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INTRODUCTION
a social type or whether they were a literary construct. If they should turn
out to be the latter, one must then explain the function of the latro figure in
the Roman tradition.
Since I soon began to suspect that the latro might be a literary construct
unconnected with everyday reality, I chose not to begin my research with
the colourful depictions of bandit life to be found in, say, Apuleius’ Metamorphoses
or Heliodorus’ adventure novels and to draw conclusions from
those concerning historical bandits. This would, I considered, lead to serious
misinterpretations already visible in part in existing work on latrones (see the
review of research below). I begin instead with latrones who are presented by
Roman historians as historical personalities.
In order to answer the crucial questions ‘who was a latro?’ and ‘what was
latrocinium?’ I therefore chose to adopt a typological approach, based on
prosopography. This means that I first established all those persons who
can be shown to have been called latrones by the Romans (i.e., above all, by
Roman historians). My typological approach involved my attempting to
group the prosopographical material by different classes, according to the
characters of those concerned, their deeds and what people basically thought
about them.
Classification of latrones according to their supposed personal characteristics
produced two basic types: the ‘common’ and the ‘noble’ bandit. Classification
of latrones according to what they did produced four categories: ‘bandits’,
‘rebels’, ‘rivals’ and ‘avengers’ (hence the book’s original alliterative German
title: Räuber, Rebellen, Rivalen, Rächer). For the moment however, let us
ignore precisely how these two classifications relate to each other. In each
chapter I will first present the best examples we have of a particular type,
and then compare these with less important or less well-evidenced parallels.
Such examples include Viriatus, Tacfarinas, Spartacus, Catiline, John of
Gischala, Bulla Felix, Maternus and Clemens, the slave who impersonated
Agrippa Postumus. Investigation of these cases and their parallels gives us a
total of over 80 latrones.
As far as the validity of such classifications is concerned I would stress
that none of the basic types of latro is pure or entirely distinct. They usually
overlap, so that every latro displays aspects of several classes. Allocation to
one specific category depends on the apparent predominance of a particular
quality or qualities. This should not be regarded as methodological inexactitude,
but rather as a reflection of the fact that an individual rarely embodies
an ideal social or literary type.
What we are dealing with are essentially people who were either called
bandits or of whom it was suggested that they were bandits. ‘Suggested’
means that in the Roman tradition there are people who, though not explicitly
termed bandits, are made to look like latrones. The occurrence of persons
projected as, but not labelled bandits may be seen as an expression of autonomy
on the part of the writer concerned (able to use or paraphrase a word
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