Late Roman Army
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Late Roman Army

Karen R. Dixon, Pat Southern

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eBook - ePub

Late Roman Army

Karen R. Dixon, Pat Southern

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About This Book

Using a full range of original literary sources, modern Continental scholarship, and current archaeological research, Pat Southern and Karen R. Dixon provide a stimulating overview of the historical period, the critical changes in the army, and the way these changes affected the morale of the soldiers.

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Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2014
ISBN
9781134724291
Topic
History
Edition
1

I
Sources

There has been a vast increase in the publication of secondary source material on the Roman army in recent years. Various aspects of Roman military history have been discussed by a growing body of scholars, such as Luttwak (1976) who examined the broader issues of frontier strategy, and more recently Whittaker (1994) who reassessed frontier policy in general. Intelligence gathering and the use of diplomacy in the Late Empire have been studied by Lee (1993) and Austin and Rankov (1995). Precisely because these authors have discussed these specialist fields, this book does not aim to go over the same ground. Rather, it is intended to document the physical presence and appearance of the army from an archaeological and historical point of view. Lack of space precludes any in-depth discussion of methods of warfare or the tactics of particular battles.
A large part of the ancient source material concerning the army is of an administrative nature. The relevant sections of the two great law codes, the Codex Theodosianus and the Digest of Justinian, illustrate the problems faced by the military authorities over the changing years of the late Empire. The Codex Theodosianus was published in the reign of Theodosius II. Many of the problems of using any ancient source material prevail, in that the compilers were themselves using sources already about a century old, which may not have been totally reliable. The Codex is arranged by subject groupings, but military affairs can be found under more than one heading; perhaps the greatest value of the Codex lies in the provision of firm dates. The laws clearly concern a situation that the emperors wanted to achieve, rather than the situation as it actually was, and the repeated reiterations of laws, sometimes listing penalties of increasing severity, reveal that the law was not supreme in the Empire and that the will of the emperors was not enough to ensure good behaviour. The Digest contains less information about military matters, but yields a wealth of social detail.
A document that has been discussed by modern authors for many years is the Notitia Dignitatum, which is literally a list of civil and military officials, and their staffs, listed by title or rank, complete with an enumeration of the commanding officers and the names of the units in garrison at various forts and military establishments. This sort of official and authoritative document promises much in the way of reliable information, but ultimately creates more questions than answers. The most important fact to remember is that such a document would need constant revision, and although the Notitia can be said, broadly speaking, to represent the army of the late fourth century, the complete text is composed of elements of different dates, and therefore it is not representative of the whole Empire at one time. The version that has come down to us is the western one, in which the information for the eastern Empire probably predates that for the west. Furthermore it is not a complete record of all the forts, garrisons, units and military establishments of the whole Empire. Used with caution, however, the Notitia is invaluable, simply because there is nothing to match it for the study of the late army.
Ancient authors who were concerned directly with the army include Vegetius, Ammi-anus, Procopius and the Anonymous. Vegetius was not a military commander, but a civilian official with a sense of history, who at some uncertain date compiled a lot of disparate information drawn from many different periods into a book designed to encourage the Emperor of his day (perhaps Theodosius I, alias Theodosius the Great) to improve the army. The work is not reliable as a portrait of the late army, but only of what was wrong with it and what had been lost, but since this is a matter of Vegetiusā€™ personal opinion, it is also a matter for debate, and so his writings must be used with caution.
Ammianus Marcellinus is the supreme authority for the fourth-century army. He was a military man, born at Antioch c. 330, who saw active service, and incorporated into his history accounts of events that he had witnessed or had lived through. The first thirteen books of his narrative are lost. In these he documented the history of the Empire from 96 to c. 350, for which he would have used older sources. Books 14 to 31 concern the history of the Empire from the mid-fourth century to the battle of Adrianople. Ammianus is generally considered to be reliable and, compared to some writers, remarkably free from religious or personal bias, save for his extreme partiality to Julian. The work of the Anonymous is a fantastic collection of ideas for improvements to the army, addressed to the Emperors Valentinian and Valens. Some of this unknown authorā€™s suggestions seem plausible to the modern scholar, and reveal a few of the defects of the late fourth-century army, but the more ambitious machinery which he describes leave something to be desired in the practical sense. Procopius was a sixth-century author who wrote the History of the Wars, about the campaigns of Justinian. Like Ammianus, he described contemporary events, incorporating details about the army and how it operated. His alternative work, the Secret History, is so vituperative that it cannot be used with any confidence.
The military manual attributed to Maurice, called the Strategikon, was probably written at the end of the fifth century or the beginning of the sixth, and therefore its use in connection with the army of the fourth and fifth centuries is anachronistic. But the information contained in this work is of such an eminently practical and sensible nature that it seems more relevant than the speculations of the improving authors such as Vegetius and the Anonymous.
A large amount of Latin and Greek literature survives with sporadic or fragmentary relevance to the army. The Historia Augusta purports to document the events of each emperorā€™s reign, but the work is neither carefully researched nor systematically presented. Recent scholarship has established that there was only one author, rather than several different ones as named in the work (Syme 1971; White, 1967). The date of composition is also disputed (Baynes 1953). In some instances, the information is little better than gossip, and reliance upon any statement would be ill advised. Similarly, the various panegyrics addressed to the later emperors cannot be taken at face value because of their overt and pronounced bias, and staunchly positive outiook. Nevertheless, they cannot be completely ignored, and do provide a broad general background against which to evaluate military events.
Letters, poems, essays and speeches occasionally reveal useful information about the army. Ausonius, born at Bordeaux c. 310, wrote optimistically of the state of Gaul around the last three or four decades of the fourth century. Sidonius, bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, provided the same sort of information for the mid-fifth century. The speeches of Symmachus, a pagan orator (c. 340-402) and Synesius, a Christian (c. 370-413) provide differing views on the state of the Empire and what should be done about the barbarians. The fourth-century Orations oi Themistius strike a more reasoned note on the subject of the barbarians. The Christian/pagan bias in the literature of the late Empire distorts to varying degrees the value of the sources. The life of Constantine was well documented and the literature survives by dint of its extreme value to the Church authorities, but it was not only Christian writings that survived. It is refreshing to note that as well as sickening panegyrics, hostile narratives were also preserved, regardless of the religious convictions of the victim. The Christian author Lactantius blamed Diocletian for all the ills of the Empire, while Zosimus, the pagan, blamed Constantine instead.
Epigraphic evidence for the late Empire is perhaps less abundant than for the earlier Empire, but is still vast, covering a wide range of provinces and a broad time-scale. The great builders, such as Diocletian, Constantine and Valentinian, are better represented epi-graphically than most others. The information about some Imperial decrees survives only in epigraphic form, such as Diocletianā€™s famous price edict, by which he attempted to stabilize the economy. Many inscriptions were reused as building materials, and although this means that they are no longer in situ and cannot reveal much about the buildings they came from, they are still useful and can supplement the written sources by documenting the details which were not considered important or interesting by the literati.
There is a fairly extensive body of papyrological evidence for the late army The duty rosters of Cohors XX Palmyrenorum stationed at Dura-Europos in the third century reveal that bureaucratic documentation had not diminished, but the detail about routine procedures is perhaps more applicable to the army of the early Empire than it is to the late army. The correspondence of the commanding officer at the fort of Dionysias is more relevant, and has been published as The Abinnaeus Archive with translation and commentary.
Archaeological remains include military equipment, coins and pottery, and skeletal finds, all of which have been made to yield considerable evidence about the late army, its appearance, and to a lesser extent its movements. Military equipment is perhaps the most exciting aspect of archaeology of the late army, imbued as it is with the ideas of both living personality and military glory. Skeletal evidence speaks for itself, revealing much information about the height, state of health and often cause of death of the person concerned. Coins are useful indicators of Imperial propaganda, as well as being helpful in providing dating evidence on archaeological sites. Pottery is also used as dating material, and can illustrate the quality of milndane daily life. Finally, buildings themselves are important documents if considered from the point of view of geographical location, architectural history and archaeological remains. Study of them can augment our knowledge derived from literary and epigraphic sources, and if taken in conjunction with this supplementary information can fill in some of the gaps in understanding of the late army. Unfortunately the degree of investigation of late Roman buildings has not been as intense as it has for the early Empire, so that the internal arrangements of forts is as yet little understood, and since the supposed standardization of earlier forts (now proving rather more elusive than hitherto expected) was abandoned in the late period, it is not possible to draw definite conclusions about the organization of the units in occupation, nor even about their relative strengths. As for the mobile army, it is not in abundant evidence on the ground; neither buildings nor documents nor archaeological finds can pin it down sufficiently to enable scholars to produce a complete picture. There are only glimpses of it here and there and from time to time.

II
Crisis and Transition

The late Roman army was ultimately a product of the reforms of Diocletian and the more far-reaching measures taken by Constantine, but a discussion of its origins must begin in the late second century in order to illustrate the background to the reforms of these two emperors. There are certain landmarks in the origins of the late Roman army, conventionally placed by modern scholars in the reigns of Marcus Aurelius, Severus and Gallienus. Any evaluation of the development of this army must take these landmarks into account, but with this proviso: that it is important to realize that the successive remodelling of the army that occurred between the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Constantine was not undertaken as part of a steady progression by logical stages towards an established goal. The benefit of hindsight enables scholars to discern, in the changes in military organization made by Marcus, Severus, Gallienus and Diocletian, the embryonic forms of the later army, with the result that it seems that there are definite links in the chain of development connecting the armies which Marcus Aurelius assembled on the Danube, with the later field armies of Constantine. This is not, strictly speaking, the case, and has been the subject of debate for nearly a century.
Changes which were made at any time in the command structure of the Roman army and in the organization of troops must of necessity have been related to the problems faced at that time, or more specifically to problems most recently faced and overcome. At no stage could the Roman high command be expected to make long-term predictions as to the nature of future threats and accordingly take in advance the necessary preventive measures. It goes without saying that if there are links in the chain between the army reforms of the late second or early third centuries and those of the fourth, they are retrospective and empirical, based on experience of what had gone before and what had proved most effective in dealing with threats from different sources. The task of the archaeologist and the historian is to try to assess at what point, if any, can it be said that the changes in the army are truly unrelated, unprecedented and original.
The Roman Empire reached its greatest territorial extent during the reign of Trajan, who conducted major offensives in Dacia and in the East. His successors, the less warlike Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, made adjustments to the frontiers resulting in some further gains of territory, but these were not major additions and can be seen more as a rationalizing process whereby frontier defence was facilitated. Hadrian fell into disfavour by abandoning some of Trajanā€™s conquests, probably because he did not think that the Empireā€™s resources were sufficient to hold them. For several years the Empire was, on the whole, peaceful, and the orator Aelius Aristides waxed enthusiastic about Romeā€™s frontiers. But this peace was not long maintained.
Tomlin (1987,107) points out that the first signs of strain on military resources occurred during the wars in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. The Emperor dealt with the situation by brigading together vexillations and whole army units from different parts of the Empire, to create field armies distinct from the provincial armies already stationed in the threatened areas. This use of vexillations was not a new idea, but the size of these armies and the duration of the wars foreshadow the adaptations which future emperors made to their armies in order to defend the Empire. One important development which can be traced to Marcusā€™ reign is the promotion of military commanders on the grounds of their suitability for the tasks to be performed, regardless of their social origins or whether they had passed through all the relevant progressive stages of the traditional cursus honorum. Thus the rudiments of two of the important changes in the organization of the army were already apparent at the end of the second century.
A great number of writers are of the opinion that the true beginning of Romeā€™s decline is clearly recognizable in the reign, and sometimes in the personality, of Septimius Severus. Gibbon acknowledged that Severus brought peace to the Empire, albeit ruthlessly and at great cost, and in the end the long-term effects were disastrous, so that while contemporaries of Severus excused his methods, ā€˜posterity ā€¦ justly considered him the principal author of the decline of the Roman Empire.ā€™ Rostovtzeff (1957, 710, n. 10) went even further, and attributed the beginning of the end of the Empire to the ā€˜ambition and unscrupulous policy of Septimius Severusā€™. Boak (1955, 19) dates the beginning of serious manpower shortages to Severusā€™ reign, and MacMullen (1963,156) and Walbank (1969, 68; 77) both consider that Severusā€™ reforms of the army laid the foundations for most of the problems which occurred later on.
It is apparent, then, that in this Emperorā€™s reign there are detectable changes which seem to foreshadow the development of the late Roman army. It is debatable, however, whether the measures taken by Severus are to be seen as the nascent stages of the process which culminated in the Diocletianic and Constantinian reforms, or whether they were adaptations to the needs of the moment, with little or no bearing on later decisions.

Severusā€™ Army Reforms

It is necessary to describe the Empire as Severus found it, paying particular attention to the military establishment, before discussing the changes which he made to it. This brief survey is merely intended to set the scene, highlighting the broad details of the late second and early third-century army, and therefore does not enter into the finer arguments about various points which merit much lengthier treatment.
At the end of the second century, when Severus fought his way to supreme power, Rome was still the capital of an undivided Empire, the administrative nerve centre of an agglomeration of provinces and the seat of the Emperorā€™s authority. The Senate still exercised a somewhat curtailed influence. Political and military advancement went hand in ā€œhand, and was achieved by following the various stages of the cursus honorum, a blend of both civilian and military posts of more or less graded importance. Legionary legates and most provincial governors were senators. There were limited opportunities for the middle classes or equites to rise to high rank, but there were already certain avenues by which they could rise to power; the governors of Egypt, for instance, were always equestrian prefects.
The frontiers of the Roman Empire were of several different types. Some of them were completely open with scarcely any boundary definition, others were provided with only a road as boundary, yet others followed the lines of rivers, and some of them were closed off by physical running barriers. These barriers were not of uniform design, except that most were accompanied by one or more ditches. Hadrianā€™s Wall in England is extremely elaborate, composed of three separate features: a ditch to the north, then the wide stone wall with turrets, milecastles and forts strung out along it, and finally the larger ditch to the south, known...

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