The comitatenses and later the palatini were the units of the field armies of the late Roman Empire . They were the soldiers that replaced the legionaries , who had formed the backbone of the Roman military since the late republic.
30-652: Units such as the Joviani and Herculiani had 5,000 soldiers and 726–800 cavalrymen. Many units' sizes would vary. There were three types of units, the heavy infantry , medium infantry , and light infantry . The comitatenses were the heavy infantry. The auxiliaries , auxilia palatina , and the peltasts were the medium infantry, and the psiloi were the light infantry. Comitatenses regiments consisted of 1,024 soldiers. Comitatenses legions could consist of 6,000 to 7,000 soldiers. Some of these soldiers would be lightly armed, while others would be heavily armed. During
60-507: A battle the army would divide into 3-4 divisions. The army might use a double phalanx to protect its rear. Reserves would be located behind or between each division. In the Late Roman Empire the army was divided into two major units, the limitanei border guards and mobile armies consisting of comitatenses . The limitanei would deal with smaller raids, or, in the case of larger invasions, try to defend or stall long enough for
90-481: A large Roman garrison. Other public amenities included a theatre, a colonnaded street typical of Hellenistic cities and a forum. The major religious shrine was a temple of Demeter , which stood in a sacred precinct on a hill above the harbor. The city adopted official cults of Rome avidly, there were temples dedicated to the Emperor Commodus , a sacred precinct of the city dedicated to Augustus , and
120-509: A temple of Roma dedicated during the late-Republic. The city was sacked in AD 253 by the Goths , but when Diocletian made the city his capital in 283 AD he undertook grand restorations and built an enormous palace, an armory, mint, and new shipyards. The ruins of Nicomedia are buried beneath the densely populated modern city of İzmit , which has largely obstructed comprehensive excavation. Before
150-576: A time, when plague broke out in Constantinople and drove him from his capital in 746–47. From the 840s on, Nicomedia was the capital of the thema of the Optimatoi . By that time, most of the old, seawards city had been abandoned and is described by the Persian geographer Ibn Khurdadhbih as lying in ruins, with settlement restricted to the hilltop citadel. In the 1080s, the city served as
180-589: Is referenced repeatedly in Pliny the Younger 's Epistles to Trajan during his tenure as governor of Bithynia. Pliny, in his letters, mentions several public buildings of the city such as a senate-house, an aqueduct, a forum, a temple of Cybele , and others, and speaks of a great fire, during which the place suffered much. Diocletian made it the eastern capital city of the Roman Empire in 286 when he introduced
210-631: The Castra Praetoria in Rome, and had frequently proved disloyal, making and deposing emperors and even on one occasion in 193 putting the Imperial throne up for auction to the highest bidder (cf: Didius Julianus ). Thus Diocletian, who ruled from Nicomedia , promoted two faithful legions from the Illyricum ( Legio V Iovia and VI Herculia ), the area he was also descended from, to be
240-612: The Battle of Bapheus in 1302, it was threatened by the rising Ottoman beylik . The city was twice besieged and blockaded by the Ottomans (in 1304 and 1330) before finally succumbing in 1337. During the Empire, Nicomedia was a cosmopolitan and commercially prosperous city which received all the amenities appropriate for a major Roman city. Nicomedia was well known for having a bountiful water supply from two to three aqueducts, one of which
270-487: The Byzantine Empire . The Byzantines managed to retake it in the aftermath of the Battle of Ankara , but it fell definitively to the Ottomans in 1419. It was founded in 712–711 BC as a Megarian colony and was originally known as Astacus ( / ˈ æ s t ə k ə s / ; Ancient Greek : Ἀστακός , 'lobster'). After being destroyed by Lysimachus , it was rebuilt by Nicomedes I of Bithynia in 264 BC under
300-520: The Gildonic revolt . Nicomedia Nicomedia ( / ˌ n ɪ k ə ˈ m iː d i ə / ; Greek : Νικομήδεια , Nikomedeia ; modern İzmit ) was an ancient Greek city located in what is now Turkey . In 286, Nicomedia became the eastern and most senior capital city of the Roman Empire (chosen by the emperor Diocletian who ruled in the east), a status which the city maintained during
330-554: The Tetrarchy system (293–324). The Tetrarchy ended with the Battle of Chrysopolis ( Üsküdar ) in 324, when Constantine defeated Licinius and became the sole emperor. In 330 Constantine chose for himself the nearby Byzantium (which was renamed Constantinople , modern Istanbul ) as the new capital of the Roman Empire. The city was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire with the victory of Sultan Orhan Gazi against
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#1732772441905360-670: The Tetrarchy system. Nicomedia was at the center of the Diocletianic Persecution of Christians which occurred under Diocletian and his Caesar Galerius . On 23 February 303 AD, the pagan festival of the Terminalia , Diocletian ordered that the newly built church at Nicomedia be razed, its scriptures burnt, and its precious stones seized. The next day he issued his "First Edict Against the Christians," which ordered similar measures to be taken at churches across
390-463: The comitatenses legions to arrive. These comitatenses would be grouped into field armies . This strategy has been described as " defense in depth ." To conserve manpower , the general would do his best to avoid a pitched battle . Rather than attack the enemy, the legions would form a shield wall and wait for the enemy to attack the Romans. The Romans would use their superior coordination to defeat
420-490: The comitatus ; palatini , elite ("palace") units typically assigned to the magister militum ; and the scholae palatinae of actual palace guards, usually under the magister officiorum , a senior court official of the Late Empire. Among the comitatenses units listed by Notitia Dignitatum are: Jovians and Herculians The Jovians ( Latin : Ioviani ) and Herculians (Latin: Herculiani ) were
450-612: The Christians to start the fire, followed by six more executions through the end of April 303. Soon after Galerius declared Nicomedia to be unsafe and ostentatiously departed the city for Rome, followed soon after by Diocletian. Nicomedia remained as the eastern (and most senior) capital of the Roman Empire until co-emperor Licinius was defeated by Constantine the Great at the Battle of Chrysopolis ( Üsküdar ) in 324. Constantine mainly resided in Nicomedia as his interim capital city for
480-582: The Crusader stronghold was subjected to constant raids by the Emperor of Nicaea Theodore I Laskaris , during which de Loos was captured by Nicaean soldiers; by the summer of 1207 Emperor Henry of Flanders agreed to evacuate Nicomedia in exchange for de Loos and other prisoners Emperor Theodore held. The city remained in Byzantine control for over a century after that, but following the Byzantine defeat at
510-421: The Empire. The destruction of the Nicomedia church incited panic in the city, and at the end of the month a fire destroyed part of Diocletian's palace, followed 16 days later by another fire. Although an investigation was made into the cause of the fires, no party was officially charged, but Galerius placed the blame on the Christians. He oversaw the execution of two palace eunuchs , who he claimed conspired with
540-536: The accepted (substantiated) name for those Roman imperial troops ( legions and auxiliary) which were not merely garrisoned at a limes (fortified border, on the Rhine and Danube in Europe and near Persia and the desert tribes elsewhere)—the limitanei or ripenses , i.e. "along the shores"—but more mobile line troops; furthermore there were second line troops, named pseudocomitatenses , former limitanei attached to
570-525: The city, also led to major discoveries of ancient Nicomedia during the subsequent debris clearing. A wealth of ancient statuary was uncovered, including statues of Hercules , Athena , Diocletian and Constantine. In the years after the earthquake, the Izmit Provincial Cultural Directorate appropriated small areas for excavation, including the site identified as Diocletian's Palace and a nearby Roman theatre. In April 2016
600-491: The enemy. The Emperor would command a comitatenses field army to put down rebellions . Comitatenses is the Latin nominative plural of comitatensis , an adjective derived from comitatus ('company, party, suite'; in this military context it came to the novel meaning of 'the field army'), itself derived from comes ('companion', but hence specific historical meanings, military and civilian). However, historically it became
630-640: The late 4th century document Notitia Dignitatum , they are listed, for the West (bearing the title seniores ), as directly under the command of the magister peditum , and for the East (the iuniores , junior to their counterparts in the West), as being under the command of the magister militum praesentalis . In 398, the Jovians and Herculians of the West were part of the small body that invaded Africa and suppressed
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#1732772441905660-644: The later period of the empire Nicomedia enjoyed the honour of a Roman colony . In 451, the local bishopric was promoted to a Metropolitan see under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople . The metropolis of Nicomedia was ranked 7th in the Notitiae Episcopatuum among the metropolises of the patriarchate. In the eighth century the Emperor Constantine V established his court there for
690-636: The main military base for Alexios I Komnenos in his campaigns against the Seljuk Turks , and the First and Second Crusades both encamped there. The city was briefly held by the Latin Empire following the fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade in 1204: in late 1206 the seneschal Thierry de Loos made it his base, converting the church of Saint Sophia into a fortress; however,
720-459: The name of Nicomedia, and has ever since been one of the most important cities in northwestern Asia Minor . The great military commander Hannibal Barca came to Nicomedia in his final years and committed suicide in nearby Libyssa ( Diliskelesi , Gebze ). The historian Arrian was born there. Nicomedia was the metropolis and capital of the Roman province of Bithynia under the Roman Empire . It
750-515: The next six years, until in 330 he declared the nearby Byzantium (which was renamed Constantinople ) the new capital. Constantine died in a royal villa in the vicinity of Nicomedia in 337. Owing to its position at the convergence of the Asiatic roads leading to the new capital, Nicomedia retained its importance even after the foundation of Constantinople. A major earthquake , however, on 24 August 358, caused extensive devastation to Nicomedia, and
780-579: The personal protectors of the Roman Emperors. On their promotion, the two old legions were renamed Ioviani and Herculiani . The Praetorian Guard continued to exist until its abolishment by Constantine I in ca. 312, and replaced as the imperial guard by the Scholae Palatinae . The two legions however continued to be counted among the senior units of the army, and after its division between East and West , they too were divided. In
810-462: The senior palatine imperial guard units under the rule of Roman Emperor Diocletian (r. 284–305). They continued in existence thereafter as senior units in the field armies of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires . The name originated in the equation of the two co-emperors Diocletian and Maximian with the Roman gods Jove and Hercules . The old-established Praetorian Guard was based at
840-536: The urbanization of the 20th century occurred, select ruins of the Roman-era city could be seen, most prominently sections of the Roman defensive walls which surrounded the city and multiple aqueducts which once supplied Nicomedia's water. Other monuments include the foundations of a 2nd-century AD marble nymphaeum on İstanbul street, a large cistern in the city's Jewish cemetery, and parts of the harbor wall. The 1999 İzmit earthquake , which seriously damaged most of
870-524: Was built in Hellenistic times. Pliny the Younger complains in his Epistulae to Trajan , written in 110 AD, that the Nicomedians wasted 3,318,000 sesterces on an unfinished aqueduct which twice ran into engineering troubles. Trajan instructs him to take steps to complete the aqueduct, and to investigate possible official corruption behind the large waste of money. Under Trajan, there was also
900-461: Was followed by a fire which completed the catastrophe. Nicomedia was rebuilt, but on a smaller scale. In the sixth century under Emperor Justinian I the city was extended with new public buildings. Situated on the roads leading to the capital, the city remained a major military center, playing an important role in the Byzantine campaigns against the Caliphate . From inscriptions we learn that in
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