Trajan remained concerned about the problem, hence instructing Pliny to make sure that equipment was readily available, but that was as far as he wished to go. The Roman administration was reluctant to play a direct role in local affairs by organising services like this and controlling them, feared letting local leaders do this, and so followed the usual practice of allowing the population to deal with it on an informal, non-institutional basis. This is unlikely to have been the most efficient way to deal with outbreaks of fire, although we should note that the Romans did not suppress an existing fire brigade – Nicomedia and the other cities had never possessed such forces at any time in their history, and it was the Roman outsider Pliny who raised the idea. Trajan could claim, at least from his perspective, that on balance it was better that this remain the case.
The princeps alludes to the political infighting and violence in the recent past of these cities, problems fuelled by the constant competition within communities for dominance and between the major cities for status. As we saw in the last chapter, such rivalry was commonplace in many parts of the empire. In this case it had not led to inter-communal violence, let alone resistance to Roman rule, and instead intensified aristocratic struggles within cities. So many grand projects, overreaching themselves and failing, gave the opportunity of announcing new plans to surpass rivals and of blaming them for past problems. Some of these struggles may have produced rioting or worse, and this is suggested by the speeches of Dio Chrysostom. In one he defends himself against charges of hoarding stocks of grain during a shortage, and speaks of a mob attacking his house. Dio was one of the wealthier men of the region, able – at least when he enjoyed imperial favour – to give largesse to more than one city. Such men were courted for their benefactions, but could then be blamed if they did not do enough to earn the honours and praise given by each place.32
Once again the small size of the provincial garrison meant that the resources to deal with rioting simply did not exist. Some cities employed professional policemen/watchmen, but these forces were not allowed to grow too big for the same reason that fire brigades were banned, so the only counter to a mob was all too often another mob. The escorts accompanying governors and other Roman officials offered protection against robbers of the sort who had attacked Nonius Datus, but not against larger-scale threats, so that the presence of these authorities could not suppress disturbances by force. While serving as proconsul in Africa, the future emperor Vespasian was pelted with turnips by an angry crowd. Governors had to rely for protection on the distant threat of the empire’s overwhelming force. Even when they were accompanied by larger numbers of troops, these would still be outnumbered by the population of any substantial city. Turning the soldiers loose on crowds usually worked, but if the protestors were numerous or included organised groups willing to use violence, then success was not assured and might make the situation worse, as it did in Jerusalem in AD 66. The Gospel accounts of the trial of Jesus depicting Pilate as reluctant to refuse demands made by the crowd reflect a reality faced by many Roman governors, who knew that the force backing them relied as much on bluff as on actual strength.33
EVIL MEN
According to the legal expert Ulpian:
It is right for a competent and conscientious governor to see to it that the province of which he has charge is peaceful and quiet. He will achieve this without difficulty if he carefully ensures that evil men are expelled, and hunts them out. He should hunt out sacrilegious persons, brigands, kidnappers, and thieves, and punish each one according to his crime, and he should also bring force against those who harbour them, since a criminal cannot escape detection for long without their help.34
The passage ties in with Fronto’s recruitment of Julius Senex for his experience in hunting bandits, as well as stating quite openly the Roman assumption that people living near the scene of a crime were expected to help the authorities or be held responsible for protecting the criminals.
Modern scholars routinely describe banditry as endemic within the Roman Empire, and occasionally extend this to the entire ancient world. They tend to depict the imperial authorities as incapable of eradicating it, perhaps even of keeping it under control.
Some go further and see the princeps and his representatives as unconcerned about such things unless it threatened their persons, other people of importance, or the workings of administration and taxation. It was simply a reality of life, accepted by everyone as inevitable. Laws tended to rank death or abduction by bandits alongside natural disasters such as fire, storm or flood – what would now be termed ‘acts of God’ – when it came to liability for damages.35
One of Pliny’s earlier letters mentions the disappearance of an equestrian friend while journeying in northern Italy. The man’s son was searching for him, but Pliny was pessimistic about his chances, remembering Metilius Crispus, a young man from Comum who had vanished some years earlier. Pliny had secured him a commission as a centurion in a legion and given him 40,000 sesterces to equip himself in the style appropriate for an officer, but on the way to join the army he vanished; ‘whether he was killed by his slaves or along with them, no one knows: at any rate, neither Crispus nor any of them were ever seen again’. Some slaves understandably tried to escape from a life of servitude – in Bithynia Pliny discovered two who had tried to hide by enlisting in the army, something only open to the freeborn. Loyal slaves offered protection on a journey, but the chance to disappear in some quiet spot gave them more chance of escape than at home, especially if they worked together. It is revealing that the slave-owning Pliny considered that being murdered by one’s own slaves was as likely as murder at the hands of bandits. Roman law decreed the execution of an entire slave household when even one killed or tried to kill his master – something Nero enforced, even though many senators felt it cruel to punish the innocent along with the guilty. Runaway slaves, like army deserters, were seen as likely to turn to banditry.36
Some tombstones list armed robbers as the cause of death, for instance one found in Upper Moesia dedicated to ‘Scerviaedus Sitaes, age thirty, killed by bandits’ and set up by his son and daughter-in-law, who had either married young or erected the monument sometime later. Although these are only a tiny fraction of the surviving memorials from the Roman period – the vast majority do not say how the subject died – some are poignant, for instance of husbands and wives killed together, and a little girl killed and robbed of her jewellery. St Paul spoke of all that he had endured on his evangelical journeys, including ‘perils of robbers’ alongside such other dangers as ‘perils of waters’, and attacks from Jews and Gentiles provoked by his preaching. Nonius Datus and his party were robbed and stripped, but escaped with their lives, so not all attackers were determined to kill, although it seems that many were. The former slave-turned-Stoic philosopher Epictetus noted that the wise traveller did not venture alone along a road where armed robbers were said to operate, and instead ‘waits to journey with an ambassador, a governor’s assistant, or a governor, so that he may travel along safely’, shielded by his escort. Fronto clearly expected banditry to be a problem in his province requiring special attention, and governors were praised for curbing violent crime.37
The resources at their disposal were limited, such policing being just one of the tasks required of small and scattered garrisons. The ‘picked soldiers’ mentioned earlier were beneficiarii, experienced and literate men posted as individuals, often in towns or villages along the major roads. Their main concern was regulating traffic, but they could play a role in dealing with crime. There were also small outposts of other soldiers (stationarii), placed where it was felt necessary. Centurions known as ‘regional officers’ (regionarii) were placed in charge of some districts, and we know from Egypt that people went to them seeking help after they suffered from theft or violence. The effectiveness of such individual officers and detachments of soldiers can only have varied with their ability and the local situation, and even more depending on how thinly they covered the
province. A character in Apuleius’ second-century AD novel The Golden Ass complains of gangs of youths roaming the streets at night in a Thessalian city, free to do what they liked, robbing and killing, because the ‘governor’s troops are too far away to relieve the town of this slaughter’.38
Later in the same story, a rich young man appears at the camp of a band of desperadoes holding prisoner his fiancée and pretends to be a famous bandit called Haemus. He tells them that he had been very successful until a raid on an inn, where by chance a procurator, his wife, slaves and escort of soldiers were spending the night. Disturbed by the noise, ‘the wife ran into the room and stirred up the whole place with repeated shouts, calling the soldiers and her servants by name and even trying to rouse the entire neighbourhood to help. Only because everyone was terrified and stayed hidden out of fear for themselves did it come about that we got away scot-free’. Afterwards the procurator’s wife appeals to Caesar, who acts. ‘. . . Caesar banned the guild (collegium) of Haemus the robber, and it disappeared forthwith: such is the power of even a nod from a great prince. Then, when my entire band had been hunted out, cornered, and cut down by regiments of soldiers (vexillationum militarium), I alone got away’, disguised as a woman and riding on a donkey to get past the patrolling soldiers.39
Bandits and pirates offered a rich vein for storytellers, and so we should never forget that this is fiction – indeed presented as a fiction within the novel itself. Yet, in spite of strong elements of mysticism and fantasy – the narrator of the tale is a human turned by magic into an ass – much of the detail does seem to reflect life in the empire and in northern Greece at this time. By chance, an inscription actually tells us that around AD 176 – so roughly at the time Apuleius wrote the novel – several vexillations or detachments drawn from legions in Moesia were sent by the emperor to this region to deal with a band of Thracian brigands. The appearance of a force of well-trained legionaries would have drastically increased the strength and capacity of the otherwise tiny garrison of a peaceful public province. While it is interesting that in the story – we have no idea what prompted the actual intervention – this is supposed to have occurred only because the procurator was involved, and he and his wife’s pleas were listened to by the emperor, we should not push this too far. People of influence – especially his own senior officials, senators and the wealthy, particularly if they were Roman citizens – were more likely to receive help when it was requested in this respect as with everything else. That does not mean that action would only be taken in such circumstances. Much depended on the inclinations of the provincial governor.40
The Roman army was thinly spread, and there were simply not enough soldiers to police, administer and defend every part of this vast empire, and individuals and communities were left to take measures for their own defence. Travellers often armed themselves and tried to travel in groups for safety. Shepherds were used to protecting flocks from animals and human robbers alike, as were other herdsmen. The owners of big estates or their overseers were able to muster their workers to drive off or chase attackers. In The Golden Ass, a party of innocent travellers were advised to be prepared to defend themselves from packs of wolves roaming the country, but equipped themselves so well and moved in such good order that
. . . the workers on an estate which we happened to pass assumed from our numbers that we were a band of robbers, and being worried about their possessions and extremely frightened, they set dogs on us. These were mad, enormous creatures, fiercer than any wolf or bear, and they had been carefully trained for guard duty. . . . Suddenly this great danger was followed by even worse trouble. From the rooftops and hill nearby the farmers furiously began to hurl rocks down on us . . .41
There is plentiful evidence from the Greek-speaking provinces, and especially Asia, for magistrates called eirênarchai or peace officers, ‘who are in charge of public discipline and correcting behaviour’. Although, like most magistracies, these were the preserve of the wealthy, they do seem to have been expected to be active. The famous orator – and noted hypochondriac – Aelius Aristides took great care to avoid being nominated for such a post in a city where an official had not long since been killed by bandits. More junior were paraphylakes, who may well have been professionals rather than wealthy aristocrats taking on the senior post for a while. A couple of sculptures, including a tombstone from Prusa, portray these officers mounted, backed by constables who are shown armed and in uniform. The relief from Prusa has them carrying small round shields, clubs and short swords. Another from Ephesus shows them with bigger, oval shields, much like the ones used by many auxiliaries. Such men were sometimes called diôgmitai or ‘chasers’, and we have no figures for their numbers, but it would more likely be a question of tens than hundreds, given the imperial authorities’ suspicion of associations. There is no real evidence for police forces in the western provinces and we can only assume that some vaguely similar arrangements were followed there.42
Watch-towers were common in the frontier areas, and there were systems of such towers in other parts of the empire, especially along important roads. Only the foundations survive archaeologically, making it difficult to reconstruct their design and, except when there is a convenient inscription, their purpose. The best evidence comes from Egypt, where the Romans inherited and built on a well-established system of policing probably unmatched elsewhere in the empire. It is clear from documents on papyrus or pottery ostraka that both soldiers and civilians were employed on these towers, depending on where they were. Civilians volunteered or were conscripted to man the high platforms or skopeloi, which could provide warning of bandits, cattle rustlers or raiders. A text found at the military-run quarry of Mons Claudianus was written by a decurion, a junior officer commanding a troop of some thirty or so horsemen, and neatly combines the need to ensure proper manning of towers with action on a recent, and perhaps criminal, act:
Herennius Antoninus, decurion, to Amatios, greeting. Since the son of Balaneus who is in the watchtower is a boy, speak to the dekanos (a civilian official) so that he may place a young man in his stead; for I also have sent orders to him about him. And send me the civilian who set fire to the reeds near the new praesidium. Farewell.43
Towers – in this case little more than solid stone platforms, perhaps rigged up with some form of canopy as protection against the sun – were placed all along the roads leading to the Red Sea ports, and the army regulated movement along these routes. There and in other controlled regions, archaeologists have found many pottery fragments which acted as passes – for instance ‘Let pass Asklepiades’, or often not bothering with names, so just ‘four men and twenty donkeys’, or ‘one woman and two children’. These were only valid for a set time period, and allowed soldiers to levy tolls on people passing along the road, but at the same time helped to prevent unauthorised access in an area where bandits sometimes preyed on travellers.44
A few soldiers or civilians on a watch-tower could not prevent an attack by robbers. All they could do was give warning, allowing travellers to flee and seek shelter, and raise the alarm to summon a larger force, assuming one existed. Manning so many towers was expensive in manpower, hence the use of civilians as well as soldiers. At the very least the towers, which by their nature were highly visible, helped to create an impression that the area was being watched – much like closed-circuit television cameras in town centres – and in this way deter criminals, or at least encourage them to move to a less well-observed area. In Egypt, and no doubt elsewhere, the army co-operated with local civilians to make areas more secure. Usually this was to protect trade, official communication or movement of resources needed by the state or the army, and so was not primarily altruistic. Yet it did also serve to protect others.45
‘Endemic’ is a loose term. It is clear that, in spite of the boasts of successive emperors, the Romans were never able to make the lands entirely free of bandits or the seas free of pirates. No state has ever managed to eradicate violent crime altogether
, so it should not surprise us that the Romans were no exception. In the modern world dealing with crime is a never-ending struggle, not a battle that can be won for ever. Bandits and armed robbers willing to kill and kidnap appear in many different sources dealing with many Roman provinces throughout the history of the empire. They clearly occupied a place in people’s imagination and were also seen as a real threat, most of all to travellers, but much of the evidence for them is too vague to quantify.
The concept of the ‘Social Bandit’, developed by the distinguished modern historian Eric Hobsbawm in a highly influential study of bandits in more recent times, has been imported to the ancient world, but has not proved helpful. The Social Bandit is supposed to emerge from peasant societies oppressed by landlords and governments, but prey only on the oppressors; they ‘remain within peasant society, and are considered by their people as heroes . . . and in any case as men to be admired, helped and supported’. Their appearance was thus inevitable if the social and economic conditions were right, and some would see the Roman Empire as fitting the model very well, with privileged and wealthy aristocrats acting hand-in-glove with the imperial authorities, all of them owners of great rural estates worked by slaves or peasantry.
That picture is crude, arguable in many respects, and in addition others have pointed out the weakness of Hobsbawm’s thesis. Most of his evidence came from folk tales about characters like Robin Hood, with the assumption that these must be based on some reality, which mainly shows that even serious scholars can have their romantic moments, in this case shaped by Hobsbawm’s Marxist ideology. Close analysis of more recent periods of history tends to suggest far more predatory robbers preying on the peasants, fear being the main reason why they are ‘helped and supported’. For the Roman period the model of the Social Bandit is even harder to maintain. If there were any of these ‘Robin Hoods’ in reality, then they were exceptionally rare, and even the poor feared and hated bandits. In fiction the heroes may impersonate bandits and pirates, but genuine bandits and pirates are not depicted with sympathy – unlike Hollywood’s long-standing obsession with outlaws, criminals and gangsters. The physician Galen described how on a journey he and his companions ‘saw the skeleton of a bandit lying on rising ground by the roadside. He had been killed by a traveller repelling his attack. None of the local inhabitants would bury him, but in their hatred of him were glad enough to see his body consumed by birds.’46
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