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BANDITS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
general on the Roman side was, in 207, the governor L. Alfenus Senecio: see Birley,
African Emperor (n. 2), 170ff. (= Septimius Severus 244ff.). The arrival of the emperor
is dated to late 207 or early 208: see Halfmann, Itinera principum (n. 1), 219. The
period of two years which Dio gives for the duration of the activity of Bulla’s band
therefore probably comprised the years 205 to 207.
57 Cf. Shaw, ‘Bandits’ 47: ‘the Bulla Felix legend is set within the context of a
challenge to the formal authority of the emperor who is said to manage the hunting
down of the bandit personally.’
58 HA Sept. Sev. 18.5. Zos. 1.8. CIL VI 234 = ILS 2011 (Genio / exercitus qui /
exstinquendis sae- / vissimis latronib(us) / fideli devotione / Romanae / e[x]pectationi / et
votis / omnium / satis fecit) may be associated with events to do with Bulla Felix, as
already proposed by Dessau in his commentary on ILS 2011; contra, Sünskes
Thompson, Aufstände 30.
59 M.P. Speidel, Riding for Caesar. The Roman Emperors’ Horse Guards, London 1994,
63, considers that this officer who, as we shall see, managed to arrest Bulla, was a
tribune of the equites singulares Augusti, remarking: ‘Again the emperor was served
well by his horse guard.’ But this presupposes the historicity of the information
which, given the high degree of stylisation of the whole account, I consider to be
unproved and unprovable.
60 H.G. Gundel, s.v. Viriatus, RE IX A, 1961, 223. Cf. above, pp. 45–7.
61 Kunkel, Herkunft (n. 45), 224ff.
62 Dio 76.10.7.
63 Thus, persuasively, G. Alföldy, The Social History of Rome, London/Sydney 1985,
177. Similarly, albeit less definitely, Shaw, ‘Der Bandit’ 378: both men owed their
position to one and the same power basis.
64 Alföldy, Social History (n. 63), 177. Concerning Theocritus, an imperial freedman
and former dancing master of Caracalla, Dio 77.21.2 remarks drily: ‘Thus, from a
slave and a dancer, he rose to be commander of an army and prefect.’ (Trans. Cary,
Loeb) At 80.7.1f. Dio criticises the rise of a centurion and of the son of a doctor to
key military positions and to senatorial rank.
65 Tac. Ann. 2.40: Percunctanti Tiberio, quo modo Agrippa factus esset, respondisse fertur ‘quo
modo tu Caesar’. Cf. below, pp. 141–2.
66 Dio 57.16.3–4. Cf. below, p. 140.
67 Dio 57.16.4.
68 Dio 76.10.7.
69 It has to be conceded that there is not full agreement since, in the case of Clemens,
question and counter-question are pitched rather differently from that of Bulla
Felix. ‘How did you become Agrippa?’concerns the means, and is not the same as
‘Why did you become a bandit?’, which concerns the cause. However, no one
would anyway wish to accuse Dio of the limp adoption of the tacitean model. The
change from modal to causal would have been suggested to him by the different
circumstances. Tiberius had no grounds for asking the slave why he had become
Agrippa: no one knew this better than the emperor, who had conspired or was
complicit in events (see above, p. 142). On the other hand, he had a very close
interest in how Clemens had managed to pass himself off as Agrippa. Papinianus’
concerns lay in the opposite direction: not how a person became a bandit, but why.
70 This is not the place to go into the crux as to whether Dio drew on Tacitus directly
or indirectly; on this see most recently M. Hose, Erneuerung der Vergangenheit. Die
Historiker im Imperium Romanum von Florus bis Cassius Dio, Stuttgart/Leipzig 1994,
411ff. (with bibliography). Both passages discussed here support the assumption of
direct use of the Annales by Dio, not only because of the high degree of agreement
as to concrete details but also, and predominantly, because of the identical conception
of the bandit image.
208