The gritty intimacy of the Roman army

Sometimes a tiny element of something is so irritating that it colours our view of the whole thing.

I have been reading a book in which the author repeatedly uses the meaningless phrase “by far and away”, when he means either “far and away” or (more likely) “by far”, but not a fusion of both. Silly, isn’t it?

But this is the least of the problems that I encountered in my spirited attempt to plough through Guy de la Bédoyère’s 500-page 2020 book Gladius, subtitled “The World of the Roman Soldier”. (Incidentally, I see that, in the latest reprint, this has already changed to “Living, Fighting and Dying in the Roman Army” — presumably to match the same author’s Populus: Living and Dying in Ancient Rome.)

Definitely not a handbook

The author opens by excusing himself from writing a handbook or a history in favour of presenting a rather impressionistic image of what he imagines “it was like to be a soldier in the army that brought the Romans their vast empire”. A three-page listing of Roman emperors takes the timeline from Augustus in 27 BC to Valens in AD 378, although the author claims to “focus mainly on the Roman army up to the time of Constantine I”. So it’s quite definitely a book about “the army of the emperors” (although page after page is devoted to the Republican army, presumably to boost the page count).

Missing provinces

The accompanying map of the Roman Empire is, unfortunately, an unintended mish-mash of periods. As we glance from left to right, we travel back through time — part of the map belongs to the mid-2nd century AD, since Pannonia has been divided and the Antonine Wall built, but part is still in the 1st century AD, since Arabia does not exist and Judaea has not yet become Palaestina, and part even seems to predate Augustus, since the only “Major Battles” shown are Trasimene, Cannae, Zama, Carrhae, and Actium. Curious and confusing.

As clear as a cloudy day

The text is all a little vague, a little woolly. Ideas parade as facts, and I worry about the impression of the Roman army that the average interested reader will gain. We should brace ourselves for a slew of factoids generated by this book. Nothing is stated precisely. Everything is rather cloudy, rather nebulous. Redundant phrases are added for padding. “The Roman army reached its most coherent and consistent form under the emperors”, we read in the Introduction, “especially from the time of Augustus until the middle of the third century AD”. So, let’s be clear: the author is saying that the army of the emperors reached its most coherent form during the period of the emperors. Very informative.

Apparently, “auxiliary organization varied wildly”. I beg to differ. Three basic unit-types, available in two generalized sizes, doesn’t seem overly “wild” to me. And yet, we are informed that “they were in a constant state of flux”. How so? The author believes that “it is impossible to say how many legions and auxiliary units there were in the Roman army at any point in Roman history”, owing no doubt to this “flux”. This kind of statement is, at best, unhelpful, or (let’s speak plainly) just wrong.

Spurious facts

It would be tedious to fact-check absolutely everything (perhaps the University of Chicago Press editor should have done this?) but I was taken aback by just how many statements are incorrect, just how many assertions are untrue.

For example, Zosimus did not “dismiss Valerian as ‘effeminate and indolent’”, but gives rather the opposite impression. Diocletian did not divide the army into a fixed frontier defence force and four “highly mobile forces that could race to trouble spots”. The Praetorian Guard was not called the Cohortes Praetorianae, and the Germani corporis custodes were not “hired by some emperors”. The eques singularis Augusti Aurelius Martinus (pictured here) did not belong to “the cavalry attached to the Praetorian Guard”.

Victor, the Moorish freedman of the cavalryman Numerianus of the ala I Asturum (depicted below, reclining on a funeral couch), did not serve at South Shields, and the author does not explain (beyond wishful thinking) how “the text makes it clear that the two were engaged in a same-sex relationship”. Our primary evidence does not “include writing tablets preserved in bogs in northern Britain” (presumably an allusion to the Vindolanda tablets, and a phrase I have had occasion to query before, when Jonathan Roth, in his 2009 book Roman Warfare, informed his readers that Vindolanda “was built, inadvertently, on a bog. When it began to sink, it was abandoned”).

Errors abound

The inscription listing the legions under Marcus Aurelius does not “list all the legions and the provinces in which they were stationed”. (This latter error probably arose as a result of using Brian Campbell’s ‘translation’ of the inscription, which adds the names of provinces in brackets, rather than consulting the primary evidence, as he claims to have done in the Foreword.)

It is nonsensical to suggest that “Legio XXX was supposed to be the first of a new series of legions, starting with XXX”. The word vexillationes for legionary detachments does not mean “wings”. The fact that auxiliary cohorts numbered approximately 500 men was probably not because “anything bigger might have risked creating a potential rebel force of dangerous size”, and probably has more to do with logistics and provisioning.

As for the parade held by Gallienus in Rome, probably in AD 263 (not “in around 261”), far from being “a publicity stunt to divert attention for (sic) the military disasters and troubles that had afflicted his reign”, this was none other than the emperor’s decenalia, celebrating ten years in power, no mean feat and definitely deserving of a parade. And Valens was certainly not “the first Roman emperor to be killed in battle by a barbarian force” — that distinction must go to Decius.

Arrant nonsense

It is also irresponsible for the author to inform his general readership (without reference to any evidence) that “even the word Rome itself was derived from the Greek word ῥώμη, which means ‘strength’ or ‘might’”, when this was nothing more than a folk etymology amongst Greek writers intrigued by the similarity of the words. Every schoolchild, Roman or modern, knows that Rome (Roma) was named after Romulus.

The author claims that “the evidence shows that, whatever the position [viz. regarding the military establishment] at one date, it was different at others, and usually in ways we cannot now resolve”. Didn’t an editor, at some point, ask what on earth the author thought he was saying here? (I keep hearing the Rumsfeldian “known unknowns, that we don’t know, and unknown unknowns, that we don’t know we don’t know”.) Is this the “flux” we read about earlier?

When he writes that “It is extremely unlikely that the Romans themselves ever knew the army’s size with any precision”, he is just plain wrong. No two ways about it. This is nonsense. Half-a-dozen or so pages earlier, he just told us that “the army was the Roman world’s biggest bureaucracy”, alluding (I suppose) to the almost fanatical fact-recording evident from the Dura-Europos papyri and elsewhere. Of course they knew exactly how big their army was. They even knew every soldier’s name!

There are many questionable opinions on show, as well. Was the legionary legate really “approaching the climax of his senatorial career”? It might be another decade before he had a shot at the consulship, which opened up the possibility of a major provincial governorship like Britain or Syria. Wasn’t that more likely to be the climax? Then again, we are told that optio is “a word that meant ‘assistant’”, but actually it probably derives from the verb opto, “to choose or select”, meaning that the centurion chose him (which is what Polybius implies, in any case).

Dodgy Latin

The author’s Latin is a little dodgy, too. The word contubernium does not mean “with a tent”; it is the tent, as Tacitus makes clear. The men who sleep in it are the contubernales. An evocatus was not just any soldier “who voluntarily signed on again”, but specifically a Praetorian. It is odd to translate valetudinarium (a hospital) as “place of health/sickness”, and it was not necessary for a vexillum (a flag or banner, normally carried by a detachment of soldiers) to be “erected in the ground to mark the presence of soldiers”. We are told that a centurion placed in charge of a unit was called a princeps praepositus, but this tautology (a man could either be princeps, “chief”, or praepositus, “placed in charge”, but not both) is only found (as far as I’m aware) on a single inscription from Dura Europos (illustrated above), where it occurs, heavily abbreviated, on the bottom line (princ(eps) pr(aepositus) ve[x(illationum)); the same man elsewhere calls himself simply princ(eps) vexill(ationum), which is the normal term.

The plural of signifer is not signifer (this, at least, may be a typographical error), nor is the plural of imaginifer (the standard-bearer responsible for carrying the emperor’s imago or “image”) imaginiferes. (The plural of both words ends in -feri.) The speculatores appear in the text as “the emperor’s personal mounted bodyguard”, but in the Glossary as “scouts”; neither seems quite right. The position of subpraefectus is glossed as “an under-prefect”, chiefly it seems to enable the career of the imperial freedman Tiberius Julius Xanthus to be mentioned, but this seems to have been a shadowy sinecure associated with the imperial fleet, whereas readers are in danger of assuming incorrectly that all praefecti were supplied with a deputy. The non-military term tractator (here, erroneously, tractatorus) is included for the same reason — Xanthus apparently performed this “handling” function (Seneca suggests that it means “masseur”) for the emperors Tiberius and Claudius, presumably before being rewarded with his sub-prefecture.

Unreliable testimonials

Apart from errors of fact and judgement, there are referencing issues, as well. The end note for the career of Tiberius Claudius Maximus, famous as the man quod cepisset Decebalum et caput eius pertulisset Traiano (“who caught Decebalus [King of the Dacians] and delivered his head to Trajan”), refers us to Cassius Dio’s story of the heroism of a badly wounded cavalryman and (inexplicably) a dedication by the townsfolk of Carnuntum for the good health of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. We actually want Dio 68.14.3 for the capture of Decebalus, and AE 1969/70, 583 for the impressive tombstone of Maximus. Incidentally, it is this tombstone that gives us the only instance (again, as far as I’m aware) of a soldier missus voluntarius honesta missione (“released voluntarily with an honourable discharge”). Although we are informed, in the Glossary, that voluntarius indicates “a veteran who volunteered to fight again after retirement”, it rather seems, on the contrary, that Maximus was making the point that, having served for thirty years, it was his decision to call it a day.

The University of Chicago Press copywriters must have been dreaming about a different book when they wrote: “Gladius gives us a portrait of an ancient society that is unprecedented in both its broad sweep and gritty intimacy”.

Likewise, the New York Times reviewer (quoted by the publisher) knows little about Roman studies if he believes that this book “collects pretty much every fact known about what it was like to be in the military arm of the Roman empire”. No, it really doesn’t. But then, this is precisely the danger I alluded to at the start. Brace yourselves for those factoids.