Famous Battles of the Roman Empire: Actium to Chalons

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BATTLE OF ACTIUM


Battle of Actium

The Battle of the Actium paved the way for Augustus (Octavian) to become the leader of Rome. While Antony and Cleopatra were trapped in Actium 400 ships and 80,000 infantrymen under Octavian's command approached Anthony's army from the north and cut of his supply lines in the south. Cleopatra reportedly was the one who urged Antony to make a final stand at sea. Cleopatra was put in charge of third of the fleet and ultimately showed that her military skill did not match her political skills

During the naval Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. the forces of Antony and Cleopatra were defeated by Octavian, whose navy was made up of smaller, faster ships that outmaneuvered the larger ships of Antony and Cleopatra's fleet after hard fighting and a lot of bloodshed. Many of the ships had battering rams, and many of the ships that sunk burned and were dragged down by their heavy battering rams. In 1993, objects believed to be from Anthony's fleet were discovered two miles off the west coast of Greece.

Before the battle had even begun, Cleopatra is said to have withdrawn her 60 ships, including her flagship containing Egypt's treasury. According to one account Antony abandoned his forces to pursue Cleopatra. In the run up to the battle Antony and Cleopatra staged a theater festival at Samos and neglected their supply lines.

Websites on Ancient Rome: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history; Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; Lacus Curtius penelope.uchicago.edu; The Internet Classics Archive classics.mit.edu ; Bryn Mawr Classical Review bmcr.brynmawr.edu; Cambridge Classics External Gateway to Humanities Resources web.archive.org; Ancient Rome resources for students from the Courtenay Middle School Library web.archive.org ; History of ancient Rome OpenCourseWare from the University of Notre Dame web.archive.org ; United Nations of Roma Victrix (UNRV) History unrv.com

Battle in the Teutoburg Forest

The land of fierce German tribes was held for only about 20 years under the reign of Augustus. German tribes frequently raided towns in Gaul near the border. The land, divided among several German tribes, was lost when three Roman legions were slaughtered at Teutoburg Forest in A.D. 9.


Battle of Teutoburg Forest

A Roman army under Quictilius Varus was sent in to quell the Germanic tribes but it marched right into a trap. The Battle of Arminius in the Teutoburg Forest brought the Roman expansion into Germany to a halt. Almost every member of a 50,000-member Roman army led by Varus was killed or enslaved. Varus committed suicide.

Sarah Bond wrote in“There is no doubt that the Roman emperor Augustus was successful in expanding and securing the Roman empire, but in the strike column was one of the worst defeats that the Roman empire ever suffered. In 9 CE, Varus, the emperor’s general in Germany, lost three legions and to all intents and purposes halted Roman expansion across the Rhine river. It was then that a number of German tribes, led by Arminius, attacked the legions and massacred them in the Teutoburg Forest, in northern Germany. The impact on the Roman imperial psyche was dramatic. [Source: Sarah Bond, Forbes, July 1, 2016]

The defeat kept Rome from absorbing German territory. The Germans captured the Roman standards. Augustus was so upset he didn't shave and let hair grow for months. He reportedly also banged his head against a wall, shouting, "Varus! Give me back my legions."

Siege of Jerusalem by the Romans

Jerusalem was reclaimed by the Romans after a siege by Titus's army. In A.D. 70, Titus put down the revolt, captured Jerusalem, and punished rebellious Jewish zealots by salting agricultural land, slaughtered and enslaved thousands of Jews, and looted menorahs and other sacred objects. Thousands of Jewish slaves were brought to Rome from Judea. During a huge triumphal procession, commemorated by the Arch of Titus, Jewish prisoners were paraded through the streets and strangled at the Forum. Josephus claimed that all together over 1 million Jews died as a result of the Roman crackdown.

L. Michael White at the University of Texas at Austin told PBS: “The siege of Jerusalem is a sad story. Josephus tells us about some of its events, and it's in gruesome detail in the story of the Jewish war. Josephus describes walking around the walls of Jerusalem and pleading with people on the inside to give up rather then go through the suffering and agony that would come from a long protracted siege. Josephus also tells us that there's a lot of infighting going on in the city among the different rebel factions who occupy different parts of Jerusalem. The loss of life must have been catastrophic to the Jewish population as a whole. [Source: L. Michael White, Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin, Frontline, PBS, April 1998 \=/]

“For two years then Jerusalem was under siege. Starvation, disease, murder were the order of the day. In the final analysis, by the month of August in the year 70 the fate of Jerusalem was a foregone conclusion. The Roman armies were masked. They were ready to break through. Everyone knew it. It was just a matter of when but they were going to fight to the death, and many of them did die. So on that fateful morning when they broke through, Josephus describes the events of them breaking through the walls. The Roman soldiers running through the streets. Going into every house. Killing everyone they find. \=/

“It's a pretty awful slaughter and we have lots of evidence of it now between the artifacts that one finds of the first revolt that are scattered throughout this layer of the archaeological record. Arrowheads, spears, other kinds of indications of pretty serious hand-to-hand combat in all parts of the city. The lower city of Jerusalem remains to this day largely uninhabited but in Jesus' day in up to the time of the first revolt that was the most populous part of the city. But in the first revolt in those final hours of the battle it was burned to the ground. \=/



Masada

Historians mark the end of the Jewish wars in A.D. 73 when 960 Jewish zealots committed suicide at Masada, rather than surrender and submit to Roman rule, after withstanding a siege by 15,000 Romans for nearly two years (A.D. 72-73). Some regard it as the world's largest known mass suicide (909 died in the mass suicide at Jonestown in Guyana in 1978).

First identified in 1838, this cliff-top fortress of Masada is located in Israel near the Dead Sea and was the site of a last stand during a rebellion against the Romans. A team led by archaeologist Yigael Yadin in the 1960s found out that King Herod (74 B.C.– 4 B.C.) built two palaces with support buildings surrounded by a wall, nearly a mile long, with 27 towers. After a rebellion against the Romans was crushed in A.D. 70, a group called the Zealots occupied the fortress with 960 people and tried to hold it against a Roman army of about 9,000. In A.D. 73 or 74 the Romans succeeded in building a siege ramp up to the wall, and the remaining defenders decided to take their own lives rather than surrender.

Masada (35 miles southeast of Jerusalem) was originally a fortress palace used by King Herod, the builder of the second Jewish temple, built on a mesa which is 300 meter wide, 600 meters long and 450 meters above the Dead Sea. According to the Roman historian Josephus, the Zealots were some of the last holdouts during a Roman campaign to break Jewish resistance in Palestine. It is believed that they lasted as long as they did at Masada because they had a large food and water supply and they carefully rationed what they had.

The Roman general, Flavius Silva, commanding the Tenth Legion, finally breached Masada's wall in A.D. 73 after spending a year building an earthen ramp on the west side of the mesa. When the Romans were about to reach Masada the Jewish commander, Eleazar ben Yair, exhorted his followers in an impassioned speech to commit suicide rather than become Roman slaves.

Eric Meyers at Archaeology Duke University told PBS: “When the Romans attacked Jewish citizens in Caesarea on the coast, the home of their administrative offices in the year 64, there was an enormous outbreak of opposition and hostility in the Jewish community to this distant Roman administrative force. This is really what precipitated the war, which broke up, literally, four years later, and led to the cataclysmic conclusion, the burning of Jerusalem in the year 70. [Source: Eric Meyers, Professor of Religion and Archaeology Duke UniversityFrontline, PBS, April 1998 \=/]


Battle of Milvian Bridge


Battle of Milvian Bridge and Constantine's Conversion to Christianity

In 310, Constantine decided he was going to take Rome. He lead a small army to the Alps for an important battle outside Rome on the Tiber River against his rival Maxentius, the emperor of Rome. According to the historian Eusebius, while on his way to the battle, Constantine had a vision while staring up at the sky. He reportedly saw a flaming cross above the sun with the words " In hoc signo vinces " ("in this sign you will conquer"). The words " In hoc signo vinces " are featured on the label of Pall Mall cigarettes.

That night Constantine dreamed that Jesus told him to take the cross as his standard. Constantine ordered that new standards be made up, emblazoned with the cross. The next morning at the Battle of Milvian Bridge, on October 28, 312 he scored a victory against great odds against Maxentius, whose forces were swept into the Tiber, where Maxentius drowned.

Constantine attributed his military victory to the Christian faith and entered Rome with Maxentius's head on a pike. He erected the triumphal Arch of Constantine in Rome and took control of the western half of the Roman Empire. Maxentius had been the strongest member of the Tetrarchy. By 323, Constantine had unified the Roman Empire and brought it under his control by defeating another rival, the eastern co-emperor Licinius.

Hans A. Pohlsander of SUNY wrote: “Lactantius, whom Constantine appointed tutor of his son Crispus and who therefore must have been close to the imperial family, reports that during the night before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge Constantine was commanded in a dream to place the sign of Christ on the shields of his soldiers. Twenty-five years later Eusebius gives us a far different, more elaborate, and less convincing account in his Life of Constantine. When Constantine and his army were on their march toward Rome - neither the time nor the location is specified - they observed in broad daylight a strange phenomenon in the sky: a cross of light and the words "by this sign you will be victor" (hoc signo victor eris or ). During the next night, so Eusebius' account continues, Christ appeared to Constantine and instructed him to place the heavenly sign on the battle standards of his army. The new battle standard became known as the labarum. [Source: Hans A. Pohlsander, SUNY Albany, Roman Emperors]



Battle of Adrianopole

In the late A.D. 4th century, a great event occurred that set in motion a chain of events that would ultimately bring down Rome. That event was the irruption of the Huns, horsemen from the steppes of Central Asia, into Europe. They pressed upon the Goths and drove them from their homes into the Roman territory. It was now necessary for the Romans either to resist the whole Gothic nation, which numbered a million of people, or else to receive them as friends, and give them settlements within the empire. The latter course seemed the wiser, and they were admitted as allies, and given new homes south of the Danube, in Moesia and Thrace. But they were soon provoked by the ill-treatment of the Roman officials, and rose in revolt, defeating the Roman army in a battle at Adrianople (A.D. 378) in which Valens himself was slain. [Source: “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901)]

Ammianus Marcellinus wrote: “When the day broke which the annals mark as the fifth of the Ides of August, the Roman standards were advanced with haste, the baggage having been placed close to the walls of Hadrianopolis, under a sufficient guard of soldiers of the legions; the treasures and the chief insignia of the emperor's ranks were within the walls, with the prefect and the principal members of the council. Then, having traversed the broken ground which divided the two armies, as the burning day was progressing towards noon, at last, after marching eight miles, our men came in sight of the wagons of the enemy, which had been stated by the scouts to be all arranged in a circle. According to their custom, the barbarian host raised a fierce and hideous yell, while the Roman generals marshaled their line of battle. The right wing of the cavalry was placed in front; the chief portion of the infantry was kept in reserve. But the left wing of the cavalry, of which a considerable number were still straggling on the road, were advancing with speed, though with great difficulty; and while this wing was deploying, not as yet meeting with any obstacle, the barbarians being alarmed at the terrible clang of their arms and the threatening crash of their shields (since a large portion of their own army was still at a distance, under Alatheus and Saphrax, and, though sent for, had not yet arrived), again sent ambassadors to ask for peace. [Source:Ammianus Marcellinus (330-395 A.D.): The Battle of Adrianopole, 378 A.D. “The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus During the Reigns of The Emperors Constantius, Julian, Jovianus, Valentinian, and Valens,” translated by C. D. Yonge (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1911), pp. 609-618]

“The emperor was offended at the lowness of their rank, and replied, that if they wished to make a lasting treaty, they must send him nobles of sufficient dignity. They designedly delayed, in order by the fallacious truce which subsisted during the negotiation to give time for their cavalry to return, whom they looked upon as close at hand; and for our soldiers, already suffering from the summer heat, to become parched and exhausted by the conflagration of the vast plain; as the enemy had, with this object, set fire to the crops by means of burning faggots and fuel. To this evil another was added, that both men and cattle were suffering from extreme hunger.


Huns in Italy


Battle of Châlons

During the Battle of Châlons-Sur-Marne during the Wars of the Western Roman Empire in A.D. 451 an army of Romans and Germanic Visigoths, along with Burgundians, and Franks, led by Flavius Aëtius and Theodoric I drove Attila the Hun's 40,000 member army across the Rhine, ending the invader's thrust into western Europe. The Huns were more hated by the Germans than by the Romans.

Attila has entered Gaul under the pretext of rescuing Honoria, the sister of the West Roman emperor, from an arranged marriage. Honoria had reportedly sent Attila a ring and Attila claimed her as his bride and demanded half of the West Roman Empire.

The Huns besieged Orleans in central Gaul. The Roman-Visigoth army rescued Orleans and forced Attila retreat to the Catlaaunian Plains near Châlons-Sur-Marne, where the Hun army reared around and engaged the Roman-Visigoth army on June 20, 451. The Huns repeated charged the Roman-Visigoth army and were repulsed.

The turning point was when the Visigoth king Theodoric was struck with a javelin and died. The Visigoths were enraged by the death of their king and fiercely attacked the Huns let flank, forcing the entire Hun army to retreat to its camp. By the end of the battle 3,000 Romans and 6,000 Huns were dead.

Attila was almost killed in this battle when he was surround by Germanic horsemen. He had to hide in the back of a covered wagon and fled under the cover of arrows. The day after the battle Attila was allowed to retreat back across the Rhine. The battle was his first and only defeat. The Huns returned two years later and scored a victory in the same area.

The battle was fought near Châlons has been called one of the great decisive battles of the world, because it relieved Europe from the danger of domination by horsemen from Central Asia. Aëtius later became the victim of court intrigue, and was murdered by the jealous prince Valentinian III. [Source: “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) \~]

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.

Last updated October 2024


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