University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations Fall 2009 THE REPUBLICAN SOLDIER: HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REPRESENTATIONS AND HUMAN REALITIES Kathryn H. Milne University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity Commons Recommended Citation Milne, Kathryn H., "THE REPUBLICAN SOLDIER: HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REPRESENTATIONS AND HUMAN REALITIES" (2009). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 64. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/64 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/64 For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE REPUBLICAN SOLDIER: HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REPRESENTATIONS AND HUMAN REALITIES Abstract My dissertation addresses two related questions about the soldier of the Roman Republic: how writers who treated the Republic interpreted the figure of the soldier, and what that soldier’s real experience was like. The dissertation shows how the soldier figure was wound into the overall objectives of the writers Polybius, Livy, and Sallust, who made the figure of the Roman soldier essential to their conceptions of Roman national character, and used the soldier to demonstrate their perceptions of the ascension, stability, and then decline of Roman society. I conclude that the soldier figure has a privileged role to play in Roman self-identity and representation. I then address how we can access the soldier’s real experience, and use the Bellum Hispaniense, the work of a low ranking soldier, to demonstrate that the soldier’s major concern is for information. Success in warfare and the cohesion of an army depend on the soldier’s mentality, rather than his physical body. I explore this by creating a methodology for interdisciplinary research involving modern history and psychology. I argue that unusual or seemingly incongruous incidents, instead of being labeled as romantic or legendary discourse, can be usefully reframed in terms of the study of human behavior. I show similarities between recorded behaviors of Roman soldiers and documented cases of modern soldiers who have developed dependency on their leaders. I also address the Roman army more broadly, and argue that the rules and regulations in the Roman army bear strong resemblances to those employed in the German Wehrmacht and the Iraqi army to encourage “victory or death” style soldiering. I conclude that this historiographical trope was deliberately enforced using psychologically manipulative methods. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Ancient History First Advisor Campbell Grey Second Advisor Brent Shaw Third Advisor James Ker Keywords Roman soldier Subject Categories Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/64 THE REPUBLICAN SOLDIER: HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REPRESENTATIONS AND HUMAN REALITIES Kathryn H. Milne A DISSERTATION in Ancient History Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2009 Supervisor of Dissertation _______________________ Campbell A. Grey Assistant Professor of Classical Studies Graduate Group Chairperson _______________________ Jeremy McInerney, Professor of Classical Studies Dissertation Committee Brent Shaw, Professor of Classics, Princeton University James Ker, Assistant Professor of Classical Studies The Republican Soldier: Historiographical Representations and Human Realities © 2009 Kathryn H. Milne iii For my parents iv Acknowledgements I am grateful to Campbell Grey, whose advising over the last three years has pushed, guided, and inspired me to become a much better historian and scholar. I could not have asked for a more intellectually generous, knowledgeable, and invested supervisor. I am grateful also to Brent Shaw, for his enthusiastic support of my work and for giving me the benefit of his considerable academic expertise; to James Ker, a wonderfully insightful reader, and to Jeremy McInerney. For those who walked the path with me, counseled my crises and cheered my triumphs, I cannot express how much your support has meant. My most profound thanks to Amanda Sisselman, Joanne Valin, Helen Hoguet LaCroix, Leah Culligan Flack, and the other members of the ‘Cabin’. In addition, a small army of friends helped me either academically or emotionally during the writing of this dissertation. I am grateful to Roshan Abraham, James Boutette, Nicholas Cipolla, Amanda Coles, Jean-Louis Hippolyte, Jonathan Jacober, Grant Nelsestuen, and François Woo. I thank also Patricia Kuhlman, who was kind enough to point me in the right direction in the field of psychology and give me valuable advice. Finally, heartfelt thanks go to my parents, Colin and Gloria Milne, whose unfailing support and belief made this possible. This dissertation is for you. v ABSTRACT THE REPUBLICAN SOLDIER: HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REPRESENTATIONS AND HUMAN REALITIES Kathryn H. Milne Campbell A. Grey My dissertation addresses two related questions about the soldier of the Roman Republic: how writers who treated the Republic interpreted the figure of the soldier, and what that soldier’s real experience was like. The dissertation shows how the soldier figure was wound into the overall objectives of the writers Polybius, Livy, and Sallust, who made the figure of the Roman soldier essential to their conceptions of Roman national character, and used the soldier to demonstrate their perceptions of the ascension, stability, and then decline of Roman society. I conclude that the soldier figure has a privileged role to play in Roman self-identity and representation. I then address how we can access the soldier’s real experience, and use the Bellum Hispaniense , the work of a low ranking soldier, to demonstrate that the soldier’s major concern is for information. Success in warfare and the cohesion of an army depend on the soldier’s mentality, rather than his physical body. I explore this by creating a methodology for interdisciplinary research involving modern history and psychology. I argue that unusual or seemingly incongruous incidents, instead of being labeled as romantic or legendary discourse, can be usefully reframed in terms of the study of human behavior. I show similarities between recorded behaviors of Roman soldiers and vi documented cases of modern soldiers who have developed dependency on their leaders. I also address the Roman army more broadly, and argue that the rules and regulations in the Roman army bear strong resemblances to those employed in the German Wehrmacht and the Iraqi army to encourage “victory or death” style soldiering. I conclude that this historiographical trope was deliberately enforced using psychologically manipulative methods. vii Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One Earning Eternal Rome: The Soldier and the Citizen 8 Chapter Two To Conquer or To Die: Polybius’ Scientific Explanation of a Roman Slogan 43 Chapter Three Falling in, Falling Out: Livy on the Fragility of the Soldier’s Identity 67 Chapter Four A Military Society Without War: Moral Decline and the Soldier in Sallust 94 Chapter Five Information and Communication: The Caesarian Corpus 123 Chapter Six Nothing Ever Changes: The Psychology of the Soldier 150 Conclusion 193 Primary Source List 197 Bibliography 200 1 Introduction I. General Introduction This dissertation is a project of intellectual history, which investigates popular thought and perceptions about the soldier figure during the Republic and sets them in dialogue with accounts of real human experiences in war. It is about thought, mentality, and psychology. It should be noted that the ideas about the soldier with which this dissertation is concerned are naturally not the only ones in evidence during the Republican period. I have therefore chosen to examine those authors and accounts which help to define the soldier’s relationship to the rest of society. This central theme operates on a number of different levels. I deal with semi-mythological stories and etiological legends, which allow us access to broad themes about what the Roman soldier means to the Roman nation. These stories indicate that the Roman people attached great significance to the figure of the soldier and related him to larger concepts about Rome’s place in the world. I also examine the authorial treatment of themes about the soldier. The soldier figure is integral to Roman life and to Roman self-perception, and so he plays a large role in the world view of historians of Rome. For Polybius he is behind her success, for Sallust a measurement of her decline, and in both authors, vital to perceptions about the health of the state. When considered together, all the authors treated in this dissertation contribute parts of a larger picture which helps to frame the soldier’s relationship to the 2 rest of society. The soldier is the means by which the citizen makes his contribution to society, and the figure of the soldier as a conqueror of others is linked to Rome’s success as a nation. In Livy, if one ceases to perform the duties of a soldier, one ceases to be perceived as a soldier in the eyes of the rest of Rome, and as a result the offender suffers social marginalization and exclusion. The Romans cast out groups of men who have ceased the pursuit of soldiering. Sallust sees the same vision on a larger