The Folds of Olympus by Jason König

Author:Jason König
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2022-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

Bodily Immersion: Mountains, Rivers, Sea

Both Roman and barbarian armies are also often at risk of being overwhelmed by threatening landscapes, often in ways that emphasise their bodily entanglement and immersion in the environment.18 We have seen already that in the mountains both the Romans and their enemies blend with the landscapes they are operating in: the barbarians like animals completely at home in the rocks, the Romans fighting for each step, clinging on to the undergrowth, with their bodies exposed to the slippery ground and the rocks thrown down from above. That kind of scene is repeated in other passages too. The conflict with the Alamanni in Germany resurfaces sporadically even after the death of Julian in battle against the Persians in 363. Five years later, in 368, the emperor Valentinian launches a concerted campaign against them, hoping to stamp out the threat once and for all, and succeeds in defeating them in battle at Solicinium. That success comes despite the fact that the enemy, ‘putting trust in their knowledge of the ground’, have retreated to ‘a very high mountain, precipitous and impassable with rough hills on all sides (montem … praecelsum, per confragosos colles undique praeruptum et invium), except on the north, where it had an easy and gentle slope’ (27.10.9). Valentinian is nearly killed while inspecting the cliffs, having arrogantly assumed that he would be able to find a route to the summit other than the one the scouts had picked out: ‘as he was making his way by a winding route through unknown ground and swampy marshes (per ignota … et palustres uligines devius tendens), he would have died by the sudden assault of an ambushing band concealed in a hidden spot, had he not as a last resort spurred his horse and retreated through the slippery mud (per labilem limum)’ (27.10.11). Finally and laboriously the Romans take the summit, despite being out of their element: ‘brandishing their spears, they approached the rocks that lay in their path, and tried to get up to the higher slopes, while the Alamanni tried to push them back; and then the whole weight of the army came up, and with the same troops in the front rank, through places that were rough and overgrown with thickets, with a huge effort of strength, they forced their way on to the high ground’ (27.10.12). The dominant impression here once again is of the desperate difficulty of mountain warfare. Conquest of the Alamanni and of the summit are entangled with each other: victory comes only from the painstaking process of dragging themselves upwards step by step to the top of the mountain. In another incident soon afterwards, a group of Roman soldiers is killed while fortifying Mount Pirus on the far side of the Rhine (28.2.5–9): the barbarians ‘leapt out’ (prosiluit) from the fold of a nearby hill; the Romans are half-naked and ‘still carrying earth’ (humum etiam tum gestantes) (28.2.8). Both Romans and barbarians here are immersed in the environment. In this case that state of closeness to the earth brings disaster for the Romans.

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