A writing-tablet from Vindolanda (Chesterholm) briefly preserves a noteworthy request by a decurion of the cohors VIIII Batavorum equitata:Footnote ¹

The writer, Masclus (i.e. Masculus), addresses the prefect Flavius Cerialis, adding the epithet regi suo (‘to his king’).Footnote ³ The text may be interpreted either as a polite address to a social superior, with a possible parallel from Egypt, or more literally as an echo of Cerialis' heritage as a Batavian noble, commanding an ethnic auxiliary unit.Footnote ⁴ Bowman and Thomas suggest, on the strength of a parallel with P. Mich. 8.472 = CEL 147 and OLD s.v. ‘rex’ definition 8,Footnote ⁵ that the word here means ‘patron’ and has no regal force, although they provide the literal translation ‘king’ for rex. Masculus' use of rex here in this interpretation is just, as the editors have described it, ‘standard flattery’. This is not a priori implausible; the use of rex as meaning ‘patron’ is attested many times in Latin literature of both the Republic and the Empire. One might ask what use it would be for a Roman military commander to want to be called, or to encourage, possibly, his soldiers to call him, a ‘king’? Here it is important to remember the context of the letter as belonging to the personnel of an auxiliary unit. The Batavi, like other Germanic peoples, were governed to some degree by an individual whom the Romans often called a rex, a word which shares a common Indo-European root with Germanic and Celtic.Footnote ⁶

Originally described by Tacitus as ‘part of the Chatti’, the Batavi seem to have migrated from the Germanic-speaking territories of the east to the west,Footnote ⁷ where they became an important ally of the Romans.Footnote ⁸ Probably serving under Caesar and certainly serving in the army during Augustus' reign, they gained a reputation as fine horsemen, fierce fighters, and excellent swimmers.Footnote ⁹ Around this time they entered into the aforementioned treaty of alliance with Rome that provided a large degree of internal autonomy, exempted them from taxes, but required the provision of auxiliary troops. Although Tacitus' account of the Batavian revolt's conclusion is lost in the Histories, his record in the Germania shows that the Batavians retained their earlier privileges.

This continuity of special status is significant. Nico Roymans has seen this treaty as the beginning of the Batavian ‘ethnogenesis’.Footnote ¹⁰ Although the names of no Batavian kings are known, Tacitus' reference to a stirps regia (‘royal line’) indicates that there was a tradition of leadership that was expressed as such by (and, presumably, to) the Romans. Roymans has argued that in the pre-Flavian era the stirps regia had a key role in creating and diffusing Batavian identity, and notes that the Batavi had the status of a civitas peregrina. Peregrine status implies that a relatively small number of Batavians were enfranchised.Footnote ¹¹

As noted above, the name and date of the last Batavian king are unknown — although the Roman terminology of Germanic kingship may have obscured the Batavian line. Wallace-Hadrill's observation that the Germanic rex was, in Tacitean usage, an individual taken ex nobilitate, seems to apply to the case of Chariovalda, characterised by Tacitus as a dux:Footnote ¹²

Lack of kings does not necessarily mean lack of a concept of kingship; as Wenskus has observed, in communities of peregrine status, positions of power were often held by descendants of the tribal, tradition-bearing political core, which he described as the Traditionskern.Footnote ¹³ Chariovalda was clearly a member of the élite Batavian nobility that laid claim to the right to command troops; it was this nobility that Tacitus described as a stirps regia.Footnote ¹⁴ The descendants of the old Batavian tribal leaders, like, for example, Julius Civilis, also served in the auxilia, as we know from Tacitus' accounts. Thus, members of the stirps regia, through their service as commanders of auxiliary units, would have more contact with the ‘lower echelons’, to use Roymans' term, of Batavian society. In a.d. 100, then, the question becomes, if there were no Batavian kings, then were there Batavians who possessed, or could claim to possess, a share of the stirps regia?

The prominence of Batavian recruits not only in the auxilia, but also among the ranks of the emperor's bodyguards is well known from both literary and epigraphic sources. The privileges enjoyed by the members of the tribe included exclusion from taxation, a privilege enjoyed, it should be stressed, by groups that supplied auxiliary soldiers, including tribes that did not provide ethnic units.Footnote ¹⁵ The Roman army levied eight Batavian cohorts, of which at least three were equitate.Footnote ¹⁶ In an important study of the personnel of cohors VIIII Batavorum, A.R. Birley has demonstrated two important things. First, that the Batavian cohort, despite being stationed in Britannia, continued to draw Batavian recruits even in the late first century a.d.;Footnote ¹⁷ he identifies 164 Batavian names from the period c. a.d. 92–105, the time when we know that cohors VIIII Batavorum was stationed at Vindolanda. Second, he identified two Flavii and one Flavianus among the Batavian prefects of this period.Footnote ¹⁸ All of these enfranchised officers will have had the rank of eques, and represented the nobilissimi popularium at the time of the Vindolanda tablets, who commanded the Batavian units up to the time of the revolt. They continued, as mentioned earlier, on the basis of the text ‘manet honos et antiquae societatis insigne’,Footnote ¹⁹ to command these units after the revolt, even as late as c. a.d. 100. Thus traditions of Germanic recruitment in the Batavian units mentioned by Tacitus continued, as we know from the Vindolanda tablets, even after the suppression of Civilis' rebellion in a.d. 70.Footnote ²⁰

On these bases — i.e. the general context of the Batavian cohorts and of the new citizens enfranchised by the Flavians who commanded these units and of what we know about the tribal structure of the Batavians — Birley suggested that Masculus, in referring to his commander as a rex, viewed Cerialis as a ‘king’. He goes on at a later point to argue that Cerialis was also of the stirps regia, and that ‘this makes it tempting to take literally the decurion Masculus’ form of address to Cerialis, regi suo'. In addition to the list of Batavians attested at Vindolanda, including the decurion Masculus,Footnote ²¹ Birley cited in support of his interpretation a passage of Plutarch:Footnote ²²

The text characterises the suffect consul of a.d. 109, C. Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappus, as a ‘king’.Footnote ²³ This was not literally the case; Philopappus was grandson of Commagene's last king Antiochus IV, whose kingdom had been reorganised as a Roman province by Vespasian.Footnote ²⁴ The evidence for the life, career and lineage of Philopappus is relatively abundant, since we possess not only references to him by Plutarch but also his famous funerary monument, erected on the Mouseion hill in Athens. The monument, dating to c. a.d. 114–116 and the subject of a detailed study by Diana Kleiner, describes the various titles and associations that he attained both during an impressive career at Rome and as an honorary citizen of Athens, where he was enrolled in the deme of Besa and the tribe of Antiochis.Footnote ²⁵ One of the monument's inscriptions referred to him explicitly as a basileus and, in the extant remains, depicts the ‘king’ in a chariot in a scene evocative, perhaps, of the apotheosis of Hercules.Footnote ²⁶

Although the career of Flavius Cerialis was not as illustrious as that of Philopappus, the usefulness of the comparison cited by Birley rests on the evidence that both men could plausibly lay claim to a royal identity. In the case of Philopappus, this identity can also be traced to an eastern ethnic group, the Commagenians. The title of ‘king’ was an obvious anachronism tellingly omitted from the Latin inscription on Philopappus' tomb, although it is clear from Plutarch's passage that Philopappus' friends routinely called him basileus. Birley's comparison of this man with the rex of Tab.Vindol. III, 628 can be explained further. Like Philopappus, Flavius Cerialis was the descendant of an enfranchised peregrinus. Cerialis was also attested by ancient sources as belonging to a royal line (stirps regia). While Philopappus did not translate his claim to royal descent in the Latin portion of his funerary inscriptions, this does not indicate that he avoided discussing his royal identity.Footnote ²⁷ Clearly his own stirps regia was important to Philopappus' identity in another important respect; his cognomen translates, literally, as ‘grandfather-lover’.Footnote ²⁸

Flavius Cerialis, as Birley observes, is part of a group of Flavii (enfranchised) who came from an area of the Rhineland lacking stone inscriptions, which might otherwise have cast light on Masculus' characterisation of his commander as rex and the latter's Batavian nobility.Footnote ²⁹ The argument implicitly rejects the interpretation of rex as meaning ‘patron’, which Bowman and Thomas had articulated in the commentary to the tablet published in Tab. Vindol. III.

In his Journal of Roman Archaeology review of Tab.Vindol. III, Werner Eck also referred to the usage of rex in Tablet 628. He called Birley's suggestion an ‘attractive’ interpretation, despite the fact that another inscription, he noted, might seem to support the ‘patron’ interpretation (CIL XIV, 4239 = ILS 1013).Footnote ³⁰ The text referred to by Eck is worth quoting here:

This statue-base inscription records that the equestrian legionary veteran Ti. Claudius Ti. f. Liberalis Aebutianus dedicated it to Herennia Helvidia Aemiliana, wife of the consul L. Claudius Proculus, strikingly characterising Aemiliana as his regina. A literal interpretation of the term would be preposterous, and the usage here seems intended to honour a ‘patroness’, although the rarity of its appearance in the extant epigraphic record indicates that this was not a common method of honouring an individual.Footnote ³² While the precise context cannot be clearly ascertained, the fact that this monument was set up honoris causa indicates that Liberalis and his wife were recognising a woman who, as the wife of a consul, was clearly of some standing locally.Footnote ³³ As Eck suggested, the equestrian client's description of the consul's wife is clearly meant to flatter. The inscription is one of only two such examples from the extant epigraphic record. The other is a very short funerary inscription from Pompeii that characterised a woman named Cestilia as ‘regina Pompeianorum, anima dulcis’.Footnote ³⁴ It is significant that both examples originate in Italy, where the literary subtlety of this usage would be most readily understood by those who viewed these monuments.Footnote ³⁵ The same cannot be said with regard to the epigraphic record for rex as ‘patron’. Eck cited no comparisons, as none are extant in the epigraphic record. This surely reflects the odium attached to the word by the Romans, who studiously avoided association with it on public monuments.Footnote ³⁶ All known examples of this usage are from literary texts or private correspondence, and on the whole the evidence indicates that the use of rex/regina as a term of flattery was uncommon.Footnote ³⁷

On the basis of these examples, one can interpret all such usages of rex/regina as a form of flattery, and this is how Bowman and Thomas understood Tab.Vindol. III, 628. However, although he felt that this usage was meant to flatter, Eck did not believe that the royal epithet used in CIL XIV, 4239 to characterise Herennia was a clear equivalent to the use of rex in the Vindolanda tablet. He reasoned that the cultural history of the Batavians, who were prominent soldiers in various auxiliary ranks and included members of a stirps regia, favoured Birley's more literal interpretation.Footnote ³⁸

The editors of the text have consistently rejected this explanation, and prefer instead to interpret it as ‘patron’. In support of the ‘patron’ interpretation, Bowman and Thomas cite only one text, CEL 147, a letter on papyrus discovered at Karanis in Egypt. This is sufficient, they argue, because of its ‘military nature’ and status as the only other extant epistolary use of rex in this fashion.Footnote ³⁹ Given the importance of the criteria, the context of CEL 147 merits close attention. Claudius Tiberianus, the writer, addresses his lord and patron, Longinus Priscus (or Longinius, as his name appears on the verso) in a letter with a very deferential tone that characterises Priscus not only as Tiberianus' rex but also his dominus on no less than five occasions, highlighted in the translation below:

Longinus must be a soldier in the Roman army; ubi constas refers to ‘where you are stationed’, implying that Longinus is still a serving soldier, and the postscript, ‘saluta … omnes tuos contubernales’ (if properly restored), must mean, ‘and all your tent-mates (i.e. comrades-in-arms)’.Footnote ⁴⁰ It is not clear, however, whether the cultural context of the soldiers attested in this papyrus is similar to the tradition of ethnic service well-attested in cohors VIIII Batavorum. A connection to an auxiliary unit may be possible. Cugusi has suggested identifying this Longinus Priscus with the C. Longinus Priscus who enlisted with an auxiliary unit, cohors II or III Ituraeorum, in a famous exemplum of a letter, dating to February a.d. 103, sent from the prefect of Egypt with a list of six recruits approved by him for service in the unit.Footnote ⁴¹

These Ituraeans had in fact been ruled by kings, the last being Sohaemus, who was appointed by Gaius and died in a.d. 49, after which his territory was incorporated into the province of Syria.Footnote ⁴² Cohors II was stationed in Egypt where it was joined in a.d. 83 by cohors III.Footnote ⁴³ In both cases, the units were stationed far away from the Ituraean homeland in Syria and Phoenicia. However, the Ituraean cohorts did not have the same traditions of local leadership evident in the history of cohors VIIII Batavorum. Neither the Ituraean cohort's commander nor any of the six tirones approved by the prefect is identifiable as an ethnic Ituraean. The recruits bear the tria nomina of Roman citizens, and though this is not in itself incontrovertible proof that these men were citizens upon entering the cohort, it does seem unlikely that, as recruits from Egypt, they were ethnic Ituraeans.

Large-scale recruitment within a civitas of any group would be conducive to the creation and maintenance of communal cohesiveness, as Roymans put it, of ethnic groups.Footnote ⁴⁴ These conditions have been observed in the case of the Batavians, but in the case of the Ituraean cohorts at Oxyrhynchus they cannot be observed as easily. Specialist units of archers often maintained a connection with their eastern origins, such as the cohors Hamiorum sagittaria stationed at Carvoran in the second and third centuries a.d.Footnote ⁴⁵ However, there is no indication that an aristocratic class was prominently represented among the officer corps in either the Hamian or Ituraean cohorts.

CEL 140 names the prefect of the Ituraean cohort, Celsianus. Unlike Flavius Cerialis, there is no evidence that he belonged to the same ethnic group as the one from which his unit was raised. Surely he was a man of equestrian rank starting out on the career path of equestrian militiae. Without any ethnic connection to the Ituraeans, he would just be another eques Romanus trying to move up the social ladder. As for Claudius Tiberianus, he had a son, Claudius Terentianus, who followed in his father's footsteps and joined the Roman navy and, eventually, a legion. At least one of Terentianus' sisters, who bore the Egyptian name Tasoucharion, is attested in a papyrus letter written in Greek.Footnote ⁴⁶ Ultimately, Longinus' ethnicity cannot be shown to be Ituraean; there is no evidence that either he or any of his five fellow tirones belonged to the Ituraean group, much less to an Ituraean stirps regia.

This amounts to a significant difference in citizenship and status between the authors of Tab.Vindol. III, 628 and CEL 147. In CEL 147, Longinus Priscus was the recipient of a flattering term (rex) that surely lacked any literal force. If he is the same Longinus Priscus mentioned in CEL 140, he is certainly an auxiliary soldier, but there is less likelihood that Longinus belongs to an ancient Ituraean stirps regia, since his names are not connected to the nomina of the imperial family. If CEL 147 is considered alone, all that can be ascertained of Longinus' status is that he is a serving soldier belonging either to a legion or an auxiliary unit. The other people in the letter bear recognisable Roman names; the only exception being Aristus, one of the contubernales, whose Greek name is hardly surprising to find among the soldiers serving in Egypt. Longinus seems to have been a valued patron to Tiberianus, but not a ‘king’ in any native sense. In this way, the letter parallels well with the inscription cited by Eck, but not with the Vindolanda tablet. There are significant differences in the contexts of writer and recipient in the letters from Egypt and Vindolanda; while both are military in nature, and indeed have a flattering tone befitting a request for, in the case of Masculus, a fresh supply of beer for the men, the cultural background of the Batavians adds a clever double reference. On one hand, Masculus engaged in what we have seen to be a rare literary conceit, to refer to an eminent individual as a ‘king’; yet in Cerialis' case, the ‘king’ in question belonged to a Batavian nobility that was described, in Latin terms, as regia.

The relationship between Cerialis and Masculus requires clarification. The position of a cavalry decurion was not a part of the equestrian militiae and was open to men of either Roman or peregrine status. Masculus' single Batavian name implies that he was not a Roman citizen, while Cerialis, on the other hand, clearly was, and was also descended from the Batavian nobility. This gave him a claim, at least in part, to the Batavian stirps regia. He bears the cognomen of the Roman general Petillius Cerialis, who had been appointed by Vespasian to lead the campaign against Julius Civilis' revolt.Footnote ⁴⁷ His gentilicium Flavius clearly indicates that either he or, more likely, his father had received Roman citizenship from Vespasian, surely as a reward for loyalty to Rome during the revolt.Footnote ⁴⁸

Flavius Cerialis' position as prefect of the cohors VIIII Batavorum was another reward, in a sense, for loyal service to the emperor. Moreover, his status supports the claim of Tacitus that the Batavians kept their ancient privileges following the revolt, although their units were presumably purged and no longer stationed near their homelands. As a successor to the Batavian nobility's tradition of military leadership, Flavius Cerialis' status was enhanced by both Roman and Batavian marks of rank, namely Roman citizenship, service in the army, Batavian nobility, and leadership of the Batavian auxilia, a right conferred by ancient treaty to Batavian nobles. Indeed, flattery still may have been Masculus' intent, given the nature of his letter's request, and surely Cerialis did not claim to be a Batavian king. However, both soldier and commander had a shared ethnic heritage, in which Masculus' choice of words acknowledged a distinctively Batavian aspect of his commander's status.

Thus it seems insufficient to cite the ‘military nature’ of CEL 147 as a valid reason for denying a Batavian royal nuance in Tab.Vindol. III, 628. Flavius Cerialis should not be seen as Masculus' patron. Instead, he was Masculus' commanding officer and a member of the Batavian nobility that still laid claim to the vetus institutum famously described by Tacitus. As argued above, the two concepts need not be separated as if mutually exclusive; to use this type of binary reasoning would miss the point.Footnote ⁴⁹ Masculus' tone is respectful but, unlike that of CEL 147, not deferential to the extreme. One might even detect a certain sense of propriety, as the address of the letter designates Cerialis as the prefect, but the content of the letter, to be read only by Cerialis, calls him rex. Tab.Vindol. III, 628, therefore, reinforces the general impression, conveyed both by Tacitus' accounts and by the epigraphic record of Batavians in the Roman army, that this Germanic tribe maintained a strong sense of identity that had been forged, in large part, by the group's decades of military service. As ancient rule of the Batavians by native reges was a part of their cultural history, this brief letter from an auxiliary to his ‘king’, which need not be taken as a literal expression of Germanic fealty, provides insight into the Batavians' enduring cultural identity.