Around the year 167 or 168, Emperor Marcus Aurelius of Rome (r. 161-180) and his loyal co-emperor, Lucius Verus, began a wave of warfare against the Germanic tribes situated along the Roman Empire’s Danube frontier. It would turn out to be a long and tense campaign, lasting for virtually the remainder of Marcus Aurelius’ reign, but at the time of the war’s inception, the average Roman was enthusiastic and confident about the Roman invasion. Typical of ancient times, the prospect of war caused prophecies to be requested and omens to be read—anything to obtain good luck and fortune for the upcoming campaign. As the story goes, the oracular cult of the snake-deity, Glycon, released to the public one such prophecy about the war. The contemporaneous satirist Lucian of Samosata (c. 120-180) wrote that, “at the height of the war in Germany, when the late emperor Marcus was now fighting it out with the Marcomanni and Quadi” the cult of Glycon’s influential leader, Alexander of Abonoteichus, released a statement that allegedly read as follows:
“Into the stream of Danube, flowing from Zeus as his source,
I command you to throw a pair of those that attend upon Cybele,
Beasts of the mountains; and all that India nurtures
In flowers and sweet-smelling herbs: then straightway will come to you
Victory, great glory, and after them peace that is lovely.”
(Lucian, Alexander or the False Prophet, section 48)
At that time, the cult of Glycon was popular in the Roman Empire and it had believers and supporters in the highest levels of Roman government, such as the immensely influential statesman, Rutilianus. Therefore, Romans with wealth and means were said to have taken the cult’s statement seriously and arranged for the prophesy’s commands to be carried out. Followers of the cult of Glycon interpreted the statement as orders to sacrifice two lions (attendants of Cybele) in the waters of the Danube River. Acquiescing to the prophecy’s demands, the Romans allegedly did procure two lions in a timely fashion and quickly trekked the poor creatures all the way to the Danube. There, so the tale goes, the cultists followed the prophesy to the letter. After presumably loading the lions on a boat and dressing them with fragrant herbs and spices, the followers of Glycon had the lions tossed overboard. The sacrifice, however, did not go as expected. As told by the aforementioned writer, Lucian, “when these orders had been carried out, the lions swam across to the enemy’s shore and the barbarians killed them with clubs, thinking they were some strange kind of dogs or wolves” (Alexander or the False Prophet, section 48). To the horror of the Romans, the escape of the lions from the Danube and their subsequent slaughter by the opposing forces were seen as incredibly bad omens for the war.
According to Lucian’s chronology, this botched sacrifice occurred right before one of the most embarrassing events of Emperor Marcus Aurelius’ reign. Not long after the Roman forces launched their assault across the Danube in 167 or 168, an army of Germanic warriors snuck around the Roman lines and managed to embark on a surprise invasion of northeast Italy, going so far as to besiege the city of Aquileia, along the Adriatic Sea. Lucian of Samosata, musing over the inaccurate prophecy of Glycon, recalled, “what came ‘straightway’ was a most appalling disaster to our troops, with something like twenty thousand completely destroyed. Then followed the events at Aquileia, when the city narrowly escaped being captured” (Alexander or the False Prophet, section 48). It was a scary time, hinting at vulnerabilities that would doom Rome in later centuries. Nevertheless, Marcus Aurelius and his legions were able to respond to the invasion and push the Germanic forces back to the Danube borderlands, where warfare would continue for almost the entirety of the emperor’s remaining life.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Illustration labeled “The Lion Bas-Reliefs” by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (c. 1720-1778), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the Finnish National Gallery).).
Sources:
- Lucian, Selected Dialogues, translated by C. D. N. Costa. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World Classics), 2005, 2006, 2009.
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marcus-Aurelius-Roman-emperor
