Military history

APPENDIX C

THE UNIQUENESS OF THE LEGION COMMANDS IN EGYPT AND JUDEA

During his reign, and following the example set by Julius Caesar, Augustus appointed officials of Equestrian Order rank to govern Egypt and decreed that no Roman of senatorial rank could even enter the province of Egypt, at any time, for any reason, without the emperor’s specific permission. This was because Egypt was at the time considered the breadbasket of the empire. Between them, Egypt and the province of Africa produced almost all Rome’s grain. He who controlled the grain supply could control Rome, and to ensure that no senator ever even thought about challenging the emperor by taking the revolutionary road via Egypt, it was off-limits.

Germanicus Caesar, heir to Tiberius’s throne, caused uproar when he went to Egypt as a tourist in A.D. 19. If a senator trod the sands of Egypt, as Vespasian did in A.D. 69, it was seen as a deliberate contravention of the law, the first step on the quest to empire. For this reason, at least until the third century—Cassius Dio refers to Egypt still being governed by a prefect in A.D. 218—and probably much later, the governor of Egypt was always a prefect, an officer of Equestrian rank, never of consular rank, as in other important provinces. He was also paid as much as a top proconsul, to maintain his loyalty and his incorruptibility.

Yet there were always legions in Egypt—three during the early part of the reign of Augustus, two throughout the first century, one by the third century. Imperial legions were ordinarily commanded by legates, officers of senatorial rank. If legates had commanded legions in Egypt, their presence would have contravened the law of Augustus.

We know that the Prefect of Egypt issued orders to the legions in the province, just as Tiberius Alexander called the legions in Egypt together on July 1, A.D. 69, and required them to swear allegiance to Vespasian as their new emperor. Vespasian sent his son Titus, then only a prefect, a colonel, to Egypt to bring the 15th Legion to Caesarea so it could take part in the A.D. 67 Judean offensive, and in doing so didn’t contravene the law.

Tacitus confirms that from the time of Augustus, Rome’s armed forces in Egypt were always commanded by knights of the Equestrian Order—colonels. So a unique but simple solution was arrived at to solve the Egyptian dilemma. As the emperor Claudius was to tell the Senate on one occasion, all things are precedents at one time. A precedent was set regarding the command of the legions in Egypt. In deference to the Augustan law, legions stationed in Egypt were commanded by their second-in-command, a senior tribune, an officer of Equestrian rank, and these officers were subordinate to the Prefect of Egypt, who outranked them in terms of Equestrian Order seniority.

Once a legion left Egypt, a legate took command again. When a legion passed through Egypt, marching to an adjoining province, the legate commanding it would have traveled by sea to join it, never setting foot in Egypt.

A similar situation existed regarding the garrison in Judea. One or two writers have in the past put forward the theory that no legion could have been stationed in Judea prior to A.D. 70, and the province could only have been garrisoned by auxiliaries, because the governor of the province was merely a procurator, and the general, or legate, commanding a legion in his province would have outranked him, an unacceptable situation.

As it happens, the administrator of Judea until the reign of Claudius was not a procurator at all, but a prefect. Pontius Pilatus, celebrated famously in countless books, films, and television programs as Pilate, the Procurator of Judea, similarly held the appointment as Prefect of Judea, not Procurator, a fact confirmed by an inscription relating to Pilate found at Caesarea in 1961. And in the same way that the Prefect of Egypt could command legions stationed in his province because they were led by their senior tribunes, so the Prefect of Judea, and later the Procurator, once the status of the administrator changed after A.D. 44, could command legionary forces in his province.

There is ample evidence that legions were stationed in Judea during this period. Varus, Governor of Syria, stationed a legion, the 10th, in Jerusalem in 4 B.C. The Jewish historian Josephus several times writes of the “legionaries” of the Judea garrison in the years leading up to the First Jewish Revolt of A.D. 66–70, and provides plenty of clues about the identity of the legion stationed in the province between A.D. 48 and 66—“the Augustans,” “the Syrians,” “the men from Beirut”—for us to know that it was the 3rd Augusta, a Syrian legion with a major recruitment station at Beirut, a military colony founded by veterans of the 10th Legion. The fact that elements of the 3rd Augusta Legion were stationed at Jerusalem and Caesarea is confirmed by the Christian Bible, which talks of men of the “Augustan” legion saving and escorting St. Paul the Apostle in A.D. 58–61—there were three “Augustan” legions, and the 2nd Augusta and the 8th Augusta were never stationed in the East, but the 3rd Augusta was. Indications are that the legion stationed in Judea between A.D. 6 and 48 was the 12th.

There is never a mention of a general commanding the legion stationed in Judea prior to A.D. 70. Interestingly, Josephus tells us that after serious trouble in the province in A.D. 51–52, Claudius sent for the Procurator of Judea, Cumanus, and a subordinate, “the tribune Celer.” Civil tribunes—Tribunes of the Plebs— did not serve outside Rome. Military tribunes only officered legions. Had there only been auxiliary units stationed in Judea, the most senior Roman military officers in the province would have been prefects, not tribunes. And Josephus had more than enough exposure to the Roman military to know the difference. If he said Celer was a tribune, not a prefect, then a tribune he was.

Josephus went on to say that Tribune Celer was subsequently tried at Rome for his rapacious conduct in the province, then returned to Judea, where he was executed by his own troops, and Cumanus was replaced as procurator. Cumanus and Celer were obviously the two most senior Roman officials in Judea at the time. Junior tribunes were merely officer cadets, without responsibility or power. Even so, they, too, only served with legions.

There was only one senior tribune with each legion, its second-in-command. Celer was obviously a senior tribune, second-in-command of the 3rd Augusta Legion, the legion stationed in Judea at the time, and as such was the only senior tribune stationed in Judea and the province’s military commander in the same way that senior tribunes commanded legions in Egypt.

There are several other examples of imperial legions outside Egypt being commanded by their senior tribunes, for years at a time—the 6th Victrix and 12th Legions in Syria during the Jewish Revolt of A.D. 66–70, for instance, when brigadier generals were scarce on the ground—so it appears to have been an accepted practice.

The conclusion that can be drawn is that until A.D. 70 Judea was treated in the same way as Egypt—the officer commanding the legion based in the province was its senior tribune, normally the legion’s second-in-command, who would have been outranked by the prefect/procurator and could therefore take orders from him. As with the legions in Egypt, when the Judea legion left the province, a legate could be appointed to command it.

As further evidence of this, when Corbulo brought six cohorts—three thousand men—of the 3rd Augusta Legion up from Judea to take part in his A.D. 58 campaign in Armenia, they were apparently commanded by their camp prefect, Capito, the legion’s third-in-command. This would have permitted their senior tribune to remain in Judea with the other four cohorts, as the province’s military commander.

The situation in Egypt continued because of the Augustan law, but the situation in Judea could be changed at the discretion of the emperor. Vespasian did just that in late 70. When he permanently stationed the 10th Legion in Judea that year, he left it under the command of a legate, a general, even though there was also a procurator stationed in the province. The procurators who had commanded the Judea garrison in the past had, almost without exception, done a poor job with the troops at their disposal, so now the Judea legion would be autonomous. To ensure that there was no conflict between the procurator and the general of the legion, Vespasian duplicated his orders to them—both received the same directives, and both were expected to carry them out, one via his civil officers, the other through his soldiers. And both would have reported to the Syrian governor, the regional commander in chief.

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