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BANDITS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
as he thought fit); alternatively, it could have arisen from the writer’s desire
(for reasons of propriety or otherwise) to avoid directly calling the individual
concerned a latro, hence his deployment of suggestive circumlocution. Recognition
of this approach, of course, makes extension of enquiry to evident
‘paraphrased’ banditry unavoidable.
Since this investigation is based on classification, it is not intended to
touch on all bandits. However, it does aim to include all-important latrones,
especially those who may be able to contribute to our understanding of a
specific type of bandit. In terms of area, it deals with the whole of the
Roman Empire. With regard to time, it covers a span of about 500 years. I
would justify the latter by remarking that my chosen period comprises, as it
were, the central (or, the ‘classical’) period of the Empire – from the second
century bc to the third century ad. In other words, according to the traditional
divisions of Roman history it includes the disappearance of both the
Middle and Late Republics and of the Principate, as it turned into the Late
Empire. Its commencement is marked by the high degree of development of
the Roman world-state and, amongst other things, by the equally high level
of development of an indigenous Roman historiography. Its end coincides
roughly with that of the third century, with some run-on into the fourth.
Despite elements of continuity, Late Antiquity should be allowed a character
of its own. In this time of radical change, social and literary designations
like that of latro underwent changes of meaning that would require another
book to explore, and which make it unwise to take evidence from this period
in reconstructing earlier phenomena. On the other hand, as will be shown in
more detail in the section on terminology, the 500 years examined here form
a unity with regard to the development in meaning of the Roman notion of
the bandit. Finally, bandit topics from Late Antiquity, in particular the
Bagaudae and Circumcelliones, have already been so closely researched 7 that
they can be safely omitted (though mention will be made of the beginnings
of the Bagaudic movement in Chapter 6).
In the following chapters, mention will be made of aspects of piracy in
various contexts but there will be no systematic treatment of maritime
banditry. As I will show in Chapter 1, the pirate constituted no particular
class of bandit. The political and social aspects of the piracy of the eastern
Mediterranean at the time of the collapse of the Hellenistic kingdoms
have also been intensively researched, most recently in H. Pohl’s Hamburg
dissertation. 8
3 Terminology, etymology, sources
I will now consider a dossier of evidence on Roman banditry, beginning
with its ancient terminology. As already mentioned, in Latin ‘bandit’ is
latro, in Greek leistes. 9
4