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POLITICIANS AND PRETENDERS AS LATRONES
Thrax and Maximinus Daia. Here geographic rather than social origin was
important. Along with other barbarian peoples on the margin of civilisation,
Thracians and Arabs were regarded as classical bandits. 109
As already indicated, Lactantius follows this pattern in detailing the background
of Maximinus Daia, who:
. . . had only recently been picked up from looking after cattle in
the forests, had at once become a guardsman, then an officer of the
guard, soon afterwards a tribune, and then the next day a Caesar,
and now he received the East to crush and trample underfoot – as
might be expected of one who knew nothing about public or military
affairs, a herdsman who was now to look after soldiers instead
of cattle. 110
This characterisation, which by now we have seen in various forms, expresses
in full the hostility to a class of emperor which contemporary critics claimed
to have identified as a basic cause of the ‘Crisis’ – the imperial parvenu who,
also by virtue of his questionable origin, could be regarded as a ‘bandit’. We
can complete the picture with another case from the Historia Augusta, that of
Proculus, a usurper at the time of Probus. 111
This Proculus came from Albigauni (Albegna) in the Maritime Alps.
According to the Historia Augusta he was highly respected in his own region.
His ancestors had been bandits who had amassed considerable wealth in
the form of slaves and livestock as a result of their raids. 112 During his
usurpation, Proculus could depend on the support of 2,000 slaves of his own
household. He himself was used to a bandit’s existence, to a life spent
permanently under arms. 113 His method of fighting was that of latrones, i.e.,
guerrilla warfare. 114 This is, at least, the tactic to which he owed a victory
over the Alamanni. To bring home the uncivilised way in which Proculus
behaved, his biographer thought up a rude tale about his sexual prowess.
Proculus is supposed to have boasted that over fifteen consecutive nights he
deflowered one hundred Sarmatian virgins, on one night having ten. 115 The
fiction probably says more about the fantasies of the author of the Historia
Augusta than about Proculus’ capacities. The example also shows that in
Antiquity a bandit like him was expected to be characterised by physical
strength and sexual potency.
In a further anecdote, for the reliability of which the biographer calls
upon the (pseudo-) authority of the historian Onesimus, we are told of a
banquet at which Proculus and his friends played the game of ‘Bandits’
(ludus latrunculorum). 116 This story, too, is probably a product of the biographer’s
imaginings, allowing him to use a word game to come up with an
omen of Proculus’ imminent usurpation: Proculus the bandit (= latro), playing
the bandit (= latro), indicated that he would become a usurper (= latro)
by emerging ten times in a row as winner (= imperator), whereupon another
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