History is often written on the intersection of truth and legend, and although the work
of a historian is to separate the legends from the reality, there is value in understanding
what was the origin of certain myths and how and why they became so widespread.
One such legend is the story of Saint Maurice and the Theban Legion, which played a huge
role in the early history of Christianity in the Roman empire.
But what was the legend and what is the truth surrounding it?
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Religious strife plagued the Roman Empire of the Third Century AD.
Nearly three centuries have passed since the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, and his
followers grew throughout the Roman world.
Since the beginning of the Republic in 509 BC, the majority of Romans had been pagan
– worshipping a pantheon of many gods.
Chritianity first appeared as an offshoot of Judaism.
For centuries Jews lived under Roman rule, but this new minority sect of monotheists
posed a unique challenge for the polytheistic majority.
Ceremonial sacrifices were a State affair.
Privately, Romans were largely free to worship any gods.
Household shrines to countless deities filled the homes of Romans on all shores of the Mediterranean.
Demonstrating devotion to the Roman State, however, was a mandatory display of citizenship.
For most Roman pagans, participating in the performance of public sacrifices was a service
to the State.
These civic rituals ensured that good fortune would favor the Empire and its people.
As direct beneficiaries of the Empire’s prosperity, all citizens were expected to
partake in these rites.
But many Roman Christians believed that sacrificing to gods of the Roman pantheon would be to
directly betray their God of Abraham.
Some felt this so strongly that they would not sacrifice, and were occasionally put to
death for their refusal.
Though less numerous than some hagiographies claim, these Christian martyrs became irrepressibly
famous.
Roman culture had a long tradition of exempla.
These stories illustrated moral imperatives, their heroes dying theatrical deaths in the
name of Roman virtues.
When the tales of Christian martyrdoms began, the populace was primed to receive and relay
these newest exempla.
Though they were under the rule of Rome’s pagan co-emperors Diocletian and Maximian,
Christians were acutely aware of their growing presence within the Empire.
In 286 the junior emperor Maximian campaigned in Gaul to quash the Bagaudae revolt.
These peasant insurgents rebelled against the Empire’s taxation and abuse of their
agricultural resources, but suffered a swift, brutal defeat by Maximian and his legionnaires.
The legend of the Theban Legion tells of at least six thousand men from the Egyptian city
of Thebes, who after subjection to the horror of two decimations– were martyred at Agaunum,
in the Western Alps under Maximian.
The legion was said to be composed exclusively of Christians summoned to Gaul to aid in the
emperor’s military campaign.
According to the story, the Theban Legion refused to sacrifice to the emperor, or to
the gods, or to harm fellow Christian Gauls.
For its defiance, the Legion received the ultimate Roman military punishment: decimation.
Every tenth man was killed, each of his nine comrades escaping death by a hair.
The legion’s principle officer – the primicerius - beseeched his subordinates not to lose their
faith.
This officer is known to history as St. Maurice.
The legionnaires stood with their commander, and suffered a second decimation.
But even this most extreme demonstration of imperial judgement was not enough to make
the surviving men abandon their religion.
The remaining soldiers were all executed, joining their fallen fellows as martyrs of
the faith, and achieving fame throughout Christendom.
The story of the Theban Legion is unlikely, and most modern scholars agree that it is
fictitious, or at least egregiously exaggerated.
The Legion’s summons to Gaul is dubious.
While it is not impossible that an Egyptian legion could have been part of Maximian’s
company, it would have been more sensible to enlist troops already stationed on the
continent.
There is little certainty on the number of soldiers that served in the legion.
Christian sources claim the number to be 6,000 or 6,666, but a Roman legion of the time period
that exceeded 5,500 men-at-arms is improbable.
Though there was a noteworthy Christian presence throughout North Africa, it would have been
highly irregular for every member of the Theban Legion to be a Christian in a primarily polytheistic
ancient world.
In the only Latin novel that survives in its entirety –The Metamorphoses of Apuleius–
the Roman protagonist is initiated into a mystery cult to serve the Egyptian goddess
Isis and her husband Osiris.
Many Romans worshipped Egyptian gods, as well as their own.
Most suspect of all, Christian tradition claims that the legion was subjected to two decimations
before being wiped out entirely.
The punishment of decimation was rarely carried out by the Roman military.
A legion might be sentenced to such a fate twice during its entire existence.
There are no other known cases of double decimation.
Though decimation was occasionally performed, the obedience instilled by this tactic came
at a steep price for the Empire.
To execute so many trained fighting men was an extravagant expenditure of resources and
manpower.
A commander ordering every legionnaire to be slaughtered is beyond overzealous, and
would have branded him as a madman.
It is unlikely that either Maximian or Diocletian – both soldiers themselves– could have
maintained leadership of such a military-centric Empire with reputations for eliminating entire
legions.
Even during the 17th century, scholars were skeptical of the Legion’s existence.
The prominent French intellectual Voltaire dismissed the idea of the Theban Legion, and
a historical dissertation by John Dubourdieu published in 1696 attacked the legend’s
source.
Traditionally, the story of the Legion is attributed to a letter written by St. Eucherius,
archbishop of Lyon.
Dubourdieu argued that St. Eucherius was not the true author of this supposed letter; the
author mentions the Saint-king Sigismund of Burgundy, who built a monastery in honor of
the Theban martyrs at Agaunum.
By the time St. Sigismund had built the monastery and was martyred himself, St. Eucherius was
already dead.
Therefore, St. Eucherius cannot be the author of the letter off of which the entire legend
is based.
The Theban Legion’s origin source appears to be a falsehood.
Still, the concept of a North African military presence in the Alps is not without precedent.
One of most dramatic and celebrated military achievements of antiquity did indeed involve
North African troops in the Alps.
Hannibal Barca, the terror of Rome, marched war elephants and his Carthaginian army through
the mountains, to make a direct assault on the Roman Republic during the Second Punic
War in 218 BC.
Although the story of the Theban Legion is anachronistic, it is important to consider
the influence of North African history and culture on the Roman world.
Before the land that would eventually become Rome was even a blip on the map of the ancient
world, Egypt was a magnificent and powerful civilization.
Egyptian sculptural techniques and their love of monumental architecture were adopted and
improved by the Greeks, who in turn were envied and emulated by the Romans.
Since Cleopatra and Marc Antony lost the Battle of Actium in BC 31 , Egypt had served as the
breadbasket of Rome.
The Emperor Septimius Severus ruled from AD 193 to 211, hailing from Leptis Magna in modern
Libya.
Under Severus, the Empire fully secured Africa as the agricultural provider for Rome.
The tastes and fashions of North Africa were prevalent in Roman society.
Wealthy Roman houses in the Capitol and resort towns like Pompeii were decorated with Egyptian
motifs, and entire obelisks –shipped all the way from Egypt– were erected around
the Empire.
By Late Antiquity, Alexandria was an intellectual hub.
Philosophers, scientists, astronomers, and mathematicians flocked to the Egyptian port
city.
Alexandria boasted a cosmopolitan blend of Egyptian, Greek and later Coptic Christian
cultures.
But perhaps most thrillingly of all, North African presence was felt in the infamous
Roman bloodsports of the arena.
The ritual slaughter of animals was a political aspect of the games that became so prominent
that tunnels for their transport into the Flavian Amphitheater –known to us as the
Colosseum– still exist today.
Providing exotic African animals for these spectacles made a resounding declaration of
the game sponsor’s generosity.
Legionaries required specific training to capture and carry live beasts all the way
across the Mediterranean and into the landlocked Capitol.
Romans are known to have brought lions, elephants, crocodiles, hyenas, hippopotamuses, and ostriches
to the arena.
To illustrate his triumph in Egypt, Julius Caesar returned to Rome in BC 46 with a menagerie
of African animals, including a giraffe.
The cost of these theatrical endeavors in the logistics of supplying food, water, transportation,
and manpower are incalculable.
Displaying the wonders of Africa as a statement of power and wealth was staggering.
Beyond simply slaughtering the animals in ritual sacrifice, African animals were famously
used as a form of entertainment, and a method of execution.
Venatores were fighting men who participated voluntarily in beast hunts for glory or money,
but the Bestiarii were enemies of the state condemned to death by combat or exposure to
wild animals, as a form of capital punishment.
One of the first instances of this method of execution was used by Scipio Aemilianus
after his conquest of Carthage in 146 BC, during the Third Punic War.
It was originally practiced exclusively on non-Roman military deserters or defectors,
and was possibly inspired by the Carthaginians’ own use of the tactic.
Death by beast became inexorably entwined with the persecution of
Christians in the 1st century AD.
The Roman historian Tacitus claims that Emperor Nero exposed Christians to wild dogs after
blaming them for the Fire of Rome in 64 AD, and the Christian writer Tertullian made the
first mention of Christians being killed by lions, in the 2nd century.
The legend of the Theban Legion draws on several striking and impressive truths.
It plays on the shock value of decimation, coopting the Romans’ occasional genuine
usage of that punishment as proof of their remorseless severity.
It borrows the resplendence of Hannibal’s steadfast North African troops crossing of
the Alps, immortalized in art, literature, music, and drama throughout history.
This event gained fame in its own day, and was certainly known during the time the Theban
Legion was supposedly martyred c. 286/7.
And though there were not nearly so many executions by wild beasts as hagiographies would insist,
some Christians were indeed put to death in grisly and harrowing ways for their refusal
to partake in State-mandated sacrifices.
The Theban Legion, however inaccurate, continues to be celebrated.
The Legion’s Feast Day is September 22, and St. Maurice is the patron saint of prominent
European royal houses such as the Merovingians, Carolingians, Burgundians, Lombards, House
of Savoy, and the Pope’s Swiss Guards.
He is portrayed in art as a sub-Saharan African soldier, and was first depicted as dark-skinned
in the 12th century.
These representations pre-date the racial tensions and inequalities that our modern
world contends with today, and is a testament to the true diversity of the Roman world.
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