A SIMPLE EXPLANATION AS TO WHY 'ADVERSUS ARMENIOS' SHOULD BE THE PREFERRED READING FOR THE LAC MEMORIAL STONE

I recently had a heated debate with the "opposition" concerning the proper reading of ARM[...]S on the Lucius Artorius Castus memorial stone.  I tried to get my point across - without reaching into several pages of material in my new book THE BATTLE-LEADER OF RIBCHESTER or into coresponding blog articles.  But there was just no fighting through the resistence.

It has occurred to me that I need to take a simpler approach.  To begin, I would like to warn my readers NOT TO RESORT to the Wikipedia page 

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Artorius_Castus#Adversus_*Arm[oric(an)o]s_or_Adversus_*Arme[nio]s?) on Lucius Artorius Castus.  It is REPLETE with errors, falsehoods (?), mistatements and just plain, old-fashioned misinformation.  I will not bother trying to edit the content of the Wiki page, because A) it will only be changed back and B) no one should be utilizing a Wiki page as their knowledge base.  Sometimes good sources are referenced, but even these must be checked to see if they actually confirm what citation is being offered.  Often, they do not.  

One good example quoted directly from that page:

"On the other hand, adversus Armenios isn't attested in written or epigraphic sources..."

Patently untrue.  Here is 'ADVERSUS ARMENIOS' from Tacitus' ANNALS 13:37:

At Tiridates super proprias clientelas ope Vologaesi fratris adiutus, non furtim iam, sed palam bello infensare Armeniam, quosque fidos nobis rebatur, depopulari, et si copiae contra ducerentur, eludere hucque et illuc volitans plura fama quam pugna exterrere. igitur Corbulo, quaesito diu proelio frustra habitus et exemplo hostium circumferre bellum coactus, dispertit vires, ut legati praefectique diversos locos pariter invaderent. simul regem Antiochum monet proximas sibi praefecturas petere. nam Pharasmanes interfecto filio Radamisto quasi proditore, quo fidem in nos testaretur, vetus adversus Armenios odium promptius exercebat. tuncque primum inlecti Moschi, gens ante alias socia Romanis, avia Armeniae incursavit. ita consilia Tiridati in contrarium vertebant, mittebatque oratores, qui suo Parthorumque nomine expostularent, cur datis nuper obsidibus redintegrataque amicitia quae novis quoque beneficiis locum aperiret, vetere Armeniae possessione depelleretur. ideo nondum ipsum Volgaesen commotum, quia causa quam vi agere mallent; sin perstaretur in bello, non defore Arsacidis virtutem fortunamque saepius iam clade Romana expertam. ad ea Corbulo, satis comperto Volgaesen defectione Hyrcaniae attineri, suadet Tiridati precibus Caesarem adgredi: posse illi regnum stabile et res incruentas contingere, si omissa spe longinqua et sera praesentem potioremque sequeretur.

We can find ARMENIOS in other Classical authors.  Here are several examples I found after doing a brief search:

https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/lucan/lucan2.shtml

Armenios Cilicasque feros Taurumque subegi (Line 594)

https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/pomponius3.html

per Armenios et Cappadocas occidentem petit (66)

Tibullus

https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/34379/Liveley_Book4CD.pdf

iactat odoratos vota per Armenios

Tactius Annals II (second occurence of the word in Tacitus)

ed praeverti ad Armenios instantior cura fuit

Ammianus Marcellinus (admittedly, a later author), Book XXXI, 2, 17-25

"itidemque Armenios discurrentes et Mediam

Florus 1.47.4

Armenios etiam et Britannos

The paragraph following the Wiki page should also be ignored.  It does not take into account all the excellent new work that has been done on the Priscus in question, and makes bold statements about Armenios being impossible that not only can't be substantiated, but which run against conventional wisdom.

For the remainder of this piece, I'm going to simply put down a statement from my own mind, without consulting other sources or quoting other authorities.  This is meant to be an appeal to reason - something that is sorely lacking in much of the Arthurian Community right now.

The argument about ARM[...]S on the LAC stone comes down to three possibilities (well, really only two, but as three have been offered, we must treat of all of them):

1) ARMORICOS for Armorica or Brittany.  This has been thought unlikely not only because we can't find an action recorded for Armoricos with British troops anywhere else in the period under consideration (second or third centuries A.D.) and because the unusual ligature required to fit the name on the stone is not of a kind found elsewhere on the monument and does not, therefore, match the style of the carving. The C/O ligature also appears to belong only to a later period.

2) ARMATOS for some vague group of armed men.  I've not found a single scholar outside of the immediate circle of the originator of this theory who will accept it.  The problem has to do with there being no qualifier for who these armed men are or where they belong.  Furthermore, the word is considered far too obvious.  Who else would they be fighting other than armed men?  Unarmed men?  Again, context is everything, and the LAC stone does not permit the use of this term in the space provided.

3) ARMENIOS for Armenia.  This was proposed initially with either Septimius Sereverus or Caracalla in mind, but there is no evidence for British troops being used in Armenia during the reigns of either of those emperors.  Thus the most common sense solution is to allow for LAC to have come with legionary detachments from Britain to Armenia with the British governor Statius Priscus. [That they were detachments and not entire legions is based upon the fact the full legionary complement of any single province would never be sent against anyone.] This emergency Armenian action happened c. 163.  The opposition tries to obfuscate the event, claiming it wasn't an Armenian War, but a Parthian one.  However, it is clear from coins and inscriptions that Armenia was depicted as a defeated country.  There are dozens of inscriptions in which Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus are declared solely ARMENIACUS, 'conqueror of Armenia.'  These stones can be precisely dated precisely because they appear without later titles that became attached to the emperors after Parthia and then Media had been conquered.  Thus the argument that we would have to have "AGAINST PARTHICA" in the stone is null and void.  As LAC participated only in the Armenian War with Statius Priscus, he would quite naturally have declared that he went "AGAINST ARMENIA. The argument against an M/E ligature for ARMENIOS does not hold up, as an N/I ligature would have served just as well.  We may compare the N/T/E ligature of CENTENARIO on the following line. "

In order to try and prevent us from adhering to ARMENIOS as the best reading for the fragmentary inscription, great emphasis is placed on a late date for the Liburnian procuratorship of LAC.  In their belief, Liburnia did not become a separate province from Dalmatia proper until the reign of Commodus.  Yet they are unable to show any documentary evidence suggesting that this alternation of the structure and function of Dalmatia occurred in the time they wish for it to have.  

This is a shame, because we have such evidence for the military reorganization of Dalmatia before 170, when Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus did exactly this!  As this is the case, LAC could well have become procurator of the new province at this time or shortly thereafter.  

And we can't claim, as the opposition does, that LAC would have been too old to have done all this.

To begin, we do not know when LAC was born.  In addition, the date of his memorial stone can only be roughly dated.  Most scholars now believe it belongs to the Antonine period (c. AD 140-190).

We can say that had LAC been directly commissioned ex equite Romano into the centurionate, he could have been comparatively young when he became Prefect of the Sixth Legion in Britain. We needn't suppose he served 12+ years in the ranks before becoming centurion.

Cn. Marcius Rustius Rufinus, who became centurion in the reign of Marcus, proceeded through a series of posts like those held by LAC to become Severus' praefectus vigilum in c. 207. This is a 30-year career. 

We can, therefore, make a decent case for LAC fighting in Armenia, then returning to Britain with his men.  He could still have been there when the 5,500 Sarmatians arrived in 175.  But it is only with difficulty that we can extend his tenure of the Sixth Legion to 185 (the year that saw the execution of Perennis, an act carried out according to one account by British troops). If we get LAC into the centurionate, say, in the mid-150s, he need only be in his mid-40s by 175. But it becomes difficult to give him a re-run, another field command, ten years later.

This is the best possible reconstruction of the ARM[...]S of the Lac stone.  It avails itself of known historical sources.  No wild guesswork is required.  It represents a common sense solution that satisfies the objective examination of the problem.   

NOTES:  I have encountered nothing but strong, negative responses on the PRAEFF of the LAC insciption being for the plural of prefect.  The appearance of the word, and known similar occurrences, mean that it was simply an error.

In Professor Roger Tomlin's words, 

"I don't know of any instance of the final letter being repeated in this way, to indicate repeated tenure. It will be spelt out, with ITERVM. He would have remained prefect while dux. I can't put weight on the double F of PRAEF. On the stone, it looks so much as if someone drew PRAFF (as if a mistake for PRAEF) and then inserted E ligatured to A. "

Tomlin's response to the suggesstion that the number 6 (VI) followes LAC's rank of procurator, for a supposed 6 times at that rank, is just as damaging:

"No good. '6 times' procurator is absurd: even 'twice' would be highly unusual. Nor can it be the duration of his office: 'annos' would have been specified, and any way, the length of tenure is not specified in career inscriptions.

An inscription will either centre each line, or (more usually) will take each line to the end, even if it means breaking words. This is all the draughtsman has done. He has then centred the bottom line for appearance. VVS cannot be an abbreviation for VIVVS, and almost unacceptable as an error.

I attach the relevant entry from AE on the only example I could find on VVS for VIVVS.  As you can see, it is not comparable: it is very brief and almost every word is abbreviated.

Martio / v(i)v(u)s fec(it) sib(i) / et Lupo fil(io) / kar(issimo)

AE 1977, 0596"

Finally, the claim that the presence of the word CENTENARIO in the LAC inscription proves it belongs to the Severan period because other stones using the rank this way are only found then is simply not true.  

We have centenario on an inscription from the time of Marcus Aurelius: (http://rimskelegie.olw.cz/.../mvaleriusmaximianus_en.html, 

https://weaponsandwarfare.com/.../the-principate-roman.../).  M. Valerius Maximianus tells us he was given the centenarian rank ("honor(e) centenariae dig/nitatis") for leading cavalry with "aucto salario" or higher pay being granted to him in the procuratorship immediate-ly following. He was an equestrian, of course, like LAC.

A man in the time of MA saying on his stone that he got this particular pay grade and then was given even more when he was made procu-rator is certainly significant. If nothing else, it shows the use of centenarius on a stone dated to the much earlier period. We can't simply dis-count this, and then extrapolate from it (as some are trying to do) that his stone somehow sup-ports the case for LAC being later. This is simply an illogical conclusion to arrive at.