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BANDITS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
whose conditions of service had been rendered unbearable by unreasonable
demands of which we know nothing. Finally, Bulla Felix, the ‘noble’ bandit
who challenged the emperor, appears basically as the avenger of all those
who suffered the consequences of the civil wars in general and, in particular,
the pressure of taxes and exactions.
As this short review has shown, to a certain extent the desire for vengeance
characterises all types of latrones, in this respect making it difficult to
distinguish between them. In what follows I will deal with only one specific
variety of revenge which may be seen as the characteristic which links the
members of a discrete group of political agitators. We have already met
one of these in the chapter on Bulla Felix, the slave Clemens, alias Agrippa
Postumus. By masquerading as his murdered master Clemens pursued a
campaign of revenge against his killers. I shall go into further detail about
this below. For the moment, it is sufficient here only to point up the two
distinctive elements of the case: first, vengeance by a slave for a master fallen
in dynastic conflict; and second, assumption of the identity of the fallen
owner as the demagogic means of this revenge.
Under the early Principate this nexus typified, more or less exactly, a
series of incidents which occurred at the imperial court and in those of a
number of client-kings. In examining these cases it will become clear that
the sources refer to only a few of these ‘avengers’ directly as latrones. In this
chapter, therefore, we drift somewhat far from the terminological hub of our
study – but, it should be emphasised, not too far. In terms of the difference
between ‘named bandits and implied bandits’ as touched on in the Introduction,
it is important that all the avengers to be dealt with here were ascribed
basic characteristics of the bandit (e.g., the creation of bands, mainly from
those who had nothing more to lose, riff-raff, scum; and the goal of getting
rich by dishonest means). This amounts to more or less explicitly naming
them latrones. And, just as in the case of rebels and rivals, whom we have got
to know as two other types of the politically motivated latro, the lifestyle
of these avengers amounted, at least according to the critical portrayal of
Roman writers, to banditry – the recruiting of gangs and the taking of booty.
So they, too, qualify as a type of latro.
A further feature of our avengers is that most of them took on the roles of
masters who had fallen victim to dynastic struggles. This may at first seem
strange, even ludicrous. However, given the restricted means of identification
available in the ancient world this method was not really such a bad
choice. Runaway slaves could frequently pass as freemen under false names, 9
and for this reason the slave trade was closely regulated to protect customers. 10
For political troublemakers who wished to make capital out of a false identity
the ‘right’ name could be of enormous value. The proof of this is to be
found in no less a person than Octavian. To begin with a claimant of little
reputation, for his rise to power it was at least as important to him that
he took on the name of Caesar as that he was able to draw extensively on the
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