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BANDITS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Friedländer in his Roman Life and Manners and of Martin Hengel in his book
on the Zealots. 31
In Marxist historiography, engagement with robbers and bandits of
Antiquity as manifestations of class conflict (according to the teachings of
historical materialism) had become regarded as a very fruitful activity as
early as the 1950s.
Thus Rigobert Guenther, in his Leipzig dissertation of 1953, attempted
to show latrocinium as ‘a particular form of resistance of the oppressed classes
and of barbarians in the Roman slave-owning state during the Principate’
and so interpreted it, in the sense of a distinct and continuous movement,
as a means of class conflict, recognised as such by those who deliberately
deployed it. 32 The basis of this approach is subject to the same criticisms as
those levelled against Marxist studies of slavery: that there is no proof that
in the Roman period slaves (and, likewise, latrones) had any sense of belonging
to a class, or that they, out of feelings of affiliation to the oppressed
levels of society, had developed any revolutionary purpose. In addition, in his
study Guenther made a methodologically questionable attempt to arrange
his material chronologically and regionally so as to produce an endless and
closely linked chain of causes and events, meant to show latrocinium as an
ongoing process, part of the continual conflict between the classes.
Until recently, probably the most comprehensive collection of references
to Roman bandits was provided by R. MacMullen (1966) in an appendix to
his Enemies of the Roman Order. 33 With its brief comments, this set of material
opened the way to a new and wider understanding of what the Romans
meant by latro. The ‘bandit’ began to be seen not simply as a common
criminal but rather, as the title of MacMullen’s book stated, in terms of
political security as an ‘enemy of the Roman order’. A few years earlier,
MacMullen had published an article that dealt with latro in its specialised
meaning of ‘usurper’ – once again, from the point of view of political security.
This study, though short, pointed the way forward. 34
Heinz Bellen (1971) gave banditry, as an alternative to slavery and so as
one of the ‘major motives for flight by slaves’, particular attention in his
book on runaway slaves in the Roman Empire. 35 In doing so, Bellen dealt
with aspects of Roman banditry which went beyond the close relationship
between fugitive slaves and bandits. These included, for example, banditry
as a ‘calling’, banditry as a means of leading revolts, banditry as the result of
military desertion and, finally, the measures taken by the Roman state to
defend itself against bandits. Wolfgang Hoben’s (1978) work on terminology
served to clarify the conceptual use of the vocabulary employed to label
bandits in the context of the slave wars of the Republic. 36 Peter Herz (1988)
took a look at the ancient world’s endemic problem of cattle thieving from
the point of view of Roman criminal law; and at the same time, Hans-
Joachim Drexhage (1988) showed how the huge bequest of the papyri could
be exploited to obtain important insights into everyday petty crime in Roman
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