Commodus Dressed as Hercules
Over the past several weeks I have been discussing the Priscus who is offered the purple by British troops during the reign of the Emperor Commodus. A number of assertions have been made about this man, and some of these are being passed off as factual statements. With Professor Roger Tomlin's help, I have gained a real appreciation for the difficulty involved in piecing together a long military career from a series of incomplete sources. Tomlin has kindly pulled everything together and produced the following narrative, which I will comment upon later in this post.
"Our basic problem, as you know, is whether we can pull all these inscriptions together and refer them to the same man – (1) Titus Caunius Priscus, legate of III Augusta who is about to become consul (but we don't know when); (2) the legate of III Augusta called ]CO LEG[, who is in post under Commodus; (3) the consul of Commodus in c.191 who is called ]VNIO ... [...]CO. Identifying (3) with (2) depends on seeing his latest command as III Augusta, not II Italica (as in Birley p. 261, following Gregori and Alföldy). From what I can see of the stone, this is possible, and better suits his titulature.
If you do identify the three, you get a long and interesting senatorial career crowned by the consulship at the end of Commodus' reign. In ascending order:
legate of VI Victrix (but bear in mind that this is a restoration – we only know for sure that it was a legion with P F in its titulature)
legate of V Macedonica
field-commander of vexillations drawn from a provincial army ending in –NNICARVM , which again must be reconstructed as the 'British' legions. The first N is doubtful – could it be 'Germanicarum' instead?
legate of III Augusta (which depends on a re-reading of the Rome inscription)
consul, c. 191
If this is seen as the career of Caunius Priscus, which I think is reasonable (but not certain), then you get a tight chronology if you try to fit it to the second-rate literary record.
Priscus is legate of VI Victrix in 184, when Commodus becomes Britannicus and the British army tries to proclaim the legate Priscus. He is promoted for his loyalty, and also to get him out of Britain – becomes legate of V Macedonica. As such, he is made acting-commander of a field force perhaps (but not necessarily) drawn from Britain. In any case, he would not have needed to go to Britain to command a field-force operating on the Continent.
He is successful in this command – i.e. he kills Maternus – and as a reward gets the plum post of III Augusta which is a provincial governorship as well; and naturally leads to the consulship. One complicating factor is that the Historia Augusta says that Pescennius Niger distinguished himself in Gaul against the deserters[1], while Herodian has Maternus slipping away from Gaul when a force is concentrated against him, and being arrested and executed in Rome.
I suppose it would be safe to assume that more than one field force was mobilised against the deserters, since the uprising was so widespread.
I think you can squeeze it all together, since his legionary command in Britain would have ended with his refusal to become a usurper, and he could have commanded the vexillations during his next post, the command of V Macedonica.
I leave it to you to decide whether the vexillations were 'British' or to be identified with the 1500 spearmen who killed Perennis, let alone whether LAC had anything to do with all this."
This astute summary of the extant materials on Priscus reveals what a tricky business reassembling a personal history can be. There aren't too many scholars with the acumen capable of treating of these complex and confusing matters in a way that commands admiration and respect.
Tomlin is still content with the ARM[...]S of the LAC inscription as ARMENIOS, and remains "happy to see him as already procurator of Liburnia" when the Perennis affair plays out.
My only question concerning Priscus is whether it is logical to assume he would have been given command of British troops on the Continent shortly after members of the British army had tried to raise him to the Purple. This seems rather counter-intuitive. Allowing for the inscription to read GERMANICARUM thus makes more sense. We know that Maternus attacked Argentoratum in Upper Germany in 185 A.D. Gaul, Spain and Germania were involved in the Deserters' War (see https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiptavb3LP7AhWrGDQIHV5LAAsQFnoECCIQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fpublication%2F351783693_Emperor_Commodus%27_%27Bellum_desertorum%27&usg=AOvVaw1Nnz0NcpGFDzs-QASY8g_U , T. Grünewald, Bandits in the Roman Empire. Myth and Reality, London/New York
The story of the deputation of the 1500 British spearman is highly suspect, and it is likely that this is a garbled account of soldiers coming instead from Illyricum (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2022/11/no-1500-spearmen-from-britain-better.html).
[1]
Now Pescennius was on very friendly terms with Severus at the time that the latter was governor of the province of Lugdunensis.12 4 For he was sent to apprehend a body of deserters who were then ravaging Gaul in great numbers...
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