement, everyone. I will be updating this evening or for certain tomorrow evening when Corbulo and his command make their first appearance in the fragments uncovered by Prof Edward Charlton.
    Last edited by SeniorBatavianHorse; July 04, 2009 at 11:40 AM.

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    Default Re: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line




    Callinicum and the Constant Flavians

    The dusty frontier fortress town of Callinicum, a few days’ march from Edessa to the west, provides an unlikely gateway into our Corbulo but it is in the museum here back in 1989 that I was able to examine in some detail surviving papyri from a legio’s headquarters building. Although Corbulo himself is not mentioned, the epistles themselves – remarkably preserved in the arid Mesopotamian heat – were written all in one hand and detail at some tedious length the regular daily routine of a Roman legion relegated to patroling caravan routes and maintaining customs posts along the ancient roads of this part of the Empire.



    We are sometime in early Spring of 366 AD. War with Persia has been rumbling on for a few years but no actual hostilities has broken out. The Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus has moved a sizeable portion of the army of the Oriens out of the interior cities and towns and is re-grouping them in various detachments along the limes – the frontier zone which marks the border between Rome and Persia. Whether this is all a diplomatic bluff or preparation for an imminent invasion remains a heated topic of debate in the local tavernae and lupinarae of all the towns in the Diocese of the Oriens, from Antioch herself to Edessa, Damascus, Amida and even down to Callinicum and the nameless oasis villages strung out deep into the arid tracts. Certainly, the papyri fragments recovered in Callinicum itself remain dry and interested only in assessing provisions, detailing guard patrols and notating what troopers were fit for duty and what ones were on assignment outwith the town itself.

    Details typical of any army in any period and which would not be out of place in the regimental headquarters of a field camp in Flanders or Harfleur or even Khandahar in Afghanistan.





    This is the daily world of the Secunda Flavia Constantia Thebaeorum, a field army legion, long since sundered from its parent legion in Aegypt and now under the operational command of Antiochus, the Magister Equitum et Pedites Orientum, a stolid and career-orientated Roman from Palestine. The ‘Second Reliable Flavian from Thebes’ – to anglicise its Latin regimental title – is not, as can been seen from the papyri, a frontline legio as its parent legion once had been and is clearly operating now more as a border police force: gathering taxes, hunting down inept bandits, and generally patrolling the ill-defined desert limes. What makes all this interesting however is not the mundane and somewhat regurgitated litany of details in the papyri of the Second Flavians but the fact that the hand writing in all these reports is clearly by the same hand which wrote the graffiti on the pottery shard about Corbulo . . .

    . . .Prima Cohortes and Secundae Cohortes remain understrengthed and in need of essential provisions in this the Consulship of Julianus and Antiochus, the sixth year since our mighty dominus assumed the Purple. Eight men remain missing from the lists. Three legionaries are under the care of the medicus. One died of the flux a week ago. Fifteen men are on authorised leave to Antioch – may the gods bless them – and we still have no Praepositus to make the sacrifices and raise the auguries for the divine goodwill of our new Imperator. The Curiales of Callinicum resist as ever their requisite hospitality and have lodged several claims for property damage and theft. Tertia Cohortales remain ever vigilant and swift as the guardians of the Second Flavians . . .

    What do we learn from this fragment alone? As ever the local population resents the billeting of the legion within its walls despite the protection such a force will provide; the Legion is without a commanding officer and has been for some time; it consists of three cohorts although we should be wary of equating Late Roman cohorts with the same unit descriptor or size under the early and middle Imperial periods; and that two of the three cohorts are lacking in manpower.

    . . . The Nones of Aprilis passed with ferocious sand storms and the river broke its bank to flood the main forum of Callinicum. The men of the Legion assisted with repairs and celebrated with a ceremonial sacrifice of a bull in the Mithraic manner. The Curiales of the town presented watered down wine. Violence ensued. Two legionaries were placed under the care of the medicus. Nine men of Callinicum suffered broken limbs. In punishment, all Cohortales were ordered on a ten day march into the Analaean Plain south of the town and suffered the flies and thirst of Roman disciplina . . . The Bishop of Callinicum was banished together with his pregnant servant. The statues of the gods were anointed with laurels and wine, of the unwatered sort . . .

    Religious tensions, civilian against soldier, the drudgery of manual labour, sporadic violence, celebrations – in other words, typical life in a frontier town on the edge of Empire . . .







  9. #9

    Default Re: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

    An interesting update. I'd like to see where this legion goes.

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    Default Re: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

    A Drudgery Ended

    The Secunda Flavia Constantia Thebaeorum legio is listed as one of several legions and vexillations under the diocesan command of Antiochus, the Magister Equitum per Pedites Orientum. These included ten cavalry vexillations, 9 field army legions, of which the Second is one, plus various unnamed milites and numeri. This was the main mobile army stationed in and around the cities of Syria and remained distinct from the border limitanei troops under the regional commanders – the Dux Mesopotamiae, the Dux Armeniae and the Dux Arabiae, all three of whom commanded various units of local cavalry, indigenous nomads and the strung-out garrisons of the ancient legions raised back in the time of Augustus and onwards. The principle ones being the First and Second Parthica, the Fifteenth Apollinaris, the Twelfth Fulminata, the First Pontica, the Third Cyrenaica and finally the Fifth Martia. These latter remained under the frontier commands of the Duces and could only be called upon to aid the Magister, Antiochus, under the express orders of the Emperor himself.



    What we see, then, in the Second Flavians is a field army legion of three ‘cohorts’ detached some years earlier from its parent legion of Aegypt and renamed as part of the operational command of the main field army in the East. Fragments of lists and food requisitions remind us that the Second Flavians can muster barely some six hundred legionaries in three units named perhaps anachronistically as Cohortales but in essence being equivalent to the Late Roman ‘ordo’ or unit which held a paper strength of some two hundred men. The First and Second cohort mustered as front-line troops while the Third cohort was filled with specialised slingers or funditores and would act as skirmishers in the battle-line or escorts on the march.



    The month of April was memorable not just for the arrival of the storms and the river-flooding but also for the appearance of a troop of Saraceni cavalry, arriving towards the end of the month with sealed orders from the officia of Antiochus. These rugged and olive-skinned nomads from deep in the arid tracts beyond Palestine and Arabia bear no Roman military ceremonial and present only savage faces as they ride into the main (now rebuilt) forum of Callinicum. Their Praepositus, an Arab with the nominal Latin name of Flavianus, recorded his arrival in a disdainful letter sent back to his father, a retired merchant now living in Petra. It is worth quoting at some length for the light it shines on Callinicum –

    What is Rome, father, if all she presents now are no more than lazy soldiers in dull armour and faded crests? This little dusty town here where Roman and Persian names glide through the deserts like phantoms lost and confused shows little spirit or mettle, I swear. My Saraceni rode like demons through the night and as we thundered into the forum of this town we roused only sleepy eyes or bored looks. The guards at the main gate were drunk as the morning sun rose and we were past them before they had even donned helmets and reached for their long kontos spears. This town of Rome seems wrapped in a dream. A wisp of glory fading even as it is reached for. I know you fought for Rome for many years and sing of the glory of fighting under Diocletian but, father, I do not see this glory you mention. I see only thin men in rusty armour and whose standards and banners seem as faded as this hymn of Rome itself. I know you urged me to seek service with this new Emperor in his war against Shapur, the Sassanid dog, especially after his armoured nobles savaged our oasis home last year, but I wonder now whether I have brought my desert-brothers here to fight only for a dying Empire too wrapped up in its past to forge a new future? I am your loyal son, father, and will honour my pledge to you no matter what. Remember this: we will fight for Rome to revenge our fallen, no matter how dull and old the camel of Rome is now – Flavianus, once Naba, of the tribe of Aezanaba.

    A terse entry a day later reports the Roman attitude to the new arrivals:

    A cuneus of Saraceni foederati arrived commanded by the Praepositus, Flavianus. Sealed orders were presented and opened under the standards of the legio and in the presence of the Primicerius, Strabonius, and the three Ducenarii commanding the Cohortales. It was a struggle to understand Flavianus’ Latin.





    No record remains of exactly why the nomad federates had been posted to Callinicum but given the huge logistical re-ordering of troops and supplies all across the Diocese of the Oriens to counter the Persian threat of invasion, even if only as a bluff, it is probable that these mercenaries were relocating further towards the limes. An interesting tension builds up as the lack of a commanding officer for the legion, now filled by the Primicerius, Strabonius, the second-in-command, means that technically, Flavianus, as Praepositus of the Saracens, outranks all other Roman officers in the town.

    Five amphorae of wine requisitioned by the Saraceni foederati under express orders of Flavianus. None left for the Second Flavians . . .

    Flavianus reprieves an Anatolian merchant from flogging by the Ducenarius, Maxentius, of the Prima Cohortales. Much olives and honey is lavished upon him . . .

    The Saraceni foederati excused from deep patrol of the Analaean Plain due to religious rites. Twelve later arrested for drunken behaviour . . .

    This tension was only to get worse as the months progressed.
    Last edited by SeniorBatavianHorse; July 04, 2009 at 02:12 PM.

  11. #11

    Default Re: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

    Beautiful writing. The disappointment in the soldier's voice when discussing the sad state of Rome was palpable indeed.

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    Legio's Avatar EMPRESS OF ALL THINGS
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    Default Re: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

    I will definitely be following this, your AARs are all a treat!

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    Gen.jamesWolfe's Avatar Vicarius
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    Default Re: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

    interesting. a barbaria-I mean roman AAR.

    I've subscribed to this thread
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    Edward lV's Avatar Campidoctor
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    Default Re: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

    Hopefuly this will be as good as at the limes. Definatly on the way to it.

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    SeniorBatavianHorse's Avatar Tribunus Vacans
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    Default Re: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

    Thanks for the comments, guys - as for a barbarian AAR, expect some insight from the Sassanian side soon as Prof Charlton incorporates a multitude of eye-witness reports: Roman, Saracen, Persian and various other groups all sucked into the Great War between Julian and Shapur II.

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    Default Re: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

    The Mosaic Gathers

    The month of Aprilis then brought only an increased tension among the soldiers of the Second Flavians as they shared their billets and supplies with a small cavalry troop of Saracen federates. Reports sent back to the officia of the Magister of the Diocese, Antiochus, allude to the indiscipline of the desert riders under Flavianus and their continual dereliction of duty. Fights occur. Supplies are requisitioned unfairly. Billets are taken against the wishes of the soldiers. All sealed with the orders of the Saracen Praepositus against whom the legion can only muster a second-in-command, the Primicerius, Strabonius. It would seem that this Saracen commander, Flavianus once called Naba, was also skilled in enlisting the townsfolk of Callinicum against the men of the Second for we have a solitary epistle from one Ennadius, a Decurion of the town, who writes to his brother in Antioch, praising the newly-arrived federates over the incumbent men of the field army legion:

    . . . And what prayers have been answered, my Florentius, that brought such doughty fighters into our desert town? What offerings pleased the gods to bring such fierce fellows into our walls to provide for our defence in these uncertain times? Truly the Emperor is blessed to have such men under his Imperial standards!

    While the reports from the legion filter back to the capitol of the Diocese to complain about the behaviour of the Saracens, Nabo has already wooed the townsfolk of Callinicum and turned them against the legionaries. We must remember however that all this ill-will results not from genuine mistrust between Saracen and Roman but a broken military hierarchy which allows the federate allies of the Empire to usurp the Legion’s status in Callinicum.

    One report – again written in the same hand which apparently wrote the graffiti – sums it up nicely:

    . . . These ‘inconstant’ Saraceni roll through the town as if they owned it, overriding the soldiers of the Second Flavians like a wind blowing rubbish about. What can the legion do if there is no head to guide and order it? The Primicerius, Strabonius, knows he is merely an incumbent with no power while the three Ducenarii in command of the Cohortales bicker amongst each other like Gallic fishwives. What is a legion with no Tribune over it? What is an Empire with no Augustus to rule it? Plant a head upon us that we may raise our eyes to our standards once more, illustrious Magister . . .

    The unspoken question which has been hovering in the background regarding this legion must always be what exactly occurred to deprive it of its commanding officer such that no replacement was found? What happened to leave the Second Flavians languishing in Callinicum in a time of imminent invasion leaderless?

    We have two pieces of the puzzle already in place: namely, the graffito found at Antioch besmirching a certain Corbulo and the reports from the principia of the Legion at Callinicum written in the same hand. We can deduce that the Second Flavians were hardly front-line crack troops, given that the Emperor was already mobilising several field army regiments across the Diocese into potential jumping off points around Carrhae and Nisibis and the Second were not among them (as yet) and that a small Arab cavalry force was able to bully them around. We can also surmise that the administrative officers of the Second (among whom was our graffiti writer) were desperate to receive a new commander only to be rebuffed time and again.

    For the remaining piece of the puzzle, let us move north and west some one hundred Roman miles, across the dusty roads of the province of Osroene, towards the remote villas and farmlands east of Edessa, that ancient city which held a letter and a portrait of Jesus, together with the body of Thomas the Apostle himself. Here, amid all the turmoil of an Imperial army following in the wake of its Emperor and his personal guard, we find a small elite legion marching along the obscure paths eastwards. It marches in full regalia not along the main Roman road east to Nisibis and Carrhae but instead along mountain paths and goat-tracks and dry, dusty, riverbeds away from the small oasis villages and fortified villas. It marches with discipline and order and it marches in newly-minted armour and weapons from the state Fabrica at Edessa itself.

    This legion is the Armatus Invicti Julianus Legio and is enrolled under the Lists of the Notitia Dignitatum as a Palatine Legion or legion of the highest grade attendant upon the personal presence of the Emperor himself. We know from surviving lists that upon his accession Julian enrolled several new elite legions under his name using men enlisted form the crack regiments which had fought under him in Gaul against the Germanic barbarians. As a condition of his election or usurpation against Constantius II was not to remove the field army legions in Gaul east to fight in a Persian war, we can deduce that Julian instead sought volunteers and enrolled them in new formations. This Armatus Invicti Julianus was one such legion – the Invincible Armoured Julians.







    Being a newly-formed Legio Palatinae, all outfitted in the best weapons and armour the state factories could manufacture, it may be asked what it was doing marching in the dusty hinterland of the province of Osroene – a march surely calculated to add several days on to its itinerary in an atmosphere where speed and dispatch would seem to be of critical importance. The answer may be found in the following report from a Biarchus, or second-in-command, of the Secunda Ordo, to the presiding Tribune of the legion:

    . . . The men weary under the desert heat and the desert sun, Tribune. Of that there can be no doubt. Of the ranks in the Secunda Ordo, under the Ducenarius, Callimachus, scarcely one hundred and sixty men remain at the standards. This long march in the fringes of this province bakes the men and causes them to falter like colonii in the fields after a drought. The riding crop of the Ducenarius is needed each mile to force them on and not one among this ordo has ever laboured under such heat before. Truly we lament the soft stars of a Gallic sky and the sighing waters of the Liger and the Rhine in this empty iron land . . .

    These men, all born in the green and verdant lands of Gaul, are being inured to the desert lands of the orient and learning again what it is to march and fight in bright armour under a molten sun. There are no German barbarians hiding in dank woods and forests now, glowering at them from within deep shadows but olive-skinned horse-archers on fleet ponies instead. These men of the Armatus Invicti Julianus are being re-trained methodically in desert-warfare by a stern and rigid task-master who is broking no soft quick route to the staging posts ahead under Julian.







    That solitary report from the Biarchus of the Second Ordo is addressed none other than the Tribune of the Legion – Corbulo himself . . .



  17. #17

    Default Re: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

    Most interesting. What complications, I wonder, will this legion undergo?

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    Default Re: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

    Quote Originally Posted by Antiochos VII Sidetes View Post
    Most interesting. What complications, I wonder, will this legion undergo?
    I fear that the barbar-I mean roman troops will roast in their armor. they are too cowardly hiding in that armor to fight in the deserts of the occident
    I haz a culler!! (really, who gives a darn? its totally meaningless, and it doesn't really accurately reflect who I am)


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    SeniorBatavianHorse's Avatar Tribunus Vacans
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    Default Re: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line



    The Inheritance of Discipline


    Corbulo was not his real name, of course, and therein lies most of the mystery surrounding his character and the cryptic graffiti found in Antioch in Dig No.17a. Flavius Anicius Olybrius, Tribune, commanding the Armatus Invicti Julianus Legio Palatinae, on route to Carrhae from Edessa in full marching order is referenced twice in relation to the Gallic-filled legion as ‘Corbulo’ rather than his usual title and name of Tribune Olybrius, and both references are not flattering:

    . . . ‘Corbulo’ suffers this heat as a hyena takes to rancid meat, I swear (from a fragment of a letter to a brother in Antioch) . . . Daily he struts around the men in full amour and wielding his officer’s riding crop without let. The Celts and Germans in the legio begrudge him not his fierce discipline and eye for detail but find his reverence for the old Romans gods and ways ill fitting now in this supine heat. Drink well of the wine amphorae, my brother, for here in the arid deserts we lick at best only our own sweat . . .

    Again, in a dispatch to the diocesan weapons-factory at Antioch, an unnamed legion subaltern mentions:

    . . . Our arms break and bend in this incessant drill. Pray amend our toils with fresh provender and urge the slaves and craftsmen of the Fabrica to work without let that we may re-arm and re-kit with all haste. This ‘Corbulo’ chaffs at all delays and enquires of me where the re-supplies are. His beetling brows, I swear, thunder like old Jupiter’s in a storm! Yours, ever felix, and faithful . . .

    Flavius Anicius Olybrius, a scion of the ancient gens of the Anicii in Rome, deeply pagan and at odds to the later Christian Emperors before Julian, rose from the Domestic Protectors to command first the Sixth Parthian Legion on the limes, then the Legio Funditores, or ‘Slingers’ before being re-assigned and fading from our scant records. Some years pass and he has resurfaced now as tribune in command of a Palatine Legion enroute to Carrhae and the jumping-off point for Julian’s invasion of Persia.

    This is obviously a tough soldier in the old mould of Rome, hence the derogatory nick-name of Corbulo, after Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, the legendary Roman general renowned for his discipline and unyielding loyalty to command. It is not inappropriate that the Armatus Invicti Julianus legion marches to battle under the eagle of Rome and to the battle-cry of ‘Axios, axios, axios!’ or ‘(he is) Worthy!’ in response to the commands of the Tribune – words which were also Corbulo’s fatal last to Nero when ordered to commit suicide.

    What, we wonder then, prompted the scandalous reference to him being nothing more than a lazy Aegyptian eunuch? The missing years from the lapse of his command of the Funditores, a lowly legion promoted from the border to field army status, give us a hint for those years correspond almost exactly with a gap in our records regarding the Second Flavians, toiling rudderless as it were now at Callinicum, and that single graffiti written by one of its headquarters officers. A sarcastic comment written in anger to mock a severe disciplinarian? A desperate attempt to besmirch his character, perhaps? Or a political ploy designed to stir up discontent in Antioch? We will never know but it is a fair assumption that prior to his appointment as Tribune of the Julians, Anicius Olybrius held command over the Second Flavians at Callinicum and that something happened which facilitated his removal with all haste and the disgrace of not replacing him. Whatever it was that happened, it left Olybrius in charge of a newly-formed elite legion named after the Emperor himself and a field army legion punished and left to languish in a rotting fortified town . . .

    One can only wonder perhaps on a possible assassination or attempted murder gone wrong in response to Anicius Olybrius perhaps uncovering some deep scandal or other. Suffice to say, our ‘Corbulo’ marches hotly towards his Emperor at the head of a shining legion now while the Secunda Flavia Constantia Thebaeorum chaffs under the despotism of some irregular Arabs . . .


    Last edited by SeniorBatavianHorse; July 08, 2009 at 12:10 PM.

  20. #20

    Default Re: [IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

    So very happy that you've started a new AAR!
    Every time you :wub:, god kills another kitten.
    If you're gonna hire Machete to kill the bad guy, you better make damn sure the bad guy isn't YOU!

    'I understand, and I take the light into my soul. I will become the spear of Khaine. Lightning flashes, blood falls, death pierces the darkness.' , Dhrykna.

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