This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ The Roman army in Egypt, 31 B.C. to A.D. 212 Alston, Richard The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 11. Oct. 2021 I ryrý GfQ The Ro m an Arm y in Egypt 31B. B. C. to A. D. 212 by Richard Alston Thesis submitted for Ph. D. King's College, London 19gi p uo N. uNýv BEST COPY AVAILABLE Variable print quality A bstract Roman Egypt has produced a considerable amount of documentary, papyrological material illuminating for historians the society of the chora. Some of the material illuminates the role of the army in society and much of this has not been exploited by military historians. The thesis is divided into two broad sections. The first section, chapters 3 to 7, cover the role of the army as an institution. I consider the military role of the army in guarding against external threats or launching expeditions out of Egypt and the place of the forces in Egypt in the crises in the Eastern Mediterranean. I go on to study the internal revolts in Alexandria and in the chora before concluding the section with a detailed analysis of the impact of the army at the level of the village. Here I concentrate on the policing role of the army and especially on the position of the centurion. The second part of the thesis concerns the position of the soldiery in Egyptian society, looking at their legal, social and economic position as well as recruitment and veteran settlement. Much of the evidence for this part of the thesis comes from the North-eastern Fayum villages and the section culminates in a case study of one of the villages of that area, Karanis. 2 C on tents I Preface 4 II Introduction 6 III The Military Establishment of Egypt 10 79 IV The Army at War V The Alexandrian Uprisings 96 VI Bandits and Rebels 119 VII Peacetime Activities 155 209 VIII Recruitment and Veteran Settlement IX Pay 231 X The Legal Status'of Soldiers and Veterans 244 XI Karanis: A Small town in Egypt 284 XII Conclusion 326 337 XII Notes , XIII Bibliography 409 3 I Preface When the subject for this thesis was first suggested my first reaction was to reject the idea out of hand. I had never had any real interest in military history and as an undergraduate had striven to avoid writing anything that might involve much research on such matters. I came to this work with little prior knowledge of the Eastern Mediterranean or Egypt and my interest had always been in history through literature not documents or archaeology. Yet, the material had an immediate allure. The insights into a part of society impossible for the classical historian to study were fresh and exciting and the prospects of tracing the impact of a foreign culture on this level of society fascinating. This study has sprung from an interest in Egypt and I must apologise to the reader interested in the army if the military get lost in the country but I hope they will struggle through until it reappears. I have incurred many debts in the writing of this thesis both to those who have helped directly and those who have indirectly encouraged me by a kind word or sharing a thought. I would like to thank especially Dominic Rathbone who has supervised this thesis with great patience and dedication; Sara who has supported me through the pressures of the last few years and listened to my enthusiasms with unfailing patience; Kate Gilliver who 4 has helped me understand something of the archaeology of the period and Dominic Montserrat who has always been ready to answer my queries about Egypt and glance at the more troublesome documents. I would also like to thank Jane Rowlandson, Margaret Roxan, Averil Cameron and Tim Cornell. I must thank the teaching staff of the relevant departments of U. C. L. and King's, the staff of the Institute of Classical Studies, especially those who work in the library, and the post-graduates who have introduced to me to many new fields and ideas. It is only at this stage that I realize how rauch of a team effort thesis production is. 5 II Introduction The military history of the Roman Empire has become something of a backwater in recent years. The study of this important area of Roman life has been neglected or has become the group of preserve of , an extremely well-informed specialists, operating within their own parameters. These specialists tend to see the army as an institution which can be studied separately from the rest of Roman society and to some extent the study has evolved separately to the changes in ancient history over the last twenty to thirty years. The study has been dominated by the view from the western provinces and by those historians trained in the discipline of archaeology rather than ancient history. This is perhaps no bad thing but can tend to lead to assumptions and methods being unquestioned over many years. It has also led to a great division between the military historians and the ancient historians. When I mention my thesis topic to most ancient historians, a slightly glazed look appears in the eye as memories of books on the Roman imperial army started but never finished come flooding back. With military historians the reaction is often initially very different; a moment of wild enthusiasm which is soon lost at the mention of the word "society". At a recent conference, archaeology- based, military historians spent a great deal of time Page 6 Introduction congratulating each other on the work accomplished in the last years and searching for new directions, new questions that needed answering. This healthy process was marred by a lack of self-doubt or of questioning of firmly held assumptions that lay behind so much of the methodology. At a recent conference of ancient historians, the announcement of a paper on Roman military history caused dark murmurings about phone-calls to be made and book shops to be visited before the realization that there was no tactful escape. Yet talked to privately, many of the military historians and the ancient historians express similar doubts over the modern literature on the army. All historians attack the "old- fashioned ideas" that dominate much readily available work. Younger scholars, though this is perhaps the nature of younger scholars, almost universally express profound dissatisfaction with the received view. It seems that the time is fast approaching when there will be radical change within the historiography of the Roman imperial army. This thesis will not bring about that revolution. However, I seek to break away from the traditional constraints of military history. Thus there are many traditional areas of interest which do not appear here. Strategy is considered in one chapter but only briefly. There is no consideration of the problems of supply and of logistics; no discussion of the officering of the army and Page 7 Introduction -no study of senior ranks. Similarly there is no study of paths of promotion and there is virtually nothing on the internal organisation of military units. The tactics, training and equipment of the forces are ignored. The archaeology of the army, its forts, roads, limites, only have a minor role to play. My concern is to consider the army within a precise social and political context which is more fully illuminated for Egypt than for any other province. To build up such a picture, we must start very slowly, very carefully. My first chapter is very traditional in approach. It is the foundation of the study, placing the army on the map before going on to consider its function and role. I suppose that I start as I imagine the Roman emperor starting, with a list of units, looking at them in the context of the empire as a whole. But, progressively, I move away from the imperial view towards Egypt, looking at the army on the ground, and ending in a village in the Fayum. This may seem to be the wrong direction. To start with the general and work down to the specific might be considered perverse and work against any claims to general applicability. This brings me to the problem of Egypt. The "Egypt is different" school is undoubtedly very persuasive but not only is the difference between Egypt and the rest of Page 8 Introduction the empire a problem, but the differences within Egypt are also problematic.