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BANDITS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
of people acting out of political motivations. Socio-historical research –
focussing exclusively on true, apolitical, banditry – fails because of the lack
of relevant evidence.
The attempt to categorise Roman latrones throws up two different ways of
differentiating between them, according to either what they did or how they
were seen. The former produces four basic bandit types:
1 ‘Real’ (in terms of criminal law) bandits: generally anonymous, who
acquired wealth through robbery with violence or who practised other,
but apolitical, crimes against the person;
2 Bandit rebels: famous or infamous, who, as guerrilla commanders heading
native rebellions or as leaders of slave rebellions, championed the
political aspirations of their people or the social aspirations of their
groups;
3 In a wider sense, bandit rivals: either illegitimate rulers who sought to
assert the positions they had usurped against legitimate holders of power
or those who were made out to be the challengers of such office holders,
as their models or mirror images;
4 In a narrower sense, bandit avengers: those who, as self-styled judges,
sought satisfaction and justice for victims of dynastic murder, or who
used this as an excuse to create their own political power bases.
The latter produces two ideal types:
1 The common bandit: a violent criminal wholly undeserving of respect,
in his meanness of mind focussed only on booty and force;
2 The noble bandit: driven by lofty motives, who fights for higher things,
such as justice.
As has already been said, while Roman bandits should generally be seen as
historical personalities the main contention of this work is that the latro,
as he has come down to us, is not a social type but a topos: a stock theme.
This is now the place to explain how the living man became the literary
creation.
The use of the term latro in respect of any one of the categories of bandits
in the first of the above lists (grouping them according to what they did)
does not necessarily of itself amount to any distortion and therefore does not
make the historical person into a literary figure. Change comes, however, the
moment the author concerned sets an historical bandit in one or other of
the categories of the second list (of bandits according to how they were
perceived). From this point onwards how a bandit is described is characterised
by stereotyping, misrepresentation and distortion, as is whichever of
the four basic categories he represents by virtue of his deeds. In the course
of the literary re-working of historical into literary figures, latrones were given
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