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The Adherence of Britain to Vespasian
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2011
Extract
Vexillations from all three British legions – II Augusta, IX Hispana and XX Valeria Victrix – took part on the Vitellian side in the second battle of Bedriacum in A.D. 69 (Tacitus, Histories 3, 22), but their main bodies had remained behind in the province under the cautious governorship of Vettius Bolanus (Histories 2, 97). After the capture of Fabius Valens, however, when the cause of Vitellius was plainly becoming hopeless, the army of Britain declared for Vespasian (Histories 3, 44): et Britanniam inditus erga Vespasianum favor, quod illic secundae legioni a Claudio praepositus et hello clarus egerat, non sine motu adiunxit ceterarum, in quibus plerique centuriones ac milites a Vitellio provecti expertum iam principem anxii mutabant. The meaning of this passage is surely clear enough: II Augusta, which Vespasian had commanded with distinction during the Claudian invasion and the following years, took the lead in swinging the whole army of Britain on to the Flavian side, despite the resistance of the other legions. On the attitude of XIV Gemina there is room for uncertainty: it had been sent back to Britain by Vitellius (Histories 2, 66), but it can hardly have been very enthusiastic for him, nor is it easy to suppose that many of its centurions and men can have owed their advancement to him. However that may be, II Augusta was manifestly the prime mover in securing the adherence of the army of Britain to Vespasian.
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- Copyright © Eric Birley 1978. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
References
1 Compare the case of Vipstanus Messala, commanding VII Claudia on the Flavian side in 69 (Histories 3, 9: legioni tribunus Vipstanus Messala praeerat, claris maioribus, and 4, 42: nondum senatoria aetate), and cf. p. 245 below.
2 Roman Britain and the Roman Army (1953)) 13.
3 Cf. Dottin, La Langue Gauloise (1918), 62 and 92.
4 If Rusticus became consul in his forty-second year, in A.D. 90 (for he had evidently not been accorded acceleration in his career by Domitian, for the proconsulship of Baetica and the prefecture of the treasury of Saturn cannot have taken up all the time between his return from VIII Augusta and his suffect consulate in the spring of 90), he would have been only twenty in 69; but he might, of course, have been in his twentyfifth year by 73, which would have qualified him for the quaestorship.
5 Cf. Suetonius, Vesp. 4, I.
6 Groag, in his article on Antistius Rusticus in PIR 2, A 765, thought that the military decorations had been won during his command of VIII Augusta in Upper Germany, since they were those appropriate to a legionary legate; but there is no justification for assuming that they are mentioned on the stone out of chronological order, into which every other stage in the career fits perfectly.
7 Cf. W. Eck, Senatoren von Vespasian bis Hadrian (1970), 118.
8 Cf. PIR 2, c 173, citing the military operations by the army of Syria, under Caesennius Paetus, against the two sons of C. Julius Antiochus, the king of Commagene; Josephus, who records them, also tells of their flight to Parthia and their return to Rome – conducted, as we learn from the inscription which gives his career (ILS 9200), by C. Velius Rufus.
9 Note that Tacitus, in this case as not infrequently, has transposed nomen and cognomen, evidently for literary effect, as he did when he called the incompetent procurator of Britain, at the time of Boudicca's rising, Catus Decianus (Annals 14, 32); Cassius Dio put the man's names in the right order (62, 2, 1). Catus is well attested as a cognomen, cf. I. Kajanto, The Latin Cognomina (1965), 249.