AD 69: Emperors, Armies & Anarchy (2024)

Roman propaganda monuments are known best of all and they are still often cited, especially in Hollywood blockbusters. Despite the many doubts expressed by modern researchers, they continue to be sources valuable in many aspects as those monuments, mostly located in the capital, show how military weapons were perceived by the inhabitants of the capital, including the sculptors who were working on these monuments. There are many images of so-called Attic helmets on Roman monuments dated back to the first two centuries AD. As a rule, all of them are richly decorated with embossed floral ornament, have a browband with volutes in the temporal region and equipped with longitudinal crests with gorgeous plumes. The question arises, what are the samples were depicted on the Roman reliefs? Ho w accurately this specimen have been reproduced by artists and sculptors, or, perhaps, we see only a reflection of the Hellenistic artistic tradition? There are helmets with a browband shaped as a vertical fronton with volutes existed. Their later modification is presented by finds from Guisborough, Theilenhofen, Chalon-sur-Saône. The pieces of the I st century AD – early II nd century AD are Weiler-type helmets with a decorated riveted browband. They are the helmets from Nijmegen, Brza Palanka and from other places. The pieces from Butzbach and Hallaton can be considered as a transitional design between early and later h elmet modifications with a vertical fronton. Thus, all of the above finds suggest that Attic helmets with browbands, which are often depicted on Roman propaganda monuments, are not the sculptors’ invention, but helmets really common in the Roman imperial army , imitating the models of the earlier period.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2003

This dissertation examines the military and social roles of centurions in the Roman legions during the Republic and Principate. It combines textual accounts of centurions from such authors as Caesar, Tacitus, and Cassius Dio, as well as epigraphic and archaeological evidence for centurions themselves, including funerary monuments, dedicatory inscriptions, and the physical remains of legionary camps. I evaluate this evidence, moreover, with reference to contemporary military and critical social theory (which integrates concepts of civil-military relations, performance, and symbolic systems), considering the centurion not only in the context of the Roman legions, but in broader Mediterranean warfare and society.I argue that centurions were at once the linchpin of the legions’ social and military, hierarchy and the chief representatives of the Roman Emperor’s power at the periphery of the empire. By showing the critical functions of the intermediate members of Rome’s legions, this research challenges scholarship that assumes the supremacy of elite military and political values in shaping Roman attitudes towards warfare and imperialism. I show, moreover, that military authority in the Roman army was often quite fluid, and I identify various contexts in which it was disputed or redefined.The dissertation is organized into six chapters. The first chapter describes the centurion’s disciplinary role in the Roman army. Centurions were responsible for both discipline and punishment in the legions, and by analyzing their reputation for severity, I reassert the significance of corporal punishment in developing Roman military culture. Chapter Two investigates the centurion’s idealized behaviour in warfare, and how it affected views towards leadership and personal authority in the Roman legions. The third chapter demonstrates how these seemingly contrasting ideals of severe discipline and outrageous aggressiveness in combat were complementary rather than contradictory practices in Roman attitudes towards warfare, and that this perceived balance was crucial to the development of the legion’s ranks and organization during the Principate.Chapter Four evaluates legionary centurions’ rank and social status in the legions, including their career paths, military expertise, and training. Using papyrological and epigraphic evidence in particular, I show how centurions identified themselves as part of a corporate body, distinct from both the rank-and-file and aristocratic leadership. The fifth chapter explains their intermediate position in the legion’s social hierarchy between soldiers and aristocratic commanders, and how this position was important to integrating new soldiers into the Roman military community. Finally, Chapter Six assesses the political and administrative roles of centurions in imperial administration, arguing that they were the chief representation of Roman power among local populations at the periphery of Rome’s empire.In organizing the chapters according to the centurions’ various statuses and functions (e.g., combat, institutional discipline, camp management, diplomacy, regional administration), the dissertation concomitantly traces the social, political, and institutional development of the centurionate from Republic to Principate, including its cultural representations. I demonstrate that although the centurions’ traditional role on the battlefield increasingly gave way to more bureaucratic duties, they conversely became more emblematic of Roman martial traditions in their vestments, equipment, and cultural image – a military anachronism, and reflective of a broader trend in which the vestiges of an idealized Republican army endured in the professional legions of the later Principate. This dissertation, therefore explores not only the functions, but the identity and self-image of these officers. This dissertation contributes to scholarship in two fundamental ways. Primarily, it is the first study that combines and analyzes such a broad array of textual, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence for centurions, including duties, characterizations, and expectations. In doing so, the dissertation offers the first comprehensive, scholarly study of legionary centurions in the Roman Empire. Second, the dissertation demonstrates that this analysis of Roman intermediate ranks and social positions is crucial to understanding how attitudes towards discipline, violence, masculinity, and personal authority were manifested both within the Roman military community and throughout the Roman Empire.

JRMES, 2017

Acta Musei Napocensis, 2018

The present paper discusses two funerary monuments from Alba county(Romania) depicting riders. These had been published before, but only summarily, without taking note of the details of military equipment illustrated on them. This is surprising because depictions of soldiers in full battle equipment are very rare in Dacia, not to mention that both monuments were dated to the 3rd century, a period in which such representations are scarce throughout the Empire. Therefore, the traditional art-historical approach to the study of Roman stone monuments will be by-passed and, instead of focusing on the type of monument, elements of style, workshops etc., the study will attempt to discuss at length the riders’ attire and the implications for the study of Roman military equipment.

Apulum, 2017

Open access: https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789047430391/Bej.9789004160446.i-589_009.xml, 2007

Limes XIX: proceedings of the XIXth …, 2005

The military equipment of the Roman Army continues to fascinate academics and enthusiasts alike, the most elaborate and ornamental pieces being the so called ‘parade’ helmets supposedly worn by cavalrymen during ceremonies and displays. Indeed, a private collector recently paid over £2.2 million ($3.7 million or ¤2.8 million) for the Crosby Garrett Helmet, an original cavalry helmet dating from the second to third century AD and discovered by a metal detectorist in Cumbria, England, in 2010. But, were these beautifully decorative and expensive pieces of military kit only ever used, and intended for, elaborate displays?

The various standards carried by Roman armies were not simply for show. Nor were they purely utilitarian symbols to mark a rallying point in battle, or honorific emblems representing tradition or unit pride. In fact, each unit’s standards were venerated as deities that encapsulated the very spirit of the unit itself. It is no wonder that the loss or destruction of the standards was considered shameful and brought disgrace on the men, on the unit, and on Rome herself.

The legions of the Roman Army spark our imaginations, eventoday. The image of their armour, large shields, swords and cloaks are prominent to us and instantly recognizable, with their eagle standards blazing overhead as depicted in stone on the iconic Trajan’s Column. The image of the eagle more than any other has lived on and been used by the likes of Napoleon Bonaparte centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire. But what did the eagle standard, and indeed the others, mean to the soldiers who carried them? What did they symbolize? Why were they venerated?

In: Nosch, M.-L. (ed), Wearing the Cloak. Dressing the Soldier in Roman Times. Ancient Textiles Series vol. 10, Oxford (DressID).

My paper explores how the vitis, the vine-­‐stock that a Roman legionary centurion wielded as a cane with which to punish his soldiers, developed during the Principate from a punitive tool to a positive symbol of military status and imperial authority. As Augustus and his successors transformed the legions into a permanent, standing army, centurions acquired responsibilities beyond combat, including the management of outposts, logistics and supply, policing, and local administration, and they received greater pay and social benefits to match. Despite this increasing professionalization and bureaucratization of centurions, however, the vitis remained their trademark. In fact, it became the most prominent object with which centurions depicted themselves in funerary relief. Ancient authors from Pliny to Eusebius, moreover, refer to it as a symbol of “supreme authority and command” (summam rerum imperiumque) and “honor of the Romans” (Ῥωμαίων ἀξίας). In effect, the vitis transcended its origins as a punitive tool to become a badge of the centurionate and a symbol of the emperor’s military authority that each centurion was to represent and protect.Historians such as Saller (1994), Aubert (2002) and Phang (2008) have interpreted violence and punishment in ancient Rome as a kind of performance, a social ritual, expressed through a variety of language, ritual and imagery, that communicated and distinguished power between different individuals and groups. Several scholars have also examined some of the “props” of this performance– the weapons themselves – and what they reveal about broader practices and ideologies of Roman warfare and imperialism. James (2011), for example, demonstrated how the sword became not a just a weapon in the hands of Roman legionaries, but an artifact, a metaphor for the martial power of the Roman state. Marshall (1984), Schäfer (1989) and Drogula (2007), moreover, have shown the varied meanings attached to the fasces, from a representation of a magistrate’s power to inflict corporal and capital punishment, to a broader symbol of Roman imperium. The vitis, however, has received no such attention, despite its prominence in both textual and visual evidence. My paper, then, addresses this gap in studies on the symbols of Roman power.I begin by examining textual evidence, particularly from Polybius, Varro, Livy, and Plutarch, of the vitis’ origins as a punitive tool in the Roman Republic. I next trace its development into the chief symbol of the centurionate during the Principate by surveying its appearance in funerary inscriptions to centurions and in the literature of the period, including Lucan, Pliny and Juvenal. I then argue two points. First, that a closer study of how the vitis was transformed over the course of the Principate illustrates the development of the centurionate itself; the transformation of the vitis from a brutish, punitive tool into a “scepter,” a positive symbol of imperium, reflected the simultaneous development of centurions from combat officers selected among the soldiers, to influential military and imperial administrators with greater pay and prestige, who were supportive of Rome’s ruling class. Second, I argue that a closer examination of the vitis contributes significantly to scholarship about how power in the Roman Empire was articulated through imagery of punishment and violence. Rather that exploring such imagery amid its aristocratic leadership, however, my paper shows the potential for investigating a symbol of power prominent at an “intermediate” level of Roman military life and society, among officers who were prominent representatives of Roman authority at the periphery of the empire.