Companion_to_the_Roman_Army_(Blackw(BookFi.org)

Introduction 3The army retained a central role in the power structures within the empire. Addressingthe Roman Senate, Augustus used the phrase “I and the army are well,” leaving nodoubt about who ruled the empire and with what backing. Hence the close connectionbetween emperor and armies was an important message to convey not onlyto the senators in Italy and peoples throughout the empire, but – most crucially –to the armies as well. While the Praetorian Guard, which was stationed near Rome,played an important role on the accession to the throne of Claudius in 41 ad, inthe civil wars of 68–69 ad the armies of the Rhine, Danube, and the East decidedwho would be put on the throne. While the nature of the relationship between theemperors and the senatorial class (to which belonged many of the authors on whosehistorical narrative we nowadays rely) colors – and possibly distorts – our picture ofindividual emperors, the most important development in the position of the emperorduring the next centuries may be said to have been the changing relationship betweenarmy and emperor. Whatever their qualities and intentions, emperors could not functionwithout maintaining close relations with the troops. One of the problems wasthat many units were almost permanently stationed in the same region, and drewrecruits from their locality. Troops developed regional ties that proved stronger intimes of crisis than the ties with Rome or the emperor. In the mid-third century adthe position of emperor became the prize in a struggle between the various armiesstationed in Britain, along the Rhine and Danube, and in the East. Diocletian(284–305) and Constantine (312–337) managed to restore control of the armies.In the meantime, however, Rome and Italy had lost their centrality, while internalthreats played as much a role in the development of the army as did external wars.The traditional view of the late Roman Empire held that, as the nature of theopponents along the borders changed and their strength became ever greater, theempire threatened to collapse under the stress, leading on the one hand to morestate control of society in order to maintain military strength, on the other hand toa weakening army, consisting more and more of barbaric peoples or farmer-soldiersof dubious military value. This picture now seems largely untrue: the central authoritiesdid not suffocate civil society in order to maintain the war effort, nor were theRoman armies of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries ad less capable of striking forcefulblows at their opponents. In the fourth century, many Germanic peoples servedin the Roman armies. The landowners paid money to hire men, and kept their ownpeople on the land. The western half of the Roman Empire did indeed collapse, asafter the battle of Adrianople large tracts of land came under the control of migratingGermanic peoples – in particular Vandals, Visigoths, and Ostrogoths – who wereeventually allowed to settle under their own rule, but who increasingly made it impossiblefor the central Roman authorities to gather the resources necessary to sustaina sizeable army of their own. The armies of the emperor Justinian (527–565), whichwere backed by a populous eastern empire and reconquered Italy, northern Africa,and southern Spain from their Germanic kings, may be seen as the last Roman armies.