[IJ3 AAR] The End Of The Line

[jermagon]

Excellent AAR, and it's very detailed go for victory pal +rep

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

The Staging Post of the Emperor

That long march through the remote deserts and barren by-ways of the province of Osroene is always towards the large walled town of Carrhae, once renowned as the fateful resting place of the legions under Crassus so many ages ago, where treachery and foolishness led to the defeat of several legions and the loss of Roman standards to Parthian horsemen not unlike the Sassanids who now ruled Mesopotamia. Carrhae, of the Crossroads, and the Moon god, Sin, still venerated by ascetic men and women in Julians’ time, Carrhae, that ancient city of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Achaemenids, the Macedonian Seleucids, and now the Romans, always known also as Harran, the place where the Orient and the Occident collided. It was here around Carrhae in the first months in the new year of the Consuls Julian and Antiochus that saw the main bulk of the army assemble under various officers, tribunes and comites in response to the war declared by Shapur a few years earlier.

We remain on the whole ignorant about Shapur’s larger strategic intention in declaring war against the Roman Empire under Julian. Academic consensus still tends to veer towards the Persian monarch putting pressure on a newly elected and still somewhat insecure Emperor in order to squeeze out better trade concessions and access to the vital provinces north and west of the Tigris river. Pure politics, in other words. Shapur’s war-like credentials had been well-established against the previous Emperor, Constantius II, especially with the sacking of Amida some years earlier, so therefore his emissaries were well prepared to bluff the young Julian into making concessions in order to secure his new Empire. If this was the case, then it back-fired spectacularly. Julian responded with martial vigour and one anecdote from the pen of Macrobius, a notary under the Magister Officiorum, reveals an interesting insight into Roman court intrigue at the time:

. . . The Augustus partook of a light evening repast in the manner of soldiers on campaign and received into his venerated presence the dignitaries from Persia, the land of the fleeting deserts and swift horses, and they, amazed at his casual dress, protested that it was not proper for a ruler of an Empire to sit upon a canvas stool and break bread. And the Augustus smiled at them and said in a soft manner as if teaching a child that he did not need more than was provided, and was not his Empire for the benefit not of he himself but of all his subjects under the largesse of the old gods? And as he ate only that which was needed so too did he rule all which was only fit to be his and not one province more. The Persians understood then by his manner that this Emperor in the old Roman austere ways would not grab more onto his plate than was fit nor surrender up from it one crumb that was not his. And so the Persians left, empty of stomach, as it were, and knew that war was brewing upon the horizons of Mesopotamia as surely as if Shapur himself had thrown the kontos . . .

Over a year passed without incident after the formal declaration of war by Shapur. Trade routes were closed and the great Silk Road was barred from Roman traders. Christians fleeing from Julian’s resurgent paganism fled eastwards into the dim and unknown lands of Persia and were accommodated into remote churches under Shapur’s benediction; a move calculated to inflame religious tensions inside the Empire. Various political overtures were made on both sides but always ended in stalemate: Shapur stood by his initial demand for higher trade taxes and the return of the lands around the upper Tigris. Julian responded with firm refusals and then began to assemble the main Roman field army in the Orient around Carrhae and its outlying towns and forts. By the end of March, in the year 366 AD, Carrhae had become a massive munitions and logistical base for the units of the army assembled by Julian. The bulk of the field army of the Oriens together with elements drawn from the two main field armies in Asia Minor and Greece were gradually brought together in and around Carrhae and further to the north around Nisibis. Our records remain scant as always but we know for certain that of the officers and units in attendance the following were present with Julian as March slid into April, the month which saw the Saraceni under Flavianus billeted at Callinicum with the Second Flavians even as Anicius Olybrius marched his palatine legion eastwards from Edessa through the long rough days towards Carrhae and the Emperor

-Aspar, a Syrian-Frankish Comes together with a guard escort of Domestic Protectors

-Antiochus, The Magister Equitum per Peditum Orientum, and overall commander of the Oriens field army

-A certain Comes Julius, under whose command is listed the Equites Primi Sagittarii among other units

-The Comes Numerius Flavius, commanding three border legions, the First, Third and Fourth Parthicae, along with foederati light troops from the hills and mountains of distant Corduene, the present day Kurdish lands from where the name originates

-Flavius Claudius Julianus himself along with the Herculiani and Joviani palatine legions, and the Equites Persae Clibanarii, a gift from the Armenian King, who fought in the Persian manner.

-A Comes Belisarius, under whose command lay the Lanciarii Seniores, a palatine legion, the Equites Tertio Dalmatae, and the Equites Catafractarii Ambianses









We can imagine many more units being assembled throughout these months but only the previous named units can attested with any degree of certainty prior to April in that year. From Antioch, Edessa, Amida, Damascus, and all over the Oriens, troops were being called to the standards and then marching eastwards to join their emperor. Elite palatine legions and vexillations, the main bulk of the field army, and even the border or limitanei troops were all being drafted into what Julian’s court panegyrics were now calling the Great War. Persian hostility and arrogance were being rebuked in harsh terms by Roman martial valour and strict discipline.

Except that it was all a bluff, of course. Julian had no intention of invading Persia. We know that only six years into his reign, the Empire was still riven with dissent as pagans and christians fought over their temples and rites, the old adherents of Constantius II remained troublesome in large areas of Africa and Hispania, and migrations of barbarian Iazyges and Quadi had recently breached the Danube limes to ransack Sirmium and other Roman towns. Julian’s empire was far from secure and needed time to stabilise which a massive Persian offensive would not give him. This mustering of Roman troops and vigour along the desert limes between Rome and the Sassanid lands, it has generally been agreed, was nothing more than a show of resolve to compliment the staged evening meal for the ambassadors.



However, Shapur the Second, conqueror of the Arab tribes of the Taghlib, the Bakr bin Wael, and the Abd Al-Qays, sacker of Amida, victorious over the eastern Xionites and whose King now accompanied him into war, was all too ready to seize the Roman bluff and give it a serious shaking . . .

Carrhae, that ancient forgotten city, dedicated to Sin, and Ningal, the Syrian goddess Atargatis and the Arabian goddess Allat, the place where east and west always collided, and which was now a giant hub of legions and vexillations, supplies and traders, court ceremony and harsh Roman discipline, was to see all this frenzy of chaotic activity rudely shattered.

Out of the shimmering haze and the distant sands arose a host of Sassanid steel like a mighty river pouring forth from a hot forge and at its head rose the gleaming banner of the Vuzurg Framandar, Fariel, and beneath its embroidered silk rode the feared Persian cataphracts shining like a host of stars . . .







Five days after the first sighting of the Sassanids pushing west towards the Euphrates river and Carrhae and the disorganised units under Julian, a dusty rider gallops under the main gate of Callinicum and tumbles from his mount to thrust hastily written orders into the hands of a surprised Primicerius. Strabonius finds scrawled in the wax of that tablet three simple Latin words:

March to Carrhae

It was that evening as both he and Flavianus, also known as Naba, of the Aezanaba, discussed that cryptic command that an old man emerged from the shadows under the portico of the headquarters building and introduced himself as Rumitalca, formerly a legion soldier:

Do legends ever die, my father, or do they blow forever like the south winds in the deserts near the Erythraean Sea, or shine ever distantly like the stars above our heads? Here in this little dusty and dying town, its walls all broken now not by enemies but by time, I have shuddered under the glow of the oil lamps and felt my blood freeze. There in a little shroud of dark, a man has come to us even as we read the command to march. An old man white with the frost of too many years and laced all over with too many scars. In his eyes lie wars and blood and death and in his voice echo the doom of too many men. He calls himself Rumitalca, surely a corruption of the ‘Italian Roman’? He came to us out of the shadows and wearing simple home-spun clothes and yet his fist grasped a staff of twisted vine and at his belt hung an old Roman sword – short and broad like a dagger. It caught my eye and he smiled mirthlessly at my gaze. He came to us even as I took the command from the hands of this thin Primicerius, Strabonius, and before I knew what was happening I had passed it to him without a second thought. His eyes glittered, father, like a wild eagle upon a high hunting wind and he called out the names of the Emperors he had fought under in all his long life: Maximian, Diocletian, Licinius, Constantine, and Constantius. He had stood under the standards of a dozen legions and travelled from the limes of Africa to the mist-shrouded banks of the Rhine. A wife and sons had brought him out of the army to settle here in Callinicum but disease had taken them away and now a fading god had whispered to him that an Emperor of Rome needed him once more. There he was wreathed in shadow like a legend and then Strabonius, that fool of a Primicerius, was begging him to take up the mantle of the Second Flavians – lead the men east into war and glory, he begged, put a head upon this corrupt and broken legion . . . I do not know if myths ever die, father, but I swear by the gods and spirits of the distant deserts that one emerged out of the night with the name of Rome upon his lips and an ancient sword at his waist . . .

The next morning, the Second Flavians together with the ala of Saraceni foederates left Callinicum to march north and then east over the Euphrates towards ill-fated Carrhae. Its final dispatch is a simple list of the men under its command and it is signed off by a certain Silvius Rumitalca, who styled himself anachronistically as ‘Praefectus Legionis’.

[Antiochos VII Sidetes]

Most interesting indeed! I wonder if your march to Ctesiphon will be rather more successful than Julian's was...

Also, I notice a gigantic amount of rebel activity within your empire, including Carthage, which is a prime moneymaker... Isn't that murdering your finances?

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

I just hope Julian can survive the surprise Persian assault upon Carrhae let alone march south and east down the Euphrates towards Ctesiphon! Finances-wise, I am clearing around 25,000 solidi a turn. The loss of the African cities is hurting but I have sacked the Caledonii towns, wiped out and sacked/occupied the Alemanni tribes, and the Quadi main settlement north of the Danube, and re-taken several rebelling Roman towns, sacking them only if Christian (!) to favour Julian's character. Carthage was a rebel Roman faction and then revolted from them to become a Free Peoples town so I am not too worried about re-taking it.

The real critical issue is the Great War with Shapur. I needed a few more years to stabilise the Empire before imitating Julian's advance into Persia. Shapur, alas, had other ideas! Now all the main Roman legions and vexillations in the Oriens are gravitating towards Carrhae and Nisibis. The rest of the Empire from the Danube eastwards is now vulnerable as a result and recruiting new units is taking too long (as it should be) . . .

[Antiochos VII Sidetes]

Sounds strategically interesting, if troubling. Best of luck, I suppose.

[julianus heraclius]

I agree with Antiochus. Just when you had plans, a bloke called Shapur ruins them. We'll be watching.

[Gäiten]

I agree with Antiochus. Just when you had plans, a bloke called Shapur ruins them. We'll be watching.

[Legio]

Great updates. I think I'll have to download IJ3.

[Antiochos VII Sidetes]

You certainly won't regret it!

[Juvenal]

There is a feeling of the forces of fate gathering for an apocalypse in the Syrian desert. I like your new fragmentary style. It gives us much scope for speculation and second-guessing before you finally join the strands with your narrative.

The IJ3 units are lovely things to behold, and the campaign map is also rather splendid where snow-covered mountains abruptly descend into soft yellow desert sands.

Congratulations on the build-up. We await the onset of Armageddon.

[Julianus Flavius]

Excellent as always. But I second Antiochos VII Sidetes, the loss of Carthage would have been most annoying. How is your money?

[Gen.jamesWolfe]

I agree with Antiochus. Just when you had plans, a bloke called Shapur ruins them. We'll be watching.

yeah, lets face it. shapur is an

this AAR is starting to become more intersting. looking forward to seeing how those tin cans adapt to the deserts of Al-nafud.

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

The money is not so good - about 26,000 per turn but I've only jut got back into the black so the Empire as a whole is woefully in disrepair. Armageddon in the desert? Surely not? I see a lovely picnic . . . IJ3 is a wonderful mod with gorgeous units and maps and one of the few which gives you the whole Roman Empire to start with. A fantastic challenge!

Paths That Converge Darkly

The Persian thrust out of the desert and across the Euphrates seems to have taken Julian by complete surprise. The silk banners and sun standards swept like avenging demons over the ill-prepared garrison forts leaving them untouched and plunged north and west into the dry tracts around Carrhae. As the end of Aprilis approached, and unending numbers of Roman troops and supplies accumulated in the regions around Carrhae, the last thing anyone expected, it seems, was a main Persian assault upon the Emperor himself. Chaos ensued as refugees tumbled backwards from the oncoming Persian mailed horsemen, bringing word of a seemingly endless river of flowing steel out of the desert. Light cavalry blown hither by the Persian storm rode into Carrhae daily with news that in the wake of the shimmering cavalry of Fariel there toiled massive siege engines and a host of miners, carpenters and masons, all eager to crack the walls of Carrhae itself and bring into the dust yet another Roman Emperor.



Both the pens of Ammianus and Zosimus paint Julian as a lightning tactician and a bold leader but it is to the faded pen of Magnus of Carrhae, a tribunus vacans, or unattached officer, who perhaps best illuminates these dramatic days as the month ends. His diary survives mainly in fragments preserved in the Byzantine Suda but it is worth quoting in sections for the light it sheds not perhaps on the grand strategical stage but instead, as with Ammianus, on the middle-level echelons of command and their response to this crisis:

. . . The Consistorium of the Augustus remained locked away in frantic talk far into the night while outside Carrhae bemoaned its fate like a sheep caught out in a storm. Southwards, torches and lamps flared far into the desert towards us in chaos while northwards more torches flared up only to recede away from us in haste. Some of my fellow officers commented upon the comic element of this while another, Servius, of Antioch, muttered that in time, as with Amida, we would not be finding things so amusing. He was right as I am sure the gods will bear witness. They say that the Persian barbarian is like a snake writhing in your grasp and that just when you think you have him where you want him you find that it is the tail and not the head which rests in your grip. Now the serpent of the Persians winds towards us and all our legions and vexillations lie scattered in staging posts and forts around Carrhae. Why does not Julian summon them to our aid instead of leaving them alone and separate out there? This ancient and some say cursed cit, which saw the doom of Crassus, cannot stand long against this oncoming Persian storm. My fellow Tribunes wait anxiously for word from out of the depths of the Consistorium but nothing comes. Wine, food, reports by the handful, enter but nothing ever seems to leave. Is the Augustus paralysed with fear, we wonder? Have the gods deserted us? Why will Flavius Claudius Julianus not summon the army to aid us?

Except of course, one legion had been summoned. Even as Magnus of Carrhae was penning his entries within a panic-stricken city, packed with refugees, The Second Flavians, barely some six hundred strong, in three cohorts, had crossed the Euphrates to march north up towards Carrhae, along with its accompanying ala of Saraceni cavalry. Two epistles survive from fleeing wealthy landowners to relatives back in Constantinople which record in some scant detail the passing of this disgraced legion. Nonae, a Christian Syrian, founder of the two monasteries in the province of Syria Secundae Salutaris, writes:

. . . And what of God’s will in this dusty land, I wonder? As the barbarians rampage through Osroene towards Carrhae and I must flee my beloved houses of God, I find only empty staging posts and abandoned oases. Even my female habiliments are no longer a guarantee of my safe conduct and my guards must now batter aside slaves and common folk who attempt to cling to our carriages as we travel west towards Antioch. We fear for our lives but I place my trust in God’s Will as always. Two days from Carrhae, we passed a poor sight indeed. Roman soldiers marching in haste and without respite back towards the ill-omened city. I have seen boys dressed up in war looking better, I swear. Where is the spirit of Rome now? Where are the shining eagles of Christ? Our Emperor seeks to revive the old gods and all that march to his standard now is a tired legion of wasted men. What hubris of this Julian! What nerve! I took pity on the men of the broken legion and bade my slaves to pass out what little honeyed wine I had left but some scarred officer, an ugly looking dog of a man in a faded military cloak, snapped at me and ordered my guards to pass on in haste. The nerve of the man! I can still see his face resting atop that old cloak like a roughly carved mask of wood, all chipped and knocked about. I swear he must have been a century old at least! I will pray for his soul and for the souls of all those legion soldiers even as they toil towards Carrhae . . .

Another epistle is equally unflattering about the Second Flavians:

. . . At the little trading post on the Euphrates known as Osettium, Roman soldiers commandeered all the barges and fishing boats to transport their men and horses and supplies over the great golden river. When a small group of traders begged for recompense for the loss of their trade, an officer, with ill-fitting words, scolded them out loud and told them to ask for coin from the Persian barbarians riding now out of the deserts of the Orient. The soldiers about him laughed at that but he lashed his tongue upon them also so that they crossed into the boats like sheep. This man stood upon the shore as the boats plied away into the deep currents and we thought that an old god had arisen from the past for he seemed to be as dusty and as dry as the land around us. One of us, Maxentio the Greek, approached him and asked where his men marched and he, all distant and aloof, muttered that they marched where all Roman soldiers marched, to death. We shivered to hear him speak so coldly about his men . . .

It is an irony of history, of course, that a mere twenty or so Roman miles away even as the Second Flavians cross the Euphrates to close in on Carrhae, the Tribune Anicius Olybrius, with the shining men of the Armatus Invicti Julianus are also approaching the city fully unaware of the impending disaster. Their circuitous route through the empty trails and tracks of Osroene have left them isolated and in ignorance about the wider scheme of things - so much so that Gallic and German veterans in its ranks are blissfully looking forward to arriving finally at Carrhae and its baths and wine-houses:

. . . The discipline of the Tribune Olybrius is stern yet even. We march steadfastly as we did under Julianus at Argentoratum and only now is the high sun finally bearable. Dust cakes everything. Our lips are parched. Our eyes full with sand and flies. The tramp of our feet raises only more dust to torment us. Carrhae beckons like a siren and we feel its nearness daily. The Ducenarii of the ordines do not crack their crops so much now and even our Tribune smiles a little, although there is little mirth in such a smile it must be said. This ‘Corbulo’ is stiff like a rod and not even the jokes of the Centenarii amuse him. Discipline is all. It is his god . . .

If History is a stage then it cannot come as too much of a surprise that it has its entrances and exits. And upon this stage named now as Carrhae, that city lost in an endless desert and fated to see battles litter its land like rain, amid all the confusion of retreating refugees and scouting cavalry, three long columns converge: the bedraggled line of the Secunda Flavia Constantia Thebaeorum, the tight ranks of the Armatus Invicti Julianus, and the Persian army of Fariel, the Vuzurg Framandar of Shapur the Second.







And of course if a stage exists at all it exists with a backdrop to frame it and this backdrop was none other than a violent sandstorm which swept over all the players even as they moved to collide.

[Antiochos VII Sidetes]

Hopefully the Invicti Julianus will put some backbone into these cowering Christians!

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

The Sands of Confusion

What history has subsequently named as the Siege of Carrhae began on the last day of Aprilis in the year 366 AD. As the last of the scouts and refugees dashed inside the old stone walls of Carrhae, the bright shining sun illuminated the endless banners of the Persian hosts emerging from out of the desert. Rank upon rank of shining Savaran cataphract cavalry all intermingled with the jostling hosts of the infantry and the trundling and groaning shapes of the siege engines, which towered over all like wooden golems. Dust shrouded their wake and a soft wind swept ahead of them like a herald. Overall rode the silk banner of Fariel, the Vuzurg Framandar of the Sassanid Empire, and favourite of Shapur the Second. Panic engulfed the citizens of Carrhae even as the old, iron-framed, gates were slammed shut and several ordines of sagittarii took up nervous positions along the main south-facing wall. Crowds still swept out of the open north and west gates, milling with camels, horses and carts. A wagon-load of amphorae containing olive-oil and figs overturned at the east gate and jammed its entrance. Fights broke out around it and a cry rose up that the Jews, ever eager to see the Persians, were sabotaging the city. Magnus of Carrhae, our main authority for these events, relates how it finally took a century of soldiers to beat back a vicious mob from assaulting the Jewish quarter even as the first Persian cavalry began to cautiously encircle the walls.

Night brought only a subdued tension. The camp-fires of the Persians ringed Carrhae like a poisoned necklace, to paraphrase Magnus, and deep in the folds of the moonless dark, soft chants and singing could be heard, praising Ahura-Mazda, the ancient fire deity of Mesopotamia. A muted ringing was felt and those officers and soldiers who had been in sieges before warned their comrades that tunnels were being opened and other engines of war were being formed. Magnus remains mostly alarmed in his writings which cover this period – perturbed at the supposed inactivity of the Emperor in his midst and the scattered units of the field army of the Oriens spread throughout the regions around Carrhae. There is a palpable sense in his pen that the sudden advance of the Persians into Roman territory has taken everyone by surprise in the manner in which a smoking stick thrust into a bee hive scatters its drones and leaves them disorientated. The Kalends of Maius, the first day after the arrival of the Sassanid host, finds him tramping the north wall and its gate which remains open for the last of the refugees. A scattered medley of light Persian horsemen drift idly out of bow-shot but seem disinterested in the fleeing men and women of Carrhae, being content to merely show their presence with their high silk banners. The bulk of the Persian forces have encamped around the south and east facing walls, erecting a triple line of shields to defend against ballistae shot or sudden sorties. Neither of which, to Magnus’ disgruntled amazement, are initiated.

It is Magnus himself, if we are to believe his pen, who sights the newcomers first, marching down the north road and in tight formation. His first intimation of their arrival is the sudden scattering of the Persian light horse away from a rising cloud of dust and then a light but dull gleam which tells him that a body of infantry is on the march. Barking out orders to the sentries below, Magnus sends off runners to the Consistorium of the Emperor even as he descends to the north gate and anxiously awaits their arrival. By midday of the Kalends of Maius, the dull gleam has resolved into the armour and standards of a Roman legion in tight order and full marching kit. Even as his eyes alight upon the outline of the legion, Magnus narrates that a dry wind sprang up and with it the sand of the desert brought a veil over his eyes. This wind rose in ferocity and soon he was blinded down by the north gate, huddling within the folds of his military cloak, struggling to see who these Romans were. There is sense of something otherworldly in his description of the wind and the sandstorm, as though judgement is being given by the old gods of the desert. This vignette of the unattached Roman officer huddled into the rough stone of the north gate, wrapped in his great cloak, peering into the blasting sand, looking for fate perhaps or salvation or even just relief is a powerful image which some scholars have argued is a literary conceit carved out by Magnus as a wilful piece of art. I defer from that however and wonder why such an intelligent officer who later achieved Senatorial rank would paint himself in such debilitating terms if not for the veracity of the scene and the impression it left on him in all his years ahead.

For out of the dust and the wind and the indeterminate wash of yellow which surrounded him at that north gate came not salvation at all but the tired and dull-eyed men of the Second Flavians, the old garrison legion of Callinicum, with an Ala of Saraceni cavalry in their wake, all wrapped up in white cloaks and robes so as to appear like wraiths of the desert. Magnus watched them enter Carrhae and it is worth quoting his pen rather than summarising here:

. . . If ever Crassus were to return from Hades or the Lethean realm and bring back a legion of the dead in his wake then these men would be their imago now - for what was Rome in this paralyzed city of Carrhae if not an empty word, a broken banner, a shrouded mummy as the Aegyptians make? These men toiled through an awful storm of sand and dust, heralded by wind, and battered by a shrieking moan, and not one face of these legionaries could I stare into in thanks. Slaves I have seen have borne cooking implements with better discipline. What a legion is this that marches here out of the desert into certain death and knows not to flee like the rest?

The Secunda Flavia Constantia Thebaeorum, a field army legion, long since sundered from its parent legion in Aegypt, disgraced over a nameless dishonour, left ungeneraled for months, understrengthed, mocked by Arabs, arrives in Carrhae with a mighty desert storm in its wake, and only the grim face of an aged Roman, whose face is scarred like a roughly-carved mask, pushes them on. It is a face which brushes past our Magnus at the north gate as an old hoary dog paces past a cub not worth a glance.

Moments later, Magnus seals the north gate, even as the storm washes high over the stone walls in wave after wave of sand . . .

[Antiochos VII Sidetes]

And let the assault begin! Excellent update.

[Legio]

Go Romans go!
Great update.

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

Thanks - everyone is rooting for the disgraced legion?! How perverse . . .


The Gorgon’s Breath

The arrival of the Second Flavians, under its Praefectus Legionis, Rumitalca, together with the white-shrouded Saraceni, largely went unnoticed as the sand-storm swept over Carrhae and rendered everything into a dim distant outline. It is here, amid this unnatural phenomenon, that Magnus of Carrhae unleashes his literary learning and so begins to describe the ferocious winds and biting sands as ‘The Gorgon’s Breath’. By early evening, with the sun a washed-out orb, and the remaining inhabitants of the city huddling inside for shelter, we find the Tribune bearing news of the arrival of the legion to the guards of the Consistorium of Julian. His description of the events that evening, as he waits in the outer chambers, witnessing hasty arrivals and grim-faced departures, is vivid indeed. Notaries, slaves, high-ranking officers and regimental commanders filter past him on urgent business as the oil lamps gutter low and the shriek of ‘The Gorgon’s Breath’ outside rises higher. One senses in him a desperate desire for action; for command instead of this waiting and apparent indecision from an Emperor he clearly regards as a hero. Again and again, Magnus edges up to the shrouded inner sanctum, past the ranks of the Emperor’s bodyguard, the Candidati, only to be politely rebuffed and made to wait outside.

It is only as late evening comes and the gilded tapestries around him seem to whisper in colluding tones, that the stern figure of the Magister Equitum per Peditum Orientum, Antiochus, emerges with a phalanx of junior officers in tow. Magnus is made to repeat his news about the arrival of the Second Flavians and their bedraggled state to the satisfaction of his superior, the overall commander of the diocese of the Oriens. Words are feverishly whispered between his adjutants and then Antiochus faces Magnus and places a hand upon his shoulder:

. . . Tell this Rumitalca that his legion is to be de-listed from the field army and placed upon the scrolls of the limitanei, that his legion will drop a grade in pay and no longer receive the donative from the Augustus, that his legion will rot in the furtherest fort on the limes where even the crows weary from flying too far without respite. Tell him also that to take up the command of a legion in disgrace with no mandate from myself as Magister is to usurp a title that is not his – no matter his past record and oaths. Do you understand these orders, Magnus? Then tell Rumitalca this also – that tomorrow morning by the will of the divine Augustus, orders will come to this legion, these Second Flavians, whose cause he has rudely adopted, and should his legion accept these orders, all dishonour may be expunged, if the Emperor wills it. Garrison them tonight in the Baths of Trajan by the South Wall and feed them like kings. Kings, you understand?

What happens subsequently is difficult to disentangle from his writings for Magnus is clearly struggling with the import of those words. Antiochus and his coterie of officers disappear again into the Consistorium and only the howl of the wind outside the marble walls keeps him company. Mad thoughts whirl through his mind and Magnus wonders on the events to come. These confusions keep him company until sometime later he finds himself in the presence of Rumitalca and delivers the words of the Magister in person. This meeting, Magnus is at pains to point out in his campaign diary, is a private one and it is the first time he is able to assess this odd Roman:

. . . He watched me like an old hoary wolf who had seen too many winters and fought in too many packs to be dazzled by baubles and scraps now. His head was shaved and rough like a old stone idol seen in the lands of the ancient Cambri and Teutones. His eyes were black and mirthless. His smile cold. I saw a hand grasped around a long gnarled vine stick and for one mad moment wondered where one ended and the other began. He saw me shiver at that and rudely bade me repeat the words of Antiochus. He nodded once as I finished his request and then he told me to damn the food to Hades, bring wine, bladders of the stuff, enough to float the Ark of the Jews and the Christians. Do not stuff a soldier’s mouth with food, drown it with wine, instead, if you wish to sacrifice him, he said. I baulked at that. What sacrifice? The Magister made no mention of such a thing – only that orders would come which might allow the Second Flavians to redeem themselves on the morrow. He laughed at that in a way which made my blood chill - Son, you have much to learn about the whims of Emperors, even ones as gifted as this Julian. He turned then and barked back at me even as he summoned his Ducenarii and Centenarii – do not forget the wine, by all the gods of Rome, you understand? Bring wine!

That night of the Kalends of Maius brought no respite from ‘The Gorgon’s Breath’ and the Romans atop the city’s walls struggled even to see their own signal fires and standards let alone the massed Persians spread across the plain to the south and east. Every so often an erratic ballista bolt would arc out of the sand and the wind only to careen carelessly off a buttress or supporting wall. Stragglers crawling in through guarded culverts in the walls reported that the host of Fariel seemed cocooned in the desert, the siege towers and rams all bogged down in drifts, the sentries wrapped up in moistened cloaks to guard against the endless sand. Magnus remained awake through the night and it is clear from his writings that unease about the words of Rumitalca are eating away at him. He cannot conceive what orders will come in the morning nor their import. Once towards dawn a slave brings him a flask of wine to refresh his dry mouth but he throws it aside as a bad omen and waits for an unseen sun to rise and end his anticipation.

There is little remaining now in the ruins of Carrhae of the Baths of Trajan, built in honour of his conquest of Ctesiphon along with the title ‘Parthicus’ added to his imperial splendour, but archaeologists have determined that it was a magnificent structure as befitting an Imperial statement. No doubt, with the decline in civic patronage which was a feature of the Later Roman period, the Baths were not at their best. Marble would have been cracked and dilapidated; the heating hypocausts perhaps in disrepair; some rooms left to fall in decay even. Having said that – it would still have been an impressive structure and a worthy billet for a front-line legion or cavalry vexillation passing through Carrhae to a distant posting or far-off battle. That morning, as the sand-storm showed no sign of abating, Rumitalca assembled the pitiful numbers of the legion, a mere three cohorts, barely two-thirds strong, all now groggy from too much wine and rough humour, and Magnus found himself standing alongside the legion ranks, his eyes scanning that old carven face for a hint of what was to come. It was only as Rumitalca held up a vellum scroll that he realised that the Ducenarii and Centenarii of the Second Flavians were nowhere to be seen. Only the file-closers and the Biarchii stood within the soldiers blinking uncertainly at their commander. The single exception was the Primicerius, Strabonius, who, Magnus noticed, was white-faced and attempting to casually clean his sword hilt with a ragged cloth. A cloth stained red.

. . . I watched that man wipe his hilt clean and knew then that blood had been spilt. Where were the legion officers? The three Cohortales commanders? Their century subordinates? Why was the Primicerius, Strabonius, ashen-faced as he stood next to the Legion Prefect? I gazed into the cold eyes of Rumitalca and in my heart knew what my mind would not fathom. He stepped forward then and raised up the vellum like the fasti of old – his voice was a low rasp and it reminded me of a spatha sliding out of its scabbard – he talked of shame, the shame of a legion’s name in disgrace, the shame of corruption and cowardice, of lethargy and fear, fear like a stink which no man could wash from his clothes. This old Roman named Rumitalca, the ‘Roman Italian’, talked then of other legions and other battles and other honours, all won in the dim past of Roman prestige and yet I swear he talked as if he himself had been there. He talked of soldiers lost in German forests and wild savage lands, of cohorts surrounded and committing suicide rather than being taken alive and sacrificed to savage gods, of legates and tribunes ordered by corrupt emperors to fall upon their swords and never failing to follow that last bitter order, of standards broken in a river of blood, and of solitary centurions, that old rank of honour, who fought alone in a sea of dead comrades, and always his voice remained low and deadly. And what of this legion, he asked, still holding that vellum scroll up in his gnarled hand, what of the Second Flavians, once of Aegypt and now of Callinicum, what of this legion and its old honours? What salve could ever come that would wash it clean and place the standards again upright in pride? I saw men look around like bewildered children then and try to find their officers but this Rumitalca stopped them and barked out that the Magister had deprived this legion of its head to mark it as shamed and now he had lopped off all the corrupt heads which had remained. – Do not look now to those men for you will not find them, I swear! If you imbibe a poison what is the remedy? You bleed the body and let it out. I have bled this legion and let the poison out. I have purged it in the night with wine and iron. Now I ask you all, will you let this legion fade away into dust and bitter loss or will you march out and redeem not yourselves for you are too stained for that, trust me, but this legion and its name? Will you wash away your dishonour with your lives that this legion may be reborn again as it once was? Will you if only for one day step into the past of this legion and its battle-honours and step also out to doom as your Emperor commands? This Rumitalca threw the vellum scroll towards me then and trembling I reached down to pick it up. – Read it out, Tribune, he barked, read out their doom. And I did. And the orders of the Augustus Flavius Claudius Julianus bade the legion march out of Carrhae into the desert and engage the Persian barbarians alone and unsupported so that time might be bought and confusion sown among their ranks. March forth and wipe out the shame which no legion should endure. Bring back only honour and redemption not of yourselves and your lives but for the legion. For the Second Flavians. Restore its name to the rolls of the legions with your blood, my Romans.

Magnus writes that a vast silence entered the old Baths of Trajan then once he had finished reading out the words of Julian and that even the wind of ‘The Gorgon’s Breath’ seemed distant and muted. Without a second glance, Rumitalca turned and walked out, buckling on his miitary belt, and then the Primicerius, Strabonius, followed him, dropping the bloody rag in his wake. One by one, the soldiers of the Second Flavians too moved to depart, girding weapons and armour, wrapped up in a silence as deep as the waters of Acheron itself. Not one of the soldiers glanced at Magnus and he remarks that he is left alone in the giant Baths, the vellum in his hand, a forgotten witness.

At midday on the first day after the Kalends of Maius, less than five hundred or so men of the Second Flavian Legion, swathed in wind and sand, under the command of Silvius Rumitalca, marched out of the south gate of Carrhae not to fight barbarians so much as to fight and overcome their own dishonour. They marched straight towards the Persian army which had pulled back into a serried block of lines to await this presumptuous solitary legion, abandoning their breastworks as they did so.





A single officer stood upon the walls of ancient and blood-drenched Carrhae and this officer for the first time in his career found himself regretting his vacans status and yearning instead to be among the ranks even if such ranks were marching to certain death.

Beyond this Tribune’s sight, deep in ‘The Gorgon’s Breath’ waited almost four thousand Persian mailed cataphracts and infantry.

[Antiochos VII Sidetes]

I'll be somewhat afraid for the Incultum Ferrum if you manage to defeat the Persian host with five hundred men; that would be a true feat of tactical genius!

[Julianus Flavius]

I fear that legion is doomed. However I think the siege could be broken by all the other imperial armies congregating nearby.