REOPENING AN ARMORICAN CAN OF WORMS or COULD L. ARTORIUS CASTUS HAVE FOUGHT IN THE DESERTERS' WAR AFTER ALL?

It was once thought that ARMORICANOS should fit on the L. Artorius Castus memorial stone.  When this proved to be way too long to accommodate the fragmentary ARM[...]S, ARMORICOS was proposed instead.  But there was even loud oppposition about this word, which itself - it was claimed - simply wouldn't fit on the stone.  Until, of course, I showed that, in fact, it could:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-lucius-artorius-castus-stone-with_14.html

Over the past few months, I've been going back and forth with scholars on the possibility that ARMORICOS was the location where Castus took his legionary vexillations.  My main conversation has been with Professor Roger Tomlin, who still thinks ARMENIOS is a better candidate.  However, he is the first to admit that ARM[...]S may be something else entirely.  As an example of how wrong we can be with this kind of reconstructive guesswork, he presented an example from his own researches.  I supply that here in full:

"We can only play with probabilities! It's good to suggest many possibilities, but ...

One of the Bath tablets was missing its top right-hand corner, but I could see its heading was centred:

      DOCI[

      BRV[

DEAE SAN[

So I read:

      DOCI[LIS

      BRV[CETI

DEAE SAN[CTAE

since Brucetus was a locally attested name, and deities are often addressed as sanctus.

Then I found the missing piece in the box of another tablet, and it now read:

      DOCI[LIANVS

      BRV[CERI

DEAE SAN[CTISSIME

The engraver had not centred Docilianus, he had mis-read the t of Brucetus in his draft, and mis-spelt the ending of sanctissimae.

You can't win!"

Tomlin only really has one objection to a reading that favors ARMORICOS as a reference to a purely regional outgrowth of the Deserters' War:

"This is a possible scenario, of course, but it 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, than he might have said 'in Armorica', but he would have been perverse to call his opponent 'the Armoricans'."

Now, while this is logically sound, we might suppose that the deserters in Gaul (specifically Gallia Lugdunensis, which included Armorica) were the match that lit the fire, so to speak.  In other words, it could be that the deserter uprising brought about a full rebellion in Armorica - a true nationalist rebellion that was restricted to that sector of Gaul.

We know that Armorica gave Rome fits in the later period.  The following is from John Koch's CELTIC CULTURE: A HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA:

"In the later Roman period, Armorica was more than

once controlled by regional emperors, backed by the

Romano-British garrison, whose authority was not

recognized in Italy or the East—for example, Carausius

and Allectus (287–96), Maximus (Macsen Wledig;

383–8), and Constantine III (407–9). Intermittently

from the late 3rd century, Armorica slipped out of

Roman control altogether, as a result of a series of

uprisings by bacaudae (rebel bands made up of peasants

and disaffected soldiers). The Byzantine historian

Zosimus (6.5.2) relates concerning the events of ad 409:

. . . the barbarians from beyond the Rhine overran

everything at will and reduced the inhabitants of

the British Island and some of the peoples in Gaul

to the necessity of rebelling from the Roman Empire

and of living by themselves, no longer obeying

the Romans’ laws. The Britons, therefore, taking up

arms and fighting on their own behalf, freed the

cities from the barbarians who were pressing upon

them; and the whole of Armorica and other provinces

of Gaul, imitating the Britons, freed themselves

in the same way, expelling Roman officials

and establishing a sovereign constitution on their own

authority . . . (Trans. Thompson, Britannia 8.306).

A shaky Roman rule was re-established in 417 and

lapsed more than once before the mid-5th century. By

the 460s, we find a ‘king of the Britons’ with the

Brythonic name or title Rigotamus ‘supreme king’

and 12,000 men on the Loire, and Gallo-Roman

Armorica belongs to the past."

Might we not accept the possibility that under Commodus, when everything seemed to be going wrong, the Armoricans were encouraged by the deserter uprising to attempt to throw off the Roman yoke entirely?  And that help was sent for from Britain, with Castus answering the call?

This does not seem unreasonable to me.  In fact, as our only other possible candidate (according to a broad consensus in the academic world) is Armenia (with Castus having gone with the British governor Statius Priscus to that country in the early 160s), Armorica right across the Channel from Britain still looks quite attractive.  Even Tomlin agrees that Armenia was very far away.

I had researched British vexillations on the Continent in Saxer's work and found that the two instances we know about only went about halfway between Britain and Armenia.  Yes, we did have an entire legion taken from Bonn on the Rhine to Armenia, but all in all, speaking purely from a geographical perspective, Armorica is preferable to Armenia.

Of course, if we allow for ARMORICOS being the right rendering of the fragmentary ARM[...]S, that opens up another can of worms: the mission of the 1500 British spearmen to Rome to rid the Empire of the Pratorian Prefect Perennis.  There is continuing debate as to whether this mission was headed up by Castus or by the legate Priscus whose British troops tried to raise to the purple.  

The speculative reconstruction of Priscus' career, pieced together from badly damaged inscriptions, was undertaken by Tomlin.  His conclusion was that Priscus would have been immediately removed (perhaps with the other legates under Perennis' directive) and shipped to the Continent to head up an eastern legion.  He then took on a special mission (as praepositus) with either British detachments or German detachments (we can't be sure of which). But in my judgment - and Tomlin agrees - it seems highly unlikely that a man just removed from Britain would, within a short period of time, be given command of British troops on the Continent.  Plus, we have archaeological evidence that strongly suggests the Deserters' War involved Germany as well, so it makes more sense logistically for Priscus to have taken German troops against the enemy rather than British ones.  This is especially true as Priscus prior to leading these detachments was legate of V Macedonica, which was stationed at Potaissa in the province of Dacia Porolissensis (modern Turda). 

If the 1500 spearmen who went to Rome were, originally, fighting a rebellion in Armorica, then there are three ways to explain their subsequent conduct.  Firstly, as I've previously proposed, Dio might have confused an escort or honor guard sent from the main force to Rome to petition the Emperor for Perennis' removal with the entire force.  That is quite plausible.  We might also, should we choose to incorporate Herodian's account, have the British troops pursue Maternus to Rome.  Finally, we may accept the account at face value and allow for the victorious British legionaries coming to Rome to both recieve honors and to redress grievances.  As long as the force was not seen in any way as mutinous, it could have been granted free passage to the capital. It is possible, I suppose, that while the rebellion had been quelled in Armorica, there were still enough of the deserters in other districts to make traveling with a larger force necessary for the protection of the removed British legates. 

Do we find ourselves, then, once again with ARMORICOS as a feasible reading for the ARM[...]S of the L. Artorius Castus memorial stone? 

Actually, probably not.  Why?  Well, I will let Professor Roger Tomlin sum up his defense of ARMENIOS in the inscription:

"I think you must continue to abandon ARMATOS, since this is adjectival: it is used to define someone specific who is 'armed', whether a soldier who hasn't left his sword behind or a murderous civilian. Unless you find an instance, it can't be used by itself in the sense of 'terrorist', without specific reference. After all, whom can a soldier fight, if he isn't 'armed'?

As for ARMORICOS, of course they are possible. Your difficulty is that the passages you cite are more than two hundred years later, and history, even in Roman times, moved on. A second-century Roman general, if he was fighting deserters or rebels in north-west Gaul, would he use a geographical term for them, as if it was where the fighting took place that mattered, not whom? I find a second-century nationalist revolt difficult, and especially for a conventional Roman so to describe it, rather than to refer to 'rebels' (etc.). Is it not the case that he would have used a geographical term for someone outside the Empire, say Marcus campaigning against the 'Marcomanni' or Severus against the 'Caledonians'?

Can you find a career-inscription with action 'against' a (named) people who have been 'Romans' for centuries but have thrown off their allegiance?

I agree that Armorica is geographically convenient – just across the Channel – but I think you risk going against Roman usage, if you apply a geographical term to rebels or deserters without real support in your sources."

  
As an inscription of the sort he asked me about does not exist, I can only assume that he is correct in his assessment and we must continue to allow ARMENIOS as the best possible reading for the stone.