Gordian III and Philip the Arab

The Roman Empire at a Crossroads

Ilkka Syvänne

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781526786753
• eBook ISBN: 9781526786760
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

This is a dual biography of the emperors Marcus Antonius Gordianus ('Gordian III', reigned 238-244) and Marcus Julius Philippus Augustus ('Philip the Arab', reigned 244-249), focusing mainly on the political and military events during this crucial stage of the 'Third Century Crisis'. The tumultuous 'Year of the Six Emperors' saw Gordian raised to the purple at just thirteen years of age, becoming the youngest emperor in the Empire's history at a time when the borders were threatened by the powerful Sassanid Persians and the Goths, among others. Gordian died on a campaign against the Persians, either in battle or possibly murdered by his own men. Philip, succeeded Gordian, made peace with Shapur I and returned to Italy. His reign encompassed the spectacular celebration of Rome's millennium in 248 but the wars in the Balkans and East together with crippling taxation led to mutinies and rebellions. Philip and his brother had until then fought successfully against the Persians and others but this did not save Philip, who was killed by a usurper's forces at the Battle of Verona in 249. He had been Rome's first Christian emperor and the author considers why it was fifty years before she had another.

Chapter One

The Sources and Analysis

1.1 The Sources

The principal literary sources for the reigns of Gordian III and Philip the Arab are: Herodian (early 3rd century), ‘Res Gestae Divis Shapuris’ (3rd century), Anonymous Eis Basilea (3rd century), Eusebius of Caesarea with Jerome (4th– 5th century), Orosius (375/80–417/8), Zosimus (early 6th century), Zonaras (beginning of the 12th century), Synopsis Sathas/Synopsis Chronike (1241), Cedrenus (11th–12th cent), Historia Augusta (turn of the 4th century and/or late 4th century also known as Scriptores Historiae Augusta), Sextus Aurelius Victor (c. 360 AD), Epitome de Caesaribus formerly wrongly also attributed to Aurelius Victor (turn of the 5th century), Eutropius’ Breviarium (c.369 AD), Rufus Festus’ Breviarium (c.370 AD), fragments of Herennius Dexippus (a period source from the 3rd century), fragments of Anonymous Continuator of Dio Cassius now attributed to Petrus Patricius/Peter the Patrician (6th century), Ammianus Marcellinus (4th century), Jordanes (6th century), Malalas (6th century), George Syncellus (early 9th century), fragments of John of Antioch (6–7th century), and other less important sources.1

The above list gives a misleading impression of the amount of evidence available for these reigns. In truth, there does not exist any detailed narrative of the reigns of these two emperors because we no longer possess the original period sources in their entirety – only the ones that have used them. The only detailed source is the period author Herodian, but his account stops at the death of Pupienus and Balbinus in 238. Thereafter the sources are far less detailed and reliable. It is because of this that there is a disproportionate amount of information available for the very beginning of the reign of Gordian III as Caesar in early 238, but there is far less available for his reign as Augustus from 238 until his death in 244. The situation is even worse for the reign of Philip the Arab. This results from the fact that the Historia Augusta has preserved a short biography of Gordian III but the reign of Philip the Arab is missing from the extant manuscripts. The end result of this is that we have more information for the beginning of Philip the Arab’s reign in 244 because it is included in the biography of Gordian III, but we have very little evidence for the reign of Philip the Arab from 244 until his death in 249. In addition, much of this evidence is contradictory and unreliable. As a result, numismatics and analysis of inscriptions and legal codes have assumed extraordinary importance for the analysis of these reigns, especially for that of Philip the Arab. The inbalance in the evidence has also influenced the way in which I treat their reigns. As there is so much more information available for the period before August 238, it has taken a disproportionate amount of space in my biography of these emperors. However, it is impossible to understand the events after 238 without taking into account the events preceding it in 222–238.

The analysis of the extant narrative sources is also complicated by their biases. All of the extant narrative sources in the Greco-Roman tradition paint a favourable image of the reign of Gordian III while they paint the reign of Philip the Arab in the darkest possible terms. Most of these sources represented the viewpoint of the conservative faction within the Senate. These senators held a strong pagan bias against Christians and non-Romans such as Arabs, and when their views dominated the field among those who wrote histories, it was the view that was passed to the future generations. This strong and conservative senatorial block had been created under Septimius Severus and then strengthened under Alexander Severus, but it was internally divided in its attitude towards Christianity, hence the rise of two competing views towards it. I will therefore start my account of the reigns of Gordian III and Philip the Arab with a relatively long introduction of the reigns of Alexander Severus and Maximinus Thrax, which forms the background for the policies of the main narrative. On the basis of the fact that the emperor Licinius later claimed descent from the emperor Philip the Arab, it is clear that there existed at some point in time a version of history that was favourable towards him – Licinius would not have made that claim if it would have been harmful to him. This means that the rise of the Constantinian dynasty wiped clean that version of the history.2

The best narrative source for the era is the much maligned Historia Augusta and it is largely thanks to this text that we have better information for the reign of Gordian III than we have for the reign of Philip the Arab. A few words are in order to explain why this is so. The usual view among historians since the late nineteenth century has been that the Historia Augusta is a later fourth-century forgery by one person who pretended to be six different persons. This view can no longer be maintained. As discussed recently by Paul N. Pearson in his biography of Maximinus Thrax (Barnsley 2016, xxi ff.), the most recent research based on computer analysis has demonstrated that it is likelier that there were originally indeed six different authors as the book claims. The authors of the Historia Augusta claim that they wrote their texts at the turn of the fourth century and on the basis of their bias it is very likely that they did indeed do that. Uniform elements within these six texts are likely to be the result of the work of the person or persons who later united these six texts to form the Historia Augusta or merely from their similar cultural background. I will therefore call the authors of these books by their real names, but for clarity’s sake I still use the traditional way of referencing so that I name the Historia Augusta as HA followed by the Book in question, for example as follows: HA Gord. (for Gordians) followed by the numbers. This approach to the sources removes the ridiculous situation in which historians use the Historia Augusta as a source but then make the cautious statement that it is not to be trusted. I do not deny that the Historia Augusta is highly unreliable – it is – but I am readier to accept its versions than is usually the case. In other words, I am inclined to accept its text when there are no strong reasons not to. The usual approach has been to accept its information only if it can be confirmed from other sources. As I have already shown in my previous books, the situation is sometimes the exact opposite: the other texts have to be confirmed against what is in the Historia Augusta. None of the sources named above are without their biases or falsifications, even if it is clear that a period source such as Dexippus is more reliable in general than the others. But unfortunately we possess only fragments of Dexippus’s texts, some of which have been preserved only because the Historia Augusta used him. I take this same approach to the other sources too: I do not discard the evidence solely on the basis that it comes from an unreliable source. If one decides not to accept the evidence presented by the ancient source(s), one should always be able to explain why this is so, and the usual statement that it comes from an unreliable source will not do. This approach would result in the replacement of the only surviving evidence by our own subjective guess at what must have been.

The authors of the Historia Augusta that concern us here are:

Author:	Books
Aelius Lampridius	Antoninus Heliogabalus (Elagabalus), Alexander Severus
Julius Capitolinus	Maximini Duo, Maximus et Balbinus, Gordiani Tres
Trebellius Pollio	Tyranni Triginta
Flavius Vopiscus	Divus Aurelianus

To sum up my approach to the available sources of evidence I quote my biography of Gallienus: ‘In short, there is one important difference between my approach to these sources and the traditional approach to the sources, which is that I put far more trust in the veracity of ancient sources than is usually done. History is a source-based art and when there are no strong reasons to suspect the information, it should be accepted as likely to be true or something which is as close to the truth as our defective sources would allow us to judge. If we decide to reject some piece of evidence presented in the sources, it should always be based on an analysis of the information known from other sources. The rejection of evidence solely on the basis of one’s own subjective preconceived ideas is not real criticism. It is a travesty of our trade.’

Despite the above rather critical comments regarding the approach to the sources, my study has not been done in a vacuum. It still builds upon the work done by a number of great historians. In this study I have found most useful (in no particular order) the studies and translations (with perceptive comments) of the following: W. Ensslin, X. Loriot, E. Ketenhofen, T.M. Banchich, E.N. Lane, M.H. Dodgeon, S.N.C. Lieu, P. Southern, D.S. Potter, M. Christol, K. Herrmann, J.M. York, M.L. Meckler, C. Körner and Y. Zahran. I do not necessarily agree with their conclusions, but without their earlier groundbreaking research work this study would not be the same. As I noted in my biography of Gallienus: ‘The surviving sources are so poor and contradictory that several alternative explanations and reconstructions are equally plausible. Therefore the reader is advised to read these previous studies to assess the probability of my reconstruction of the events. The following reconstruction is out of necessity quite speculative, but it has the advantage of being able to reconcile the other sources with the Historia Augusta – something that previous historians have not been able to do as they have not exploited the Historia Augusta to the same extent as I have.’ The second of the reasons for the differing results of my studies is that I subject the sources to a new type of analysis.

1.2 My Analysis of Warfare and Battles

My approach to the analysis of warfare, combat and battles differs significantly from that typically followed by historians/classicists because those who have not specialized in military history fail to appreciate its intricacies. It is thanks to this that I believe that I have been able to use the military treatises and my knowledge of period military practices to fill in the blanks in the narrative sources. This means that I have used so-called ‘military probability’, which includes geography, rates of march, availability of information, logistical demands etc, and period military doctrine to shed additional light on the information provided by the sources.

As will be seen, it is clear that the extant narrative sources give us far too little information regarding period warfare. However, thanks to the fact that there exists some very specific information concerning methods of combat, battle formations and tactics in the period military treatise the Kestoi of Julius Africanus and in the sixth century Strategikon and in other ancient military treatises, it is possible to present some likely scenarios of what happened. Readers, however, are advised that these are speculative. Because of this I will always state when the reconstruction is based on an educated guess and include the thinking behind it. These sections are included for the purpose of giving readers a better sense of what is likely to have taken place and why I interpret the evidence the way I have. As I have noted in Gallienus, these sections of the text should be particularly useful for all those who are interested in the peculiarities of period warfare such as history buffs, military historians, wargamers, officers and officers in training.

I will provide a general overview of the Roman military and its combat methods in the introductory parts of this book, but since there exists better evidence for the reigns of Alexander Severus, Maximinus Thrax and Decius than there does for the reigns of Gordian III and Philip the Arab, I have decided to include longer discussions of combat methods based on the material from these reigns. I have already studied the reign of Decius in detail in my biography of Gallienus and have shown that it is an incontestable fact that he used large cavalry armies against the Gothic cavalry armies as described in the sixth-century Strategikon. Therefore I will not include discussion of his reign, but rather refer readers to this book. However, there are no detailed studies of the changes that took place in Roman armies under Alexander Severus and Maximinus Thrax and because of this I include relatively long discussions of these in two chapters preceding the rise of the Gordiani. It was the army of Alexander Severus and Maximinus Thrax that Gordian III inherited. This is the only way one can try to see what changes, if any, then took place under Gordian III and Philip the Arab.

Chapter Two

The Roman Military in the Third Century

2.1 The Background: Roman Society1

Roman society was a class society that was divided according to judicial and social hierarchies. The judicial hierarchy separated the populace into freemen, freedmen and slaves. The free populace consisted of those who had Roman citizenship and those who did not, but after the reign of Caracalla most of the free population were citizens. At the top of Roman society were the emperor and the imperial family. They were served by the imperial household with its staff that included freedmen, eunuchs and trusted slaves, while the emperor was advised and helped by his friends and advisors, including his official body of advisors called the consilium. The official social categories of the free citizens consisted of the senatorial order, equestrian order, and the plebs, but this division had become partly blurred because since the latter half of the second century there had existed a new form of class division which divided the people into honestiores and humiliores. The senators, equestrians, veterans, and decurions formed the honestiores class. They had legal privileges and exemptions from the harsher punishments to separate them from the humiliores. In addition there was a ranking system that added additional privileges. These included the following: the equestrian praetorian prefects had the rank of viri eminentissimi; the senators, the rank of clarissimus; and the officials of the court, the rank...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Plates
• List of Maps
• Introduction and Timeline
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1 The Sources and Analysis
• Chapter 2 The Roman Military in the Third Century
• Chapter 3 Alexander Severus (222–35)
• Chapter 4 Maximinius Thrax (AD 235–38)
• Chapter 5 The Year of the Six Emperors (238): Maximinus Thrax, Gordian I, Gordian II, Balbinus and Pubienus, Gordian III 76
• Chapter 6 Gordian III (AD 238–44)
• Chapter 7 Philip the Arab, the First Christian Emperor (March 244–August/September 249) 148
• Select Sources
• Notes
• Plate section