latrones - Get a Free Blog

CONCLUSION
standard recurring characteristics and patterns of behaviour. Thus bandit
narratives generally furnish nothing in the way of actual historical events,
even (and, indeed, especially) if they are given in the form of a documentary
report. All that they offer are projections: views of bandits that are to a great
extent stylised and fictitious.
When Roman authors decked out bandits in this way they did not do so
entirely arbitrarily. They chose their – generally unchanging – patterns from
a repertoire according to their subjects’ characteristics, and this choice was
made quite independently of what these men actually did: they were allotted
– as robbers, rebels, rivals or avengers – to one of the two ideal types, comprising
either ‘common’ bandits, exemplifying the morally bad, or ‘noble’
bandits, exemplifying the morally admirable.
In choosing one or other of these types, an author was guided by the
deeper strategy he had in mind in making mention of a latro. If he wanted
to expose the incompetence of a legitimate office holder – a Republican
general or an emperor – he did this very effectively by setting against him as
superior opponent a ‘noble’ bandit – a Viriatus or a Bulla Felix – who was
the embodiment of virtue. A variant of this was the conflict in which a bad
emperor – Tacitus’ Tiberius or Herodian’s Commodus – was challenged by
a ‘common’ bandit – a Tacfarinas or a Maternus. Thus both types could serve
equally well as challengers of legal authority.
But, of course, an author’s choice of ideal type was determined by the
impression he wanted to leave on his reader. For example, the opposition of
‘good’ and ‘bad’ involved in the confrontation of the state with the ‘noble’
bandit was a matter of contrast: good existed, albeit on the wrong side. However,
in the opposition of ‘bad’ and ‘bad’ involved in the struggle between a
ruler and a ‘common’ bandit each evil character reinforced the other and
created the picture of a wholly dejected, hopeless and corrupt world.
The quite arbitrary fashion in which a latro could be categorised as ‘noble’
or ‘common’ is best seen in those cases where a single historical figure was
allotted to both types by different authors. The prime example is Spartacus.
Florus presents him as the leader of a slave rebellion and therefore as a rebel
against the Roman social order, and so naturally characterises him as a
‘common’ bandit. However, when there is a need to set someone up against
so repugnant a representative of the corrupt Roman oligarchy as Crassus,
Spartacus can be given some very favourable traits. The result is the, at least
partially, sympathetic figure portrayed by Plutarch in his ‘Life’ of Crassus,
probably following Sallust.
Comparison of Viriatus and Tacfarinas also reveals how little the depiction
of bandits had to do with reality. If we disregard panegyric of the
former and vilification of the latter, a picture emerges of a pair of rebel
leaders very similar in terms of intelligence, generalship and charismatic
personalities. It was not simply that it did not suit Tacitus to characterise
Tacfarinas as a ‘noble’ bandit. Rather, given his fundamentally pessimistic
163