Ilkka Syvanne
Aurelian and Probus: The Soldier Emperors Who Saved Rome
(Pen & Sword, 2020), 304 pp. £30.00
This is the most recent edition of the attempt made by Pen & Sword Books to publish a book depicting the military history of each and every Emperor of Rome. This current book not only depicts the reign of Aurelian and Probus, it also depicts the entire military history of Rome from 268 to 285 A.D., including the reign of the Emperors Claudius II ‘Gothicus’, Tacitus and others. The book is an expected prologue to Ilkka Syvanne’s project of writing the military history of the Late Roman Empire in seven volumes, starting from 284 A.D.
The current book is filled with many fascinating debates. It seems that Syvanne is well acquainted with, and knowledgeable, about the ancient sources relevant to the period. He frequently tries to reconcile between the different sources and their different versions of the events, in order to create the best and most coherent picture possible. Some of his best discussions are with regard to the name, length of reign and other personal aspects of each Emperor. In this aspect, Illka Syvanne’s scholarly work, and the scrutiny that he displays can be used as a textbook on how this should be done. On the other hand, he always accepts the numbers appearing in ancient sources. This is a very problematic method, as will be shown in the next example:
“The reference to the 40,000 horsemen and 80,000 shield-bearers should be seen to mean the remaining Iuthungi on the opposite side of the river. The idea was to attempt to frighten Aurelian with the size of their host. However, since we know that the references to numbers in the speech were put into the mouths of the Iuthungi envoys by Dexippus, we do not know whether this statement was ever made and furthermore we do not know how many Iuthungi there had been originally and how many were left after the battle….In my opinion, it is entirely plausible that the Iuthungi had at least the number they claimed to possess because that would explain why they had been able to raid northern Italy without any interference from the army under Quintillus.” (p. 73)
What is especially surprising in this extract is that Syvanne is aware of the problematic nature of the texts, and of the numbers which are given. The numbers given by the Iuthungi envoys were probably exaggerated as they had no reason in the world to declare the real number of their forces, especially when they were trying to frighten their opponent. Syvanne’s deduction and his reasoning for the plausibility of these numbers, due to the fact that Quintillus’ forces failed to stop the Iuthungi in northern Italy, are flawed. This is because we cannot be certain how many men Quintillus had. Even if he had many units, it is very likely that many of them were depleted or filled with new recruits due to the continuous internal and external situation of war in the Roman Empire at the time. If the army of Quintillus was numerically small, even a relatively small Iuthungi army could deter it from engaging. Not only this but even if Quintillus had a large or numerically superior army to the Iuthungi one, he might have hesitated to engage because he saw his forces as ill-prepared and ill-trained. This situation is similar to the events in 49 B.C., when Pompeius had more soldiers in Italy compared to Caesar’s army which crossed the Rubicon, yet he decided to evacuate the city of Rome and abandon Italy entirely. The evacuation took place because Pompeius knew that his men were new, untrained recruits and no match for the battle ardent veterans Caesar led.
The numbers given by ancient sources are not the only problematic numbers in the book. The author provides estimates of army sizes which seem inflated. For example, the size of the army Aurelian mastered in order to face Zenobia’s Palmyrene army:
“If we assume that Aurelian would have drawn an average about 3,000 men per legion from the west (ca. 15 legions), this would have amounted to about 45,000 men. If we add this figure the two known new legions…posted in the east, the total would be 55,000 legionaries. However, since it is quite likely that Aurelian and his predecessors had created even more new legions than this, we should add at least two legions to this figure for a total of about 65,000 legionaries. If we assume that the auxiliary units would have contributed half the number then the total number of footmen would be about 97,500-100,000. If we assume that each of the legions contributed ca. 300 horsemen, these would have amounted to ca. 5,700 horse, in addition to which we should count up the Dalmatian and Moorish cavalry (9,000-10,000?), the Praetorian cavalry (ca. 2,000), the equites singulares Augusti (ca. 2,000) and about 2,500 aulici/protectores/scholae. If we assume that the auxiliary units would have contributed about twice the number of legionary cavalry, then, the grand total would have been about 33,500 horseman.” (pp. 94-95)
In this estimate, and the methods used to reach it, we can see a few, very common problems which occur throughout the field of history. The first one is that it seems that Syvanne considers all the units in the Roman army at the time as being in full strength, something that is almost always untrue for most armies in history at any given moment. It is most improbable that the units in the Roman army were even close to full strength, as they were constantly engaged in battle with internal and external opponents. For, instance, if we take World War II as an example, units that were supposedly at Division strength, according to their name, were often severely lacking in manpower, even to the point where they contained only the equivalent of a brigade, or even a battalion. Secondly, Syvanne’s assumption is based on the possibility to deplete the western part of the Empire from troops without encountering any problems. This is especially unlikely as the Romans were hard-pressed everywhere, as they faced many invasions in the Balkans and Italy, and most of Gaul was separated from the rest of the Empire in what is known as the Gallic Empire. All this means that Aurelian could not take more than 1-3 cohorts (ca. 500-1,500 man) from each legion, meaning 10,000-30,000 legionaries. Even if he had one auxiliary soldier for every legionary (more than what Syvanne suggests), his infantry strength would have been just 20,000-60,000 men. Moreover, Aurelian could not feasibly transfer all the cavalry in the west, so he could take no more than 2,000 horsemen from the legions and 4,000 men from the auxiliary. Therefore, this means that Aurelian had between 10,000-18,000 horsemen. I believe that his army was of the higher benchmark suggested and totaled 50,000-70,000 men, far fewer than the 133,000 suggested by Syvanne.
Putting aside the numbers, the book is a very good and solid example of interdisciplinary work. The author uses coins very extensively in order to date the event, to investigate which of the texts is more accurate, and to create a coherent timeline of the event. This brings me to what I reckon the best feature of the book: the extensive presence of pictures, drawings, diagrams and maps. The book is filled with pictures which include coins, busts and reliefs. It also contains many drawings of both busts and graffiti from archaeological excavations, as well as of soldiers, Emperors and events from the period, all made by the author. The maps that are present are beautiful and detailed, including maps of the Empire and the locations of the legions, as well as maps of many battles and cities relevant to the book.
Even though I disagree with the numbers given by the author, I think that this book is an excellent one and a worthy addition to the library of any enthusiast of the subject. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in warfare in antiquity, and particularly in Roman military history, especially as the 3rd century has received too little attention.
Haggai Olshanetsky
Bar Ilan University
