Cohors VI Gallorum

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The Cohors VI Gallorum ( German  6th cohort of the Gauls ) was possibly a unit of the Roman auxiliary troops . It is only attested by its mention in a single Latin inscription . Due to this very thin source of sources, their existence is sometimes questioned in research.

Sources

The only evidence of the Cohors VI Gallorum is an ancient tombstone that was found near Rome on the Via Flaminia and brought to the Vatican Museums . The buried man was Marcus Macrinius Avitus Catonius Vindex , who rose to governor of the provinces of Moesia superior and Moesia inferior after a career as an officer in the Roman army and died around the year 176 AD at the age of 42 years. As part of a fixed career scheme for Roman officers, the tres militiae , he acted at the beginning of his career - probably around 158-160 AD - as the prefect of a cohort of Roman auxiliary troops.

The inscription stone names this cohort Cohors VI Gallorum , and the text is easy to read. Accordingly, most prosopographical studies assume that such a unit must have existed, even if there is no other ancient evidence for its existence. In Paulys Realencyclopadie der classical antiquity the Cohors VI Gallorum received its own entry, which however contains no further information apart from a reference to the tombstone of Marcus Macrinius Avitus Catonius Vindex.

Occasionally, however, researchers have doubted that the Cohors VI Gallorum actually existed in view of the limited sources. They therefore suspect a mistake by the stonemason who incorrectly carved the order number of the unit into the stone (as happened occasionally in ancient times, especially since the stonemasons were often illiterate). Eric Birley is considering seeing Marcus Macrinius Avitus Catonius Vindex instead as a member of the Cohors VII Gallorum - in this case an "I" would have accidentally been carved too little in the epitaph. John Spaul, on the other hand, assigns the officer to one of the two well-known Cohortes V Gallorum, listing him as a member of the Cohors V Gallorum in Britannia (and not the unit of the same name stationed in Moesia ). The stonemason would have written an "I" too many on the tombstone.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Eugen Bormann , Giovanni Battista de Rossi (ed.): Inscriptiones Urbis Romae Latinae (= Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum . Volume 6). Part 1, Georg Reimer, Berlin 1876, p. 316, no. 1449.
  2. ↑ a b Hubert Devijver : Prosopographia Militiarum Equestrium quae fuerunt from Augusto ad Gallienum. Volume 2: Litterae LV. Ignoti – Incerti (= Symbolae. Series A, Volume 3). Universitaire Pers Leuven, Leuven 1977, ISBN 90-6186-056-3 , pp. 550 f., No. M 4.
  3. ↑ Max Fluß : Macrinius 2. In: Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen antiquity science (RE). Volume XIV, 1, Stuttgart 1928, col. 163-165, here col. 164.
  4. ↑ Hans-Georg Pflaum: Les carrières procuratoriennes équestres sous le haut-empire Romain (= Bibliothèque archéologique et historique. Volume 57). Volume 2, Paul Geuthner, Paris 1960, pp. 510-513, no. 188.
  5. ↑ Eric Birley : Alae and cohortes milliariae. In: Corolla Memoriae Erich Swoboda dedicata (= Roman research in Lower Austria. Volume 5). Hermann Böhlaus Nachf., Graz / Cologne 1966, pp. 54–67, here p. 58.
  6. ^ Conrad Cichorius: Cohors. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume IV, 1, Stuttgart 1900, Col. 231-356, here Col. 292.
  7. ↑ Eric Birley: Britain, Pannonia and the Roman Army. In: Ekkehard Weber , Gerhard Dobesch (ed.): Roman history, antiquity and epigraphy. Festschrift for Artur Betz on the completion of his 80th year of life (= Archaeological-Epigraphic Studies. Volume 1). Self-published by the Austrian Society for Archeology, Vienna 1985, pp. 75 * –81 *, here p. 79 *.
  8. ↑ John Spaul: Cohors². The evidence for and a short history of the auxiliary infantry units of the Imperial Roman Army (= BAR International Series. Volume 841). British Archaeological Reports, Oxford 2000, ISBN 978-1-84171-046-4 , p. 169, note 1.