Alan raid of 135

In the early 130s Pharasmanes II of Iberia (in modern Georgia), a Roman client king who sought more independence, quarrelled with Hadrian. In 135 he let the Alans — Sarmatian nomads living north of the Caucasus, whose army was made up mostly of mailed cavalry — through the Darial Pass. They plundered Caucasian Albania and the Parthian vassal kingdom of Media Atropatene and moved on Armenia, where King Vologases — the Parthian Vologases III or, on another reading, Vologases I of Armenia — bought them off, and then turned towards Cappadocia. Cassius Dio says that the war came to a stop because the Alans were won over by Vologases’ gifts and “stood in dread of Flavius Arrianus, the governor of Cappadocia”.

Arrian — a Greek from Nicomedia, pupil of Epictetus and author of the Anabasis of Alexander, governor of Cappadocia since 131 or 132 — concentrated his two legions and auxiliaries, by modern estimates some 18,000 men, and marched to the frontier. The Alans withdrew over the Caucasus, most likely without a pitched battle. Arrian’s own short treatise Order of Battle against the Alans (Ektaxis kata Alanon) survives in part: it sets out how the army was to march and deploy against the nomad horsemen, though it may have been written as much for literary effect as for practical use. Hadrian did not punish Pharasmanes, and under Antoninus Pius the Iberian king visited Rome and was received with honour.