THE DEATH-KNELL FOR THE ARMORICAN THEORY OF L. ARTORIUS CASTUS

A few months ago I had asked Professor Roger Tomlin the following question.  Only just today did I receive his reply...

"Does it make sense to you that L. Artorius Castus, in fighting deserters and Maternus' mixed mob in Armorica, would have put ADVERSUS ARMORICOS on his stone? I assume he would have been serving under Pescennius Niger, who according to the Augustan History had been made governor of Gallia Lugdunensis in order to deal with the deserters."

Tomlin's response:

"It seems inherently unlikely to me – it is who he is fighting, not where, that matters. If the enemy lives there, well and good, but not if the geographical term relates only to where the fighting took place. 

It is as if, in 1941, General Freyberg recalled his unsuccessful defence of Crete against the Germans as being a campaign against the Cretans.

To pursue the analogy ... Freyberg might have referred to the 'Cretan campaign', just as Castus might have referred to the 'Armorican campaign', but not by using the term adversus."

To this observation we need to add that according to the Roman sources, the deserters were not just in Gaul: they were in Germany and Spain as well."

Continuing our discussion only the other day, with me posing the last question in my arsenal:

"What if Maternus were an Armorican?  Serving in the Roman army, then deserting.  He then brings other Armorican based soldiers into his fold, as well as a riff raff from the countryside. 

Castus could then say against the Armoricans, no?

AND, there is evidence that things started in Gaul.  The Pescennius Niger bit, and some inscriptions found of men who died fighting Latrones at the right time.

Could this work, theoretically?"

Tomlin:

"Theoretically – yes, I suppose so, but unlikely. You must suppose that Armorica was 'garrisoned', centuries after conquest, by soldiers who were 'Armoricans'. And go against Herodian's narrative, who treats Maternus' followers as latrones – no hint of a 'nationalist' revolt. They ranged all over Gaul, recruiting convicts, and yet you must suppose that Castus applied a narrowly regional label to them, as 'Armoricans'.

One reason I am not happy with ARMORICOS is my impression that, in career inscriptions which use ADVERSVS of the enemies against whom an officer is sent, for internal enemies they use terms like LATRONES and REBELLES, for external enemies their name, for example GERMANOS. Unless Herodian has utterly misrepresented Maternus, his was not a 'nationalist' revolt. And even if it was, I think a more contemptuous term would have been used."

Tomlin continued in a similar vein when looking for other possible ways to make ARMORICOS work:

"ARMORICOS involves assumptions that are not backed by the text – that Castus' opponents were nationalists, not 'deserters', and that they did not ravage (the whole of) Gaul.

If Castus had campaigned only in Armorica against a much wider-ranging opponent, then he might have said 'in Armorica', but he would have been perverse to call his opponent 'the Armoricans'.

Two footloose Germans or a couple discontents fleeing Britain might have joined the deserters - it wouldn't then mean he was fighting against Germans or Britons. Such a scenario only admits of fighting 'in Armorica'."

As other than ARMENIOS (which does make sense with ADVERSUS [1]), ARMORICOS is our only possible reading for the fragmentary ARM[...]S of the Castus memorial stone, it would appear that the former must continue to be strongly favored over the latter.

Once again, ARMATOS (proposed by Dr. Linda A. Malcor, Antonio Trinchese and Alessandro Faggiani), does not work as a reading for ARM[...]S.  I and others have adequately disposed of this possible rendering.  In brief, the term is too vague and nonspecific and demands a determinant of some kind, i.e. a term designating what kind of armed men or where the armed men were situated.  For a soldier like Castus, who was so proud of his career and who took such care to preserve a detailed outline of that career on his memorial stone to have told posterity that he had taken British vexillations "against armed men" makes no sense at all.  All soldiers fought armed men; that's a given, and so obvious as to not need stating.  In truth, such a statement is absurd. 

As the proposed phrase stands, "dux of legionary [detachments] against armed men", we have no way of knowing whether these undesignated armed men were in Britain or outside of Britain. As several inscriptions make plain, British forces were used both in Britain and on the Continent.  Malcor and Co. insist on a literal reading of the Castus inscription, continuing to deny that vexillations are implied. They need for this to be so because it is there only way to be to demonstrate where the armed men were located.  Still doesn't tell us who they are, and to account for this oversight on Castus's part the proponents of the ARMATOS reading resort to a mix of tribes and/or rebellious troops whose names or descriptions could not be fit on the stone. While we can just make the simple observation that a bigger stone could have been selected onto which a pre-written, pre-arranged text could have been applied, or any number of abbreviations and ligatures could have been employed, to Malcor and Co. the absence of determinants is "evidence" that the reading must be ARMATOS. 

While the latter is easily enough ignored, the former does need addressing - AGAIN. Robert Saxer, in his magisterial Untersuchungen zu den Vexillationen des Römischen Kaiserheeres von Augustus bis Diokletian (Studies of the vexillations of the Roman Imperial Army from Augustus to Diocletian), mentions 42 instances in which vexillations are implied in inscriptions

(https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2023/12/implied-vexillations-in-roman.html). 

But even if we allow the reading, i.e. assume for the sake of argument that we really are talking about three British legions in the inscription, proving that the action had to happen within Britain, it remains a fact that while Castus, a prefect of the Sixth Legion based at York, might have taken his legion with him (presumably to the North), he would only have taken vexillations from the other two legions. So, in reality, vexillations are implied in the inscription whether Malcor and Co. want that to be true or not.

I have shown that there is not one use of ARMATOS in Roman literature or epigraphy that does not provide contextual information about precisely who the armed men in question were

(https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2021/11/my-rebuttal-of-antonio-trincheses.html).

These are fatal flaws in the ARMATOS argument, and to date not a single established, respected Roman military historian or Latin epigrapher has taken up the banner of Malcor, Trinchese and Faggiani. 

[1]

Castus would have left Britain with troops when the British governor, Statius Priscus, was sent on an emergency basis to Cappodocia to stage the war against Armenia. This scenario also fits with the most probable foundation date of Liburnia a few years after the successful campaign in Armenia.  Castus would have been made procurator of Liburnia at this time, as the foundation of the new (and possibly temporary) province was a reaction to the threat posed by possible Germanic invasion from the north.