THE PROBLEM OF LIBURNIA: LUCIUS ARTORIS CASTUS AND THE MARCOMANNIC WARS

The question has come up again about when the Roman province of Liburnia was founded, and whether its first procurator may have been Lucius Artorius Castus.  I wrote about this originally in this piece:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-date-of-lucius-artorius-castuss.html

Now, I have been asked to revisit this issue, which I have conveniently dodged.  But here is the problem, simply stated:

1) The only recorded reorganization of Dalmatia, which was of a decidedly military nature, happened c. 168 under Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius.  This was a response to the Marcomannic Wars.

2) Lucius Artorius Castus is the only known procurator of Liburnia.  Many Roman historians think that Liburnia may even been a province only for a short time, and quite possibly was phased out of existence after LAC's tenure had expired.  In other words, there is a strong indication that Liburnia existed only as long as LAC was its procurator.

3) Any suggestion that Liburnia was formed later (given that its very formation was extremely unusual, and the powers invested in LAC also extremely unusual) runs up against a very serious and, in my mind, an insurmoutnable obstacle:  Commodus, who reigned after Marcus, was not interested in the Marcomannic Wars.[1]  In fact, he had a peace treaty signed with the enemies to the North.  So to suggest that he or an immediate succesor felt it necessary to create Liburnia does not ring true - AT ALL.  

4) If LAC became procurator of Liburnia c. 168, then he was not in Britain when the Sarmatians came there in 175. And that means that any supposed connection with the Sarmatians and an "Arthur" is an invalid proposition.

My readers will recall that because the 'procurator centenarius' expression on LAC's memorial stone is otherwise found at its earliest c. 190 towards the end of the reign of Commodus, that I decided it was unlikely the fragmentary ARM[...]S had originally read ARMENIOS.  I had made this decision despite the presence of pay grades linked to ranks on stones found belonging to the time of Marcus Aurelius (e.g. Domitius Marsianus, Marcus Valerius Maximianus) and the literary evidence, which made it plain from much earlier (at least Hadrian's time) that the pay of centenarius could belong to a procurator. I was not entirely happy with my decision, for as Professor Roger Tomlin put it:

"... this may be a case of Absence of Evidence = Evidence of Absence. Just because they can't find a centenarian procurator earlier than Commodus in an inscription, they conclude there is no such thing."

The implication here is that there may well be other such stones, either not discovered or destroyed.  But it is also distinctly possible that if LAC were appointed as a special procurator with profound powers of a newly formed Liburnia c. 168, he may well have been the trend-setter.  In other words, the procurator centenarius formula evinced on his stone may well have been the first such use of the term.

So here is what we are facing:  not only do we have an evidence problem (i.e. we know Dalmatia was reorgnazed c. 168, but have no evidence whatsoever that it was reorganized AGAIN later), but we have a logic problem.  For it is patently illogical to arbitrarily decide to ignore the reorganization c. 168 when we can't prove, in any way, shape or form, that there were events playing out in the region that would justify our assigning the foundation of Liburnia to a later period.

I would add that I have made inquires of various parties in Croatia about the possible spectrographic analysis of the LAC stone.  Our earliest authority for the stone's inscription, who has been discredited for his numerous mistakes in translation, claimed the M had been ligatured to an E.  While we can't know from an naked eye examination if he was right about this one point, it is worth investigating further.  Should such an analysis show that an E had been present, we would have solved the mystery of ARM[...]S.

What do I think - should that matter to anyone in the Arthurian Community (all of whom have their own strongly held beliefs, and often insupportable theories)?  Well, I think we must allow for the LAC stone to have one of the earliest surviving examples of the "procurator centenarius" formulaic expression.  And that ARM[...]S is for ARMENIOS, and that Liburnia was founded c. 168.  We already know that the British governor Statius Priscus was sent from Britain to Armenia to command the war there, and that he did not continue in the other phases of the war (the Parthian and the Median).  Scholars like M.C. Bishop have provided excellent reasons why this may have been so, and all other evidence (literary, coins and epigraphic.) show us that the emperors of the time took the ARMENIACOS ('conqueror of Armenia') in isolation from the subsequent added titles referring to victory in Parthia or Media.  The spelling ARMENIOS is known from multiple Classical sources, so there is no problem having this on the stone.  A simple NI ligature (compare the 17 other visible ligatures, two of them triple ligatures, on the stone) would suffice to make ARMENIOS fit really well.  Lastly, there is a Dalmatian element to the heritage of several leading men in Britain at the time, including, quite possibly, LAC himself, which would prompt us to prefer the earlier to the later period for his activity.  I have dealt with this in detail here: https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/10/lucius-artorius-castus-birth-and-death.html.

In Roger Tomlin's words:

"ARMENIOS I think more likely than ARMORICOS, both because it fits much more easily 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."  

I will conclude with this challenge to my opponents:

Prove to my satisfaction - and to that of all other scholars - that the foundation of Liburnia CAN BE PROVEN TO BELONG TO A PERIOD AFTER 170 A.D. If you can do that, I will reconsider my position on the most probable date of the foundation of Liburnia, which is c. 168.  And you need also to provide me with evidence that I should avoid assigning LAC to c. 168 as the newly formed province's procurator with special powers.[2] 

Negating the “Gap” Argument

When I first broached the idea of LAC fighting in 161-163 and the being made procurator c. 168, a chronological point was brought against it.  How, it was asked, do we account for the five-year gap between his service as dux in Armenia and his being appointed the Liburnian procurator?

Well, to begin, we don’t know the circumstances of what may have happened in the said “gap.”  Some scholars have suggested that the disappearance of Statitus Priscus from our records after the victory in 163 should be explained by his probable death.  Others (like M.C. Bishop in his book LUCIUS VERUS AND THE ROMAN DEFENCE OF THE EAST) propose that not only did the building of the new Armenian capital by Priscus take awhile, but he may have been put in charge of setting up new garrisons for overwintering troops and may even have taken a force back to Cappodocia.  

Second, as LAC was still prefect of the Sixth even when appointed dux of the special expeditionary unit and would have continued as prefect afterwards – prior to assuming a procuratorship – the gap suddenly vanishes.  For the idea that a prefect of a legion only served a year or two is simply wrong.  I checked on this with the expert on the matter, Dr. David J. Breeze.  His response as to the length of tenure for a legionary prefect:

“There was no stipulated term for the office, unlike many other senior posts which appear to be of 3 years duration. The praefectus castrorum rose from the ranks of the centurionate and there was no time limit on their service, some continuing in post for decades. Similarly, the praefectus praetorio, although senior in status to the pf cas, had no time limit.”

Professor Roger Tomlin chimed in the with following helpful information:

“Bear in mind that LAC would only have specified a new post if there had been one. He may simply have continued as camp prefect, or even have retired from the army back to Dalmatia, where he was locally well-known – only to be 'dug out' when a local with administrative experience and important contacts was required to govern an improvised province. The decision was made by someone who knew him from Armenia. And I don't think he was required to add to 'adversus Armenios' all the other eastern peoples he had campaigned against. That was simply the name of the War.”

 

[1]

From Dio Cassius:

2 The Marcomani by reason of the multitude of their people that were perishing and the constant ravishing of their lands no longer had an abundance of either food or men. At any rate they sent only two of their chief men and two others of inferior rank as envoys to sue for peace. 2 And, although Commodus might easily have destroyed them, yet he made terms with them; for he hated all exertion and was eager for the comforts of the city. In addition to the conditions that his father had imposed upon them he also demanded that they restore to him the deserters and the captives that they had taken in the meantime, and that they furnish annually p75 a stipulated amount of grain — a demand from which he subsequently released them. 3 Moreover, he obtained some arms from them and soldiers as well, thirteen thousand from the Quadi and a smaller number from the Marcomani; and in return for these he relieved them of the requirement of an annual levy. 4 However, he further commanded that they should not assemble often nor in many parts of the country, but only once each month and in one place, and in the presence of a Roman centurion; and, furthermore, that they should not make war upon the Iazyges, the Buri, or the Vandili. On these terms, then, he made peace and abandoned all the outposts in their country beyond the strip along the frontier that had been neutralized . . .

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/.../texts/cassius_dio/73*.html

[2]

Because the 'proc centenario' on the LAC stone is said to belong at the earliest to the reign of Commodus (based on a c. 190 date for the stone of C. Annius Flavianus with its 'proc c'), we erroneously think that LAC could not possibly have been procurator in the late 160s to early 170s.  

First, to use Professor Roger Tomlin's phrase:  "I am worried that this may be a case of Absence of Evidence = Evidence of Absence. Just because they can't find a centenarian procurator earlier than Commodus in an inscription, they conclude there is no such thing."

In other words, there may have been proc cent stones in the reign of Marcus Aurelius; we just haven't found them yet or they have been destroyed.  It may even be the case that LAC's use of the term represents the first such use, and it may well have been coined during the reign of Marcus.

However, something that is never brought up (because it is inconvenient to do so) is that just because a proc cent on LAC's stone would seem to indicate a date in the reign of Commodus at the earliest, this doesn't preclude LAC having been procurator of Liburnia earlier.

How so? 

For a most obvious reason: he may well have been old and long retired when he had his stone fashioned. A man who had served as procurator from, say (to use Miletic's estimate) 167-174 might very well still be alive during the reign of Commodus, which started in 180. A memorial stone is not made in real time. By that I mean he didn't carve 'proc centenario' when he was made procurator. He would have carved it once his tenure had been completed, and at some point before his death.

The point is this: we can have a man who served as procurator in the late 160s to early 170s who adopted the formulaic use of proc c that was in fashion when he had the stone carved. We know centenarius may have seemed like a lot to him, but we know of equestrians in the reign of Marcus who made much more than that for similar ranks, and we know that the centenarian pay for many procurators was a common pay grade well before Marcus.

In fact, we could hardly expect LAC to have used antiquated or obsolete language for his rank and pay grade if at the time he had the stone carved he could utilize the current formula.

Thus the whole idea that proc cent - even if the terminology itself belongs to the reign of Commodus - must reflect that proc cent was the standard formula at the time LAC actually held the procuratorship is flawed from the get-go.