092 - The Parthian War

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Hello and welcome to the History of Rome, Episode 92, The Parthian War. When Marcus and Lucius became co-emperors in 161, the borders of the Roman Empire had been quiet for more than 40 years. Sure there were periodic raids from the nomadic tribes living beyond the frontier, but for the most part, Rome had not dealt with a major foreign threat in decades. That was about to change. Just minutes after taking office, the new emperors found themselves facing war with Parthia in the east, and after dispatching that threat, they were forced to immediately turn north and fight like mad to protect the Danube provinces. Ironically, the two emperors who between them had served not a single day in the legions spent the majority of their reigns out on the front lines, leading Rome's army in a running battle to ward off foreign encroachment.

Today, I want to focus on the initial threat posed by a newly resurgent Parthian empire in the east, while next time, we'll get into Marcus' long war on the Danube against a forever shifting coalition of German tribes. In the years after Trajan's invasion of Mesopotamia in 115, the Parthians had been divided internally, and had neither the time, the resources, nor the ambition to make trouble for Rome. But in the late 140s, a Parthian claimant to the throne named Volgases IV succeeded in reuniting what had become two distinct eastern and western halves of his empire. Riding high from this domestic victory, Volgases began casting his ambition into deeper waters.

In the early 150s, he reasserted control over Charyx, the Persian Gulf city I mentioned last week, that had been enjoying independence since the withdrawal of the Romans in 118. Taking back this small kingdom without difficulty, or a peep from Roman diplomats, emboldened Volgases to tread still further afar, and this is how Armenia once again became the cause of conflict between the two great empires. In the mid to late 150s, Volgases began making noise that he was unhappy with the political status quo along the border, which of course gave fit to the patron saint of the status quo, Antoninus Pius. It is reported that as he lay dying, Antoninus' final thoughts were consumed by the treachery of various foreign kings who he felt had wronged him over the years, and that he railed against Volgases in particular for making deceitful trouble where no deceitful trouble ought to be made. What in particular the dying emperor was referring to is unknown, but the swift invasion of Armenia that Parthian king led following Antoninus' death leaves little doubt that the emperor was not just ranting deliriously. Volgases was clearly aiming to reshape the border between Rome and Parthia.

Whether he always intended a military confrontation is unknown, but as I said at the close of last week's episode, the rise of two men without a gladius to their name seems to have tipped the scales in favor of taking by force what could not be peacefully agreed to. Up to this point, Volgases' life and career had been one of continuous success, and there was no reason for him to think that this new campaign would be any different. And at the outset of the war, events seemed to give the Parthian king still less to pause over. Rome blundered its way from defeat to defeat, its leaders weak and its legions soft. Probably unsure of what his prodding would provoke, Volgases had to have been thrilled at the anemic Roman response. Crazy as it sounds, as the rate things were going, it was not entirely out of the question that the Parthians might just be able to snatch the entire eastern Mediterranean coast.

In the summer of 161, Volgases led an army into Armenia, deposed the Roman-approved king, and appointed one of his own countrymen monarch. The legions in the east did not need to wait for instructions from the emperor to begin making preparations for war. The governor of Cappadocia, in this case Marcus Sedatius Severianus, was the Roman official tasked with keeping watch over Armenia, and, you will recall from our tour of the empire, he had two legions stationed on the Armenian border at his disposal to help him neutralize any threat. Overall strategic command of the eastern legions, though, fell to the governor of Syria, in this case Lucius Attidius Cornelianus. Both men had been at their respective posts for years, and were kept on by Marcus following the death of Antoninus to ensure the stability of the east would not be disrupted while he and Lucius settled into power. But whatever their experience and qualifications, both men proved unequal to the task at hand.

Severianus, on the front lines in Cappadocia, witnessed the southern Parthian invasion and immediately huddled with his advisors to plan the initial Roman response. Unfortunately, the Cappadocian governor had lately come under the influence of an infamous mystical charlatan named Alexander. Not that this was a totally crazy thing to have happened. Alexander had by this point fashioned himself into a rich and famous oracle, who spoke divine prophecies on behalf of a python named Glykon, who Alexander claimed was a new fertility god. By the 160s, Alexander was not only the father-in-law of a Roman senator, but his cult had grown to rival that of the Epicureans and the Christians, and he counted a number of aristocratic Romans as his friend. So the fact the governor of Cappadocia consulted Alexander about the situation in Armenia was not a huge breach of sanity. Lots of people believed in Alexander. Severianus was just one of them.

Alexander told Severianus that if the Romans counterattacked right away, that the governor would score an easy victory and come away with riches and fame to match those of the greatest Roman generals. Understandably excited by this response, Severianus led a legion across the border practically the next day. But, sadly for the Romans in general, and Severianus in particular, Alexander was more prophet with an F than prophet with a PH, and just three days after entering Armenia, the legion under Severianus was cornered in the mountains by a much larger Armenian force and wiped out. Severianus, after a long and distinguished career, committed suicide. The situation in Syria compounded this initial embarrassment. Cornelianus, who had been pro-consul of Syria for almost five years, and was presumably a competent administrator in general, led a disorganized attack against Parthian forces massed along the eastern border, and was soundly defeated. With one of the Cappadocian legions destroyed, and the Syrian legions now nursing both physical and psychological wounds, the Parthians looked poised to deal the empire its first major territorial loss since practically the founding of Rome.

Unlike the fine and dandy closing to their first day in power, the close of Marcus and Lucius' first year in power was an altogether different story. During the winter of 161-162, there had to be a very palpable feeling of doubt about the future of the empire. Would lifelong civilians like Marcus and Lucius be able to respond effectively to this major military crisis? What if the Parthians decided to invade Syria? And inexperienced emperors aside, would the supposedly seasoned professionals in the army be able to respond effectively? Because so far, clearly, they had not. So what did that mean?

But one thing Rome always had going for it was a deep talent pool from which to draw its leaders, and a large enough population that refilling a depleted legion was just an imperial edict away. Well, at least for the moment. We'll get into the rotten effects of the Antonine Plague here in a second. Marcus ordered the capable governor of Britain, Marcus Stadius Priscus, into Cappadocia, and to help the new governor reassert dominion over Armenia, let Priscus pick up legionary detachments from the Rhine and Danube along the way, so that when he arrived in Cappadocia, he had the manpower to complete his mission. Marcus also shifted three full legions from the Rhine to the Danube to Syria, which, while necessary to fight the present hot war with Parthia, would not go unnoticed by the German tribes to the north.

Marcus initially sent his cousin Marcus Aeneas Libo to Syria to take over for the discredited Cornelianus, but when he began to receive reports that sedition was breaking out in the legions, and a full-on popular revolt was possibly in the making, Marcus decided that a far more drastic measure was needed. What the east needed was an emperor to take responsibility for the war and clamp down on any whiff of insubordination. Since he considered his own firm presence in Rome indispensable, Marcus determined that the war in the east would have to be handed over to Lucius. There are suspicions, though, that Marcus sent Lucius east not just so that imperial authority was present on the scene, but also to get his party-hearted brother out of Rome and into the field where maybe some serious life and death responsibility would grow him up a bit.

Lucius, though, was in no hurry to grow up, and in 162, the thirty-one-year-old set out for Syria to take command of what was easily the biggest existential crisis to hit the empire since the Third Jewish Revolt. He would finally arrive in Antioch as a thirty-two-year-old, having spent nearly a full year meandering his way through Greece and the southern Anatolian coast. The slow imperial procession stopped at every tourist trap and resort town along the way, so that the emperor could fully enjoy what he had apparently understood to be an extended holiday. When he finally arrived in Syria, he set himself up in Antiochian luxurious fashion, took a mistress, and got down to the serious business of the day—gambling and drinking. Though he communicated little with Marcus, he made sure to have nearly daily dispatches sent from Rome to appraise him of how the greens were faring in the Circus Maximus. Though the details are likely exaggerated, there is no doubt that Lucius was taking the whole thing perhaps a little less seriously than he should have.

That being said, if there was one upside to Lucius' character, it was that he was a champion delegator. The co-emperor basically handed the actual prosecution of the war over to a few highly capable subordinates, and watched them rack up victory after victory in his name. Up in Cappadocia, the new governor Priscus had been busily preparing for a campaign of vengeance, and when the spring of 163 arrived, he was ready for action. He invaded Armenia with two legions on routes planned well in advance to avoid the kind of trap Severianus had blundered into. This far more sober approach worked wonders, and it turned out that the Parthian menace was not so great and terrible after all. Experiencing no major setbacks, Priscus took the Armenian capital after a short siege, evicted the pretenders of the throne, and drove off what was left of the Parthian occupation force.

For the key role he played sitting in Antioch and, um, overseeing things, Lucius took for himself the grandiose title Arminicus. Later in 163, the Parthians countered by invading and capturing the Roman-allied kingdom of Osroene, which lay on the southern Armenian border. The Romans and Parthians then spent the whole of the next year posturing. Lucius apparently offered peace terms following the victory in Armenia, which Vologases, perhaps a bit rashly, brushed aside. The terms were said to have been generous, and there was some heavy criticism lobbed at Lucius by conservative members of the Senate for offering anything to the Parthians but their total destruction.

The year's relative inactivity, though, did provide the imperial clan an opportunity to further cement their internal alliances. When Marcus demanded that Lucius be made emperor in 161, he also arranged for his adopted brother to marry his second daughter, Lucilla. She was only eleven at the time, so the wedding had to be postponed a few years. But when 164 proved to be a quiet one, arrangements were made for Lucius to meet up with the imperial entourage at Ephesus, where the marriage would take place. Lucilla, not particularly happy about any of this, then accompanied Lucius back to Antioch, where she gave birth to their first child shortly thereafter.

When 165 opened, though, the time for posturing was over, and the Romans launched a two-pronged assault into Parthian-held territory. The northern thrust into Osroene was led by Martius Verus, while the southern thrust was led by Ovidius Cassius, a man who we will have cause to deal with a little further down the road. Just as happened in Armenia, the Parthians were driven out of Osroene. The Parthian army fled back to a fortified city inside their own territory, but the Romans besieged the city and took it. The Parthian general went AWOL, and what was left of the army was smashed up against the Tigris river by the legions and destroyed. Ovidius Cassius, meanwhile, marched down along the southern Tigris, and captured Ctesiphon, the Parthian capital. Ctesiphon's Greek-speaking sister city, Seleucia, surrendered to the Romans at once and threw their gates open to the legions, but for whatever reason, Cassius let his men sack the city anyway, leaving an unusually cruel black mark on what had been an otherwise sterling record.

With the victories in both the north and south piling up, Lucius decided from his military headquarters that it was time to award himself the title Parthacus Maximus, to celebrate the great triumphs he had so skillfully overseen. In 166, Cassius crossed the Tigris and took control of Media, leading Lucius to add yet another title, Mediacus, to his already somewhat embarrassingly bloated list of names. But whoever was taking credit for what, and the string of defeats finally convinced Pholagosses that perhaps it was better that he settle for what he had in Parthia, and not worry so much about trying to take what the Romans did not want to give him. He sued for peace, and wound up ceding the Romans control over a chunk of Mesopotamia in exchange for a ceasefire. Worse than the loss of a chunk of desert though, Pholagosses' aggression had cost him even nominal influence over Armenia. Thinking he was adding the kingdom to his empire, he wound up convincing the Romans that the power sharing agreement was broken, and Marcus ordered the kingdom reorganized as a proper Roman province. Rather than a comfortable buffer zone then, Pholagosses brought even more legions right to his doorstep.

For the Romans, the whole thing seemed like a nifty little war. There had been some early setbacks, but Marcus and Lucius proved that they were not totally in over their heads, the legions proved that they were still a fighting force to be reckoned with, and the empire as a whole would prove that it was still capable of churning out talented field commanders, and, hey look, we even added a bit of territory to the empire. But these short-term benefits eventually gave way to some real long-term issues that would mar the whole rest of Marcus and Lucius' reign.

To deal with the issue that will set up the next episode, the reassignment of legions from the Rhine and Danube frontiers to the east left those frontiers badly undermanned. Governors were ordered to avoid conflict at all costs, but soon enough, the German tribes began to realize that the Romans may have left the lights on, but there wasn't really anyone tending the fire. It would prove to be a minor point in the long run, as those legions were easily transferred back to their northern posts, but in the mid-160s, the disparate Germans began to coalesce into far more unified confederacies, and the thought of easy Roman loot definitely played a part in the consolidation process. Easy Roman loot was a viable prize because the Romans were all east fighting the Parthians. Had there been no war with Parthia, the various tribes may have ignored these initial calls for everyone to join forces and invade the empire, because they would have seen the Roman defenses as insurmountable. But now, the Roman defenses aren't so insurmountable, are they?

But the second great cost of the Parthian war was what the legions brought back from the east, namely, the Antonine Plague. Likely first contracted by Cassius' troops as they occupied Ctesiphon, the plague would wreak havoc in first the legions and then the public at large, putting the empire in an almost permanent state of crisis for the next decade. Modern scholars believe, based on contemporary descriptions, that the Romans were up against a smallpox epidemic that, before it had run its course, wound up killing something like five million people in just a few years. Not only did this deal a crushing blow to the larger economy, but with the plague contracted by the legions first, it spread through the various camps like wildfire and before long was ravaging the armies of the Rhine and the Danube. For the entirety of his running war with the Germans, Marcus would have to contend not only with a visible enemy trying to kill him from without, but also with an invisible enemy killing his legions from within. More than one campaign was cut short or not begun at all because of the chronic manpower shortages brought about by the plague. And of course, it was the plague that likely killed Lucius in 169 and definitely killed Marcus a decade later. In short, the role that the Antonine plague played in the evolution of the Roman Empire cannot be understated.

But that was all for the future. For now, the Romans were riding high. Lucius Verus returned to Rome, Lucius Aurelius, Verus Augustus, Arminicus, Parthicus, Maximus, and upon his arrival in the city he celebrated, with Marcus somewhat reluctantly by his side, a full-blown triumph. For the next two years, the emperors would once again share Rome, with Marcus plodding his way stoically through the day's routine, while Lucius enjoyed the riotous life of a wealthy libertine, his experience in the East apparently not having matured him one bit. However, though the lifestyle of his brother rankled Marcus to no end, Lucius was not an utterly disinterested hedonist, and in between parties did perform his duties as emperor with intelligence and efficiency. And this is the part that separates him from a Nero or a Caligula, because though Lucius surrounded himself with actors and gladiators and all the other dregs of society, he was not crazy enough to promote his social favorites to positions of authority. The real work was always left to serious men, and for that alone, Lucius does not make the list of the worst emperors of all time.

The good times, though, did not last. Coinciding with the victory in the East, the northern border of the empire was suddenly beset with attacks on multiple fronts. There were a number of different factors that combined in the late 160s-80s to produce the unprecedented pressure that was being felt on the Danube frontier, including the southern migration of the Goths in the far north, which pushed everyone else south, an increased level of political cooperation between the German tribes, which seemed to break the spell of divide and conquer that the Romans had always been able to weave so successfully, and of course, as I have already mentioned, the shift of legionary strength to the East, which left the borders more porous than they had ever been before. It all added up to an emboldened German population, perhaps even a desperate population, if you believe that the migrating Goths were pushing the southern tribes to seek settlement within the empire or face death. It was more willing than ever to go and have it out with Rome on the battlefield.

In 166 or early 167, a confederation of tribes invaded Pannonia, but they were repulsed by a collection of local auxiliaries led by the governor Marcus Bassus. Bassus was concerned enough by the situation, and his own limited military resources, that he called a conference of the major tribes that was formally mediated by the Marcomannic King Balomer, who was, at least in theory, a trustworthy client of Rome, but in practice was about to prove one of their greatest adversaries. The conference ended with renewed pledges from everyone to respect the borders, but just a few months later, a combined army invaded lower Moesia and managed to kill the governor of the province during the subsequent fighting. Back in Rome, Marcus and Lucius watched these events unfold with an alarm magnified by the fact that the city and the legionary camps of the empire were being crippled by the Antonine Plague. They could barely keep the existing legions staffed, raising new forces was, for the moment, unfeasible. But in 168, they were able to muster two new legions and safely think about traveling north to inspect the borders for themselves.

The co-emperor set up a headquarters in the northern Italian city of Aquileia, and from there headed up to the Danube to get first-hand reports from the soldiers who had suddenly found themselves in a war zone. It was while the emperors were returning to Aquileia from the front during the winter of 168-169 that Lucius came down with a severe sickness. At the time, it was diagnosed as food poisoning, but many think he came down with the same plague that was ravaging the empire. Whatever the cause, after a few days lingering in bed, Lucius died in early 169. In some respects, it was surprising that Lucius, still in his thirties, would so suddenly die. But given his family medical history, the fact that Lucius lasted as long as he did is perhaps the greater surprise. Remember that his father Lucius Caesar was so often bedridden that people thought it insane Hadrian would even choose him to be heir.

Though the situation on the Danube was of pressing concern, Marcus nonetheless accompanied the body of his brother back to Rome, where an elaborate funeral was staged, complete with a set of memorial games, the kind that Marcus so despised, and Lucius so loved. Since I am, even as we speak, entertaining an influential diplomat from the People's Republic of Portland, I am taking next week off, but, in two weeks, will accompany Marcus as he heads back north alone, now the sole ruler of the Roman Empire. For the next decade, the frozen front line along the Danube will be Marcus' home, where the philosopher-emperor, more at home with books than swords, will prove that whatever he'd rather be doing, he always did what needed to be done.