ARMENIOS VS. ARMORICOS: A BRIEF DISCUSSION WITH PROFESSOR ROGER TOMLIN

Marcus Aurelius 'ARMENIACUS'

In concluding our many months of give-and-take over the L. Artorius Castus memorial stone, I did finally persuade Professor Roger Tomlin to allow the possibility that the fragmentary ARM[...]S of the inscription could be for ARMORICOS.  See https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2021/05/professor-roger-tomlins-final-word-on-l.html.

However, it doesn't follow that he favors ARMORICOS.  His preference was based on several points, some of which I had first raised.

1) ARMENIOS fits better on the stone and was a very well known place across the Empire.  In Tomlin's words:

"It often happens in epigraphy that you can't decide 100% between two possible restorations – you can only weigh the possibilities. ARMENIOS I think more likely than ARMORICOS, both because it fits more easily (but, I repeat, the other will also fit) and because my guess is that 9 out of 10 Liburnians would have heard of 'Armenia', but only 1 out of 10 'Armorica'. That is bare assertion, of course, but I can't help feeling that LAC was expecting his readers to know what he was referring to."

2) Statius Priscus as governor of Britain going to Armenia to command the war.  Once again, Tomlin:

"I see Statius Priscus as being transferred at short notice from Britain to take command in Armenia. He did not necessarily travel with troops from Britain – indeed, since his mission was urgent, I expect he went ahead of them. I have only suggested that he chose a reliable man whom he knew to take command of the (hypothetical) British contingent. No doubt other contingents were being despatched from the Rhine and Danube frontiers. LAC was only commanding an improvised unit in – according to my reconstruction – the field army that was assembled to campaign in Armenia. Statius Priscus was its commander-in-chief, but he did not 'command' each of its components as well, except in the sense that a modern lieutenant-general commands all the battalions in his army, each under its own lieutenant-colonel.

"That war was supposedly looming in Britain when Priscus left need not overly disturb us. The Augustan History always seems to point to trouble in Britain at the accession of a new Emperor – and if major warfare really was impending there, why transfer your best general somewhere else?"

3) Our sources only tell us of one reorganization of Dalmatia, and that occurred under Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus in 168 A.D.  Tomlin:

"The way in which LAC refers to his final post strongly suggests – to me – the improvisation of a new province. Its immediately available governor would have been the procurator who was given special powers making him the equivalent of a senatorial legate. It is an example of what happened in the second century, the increasing promotion of able equestrians to 'senatorial' posts, the process that was ultimately formalised by Gallienus."

4) To use the 'proc centenario' of the stone to claim it cannot be based before the very late Antonine merely because the earliest example is found in the reign of Commodus.

"This may be a case of Absence of Evidence = Evidence of Absence. Just because we can't find a centenarian procurator earlier than Commodus in an inscription, we must conclude there is no such thing! We have Q. Domitius Marsianus, quoting and translating the inscription (AE 1962, 183) honouring him at Bulla Regia. This quotes Marcus Aurelius' letter of appointment, appointing him to 'the splendour of a ducenarian procuratorship'.  Then we have Valerius Maximianus during the reign of the same emperor discussing his pay grades.  

As you know too well, the pay grade centenarius for a procurator is known to have existed at least fifty years before Commodus, so its non-appearance in earlier inscriptions is not decisive. It is the highest rate of pay ever achieved by LAC, and he wanted to advertise the fact."

All of that would seem to cause us to choose ARMENIOS, and I feel that the argument for the word as the best reading for ARM[...]S must continue to be considered.

ARMORICOS has its merits. It works best for me because I need a LAC who sufficiently impressed himself upon the Sarmatians in Britain for them to have remembered him and passed him name down to the Dark Age Arthur born at Ribchester, site of the Sarmatian veteran settlement.  If LAC fought in Armenia, then he left Britain before the Sarmatians were sent there in 175.  It would be impossible to account for the name Arthur at sub-Roman Bremetennacum. 

Still, it is important that I not discount entirely the ARMENIOS reading.  After all, it may turn out that I am wrong about Arthur of Ribchester.