Institutionalised' Military Violence in Late Antiquity

The focus so far has primarily been on warfare and its violent elements, above all in battles and sieges. However, military violence was not restricted to these obvious contexts.

Since armies in many periods of history have relied on conscription, the use of conscription in late antiquity might not seem especially significant. However, this is to lose sight of the more immediate historical context of the period, as well as some of the specific features of conscription in late antiquity. While conscription may sometimes have been used during the Principate more than traditionally assumed, it was not a constant feature of the period, especially in the latter stages, during the Severan period of the late second and early third century - perhaps because significant increases in soldiers' pay and other improvements in conditions of service under the Severans encouraged more volunteers to enlist.^[522] Evidence for renewed use of conscription emerges under the emperor Diocletian at the end of the third century, but drafting of manpower had presumably become the norm again during the military turmoil of the (poorly documented) mid third century. As in other areas of government, Diocletian formalised arrangements and integrated them into his new fiscal regime, part of which required land­owners to provide recruits according to size of their estates. The renewed use of conscription reflected the need for a larger army, which may have increased in size by between 25 and 50 per cent - necessary to meet the multiple threats which the empire now faced.

Roman Warfare and Military Violence in Late Antiquity desertion during the fourth century was the introduction of the tattooing of recruits on their hand or arm. In addition to the physical violation involved in tattooing, there was also the psychological damage arising from the use of a permanent method of marking previously reserved for slaves.^[523]

Recruiting pressures only increased as the fourth century progressed, with major losses of manpower in the civil war Battle of Mursa (351 ce) and as a result of the defeats of the emperor Julian's Persian expedition (363 ce ) and of Adrianople (378 ce). It was in this context that a bishop in Asia Minor referred in passing to the habitual assaults and injuries inflicted by soldiers on local peasants during the process of conscripting recruits, and that the emperor Valens sanctioned the use of cudgels against monks who resisted military service (375 ce).^[524] The desire to avoid military service was apparently such that it became commonplace for individuals to respond with self­inflicted violence, in the form of digital amputation which rendered them unable to grasp a weapon - a practice which the imperial authorities tried to discourage by various strategies. Conscription continued to play an impor­tant role in maintaining the late Roman army throughout the remainder of late antiquity, even if specific evidence relating to its forcible imposition is more limited (there is a report from the 580s of clergy being coerced into military service and of recruiters dragging children from their parents).^[525]

Unsurprisingly, the use of compulsion extended to other activities which supported the army. So, for example, the men who worked in the state arsenals producing weapons and armour (the fabricenses) - another distinctive late antique development - were also tattooed.

were presumably deployed in this way so that the threat of force could be used against reluctant taxpayers, and since the army was the government's main item of expenditure, this can be seen as another example of compulsion helping to maintain the armed forces. Finally, the munera sordida (‘dishon­ourable duties') which civilians of lower status could be obliged to undertake by imperial officials now included the grinding of grain and baking of bread for troops - a task sometimes required on a significant scale, as the inhabi­tants of Edessa experienced in the early sixth century.³⁰ The exaction of these tasks did not necessarily involve violence, but compulsion can easily meta­morphose into force, and force into violence, depending on circumstances.

A fundamental change in the organisation of the Roman army in late antiquity also had significant ramifications in this area. By the early fourth century army units had been recategorised as belonging either to the mobile, field army forces (comitatenses) or to troops based in frontier provinces (ripenses, later limitanei). The latter were stationed in permanent camps and forts, as in earlier centuries, but the former, when not on campaign (and sometimes also when campaigning), were billeted in cities and towns. House owners were obliged to allow soldiers to occupy one-third of their dwelling - an arrangement which could be guaranteed to give rise to tensions between ‘host' and ‘guest' because of the inherent difficulty of demarcating a proportion of a property. However, on top of this, it is apparent that (unsurprisingly) soldiers also tried to use their status and the latent threat of force to extract supplies from homeowners - most commonly, firewood, mattresses and olive oil. It is clear from a succession of imperial laws aimed at controlling soldiers' behaviour that this was a losing battle and that the soldiers often resorted to violence.

R. MacMullen, Soldier and Civilian in the LaterRoman Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 60, n. 31.

30 For the obligation in the fourth and fifth centuries see Cod. Theod. 7.5.2; 11.16.15,18; for Edessa, see Ps.-Joshua, Chronicle, p. 66 (630,000 modii of grain), p. 88 (850,000 modii). Its late antique novelty is implied by its absence from the list of munera sordida provided by the late third-centuryjurist Arcadius Charisius (Dig. 50.4.18); see further C. Drecoll, Die Liturgien im romischen Kaiserreich des 3. und 4.Jh. n. Chr. (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1997), esp. pp. 261-3.

even raping local women: ‘those who came to our assistance ostensibly as saviours... looted us in a manner little short of enemies’.^[527]

Since violent behaviour by Roman soldiers towards civilians was hardly a late antique novelty, it is worth emphasising that late antiquity will have witnessed a notable intensification of this phenomenon because of the fundamental changes in military organisation noted above - specifically, the creation of field armies and the basing of their units in urban centres. Similarly, the need for a much enlarged army and more centralised organisa­tion of its support structures meant greater use of compulsion in areas such as conscription and logistics. So whatever continuities from earlier centuries of Roman history may be detected, there was nonetheless a significant step change in ‘institutionalised’ military violence in late antiquity.