excerpts from the 1888 Chambers's Encyclopedia of Universal Knowledge

The Thundering Legion

LEGION,THE THUNDERING-(Lat. Legio Fulminatrix), a legion of the Roman army which is the subject of a well-known miraculous legend. During Marcus Aurelius's war with the Marcomanni (174A.D.),his army, according to this narrative, being shut up in a mountainous defile, was reduced to great straits by want of water; when, a body of Christian soldiers having prayed to the God of the Christians, not only was rain sent seasonably to relieve their thirst, but this rain was turned upon the enemy in the shape of a fearful thunder-shower, under cover of which the Romans attacked and utterly routed them. The legion to which these soldiers belonged was thence, according to one of the narrators, called the Thundering Legion. This legend has been the subject of much controversy; and it is certain that the last told circumstance at least is false, as the name ' thundering legion ' existed long before the date of this story. There would appear, nevertheless, to have been some foundation for the story, however it may have been embellished by the pious zeal of the Christians. The scene is represented on the column of Antonius. The event is recorded by the pagan historian Dion Cassius (lxxi. 8), who attributes it to Egyptian sorcerers; and by Capitolinus and Themistius, the latter of whom ascribes it to the prayers of Aurelius himself. It is appealed to by the nearly contemporary Tertullian, in his Apology (c. 5), and is circumstantially related by Eusebius, by Jerome, and Orosius. It may not improbably be conjectured, supposing the substantial truth of the narrative, that the fact of one of the legions being called by the name ' Thundering ' may have led to the localizing of the story, and that it may have, in consequence, been ascribed to this particular legion, which was supposed to have received its name from the circumstance.

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