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Warlordism and the Making of the Roman Imperial Army

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Warlordism and the Making of the Roman Imperial Army Warlordism and the Making of the Roman Imperial Army Boris Rankov The military dynasts who fought the civil and other wars of the Late Republic bore a number of the characteristics normally attributed to warlords: they ex- ercised charismatic leadership in a context in which the central authority of the Senate was weakened or destroyed; they led armies—sometimes with a regional base—which had a personal attachment to their commanders, ce- mented by regular distribution of booty and rewards; the loyalty of their troops depended in part upon their continuing military success; sometimes they promised protection to the population and the restoration of order; and ulti- mately, despite such promises, they operated for their own benefit. By the sixties BC, if not before, the armies created and led by these men were being identified by the names of their commanders: Mariani, Sullani, Sertoriani, Pompeiani, Caesariani. Such adjectives, which appear frequently in the pages of Cicero, Caesar and Sallust, implied active partisanship and not simple attachment to a particular general and thus imply the existence of a concept of warlordship even if there is no clear Latin term for it.1 It may be argued that, in effect, by the end of the Republic army service had become service to a warlord, and Keppie, following the thesis of Schmitthenner,2 long ago recognised that the Augustan imperial army represented a reunification of the former armies of Julius Caesar—the Caesariani—after the civil wars of the Triumviral period; the Caesarian origins of several legions which had fought on both sides in the struggle between Antony and Octavian were proclaimed by the astrological emblem of the Bull (Taurus), while the legions created by 1 Mariani: Cicero De Lege agraria 3.7.2; Sullani: Cic. Leg. agr. 3.7.2; Epistulae ad Atticum 1.19.4; Epistulae ad Quintum Fratrem 1.1.21; orationum deperditarum fragmenta 9 fr. 14; Sallust Catilina 16.4; Historiae 1. fr. 42; see also Cic. Leg. agr. 3.10 and 13; In Verrem 2.1.37; Nepos Atticus 2.2.4; Sertoriani: Cic. Verr. 2.5.72, 146, 153; 155; De Lege Manilia 21; Pompeiani: Caesar Bellum Africum 23.2; Bellum Alexandrinum 9.3; 59.1; Bellum Hispaniense 13.3; 14.3; 16.1; 34.2; see also 35.2 and 37.2; Bellum Civile 1.15.5; 28.1; 40.2; 3.42.3; 44.4; 46.3 and 5; 48.2; 51.2 and 6; 53.1; 58.1; 63.6; 65.1 and 2; 66.2; 67.5; 69.2; 72.1; 84.2 and 4; 93.1 and 8; 94.2 and 4; 95.1; 97. 2–5; 99.4; 101.7; 107.1; Cic. Phillipicae 13.32; 38; 45; Epistulae ad Familiares 10.32.3 (C. Asinius Pollio); Att. 1.12.1; Caesariani: Caes. BAfr. 7.5; 13.1; 14.2–3; 24.3; 28.2; 52.2; 53.1; 66.3; BAlex. 59.1; BHisp. 34.2. 2 Schmitthenner 1958. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi ��.��63/9789004354050_0�0 416 Rankov Octavian/Augustus bore the Capricorn.3 Initially, perhaps only 6 of the 26 le- gions maintained after 30 BC were left under the control of governors appointed by the Senate, while the remaining twenty were located in provinces governed by Augustus through his deputies (legati), and the only regular military force left in Italy was Augustus’ bodyguard, the cohortes praetoriae. By the end of Augustus’ reign the Senate oversaw only a single legion under the proconsul of Africa, and perhaps significantly even that legion was entitled III Augusta.4 The warlord concept had not been forgotten, however, even after the accession of Tiberius, and in the senatorial decree condemning Cn. Piso the Elder in AD 20, one of the major charges against the latter is that he ‘gave donatives under his own name from the fiscus of our princeps and having done this rejoiced that some troops were referred to as Pisoniani and others Caesariani, and even honoured those who had followed his orders after taking on this name’;5 this is associated in the decree with a clear statement that Piso was attempting to bring back civil war. In this paper, I want to consider some of the other ways in which the warlordism of the late Republic left behind traces in the imperial Roman army, preserved in its units, its ranking structure and its reward system. Although it seems possible, it is not entirely clear whether the emergence of praetorian cohorts in the late Republic6 should be connected with warlord- ism. Festus attributes the first praetorian cohort to Scipio Africanus in Spain,7 although it not certain whether this refers to the hero of the Second Punic War or to his adoptive grandson Aemilianus at Numantia in 133 BC. Such cohorts are mentioned a number of times in the first century BC, though not always attached to men we might regard as warlords: Marcus Petreius had one in 62 BC as legate to the proconsul C. Antonius Hibrida in the final battle against Catiline,8 while in the Second Catilinarian Oration Cicero was able to refer to 3 Keppie 1984: 132–44; 205–12. 4 See Le Bohec 1989. 5 SC de Cn. Pisone patre lines 54–7: sed etiam donativa suo nomine ex fisco principis nostri dando, quo facto milites alios Pisonianos alios Caesarianos dici laetatus sit, honorando etiam eos qui post talis nominis usurpationem ipsi paruisset. 6 Durry 1938: 70–6; Keppie 1984: 83–4, 115–8; 1996: 104–7; Bingham 2013: 9–15. 7 Festus p. 249L (223M) s.v. praetoria: praetoria cohors est dicta, quod a praetore non discedebat. Scipio enim Africanus primus fortissimum quemque delegit, qui ab eo in bello non discederent et cetero munere militiae vacarent et sesquiplex stipendium acciperent. On whether this should be associated with the φίλων ἴλη attributed to Scipio Aemilianus by Appian Hispanica 84, see Pina Polo 2001. 8 Sall. Cat. 60.5; and also 61.3..
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