Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

soldier and civilian 489
the emperor’s ability to produce or deny supplies was a vital element in
dealings with Gothic war-bands. One of the advantages of the Justinianic
quaestura exercitus which connected the administration of Thrace and the
more settled areas of Caria and the Aegean islands was that this permitted
a greater degree of self-sufficiency within an administrative unit. Problems
could still occur, and troops delayed outside Adrianople in 551 experienced
hunger. 78 Later in the century Tiberius, granting a 25 per cent reduction of
tax payments in gold for the next four years to celebrate his elevation to
Caesar, maintained levies in kind and specifically referred to the continuation
of such payments from Mesopotamia and Osrhoene for storage and
military purposes. 79 The western empire failed to sustain this centralized
economic–military system, a cause as well as a symptom of its decline.
There the transformation of the military into groups supported by settlement
on land represented a major change in the nature of the state, its
authority and ability to collect and deploy resources. 80
People also had to be moved from the civilian to the military sector. In
normal circumstances recruitment probably worked fairly smoothly,
through a combination of hereditary service, volunteering and conscription
from within the empire, coupled with the employment of foreign mercenaries.
But even a smooth operation might have significant consequences
for individuals: the fact that the father of St Saba was drafted from his
native Cappadocia into a unit of Isaurians who came to be stationed in
Alexandria meant that the saint’s mother accompanied her husband to
Egypt and the young Saba was brought up by relatives. 81 At times of pressure,
and especially military crisis, harsher methods had to be used, as
potential recruits tried to evade enrolment by self-mutilation or attachment
to a powerful patron. Under Maurice in the 580s even monasteries did not
provide safe refuge, as recruiting officers were sent in to obtain the desperately
needed soldiers by force. 82
If troops in fixed locations created problems for civilians, their movement
aroused even more: supplies would have to be found along their route, and
accommodation provided. In the east the tax system was efficient enough to
see that supplies were available for distribution, either through the storage of
regular receipts in kind or through the exaction of supplementary levies.
Arrangements for provisioning the public transport system were claimed to
be beneficial to remote rural areas, which might lack an alternative market
for their produce. 83 The billeting of troops, however, generated a significant
body of legislation, and an inscription from the Thebaid in Egypt attests the
construction by local inhabitants of a hostel specifically for the needs of soldiers;
restoration of the building was supervised by the local bishop. 84 In the
78 Corippus ii.249–53; CJ x.27.2.10; Procop. Wars vii.40.39; Jones, LRE 280. 79 Nov. 163.
80 Cf. Wickham (1981) 40. 81 Cyr. Scyth. V. Sabae i. 82 Michael the Syrian x.21, vol. ii p. 362.
83 Bagnall, Egypt 172–3; Procop. Secret History 30.11; Hendy, Studies 606–8. 84 Gascou (1994).
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