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Roman history is well outside my expertise, but I remember once reading that the increased disruption brought by the Germanic invaders was greatly linked to a shift in Roman military strategy. What specifically happened was that the Roman shift to more mobile cavalry armies stationed away from the front lines, and smaller border garrisons, made the Roman army commanders unwilling to directly engage the enemy upon the incursion. They would instead let the Germanic invaders plunder away freely within the provinces, and then only attack the invading army once they were heavily burdened with plunder and on their way home. All of that loot would then be seized by the army commanders. Is their any truth to this, or just another pop-history myth?


@Semper Victor I just have to thank you for putting down all of the time and effort in writing this. Fantastic.

The shift towards more mobile cavalry forces can be attributed to a multitude of factors. The first attested case of campaigns planned by Roman leaders with increased cavalry contingents took place in the East against the Arsacids, after Crassus' débacle at Carrhae. Caesar's planned expedition to the East had to include larger cavalry contingents, and Mark Antony also was accompanied by a large contingent of Armenian allied cavalry.

The best known case is that of Trajan's expedition; for it he recruited large numbers of Moorish cavalry auxiliaries, which were led by the Romanized Berber prince Lusius Quietus; he even doubled the number of the Equites Singulares Augusti from 1,000 to 2,000 men, with the new members being all Moorish cavalrymen.

Epigraphical evidence also gives proof for a steady increase upon time of Roman cavalry forces, in the form of new auxiliary units. These units could be of several types:
  • Cohors equitata: 500 men strong unit, including both infantry and cavalry.
  • Cohors miliaria equitata: 1,000 men strong unit, including both infantry and cavalry.
  • Ala: 500 men strong unit, including only cavalry.
  • Ala miliaria: 1,000 men strong unit, including only cavalry (this kind of unit though was very rare).
Probably, Trajan's campaigns both in Dacia (which featured hard fighting against Sarmatian cavalry forces) and in the East forced the Romans to ramp up the number of cavalry units in their armies, and to start copying the heavy cavalry of their eastern foes. In Hadrian's reign, there's epigraphic evidence for an ala cataphractata, and from then onwards this kind of evidence becomes more frequent. These first units were probably formed already by Trajan, and were stationed in the Danube, which means that they were intended mainly as deterrents for Sarmatian cavalry attacks:
  • Ala I Gallorum et Pannoniorum cataphractaria, based at Lower Moesia.
  • Ala I Ulpia contariorum, stationed in Lower Pannonia.
Apart from uxiliary units, the Romans also deployed allied forces and mercenaries. Among the allies, the most important were the Armenians and Osrhoenians (until their annexation into the empire), and mercenaries could include North African, Sarmatian, Germanic or Caucasian warriors. Mercenaries could be recruited individually (rarely attested) or as part of a treaty between Rome and their tribe/people as numeri or gentiles, keeping their own officers, weapons and ways of fighting. Another source were defeated enemies, which were then forced by the terms of the pace treaty with Rome to supply units for the Roman army, which received the qualification of dediticii; the best known example was the treaty between Marcus Aurelius and the Sarmatian Iazyges, who were forced to send a cavalry force of 6,000 men as dediticii to the Roman army, which Marcus Aurelius quickly redeployed to Britain (it was standard Roman policy to avoid having "Roman" forces of a foreign ethnicity in the same border area fronting their native people, to avoid trouble.

As clashes with the Arsacids and later the Sasanians in the East multiplied, the Romans kept increasing the numbers of cavalry in their eastern armies, and soon they began deploying more cavalry in the Rhine and upper Danube forces as well, where cavalry units of the eastern style proved themselves particularly useful. Severus Alexander took with him forces of Osrhoenian horse archers and exiled Parthian cavalrymen to the Rhine, and Maximinus Thrax used them in his Germanic campaigns. Herodian wrote that these forces were very successful against the Alamanni and neighboring Germanic peoples, because as they fought mainly on foot and lacked body armour they were easy prey for arrows and heavy cavalry charges. This last statement though should be treated with caution, as Germanic peoples were capable of a surprisingly disciplined behavior in the battlefield, as depicted in the Aurelian column in Rome; Graeco-Roman authors went as far as writing that one specific Germanic tribe, the Chatii (which later became part of the Frankish confederation), were as disciplined and tough as infantry fighters as Roman legionaries, which was the highest praise that the highly chauvinistic classical authors could think of.

The definitive impulse for an all-cavalry army though happened under Gallienus. This emperor found himself threatened by usurpations, secessions and invasions on so many fronts at once that he took the radical decision of gathering in a single central all-cavalry army all the cavalry forces that until them had been part of the legions (each legion had an integral force of 500 cavalrymen) or had been posted along the bordr as cavalry units. And it was this force which allowed him to keep his throne for eight incredibly difficult years, and which the Illyrian emperors inherited. It's important to note though that Aurealian (the greatest emperor-general Rome ever had, together with Constantine the Great) reversed Gallienus' measure, and although he retained a central cavalry reserve, he returned to the legions their cavalry complements.

As a curious aside, it's interesting to note that after Gallienus' radical reform, Rome's central army became essentially the same as an Arsacid or Sasanian spah, an army formed only by cavalry. And that in all cases the reasons for this measure were the same: the need to be able to gather these armies and move them quickly over long distances over land to fight on multiple fronts which were threatened in a simultaneous way.
 
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Semper Victor-->

This is BY FAR the single best thread I have seen on these forums since I have been on them, you are to be commended! WELL DONE!

I really appreciate the fact that we are not just gamers on this site, but guys having fun with games that support our active interest in the past!

You're breadth of detail reminds me of Gibbon, who I read in my youth...

"History is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind."
 
Semper Victor-->

This is BY FAR the single best thread I have seen on these forums since I have been on them, you are to be commended! WELL DONE!

I really appreciate the fact that we are not just gamers on this site, but guys having fun with games that support our active interest in the past!

You're breadth of detail reminds me of Gibbon, who I read in my youth...

"History is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind."

Thank you :).
 
Amazing, epic thread. Congratulations.

I have a question regarding the spread of early Christianity. If I understand you correctly, you imply that there was a clear correlation between the plague of Cyprian and concurrent decline of classical paganism and rise of Christianity. How the new faith was actually widespread during the time of Constantine? I lost contact with the subject well over 10 years ago, back then there were two competing theories. First theory said that Christianity was still small, relatively insignificant minority and Constantine elevated it (aside from possible genuine religious motivations) because he could mend it at his will to his own goals. The second one said that Christianity was already established and powerful and that Constantine (again aside from possible genuine religious motivations) wanted gain to access it's hitherto untapped political power.

So, how many Christians actually were there at the start of 4th century AD?
 
Amazing, epic thread. Congratulations.

I have a question regarding the spread of early Christianity. If I understand you correctly, you imply that there was a clear correlation between the plague of Cyprian and concurrent decline of classical paganism and rise of Christianity. How the new faith was actually widespread during the time of Constantine? I lost contact with the subject well over 10 years ago, back then there were two competing theories. First theory said that Christianity was still small, relatively insignificant minority and Constantine elevated it (aside from possible genuine religious motivations) because he could mend it at his will to his own goals. The second one said that Christianity was already established and powerful and that Constantine (again aside from possible genuine religious motivations) wanted gain to access it's hitherto untapped political power.

So, how many Christians actually were there at the start of 4th century AD?

In my opinion, it's impossible to give numbers for the amount of Christians within the empire, either in 313 CE or one hundred years earlier. Scholars don't even agree about the total number of inhabitants of the empire (I discussed it in an earlier post in this thread), or about the demographics of its provinces, or about the demographic impact of the succesive epidemics that hit the empire. If there's not even a consensus at this basic level, then speculating about the number of Christians is pointless. The only province for which more reliable data do exist is Egypt, due to the large numbers of papyri from Roman times that have survived. For the population of Roman Egypt, I have seen estimates for the High Empire (before the Antonine Plague) between 4 and 6 million inhabitants. Based on the estimated numbers of Christians that can be guessed (roughly) from the surviving papyri of the III and early IV century (which by the way are heavily concentrated in specific areas, especially at Oxyrrhincus), some scholars estimate that by 313 CE up to a 20% of the Egyptian population could've been Christian. But take these numbers with lots of caution, and beware that they are not in any way extrapolable to other parts of the empire.

What the evidence for the Plague of Cyprian lets us glimpse though is that this epidemic brought great disruption to a traditional religious system that was already in crisis on some levels. Again, Egypt is the best attested case, with the cessation of temple registers, inscriptions and finally the abandonment of traditional Egyptian temples themselves. As I wrote in a previous post, by Diocletian's reign the great temple of Amon at Luxor was an abandoned ruin that was transformed into military barracks.

Similar signs began to appear elsewhere already after the reign of Marcus Aurelius. The "long" III century (beginning with Marcus Aurelius' death and ending with Constantine's conversion) was a time of spiritual incertitude, "L'età dell'angoscia", as the exposition I visited in Rome was titled. But it should be stressed that this increase of interest in religious alternatives did not affect all levels of Roman society in the same way. Urban populations, the military and the upper classes were probably the most restless groups, with the rural population remaining largely unaffected; Egypt was probably an exception because it was an exceptionally urbanized province, and the Nile provided a level of internal communication which did not exist anywhere else in the empire.

I wouldn't dare to utter more than these general considerations given the available data.
 
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18.3. THE REIGN OF DECIUS. THE START OF THE GOTHIC WAR.
18.3. THE REIGN OF DECIUS. THE START OF THE GOTHIC WAR.

As usual in the III century after the end of the chronicles of Cassius Dio and Herodian, we are utterly deprived of reliable contemporary sources. Dexippus’ Scythica would have been doubtless the primary source, as it dealt precisely with the wars between Rome and the Goths in the Balkans between 238 CE and 270 CE. But the work is lost, and only some short parts remain, in several forms:
  • Isolated fragments preserved by chance like the recently discovered Scythica Vindobonensia.
  • Direct quotes by later authors.
  • Use of information originally found in the Scythica by later authors, who either specifically refer to it or scholars have been able to detect (or suspect) that they used Dexippus’ work as a source.
These later sources are the very short accounts in Zosimus, Syncellus and Zonaras and the Getica, based on a lost work by Cassiodorus, although again this work is to be used this caution, due to its primary aim to praise the antiquity of the Gothic people and the family of Theoderic the Great and to the fact that it was written in the first half of the VI century using material from unclear sources, because Jordanes’ epitome has not preserved Cassiodorus’ annotations about sources (if there were any, but it was usual in Graeco-Roman historiographic tradition). To complicate things further, the Historia Augusta (which also drew heavily from Dexippus’ work) has a gap exactly at this point in history. A section covering the reigns of Philip the Arab, Decius, Trebonianus Gallus, Aemilian and all but the end of the reign of Valerian is missing. That leaves modern scholars with only the scattered fragments by Dexippus, the accounts by Syncellus and the Getica, and other short works by authors from the IV and V centuries CE (like the Breviari of Aurelius Victor, Eutropius and Festus and the Epitome de Caesaribus). Other than that, there’s archaeology and numismatics, which can provide some help in trying to understand the events.

All these sources except the Getica provide extremely short accounts for the 249-251 CE invasion, with only the Getica providing a detailed version with some differences related to the start of the campaign with respect to the other remaining sources.

Herwig Wolfram links the decision by Philip the Arab to stop paying the tribute to the Goths to his previous defeat of the Carpi and other neighboring peoples who were probably members of the Gothic confederation (or subjects of the Goths, depending on the interpretation), and adds that Philip probably began military preparations against them. Wolfram does not precise this, but he implies that the decision was taken in the short space of time between April 249 CE (when the Viminacium mint stopped issuing coins in Pacatianus’ name) and July/August 249 CE, when the Danubian army acclaimed Decius as augustus and marched towards Italy and defeated Philip at Verona. This usurpation sent overboard any preparations ordered by Philip, and the marching of part of the Danubian army to Italy left the lower Danube border dangerously weakened in front of the impending Gothic attack.

The Getica states that at this time, the Goths were ruled by a certain Ostrogotha. As we will see, this work, together with numismatic evidence implies that it was in late 247 CE or early 248 CE at the very latest when Philip cut the subsidies off. The Getica offers a quite strange account of events:
Now when the aforesaid Philip — who, with his son Philip, was the only Christian emperor before Constantine — ruled over the Romans, in the second year of his reign Rome completed its one thousandth year. He withheld from the Goths the tribute due them; whereupon they were naturally enraged and instead of friends became his foes. For though they dwelt apart under their own kings, yet they had been allied to the Roman state and received annual gifts. And what more? Ostrogotha and his men soon crossed the Danube and ravaged Moesia and Thrace. Philip sent the senator Decius against him. And since he could do nothing against the Getae (Note: Goths), he released his soldiers from military service and sent them back to private life, as though it had been by their neglect that the Goths had crossed the Danube. When, as he supposed, he had thus taken vengeance on his soldiers, he returned to Philip. But when the soldiers found themselves expelled from the army after so many hardships, in their anger they had recourse to the protection of Ostrogotha, king of the Goths. He received them, was aroused by their words and presently led out three hundred thousand armed men, having as allies for this war some of the Taifali and Astringi andalso three thousand of the Carpi, a race of men very ready to make war and frequently hostile to the Romans. (…) Besides these tribes, Ostrogotha had Goths and Peucini (Note: possibly Bastarnae) from the island of Pence, which lies in the mouths of the Danube where they empty into the Sea of Pontus. He placed in command Argaith and Guntheric, the noblest leaders of his race. They speedily crossed the Danube, devastated Moesia a second time and approached Marcianople, the famed metropolis of that land. Yet after a long siege they departed, upon receiving money from the inhabitants.
To summarize, according to the Getica, under this Ostrogotha the Goths attacked the empire twice. The first attack was led by Ostrogotha himself only with Gothic forces, and he raided Moesia and Thrace, and it took place in late 247 to spring/summer 248 CE (based on numismatic evidence, as we will see later). The second attack was led by two subordinates of Ostrogotha named Argaith and Guntheric, and included allied or subject peoples (Carpi, Taifali, Astringi, Peucini) and perhaps Germanic mercenaries or even Roman soldiers who had been dismissed from the Roman army of Moesia by Decius in 249 CE (I’ll explain this later); this second invasion would have affected Moesia and Dacia and took place between early spring and late fall of 250 CE. These first attacks by the Goths are usually dismissed by most scholars (amongst them by Wolfram, but are accepted by some Bulgarian archaeologists based on the evidence of coin hoards) for several reasons:
  • They do not appear in other accounts, although to be fair, they’re so short (just a paragraph in Zosimus) that I’m not sure if that can be held as a reason against the Getica’s tale.
  • The sequence of events is very confused, and it’s difficult to harmonize it with other accounts, both about the Gothic War and about Decius’ reign. The fragment about Decius dismissing the soldiers and them joining the Goths is particularly strange.
  • The fact that Ostrogotha is part of one of Cassiodorus’ fabricated lineage lines. He’s made to be a member of the Amal family, and thus an ancestor of Theodoric the Great. This is enough for most historians to dismiss this part of the Getica as yet another of Cassiodorus’s fabrications to please his master.
On the other side, Bulgarian archaeologists have brought forward numismatic arguments that corroborate the account found in the Getica. Boris Gerov noted that a first group of coin hoards lack the characteristic coins that Philip issued in occasion of the millennium of Rome (the celebrations began on April 21st, 248 CE). This means that these hoards were buried in face of an invasion launched early on, in the winter-spring of 247-248 CE. All these hoards include coins of Philip issued prior to the millennium issues and are found as far south as the modern Bulgarian village of Levka, near the border with Turkey; the area of Levka must’ve been part of the territorium of Hadrianopolis in Roman times. Other hoards have been found at the village of Gramatikovo, which must’ve belonged to the territorium of the ancient city of Byzie in Roman times, as all the coins in this hoard were issued in its mint.

1200px-MontesBalcanes.svg.png

Haemus Mons was the ancient Latin name for the Balkan mountains, which separated Moesia from Thrace.

The coin hoards attest at least two different directions of the Gothic invasion in the province of Thrace in 248 CE. The forces which reached the territories of Bizye and Hadrianopolis must have used the Eastern Haemus pass leading to the present city of Karnobat. Another direction of this invasion is marked by the hoards found near Oescus (near the present Danubian village of Gigen, Pleven district, north Bulgaria) and the present city of Trastenik in Lower Moesia, and also by those found near the present villages of Smolsko, Dragušinovo and the city of Bobovdol in the territories of Serdica (now Sofia) and Pautalia (now Kyustendil, SW Bulgaria) in Thrace

Moesia-_Thrace_01.jpg

Map of Moesia and Thrace with the cities mentioned in the text.

About the second Gothic attack which threatened Marcianopolis, current evidence attests to two significant facts. On the one hand, it’s not possible to give an accurate date for the siege by the Goths and their allies under Argaith and Guntheric just by using the text of the Getica. On the other hand, one of the most impressive hoards ever found is the Reka Devnia (now Devnya, ancient Marcianopolis) hoard which ends with coins of Decius and his son Herennius Etruscus. It contains ca. 100,000 Roman silver coins (weighting around 350 kg in total) which are first hand testimony that some great danger befell the city of Marcianopolis around mid-250 CE (Herennius Etruscus was raised to the rank of caesar between May and November 250 CE). It is hardly by chance that these two facts coincide so closely in time, and there must be a link between the siege and the burying of 350 kg of silver coins in this city. Unfortunately, some of the coins were stolen after its discovery. At present, of 82,428 pieces studied out of a total of ca. 100,000, only three coins of Decius are attested, and one of Herennius Etruscus; the dating for the burial of this hoard based on the examined coins is mid-250 CE.

In my opinion, it’s possible to harmonize the events as related by the Getica with the convoluted and confused events that took place in the Danube at this time. As seen before, Decius was in command of the whole Danubian front for a period stretching from April to early August 249 CE at the latest. That’s five months, being generous. In that short period of time, it’s impossible that so many events took place. A plausible explanation would be that the first Gothic attack under Ostrogotha first hit the lower Danube when Pacatianus was still in charge of the border and loyal to Philip, in later winter of 247 CE or early spring of 248 CE and that the perception by the soldiers of the Danubian army that they were left to fight the Goths on their own while Philip amused himself giving lavish spectacles in Rome was what caused them to raise their commander Pacatianus to the purple in the summer or fall of 248 CE.

bulgaria-danube-river-vidin-dunav.jpg

View of the Danube at the border between Romania and Bulgaria.

Pacatianus would’ve been killed though by his own men by April 249 CE, perhaps because he failed in stopping Ostrogotha’s raid into Moesia and Thrace. Bear in mind that probably when Decius was first sent into the Balkans, he was sent to the province of Lower Pannonia with the hope of containing Pacatianus’ usurpation just to the lower Danube area, as Decius was a native of this province and had been its governor, so probably he had many contacts and influence networks there. Only after Pacatianus’ death did he take command over the whole Danubian front. And once again the soldiers, who probably despised Philip even more by now as he’d still failed to show himself in person in the Danube, acclaimed Decius as augustus (and Decius accepted). It’s also possible to harmonize the Getica’s tale about “dismissed soldiers”. Perhaps Decius dismissed some groups of Germanic numeri because he considered that they’d collaborated with the enemy, or again it’s possible that he purged the Moesian army of supporters of Pacatianus. Based on what we known about Decius’ personality, he was a staunch traditionalist, and that must have also affected his way of dealing with military discipline. Unfortunately, this action (if the Getica’s account is true) would’ve served only to send all these dismissed soldiers (either “barbarians” or Romans) to the side of the Goths, which would have been a very dangerous development, for now the Goths would have ex-Roman personnel among their ranks for their next attacks. That’s the only logical explanation for this part of the story and it would be quite in line with Decius’ personality and attitudes.

As for the name and person of Ostrogotha, it was held to be a pure fabrication by Cassiodorus (Wolfram tried to place this figure at another time in Gothic history, in the 290s), until the discovery of the new fragment of Dexippus known as the Scythica Vindobonensia changed this. The Scythica Vindobonensia consists of two fragments from Dexippus’s work that were discovered in a palimpsest of liturgical works written in Greek and which had been copied in Syria around the XIII century (because of a curse against thieves inserted there by the patriarch of Antioch Theodosius IV). The manuscript was bought in Istanbul in the XVI century by the imperial ambassador to the Sublime Porte Oghier de Busbecq, who left it in his will to the imperial library, which became after 1918 the Austrian National Library. An Ostrogotha is named in one of these two fragments, but from the context of the passage, it seems that this Ostrogotha is a different one to the one mentioned in the Getica, or at least he plays a very different role. This fragment deals with Decius’ efforts to stop the Goths from retreating from the empire loaded with booty and prisoners, after they’ve sacked Thrace and have defeated Decius in a previous battle. So, this Ostrogotha is placed in command of a Gothic army while Cniva is leading the main invasion force returning north from Thrace, which disagrees with the role of the Ostrogotha of the Getica’s tale. The confusion will remain until (if) more fragments of Dexippus’ lost work come to light.

Dexippus_Scythica_Vindobonensia_26.jpg

One of the two folios of the Scythica Vindobonensia kept at the Austrian National Library in Vienna; spectral image of the original, erased text (in blue).

The second Gothic invasion attested by the Getica and led by Argaith and Guntheric began possibly when Decius was already emperor and was still in the capital, in the winter/spring of 249-250 CE. In Rome, Decius would not have been surprised by the invasion, as he’d recently commanded the Danubian front himself, and perhaps had received instructions from Philip to take steps to prevent it. But instead of doing that, he’d launched a coup and a civil war and had left the border unguarded in front of an imminent attack. Firstly though, Decius had to leave things in Rome secure during his oncoming absence. According to Aurelius Victor, the eastern usurper Iotapianus was killed by his own men and his head sent to the emperor in Rome in the summer of 249 CE (to Philip or already to Decius, that’s not known). Apparently, the usurpation of Silbannacus in Gaul was also suppressed around this time without need for Decius to get involved personally, and according to Syvänne he sent a vanguard to the Balkans under the command of his eldest son, Herennius Etruscus, while he intended to follow as soon as possible. I wrote about the implausible claim of the SHA (in the surviving part of its Life of Valerian) that Decius had tried to revive the office of censor, and the Senate had chosen Valerian for the post, who refused. But the Byzantine author Zonaras also states that when Decius left Rome, he left there his youngest son Hostilian (a teenager), under the care of Valerian, who acted as Decius’ lieutenant in Rome. This coincidence in both accounts makes it probable that Valerian did indeed act as Decius’ lieutenant, and as such he was charged with applying Decius’ edict on sacrifices.

Moesia Inferior was a heavily militarized province, with a garrison of two legions (Legio I Italica at Novae and Legio XI Claudia at Durostorum) plus auxiliaries, which amounted to 20,000 men or more in total. If the Getica’s tale is true, these forces, when still not weakened by Decius’ march on Italy, had been already unable to stop the first Gothic invasion in 248 CE. That means that either they’d been badly led, or that they were not up to the task, or that they’d been overwhelmed by the size of the enemy’s army (or any combination of these factors).

scaletowidth

Landscape of the Danubian plain, northern Bulgaria. This was the ancient Roman province of Lower Moesia.

The numbers in the spring of 250 CE must’ve been even lower than that though, because Decius had probably taken at least part of the army with him to Italy (although if he only took vexillationes from the legions, these were usually only 1,000-2,000 men strong). We don’t know either if the Plague of Cyprian had reached Moesia yet, and if the dismissal of Germanic numeri and/or Roman soldiers by Decius the previous year was true, then the provincial army could`ve been further weakened. The legatus augusti pro praetore for Lower Moesia was the senator Gaius Vibius Afinius Trebonianus Gallus with his capital at Novae, and his response to the invasion was revealing: he completely refused field battle with the invaders and fortified himself with his troops in the main cities of the province. Given that the main tactic of the Roman army was engaging enemies in frontal battle, and that the Romans were usually confident enough in their own military superiority to accept combat against “barbarians” at odds quite unfavorable to themselves, this implies that the force mustered by the Goths and their allies must’ve been really imposing, enough to force the Roman provincial garrison to seek refuge into walled cities, while waiting for help from Decius. So, Argaith and Guntheric would have been able to surround Marcianopolis (the largest city in Moesia) at leisure, although their lack of skill in siege warfare meant that they could only try to force the city to surrender by hunger.

This shows once again the difficulties implicit in the Augustan/Severan commanding system with provincial governors at charge of two legions at most in front of large-scale invasions. It was a system designed to difficult internal revolt and usurpation attempts, but with the growing scale of threats in the III century, this system was becoming increasingly obsolete to defend the empire. The huge problem was that, although Philip had been the first emperor to acknowledge the problem and had tried to fix it with his naming of commanders for large sectors of the border, the results had been less than satisfactory; of three successive commanders in the Danube, two had become usurpers.
 
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ok I am painstakingly going through your tome here, semper victor, and I am currently at section 5.4, on page 3, as it's obvious the history channel re-enactor is using stirrups.

was going to make a question about "stirrups" but apparently the near east had them far earlier then the west-->

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirrup

"The invention of the stirrup occurred relatively late in history, considering that horses were domesticated in approximately 4500 BC, and the earliest known saddle-like equipment were fringed cloths or pads with breast pads and cruppers used by Assyrian cavalry around 700 BC"

this I did not know...I had always equated the stirrup as a middle ages thing but apparently the stirrup was far older than this-->

"By the late 6th or early 7th century AD, primarily due to invaders from Central Asia, such as the Avars, stirrups began spreading across Asia to Europe from China."

though it does beg the question why does the stirrup take so long to immigrate to the west?
 
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18.4. THE REIGN OF DECIUS. THE EMPEROR MOVES TO THE LOWER DANUBE.
18.4. THE REIGN OF DECIUS. THE EMPEROR MOVES TO THE LOWER DANUBE.

Finally, Decius left Rome and marched to the Danube. His elder son Herennius Etruscus had perhaps preceded him and his presence in Lower Pannonia is attested in an inscription by men of Legio II Adiutrix at Aquincum; based on this inscription celebrating him as caesar, some scholars have dated his appointment as such to a timeframe between May and September 250 CE. Father and son probably met there (Lower Pannonia was their main powerbase, and the Pannonian legions had raised Decius to the purple) and prepared a counterattack. Decius must’ve taken with him the central Roman army (Praetorian Guard, Legio II Parthica, Equites Singulares Augusti and other assorted units) as well as the Danubian forces which won the battle of Verona for him. The state of the central reserve, given that it had been recently defeated in battle less than a year before, cannot have been very good. We can’t know if they had suffered many casualties, and if that was the case, if there had been time to cover them with new recruits, and if these new recruits were really up to the task in front of them. It’s probable that auxiliary units and legionary vexillationes from the Pannonian legions also joined the army then.

The first task undertaken by the two Decii must’ve been delivering Dacia from invaders (probably Carpi), as three inscriptions found at Carthago Nova in Hispania Tarraconensis (CIL II, 4949; 4957; 4958) honor Decius as Dacicus Maximus, and one of them (CIL II 4949) attests Decius with the further titles TRIB.POT.II COS.II, pointing to a date between mid-June and November/December 250 CE (we know from ancient sources that Decius assumed the consulate during every year of his short reign). In his De mortibus persecutorum, the early IV century Christian author Lactantius also wrote that Decius had made war against the Carpi who had occupied Dacia and Moesia. It’s important though to notice that Lactantius did not name the Goths, and that the inscriptions from Hispania only acclaim Decius as Dacicus Maximus, and not Germanicus/Gothicus Maximus. This probably implies that after hearing of the defeat of their Carpi allies by the approaching imperial army, Argaith and Guntheric decided to accept a ransom from the inhabitants of Marcianopolis (modern Devnya, in Bulgaria) and retreated to the northern bank of the Danube, as stated by the Getica during the fall/winter of 250 CE, thus ending the second Gothic invasion.

Then, if we follow the tale of the Getica, in late winter or early spring of 251 CE, another very large army of “Skythians” led by the Gothic king Cniva crossed the lower Danube at Oescus (now ruined, near the Bulgarian village of Gigen) and invaded Lower Moesia. According to the Getica, this would have been the third Gothic invasion. The current scholarly consensus is that this was the only Gothic invasion, as it is the only one explicitly described in the extant fragments of the Skythica and in other ancient sources (although that’s not saying, much, as all of them are telegraphically short). According to Herwig Wolfram, Cniva’s army must have included Goths, Carpi, Bastarni and Vandals (notice though that according to the Getica, it was only in the second invasion when these allies/subject peoples joined the Goths).

After crossing the Danube, according to the Getica Cniva divided his army:
After his death (Note: Ostrogotha’s), Cniva divided the army into two parts and sent some to waste Moesia, knowing that it was undefended through the neglect of the emperors. He himself with seventy thousand men hastened to Euscia, that is, Novae. When driven from this place by the general Gallus (…)
Syvänne considers that the Gothic army must’ve been formed by a large contingent of cavalry, but he bases this assertion on the tactics of the Goths in later times; which don’t have to be necessarily the same tactics they used in the III century. The Goths, like other “barbarians” of the III century CE were completely inept at siege warfare, which means that Trebonianus Gallus’ decision of barricading himself inside the province’s main fortified cities was a safe course of action in this situation; the Getica’s account confirms it: Trebonianus Gallus was able to resist Cniva’s attack and the Goths raised the siege and went looking for easier prey. The other part of the army that Cniva sent to “waste Moesia” must’ve been a smaller force and given that Cniva himself was operating in Lower Moesia, this sentence of the Getica only makes sense if this force went somewhere else; and the Getica accounts that this “somewhere” was Moesia. If Cniva was in Lower Moesia, this second force must’ve raided Upper Moesia, and perhaps one of its goals would have been to act as a shield against any approaching Roman army from the west. For some reason though, modern scholars state that this second force crossed the Balkan mountain range and invaded the province of Thrace, besieging Philippopolis (its main city, corresponding to modern Plovdiv in Bulgaria). Let’s follow though with the account of the Getica:
When driven from this place (Note: Novae) by the general Gallus, he approached Nicopolis (Note: Nicopolis ad Istrum, now Nikyup), a very famous town situated near the latrus river. This city Trajan built when he conquered the Sarmatians and named it the City of Victory. When the Emperor Decius drew near, Cniva at last withdrew to the regions of Haemus (Note: the Balkan range), which were not far distant.
This fragment bears forward an important problem with the Getica’s narrative: if there’d been already previous fighting against the Goths in 250 CE, the imperial army and Decius must’ve remained in the area. How can it be explained then that Cniva was able to cross the Danube and move freely around the province?

The modern consensus, as I wrote before, is that there was just one Gothic invasion, led by Cniva. And that this invasion began in the winter or early spring of 250 CE and ended in the summer of 251 CE. This modern alternative though also raises another problem: that the Goths would’ve spent a year and a half within the empire with a large army, and given the nature of “barbarian” societies, it’s doubtful if that would have been feasible (to say nothing about logistic issues). Also, none of th extant sources states or implies that the Goths spent a winter within the empire. But it fits better with the known movements of Decius. On the other side, the Getica’s account of Cniva’s invasion gives a more realistic timeframe for the invasion (half a year) but then there’s the problem of accounting for Decius’ actions between the end of the 250 CE invasion and Cniva’s attack.

I’ll leave the chronology aside for the time being and go ahead with the account of the campaign, for from this point onwards there seems to be some agreement in all surviving accounts, including the extant fragments of Dexippus’ Skythica.

If we follow the Getica’s tale, Decius would’ve had to defeat the second (and smallest) Gothic force in Upper Moesia before being able to approach Nicopolis and force Cniva to lift the siege. Zosimus wrote than in his fight against the Goths Decius “won all the battles” which is a blatant lie because we know from the Skythica and the Getica that Decius suffered two major defeats at Cniva’s hands. The modern account of events though ignores this and haves Decius going straight against Cniva in the spring or early summer of 250 CE after arriving to the war theater.

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Map of Lower Moesia and northern Trace with the main cities mentioned in the text.

Ilkka Syvänne though provides an unexpected source that could confirm that Decius did indeed defeat a second Gothic army in Moesia (although he adheres to the modern chronology of events). This source is the VI century CE military manual attributed to the Eastern Roman emperor Maurice, the Strategikon. This does not mean that Decius’ victory happened according to the sequence of events presented by the Getica, but I agree with Syvänne that having this encounter just before Decius’ first major clash with Cniva is the most probable setting for it:
The Skythic tribes of the Goths employed this tactic against the Roman emperor Decius when they crossed the Danube and invaded Thrace and made war against him in Moesia. At the time, Decius was successful with the same stratagem, feigning flight in an intense combat that he did start to slay many of them.
This passage of the Strategikon gives some important information. First, that Decius did indeed win at least one victory against the Goths. And second, that he managed to win it by means of a feigned retreat. Syvänne takes this as clear evidence that Decius was employing himself a mainly cavalry army, just as the Goths did, which is one of his most controversial assertions. But if this passage from the Strategikon is read within its context, it becomes clear that the author is not dealing specifically with cavalry tactics, but with ambushes in general, by infantry and/or cavalry, and specifically ambushes in swamps and marshes; what the passage in my opinion seems to imply is that Decius employed against the Goths an ambush similar to the one that they would later use against him. At the time of his death, Decius had assumed the title of Germanicus Maximus, he probably took this title between the lifting of the siege of Marcianopolis and this hypothetic victory.

That the Goths employed a mainly cavalry army and used typical steppe tactics could also be deduced from a fragment in Syncellus’ account of the invasion:
Scythians, those called Goths, when they had crossed the Ister river (Note: the Danube) in very large numbers under Decius, began occupying the dominion of Rome. They surrounded the Mysians, who were fleeing towards Nicopolis.
This fragment describes probably a grand encirclement by Gothic cavalry of numbers of Moesian (“Mysians”) fugitives that were trying to seek refuge within the walls of Nicopolis, just like steppe peoples did in large scale hunts or when herding their large cattle or horse herds.

After the defeat of the shielding Gothic force (Syncellus states that Decius killed thirty thousand Goths), Decius approached Nicopolis. It’s unclear what happened with the city, but the extant sources don’t report it falling to the Goths. And now, according to the Getica and the other sources, instead of retreating to the north (as would be expected of a frightened army menaced by a victorious and more powerful enemy) Cniva marched south and crossed the Balkan range through the Shipka pass. This could mean two things: either Decius had cut off Cniva’s line of retreat northwards, or he was not afraid in the least of Decius; if this were the case then it would be possible that he’d indeed managed to take Nicopolis (in his Res Gestae, Ammianus Marcellinus wrote that Nicopolis had indeed been destroyed) and now, more confident than ever, he decided to cross to the rich province of Thrace.

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Aerial view of the remains of Nicopolis ad Istrum, Bulgaria.

Decius, elated by his recent victory (and perhaps angered by the events at Nicopolis) followed straight after him. At this point, I would like to make some comments about Decius and about what the scarce sources available let us know about this man’s character. Decius was a hyper-conservative character. His name seems to suggest an Italian provenance (Decius and Messius are ancient Oscan names), and although he was born in the Balkans, either his family was Italian and his father had been just deployed there, or they belonged to the considerable number of descendants of Italian soldiers who’d settled the area after service in the legions. Anyway, he probably considered himself to be more Roman than the Romans themselves and the second coming of Romulus. He believed in ancient Roman customs (including ancient Roman religion), the role of the Senate and in the Roman way of waging war. Which consisted in seeking a pitched battle whenever possible even at unfavorable odds, relying on the supposed superiority of Roman training, discipline and weaponry. Decius seems to have been deeply assured about the superiority of Roman arms, to the point of blindness and arrogance; the cunning Cniva beat him twice by using surprise and ambush, and both times Decius fell spectacularly in the trap; the second time with catastrophic results. Let’s retake the account of the Getica:
Thence he (Note: Cniva) hastened to Philippopolis, with his forces in good array. When the Emperor Decius learned of his departure, he was eager to bring relief to his own city and, crossing Mount Haemus, came to Beroe. While he was resting his horses and his weary army in that place, all at once Cniva and his Goths fell upon him like a thunderbolt. He cut the Roman army to pieces and drove the Emperor, with a few who had succeeded in escaping, across the mountains again to Euscia (Note: Novae) in Moesia, where Gallus was then stationed with a large force of soldiers as guardian of the frontier.
Syncellus also agrees with this, although with much less detail:
Decius, after he had attacked them (the Goths) as Dexippus records, and had killed thirty thousand, was beaten in battle, with the result that Philippopolis, when it had been taken by them, was sacked and many Thracians were killed.
Syncellus’ quote about thirty thousand Goths killed by Decius at Nicopolis is indeed taken straight from Dexippus, for it appears in one of the surviving fragments from the Scythica, the Letter of Decius, in which Decius promises help to the inhabitants of Philippopolis and boasts of his victory at Nicopolis. To summarize: Decius crossed the Shipka pass and reached the environs of the Thracian city of Colonia Augusta Traiana Beroea (the modern Bulgarian city of Stara Zagora) at top speed to try to stop the Goths before they advanced too deep into Thrace; he probably did so without taking the most elementary military precautions: without proper scouting and without setting up a proper encampment with proper guards. And Cniva, who had been laying in ambush waiting for Decius’ army to emerge from the mountain pass, attacked the Romans by surprise and cut them to pieces, with Decius having to flee for his life across the mountains, and not stopping until he reached Novae and met the governor of Lower Moesia Trebonianus Gallus.

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View from the Shipka pass, looking south towards the ancient Roman province of Thracia.

This defeat is also attested by one of the extant fragments of Dexippus’ Scythica. It’s one of the two fragments from the Scythica Vindobonensia, in which Decius gives a (fictional) speech to his troops when they are to confront the victorious Gothic army which is returning north after the fall of Philippopolis, and he mentions a previous defeat:
Men, I wish the military force and all the provincial territory were in a good condition and not humiliated by the enemy. But since the incidents of human life bring manifold sufferings (for such is the fate of mortals), it is the duty of prudent men to accept what happens and not to lose their spirit, nor become weak, distressed by the mishap in that plain or by the capture of the Thracians—in case any of you has been disheartened by these things. For each of these two misfortunes offers arguments against your discouragement: the former (Note: the defeat at Beroe) was brought about by the treachery of the scouts rather than by any deficiency of ours, and the Thracian town (Note: Philippopolis) they (Note:the Goths) took by ambushes rather than through prowess, having failed in their attacks.
In other words, Decius blamed his defeat to “treachery” by the scouts of his army, admitting no fault of his own.

It’s impossible to know the scale of Decius’ defeat at Beroe. The Getica states that it was a slaughter, but the fact that the Getica was basically a panegyric written by Cassiodorus to exalt the Gothic people and its king Theodoric the Great automatically makes this assertion suspicious. But the events that followed seem to vindicate the Getica’s depiction. Decius, who until then had acted impetuously and had sought direct battle with the Goths whenever possible, changed his ways, took refuge at Novae with Trebonianus Gallus and did absolutely nothing while Cniva and his Goths pillaged Thrace and besieged Philippopolis. This implies that Decius’ martial ardor must’ve cooled down considerably and that his army had suffered serious losses. The Getica also says that Trebonianus Gallus stood at Novae with large numbers of soldiers guarding the border. In my opinion, this means that, fearing more Gothic attacks or reinforcements from the north, Decius had left at least the complete garrison of Lower Moesia (two legions plus auxiliaries) under Gallus’ command, and he’d followed Cniva just with the central reserve and vexillationes (or complete legions) and auxiliary forces drawn from other Danubian provinces (probably Lower Pannonia, Upper Moesia and perhaps Dacia). But again, it’s impossible to know how many men Decius had led through the Shipka pass and how many were lost at Beroe.
 
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18.5. THE REIGN OF DECIUS. THE FALL OF PHILIPPOPOLIS AND CNIVA’S RETREAT.
18.5. THE REIGN OF DECIUS. THE FALL OF PHILIPPOPOLIS AND CNIVA’S RETREAT.

The first consequence of Decius’ defeat was that the Goths were able to pillage Thrace at leisure and to put its largest city Philippopolis under siege. It’s not sure if Philippopolis was Thrace’s official capital though, as Roman governors seem to have resided mostly at Perinthus, but it was the provincial metropolis (the provincial koinon was located there) and largest city. The Getica states that within the besieged city there was the senatorial legate for Thrace Titus Iulius Priscus who presumably led the defense. The second consequence was a usurpation attempt at Rome led by the senator Iulius Valens Licinanus, who according to Aurelius Victor was hailed as augustus by the Roman people, but Valerian and Hostilian seem to have been able to put the revolt down quickly.

The Getica states that Cniva took Philippopolis after a long siege, but this seems implausible to me for several reasons. First, because it would have been very difficult for Cniva to keep his army together for a long time. The modern consensus agrees with the Getica's statement, because as it makes Cniva’s campaign last from winter/spring 250 CE to the summer of 251 CE; in other words, the Goths besieged Philippopolis all the winter. It’s difficult for me to imagine a large Gothic force which had entered the empire just to loot it would have spent a whole winter in a tedious siege, without anything remotely similar to a logistical apparatus behind them and with large numbers of Roman forces to the north cutting their line of retreat. If we stick to the chronology supported by coin hoards and that can be deduced from the Getica’s text, the fall of Philippopolis must’ve been a quick affair.

Antiquity-Amphitheater.jpg

Plovdiv, Bulgaria (ancient Philippopolis). Remains of the Roman theater.

Fortunately, one of the two fragments from the Scythica Vindobonensia describes clearly how did the Goths manage to take the city:
(they) formed the rear-guard, claiming to be particularly valiant and having a reputation of being the fiercest. They pretended to withdraw but stayed in the area. Not shrinking from abiding there, they built a camp as secretly as they could and lodged not far from the enemies, so that the attack could be prepared within a short time. They did, however, refrain from lighting fires at night, fearing that they might be seen.
When they believed that the Thracians had become firmly convinced of their withdrawal—so much so that a rebellion against those in power had arisen (as tends to happen where there is a mass of people) and caused carelessness with the guard duty, and some had given themselves to merriment, as if the war had ended and they had achieved a splendid victory—at that point they decided to attack the town. For an advantage gained by betrayal had also encouraged them: a man had stolen away from the town and provided Cniva with information about the city (as was said, either out of hatred against one of those in power or in the hope of a big reward). And he convinced the Scythians to hold on even more firmly to their plan of attacking by promising them to give those who would be dispatched the signal in accordance with what had been agreed in the place where the fortifications could be climbed most easily. Five men, who had volunteered out of zeal and in hope of money, were sent out by Cniva by night as scouts to check what had been reported and to test the arranged betrayal. Prizes were set by the king: 500 darics for the first to climb the walls (…)
So according to Dexippus, who is a strictly contemporary and reliable source states that once more Cniva used a ruse to take the city, and that the Roman defenders once again fell for it. The fate of Philippopolis was a grim one, for according to Ammianus Marcellinus:
After many disasters had been suffered and many cruel calamities had been inflicted, Philippopolis was destroyed and a hundred thousand people (unless the histories are false) were butchered within her walls.
But the disasters for Decius did not end here. According to Aurelius Victor:
At the same time, Lucius Priscus governor of Macedonia, proclaimed himself emperor with help from the Goths, who after having pillaged all of Thrace, had advanced into Macedonia.
And according to the Getica:
But Cniva took Philippopolis after a long siege and then, laden with spoil, allied himself to Priscus, the commander in the city, to fight against Decius.
So, not only did Philippopolis fall, but the senatorial legate of Thrace Priscus allied himself with the Goths and launched a usurpation attempt. Modern scholars disagree about the possible sequence of events; some have suggested that Priscus did surrender the city in exchange for Cniva’s help. But combined with the new fragments from the Skythica that I quoted above, it seems clear to me that Philippopolis fell to a stratagem by Cniva, that Priscus entered talks with Cniva only after the fall of the city, and that perhaps Cniva used him to create confusion amongst the Romans, and that Priscus would’ve been little more than Cniva’s hostage and puppet. Anyway, usurpation was a capital offense, and according to Aurelius Victor, Priscus was immediately declared a hostis publicus by the Senate in Rome.

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Philippopolis, digital reconstruction of the ancient Roman circus.

After this successful campaign, and loaded with booty and prisoners, the Goths began their trek northwards back to their homeland. In the meanwhile, according to the Scythica Vindobonensia, Decius had been busy gathering a new army in Lower Moesia and getting ready to intercept the Goths during their return trip:
Decius was concerned about the wrongdoing of the auxiliary troops and the capture of Philippopolis. And when the army was gathered, about 80,000 men, he wanted to renew the war if he could—as he thought that the situation was favorable to him, even though he had lost the auxiliary force—but also to liberate the Thracian captives and to prevent them from crossing to the other side. And for the moment, having built a trench at Hamisos [?], a place of Beroina [?], he stayed inside the encampment together with his army, watching for when the enemy were to cross. When the advance of Ostrogotha’s force was reported to him, he thought that he should encourage his soldiers, as a good opportunity arose.
Several interesting appear in this fragment of Dexippus’ work.
  • Fist, that apparently Decius had gathered a massive army to try to stop the Goths. 80,000 men is a very large army for Roman standards; this implies again that the Gothic force was in turn truly massive, even if Dexippus’ numbers are probably exaggerated, but again he had been a contemporary of the facts. 80,000 men is the equivalent of the united garrisons of Lower Moesia, Upper Moesia, Dacia and the central Roman reserve. This was an army comparable in size to the ones used until then in the great eastern expeditions against the Arsacids or Sasanians, which could mobilize also large forces.
  • The second is that Decius seems to have resorted now to a purely defensive tactic, digging trenches and establishing military encampments. The translation of Dexippus’ text by G.Martin and J.Grusková that I’ve posted above shows the names of Hamisos and Beroina with question marks, because these place names are unknown to modern scholars, and so Martin and Grusková seem to be doubtful even of their translation. The most logical thing though would’ve been to blockade the mountain passes across the Balkan range.
  • Thirdly, that Decius was using what would become later the standard Roman tactic for dealing with plundering raids within the empire and wanted to attack the Goths when they were on their return trip, loaded with booty and captives and therefore more encumbered and less maneuverable.
  • Fourthly, that judging by the content of Decius’ fictional speech (such speeches were almost always fictions by ancient writers for dramatism’s sake, and to show off their rhetorical skills), that Roman morale was probably low after past defeats.
  • And finally, that it’s here where Dexippus’ Ostrogotha appears, but his apparition here contradicts the Getica’s tale. According to the latter, Ostrogotha had been king of the Goths and was already dead by then and had been succeeded by Cniva, but in this context he appears to be leading of the main bodies of Cniva’s army in its northwards march, probably the vanguard, as it is the first one to approach the Roman lines. But due to the loss of the rest of most of the Skythica, we don’t know if this reflects a mistake (deliberate or not) by the Getica, or simply that Ostrogotha was a common name amongst the Goths, and so that the two were not related.
According to numismatic evidence, it was at this critical moment, and perhaps trying to reaffirm his authority and raise the morale of the army that Decius appointed his eldest son Herennius Etruscus as augustus and co-ruler; usually this would be accompanied by a sizeable donativum to the troops. As we will see later, there’s reason to believe that this was indeed the case.

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Antoninianus with Herennius Etruscus as augustus. On the obverse: IMP C Q HER ETR MES DECIO AVG. On the reverse: PIETAS AVGG.

What happened immediately after this is unclear and again shrouded in confusion: according to the Getica, the Roman forces harassed the Gothic column, and in one of these skirmishes before the final battle at Abritus Herennius Etruscus was killed by an arrow. Decius’ reaction to the death of his son is disputed in ancient sources; some claim that he showed a heroic stoicism worthy of the legendary heroes of Rome, but the Getica’s tale seems more realistic to me, for it implies that it finally unhinged Decius and made him drop all precaution just before his final encounter with Cniva:
In the battle that followed they quickly pierced the son of Decius with an arrow and cruelly slew him. His father saw it, and although he is said to have exclaimed, to cheer the hearts of his soldiers: "Let no one mourn; the death of one soldier is not a great loss to the republic," he was yet unable to endure it, because of his love for his son. So he rode against the foe, demanding either death or vengeance (…)
This is perhaps the place to insert a brief comment about the figure of Decius according to ancient authors. The loss of almost all the works by III century authors, and especially Dexippus’ Skythica, is particularly lamentable in this respect, for they belonged to an era when religious controversy had still not distorted historical writing. All our data comes from the IV century CE and later, when the empire had become officially Christian, and Decius was labelled by Christian authors as the precursor of the Antichrist, or worse. On the other side, pro-pagan authors who bemoaned the abandonment of traditional religion and rites chose Decius as their hero because he had persecuted the hated Christians. So, for Zosimus Decius was a heroic figure and a true Roman and for others an “enemy of God”. The Christian author Lactantius wrote gleefully about his death and shameful end; while for Eutropius, Aurelius Victor and Zosimus he had an admirable and heroic death. Dexippus would at least have provided a more impartial view. For a work written in Constantinople under Justinian and summarizing a work written by the most pious Cassiodorus (who would later in life become an abbot) in the Christian Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy, the Getica is quite refrained in its comments about Decius and so it appears to me that its content in this respect should be taken as reliable.
 
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18.6. THE REIGN OF DECIUS. THE BATTLE OF ABRITUS
18.6. THE REIGN OF DECIUS. THE BATTLE OF ABRITUS.

With a grieving Decius seeking a decisive encounter (at this point, apart from having lost his son, probably it was clear to Decius that he had to win if he wanted to keep his life and that of his remaining family, because if he failed yet again the army would abandon him for the first usurper who appeared), the emperor fought a final and fatal battle with Cniva. Let’s see how some of the ancient the sources describe this final encounter. First, the Getica:
and when he came to Abrittus, a city of Moesia, he was himself cut off by the Goths and slain, thus making an end of his dominion and of his life. This place is to-day called the Altar of Decius, because he there offered strange sacrifices to idols before the battle.
Secondly, Syncellus’ Ecloga Chronographica (which, although written in the IX century CE, explicitly used Dexippus as a source):
And the same Decius, the fighter against God, when he had attacked Scythians who were returning to their own territory, was killed very piteously in Abrytus, the place called Forum Thembronium, with his son, and the Scythians returned with a great number of captives and much booty.
Thirdly, the Strategikon (Book IV, Chapter 3. About the ambushes conducted by both sides):
Others, using the same sort of stratagem in marshy terrain, trace two or three solid firm paths across them and inform their army about them when it comes into formation. The troops set themselves in line in front of said paths and once the action has begun they simulate flight, using these paths and they lead the enemy directly into the swamp. Then the ambushed forces hidden on the flanks charge suddenly against them and the men who have feigned flight counterattack and destroy the enemy. The Skythic tribes of the Goths used this stratagem against the Roman emperor Decius when they crossed the Danube and invaded Thrace and made war against him in Moesia.
So, Decius fought another battle against Cniva, and this time he did not survive it; Lactantius stated that most of his army perished there with him, although his hatred towards Decius doesn’t make him the most reliable of sources. Ammianus Marcellinus put the defeat at Abritus among the worst defeats ever suffered by the Romans, in the same group as the battle of Teutoburg, the Marcomannic attack against the Roman empire and the battle of Adrianople. The comparison with Adrianople and Teutoburg seems to imply a total encirclement and annihilation of the Roman army, but recent archaeological digs by a Bulgarian team led by G.Radoslavova seem to imply that part of the Roman army was able to flee the battlefield.

Decius probably had less men than the Goths, for his initial resort to purely defensive tactics seems to hint at this; the same can be deduced from his harassing of the Gothic column. This means that Cniva did probably enjoy a comfortable numerical superiority over the Roman army, and that if he managed to lure it into a terrain where the Romans could not use their superior training and discipline to establish a proper battle array he could hope for another victory.

The exact site of the battle has been established firmly with little room for doubt by Bulgarian archaeologists. The remains of Roman colony of Abritus are located near the modern town of Razgrad in Bulgaria. For decades, large numbers of Roman artifacts dated to the III century CE have been found in a wide area to the northwest of Razgrad, especially in a field known by the locals as “Poleto”, south of the village of Dryanovets. At Poleto, Bulgarian archaeologists G.Radoslavova, G.Dzanev and N.Nikolov found large number of military-related artifacts, like pegs from soldiers’ tents, iron nails from soldiers’ shoes, an iron catapult arrowhead, iron spear butts, etc. The most important findings though were bronze bracing of helmets, some of which were numbered at the rear with the numbers IV, VII and XIV, most likely referring to the numerals of the legions involved in the battle. In the same site, gold and silver coins of emperors Septimius Severus to Decius were found. These Bulgarian archaeologists consider that Poleto was the site of the Roman camp. Many more Roman military artifacts dated to the III century CE have been found scattered in neighboring villages, up to 12.5 km from Poleto. Among these artifacts there are symbolically important objects that could only have been lost under extreme circumstances:
  • The bronze insignia of beneficiarius consularis (a functionary in the office of the governor of the province).
  • A bronze legionary insignia, with the figurine of a Capricorn and the inscription LEG XIIII G. The Capricorn was the emblem of Legio XIV Gemina.
Poleto.jpg


Location of the "Poleto" field, 2 km south from Dryanovets, on a low palteau slightly rised from the valley of the Beli Lom river, which can bee seen running in a southeast to nortwest course across the picture; along it runs a Bulgarian country road (marked "2003" on the map), which coincides almost exactly with the ancient Roman road that Cniva and his armt were following headed to the northwest. The battlefield is highlighted in yellow. Razgrad (ancient Abritus) is located 13 km to the southeast. Source: Google Earth.


All the scattered coin hoards found in this area are characterized because the newest coins found in them belong to the last issues of Decius reign, including coins naming Herennius Etruscus as augustus. These coin hoards are of various sizes, with the largest among them (for example, one containing four golden rings, thirty aurei, a small gold ingot and several hundred antoniniani) belonged to high-ranking officers and were buried immediately before or after the battle.

This team of Bulgarian archaeologists provides the following reconstruction for the events before and after the battle. Decius left Oescus and headed east to intercept Cniva’s army with a force made up of vexillationes (more probable than full legions) from Legio XIV Gemina (based at Carnuntum, Upper Pannonia), Legio IV Flavia Felix (based at Singidunum, Upper Moesia) and Legio VII Claudia (based at Viminacium, also in Upper Moesia). Probably the Praetorian Guard also accompanied him, perhaps also Legio II Parthica and other palatine units like the Equites Singulares Augusti. Probably the army was reinforced by auxiliaries and vexillationes or full legions from the garrison of Lower Moesia (Legio I Italica based at Novae, and Legio XI Claudia, based at Durostorum), this latter force was probably commanded by the legatus augusti pro praetore of Lower Moesia Trebonianus Gallus.

The Roman army would’ve set up a campsite south of the modern village of Dryanovets. This was a strategic location, as it controlled two roads: the one leading from Abritus to the northwest along the Beli Lom river valley, and the other from Abritus to Sexaginta Prista, a small town already on the Danube. North of the camp, on a low hill a small fortification (whose remains have been unearthed) would’ve been built to function as a watch post and checkpoint. The Roman army remained in this place for a while, buying provisions from the neighboring villages (hence the origin for many of the smaller scattered coin hoards containing coins of low value, which have been found at places with remains of settlements from Roman times). Immediately before the battle, or having heard of the defeat, Roman officers buried their money and valuables underground. For the Bulgarian archaeologists, the battle took place “undoubtedly” close to the camp. As almost all ancient sources state that the battle and Decius’ death happened in a marshland, they think that the most probable place for the battle is the Beli Lom river valley, immediately southeast of the modern village of Dryanovets, 2 km east of the Roman army’s campsite. This location was known anciently as “Buyuk gyol” (“The big marsh” or “The big puddle”), because the terrain was regularly flooded by the recurring overflows from the Beli Lom river.

If this localization is correct, then the place mentioned by Dexippus as Forum Thembronium would coincide with the Roman settlement in the lands southeast of the modern village of Dryanovets. After the defeat of the Roman army, its camp would’ve been captured and plundered, and the surviving Roman troops would’ve fled in several directions. A part of them would’ve fled to the northwest, along the Beli Lom riverbed. Others would’ve retreated to the west, towards the Roman settlement in the lands of the modern village of Ezerche and the road to Sexaginta Prista. Another group would’ve fled south, towards the settlement to the south of the modern village of Osenets, and along the valley of the small Dermendere river (left tributary of the Beli Lom river), towards the settlement to the south of the modern village of Balkanski. To Radoslavova’s team, it seems that the major part of the surviving Roman forces retreated to the east along the Beli Lom river towards Abritus. And a remnant would’ve reached the settlements at the modern villages of Radingrad and Poroishte.

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Sequence of maps quoted from the paper titled The Battle at Abritus in AD 251: Written Sources, Archaeological and Numismatical Data, by Galena Radoslavova, Georgi Dzanev and Nikolay Nikolov, published in Archaeologi Bulgarica 2, 2011.

This report by Bulgarian archaeologists clarifies some issues about the battle of Abritus while opening new ones. First, there’s the issue of the path followed by Cniva’s army in its northwards retreat. According to ancient sources, Decius gathered his army at Oescus, one of the main fortified military bases along the Danube. Abritus is located to the east of Oescus, and considerably to the east of Philippopolis. In order for Cniva’s army to reach Abritus from Philippopolis, he could’ve chosen three paths:
From Philippopolis to Serdica, and then north, crossing the Balkan range and then taking the Roman road that ran parallel along the northern side of the Balkan range.

From Philippopolis directly north, crossing just to the west of Mons Haemus and then taking the same road as the first route in the eastern direction towards Nicopolis as Istrum:

Cniva_Retreat_01.jpg


The same way they’d come to Philippopolis, via Colonia Augusta Traiana Beroe and Nicopolis ad Istrum:

Cniva_Retreat_02.jpg


Or finally, by making a wide detour to the east using the Roman road that led from Philippopolis to Mesembria on the Black Sea coast, then northwards to Marcianopolis, and then they would join the same road as the three other routes, but this time in a westwards direction:

Cniva_Retreat_03.jpg


In my opinion, the third alternative is the likeliest one, because the other three would’ve allowed Decius, if he had gathered his army at Oescus, to intercept Cniva’s force sooner. This was probably what Decius intended; to attack Cniva as soon as he emerged from the Balkan passes, as Cniva had done to him. Instead, the Gothic leader described a wide arc avoiding the mountains and entered Lower Moesia from the southeast, and then moved to the west and northwest, along the Roman road Marcianopolis-Abritus-Sexagenia Prista, where he could cross the Danube. This is the only logical explanation for the battle happening so far to the east of Oescus, unless Decius had allowed Cniva’s columns to pass right under his nose in central Moesia without doing anything.

The Gothic army would’ve been moving slowly, encumbered as it was by booty and captives, and this would’ve given Decius the opportunity, as soon as he realized what was happening, to move his army to the area of Abritus and to wait for the Goths there. This would accord with Radoslavova’s team assertion that the Roman army was encamped at Poleto for some time before the battle. But in my opinion, looking at the battle site (which looks like a sure identification, with little room for doubt), and especially to Radoslavova’s statement that the Roman army had time to march there to cut the Goths’ retreat and build and encampment by the Roman road, then the description of the battle as transmitted by the Strategikon (an ambush in marshland), makes little sense to me, or at least becomes quite puzzling. This makes the loss of the full text of the Skythica even more regrettable.

Of twelve ancient sources, only two say explicitly that Decius was ambushed (the Strategikon, which is the one which provides the most detailed account, and Zosimus, which although provides a shorter account, agrees with the Strategikon), but the rest of them say nothing about an ambush. Four of them mention that Decius fell “in a swamp” (Ammianus Marcellinus, Strategikon, Leo Grammaticus and Zosimus) and the rest don’t mention any swamp. Zosimus attributes Decius’ death to treachery from Trebonianus Gallus, but the remaining sources say nothing of the sort. Dryanovets is located on a very flat stretch of land, crossed by the Beli Lom river; which runs on a northwest direction, with the ancient Roman road (now a Bulgarian country road) running parallel to it on its western side. Immediately to the northwest of the Beli Lom, a flat plateau rises quite abruptly, and this topography must cause the formation of swampy marshes along the Beli Lom valley especially in rainy seasons, both due to the water carried by the river itself and by the runoff of the waters from the plateau. But the battle probably took part in July or August, which is according to numismatic evidence the earliest date for Herennius Etruscus’ appointment as augustus.

The Poleto locality is located 1,5 km south of Dryanovets, while the place of the battlefield is located immediately southeast of the village. It’s located in terrain higher than the river valley to the north and west, and the fort located near it must’ve provided an excellent survey point from which the road could be controlled. Given that the Romans had total control over the battlefield, and that they had been there encamped for a while and so they must’ve grown familiar with the environs, it seems quite surprising that the Goths would’ve been able to set up an ambush, on lower terrain than the Roman camp (the battlefield is visible from it) and to the rearguard of the Roman camp if the Goths were advancing from the southeast. That would’ve required almost ninja skills on the part of the Goths; the terrain of the valley is flat, and easily visible from both sides of the valley, and in Roman times it was studded with agrarian settlements, so probably it was cleared, cultivated land with little or no forest cover. The more I think about it, the most surprising it seems that the Goths managed to set up an ambush. On the contrary, it would’ve been the Romans who would’ve been best suited to ambush the Goths.

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View of the battlefield from "Poleto", site of the Roman encampment, looking to the east/southeast. The Beli Lom river runs on the background, at the feet of the wooded slopes of the plateau that can be seen behind the battlefield.

If there was an ambush, then the incompetence of Decius and his commanders must’ve been criminal, but the well-chosen site of the encampment to cut the Goths’ retreat suggests at least some level of military skill. The battle took place just to the south of Dryanovets, near the Roman camp; the most logical thing is to suppose that the Romans, who couldn’t have missed the large Gothic column, full of captives and wagons, moving slowly along the road, would have been able to form immediately in battle order across the road and cut the Goths’ path. We should also imagine that the slow-moving, cumbersome Gothic force must’ve been constantly shadowed by Roman scouts, and that they had been moving across Roman land and bypassing Roman fortified cities the last of which would’ve been nearby Abritus; and thus Decius and his commanders would’ve had lots of intelligence to work with and anticipate the Gothic movements.

But Zosimus and the Strategikon, the only two sources who offer some details about the battle, say specifically that it was Cniva who ambushed Decius. I’ve already posted the account from the Strategikon, so I will post here Zosimus’ account:
But Decius, marching against them, was not only victorious in every battle, but recovered the spoils they had taken, and endeavored to cut off their retreat to their own country, intending to destroy them all, to prevent their ever again, making a similar incursion. For this purpose he posted Gallus on the bank of the Tanais (Note: the Danube) with a competent force, and led in person the remainder of his army against the enemy. This expedition exceeded to his utmost wish; but Gallus, who was disposed to innovation, sent agents to the Barbarians, requesting their concurrence in a conspiracy against Decius. To this they gave a willing assent, and Gallus retained his post on the bank of the Tanais, but the Barbarians divided themselves into three battalions, the first of which posted itself behind a marsh. Decius having destroyed a considerable number of the first battalion, the second advanced, which he likewise defeated, and discovered part of the third, which lay near the marsh. Gallus sent intelligence to him, that he might march against them across the fen. Proceeding therefore incautiously in an unknown place, he and his army became entangled in the mire, and under that disadvantage were so assailed by the missiles of the Barbarians, that not one of them escaped with life. Thus ended the life of the excellent emperor Decius.
Zosimus is considered by scholars to have been a mediocre and uninspired historian; his New History is mostly a “cut and paste” exercise from earlier authors to drive forth his agenda; that the adoption of Christianity had led to the decadence of the empire. Scholars have detected that the copied verbatim whole passages of Herodian, and there’s reason to think that he did the same with Dexippus; the only part where probably Zosimus added something of his own accord is the account of Trebonianus Gallus’ supposed treachery (which is considered as unfounded by most scholars).

If this is what truly happened and considering Radoslavova’s careful reconstruction of the battlefield and its environs, then Decius and his officers acted like complete fools, because they managed to get ambushed in a place where it should have been them doing the ambushing.
 
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If this is what truly happened and considering Radoslavova’s careful reconstruction of the battlefield and its environs, then Decius and his officers acted like complete fools, because they managed to get ambushed in a place where it should have been them doing the ambushing.
I'm not sure I agree.

Zosimus seems to indicate Decius had beaten (but not destroyed maybe?) 2/3rd of the Gothic force before advancing on the last third in the swamp. This would seem fitting with basic competence followed by minor hubris. Advancing on the last third was risky, but if he had beaten them he would have the whole Gothic force on the run (presumably without any carry-able loot), while if he left them be the other two battalions might rally to that remaining core and come back to beat him - and he had just beaten 2 Gothic battalions so thought he could take another no problem (for all we know he understood it was risky terrain to deploy in).

And, going one step further, maybe the other two battalions rallied precisely when he marched into the swamp, turning what would have been a careful approach over known paths into the swamp into a messy chaotic fight in which the Romans were driven off their desired paths and into the swamp.
 
I'm not sure I agree.

Zosimus seems to indicate Decius had beaten (but not destroyed maybe?) 2/3rd of the Gothic force before advancing on the last third in the swamp. This would seem fitting with basic competence followed by minor hubris. Advancing on the last third was risky, but if he had beaten them he would have the whole Gothic force on the run (presumably without any carry-able loot), while if he left them be the other two battalions might rally to that remaining core and come back to beat him - and he had just beaten 2 Gothic battalions so thought he could take another no problem (for all we know he understood it was risky terrain to deploy in).

And, going one step further, maybe the other two battalions rallied precisely when he marched into the swamp, turning what would have been a careful approach over known paths into the swamp into a messy chaotic fight in which the Romans were driven off their desired paths and into the swamp.

The account by Zosimus agrees with the account of the Strategikon, and the Strategikon states explicitly that it was an ambush and describes it in some detail. What I can't fathom is how did the Goths manage to hide a large part of their force from the Romans, when the Romans had such a command over the battlefield and had had plenty of time to get themselves acquainted with it?

Ilkka Syvänne describes it as a "double ambush". The first Gothic squadron would have started the fight with the Romans, and then they would have feigned a panicky retreat. While they retreated, the second Gothic squadron would've appeared suddenly from their "hiding" and charged the Romans, and then they would've joined the first squadron in their flight. By this point, the Romans would've been convinced that the victory was theirs and that there were no more ambushes lying in wait for them, so they advanced without the due precautions and entered the swamp, and then the third Gothic squadron which was the real ambushing force, attacked them and the other two forces stopped their simulated flight and counterattacked. This reconstruction of events by Syvänne would agree with both Zosimus and the Strategikon, and Syvänne speculates that perhaps Decius and his commanders had learnt something after their earlier experiences and began the battle advancing with care, and perhaps in two bodies, a first line and a reserve, precisely to be able to react in case of traps. But the elaborate Gothic deployement envisioned by Syvänne would have been devised expressly for such cases; when the first "ambushing" squadron attacked, Decius would have deployed his reserve to counter it, and so when the real ambush happeend, the Romans had no reserves left to react.

It's quite an elaborate scheme, but judging from Cniva's previous leadership, he seems to have been a man quite fond of ruses and stratagems. This also accords with the very elaborate traditions of steppe warfare that the Goths had adopted as their own after their settlement in "Skythia". Similar deployments are described in medieval Arabic and Persian treaties when dealing with ancient Iranian and Central Asian warfare tactics.

Anyway, your version could also suit the events; as I wrote before, unless scholars manage to recover more fragments (or the whole text) from Dexippus' Skythica, doubts will remain.
 
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The account by Zosimus agrees with the account of the Strategikon, and the Strategikon states explicitly that it was an ambush and describes it in some detail. What I can't fathom is how did the Goths manage to hide a large part of their force from the Romans, when the Romans had such a command over the battlefield and had had plenty of time to get themselves acquainted with it?

Ilkka Syvänne describes it as a "double ambush". The first Gothic squadron would have started the fight with the Romans, and then they would have feigned a panicky retreat. While they retreated, the second Gothic squadron would've appeared suddenly from their "hiding" and charged the Romans, and then they would've joined the first squadron in their flight. By this point, the Romans would've been convinced that the victory was theirs and that there were no more ambushes lying in wait for them, so they advanced without the due precautions and entered the swamp, and then the third Gothic sqadron which was the real ambushing force, attacked them and the other two forces stopped their simulated flight and counterattacked. This reconstruction of events by Syvänne woudl agree with both Zosimus and the Strategikon, and Syvänne speculates that perhaps Decius and his commanders had learnt somethng after their earlier experiences and began teh battle advancing with care, and perhaps in two bodies, a first line and a reserve, precisely to be able to react in case of traps. But the elaborate Gothic deployement envisioned by Syvänne would have been devised expressly for such cases; when the first "ambushing" squadron atatcked, Decius would have deployed his reserve to counter it, and so when the real ambush happeend, the Romans had no reserves left to react.

It's quite an elaborate scheme, but judging from Cniva's previous leadership, he seems to have been a man quite fond of ruses and stratagems. This also accords with the very elaborate traditions of steppe warfare that the Goths had adopted as their own after their settlement in "Skythia". Similar deployments are described in medieval Arabic and Persian treaties when dealing with ancient Iranian and Central Asian warfare tactics.

Anyway, your version could also suit the events; as I wrote before, unless scholars manage to recover more fragments (or the whole text) from Dexippus' Skythica, doubts will remain.
I wonder if anyone could ever know.

To me it seems the disagreement between my version and that Syvänne describes is whether or not the multiple Goth battalions deliberately retreated, or if they were beaten but rallied in time to still ensure victory. In either case the Romans seem to have deployed in a pretty handy spot (i.e. such that the Goths were mired in a swamp while the Romans started out on good firm ground), which explains why the Romans with the control of the battlefield that you describe would have chosen this spot to fight.
 
ok I am painstakingly going through your tome here, semper victor, and I am currently at section 5.4, on page 3, as it's obvious the history channel re-enactor is using stirrups.

was going to make a question about "stirrups" but apparently the near east had them far earlier then the west-->

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirrup

"The invention of the stirrup occurred relatively late in history, considering that horses were domesticated in approximately 4500 BC, and the earliest known saddle-like equipment were fringed cloths or pads with breast pads and cruppers used by Assyrian cavalry around 700 BC"

this I did not know...I had always equated the stirrup as a middle ages thing but apparently the stirrup was far older than this-->

"By the late 6th or early 7th century AD, primarily due to invaders from Central Asia, such as the Avars, stirrups began spreading across Asia to Europe from China."

though it does beg the question why does the stirrup take so long to immigrate to the west?

Stirrups are not attested either in Europe or in the Middle Est until the VI century CE. In the case of Europe, the "real" double stirrup has been first found in Avar graves dated to the VI and VII centuries. What that Wikipedia article describes is the first use of paddled saddles by Near Eastern peoples, like the Assyrians. The Achaemenids, Arsacids and Sasanians also used elaborate war saddles, but no stirrups. I all the hundreds of depictions of cavalrymen from Sasanian art, not a single stirrup can be found, and the same can be said for archaeological findings, even by the time of the late Sasanian kings, when stirrups were already in common use among steppe nomads from Hungary to Manchuria. This is particularly puzzling, because the Sasanians had very close contacts with Central Asian peoples; during the VI century CE they had been first allies of the Turkish Khaganate and later bitter enemies, and Turkish mercenaries served in the Sasanian spah.

This has led some scholars to think that the Sasanians, at least from the time of Xusro I onwards, must've used stirrups, and that the lack of depictions in art must've been due to conservatism, and that the lack of archeological evidence is simply lack of luck. What seems quite clear is that they did not use them in the III century CE or earlier. What Sasanian cavalry used was an elaborate war saddle with a wooden frame of the four-horned kind (similar to the Roman one) that offered a very stable seating for the rider, and it also included thigh guards on the front that curved around the thigh, offering further support to the rider.
 
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I wonder if anyone could ever know.

To me it seems the disagreement between my version and that Syvänne describes is whether or not the multiple Goth battalions deliberately retreated, or if they were beaten but rallied in time to still ensure victory. In either case the Romans seem to have deployed in a pretty handy spot (i.e. such that the Goths were mired in a swamp while the Romans started out on good firm ground), which explains why the Romans with the control of the battlefield that you describe would have chosen this spot to fight.

Up to this moment, there's been no proper and systematic archaeological dig in this battlefild like it has been done at Kalkriese and Harzhorn. A more thorough archaeological survey could help clarify many issues; for example an examination of the size of the Roman camp could help us determine the real size of the Roman army, and perhaps even the amount of cavalry it contained. And the same applies for the battlefield proper; until now I've only heard about Roman weapons and artifacts recovered, but not a single Skythian/Gothic one. Also, it would help us know if the Romans had built any kind of field fortifications or not allowing them to block the road, etc.
 
19. THE AFTERMATH OF ABRITUS.
19. THE AFTERMATH OF ABRITUS.

The list of disasters of the Gothic War does not end here. In 2013, the numismatist Alexander Bursche published a paper in number 173 of The Numismatic Chronicle of the Royal Numismatic Society in London. In his paper, Bursche remarks the fact that gold coins minted by emperors Gordian III, Philippus Arabs and Decius have been found in surprising amounts scattered across a wide area in eastern Europe, far away from the borders of the Roman empire.

The oldest of these coin finds date to the XVII, XVIII and XIX centuries and they ended up in several European collections; due to the date of their finding, it’s impossible to know their exact provenance and the circumstances in which they were found. From the II World War onwards, these findings have been better documented, and the results are impressive, with most of these aurei belonging to the short reign of Decius (less than two years). Most of these aurei were deliberately quartered and pierced before being buried, and the ones for which their exact geographic provenance is known have been found at cemeteries related to the Wielbark and Przeworsk cultures, in Ukraine (Vinnitsa, Kiev, Kursk), Volhynia, Podolia, Podlasie, Greater and Lesser Poland and eastern Pomerania. Of all the III century CE Roman gold coins found in Ukraine, 30% belong to the short reign of Decius.

Even more aurei of these three emperors, also pierced and quartered, are dispersed in several European collections; although the exact spots where they were found are unknown, all them came to their present emplacements from Polish collections, and were most probably found in the southeastern territories of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris (11 coins), the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (9 coins), the Adolf von Rauch collection (12 coins), the Ossoliński National Institute in Wrocław (8 coins), the National Historical Museum of Ukraine in Kiev (20 coins), the National Museum in Copenhagen (12 coins), the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (11 coins).

This concentration of aurei in this area of continental barbaricum, and limited to so narrow a timeframe, is quite extraordinary; there are no comparable examples. In contrast to other areas, in the territories associated to the Wielbark culture, out of 37 III century aurei whose finding circumstances are well documented, as many as 34 (92%) are issues from the time of Gordian III, Philip the Arab and Decius whose combined years of reign cover less than 13 years. This marked over-representation of gold coins from the time of Decius and his immediate predecessors among the third century aurei recorded in the Gothic environment cannot be fortuitous, and Bursche hypothesizes that its cause must’ve been Decius’ defeat at Abritus.

Bursche has built his hypothesis on the studies carried out at other Roman-“barbarian” battlefields, i.e. Kalkriese and Harzhorn in Germany. These archaeological digs have revealed that while on campaign both Roman officers and soldiers were well-supplied with money, both in silver and gold coinage. According to Bursche, gold and silver coins would have been regarded as useful in emergencies. Roman soldiers setting out on a long march to war would have derived some feeling of security from having silver and gold coins on them, whether from their regular pay (pecunia, usually paid in silver) or from donativa (extraordinary payments, usually made in gold). Thus, in the short time period that interests us these losses could only have happened as the consequence of a setback suffered by the Roman army when the soldiers buried part of their property, perhaps even on the battlefield, hoping to survive and recover it later, or when it was captured by the barbarians and used later in burial deposits in their home lands.

Several ancient sources describe the battle as a complete disaster in which most of the Roman army was annihilated, and so it’s conceivable that a large part of the funds carried by Roman soldiers and officers to the battle were captured by the victorious Goths. Bursche makes the interesting point that in several cases of amounts of five aurei found together in a single deposit, like for example the one found at at Shchuchyn in Belarus, the fact that they are found in gourps of five could suggest that we’re dealing with plunder taken directly from Roman soldiers fallen on the battlefield, as this was an amount usually issued as donativum.

Bursche though goes further that that and hypothesizes that, since the emperor himself was killed at Abritus, his own financial resources fell into the hands of the Goths, perhaps even the entire treasury which would have accompanied the emperor when he left Rome on a distant campaign in what were very uncertain times. The progress of the war up to that moment had been erratic as we have seen in previous posts. Thus, Bursche concludes that Decius would have needed a large amount of precious metal with him, to make, as circumstances required, a subsidy or ransom to the barbarians, and especially to issue donativa to the soldiers after the expected victory or the success of the whole campaign. In the prevailing unstable political situation, it would make no sense to leave any money in Rome and it may have appeared to Decius much safer to keep it under his care, and that of the army, complete with the praetorian guard which probably accompanied him. To avoid carrying too much weight over long distances the best solution would have been to transport the money in the form of aurei which had the highest nominal and real value and were at the time the coins most often used in the donativa.

The known amount of the donativa issued to common legionaries during the III century was between five and twenty aurei; for officers it would have been higher. The groups of mid-third century aurei and antoniniani recorded in the region of Abritus seem to point that Decius could have rewarded his soldiers for earlier successes by issuing donativa in aurei and also have paid them regular stipendia in antoniniani.

So, Bursche thinks that it’s quite likely that Decius was left only with the reserves by the time of the battle, to be issued to his soldiers as donativa after the final victory over the Goths. His portable treasury must have consisted of at least a few hundred thousand aurei and may have included gold ingots (and perhaps a mobile mint), adding up to over a ton in weight, possibly even several tons. As noted earlier this is because the emperor probably had with him the entire financial resources of Rome.

According to Bursche, if we consider the evident dominance of aurei struck in the time of Decius among finds in the Gothic homeland originating from numerous recent discoveries by metal detectors, often the same issues as those discovered around Abritus, the argument that the imperial treasury was captured by the Goths becomes convincing. Bursche notes also that these finds, regardless of how well their context is known to us, must represent only an infinitesimal fraction of the true numbers involved.

What in Burches’s eyes gives credibility to his hypothesis that so many aurei minted in the time of Decius and his immediate predecessors fell into “barbarian” hands as spoils of war is suggested by the way in which they were treated back home by the Gothic warriors, presumably those who had participated in the campaign in Lower Moesia: the coins were chopped and deposited, in the same way as weapons taken from a fallen enemy were deposited in the lakes and bogs of Jutland and northern Germany. In two cases, those of Stara Wieś and Ulów, the chopped coins were buried in a sacred space, a grave field; regrettably, the archaeological context of all the other finds is unknown. It is quite possible that chopped fragments of aurei are much more common but are either missed by metal detectorists because of their small size or not recognized for what they are.

Bursche also notes the fact the chopped aurei from Stara Wieś and Berdyshev had been pierced earlier which suggests that at least for a short time they had been used as pendants or as armor ornament. The uncirculated condition of the coin fragments from Stara Wieś, Berdyshev and Ulów indicates that they were chopped, and presumably deposited, not long after minting. Thus, a situation could be imagined in which the coins were pierced when the Gothic troops were still in the South, soon after the capture of the imperial treasury, its contents presumably shared out among the men according to merit shown in battle, as had been done some fifty years earlier with the denarii and the equipment which ended up in the lake at Illerup (Jutland).

02.gif

Pierced aureus of Decius, Odessa Numismatics Museum.

To Bursche, that the holes were made in a hurry is indicated by the fact that some are too close to the coin’s edge and caused a break, making it necessary to make another hole. Then the aurei were used as pendants or dress accessories, or to decorate weapons and horse trappings while the troops were making their way back North, which would have taken many weeks; finally, they were chopped or burnt and used as a sacrifice when the war bands came back home.

There is an additional argument to support Bursche’s assumption that Decius took with him the entire treasury, especially the gold, in the form of coins and ingots. After Decius’ death, the defeated Danubian army hailed as augustus Trebonianus Gallus, the governor of Lower Moesia who at least had managed not to be defeated by the Goths. But in the meantime, Decius’ youngest son the caesar Hostilian was still alive in Rome. Trebonianus Gallus hurried to Rome, and there he raised Hostilian to the rank of joint augustus, while he appointed his own son Volusianus as caesar. Neither Trebonianus Gallus nor Hostilian issued any new aurei celebrating their rise to the purple, something that was very rare; Bursche suggests that the reason for this could have been the loss of so much gold at Abritus.

The hypothetical capture of the Roman imperial treasury by the Goths may help explain the deepening fiscal crisis and progressive devaluations of the aureus observed during the latter half of the third century. The average weight of Trebonianus Gallus’ aurei is much lower than that of the aurei from the reign of Decius. In the times of Valerian and Gallienus there was also a sharp drop in the gold content of aurei, possibly still a consequence of the defeat at Abritus.

Trebonianus Gallus’ short reign has been described by a modern historian as “a succession of disasters”. He also enjoyed a very bad reputation among ancient writers, who criticized him ferociously for his supposed inactivity and general uselessness as an emperor. And to top it all, many of those chroniclers accused him of having been on league with Cniva and having betrayed Decius to the Goths (the most vocal amongst them is Zosimus).

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Aureus of Trebonianus Gallus. On the reverse, CONCORDIA AVGG.

That Trebonianus Gallus was not a traitor is now the consensus among scholars, because he was raised to the purple by the Danubian army which had been just soundly defeated with many losses by these same Goths. If the soldiers and officers had suspected him to be a traitor at the time, they would have lynched him, not made him augustus. Another hint that he had been loyal to Decius is the fact that he made Hostilian his colleague as augustus when he had no need to do so, and that as we will see he kept employing Valerian in high responsibility posts, when Valerian had been Decius’ main supporter in the Senate. But soon after the start of his reign, rumors began to circulate (probably fabricated by political enemies or aspirants to the purple) about his supposed treason, and shortly they became commonplace and were duly written down as truthful by Graeco-Roman authors.

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Sestertius of Hostilian as augustus. On the reverse, SECVRITAS AVGG, a message of reassurance directed by the imperial propaganda to a population that was starting to fear for the future of the empire.

And the fact is that Trebonianus Gallus had received an empire in an almost desperate situation. Its most powerful armed force, the Danube army, had been soundly defeated and humiliated, and a large part of the Balkan provinces had been laid waste. Abritus had been a sound humiliation for Rome: an army almost destroyed (after previous defeats) and two Roman augusti slain in the fight against “barbarians”, something that had never happened before. Probably, as the news of Abritus spread amongst Rome’s neighbors, they became an encouragement for other enemies to try their lot against the wounded and weakened giant. We should add to this Bursche’s hypothesis about the capture of the imperial gold reserve by the Goths (which apart from the damage that it did to an already bankrupt Roman state, would have acted as a call for other “barbarians” to try their luck), and if that was not enough, in 251 CE the Plague of Cyprian had reached Rome, where it was wreaking havoc.

Trebonianus Gallus returned to a capital ravaged by the pestilence, and his first priority seems to have been to try to organize public help to at least try to alleviate the worst effects (mass graves, etc.). Also, before leaving the Danube his first act as augustus had been to make peace with the Goths and agree to resume the payment of “subsidies” to them. This act seems to have been extremely unpopular amongst the army and populace of the Danubian provinces (the ones who had raised him to the purple), who felt deeply betrayed by Trebonianus Gallus, who was now subsidizing the very same enemies who had killed their comrades or looted their lands and cities.

But the hugest blow from outside the borders during Trebonianus Gallus’ short reign was not to come from the north, but from the east, by the Sasanian armies of Šābuhr I.
 
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20.1. ŠĀBUHR I’S SECOND CAMPAIGN. THE PRELIMINARIES.
20.1. ŠĀBUHR I’S SECOND CAMPAIGN. THE PRELIMINARIES.


The ŠKZ was carved out during the last decade of Šābuhr I’s long reign (240-273 CE), and it’s the basic source to reconstruct it. Until now I’ve quoted several passages of this long inscription that refer to Šābuhr’s father Ardaxšir I, but now I’m going to look at its two initial passages, where Šābuhr I presented himself, and the territories over which he ruled by the time when the inscription was carved out. The ŠKZ begins thus:
I, the Mazdayasnian Lord Šābuhr, king of kings of Iranians and non-Iranians, who is of the seed of the gods, son of the Mazdayasnian Lord Ardaxšir, king of kings of the Iranians, who is of the seed of the gods, grandson of the Lord Pābag, king, am the ruler of Ērānšahr.
These opening lines already show several significant differences in relation to the royal inscriptions of his father Ardaxšir I in rock reliefs or coin legends. Firstly, while Ardaxšir was just “king of kings of the Iranians”, Šābuhr I called himself “king of kings of the Iranians and non-Iranians” (in Middle Persian, šāhān šāh ērān ud anērān). This is an important ideological innovation. For ancient Iranians, the concepts Zoroastrian/Mazdayasnian and Aryan/Iranian were inextricably linked. One could not be an Iranian without being Zoroastrian, and vice versa. But with the adoption of this new title, Šābuhr I made an important point: within his domains there were not only Iranians/Zoroastrians, but also non-Iranians/non-Zoroastrians as well, and he was the king of all them; this also offered ideological coverage for potential annexations of non-Iranian lands.

But this arose an important question: if within his kingdom there were Iranians (ērān) and non-Iranians (anērān), it followed that there were Iranian and non-Iranian lands within it, which were inhabited by these two groups respectively. There are two accounts of which lands were Iranian and which were non-Iranian, which point to a disagreement between Šābuhr I (who had a more “secular” understanding of the concept of ērān) and the Zoroastrian clergy represented in the inscriptions of the mowbedān mowbed Kirdēr thirty years later, where he gave a different list of Iranian territories, reflecting that the priesthood retained an strictly religious understanding of the concept of ērān. Šābuhr I reserved the qualification of ērān for the territories that belonged to the Roman empire and which he’d raided during his campaigns: Syria and Anatolia. But Kirdēr included also the Caucasus and Armenia as lands inhabited by the anērān (curiously, Kirdēr included Mesopotamia and Khuzestan within the Iranian lands of the empire).

Šābuhr I took this terminology from the Avesta, and it had a markedly religious connotation; while he (as his father had done) tried to manipulate it for his own political designs, the mowbedān resisted stubbornly what they saw as the perversion of Zoroastrian tradition. The concept of ērān was indeed centuries older, and had appeared in the Younger Avesta as anairya, where it denoted the "Turanians”. These Turanians of anērān, apparently the traditional enemies of the Avestan-speaking peoples, appear in Zoroastrian cosmogony and cosmology as the evil dwellers of the sixteen lands created by Angra Mainyu (the Younger Avestan name for the Zoroastrian hypostasis of the "destructive spirit", which would become Ahriman in Middle Persian) which lay beyond the world river that encircled the sixteen lands created by Ahura Mazda. So, in Zoroastrian religion the concept of anērān was ideologically charged, as it was not a neutral term to name a non-Zoroastrian, but an enemy of the Good Religion and its followers the Aryans/Ērān/Iranians.

The other important innovation in these first lines of the ŠKZ is the apparition of the term Ērānšahr. This Middle Persian term means “kingdom” or “dominion” of the Ērān/Aryans/Iranians. Here Šābuhr I was borrowing again terminology from the Avesta, for this Middle Persian term is the thinly veiled translation into Middle Persian of the Younger Avestan expression Airyanəm Vaējah, which linguists translate loosely as “expanse of the Aryans” or “land of the Aryans”. This mythical land was the first one among the sixteen lands created within the world river that encircled the lands created by Ahura Mazda. This of course was a device to link his kingdom directly with the mythical home of the Aryan tribe, and with the cradle of the Zoroastrian religion, implicitly claiming a “sacred” status for it.

Both concepts would have a long-lasting life, for all Sasanian kings would title themselves king of kings of Iranians and non-Iranians, and Ērānšahr would become the official name of the Sasanian empire until the Muslim conquest. This was an important development in itself, as we don’t know what name did the Arsacids give to their empire, if they indeed used a definite term for it. That contrasts sharply with the Roman case: res publica romanorum or imperium romanorum were well-established names that revealed that the Romans had a clear concept of their state that transcended the rule of a single individual or dynasty. After Šābuhr I, the Iranians would also have a similar nomenclature, and this reflects that from its second ruler the new Sasanian dynasty was developing a clear concept of statehood for which we lack previous traces in Iranian tradition.

After this opening passage, the ŠKZ lists the lands which were under the rule of Šābuhr I in the last decade of his reign:
And I hold under my protection these lands: Pārs, Pahlav (Parthia), Xūzestān, Mēšān (Mesene), Āsūrestān (Mesopotamia), Nodšēragān (Adiabene), Arbayestān (northern Mesopotania), Ādurbādagān (Azerbaijan), Armin (Armenia), Viruzān (Georgia), Segān (Mingrelia), Arrān (in the Caucasus), Balāsagān (in the Caucasus) until forward to the Kap mountains (the Caucasus range) and the Alans’ Gate, and all the Parišxvār mountain chain (the Alburz), Māy (Media), Gurgān, Marv, Harēv (Areia/Aryana), Abaršahr (the northern part of the modern Iranian province of Khorasan), Kirmān, Sagestān (Sakastan/Sistan), Tūrestān (lower Indus valley, roughly corresponding to modern Sindh), Makurān (Makrān), Pāradān (in Balochistan), Hindustān (India), and the Kušānshahr until forward to Pašakbur (Puruṣapura, modern Peshawar), and up to Kāš (Kāshgar), Sughd (Sogdiana), and Cācestān (Tashkent), and on the other side of the sea the Mazūnšahr (Oman). And we have given [to a city] the name Pērōzšābuhr (Mishike, probably modern Anbār), and we have given the name Ohrmazdardaxšir [to another city]. And these many lands, land rulers and district governors, all have become tributary and subject to us
.
The list is impressive, and it lists many territories that no sources claim to have been under control of his father Ardaxšir I. The first thing that can be noticed from this list is that, while the territorial gains of Šābuhr I in the west were important (Armenia, and the southern Caucasian kingdoms), they were quite modest compared with the ones listed in the ŠKZ to the east of the Iranian plateau. The regions listed in the ŠKZ amount to a total annexation by Šābuhr I of the remains of the Kushan empire. On the north, he listed all the territories under Kushan control in central Asia, including all of Sogdiana beyond the Oxus and even past the Pamir into the Tarim basin in what’s now Xinjiang (Kashgar). And to the south, he lists all the territories between the Iranian plateau and the Indus river, and adds the generic term Hindustān without further specification, implying that his dominion extended perhaps beyond the Indus.

This was a spectacular territorial expansion, which the Sasanian empire was never able to repeat. The Kushan kings continued to reign, which is implied by numismatic evidence, which shows an uninterrupted line of Kushan kings, but after Kanishka II, who ruled in 225–245 CE, his successors were confined to northern India, and it becomes increasingly difficult for scholars to reconstruct their chronologies; his immediate successors were Vasishka and Kanishka III. The validity of Šābuhr I’s claims in the ŠKZ was questioned for a long time by scholars, until in 2002 a newly discovered rock relief in northeastern Afghanistan was brought to the attention of archaeologists. This is the rock relief at Rag-e Bibi. It’s located near Surkh Kotal, a major Kushan complex in eastern Afghanistan. Although the relief had been badly damaged by the passing of time and by Taliban iconoclasm, the team of French archaeologist who studied it dated it surely to the reign of Šābuhr I, for its similarities in style with other rock reliefs by this Sasanian kings. The relief shows a mounted king (most probably Šābuhr I himself) hunting a rhinoceros (a royal sport in Indian tradition); while five standing figures can be seen in the background.

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The badly damaged Sasanian relief at Rag-e Bibi, in northeastern Afghanistan.

The French team that examined the relief dated it to the 260s CE and judged that the attendants of Šābuhr I were dressed in Kushan costumes, and were shown not as conquered enemies, but as loyal servants of the Sasanian king. The location of this rock relief was carefully chosen. It’s located near the archaeological complex at Surkh Kotal, which was excavated by a French archaeological mission in the 1960s, and the digs revealed a monumental complex of huge temples and a multitude of inscription by the Kushan kings, as well as statues of the kings. Archaeologists believe that Surkh Kotal was a cultic complex closely linked to the Kushan dynasty, and it contained the burial place of two of the Great Kushans (Kanishka the Great and Huvishka), and so by placing a monumental relief of himself there Šābuhr I wanted to show himself as the vanquisher of the Kushans and also as their continuator. Surkh Kotal lies in the southeastern tip of Bactria, where the major land route leading from Bactria to Kabul (and from Kabul to Peshawar and India) began its crossing of the Hindukush; it was thus a very busy road, and the relief of Šābuhr I is placed precisely a few kilometers southeast of Surkh Kotal, directly visible from the road.

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Location of Surkh Kotal within ancient Bactria/Tokharistan.

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The terraces of the temple of Surkh Kotal when they were first excavated in the 1960s.


The relief is considered by many scholars as evidence that Šābuhr I did indeed conquer Kushan lands as far as the Indus. There were no rhinoceros then in Bactria, but they could still be found in the Indus river valley; hunting them was traditionally reserved to Indian royalty. The symbolical value is also obvious; by showing Šābuhr I in the act of hunting a rhinoceros, which was often used (as the elephant) as a symbol for India, the Sasanian king was shown as the conqueror of India. The depiction of the standing figures dressed in Kushan costume and in a dignified position (as well as the incorporation of style traits of Gandharan art in the relief) also hints to a respect towards local sensibilities and costumes, which was reflected in the policies of Ardaxšir I and Šābuhr I of establishing a subordinate king for the former Kushan territories with the title of kušanšah, as I wrote in a previous post.

The northern conquests are much more difficult to attest. It’s sure that under Kanishka the Great Kushan rule included the oasis of Kashgar in the Tarim basin, but it’s not known if by the first half of the third century CE the oasis was still under Kushan rule. There is no archaeological or numismatic evidence to verify Šābuhr I’s claims north of the Oxus, and much less as far north and east as Tashkent and Kashgar. The most that scholars are willing to accept is that, as the Sasanian conquests in Bactria, Kabulistan and Gandhara split the Kushan empire in two parts and Kushan rule is only attested as having continued in northern India, these northern territories reverted to the rule of local authorities who came under the more or less effective vassalage of Šābuhr I. But as I said, to this date there’s no sure evidence for Sasanian rule north of Marv.

When did Šābuhr I add these conquests to his sprawling empire? Unless he was willing to fight in two fronts (which was a circumstance as feared by the Iranians as by the Romans), Šābuhr I must’ve conquered them when he was not at war against Rome. That doesn’t leave much time. He ruled between 240 and 273 CE. Between 240 and 244 CE he was at war against Gordian III, and between 252 and 260 CE he was again at war against the Romans. That leaves only the periods of 244-252 CE and 260-273 CE free for his eastern expansion. Given that Šābuhr I is shown at Ardaxšir I’s victory relief at Ardaxšir-Xwarrah as being a fully grown man at the battle of Hormizdgan, that means that he was at least 18 years old by 224 CE, and that he was born around 206 CE. By 260 CE he must’ve been 54 years old, a bit old for campaigning but perhaps with still some years ahead of him. On the other side, there’s the 244-252 CE period, although the last two years of this time period seem to have been employed in intriguing and campaigning in Armenia and the Caucasus.

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Maximum extent of the Sasanian empire under Šābuhr I, according to the ŠKZ.

Although in the ŠKZ and all the preserved rock reliefs of Šābuhr I (except for the one at Rag-e Bibi) the accomplishments of Šābuhr I that are publicized more heavily are his victories over the Romans, the eastern conquests were from an economic, territorial and demographic point of view much more important than his western conquests. Bactria, the valleys of central Afghanistan, Kabulistan, Gandhara and the Indus valley were very rich, urbanized and heavily populated and urbanized territories; control over them must’ve translated into a massive increase of the resources available to the Sasanian šāhānšāh. And if Šābuhr I also exerted some kind of control (as the ŠKZ attests) over Transoxiana as far away as Tashkent and Kashgar, this meant that he became by far the most powerful monarch in Eurasia after the collapse of the Han dynasty in China and the Kushan dynasty in central Asia and northern India.

Control over Transoxiana (which was also a heavily urbanized land) meant that he controlled more than half of the land extent of the Silk Road, which translated into massive tax income. And we should add to it another consideration. As the Romans resented the fact that the main land route of the Silk Road crossed Arsacid territory, a new branch was opened that bypassed it. This branch had been opened with collaboration from the Kushans (who benefitted from it as much as from the land route that crossed the Iranian plateau). This alternative route branched out from the main land route at the Pamir, and descended to the Indus valley through Kashmir; and reached the ports at the mouth of the Indus, where Roman traders from Egypt could purchase the items they desired and carry them by sea to the ports on the Egyptian Red Sea coast (mainly Berenike), and from there by land and river to Alexandria, where they could be redistributed across the entire Roman empire.

The conquest of the Indus valley by Šābuhr I closed this route off, and this could have inflicted another blow to the Roman fiscus. Some modern scholars hypothesize that customs over the eastern trade (both by land and sea) could have amounted up to one third of the revenues of the Roman state, anything that affected the eastern trade would have been of vital importance to Rome.

As I wrote in a previous post, only a late source (Zonaras) seems to imply that Philip the Arab broke the peace that he bought after the convoluted end of Gordian III’s expedition. The most probable course of events is that he kept himself faithful to the terms of the peace treaty; he’d managed to retain Roman Mesopotamia (the Nisibis mint kept issuing coins in Philip’s name and his brother Priscus was named in inscriptions as praeses Mesopotamiae -equestrian governor of Mesopotamia-) and he hoped that this would be enough to save face. Apart from the humiliation for Roman arms and the indemnity paid to Šābuhr I, the real concession that Philip had to made was the formal renunciation to Roman interference in Armenian affairs. It was an important concession, because since the times of Nero the Romans enjoyed the privilege (acknowledged by the Arsacids) of being able to confirm or refuse any new Armenian king. Plus, since Ardaxšir I’s rise to power in Iran, the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia had become a staunch, and extremely useful and loyal, ally of Rome. Philip’s concession was the equivalent of throwing Rome’s Armenian allies to the wolves, and it’s quite noteworthy that Šābuhr I did not manage to conquer Armenia and have its Arsacid king killed until 252 CE (or 251 CE according to some scholars). But still, Philip would have probably thought in the circumstances of 244 CE that such a concession was purely nominal and had little real value and could be broken whenever it suited Rome.

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Relief of Šābuhr I at Naqš-e Rajab (near Persepolis) celebrating his victory in 244 CE against Gordian III.

As I also wrote in a previous post, the annexation of Armenia into Ērānšahr was a strategic disaster for Rome, and quite probably the successors of Philip the Arab intended to overturn the terms of his “shameful” peace treaty as soon as possible. In this sense, Ilkka Syvänne made the insightful observation that the adoption by Decius of the name of “Trajan” as part of his full name as augustus could have hinted at eastern ambitions. Trajan had first conquered Dacia and secured the Balkans before embarking in his greatest enterprise, the conquest of the Arsacid empire. And perhaps Decius had a similar progression in mind, but he never managed to succeed in the first part of such a grandiose plan.

If Šābuhr I’s conquest of Armenia took place in 251-252 CE, then it happened at the worst possible moment for Rome, which raises the question if the news of the disastrous defeat of Decius at the hands of the Goths did not cause Šābuhr I to launch a full-scale effort against Armenia with the complete assurance that the Romans would be unable to intervene. They did not intervene directly, but the decision of accepting the Arsacid Armenian prince Trdat as a refugee within the empire under Roman protection, which was probably taken by Trebonianus Gallus, was immediately seen by Šābuhr I as a breach of the terms of the peace treaty of 244 CE.

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Fragment of a bronze statue of Trebonianus Gallus, Archaeological Museum of Florence, Italy.

The decision by Trebonianus Gallus could not have been taken in a worse moment in time had he tried. The Iranians were unencumbered by wars on other fronts, and after the annexation of Armenia they had won access of an additional large pool of manpower, especially of elite heavy cavalry. And now, the Sasanian-Roman border extended from the Caucasus to the Syrian desert, so Sasanian attacks menaced not only Mesopotamia and Syria, but Cappadocia and Pontus too. With Armenia under Sasanian control, Roman Mesopotamia was now encircled by Sasanian territory on three sides and was virtually indefensible, the Plague of Cyprian was ravaging the empire, the imperial fiscus was bankrupt and the Roman army of the East was on its own, because after the disastrous Gothic war it could hardly expect reinforcements from the battered Danubian legions.
 
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Is it possible that the supposed conquest of the Kushans, itself lacking much evidence apart from Sassanid propaganda, was merely empty boasting?
 
Is it possible that the supposed conquest of the Kushans, itself lacking much evidence apart from Sassanid propaganda, was merely empty boasting?
Or, perhaps, it was like how English kings were 'overlord' of Scotland through much of the medieval period (or the HR-Emperors were notional overlord of all Christian kings) - it gave them a pretext for meddling, but was otherwise not very specific.

Presumably Sabuhr did manage something noone else did or he wouldn't have crowed about it, but maybe that's merely getting the notional overlordship translated into an allied contingent or two drawn from the Kushans.
 
Or, perhaps, it was like how English kings were 'overlord' of Scotland through much of the medieval period (or the HR-Emperors were notional overlord of all Christian kings) - it gave them a pretext for meddling, but was otherwise not very specific.

Presumably Sabuhr did manage something noone else did or he wouldn't have crowed about it, but maybe that's merely getting the notional overlordship translated into an allied contingent or two drawn from the Kushans.

Personally, I rather agree with you. Direct evidence of Sasanian control has only been attested for the territory of modern Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan. Sasanian control east of the Khyber Pass or north of the Marv oasis should probably rather be understood as having the kings and lords of these territories (like the remaining members of the Kushan dynasty) acknowledge their more or less tenuous status as vassals of the Sasanian king of kings.

In a previous post I also quoted the opinion of the scholar Khodadad Rezakhani with respect to the Kushanshahs, and how in his opinion the first Kushanshah was already appointed by Ardaxshir I. But to me, the fact that the SKZ names no Kushanshah either for the courts of Ardaxshir I or Shabuhr I is suspicious, because the lists of the members of each court in that inscription is exhaustive, and so such an omission is quite puzzling.

For one of the lands listed in the SKZ, there's a little more evidence. It's the case of Paradan, which the scholar Paraj Tandon placed in a 2012 paper in an area stretching between Kandahar/Quetta and the Indus river. The kings of this small kingdom or tribe, who called themselves in their coins Paratarajas (in Prakrit using the Karoshthi and Brahmi scripts) kept issuing their own coinage under Sasanian rule, even if they had not been replaced as kings by a member of the House of Sasan. This points towards the fact that more than an annexation (like it was definitively the case for Bactria/Tokharistan) we're dealing here with a vassal kingdom.
 
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