A book by any other name

In 1994, I wrote a somewhat critical review of Yann Le Bohec’s L’armée romaine sous le haut-empire, which had recently appeared in an English-language version. (The review is buried in a long-forgotten edition of Liverpool Classical Monthly.)

The original book was published in 1989, and apparently appeared in a second edition in 1998, a third edition in 2002, and a fourth in 2018 (all unbeknown to me). These later versions don’t seem to have been reviewed anywhere.

Having already purchased the original (twice) — and having struggled to enjoy Le Bohec’s book about the third-century army —, I am understandably reluctant to buy the new one, which (in paperback) retails for around £32 (€40).

Imagine my surprise, then, on finding (in my favourite online lending library) a 2004 Spanish version, El ejército romano, with “revisión científica” by the historian (mostly prehistorian, it seems) Francisco Gracia Alonso of Barcelona University. Could this be Le Bohec’s third edition?

Textbook or manifesto?

In 1989, L’armée romaine sous le haut-empire wasn’t just a book about the Roman army. Rather, it was a book about Le Bohec’s vision of the Roman army. These turned out to be two different things.

Here, in this edition, Le Bohec still promises to follow “a principle that we shall call ‘totality’”. (Incidentally, I have translated all quotations from El ejército romano for convenience.)

In fact, I found, thirty-odd years ago, that this wasn’t the comprehensive handbook that Le Bohec’s globalité (‘totality’) suggested. The question is, has anything changed in this (let’s call it the third) edition?

(And if you protest that this is all very academic, as Le Bohec’s fourth edition might be a completely new book, please remember that there will surely be enough people still reading the third edition, Spanish or not.)

Archaeology, but not as we know it

One of my original criticisms was about the lack of archaeological discussion, or even an appreciation of the contribution of archaeology. Unfortunately, this shortcoming has not been addressed.

Actually, Le Bohec has a peculiar idea of archaeology, summed up in his opening comment, that “excavations provide us with more than just inscriptions”. But for him, inscriptions are definitely the highlight, along with monumental sculpture, which is also subsumed under “archaeology”. (Later in the book, he remarks that “archaeology has revealed some interesting reliefs”, in reference to Trajan’s Column!) Great importance is also accorded to aerial photography, chiefly by Père Poidebard (whose 150th birthday is coming up soon — couldn’t he think of someone more recent?).

However, admittedly, a new paragraph has been added, with the revelation that “Recent work has drawn attention to a previously overlooked reality: soldiers need not only weapons, but also a range of items that constitute military equipment”! This has, at least, prompted Le Bohec to excise his original reference to Paul Couissin’s vintage Les armes romaines of 1926 (though it still appears in his bibliography) and replace it with Michel Feugère’s Les armes des Romains, a book that (as I pointed out elsewhere) has its own problems.

Having introduced the subject of military equipment, Le Bohec has added a paragraph to the “Tactics” chapter, explaining that “legionaries and auxiliaries possessed equipment that was much more similar than previously thought, although it did exhibit great diversity”. So ... the same but different.

Otherwise, archaeology is only deployed, as it was in 1989, in a facile attempt to gauge the size of the Praetorian Guard by providing a “decisive argument” (p. 29 = 1989 p. 21): the praetorians cannot have been as numerous as a legion, because their fort in Rome is smaller than a legionary fortress!

And archaeology is briefly mentioned in the section on sieges. But it is symptomatic of this idiosyncratic book that the original perfectly-judged footnote referring to the work of Adolf Schulten on the siege-works at Masada, and the comments of archaeologist Sir Ian Richmond based on aerial photographs taken by the RAF, have been replaced by a reference to a 1995 book by a French historian: Mireille Hadas-Lebel’s Massada.

Changes, but not for the better

Le Bohec displays a pride in French scholarship. We can see that in his preference for French publications over more pertinent non-French publications. That’s perhaps understandable. But references like “Carcopino, Mél. P Thomas, 1930” are not very helpful for Spanish (or, for that matter, any non-French) readers.

But this example serves a dual purpose.

It is one of the many niggling inaccuracies that permeate the book. The reference accompanies the statement that “Auxiliaries served twenty-five years in the time of Augustus, twenty-six from the middle of the 1st century onwards, and twenty-eight from the time of Caracalla”. Any moderately well-informed editor would immediately have realized that this is a description (admittedly, somewhat garbled) of the terms of service not of auxiliaries, but of fleet personnel.

(The 1930 Carcopino article, incidentally, is his publication of the military diploma of 30 April AD 166 that became CIL XVI, 122.)

Another peculiarity is the tendency to present insufficiently explored ideas as facts. For example, in one of the few newly inserted paragraphs, four sentences are added (on p. 17) on the subject of military diplomas, essentially repeating what already exists on p. 14 (= 1989 p. 10, where diplomas were first mentioned, with a blanket reference to L’Année épigraphique, as if each volume of that journal were packed with diplomas), although the citation of “M. Roxan, Roman Military Diplomas” has been updated to reflect the availability of “4 vols., 1978–2003”. (Six have now been published.)

However, Le Bohec takes this opportunity to repeat his peculiar belief that discharge from service entailed the issuing of an epistula missoria (no evidence is provided) before the lex data (the edict preserved in the military diploma) was enacted. (He has perhaps muddled up the handful of ‘discharge certificates’ that Nesselhauf gathered in 1936 in the Appendix to CIL XVI, which are quite obviously distinct from diplomas and nothing to do with them. But nor are they epistulae. The mystery remains unsolved.)

Addenda?

There has certainly been an attempt to mention more recent publications, even if their content is not reflected in the text. New footnotes appear, for example, in the Introduction, flagging up Le Bohec’s 1998 article about Onasander (but not C.J. Smith’s paper from the same year), C.R. Whittaker’s Les frontières de l’empire romain (but not the English translation), S. Perea Yébenes’ Collegia militaria (sensible for Spanish readers), M.A. Speidel’s Die römischen Schreibtafeln von Vindonissa (which are not discussed anywhere in the book), and the Mons Claudianus ostraca graeca et latina volumes I–II (likewise; incidentally, a third volume appeared in 2000).

But the main text seems rarely to have been altered. The paragraph that previously discussed the peregrini as spies and assassins who occupied the castra peregrina in Rome has been redrafted and now denies the existence of these men, but includes instead a class of “displaced soldiers” who “do not have Roman citizenship and correspond to the Latin term peregrini”, which all seems rather odd.

All of this gives the impression of a book that has been tinkered with, rather than revised.

No corrigenda?

Near the beginning, Le Bohec’s complaint that “researchers occasionally rely upon erroneous information” seems deeply ironic, given that the same mistakes that I noted thirty years ago (and there were many) are still there and the whole book now feels curiously outdated. To name a few examples, Le Bohec’s auxiliaries still wear leather tunics “sometimes covered with metal plates”, his trierarchi are still “undoubtedly” the same as centurions of the fleet, we are still told that the equites singulares “constituted a reserve and a training school for non-commissioned officers”, and the emperor Antoninus Pius still enjoys “a great reputation as a general”. None of these errors has been corrected.

Likewise, although he continues to scold those who “enjoy using Latin terms for any reason — and, naturally, most of the time for no reason at all — the precise meaning of which they do not know”, his own usage (which, as I charitably observed in my 1994 review, “occasionally lapses”) remains uncorrected.

The discussion of the three-element Roman name still includes the praenomen “Caius”, although (as I explained here) no such name ever existed. Readers are still (mis)informed that the trecenarius took his name from having commanded the 300 Praetorian speculatores. And the word vallum (“rampart”) is still translated as “palisade of timber”. More examples could be given.

But it is tedious to go through all of this again, and a little depressing.

To do list

Whatever is in the new edition of the book, I truly hope that any outdated bibliography has been excised. When the subject is soldiers’ epitaphs, we really shouldn’t be sent in search of Jean-Jacques Hatt’s 1951 book on La tombe Gallo-romaine or Jean-Marie Lassère’s mammoth 1973 paper in Antiquités africaines. There simply must be something more appropriate by now.

Le Bohec’s temptation to cite his own (rather specialized) 600-page tome on La Troisième Légion Auguste on the subject of dating inscriptions may be understandable. But perhaps the likes of Lawrence Keppie’s 1991 book Understanding Roman Inscriptions might better fit the bill?

We can only hope that the fourth edition will bring “a readable, informative and well-balanced work that will be of interest to scholars as well as general readers” (as one reviewer of the first edition rashly claimed).