The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History - Karatunov.net

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The Roman A rmy
rives from the various literary accounts, which tend to document the extremes
but perhaps not the typical or mundane aspects of w a rf a re . The end re sult is
that modern historians have at their disposal accounts of notable successes and
n o torious failu re s , in wh i ch heroics and disasters fe a tu re sign i f i c a n t ly but not
the mechanics of command and control. One of the problems is that many ancient
historians elaborated upon events, often utilizing their largely fabricated
prebattle speeches to put across to their audiences a political point of view.
Besides the historical literature, there are the military manuals. Although the
manuals offer examples of best practice and outline what should happen, they
do not help elucidate what really did happen in Roman warfare. Some authors,
notably Campbell (1987) and Gilliver (2000), have investigated the utility and
effectiveness of the manuals, and have concluded that they were in fact an important
resource in the training of a Roman commander. This in turn implies
that the modern historian can place some cautious reliance on using the manuals
as sources of evidence for the Roman army in the field.
During the Empire, the overall commander of the armies was of course the
emperor himself, who controlled all operations, either from Rome through his
subordinates or directly by his presence in the field. In the first century the emperors
were, on the whole, content to leave the conduct of military operations
in the hands of their chosen governors. Domitian and Trajan accompanied their
armies to the Danube, but after Trajan’s victories, the succeeding decades of the
second century were more peaceful and emperors reverted to directing operations
at a distance. In the later second century, and certainly in the third century,
the presence of the emperor in the field was vital.
Whether or not the emperor was with them, provincial governors and army
commanders were his legates and subject to his dictates. Generals who operated
at a distance from the emperor, such as Aulus Plautius in Britain, Corbulo on
the Rhine, and Agricola in Scotland, all had considerable authority within their
a ll o t ted zones but were sti ll su bj ect to the em peror ’s wi s h e s . Corbulo was rec
a ll ed wh en he seem ed re ady to progress beyond the Rh i n e , and Agri co l a
s topped to con s o l i d a te and perhaps to sound out the em peror ’s op i n i ons on
what should be done nex t . G en erals would work within the broad gen era l
framework of the emperor’s instructions but would make their own decisions
on the spot as to how to achieve their objectives. As always it was a question of
balance; too little power and freedom of action would stultify the generals and
risk failure, but too much power and too many troops posed a problem if they
should turn into usurpers.
There is a corpus of evidence as to the identity of Roman commanders, and
their social and military backgrounds, derived from literary sources and from
their career inscriptions. These sources help to document the various tasks that
generals could be asked to perform, but they do not inform us how well or how
badly they performed them. It is only from this historical record that informa-