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

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man, then they had to find a second one so that the two would equal one fully
functional soldier.
Since there was a lack of willing citizens, the army looked elsewhere for its
soldiers and found them among the tribesmen from the periphery of the Emp
i re . This was a ti m e - h on ored practi ce dating back to the Rep u bl i c , wh en
tri be s m en would be rec ru i ted under their own leaders for the du ra ti on of a
campaign and would serve alongside the army until the end of hostilities. In the
E m p i re the early auxiliary units were rec ru i ted from va rious tri be s , predom inantly
Gauls, Germans, and Thracians, as part of the regular army, receiving citi
zenship on reti rem en t . Th ro u gh o ut their history, the Romans bro u ght the
tribal warri ors into their armies and would have been unable to ga rri s on the
provinces and fight their wars without them. There were various ways of using
barbarian manpower. Tribesmen could be recruited en masse as part of treaty
a rra n gem ents on the con clu s i on of pe ace , and were ei t h er distri buted amon g
the existing units to fill gaps or were sent to other provinces, such as the 5,500
Sa rm a tians that Ma rcus Au rel ius sent to Bri t a i n . The Goths were defe a ted by
Claudius II Gothicus and recruited into his army, and the Romans came full circle
to the practices of the Republic in ad 382, when Theodosius I made a treaty
with the Goths, allowing them to fight under their own commanders, just as the
troops raised by Republican generals used to fight under native chieftains.
From the late third cen tu ry onw a rd new met h ods of rec ru i ting so-call ed
barbarians were established. Settlement of barbarians within the Empire had alw
ays been a means of s i ph oning of f pre s su re on the fron ti ers , of ten in large
numbers. In the later Empire, it became more common to settle tribesmen inside
the Empire in return for contributions to the army. Two groups of people
who were brought in on this basis are attested—the foederati, literally meaning
troops raised in accordance with a treaty (foedus), and the laeti. The foederati
were paid in kind by means of food rations (annonae foederaticae), which was
even tu a lly com muted into an annual paym en t . It may be the case that wh en
they were first settled they could not provide their own food until their farms
were fully established, so the Romans supplied them for the first few years.
A group of tri be s m en call ed l a eti h ad been establ i s h ed in Gaul since the
Tetrarchy. Although a large number of Frankish tribesmen were settled as laeti
a round Tri er, L a n gre s , and Am i en s , this does not mean that all the l a eti were
ethnically homogeneous groups. The derivation of the term laeti has been variously
explained as a group of people who had been captured and returned to
the provinces, or more convincingly as a Germanic root word meaning people
who were only half free. The latter interpretation accords well with the status of
the laeti whose settlement within the Empire was dependent on a regular contri
buti on of troops for the army. The law codes men ti on terrae laeti c a e , t h e
lands of the l a eti , and Am m i a nus says that the l a eti s erved in Con s t a n tiu s’s
army. The laeti were supervised by officials, perhaps military officers, since a law