WHY THE L. ARTORIUS CASTUS STONE IS A LOGIC PROBLEM (AND HOW I'VE SOLVED IT)

After years of research, myself and the academic community have reduced the possible readings for the ARM[...]S lacuna on the L. Artorius Castus inscription to two options:

1) ARMENIOS

2) ARMORICOS

A third and more recent proposed reading - that of ARMATOS - has been dispensed with by everyone save its three originators (Dr. Linda Malcor, Antonio Trinchese and Alessandro Faggiani).  I explored the ARMATOS reading more than anyone else.  No matter what I tried, it simply doesn't work.  Here is why:

In response to my recent article -

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2025/01/why-chronology-matters-l-artorius.html?m=1 -

Antonio Trinchese, who with colleagues Dr. Linda Malcor and Alessandro Faggiani have proposed the ARMATOS reading for the ARM[...]S lacuna of the L. Artorius Castus inscription, commented as follows:

"I think this reconstruction [of an Armorican mission for Castus] is excellent... About "Arm...s", I think it will remain a mystery, but for me is very probable "Armoricos", is possible "Armatos" (I know you don't agree), or another name we don't know. Or a name we know, but with a different meaning."

To which I responded:

"Armoricos is best. It's not that I don't like ARMATOS. It's that it doesn't work. No career officer who was so meticulous and precise with his life achievements - a man who had seen significant military action in many lands - would, in describing his crowning deed, say that he went against armed men. He'd been going against armed men his whole life. He would say EXACTLY who his enemy was. Not make people guess or somehow expect them to know.  And this is true whether he were fighting foes in Britain or without.  In fact, with no geographical determinant for ARMATOS (other than we are talking about British legionary forces doing the fighting), we have no reference point for the location of the said foes.  Had he meant rebels, he would have put that (with ARMATOS written second, if he felt the need to state that rebels were armed!).  If hostes, that would imply an enemy outside of Britain.  Public enemy, bandits (latrones), etc., all could have been employed either whole or with acceptable abbreviations and ligatures.  He never would have used ARMATOS in isolation. 

Yes, ARTMATOS FITS BEAUTIFULLY ON THE STONE with no ligatures. So it's very pretty, and attractive that way. 

But, pretty much every word on the stone is abbreviated and/or ligatured, so any argument based on aesthetic allure is quite hollow.

Thus no one deems ARMATOS a possible reading outside of the originators of the proposed reading.

You need to abandon it. Much more profitable would be nailing down a reason for the Liburnian appointment after Perennis and Armorica. That would help counterbalance the Armenia theory, which allows us to associate the formation of Liburnia with the reorganization of Illyricum and Dalmatia c. 168-170."

The purpose of this post is to determine, if we can, whether we can truly choose ARMORICOS or if there is some barrier to our being able to do so.  While we can certainly make a case for the delegation of 1500 spearmen who went to Rome having been requesitioned (probably by Pescennius Niger as they passed through Lugudunum on their way back to Britain) to fight in Armorica, where a full-scale rebellion had been sparked by Maternus's deserters, we have to see if this will actually work within the context of the memorial stone's inscription.  I think the application of a fairly simple logical argument will show that it cannot.  And that would leave us with ARMENIOS as the most probable reading for the stone.

The problem with ARMORICOS on the stone has to do with Castus's status when the 1500 spearmen marched to Rome.  

According to Dio's account, they came to Rome to complain about Perennis.  They disapproved of the way he had been running things in Britain, and most of all appear to have been aggrieved over his replacement of the senatorial legates of the legions with prefects (like Castus). When they reached Rome they demanded Perennis be handed over for execution and Commodus (perhaps influenced also by accusations of conspiracy to commit treason coming from the army in Illyricum).

Dr. John Drinkwater, Emeritus Professor at Nottingham and the expert in Imperial Roman Gaul, thinks what "went down" was a little different from this, although the end result was the same.  He sees in the Rome mission of the 1500 spearmen an attempt of the removed senators and their supporters in the British army an attempt to apologize for past misbehavior, including the failed raising of Priscus (quite possibly the legate of Castus' Sixth Legion) to the purple.  So while a gesture of contrition and reconcilation with the Emperor, they did still lay the blame for their troubles on Perennis and promised the Emperor that he got rid of the Praetorian Prefect and restored the senatorial legates to their post, they would work towards quelling the mutinous troops in their province.

All of which leads us to the sticking point: if we listen to Dio, the legates were really removed and replaced.  Sure, it is possible they weren't, that they refused to relinquish their commands, and then in protect marched on Rome.  However, had they done so they would automatically have been considered seditious and would have immediately have been stopped, arrested or destroyed.  

How does this scenario apply to Castus?

Well, he either followed orders and assumed command of the Sixth or he did not.  If he did not, then that was an openly seditious act.  He would have suffered the consequences for it.  He certainly wouldn't have been entrusted with a force in Armorica and he wouldn't have been rewarded with a procuratorship in Liburnia.

On the other hand, if he did assume that rank/title - even if merely for an interval until the legates could be restored after the fall of Perennis - he would have put that on his stone.

All the scholars I have consulted agree with me on this point. Professor Roger Tomlin and I have discussed the matter at length.  Castus would have inserted between his rank as prefect of the Sixth Legion and the dux (temporary military command of a unit in a special operation) title. Something like pro legato or agens vice legati.  We have examples of the latter from the 3rd century, while the former in various contexts is found earlier.

I should hastily remind my readers that this is a different kind of situation than the one that existed earlier in Commodus's reign, when Ulpius Marcellus was sent to Britain to deal with the northern stribes.  They had killed a general on the Wall, a man scholars now think was most likely the legate of the Sixth legion.  Had Castus assumed command of the legion (rather than the senior tribune, who out-ranked him), he still would merely have been prefect.  He would have continued commanding the legion until a senatorial candidate could be selected to replace the fallen legate.  Of course, I had considered this scenario for Castus.  The only problem is that we can do nothing with ARM[...]S for action against the northern tribes.  Defaulting to ARMATOS does not work for the reasons I have expressed above.

We would also have to wonder why Castus, prefect of the Sixth, is taking the legionary vexillations North when there were two other legates of two other legions still alive.  Surely one of them would have commanded the force going North?  

In the case of Castus assuming command of a legion when its legate was officially removed, we can be certain that some kind of statement to this effect would have been carved on his stone.  While dux was an important command, it was not one that had to be performed by a legate.  The only honor higher for Castus than being official commander of the legion would have been the subsequent procuratorship.  And the procuratorship was a civil vs. a military post, so in Castus's mind his being commander of the Sixth would probably have been his supreme career achievement.

Prof. Tomlin summarizes this all nicely when he says:

"I think that if Castus had been acting-commander of the legion – in whatever circumstances – he would have said so on his stone. Otherwise, to any observer, he would have been only its (camp) prefect; admittedly a great distinction in itself for a sometime centurion."

And so we come to the crux of all this: if the stone's lacuna reads ARMORICOS, and we are talking about an action taken during the Deserters' War under Commodus, then Castus would have to have recorded his being in command of the Sixth legion.

He did not.

This same line of reasoning also applies to variations on the theme. For instance, had the 1500 been sent to Armorica BEFORE it went to Rome (something I once thought possible, despite Dio's insistence on its not having seen any resistence on its way from Britain to Rome), Castus would still be commanding the Sixth in place of its legate prior to the march of the 1500 on Rome.  

And even if we allow for an entirely separate force to be sent out from Britain to Armorica AFTER the 1500 have accomplished their Rome mission, or even during the Rome mission, Castus as prefect of the Sixth would still at some point be the commander of the Sixth. This wouldn't change until Perennis was dead and Commodus had reinstated the legates to their commands of the legions. 

We can press this further.  Let's say an entirely separate force was sent to Armorica BEFORE the 1500 went to Rome.  Now, granted, this doesn't fit the relative chronology of the mission of the 1500 and the onset of the Deserters' War.  But for the sake of argument let's go with it.  Castus could have fulfilled his dux function in Armorica successfully.  Priscus refuses the purple and the legates are removed from their posts.  Castus finds himself commander of the Sixth.

It is, therefore, my judgment that we cannot support the ARMORICOS reading.

The winner, by default, is ARMENIOS.  Why?

Because had the Roman governor of Britain, Statius Priscus, been accompanied by legionary vexillations, it is quite reasonable that he would have placed them under a sub-commander he respected and knew was up to the task.  If a prefect of the Sixth, which is the perfect choice for such a mission, that prefect would have been styled dux.  And this is true whether the force went with Priscus or followed him shortly thereafter.  Priscus was put in command of the entire army going into Armenia.  There would have been many sub-commanders of various units serving under him, including forces we know were drawn from the Rhine and the Danube.

Given the time-range modern scholarship now allows for the Castus inscription, the lacuna ARM[...]S - if we have analyzed everything correctly (in other words, if our premises are valid) - must read ARMENIOS.   

NOTE:

My idea that ARM[...]S may be for ARMATAS GENTES (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2024/12/a-new-reading-for-arms-lacuna-of-l.html), while somewhat clever, has not been all that well received. It would have allowed us to identify Castus as the prefect who took over from the fallen legate at the outset of the British war under Commodus.  I also liked the fact that this war involved the Maeatae, who we find again as the Miathi in a battle involving the Dalriadan Arthur (whose presence in the territory of the Maeatae is difficult to explain). The problem seems to be that ARM.GENTES, while it fits nicely with allowable ligatures, is found as an early literary construction (twice in Livy), but is not present in later Roman period sources. Benet Salway does find what we would expect to be the more normal formation GENTES ARMATAS in some medieval Latin texts.  I have found a similar phrase, armato milites, 'armed soldiers', in Virgil's Aeneid (ii.20).

We would then see Castus' procuratorship as a reward for the British victory, celebrated by Commodus on his coinage.  Because of all the problems Britain experienced after the governship of Ulpius Marcellus, it is difficult to have Castus remain in Britain past the mutiny.  

Although, it would be tempting to have him be one of the officers in charge of the 1500 spearmen sent to Rome to eliminate Perennis.  Commodus also celebrated that event, it is believed, by stamping his coins with 'felix' in 185.  Hypothetically, Castus could have been rewarded with the Liburnian procuratorship for his role in this delegation.  We might think he would have mentioned such an embassy on his stone, although to be honest I'm not sure how he would have referred to such a mission. Presumably this would have been described as a 'legatio.'