Latest / Marcus Aurelius: Rome's Philosopher King — Fexingo History / Marcus Aurelius and the Stoic's Desert Column
Transcript
- Luna: We've talked a lot about Marcus on the Danube, but there's this whole other war he was running by proxy. Lucas: Right — the Parthian campaign. It's easy to forget that while Marcus was freezing along the Danube limes, his co-emperor Lucius Verus was waging a massive war in the Mesopotamian desert. And it actually started before the Marcomannic Wars, in 162 CE. Lucas: The Parthian king Vologases IV had invaded Armenia, installed his own ruler, and Rome had to respond. So Marcus and Verus sent legions east — but Verus went in person, while Marcus stayed in Rome. That's interesting in itself. Luna: Did Verus actually fight, or was he more of a figurehead? Lucas: The sources — Cassius Dio, the Historia Augusta — they paint Verus as enjoying the high life in Antioch while his generals did the real work. But recent scholarship suggests that's maybe overstated. There's a fine line between 'enjoying Antioch' and 'managing a massive logistical operation from a secure base.' Lucas: What we know for sure is that one of the key legions involved was Legio III Gallica. They were stationed at Raphanaea in Syria, and they marched east across the Euphrates under the general Avidius Cassius — who you might remember from our episode on the Egyptian revolt. Lucas: They took the city of Dura-Europos on the Euphrates — that's the famous 'Pompeii of the desert' — and then pushed deeper into Parthian territory. By 165, they had reached Ctesiphon, the Parthian capital, and sacked it. Luna: Wait — so Rome captured Ctesiphon? I thought that didn't happen until Septimius Severus. Lucas: That's a common mix-up. Severus sacked it in 197, yes. But Verus's general Avidius Cassius did it first — thirty years earlier. They burned the royal palace and destroyed part of the city. But here's the twist: they didn't hold it. Rome didn't annex Mesopotamia. They just took the loot and went home. Lucas: And that's where the story gets dark. Because when the legions came back, they brought something with them. The Antonine Plague — which we've talked about — almost certainly started in Seleucia on the Tigris, near Ctesiphon. The soldiers contracted it there and spread it across the empire. Luna: So the Parthian war is basically ground zero for the plague that devastated Rome for fifteen years. Lucas: Exactly. Galen described it as a 'great plague' — he was in Rome when it hit in 166. Some scholars think it was smallpox. It killed millions, weakened the army, and made Marcus's Danube campaigns so much harder. There's a direct line from Verus's triumph to Marcus's struggle. Lucas: And what's fascinating is what Marcus wrote about all this in the Meditations. He never mentions the Parthian war by name. But his reflections on ambition, on the futility of conquest — that seems indirectly pointed at this campaign. He writes things like 'a spider is proud of catching a fly — one man of catching a hare, another of netting a fish, another of hunting boars, another of taking Sarmatians.' Luna: He's putting his own empire's wars on the same level as a spider catching a fly. Lucas: Exactly. He's reminding himself that all this imperial expansion — the glory, the triumphs — it's just a bigger version of the same thing. And he was the emperor who had to authorize that war. So there's a real tension between his Stoic ideals and the practical demands of being Rome's ruler. Luna: It's almost like he's critiquing his own decision to send Verus east. Lucas: That's the reading I find persuasive. He couldn't avoid the war — Rome had to respond to the Armenian invasion. But he didn't have to like it. And he certainly didn't glorify it in his private writings. Compare that to Trajan's column, which celebrates Dacian conquests in stone. Marcus writes in ink, and he's ambivalent. Lucas: One more detail: on the way back from Ctesiphon, Legio III Gallica was stationed at Dura-Europos. Archaeologists there found a Roman military shrine with dedications to the legion — and evidence that the soldiers worshipped local gods alongside Jupiter. That cultural mixing was typical on the frontier. Luna: So the soldiers who sacked Ctesiphon ended up praying at Syrian altars. Lucas: Exactly. And those same soldiers later fought on the Danube. The same legion, Legio III Gallica, was at the battle where the 'Rain Miracle' happened — the one where Christians said their prayers saved the army. So there's this whole network of soldiers moving from one crisis to another. Lucas: If you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, you'll know that keeping this show ad-free and deeply researched takes a lot of work — and it's made possible by listeners like you. If you'd like to support what we do, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Every bit helps us keep going. Luna: And it really does make a difference. We love digging into these stories, and knowing people appreciate it keeps us at it. Lucas: So back to the Parthian aftermath: the plague, the weakened legions, the empty treasury. That's the context for everything Marcus did in the last decade of his reign. He was constantly trying to hold the empire together while it was falling apart — and he did it with a philosophy that told him not to care about outcomes. Luna: That must have been a hard balance to strike. Lucas: Incredibly hard. But maybe that's why the Meditations still speak to us. They're not the writings of a man who had it all figured out. They're the notes of someone wrestling with duty and ambition and mortality — while sitting in a tent on the Danube, or in a palace in Rome, knowing that every decision he made had consequences he couldn't control. Lucas: The Parthian war is a perfect example. It was a massive victory — Rome's first capture of Ctesiphon. But it didn't secure the frontier, it cost a fortune, and it unleashed a plague. Marcus had to live with that ambiguity. And he did. That's what a philosopher-king actually looks like.