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GUERRILLA LEADERS AS LATRONES
Diodorus, among the early stages of the career of the greatest of all
Carthaginian commanders was his creation and leadership of a band of over
100 vigorous and daring young men, who undertook profitable plundering
raids in Iberia. 38 In the last stage of his career Viriatus, like Hannibal, was
able to emerge as an honourable adversary of Rome and so, again like
Hannibal, to fulfil a higher destiny. Later, an even more important personality,
this time a Roman, was supposed to have embarked upon the same route to
manhood as Hannibal and Viriatus: Sextus Pompeius, who, after the premature
death of his father, was said to have practised banditry in Spain. 39
As I have said, latro also signifies ‘guerrilla fighter’, especially the leader of
a guerrilla or resistance movement. In this respect, too, Viriatus, as acknowledged
master of guerrilla warfare, became the model. I will discuss the
characteristics of body, soul and personality which suited him for the role of
guerrilla leader in a review of the ancient sources and will not pursue them
further here. As far as this study is concerned, there is also no need to
describe Viriatus’ tactics – with their ambushes, feints and other cunning
ploys – in any detail. Much has already been published on this topic. 40 What
matters is the terminology according to which Viriatus’ manner of fighting
was termed latrocinium and according to which the leader of a guerrilla war
was called a latro.
If the Romans called Viriatus a latro, then his war, the struggle of the
Lusitanians against Romans attempting to occupy their land, fell into the
category of latrocinium. Such a classification follows from both the status
of the enemy under international law and the guerrilla tactics which they
employed. In terms of international law, the position of the Lusitanians was,
of course, determined solely and subjectively by the Romans. As we have
already seen, the Romans regarded the Lusitanians as a barbarian people,
unable to field a regular army of heavy infantry, trained in and equipped
with the weapons of Greco-Roman military science. And they were led by
Viriatus. For this form of warfare there was indeed just one word in Latin:
latrocinium. 41
The Greeks were already well used to using leisteuein to mean ‘to wage a
guerrilla war’, for example when Demosthenes attempted to persuade the
Athenians that they ought not to risk a pitched battle against Philip of
Macedon, but should go instead for targeted attacks from the rear. 42 When
Livy narrates how the local inhabitants tried to block Hannibal’s crossing of
the Alps, he says that they attacked not like regular troops, but like latrones,
falling first on Hannibal’s vanguard and then his rear, as the topography
permitted. 43 In this he describes the very essence of guerrilla warfare, with
its sudden attacks from the rear. Even Hannibal, in the last phase of the
Second Punic War, when he was stranded in Bruttium with his lines of
supply severed, was forced ‘to campaign through banditry’. 44 This instance
shows how a regular army could be forced to latrocinium, when it had to
support itself by looting, and illustrates how close the derivation ‘to wage
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