Lorica Segmentata

Despite the armor being commonly associated with the Romans, lorica segmentata-type armor was used by other civilizations before the Romans. The armor was used by the Parthians and possibly the Dacians, Scythians, or Sarmatians before the Romans used it. Some sets of armor similar to the lorica segmentata dating back to the 4th century BCE have been found in archaeological sites located in the steppe. 

Although, the exact time in which the Romans adopted the armor remains unknown, some say it was after Crassus' defeat at Carrhae in 53 BCE. Others say the armor was adopted in 21 CE after the Revolt of Julius Sacrovir and Julius Florus. One form of the armor was used as early as 9 BCE because the soldiers at the Battle of Teutoberg Forest wore it.  

Around the middle of the third century CE lorica segmentata fell out of favor with the Roman army. Some scholars point to soldiers wearing the lorica segmentata depicted on the Arch of Constantine, a monument erected in 315 CE. However, it has been argued that these depictions are from an earlier monument by Marcus Aurelius, from which Constantine incorporated portions into his Arch.

The question as to precisely who used the armor is also debated. On Trajan's Column, auxilia are generally shown wearing mail, cuirasses, and carrying oval shields. Legionaries are uniformly depicted wearing the lorica segmentata and carrying the curved rectangular shield. On this basis, it has been supposed that lorica segmentata was exclusively used by legionaries and praetorians. However, the discovery of parts of the lorica segmentata at areas where auxiliary soldiers would have been stationed implies that auxiliary troops used the lorica segmentata as well. It is entirely possible, though, that the reason behind the presence of the lorica segmentata in these areas could be because these areas had a small amount of legionaries stationed there, too.  So, the common viewpoint is that soldiers' attire on Trajan's column is stereotyped in order to distinguish clearly between different types of troops. 

Bronze statuette of a legionary (foot soldier), perhaps a praetorian guard, 2nd century CE. The soldier wears a tunic, with an outer skirt of leather straps, and on his upper body, lorica segmentata. He is also wearing strapped sandals, breeches, and a crested helmet.  Courtesy of the British Museum.

Closeup of Legionnaire wearing lorica segmentata serves a carroballista (cart-mounted field artillery) on Trajan's Column, 113 CE, sculpture attributed to Apollodorus of Damascus, photo by Conrad Cichorius (1896) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

 

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The Royal Nisean Horse of Ancient Persia

The horse was a favorite artistic subject in ancient Iran, where horsebreeding flourished. This muscular Sasanian stallion was descended from the royal and sacred Nisean breed of the Achaemenian Persians. Although now extinct, Nisean horses were highly sought after in the ancient world. The ancient Greeks called him the Nisean after the town Nisa, where he was bred but the Chinese called him the Tien Ma – Heavenly Horse or Soulon-Vegetarian dragon. The horse came in a variety of colors including the more common dark bay, chesnut and seal brown but also the more rare black, roan, palomino, and various spotted patterns. The royal Nisean was the mount of the nobility in ancient Persia. Two gray Nisean stallions pulled the King of Kings’ royal chariot, while four of the regal animals pulled the chariot of Ahura Mazda, the supreme god of Persia and Medea. Cyrus the Great was so distraught when one of his stallions was drowned while crossing a river, he had the river where the horse was drowned drained. He did not believe that anything could kill a horse so beautiful.

The Greeks (mainly, the Spartans) imported Nisean horses and bred them to their native stock. The Romans had their first encounter with the Nisean and the Parthian cataphract at the disastrous Battle of Carrhae. Later, when Marc Antony avenged Marcus Licinius Crassus and his legions lost at Carrhae by ravaging Armenia, his plunder included the first Nisean horses in Rome. Later, when Antony died in Egypt, Augustus seized the horses. The Nisean became extinct with the conquest of Constantinople in 1204.

Although Sasanian horse-trappings were elaborate, they did not include stirrups for mounting. In this rendition, the steed lies still, as camels in the Near East do today, waiting for its rider to mount. The medallions on each shoulder contain busts, perhaps of rulers of different parts of the Sasanian Empire, holding their rings of authority. Images courtesy of the museum.

Silver Sasanian Horse-Shaped Drinking Vessel 200-325 CE at the Cleveland Art Museum in Cleveland, Ohio

Silver Sasanian Horse-Shaped Drinking Vessel 200-325 CE at the Cleveland Art Museum in Cleveland, Ohio

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Crassus' Lost Legions Target of New Chinese Study Center

Researchers at the new Italian Studies Centre at Lanzhou University, in Gansu province, China plan to excavate areas around Liqian, a small village on the fringes of the Gobi Desert in north-western China where DNA tests conducted in 2007 have shown 56 per cent of the residents are Caucasian in origin, to determine if the residents are, in fact, descendants of some of the Roman legionaries who escaped the battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.

Image via Wikipedia

Roman Triumvir Marcus Licinius Crassus

The genetic tests have lent weight to the theory that Roman legionaries settled in the area in the first century BC after fleeing a battle. The clash took place in 53BC between an army led by Marcus Crassus, a Roman general, and a larger force of Parthians, from what is now Iran, bringing to an abrupt halt the Roman Empire's eastwards expansion.

Thousands of Romans were slaughtered and Crassus beheaded, but some were said to have fled east.  They supposedly fought as mercenaries in a war between the Huns and the Chinese in 36BC - Chinese chroniclers referred to the capture of a "fish-scale formation" of troops, a possible reference to the "tortoise" phalanx formation perfected by legionaries. The theory was first put forward in the 1950s by Homer Dubs, a professor of Chinese history at Oxford University. But some experts believe the villagers could be descended from the armies of Huns that marauded through Central Asia, which included soldiers of Caucasian origin. - Montreal Gazette

In his paper, A Roman City in Ancient China, Oxford sinologist Homer H.Dubs pointed out that Li-qian was one of only three cities out of 1,587 cities chronicled in the cadastral register in A.D. 5 that was identified with a foreign name.  He went on to suggest that the name was a transliteration of an ancient name used to represent the Roman Empire.  He also found a statement in the History of the Later Han Dynasty as well as several other historical documents that “the country of Ta-ts'in is also called Li-chien.” 

Ta-ts'in was the name for the Roman Empire as late as the middle ages and as early as A.D. 166 when the merchant claiming a diplomatic connection to Marcus Aurelius arrived in the Han Court. - The Origins of Roman Li-chien

Dubs also used references to the fate of the remnants of Crassus' troops made by Pliny and Horace to explain how Romans could have arrived so far east during this time.

According to Pliny, the captives were marched 1,500 miles to Margiana to guard the eastern border of the Parthian Empire, probably to construct fortifications at Merv. Horace speculated that the captives were integrated into the Parthian army and intermarried with the indigenous women where they were settled. Apart from the brief mentions of the fate of Crassus' remaining army by Pliny and Horace, there is no archaeological evidence to corroborate the claims. Assuming that the two historians are correct, it is also impossible to know how many of the legionaries survived the long march, but since they were battle-hardened veterans and undoubtedly very tough men, it would be conceivable that at least some of the ten thousand survived the journey. The Origins of Roman Li-chien

Image via Wikipedia

The ruins of an ancient Chinese watchtower from the
Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220 AD)

Dubs then thinks he picks up their trail again when he finds references to a battle that occurred about 500 miles from Margiana with details he believed indicated a peculiar foreign, distinctly non-Hun (the opposing side in the conflict) influence.  In addition to reports of "a fish-scale formation" mentioned earlier, he finds the description of a Roman-style battlement

“...outside the earthen wall was a double palisade of wood. From behind the palisade [people] shot and killed many of those outside [the city]. So those outside brought out firewood and set fire to the wooden wall.”

Image by mharrsch via Flickr

A Roman Testudo formation depicted
on Trajan's column in Rome, Italy.

Dubs dismssed the thought that these strategies could have been deployed by the Hun since they relied heavily on mounted archers saying "“nomads and barbarians, like Gauls, rushed into battle in a confused mass. A well-patterned array in battle can be achieved only by men long trained as professional soldiers.”

But Dubs did speculate that the "fish-scale formation" could have been the Chinese description of a Greek phalanx.  At this point, classicist W. W. Tarn joined the fray saying, "“I don't see how it is possible at that date for it (the fish-scale formation) to have anything to do with either the Macedonian phalanx or the Greek hoplite phalanx. It would have implied that the memory of the phalanx had lasted in Sogdiana for a century. . . Any idea of the Greek phalanx seems to be quite impossible. The Macedonian phalanx carried small round shields. Men bearing them could hardly have crowded closely enough together to appear 'arrayed like fish-scales.'”

Image by mharrsch via Flickr

Romans constructing wooden palisades
depicted on Trajan's column in Rome, Italy

As for the double wooden palisade, Dubs said that he “cannot remember ever having met, either in literature or archaeology, with any Greek town that had a palisade outside the wall. The rule of one wall and a ditch outside (or in a great fortress even three ditches) seems to have been absolute.” Dubs adds that “the 'double palisade of wood' seen in Sogdiana by the Chinese was then a standard feature in Roman fortifications, so that Jzh-jzh [the defending Hun warlord] undoubtedly had Roman engineering assistance in building his town.”

Many other noted scholars embraced Dubs theory but other were skeptical, pointing out that it was far more likely the mercernaries engaged in the battle were trained by Roman troops elsewhere in Asia or by people who had acquired knowledge of Greek tactics when conquered centuries before by troops of Alexander the Great.  Others point out that the double palisades were not unique to Roman-style fortifications in that time period or even earlier stating:

"Thucydides mentions the use of a double palisade by the Peloponnesians in their siege of
Plataea in the late fifth century B.C.47 In 365 B.C., the Arcadians used the same tactic in the
siege of the Spartan-garrisoned town of Cromnus." - The Origins of Roman Li-chien

Chinese scholar Ying-shih Yü challenged the suggestion that Roman survivors of the battle would have been allowed to form a hsien, the standard Chinese province-district administrative system of the Han dynasty, because they were too few if the "Roman" survivors of the battle were only 145, a segment of prisoners identified individually as captured fighting men in Han accounts.

Hopefully, Chinese archaeologists will be able to settle the controversy if they can uncover some tangible Roman artifacts like coins or remnants of equipment. 

I have only briefly summarized some of the more important points raised in the paper The Origins of Roman Li-chien, published by Ethan Gruber of the University of Virginia in 2007.  I found it a fascinating read, especially the section on the events leading up to the battle between the Hun and Chinese in Sogdiana and encourage you to review the whole work.

Related articles

• Chinese villagers 'descended from Roman soldiers' (telegraph.co.uk)

           

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Descendants of Crassus' Army in China

In preparing for my upcoming trip to Italy next week I was trying to clean out my email inbox and came across a message from a friend in England with a link to a fascinating article about Roman descendants in China:

Telegraph.co.uk: "Residents of a remote Chinese village are hoping that DNA tests will prove one of history's most unlikely legends — that they are descended from Roman legionaries lost in antiquity.

	Villager Cai Junnian with his green eyes and ruddy complexion

Scientists have taken blood samples from 93 people living in and around Liqian, a settlement in north-western China on the fringes of the Gobi desert, more than 200 miles from the nearest city.

They are seeking an explanation for the unusual number of local people with western characteristics — green eyes, big noses, and even blonde hair — mixed with traditional Chinese features.

"I really think we are descended from the Romans," said Song Guorong, 48, who with his wavy hair, six-foot frame and strikingly long, hooked nose stands out from his short, round-faced office colleagues.

"There are the residents with these special features, and then there are also historical records about the existence of these people long ago," he said.

Studies claiming that Liqian has Roman ancestry have greatly excited the impoverished county in which it is situated. The village is now overlooked by a pillared portico, in the hope of attracting tourists. A statue at the entrance of the nearby county town, Yongchang, shows a Roman legionary standing next to a Confucian scholar and a Muslim woman, as a symbol of racial harmony.

Even entrepreneurs have caught on: in "Imperial City Entertainment Street" there is a Caesar Karaoke bar.

The town's link with Rome was first suggested by a professor of Chinese history at Oxford in the 1950s. Homer Dubs pulled together stories from the official histories, which said that Liqian was founded by soldiers captured in a war between the Chinese and the Huns in 36BC, and the legend of the missing army of Marcus Crassus, a Roman general.

In 53BC Crassus was defeated disastrously and beheaded by the Parthians, a tribe occupying what is now Iran, putting an end to Rome's eastward expansion.

But stories persisted that 145 Romans were taken captive and wandered the region for years. Prof Dubs theorised that they made their way as a mercenary troop eastwards, which was how a troop "with a fish-scale formation" came to be captured by the Chinese 17 years later.

He said the "fish-scale formation" was a reference to the Roman "tortoise", a phalanx protected by shields on all sides and from above. Gu Jianming, who lives near Liqian, said it had come as a surprise to be told he might be descended from a European imperial army. But then the birth of his daughter was also a surprise. Gu Meina, now six, was born with a shock of blonde hair. "We shaved it off a month after she was born but it just grew back the same colour," he said. "At school they call her 'yellow hair'. Before we were told about the Romans, we had no idea about this. We are poor and have no family temple, so we don't know about our ancestors."

Another resident, Cai Junnian, 38, said his ruddy skin and green eyes meant he was now nicknamed Cai Luoma, or Cai the Roman, by friends. He has become a local celebrity, and was recently flown to the Italian consulate in Shanghai to meet his supposed relatives. The professor's hypothesis took almost 40 years to reach China. During Chairman Mao's rule, ideas of foreign ancestry were not ideologically welcome and the story was suppressed.

Mr Cai said his great-grandfather told him that there were Roman tombs in the Qilian mountains a day and a half's walk away, but he had never connected them to the unusual appearance he inherited from his father. "People thought I had a skin problem," he said."

I tried to find a followup article but came up empty handed. I would be interested to know the results of the DNA tests. The theory is certainly plausible. I found this reference to 1st century BCE contacts between the Chinese (Seres) and Rome:

"The Roman historian Florus describes the visit of numerous envoys, included Seres (Chinese), to the first Roman Emperor Augustus, who reigned between 27 BCE and 14 CE:

"Even the rest of the nations of the world which were not subject to the imperial sway were sensible of its grandeur, and looked with reverence to the Roman people, the great conqueror of nations. Thus even Scythians and Sarmatians sent envoys to seek the friendship of Rome. Nay, the Seres came likewise, and the Indians who dwelt beneath the vertical sun, bringing presents of precious stones and pearls and elephants, but thinking all of less moment than the vastness of the journey which they had undertaken, and which they said had occupied four years. In truth it needed but to look at their complexion to see that they were people of another world than ours." ("Cathey and the way thither", Henry Yule).

In 97 CE the Chinese general Ban Chao went as far west as the Caspian Sea with 70,000 men and established direct military contacts with the Parthian Empire, also dispatching an envoy to Rome in the person of Gan Ying.

Several Roman embassies to China soon followed from 166 CE, and are officially recorded in Chinese historical chronicles."

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