Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

290 11. the army, c. 420,602
centre were naturally more prestigious than regional units, but there were no
legal distinctions within the comitatenses, in contrast to indications of their
superiority to limitanei.
Both categories of troops were recruited through a mixture of the obligation
to hereditary service imposed on veterans’ sons and traditional conscription
applied on the basis of provincial tax registers. Conscription was,
not surprisingly, unpopular both with landowners who might lose essential
farm labour and with potential conscripts threatened by service at a remote
location. Monetary commutation of recruits (aurum tironicum) offered an
escape from the burden, and was accepted at the government’s discretion,
especially when there was no desperate need for manpower and from areas
whose inhabitants did not have a military reputation. All recruits received
a certificate of enrolment and were assigned to a particular regiment, after
which they became subject to military law: desertion during the conscription
process could be excused, but not thereafter. 5
Mobile armies were stiffened by the recruitment of non-Roman troops
to meet particular military demands, and palatine forces also benefited
from the presence of imperial guards. Non-Romans served in the army
under various arrangements: some were volunteers, for whom imperial
service offered regular pay and relative security and prosperity; others came
from tribes defeated by the Romans or constrained by other circumstances
to surrender, who had accepted a military obligation as part of their peace
settlement. In the latter case, lands might be granted to provide support
during military inactivity and stabilize the tribesmen in an accessible location.
Both methods of acquiring non-Roman soldiers continued in operation,
but the most prominent way of employing tribesmen during the fifth
century was as federate units. These functioned as ethnic contingents
under the leadership of their own chief – basically a tribal, or quasi-tribal,
war-band which might vary in size from a few hundred to the 10,000 or so
controlled by each of the Theoderics in the Balkans in the 470s. The commander
received a Roman title – magister militum for the powerful and successful,
with the consulship as the ultimate accolade – and this gave the
tribesmen access to Roman salaries and provisions. Roman traditionalists
like Vegetius, or those with an axe to grind like Synesius, viewed the
employment of ‘barbarians’ as a disgraceful weakening of the army. In
reality, exploitation of the military potential of neighbours had been an
accepted strategy from the Republic onwards, as a method of annexing
external resources and defusing potential hostility. Roman reliance on federates,
however, had disadvantages in that the mechanics of the agreements
served to increase the independent power of non-Roman leaders: their
strength as patrons grew through disbursement of Roman resources, while
5 Jones, LRE 614–19; Carrié (1986); Whitby (1995) sec. 4.
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