Back to the origin of 'valeria'...
Webster quotes Birley's suggestion that just as Claudius named his son 'Britannicus' in honour of the conquest of Britain, so he might have named the Twentieth legion 'Valeria' in honour of his wife. The idea that Valeria is from Valeria Messalina can in fact be traced back to 1719, and may have a certain merit, as we shall see, but Birley's logic is difficult to follow. The emperor Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus carried the honorific Germanicus of his father Drusus. Giving his son the name Tiberius Claudius Britannicus is entirely in keeping with custom (if declining it himself is less so). Naming a legion for his wife hardly fits in the same category (it would be a unique instance). However...
Claudius is the first emperor to give legions such an Imperial cognomen. The numerous legions 'Augusta' are named in honour of the emperor but do not take the imperial nomen (it ought perhaps to result in 'Julia' after his adoption, but the C Julius part was dropped from official nomenclature fairly early on). We have Flavia and Ulpia later, but the VII and XI Claudia are the first such. Given that this was an innovation on the part of Claudius, perhaps some sort of equivalent honour from the gens Valeria of his wife might not be impossible. The main difficulty is that we have a good context for the first and not for the second. But...
Valeria Messalina was related to Valerius Messallinus as the nomenclature suggests. In the absence of the final volume of PIR2, I'm not sure of current thought on the precise family relationship. Try following Wikipedia references to the family and you will find some contradiction (obviously I need to see Christian Settipani 2000 Continuité gentilice et continuité sénatoriale dans les familles sénatoriales romaines à l'époque impériale) but she could in fact have been the granddaughter of the M Valerius Messalla Messallinus who led legio XX to victory in Illyricum in AD6 and received Triumphal ornaments. The legion had an illustrious connection with the gens Valeria. Allowing the legion to take this name as a favour to his wife is perhaps something Claudius might have contemplated. Notable service in the invasion might have been sufficient impetus. It seems to have been the only legion involved to have no other designation.The subsequent disgrace and death of Messalina might have resulted in a certain reticence in its early useage, but the gens Valeria remained prominent in public life and a Valerius Messala was consul as late as 196.
It does seem to me that straining for an alternative explanation ignores the fact that the natural reading would be 'the Valerian legion' and that many people would have taken it as such at face value, indeed Cassius Dio does precisely that when referring to the legion in his Histories.
Tuesday 30 October 2012
Sunday 28 October 2012
Victorious Valerians I
Before getting to Valerius Messalinus it would be well to dispense with one red herring, which is to say the 'victorious black eagle'.
de la Bedoyere ran with this as a translation of Valeria Victrix in Eagles Over Britannia (2001, 45); it still persists at livius.org (which is why I keep having to make this argument). I'm not sure which came first, but they are both wrong.
It should fall at the first hurdle (even if we were to believe the translation valeria=black eagle) for the simple reason that a noun is no use to us in this context. The legionary cognomina are all adjectives and although attributive use of a noun (or nouns in apposition) - so something like 'the eagle legion' - does work in Latin, there simply is no parallel for such useage among the names of the legions. We would really need something like valeriana.
As for the translation itself. It appears in Lewis and Short on the basis of older texts of Pliny's Natural History but the definitive texts rejects the difficult 'eodem in valeria' - lacking in clear sense - for 'eodem leporaria' and it is leporaria which appears in the Oxford Latin Dictionary as the equivalent of the Greek melanaetos.
It is one strange side effect of the reliance of internet sources on out of copyright texts.
Despite Perseus playing host to the definitive Teubner text:
Naturalis Historia Pliny the Elder. Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff. Lipsiae. Teubner. 1906.
their English text, Bostock and Riley 1855, was based on earlier editions; likewise Lewis and Short 'A Latin Dictionary, Founded on Andrews' edition of Freund's Latin dictionary'1879 relied greatly on earlier works and did not have the benefit of Mayhoff's revised text (unlike the Oxford Latin Dictionary).
de la Bedoyere ran with this as a translation of Valeria Victrix in Eagles Over Britannia (2001, 45); it still persists at livius.org (which is why I keep having to make this argument). I'm not sure which came first, but they are both wrong.
It should fall at the first hurdle (even if we were to believe the translation valeria=black eagle) for the simple reason that a noun is no use to us in this context. The legionary cognomina are all adjectives and although attributive use of a noun (or nouns in apposition) - so something like 'the eagle legion' - does work in Latin, there simply is no parallel for such useage among the names of the legions. We would really need something like valeriana.
As for the translation itself. It appears in Lewis and Short on the basis of older texts of Pliny's Natural History but the definitive texts rejects the difficult 'eodem in valeria' - lacking in clear sense - for 'eodem leporaria' and it is leporaria which appears in the Oxford Latin Dictionary as the equivalent of the Greek melanaetos.
It is one strange side effect of the reliance of internet sources on out of copyright texts.
Despite Perseus playing host to the definitive Teubner text:
Naturalis Historia Pliny the Elder. Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff. Lipsiae. Teubner. 1906.
their English text, Bostock and Riley 1855, was based on earlier editions; likewise Lewis and Short 'A Latin Dictionary, Founded on Andrews' edition of Freund's Latin dictionary'1879 relied greatly on earlier works and did not have the benefit of Mayhoff's revised text (unlike the Oxford Latin Dictionary).
The Complete Roman Legions
Recently published: Nigel Pollard & Joanne Berry The Complete Roman Legions, Thames and Hudson (clearly Goldsworthy's Complete Roman Army was not as Complete as all that, after all).
Well worth a read. Handsomely produced, well illustrated and clearly laid out. There is nothing much to surprise anyone who has read Goldsworthy (or Webster or Keppie), and one or two maps and illustrations may be familiar from the former, but for those interested in the legions especially (that would be me, then) it makes for a satisfying read. The geographical approach - legions of the Rhine, legions of Spain etc - occasionally falls foul of the Empire's tendency to move legions around but on the whole works very well - better certainly than a simple numerical list. The Late Roman Army is treated only briefly (reflecting the weight of evidence), but the summary list of the disposition of the late 'legions' is very useful nonetheless.
I wonder (I have wondered elsewhere) about the placing of a legionary fortress at Thebes (but that's for a later post), but I find little else to raise issue with on a quick read through. Nothing contentious in the description of the Twentieth legion and some evidence (not just in the bibliography) of reference to my own work (so it was worth all that effort after all...). The sidebar on the Titles of XX Valeria Victrix picks up on a suggestion of mine which probably deserves fleshing out (but that needs another post too). The record of a vexillation of II Traiana undertaking construction at Farasan Kebir, an island in the Red Sea, is not something I'd come across before, but the volume isn't quite up to date enough to make note of the discoveries at Kalefeld.
Well worth a read. Handsomely produced, well illustrated and clearly laid out. There is nothing much to surprise anyone who has read Goldsworthy (or Webster or Keppie), and one or two maps and illustrations may be familiar from the former, but for those interested in the legions especially (that would be me, then) it makes for a satisfying read. The geographical approach - legions of the Rhine, legions of Spain etc - occasionally falls foul of the Empire's tendency to move legions around but on the whole works very well - better certainly than a simple numerical list. The Late Roman Army is treated only briefly (reflecting the weight of evidence), but the summary list of the disposition of the late 'legions' is very useful nonetheless.
I wonder (I have wondered elsewhere) about the placing of a legionary fortress at Thebes (but that's for a later post), but I find little else to raise issue with on a quick read through. Nothing contentious in the description of the Twentieth legion and some evidence (not just in the bibliography) of reference to my own work (so it was worth all that effort after all...). The sidebar on the Titles of XX Valeria Victrix picks up on a suggestion of mine which probably deserves fleshing out (but that needs another post too). The record of a vexillation of II Traiana undertaking construction at Farasan Kebir, an island in the Red Sea, is not something I'd come across before, but the volume isn't quite up to date enough to make note of the discoveries at Kalefeld.
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