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GUERRILLA LEADERS AS LATRONES
also have been the fact that they chose their own destiny. In this is another
point of contact between desertion and slave-flight. Desertores and servi fugitivi
had, of their own accord, left the association of recognised groups in Roman
society. What they could do, or might hope to do, was, therefore, broadly
the same. As outsiders, they had very little chance to ensure their survival
other than by scraping a living as bandits. 148 By these standards, a lenient
judgement of deserters such as Tacfarinas and Maternus, as would have been
expressed in their characterisation as ‘noble bandits’, was impossible from
the start.
Like the struggle waged by Viriatus and other risings by native groups
against Roman provincial rule, Tacfarinas’ revolt was also classified as
latrocinium because it involved guerrilla tactics. The terminology of this has
already been dealt with in discussion of Viriatus. Additionally, however,
Tacfarinas exploited the knowledge of Roman military techniques which he
had acquired during his service as an auxiliary soldier to wage a conventional
war against Rome. Consequently, he trained up an elite personal unit armed
with Roman weapons and drilled after the Roman manner, using other
bands to flank the regular operations of this core group by launching carefully
planned plundering raids on the margins of the main theatre of war. It
was only after his defeat by Furius Camillus that he devoted himself exclusively
to guerrilla tactics 149 which secured him some years of considerable
success and which compelled Roman troops to adjust themselves to partisan
warfare. 150 The soldiers sent against Tacfarinas suffered so much in this war
of attrition that military discipline deteriorated and infringements of it were
severely punished. The Roman high command must indeed have been in the
grip of hysteria when, in ad 20, it ordered a dishonoured cohort to undergo
the penalties of running the gauntlet and decimation. 151 The extraordinary
nature of this instruction can be seen from the fact that this was the last
time that the barbaric penalty of running the gauntlet, and the penultimate
time that decimation was imposed under the Principate. 152
As was shown in the case of the war against Viriatus, Roman writers
sometimes referred to bellum when, legally speaking, they were dealing with
latrocinium. Tacitus begins his account of the revolt of Tacfarinas with the
sentence: ‘In the course of the same year, war (bellum) broke out in Africa,
where the enemy (hostes) were commanded by Tacfarinas.’ 153 So the rebellion
under Tacfarinas comes under the category of ‘bella/hostes’ to be found in the
definition of Dig. 50.16.118 pr. which, given that it lasted almost eight
years and produced three triumphs, is hardly surprising.
Returning to the comparison between Tacfarinas and Viriatus, the difference
between the ‘respected’ and the ‘despised’ bandit is also obvious in the
fact that Viriatus embarked upon a path of banditry as a result of an act
of Roman injustice. (In this interpretation it is crucial that the unjust act
which started all the trouble was attributed to the Roman side by Roman
historians and not by outsiders.) By contrast, Tacfarinas, like Maternus after
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