Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

488 17. armies and society in the later roman world
stressing that military inactivity had costs for the Romans. 72 Along the
Danube and Rhine frontiers, any perceived weakness in defences would
embolden those outside to attack or demand more peace-money, as for
example the Avars did in 578, whereas successful action could allow troops
to support themselves from the profits of conquest – or so Maurice
believed when ordering the Danube army to winter north of the river in
602. Even on the more stable Persian frontier, where cross-border traffic
was regulated by treaties, an impression of power would help to restrain
Arabs and other clients and deter opportunist Persian aggression.
Troops required regular supplies, and one of the determinants for the
location of major military concentrations, and hence for the siting of frontiers,
was the availability of the necessary goods and services – hence a
preference for river frontiers, with their greater ease of transport. 73 The
frontier armies were a crucial element in the empire’s complex circulatory
economy, receiving the surplus product of provinces in the hinterland and
serving to stimulate agriculture and other forms of production there. 74
Units had always supervised the acquisition of some of their supplies,
which might be produced from neighbouring lands under their control –
hence the absence of villas in north Britain – or acquired through the kind
of long-distance operations attested in the Vindolanda tablets. 75 Greater
reliance on payment in kind as a result of disruptions to the economic
system in the third century affected the nature of the process, since the military
might now be involved in the acquisition of their pay as well as their
food. That this caused problems is evident from the numerous laws in the
Theodosian and Justinianic Codes about taxes in kind, subsistence allowance,
and requisitioned services: use of incorrect measures, fixing of compulsory
purchase prices, adjustment of proportions between cash and
kind, and excessive exactions of transport all caused problems. 76 An officer
might often have the power to flout the law, however strictly it was drafted:
when Rome was besieged in 546 the garrison commander, Bessas, speculated
in grain at the expense of the civilians. 77
Whatever the problems, however, the fiscal–military system continued
to function in most of the eastern empire – the stomach that fed the arms,
to adopt the imagery of Corippus. The ideal was for each military region
to be self-supporting as far as possible. Anastasius attempted to ensure that
each diocese produced sufficient supplies for its own ordinary requirements
through payment of the land-tax in kind. He acknowledged,
however, that in Thrace the numerous troops could not be supplied in this
way because of the disrupted state of local agriculture, and so permitted
the regular continuation of compulsory purchases, coemptio. But even here
72 Cf. Lieu (1986). 73 Whittaker (1994) ch. 4. 74 Hopkins (1980a).
75 Breeze (1984) 264–86; Bowman (1994) 42–9.
76 C.Th. xi.1, vii.4; Isaac, Limits of Empire 285–97. 77 Procop. Wars. vii.17; 19.14.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008