Early Imperial Roman Auxilia

As a preparation for my next big painting project for the TooFatLardies Infamy, Infamy rules, I wrote up a backstory for the Auxiliary Cohort that I will be assembling from the excellent plastic Victrix Early Imperial Infantry and Cavalry Auxilia sets.

My plan is to create a force based on a cohors equitata quingenaria, which was a mixed cohort of 600 men, 480 infantry and 120 cavalry. 

Although the Romans had long used auxiliary units recruited from allied tribal groups bordering on or from within the empire itself, these were never formally incorporated into the structure of the army. However, from the time of Augustus onward, auxiliary cohorts became a regular part of Roman armies, and were fully integrated into the Roman system. The auxiliary cohorts were recruited from  the class of people known as peregrini, that is to say from the free non-citizens of the provinces of the empire.

I decided that instead of basing my troops on any existing historical unit, I would place their origins in my imagi-nation of Syldavia.

Roman Syldavia

History tells us very little about the peoples of pre-Roman Syldavia. A fragment of a lost work attributed to Herodotus records that black pelican feathers from the Land of the Sylvans were much sought out for helmet plumes in Greece and that the tribes of the country were “warlike, tall, well-built and fond of feasting, hunting and drinking in the manner of the ancient heroes of the long-haired Achaeans”, that their lords lived in “great hill-top palaces girt with tall walls built by the Cyclopes” and that the people honoured “Chthonic gods unknown to the citizens of the cities of Hellas”.

Sometime around 337 BCE: Alexander the Great is said to have campaigned against a  number of tribes of the region. These were recorded as being the Goganidae, the Calippians and the Donantae, these being the Greek names for the tribes. The Romans later knew them as the Goganii, Calippii and Donantii.                           

In 281 BCE, an army sent by King Pyrrhus of Epirus is said to have been defeated by the Goganidae in a battle in a place called Xalippium. This site has never been definitively identified, although it has tentatively been linked to a site on the plans about 30 km east of the modern city of Travunje, where archaeologists have uncovered what appear to be the remains of a battle of the Hellenistic period.

In 87 BCE, the Roman period begins when the tribes of the northern regions along the valley of the River Trebjesa and southern Zympathia are defeated and subjugated by the legions of Gaius Hilarius Pollo. A number of oppida were besieged and reduced in the modern provinces of Zympathia and Wladruja and the Goganii and Donantii submit to Roman rule. In the following year, Bestus, king of the Calippii (Rex Calippiorum) submitted to Rome and most of the coastal littoral and the lowland interior of modern Syldavia was absorbed into the Empire as the two provinces of  Syldavia Superior and Syldavia Inferior. The cities (colonia) of Klovinus (Klow) and Istriodunum (later Istrow, modern Istow) were founded by veterans of Legio XXXXII Invictus.
                                                                                     
During the Civil Wars of the First Triumvirate, both Syldavian provinces were controlled by Julius Caesar, who recruited auxiliary troops from the peregrini of Syldavia, the warlike Goganii of the north being considered amongst the best of his allied contingents.

After the death of Caesar, the Syldavian provinces came initially under the control of Brutus, but following the Treaty of Brundisium in 40 BCE, they became part of the possessions of Lepidus. After Lepidus was deposed and exiled by Octavian, the inland portions of Syldavia were absorbed into the empire, as a result of Octavian’s campaigns in the Balkans and the two provinces were then much enlarged. The colonia of Klovinus had been partially razed during these campaigns but was rebuilt by the provincial governor, Marcus Totalis Nervus in 39 BCE.

In the years following the assumption of imperial power by Octavian as the Emperor Augustus, both Syldavian provinces prospered and became integrated into the empire. During the Augustan period six cohorts of auxiliary troops were raised in the provinces. These consisted of four cohortes equitate quingenarie (i.e. a mixed unit of 480 infantry 120 and cavalry, totalling 600 men), one cohors peditata milliara (800 infantry) and one ala milliara (720 cavalry).

These were named as;

Cohors Primus Syldaviorum equitata Luperci
Cohors Secundus Syldaviorum equitata
Cohors Tertius Syldaviorum equitata
Cohors Primus Calippii equitata
Cohors Primus Syldaviorum peditata
Ala  Primus Donantorum                                                                                 

All of these units are recorded as still being in existence in the 4th century, in a little-known addendum to the Notitia dignitatum, known as the Notitia Syldaviorum (a document that should not be confused with a text dating to the 8th century known as the Notitia Syldaviarum). In this text, the Ala Donantorum is categorised as being equites clibanarii, which indicates that at some point in the unit’s existence it was converted into heavily-armoured cavalry.

Little is known about the deployments of any of these auxiliary cohorts, although it has been suggested that the three cohortes Syldaviorum equitatae were present in the Dacian campaigns of Trajan and that the first cohort may have been part of the Roman garrison in Britain during the second half of the 1st century and, together with the second cohort also served in Germania in the 1st and early 2nd centuries. A partially legible funerary inscription found in northern Syria in the 1930s contains the following;

“M. HOSTILIUS GAVIA. OPTIO III COHORS S...........M”

Which some have taken as evidence that the Cohors III Syldaviorum equitata could have been stationed in Syria Coele at that time.                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
It is recorded that the initial recruitment for the first cohort was exclusively from among the Goganii, a tribal grouping living in an area roughly contiguous with modern Zympathia, Hum and Wladruja, and associated with a cult that venerated a wolf deity sometimes called Lykas, and this was reflected in the occasional wearing of wolf pelts as cloaks by some of the troops, as well as the sobriquet Luperci, i.e. “Brothers of the Wolf” attached to the name of the cohort. The 2nd century Roman author, Gnaeus Populus Silvus, of Goganian origins himself, connected the traditional cult with the Roman festival of Lupercalia and the Roman deity Lubercus.

Similarly, the fourth cohors equitata from Syldavia was named the Cohors Primus Calippii equitata because it was initially recruited from the Greek-speaking Calippians of southern Syldavia Inferior, who lived in an area stretching north from modern Cataro (Roman Castrum Caetarus) to the valley of the River Wladir (ancient name uncertain, but suggested to be Vallidos or Ballidos) and west as far as the modern Travunje.

The ethnic  composition of the remaining cohorts is presumed to have been mixed, apart from the all-cavalry Ala Donantorum, which was raised from the Donantii, a group of tribes who appear to have inhabited a large area covering the modern day provinces of Moltuja and Polishov, centred around the modern city of Istow. Roman Istriodunum was built on the site of a large oppidum which was probably the “capital” of the Donantii. Numerous objects of Illyrian and Scythian origins have been found at various times by archaeologists working in the extensive ruins of Roman Istriodunum, which has been preserved because the site was never reoccupied after its abandonment in the 4th century.

Thus, we can see that Roman Syldavia was inhabited by three main tribal groups,  the Goganii in the west and north west, the Donantii in the centre and north-east and the Calipii in the south and south-east.