Last Legion Standing

[Spurius Papirius Cursor]

Hi all!

Let me thank everyone for their responses - they are great.

I'll respond to Renatus first, again with thanks.

Re Casey, "Grrrr!" to him. Still, it may have been a matter of his publishers minimising the number of footnotes, so benefit of doubt. Still, it would have been nice...

Papyri link: THANK YOU! An unknown world for me to explore. I wonder if I could throw up an extract from the passage you refer to for thought:

"...καὶ χειρὶ τοῦ βικαρίο(υ) τῶν στρατιωτῶν Σκυθῶν καὶ τῶν Μακεδόνων,...".

I interpret this (with less-than-perfect Greek) tp mean:

"...and (dative/singular of) hand of the (?) vicarius of the Scythians and of the Macedonians..."

Could the Scythians referred to here also be a legion? (maybe Legio IV Scythica?)

Or maybe not. I realise this is drawing a longish bow with other possibilities in the ND, e.g.:

a. (? under the Magister militum in praesenti)
- One of 6 "legiones palatinae" (Scythae)

b. Under a Praefectus legionis, the quartae Scythicae, Oresa

c. Under the Dux Scythiae:
- Milites Scythici, Carso.
- Milites Scythici, Dirigothia.

d. Under the Praefectus ripae legionis:
- primae Ioviae cohortis ..... et secundae Herculiae musculorum Scythicorum et classis,

Cheers

Howard/SPC

[Renatus]

May I add to that a reference to:
Cowan, Ross: The Last Legion, in: Military Illustrated vol. 200, January 2005, pp. 48-53.
It has an inscription from Baalbek from the Selucid year 947 (AD 635/6) referring to the 'Macedonians'.

This is the illustration of the Baalbek inscription from Ross Cowan's article.

[attachment=2844]BaalbekInscription.jpg[/attachment]

[Spurius Papirius Cursor]

This is the illustration of the Baalbek inscription from Ross Cowan's article...

Hi Michael

What form of script is this? I read the Palmyrene area had been Helenized - is it a Nabataean script?

Thanks

Howard/SPC

[Macedon]

It is Greek (with some added symbols (the number in the end which is the date), foreign word(s) (INOX, I guess it is ENOX?) and possibly mistakes ΠΥΡΓΥΝ instead of ΠΥΡCΥΝ). Just read Σ instead of C, a norm in later Greek texts...

I found a reading right now :

ΚΤΙCΜΑ ΠΥΡ(ΓΟΥ) CΥΝ Θ(E)Ω ΓΙ(ΤΟΝΙΑ) ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΩΝ ΙΝΔ(ΙΚΤΙΩΝΟΣ) Θ' Τ(ΟΥ) ΖΜΛ'

Very possible. I saw that the C ιν ΠΥΡCΥΝ was not inscribed as the one in ΚΤΙCMΑ. In the beginning I also read CΥΝ Θ(Ε)Ω which means "with (the help of) God". This made me think that it might be a Γ (or initially meant to be one) which then would make the ΠΥΡCΥΝ ΠΥΡΓΥΝ which could be a mispelling of ΠΥΡΓΟΥ, especially since Υ is also used as ΟΥ sometimes. The ΙΝΔ(ΙΚΤΙΩΝΟΣ) part makes sense, although I do not see a Δ but a OX, which made me think that it had to do with some regional spelling of ΕΝΟΧ (which would be a name) and this double consonant coming afterwards I read as a TΘ which I understood as ΤΩ ΘΕΩ. The next being a TO (the) with the O over the T and then the date (947). Now, if the ΓΙ is indeed a mispelled ΓΕΙ(ΤΟΝΙΑ) and not, for example, an also misspelled ΓΗ (land), then the inscription is about the Macedonian "neighborhood"/sector of the city and not about a legion. The line over the letters usually indicates that it is a number, so this is why, I guess, the Θ could be seen as a 9. Yet, I do not know how it could be the 9th indiction, I would have expected the 5th (the date of creation was normally regarded to have been 5493 BC). There are some more things of interest in the reading of this inscription... I cannot personally be certain of the exact reading of each word, maybe others can be more helpful than I.



What I personally originally read when I first saw this inscription and before looking it up was :

ΚΤΙCMA ΠΥΡΓ(O)Υ (Ε)Ν Θ(Ε)Ω ΓΗ ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΩΝ
ΙΝΟΧ Τ(Ω) Θ(ΕΩ) ΤΟ ΖΜΛ' (where Λ is the arrow pointing up, not the letter)

[Spurius Papirius Cursor]

Thanks George

I really enjoyed your post!

I took the following you proposed:

ΚΤΙCΜΑ ΠΥΡ(ΓΟΥ) CΥΝ Θ(E)Ω ΓΙ(ΤΟΝΙΑ) ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΩΝ ΙΝΔ(ΙΚΤΙΩΝΟΣ) Θ' Τ(ΟΥ) ΖΜΛ'

and rendered it as:

[1] κτίσμα πύργου σῦν θεῶ γειτονία Μακεδόνων [2] ινδικτιωνος σύ tou ζμλ’

Then had a try at translating it.

The first part seemed (in my VERY much beginner's Ancient Greek) to be:

The neighbourship of Macedonians with God's help...
(either)
(a) ...raised the building to a great height. OR
(b) ...girded the colony with towers.

The second part defeated me entirely. (I'm away from my textbooks and am using the Perseus Greek Word Study Tool - which, incidentally, gave the rather quirky translation of γειτονία as "neighbourship" which means I can't really grasp its meaning.

But, to the second part, how might the second part translate in English do you think? (I cen't translate "ινδικτιωνος".

Thanks and Cheers

Howard/SPC

[Spurius Papirius Cursor]

Hi Evan

Sorry to be late in acknowledging.

I've been burrowing through the TWC links with great interest. I'm absorbed in the History of the Legio (late 4th, 5th and 6th century) thread at the moment.

Many thanks for alerting me to these.

Howard/SPC

[Macedon]

I already told you!

ΙΝΔ(ΙΚΤΙΩΝΟΣ) Θ' Τ(ΟΥ) ΖΜΛ'

would mean :

the θ' (9th) indiction of (the year) 947.

The Byzantines would very often use this method of counting the years. An indiction would be a time period of 15 years whose start would be the beginning of the world. They effectively divided the years that had passed since creation and divided them with 15. The remainder would be the indiction (I know it is kind of tricky... some dumb tax that was imposed sometime did all this harm IIRC). What I found as problematic in this inscription is the fact that the year 947 (635 if it is the Seleucid year) would not be the 9th but the 7th indiction... (5493+635-1= 6127 anni mundi /15 =408.46, 408 x 15 = 6120) So either the reading is wrong or the inscriber took an alternative year as the creation of the world (I cannot say how probable this is, maybe very, maybe not)

The first part :

ΚΤΙCΜΑ ΠΥΡ(ΓΟΥ) CΥΝ Θ(E)Ω ΓΙ(ΤΟΝΙΑ) ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΩΝ

would mean :

(This is a) building of a tower, with (the help of) God, neighborhood of the Macedonians

γειτονία ,means neighborhood or "being a neighbor of - neighborship". I guess, it could be translated here as either (to me most probably) that the Macedonian neighborhood/sector of the city built or financed the building of the tower or that it was built in/near their neighborhood/sector.

[Spurius Papirius Cursor]

Hi George

Sorry for missing your point in your earlier post, but I'm kinda glad I did because of the additional detail in your second.

It went on the word "indiction" with which I wasn't familiar.

Your reading of the inscription is really significant. It could be that, V Macedonica being part of the garrison at Baalbek for many years, the quarter of the city they were billeted in became known as a Macedonian quarter. But that's only one possibility. The inscription evidently doesn't say "by Macedonian legionaries" and so there are many other possibilities.

Could one be - drawing a long bow - that this was a very old (say 1,000 year-old) community from Alexander's campaigns? Or a later one formed by a trade/commerce-led diaspora?

Many thanks again for your explanations! What is your main interest area BTW? Is it Byzantine mainly or...?

Cheers

Howard/SPC

[Macedon]

I do not personally think that it has to do with the V Macedonica. Most probably it is just a Greek quarter of the city. These parts of the world swarmed with sizable Greek communities that flourished for a thousand years. Greek immigration to those lands was greatly encouraged.

My main interest area is ancient Mediterranean (6th-1st c. BC) but I do occupy myself with many other eras and I am one of those sobs who just keep placing more credence to ancient sources than to modern scholars who know little if any ancient Greek while keeping drawing conclusions from (mostly flawed) translations...

[Spurius Papirius Cursor]

Thanks George

Yes, that's my thought also. One of numerous Hellenic communities has to be one's primary suspicion given the wording of the inscription.

And DO keep on being "one of those sobs who just keep placing more credence on ancient sources than modern scholars who know no ancient Greek". That's just why I'm studying Greek and Latin as well as archaeology because I don't like the recycling of "facts" (that sometimes aren't) because researchers tend to trust other researchers. I'd like to be in a position to make up my own mind. Which is why I appreciated the detail of your approach to the inscription, because it gave me the opportunity to confirm for myself that what was being commemorated was the work of a community but not specifically a military one.

I'm going to need to do a lot more work on indictions before I get my head around them however.

Cheers

Howard/SPC

[Renatus]

I have now had the opportunity of seeing the published text of the Baalbek inscription (IGLS 6, 2828). It reads as follows:

Κτίσμα πύρ(γου)
σὺν Θ(ε)ῷ γι(τονία) Μα
κεδώνων
ὶνδ(ικτιῶνος) θ΄ τοῦ ζμ[?]΄

[?] represents a symbol that I cannot reproduce but otherwise the reading is the same as that found by Macedon. The publication is in French and I set out below the translation and comment without attempting to render them into English:

“La construction de la tour est, avec l’aide de Dieu, l’œvre du quartier des Macédoniens, la neuvième indiction de l’an 947.”

La date se calcule selon l’ère des Séleucides: l’an 947 = 635/636 ap. J.-C.; la neuvième indiction commence le 1er septembre 635. Il ne peut être question d’une ‘ère des Macédoniens’, à laquelle songeait Clermont-Ganneau. Le quartier des Macédoniens devait se charger de la portion de ramparts qui le protégeait. Cette remise en état des ramparts est à mettre en rapport avec la menace perse sous Héraclius, ou plutôt avec les invasions musulmanes.

If the reference to le quartier des Macédoniens, ‘the district of the Macedonians’, having to maintain the section of the ramparts that protected it is a correct interpretation, it would seem, as Macedon suggests, that this militates against the inscription relating to the old legio Macedonica.

[Robert Vermaat]

If the reference to le quartier des Macédoniens, ‘the district of the Macedonians’, having to maintain the section of the ramparts that protected it is a correct interpretation, it would seem, as Macedon suggests, that this militates against the inscription relating to the old legio Macedonica.

Which seems to me the most logical explaination, as already proposed by Ross Cowan as well. Each unit would have been responsible for their own section of the wall.

[Renatus]

If the reference to le quartier des Macédoniens, ‘the district of the Macedonians’, having to maintain the section of the ramparts that protected it is a correct interpretation, it would seem, as Macedon suggests, that this militates against the inscription relating to the old legio Macedonica.

Which seems to me the most logical explaination, as already proposed by Ross Cowan as well. Each unit would have been responsible for their own section of the wall.

It depends upon how you understand 'the district of the Macedonians'. Does it mean 'the district defended by the Macedonians' (whatever 'Macedonians' may mean), or 'the district inhabited by Macedonians (or Greeks)', or simply 'the Macedonian district'? In the absence of other evidence of the eponymous military unit having been stationed in or near the city or of its even having survived so long, 'the district defended by the unit descended from legio V Macedonica' does not necessarily seem to be the most obvious or logical definition.

[Spurius Papirius Cursor]

...It depends upon how you understand 'the district of the Macedonians'...'the district defended by the unit descended from legio V Macedonica' does not necessarily seem to be the most obvious or logical definition.

I have to agree with Renatus and Macedon based on what is here in the thread (I haven't been able to obtain Ross Cowan's book yet). If there were additional evidence of, say, several legions being garrisoned in the town, one of which was the "Quintanis" (however that would come out in Greek!) or "Macedonians", then I'd see the inscription as fair evidence of which sector of the town was theirs. But, as Macedon points out, the region was "swarming" with Hellenic communities and interpretation should, I'd imagine, go with the greatest ptobability. The phrase "with God's help" may have been formulaic but - to the modern ear - it sounds as if the dedication acknowledges the ability to fund the construction and/or otherwise manage to bring together the means of construction - a community congratulating itself on a job well done. Mind you, this interpretation is not proof the V Macedonica was not or never in Baalbek. It's just not, on its own, proof that it was. Let the Hunt for the Fifth Macedonians go on! (Well, isn't it better than assuming they were 'Yarmouked'?)

Just harking back to Amelianus' reference to the "legions of Chalkis" (which is how they are described in the online vesions of the two sources). I'm imagining the Chalkis referred to is in Syria, not the one on Euboia. I'm wondering whether "legions" refers to actual units 'designatable' (my word) as "legiones" (presumably not of a mobile army) or whether the word's being used in a more general sense of "Roman army units"?

Does anyone have anything on this?

Cheers

Howard/SPC

[Robert Vermaat]

I have to agree with Renatus and Macedon based on what is here in the thread (I haven't been able to obtain Ross Cowan's book yet). If there were additional evidence of, say, several legions being garrisoned in the town, one of which was the "Quintanis" (however that would come out in Greek!) or "Macedonians", then I'd see the inscription as fair evidence of which sector of the town was theirs.
[..]
Mind you, this interpretation is not proof the V Macedonica was not or never in Baalbek. It's just not, on its own, proof that it was.

True, there is no solid evidence that the 'Macedonians' were indeed from V Macedonia. It's Cowan's opinion that this reference might point to a detachment from one of the mini-legions, split off from V Macedonia, serving in Egypt as late as the 6th or early 7th century. One reference (not sure which) refers to these men being called 'Quintani', after their unit numeral.

But, as Macedon points out, the region was "swarming" with Hellenic communities and interpretation should, I'd imagine, go with the greatest ptobability.

So let's turn around the question: do we have any inscriptions referring to any such communities manning sections of walls anywhere? It would be really interesting to know that.

I'm wondering whether "legions" refers to actual units 'designatable' (my word) as "legiones" (presumably not of a mobile army) or whether the word's being used in a more general sense of "Roman army units"?

The word 'legion' seems to have become generic and referred to any kind of unit from the 4th c., when the larger ancient legions were split into smaller units (half-legions, mini-legions) and when new smaller units were created.