Legio IIII Italica
Gordian III (Louvre)
This legion is only known from a text known as Notitia Dignitatum, a list of Roman officials and army units that existed in the last decade of the fourth century. It belonged to the field army of the Orient, but the legion must have been created as garrison of a province.
The birth of the Fourth Italian legion can not be dated, but must be
in the first half of the third century, because after c.250 Italy was no
longer associated with the best part of the empire. The emperor Gordian
III (238-244) is the most likely creator of this unit after he had
disbanded III
Augusta. He may have needed it during his campaign agaist the Sasanian
empire in Persia.
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