Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

troops: categories, conditions of service, numbers 289
be incorporated into the mobile armies led by magistri militum. The relatively
static limitanei naturally dug themselves in to their localities. Service in the
imperial army gave influence and a desirable status in places where the military
risk was slight: units at Syene in Egypt and Nessana in Palestine in the
sixth century reveal considerable family continuity among their members, 2
and, though this can be explained by the legal requirement for veterans’ sons
to enlist in place of their fathers, enrolment was a privilege for which a fee
was payable, like entrance to a club. On some frontiers, if not on all (the evidence
is eastern), limitanei were assigned lands to ensure their maintenance,
and such properties were sufficiently desirable to be coveted by outsiders. 3
The quality of limitanei was open to criticism, particularly by observers
eager to accuse an emperor of inadequate attention to provincial safety;
stationary units might be allocated the weaker members of a draft of conscripts
and were accorded less advantageous tax exemptions for their families.
On the other hand, they guaranteed an imperial presence in frontier
regions, thereby helping to protect local security and communications and
to define the sphere of Roman authority. The cost was moderate, since the
soldiers were partly supported by the territories they directly protected, and
eastern emperors sensibly took steps to maintain the limitanei: Theodosius
II legislated in 443 that numbers and training be kept up, various abuses
eradicated, and an annual report submitted by the magister officiorum in the
imperial consistory; Justinian re-established them in Africa to protect the
frontiers of the newly reconquered provinces. When Attila wished to
secure his authority over the Huns, he demanded that an uncultivated noman’s-land
five days’ journey in width should be created south of the
Danube: Roman presence at frontiers mattered, since this helped to control
all cross-border movement, whether hostile, commercial or transhumant. 4
The comitatenses can be divided into two broad categories, those in the
central or palatine forces that were based in the vicinity of the imperial capitals,
Ravenna and Constantinople, and were commanded by a magister
militum praesentalis, and those in regional armies commanded by magistri
militum with a geographic specification. At Constantinople there were two
praesental armies, probably billeted on either side of the Bosphorus; there
were three regional commands in the east (Illyricum, Thrace and Oriens)
and one in the west (Gaul); there was still a smaller, but significant, group of
comitatenses in Africa commanded by a comes, although comparable units in
Spain, Britain and the western Balkans had probably ceased to exist by 420.
When not on active campaign, units of mobile armies were often billeted in
cities, a procedure open to considerable exploitation in spite of the legislation
intended to regulate abuses. Units stationed closest to the imperial
2 Keenan (1990); Rémondon (1961); Kraemer (1958). 3 Theodosius II, Nov. 5.3; 24.
4 Theodosius II, Nov. 24; CJ i.27.2.8; Priscus fr. 11.1.11–14 (Blockley).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008