Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

480 17. armies and society in the later roman world
once it had been given its own property. In Merovingian Gaul, Theuderic
employed his army to discipline the Auvergne, probably in 523, after a false
rumour of the king’s death had led some Arvernians to switch allegiance
to Childebert; even the royal army found it difficult to capture fortresses
with their local garrisons. This campaign reveals the complexities of royal
authority: the army, disgruntled by Theuderic’s refusal to join his halfbrothers
in an attack on the Burgundians and seeking an alternative source
of booty, forced the king to conduct the punitive invasion; thus,
Theuderic’s regional assertion of authority was combined with a demonstration
of the power of the military over the king. 37 The Merovingian
kingdom had emerged from the amalgamation, often forcible, of the
heterogeneous war-bands that dominated northern France in the late fifth
century, and this fact conditioned the subsequent relationship of kings and
army.
Theoderic the Amal was well aware of the same problem, since in his
early days in the Balkans he had experienced the crisis of a recalcitrant
war-band when his followers threatened to switch allegiance to Theoderic
Strabo, who at the time appeared to be a better patron; in due course
Theoderic could turn to his advantage a war-band’s fluidity, when he won
over the followers of Strabo’s son, Recitach. As an establishment figure
at Ravenna, Theoderic had to reward his following with the land grants
for which they had struggled so long in the Balkans. This dispersal of the
war-band might well have encouraged the emergence of local centres of
power, but Theoderic appears to have countered this centrifugal danger
by demanding the regular attendance at court of the members of his
army. 38
iii. local and central
The role of armies in maintaining order was crucial for the image of a particular
regime. Preservation of internal stability and external security were
fundamental elements in the ideology of the Roman emperor, and were
largely adopted in the tribal kingdoms, since failure by any ruler to guarantee
protection was an invitation to others to intervene, either locals organizing
self-help or new protectors arriving from outside. The physical and
literary rhetoric of Justinian’s building works proclaimed that the emperor
was ensuring the defence of frontiers and the protection of the empire’s
inhabitants: for example, with regard to the Balkans, Procopius asserted
that Justinian had re-established the Danube as the boundary, and provided
protection throughout the interior of the provinces by constructing
towers, while for reconquered Africa Justinian legislated to reintroduce an
37 Wood, Merovingian Kingdoms 52–3; Bachrach (1972) 20–2. 38 Heather (1995b).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008