Justinian's Guide to Ruling an Empire

I just finished reading Peter Heather's (PH) Rome Resurgent, which I now have to write a review for.  When I first heard about the book, I was both excited and horribly disappointed: excited because I love the topic and have read some of Heather's other work, disappointed because it looked like he had done what I had done.  The good news, for me, is that he doesn't quite seem to have done what I had intended:  write a detailed study of the impact of Justinian's wars on the fate of the empire.  Yes, this is what the book purports to do - and to some degree it does just that, but not quite in the way that I would. 

I'm not going to get into all the nitty-gritty here; most of that will have to wait for the review.  That being said, there is one issue I want to raise, which PH got to, or at least underlined, at the end:  how do you rule for a really long time?  As PH makes clear, Justinian (J) did a lot of things while he was emperor, some of which are quite significant, with four items the accomplishments that usually get most of the attention:  wars of conquest, legal reforms, building of Hagia Sophia, and the closing of the Academy in Athens.  Besides those accomplishments, PH illustrates well J's determination in a number of other capacities, including the religious sphere, for J, like many before and after, strove to bring unity to the Christian church, though with mixed results.

As PH sees J, a great deal of his accomplishments should be ascribed to his attempts to prove his credentials (for rule) and, in the aftermath of the Nika revolt, restore order and his lost prestige (or something to that effect).  J didn't have a clear plan with the west.  Rather, with real challenges to his rule all around, J needed to find some means of consolidating his power, and military success in far-flung places, as the opportunities arose, seemed the best bet.  Yes, there was some strategic thinking on J's and his empire's part, but little of it was long term, and PH argues there's not much in the way of concern for the wellbeing of that empire.  Ultimately, then, while J doesn't deserve the blame for the later ills of the empire, which were largely the result of the world war (as PH calls it) of the later sixth century, most of his success would seem to be a combination of opportunism and - as I take PH's underlying message - dumb luck.

Like others, PH sees J as an emperor only out for number one, with little regard for his people and what impact his policies had on them.  He was quite happy to plunder and pillage if it got him what he wanted, and that was control of the empire.  So, the many thousands who died in Constantinople itself, or the wider parts of the empire at large (Antioch, North Africa, Italy), mattered little.  Many have seen J as a particularly harsh ruler, and PH would seem to fall on this side of the spectrum, if not quite at the far end.

This is where I come in.  I don't want to make a judgement on J's cruelty here, but I do wonder if the absence of long term strategic planning fits well with what we know about J's reign.  Few emperors lived and reigned as long as J.  While many of PH's explanations are perfectly reasonable, is it really possible to rule for nearly 40 years on dumb luck, or something a little more sophisticated than that?  Augustus' long reign is undoubtedly due to his careful networking, planning, and plotting - and like J, he was a master propagandist.  Even if J didn't have any real long term version at the start of his reign, the near disastrous Nika riot would, to my mind, seem to have provided just such an opportunity, after the dust settled, for J to carefully, with Theodora's help, work out how to rule for a long time without the same kinds of crises.  Rather importantly, it seems to have worked, despite all the challenges that he later faced, from the death of his wife and the onset of the plague, which might have afflicted J himself, to the Persian invasions of 540 and the 559 Kutrigur attack of Constantinople.

This doesn't necessarily mean that J had a long term plan to conquer the west and rebuild the ancient pan-Mediterranean empire.  A good part of J's initiatives on that front truly could have been the result of circumstances, and I don't doubt that J did many of the same things that many if not all pre-modern rules have done to ensure rule, including prove their religious and military mettle.  I think the absence of detail - and insufficient evidence - are the cause of some of my dissatisfaction with the explanation PH offers.  I guess then too that what I'd also like to know more about is how exactly an emperor like J went about carrying out his foreign policy objectives - and even how he created them in the first place.  To what degree were there sets of instructions, or guidelines, left from previous rulers that laid out some of this stuff?  Anyway, what the book proves to me, at least for the moment, that my 'great' "impact of war under Justinian" project isn't dead yet, and in fact might be in better shape than I'd feared.  Now if only I hadn't just sent in a proposal for a big research project on Ammianus.  Oh well, maybe it'll get rejected in April? :)

Isidore of Seville and Vegetius

No trees yet. I think a post on trees is coming - it'll mostly be pictures - but not yet.  I want to see out this thread, in part because I had more to say after completing the last post.

In the last post I noted the discrepancy between Isidore's figures for the subdivisions of the legion and Aulus Gellius', my possible/probable source.  The number of centuries and maniples seemed fine, but the number of cohorts was off, turmae were added, and Isidore gave a troop total, namely 6000.  Where did the extra material come from?

One reasonable possibility is Vegetius, the famed and popular (in the medieval era) writer of the Epitoma Rei Militaris.  Vegetius, as I'm sure I've mentioned before (and as you may already know), spends a good deal of time in his work discussing the ancient legion, which Sylvain Janniard has identified with the legion of the Severan dynasty.  While Janniard doesn't argue that Vegetius' legion is a bang-on copy of that earlier one, he makes a good case.  At the same time, there's still scope for other legionary components to find themselves in Vegetius' corpus. 

First, Vegetius isn't the source, it seems, of Isidore's definition of a maniple, which runs (9.3.50, trans. Bentley et al.):  "A maniple consists of two hundred soldiers soldiers. These troops are called maniples either because they would begin a battle in the first combat, or because, before battle-standards existed, they would make 'handfuls' for themselves as standards, that is, bundles of straw or of some plant, and from this standard the soldiers were nicknamed 'manipulars'."  Isidore then gives a quotation from Lucan (1.296), which mentions maniples rallied around standards, and which seems only vaguely related.  That said, one of the definitions for manipulus in the Lewis and Short reads as follows:  "B. Because the ancient Romans adopted a pole, with a handful of hay or straw twisted about it, as the standard of a company of soldiers; in milit. lang., a certain number of soldiers belonging to the same standard, a company, maniple; generally applied to infantry, and only by way of exception to cavalry".  So Isidore and Lewis and Short seem to agree, at least in part, on the origin of the term maniple.  For Vegetius, however, a maniple could be a couple of things:  first (2.13), it could be another word for contubernium, or at least an earlier form of that term.  Secondly, he conflates century and maniple (2.14).  Why the discrepancy?  I think it's due to the same reason that Isidore explains maniple (manipulus) in terms of first combat (manus), as the translators have it.  He says the contubernium used to be called a maniple because they found in groups (manus) joined together.  What we seem to have is some disagreement between Vegetius and Isidore over what manus means in this military context, or at least this organizational one (both are right).

Just because they disagree over maniples and manus, that doesn't exclude Vegetius as a potential source for Isidore's much larger legion (in Isidore's 6000 range) and its attendant turmae.  Vegetius (2.2) gives the size for a legion as 6000 (2.2 - sena milia), and the passage in which we find this is not unlike Isidore's (9.3.46), a point not lost on Milner (p. 31, n. 7):  both refer to the regiments of Macedonians and Gauls, though Vegetius includes many more.  Vegetius' (2.6) legion only contains ten cohorts, however, not Isidore's twelve, and it could have as many as 6100 men and 726 cavalry.  Seems reasonable (though nothing like conclusive) to suppose that this is the source of Isidore's 6000 soldiers.  And, as noted in the previous post or two (can't remember), Isidore would seem to be modifying his source material as he sees fit.

But Vegetius doesn't append turmae to his legion, and speaks of legionary cavalry solely in terms of numbers of soldiers, at least when he first brings them up at 2.2.  That doesn't mean he leaves out turmae; rather, that he saves them for a different discussion.  At 2.14, he has a section entitled "On the Turmae of Legionary Cavalry" (XIIII. De turmis equitum legionariorum).  Therein he says that one turma contained thirty-two men, just two off Isidore's thirty (9.3.51).  The rest of the discussion concerns the duties of decurions and ideal types - it reminds me of Procopius' horse-archers.  Anyway, it's easy to imagine Isidore taking the number and rounding it out to better fit the other figures he gave for the legionary divisions, though it doesn't quite explain how he got to 200 turmae.  When he discusses their 30-man size, he's reasonably accurate, and his vague connection (in my mind) of turmae with republican politics isn't far off the mark.  What he might have done, then, is simply conflated the 200 cavalry usually associated with a legion and forgotten that a turma isn't applied to individual soldiers.

So there we go:  the first half (or its original incarnation) of that little phrase in Isidore possibly/probably from Cincius via Aulus Gellius (not listed as a citation in the translation I'm using), and the modifications from Vegetius.  Of course, there could even have been an intermediary, like Cato, who's work on military matters is lost.  For the moment, I'll stick with what I've got.  Ultimately, too, this should help me to understand how Ammianus uses forms of manipulus and legio, believe it or not.  To close:  I enjoy looking into Roman military divisions and subdivisions more than most things.  Next...maybe tonight...trees?

Isidore, Aulus Gellius, and Cincius Alimentus

My perusing of parts of Isidore's Etymologies has led me to some more uncharted waters, namely those of Aulus Gellius and Cincius (?).  I'd been "aware" of Aulus Gellius before, but I've never given it much thought.  I think too - and I'm certain I've done this a few times - I'd thought it was some sort of novel until I checked and discovered it was an, well, encyclopaedia of sorts:  I'm sure my thinking had been, why is X in a work like Y?  Then I'd check and discover:  oh, that's not what I thought this was.  That being said, the name makes some sense.  Anyway, enough of my convoluted thinking.

While thinking more about Isidore's division of the 6000-man legion into cohorts, maniples, centuries, and turmae, I stumbled across a comparable quotation from Aulus Gellius.  It comes at the end of a long series of quotations of a work called, On Military Science (De Re Militari), by a Cincius (possibly Lucius Cincius Alimentus), and includes snippets of a few sections of that earlier work.  You can find more of the text at Perseus.  As for the parts I'm interested in (translated) here they are, in segments.

"CINCIUS writes in his third book On Military Science that the war-herald of the Roman people, when he declared war on the enemy and hurled a spear into their territory..."  The tossing of a spear as a declaration of war in the republican era was an established practice we know well about, and as far as I know Aulus-cum-Cincius' words on what was said might be true enough. 

Cincius also discusses the levy, the oath a soldier would declare in book four, which also stressed the importance of appearing before the consul once they had been enrolled.  There are also several excuses for missing the day in question that could be acceptable.  This too, so far as I can tell, is fair enough, even if some of the details turn out to be misleading.  I should say too that it'd be interesting if any of this material served as the foundation for later Roman military law, but that's another issue (it discusses desertion and branding, for instance).

Next we come to the possible source of the Isidore passage, and I quote:  "Also in the sixth book we find this: “The columns of cavalry were called the wings of the army, because they were placed around the legions on the right and on the left, as wings are on tile bodies of birds. In a legion there are sixty centuries, thirty maniples, and ten cohorts.”"  In the end, then, we get a pretty close approximation of Isidore's "A legion has sixty centuries, thirty maniples, twelve cohorts, and two hundred squadrons" (9.3.46).  In case there's any doubt, here are the two passages, side by side, in Latin (look, I'm experimenting with links!). 

First Aulus Gellius:
In legione sunt centuriae sexaginta, manipuli triginta, cohortes decem. 

Now Isidore:
Legio habet sexaginta centurias, manipulos triginta, cohortes duodecim, turmas ducentas.

So, pretty similar.  The numbers, however, are off, and both have still put centuries and maniples in the same legion, though in differing quantities.  Isidore's phrasing is slightly different, he's tweaked the numbers, and added an element.  If he was a student, I'd given him credit for not providing a direct quotation, though at the moment I'm tempted to say that this was probably the source of Isidore's information.  As it happens, not only have I discovered, recently, that Lucan was popular in late antiquity, but so too was Aulus Gellius.  Given the two works are not dissimilar, I can understand Isidore's decision. 

All this being said, the passage from Aulus Gellius creates problems of its own.  First, like Isidore, is the information it provides.  The grouping of a century, maniple, and cohort into a legion seems spurious, and at least on the surface seems the questionable part of this series of passages that he's included from Cincius.  But even his alleged source opens up an interesting problem.  A quick google search and an inevitable stop at wikipedia "revealed" that the Cincius in question was a Lucius Cincius Alimentus, a mid-republican individual who had military experience in the Second Punic War.  This man was evidently wrote a great deal, only a portion of which have survived, including many (?! - I'm sceptical) works on military science.  His context, the Second Punic War, makes sense of the content from Gellius' quotations:  the tossing of the spear, the appearance before a consul on a given day, and the appearance of a maniple all make sense in the context of the mid-republic.  This makes the identification of this Gellius Cincius with that republican Cincius believable.  That said, the cohort-maniple situation still creates problems.  How can there be these two subdivisions in one legion, even if the timing is right (generally speaking - it's murky) for the replacing of the latter with the former?

On the one hand, this could be a case of faulty transcription.  Gellius might have had access to the original text (some 300 or so years old) when he composed his work, and a later copyist might have erred in some way or other.  After all, the maniple might have been familiar as a republican thing, and in a gap in the text the copyist might have inserted maniple. 

On the other hand, there are other issues with the quotation.  For instance, how many men did the Cincius think were in a legion?  Polybius (1.16.1ff) says that a mid-republican legion numbered about 4300, 5000 in times of turbulence (6.20.1ff), while Livy (22.36.2-3) says it was 5300 late in the Second Punic War, with an additional 300 cavalry.  When 4300 or 5300, is divided by 60, 30, and 10 we get some odd numbers indeed. 

So if there is a mistake, where is it?  A mid-republican Cincius with real practical military experience seems unlikely to have made this kind of mistake.  It could then be that Gellius' Cincius is not the earlier one.  That said, if it is accurate (or matches Cincius exactly, and Cincius was mid-republican and knew what he was talking about), it could be things were never as fixed as we sometimes think they are.  Those 4000-5000-strong legions were only ever approximations, and the arrival of the cohort might have come about in a random sort of way alongside the maniple. 

There's also a way to make sense of the three divisions, 60 centuries, 30 maniples, and 10 cohorts in a legion:  make it 6000-strong.  In that case, we get centuries of 100 men, maniples of 200 men, and cohorts of 600 men.  These figures are much more in line with what we know about these sizes of these divisions.  Centuries are usually in the 100 range (80-100), maniples in the double century range (160-200), and cohorts in the 500 range (600 for double-cohorts - I know the number is off).  This solution, the 6000-man legion, would make sense of Cincius' numbers.  We could also do it the other way, however, and work backwards:  if the centuries contained 80 men, that would give us about 4800-strong legions.  The 160-man maniple and the 480-strong cohort make sense too - and the chronology works well, as noted earlier, for all these items being together (see Sekunda p 356 in this, admittedly not in the preview).

This brings us back round to Cincius:  even this, on the surface, odd bit in book seven would seem to be pretty accurate.  The association of Cincius the military writer with Cincius the mid-republican praetor works, at least on the basis of the accuracy of what he says and his subject matter, assuming Aulus Gellius has quoted him accurately.  What it doesn't do is help us to understand how Isidore got from Cincius-via-Gellius' figures to his own.  The 6000-legion is still too big.  A 4800-legion would also be big too for the seventh century (the 4th-6th century ones were 1000-1500).  Even if the maniple continued to be used into the imperial era in some capacity or other, other numbers are off. 

What might have happened is that Isidore took this nugget from Cincius-Gellius (he might have got it direct from Cincius, a possibility I have not yet entertained, in part because of the popularity of Gellius in late antiquity), and then attempted to update it with more recent material.  Speidel, for instance, has argued that the paper strength of a legion was closer to 6000, which would make Isidore's total much closer to reality, though it wouldn't explain how he arrived at that total.  It could be the figure is hiding somewhere, and I'll just have to keep digging. 

Suffice to say, interesting stuff (to me) - and quite a roundabout route it always is, with the focus ultimately still me trying to come to grips with Ammianus' use of "legions" and indirectly "maniples" in his Res Gestae.  Next time, perhaps, trees!

Isidore of Seville on War Part 1

Lately, Ammianus Marcellinus has been on my mind for a number of things.  I'm working on a paper on Ammianus for a conference in July that focuses on his discussion of legions.  To that end, I found myself looking through the admittedly much later Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, composed, it seems, in the first quarter of the seventh century.  Isidore has a section on military terms, and another on war. Isidore's discussions are interesting for a number of reasons, and I want to highlight a few features.  One of the interesting questions is where he gets his material, and as the examples I highlight will show, it's an eclectic army that he describes.

As I said, my interest was in his use of legion.  Not surprisingly in a work on Latin terms, Isidore defines quite a few divisions in the Roman army.  Surprises include the size of the legion he gives (6000), and its Romanity (Isidore lived in post-Roman Spain - all 9.46).  What's more, he says the legion is comprised of 60 centuries, 30 maniples, 12 cohorts, and 200 turmae.  A legion was comprised of centuries and cohorts, and at one stage maniples.  But turmae?  And were maniples and cohorts ever part of one legion, and one that numbered 6000?  Turmae were usually cavalry squadrons - he says so as much a short while later (9.51).  Could it be he's referring to the cavalry attached to the legion?  That would make sense, though 200 turmae, which says comprised 30 horsemen, would seem high (that makes for 6000 soldiers).  There's also no 30-man unit within the legion:  there's the 80-100 man century, and the 8-10 man contubernium.  So the 200 30-man turmae (10 is better) is a mystery.

The size of the cohort (500-men) and the century (100-men) are fine, at least at a basic level.  The 6000-men legion and the 200-man maniples are harder to understand.  The imperial-era (Lucan and Tacitus) legion was about 5000 or so (closer to 5200) strong.  The mid-republican was usually about 4200 ordinarily, or 5000 in emergencies in the mid-republic, the era of the maniple.  By the second Punic war the cohort had been introduced, and some speculate that by its conclusion it was already used widely.  The maniple as a word gets used much later than the maniple as pre-cohort division survives.  It's hard to say (and I haven't really checked), but it might well continue to be a division in the Roman navy well into the imperial era (a few inscriptions imply as much).  That doesn't explain its association here, however.  It's used by Ammianus occasionally, sometimes just for a generic unit, though also in a phrase he repeats a few times before speeches ("centuries, cohorts, and maniples").  Did it continue to be used long after its death, only it effectively disappeared from contemporary records?  Is that how we should understand the discussion of maniple here, and how we should understand the regular usage of commanipularis in imperial-era inscriptions?  I suspect, however, that the latter's appearance was more a matter of tradition than its continued usage.  

For Isidore, a camp, the place a soldier was stationed, was given that name (castra) because it was as if they were chaste (castus) or they might be castrated (castrare).  That, in turn, was due to women never entering a camp (9.45).  Now there's been a lot of debate on the presence of women in Roman military bases, and it now seems pretty clear that they were there.  So on this matter he's wrong, but was he basing his estimation strictly on what he knows about those other words?  Or was he using one of the many earlier Latin texts he refers to, like the works of Lucan, Sallust, or Vergil?

Anyway, just a sample.  There's much more interesting nuggets in the Etymologies, and I've only been focusing on military things.  More work to do!

Scrubbing Out Procopius, or the Anti-Kaegi "Procopius the Military Historian"

It's pretty hard to escape the pull of the Procopius-black hole when it comes to the sixth-century East Roman Empire, at least if you're interested in military and political issues.  That's part of the reason why scholars like Roger Scott have devoted so much attention to the other historians like Malalas.  Scott's four pillars of the age of Justinian are:  the construction of Hagia Sophia, the codification of Roman law, the closing of Plato's Academy in Athens, and Justinian's reconquest of the west.  Although Procopius does devote considerable attention to Hagia Sophia in the Buildings, it's the reconquest that garners so much attention in the Wars.  There's no doubt that this presents a skewed view of Justinian's world.  In this post, however, I'd like to flip things around.  To what degree does Procopius' interests in war obscure other pertinent matters, and in turn cause most of us to overlook other important pieces of evidence?  Bearing all this in mind, I want to discuss six aspects of Procopius' military history:  his classicizing vocabulary, his descriptions of combat, his interest in the conquest of Africa and Italy, and his focus on Belisarius in the Wars, his account of the fortifications of the northeast frontier in the Buildings, and his account of the malaise of the empire's soldiers in the Secret History.

Let's begin with the latter, and proceed in reverse order, finishing with Belisarius.  In the Secret History Procopius' emphasizes the suffering of most of the empire's inhabitants, and the soldiers are no exception.  One particular group that Procopius complains suffered a great deal are the border troops, who got into such a sorry state that they effectively stopped being soldiers.  If we forget about Procopius' comments here, and in the other two texts for that matter, in which frontier troops feature hardly at all, and instead look at the surviving evidence we get quite a different picture, at least potentially.  We have plenty of documentary evidence for frontier soldiers in Egypt and Israel/Palestine, and to a lesser degree Jordan.  That material points to thriving frontier communities full of soldiers, who identify as such.  Most seem fully integrated into local life, and if anything the abundance of property documents, not to mention marriage certificates, point to some degree of wealth and prosperity amongst those very soldiers.  So where are they getting their money?  Have they managed to supplement their income through other means, as some has suggested was the case with the soldier from Aphrodito who also served as a boatmen?  Or is their income derived primarily if not entirely from their state income?  If we didn't have Procopius' comments, I suspect the argument would be that the frontier soldiers were flourishing, at least in the sixth-century southeast.  The legal evidence, which is full of material concerned specifically with soldiers, would reinforce these sorts of arguments.

Next we move to the forts of the northeast.  Procopius' love-in for Justinians' building programme has led to a great debate:  just how many of the fortification work we read about is really attributable to him?  Many have highlighted the work of Anastasius, for instance, though in other cases the jury is still out.  What if all we had were the surviving fortifications and a few incidental anecdotes?  Justinian's efforts would certainly be diminished, but then so too might Anastasius'.  There are plenty of forts still standing in Syria (or there were until recently), and plenty more in Jordan.  The date of some of those Jordanian forts are ambiguous, while others are more obviously fourth century in date.  Some seem to have been occupied regularly, though only some have been privy to detailed excavations.  If all we had to go on was these Jordanian (and the neighbouring Israeli/Palestinian forts) forts, we wouldn't see Justinian's reign as an age of considerable frontier work in this part of the frontier, though the comparative epigraphic and papyrological evidence would imply that many if not most of the fortifications continued to the sites of a good deal of activity.

Procopius tends to use archaic vocabulary, vocabulary better suited to the world of Thucydides, or so goes the usual complaints.  This applies to military matters too, and we get hints of this in the words he uses for divisions within the military.  Much of his terminology is vague:  the men with general X, the infantry, the horsemen, etc.  In other cases, his diction has occluded more than it has illuminated.  He likes to use the word katalologos, for instance, a word rarely used by classical or even classicizing historians, when describing groups of soldiers (units or even regiments).  Quite a few have taken this to mean that the term had a more technical meaning, and more specifically that it denoted the army's field units.  It's not an unreasonable assumption if we assume that Procopius is mostly concerned with the field unit soldiers (at the expense of frontier soldiers).  That it features in virtually no other military source for the sixth century should give us pause, however, and A H M Jones is one of the only ones to have done so.  If we didn't have Procopius' Wars narrative where he used words like  katalogos we'd probably devote more attention to the words we do occasionally find in the inscriptions and papyri.  The newly published inscription form Perge would receive a great deal of attention - and scholars would likely be obsessed with how we get from the regiments of the eastern section of the Notitia Dignitatum to the units of Maurice, with no unnecessary - even unhelpful - pauses to consider Procopius.  To some degree this might still happen, though maybe it should happen sooner.  Is it not, for example, interesting that Theophylact can talk of legions on the eastern frontier around the same time that we find the word "legion" in Egyptian papyri - and just a few decades after that Anastasian inscription detailing the structure (it seems) of a legion? 

Turning to combat, Maurice's Strategikon might give the impression that cavalry played a major role in combat at the end of the sixth century.  But it wouldn't explain quite which proportions of the military dominated decades earlier.  Our material evidence is limited, while the other evidence is ambiguous.  If we had to rely on Pseudo-Joshua, we wouldn't get too far.  Corippus' Iohannis, though quite detailed, is a panegyrical epic, and his combat scenes are vaguely Homeric:  they involve single combats, and the dashing to and fro of soldiers into and out of battle.  Agathias, on the other hand, does go to some lengths to describe the experience of combat even if he spends only a little on the finer details. In his most detailed battle, the Battle of Casilinum, there's little in his account that betrays a clear emphasis on either cavalry or infantry.  That might help provide context for the anonymous treatise of political science which includes that fictional debate between Menas and Thomas on the relative merits of the two solitudes to borrow a Canadian literary-cum-historical phrase.  But whether cavalry had supplanted infantry would not yet be clear.

Moving on to the conquest, we would suspect that the campaign in Italy had the smallest of impacts on matters in the capital, which would be in line with some of Scott's arguments.  Even the more local evidence, the Lives of the Popes, devotes only a little bit of attention to the war, with the siege of Rome, such a central feature of Procopius' account, restricted to a few lines.  North Africa, on the other hand, is something else.  Later writers, like Photius and Theophanes, who had read all of part of Procopius, either paraphrase or quote Procopius' narrative of the Vandal Wars.  The aforementioned epic of Corippus also gives the impression that a significant conflict had taken place in the region.  In fact, we could even look to another of the four pillars, Roman law, for yet more evidence of the war's impact.  Besides the overt propaganda at the opening of the Codex of Justinian, there are specific laws that point the acquisition of significant territory in North Africa, and the efforts of the state to administer the new lands.  What this evidence might imply was that a long and significant war had taken place in North Africa, which resulted in a lasting Roman victory.

That North African success brings us to the last point, the reputation of Belisarius.  It seems to me, and many others besides, that his reputation rests largely on the literary efforts of Procopius.  A closer look at the epigraphy, on the other hand, might bring greater attention to Solomon, who published his successes in North Africa quite widely.  Belisarius features in maybe a dozen Latin inscriptions, and a handful of Greek ones.  Solomon, however, features in nearly three times as many Latin inscriptions from North Africa.  On this limited evidence the impression might be that Solomon was the great general of the age, or at least the campaign.  Thanks to Agathias, Narses' reputation might rise too, and though the historian is not unflattering towards Belisarius, his account gives only the vaguest impression of the man's military accomplishments.  Indeed, if all we had to go on was the many later references to Procopius' works, we'd be left wondering what the scope of Belisarius' accomplishment truly was, and perhaps a little baffled the comments of authors like the one who wrote the entry on Procopius in the Suda, or the later Byzantine historian Manasses.

All this is to suggest that the survival of Procopius' long works has not only obfuscated our understanding of the wider world of sixth-century Byzantium, but also more specifically Byzantine military affairs.  While his work has undoubtedly shed a great deal of light on matters like combat, in other instances, such as the careers of "lesser" generals like Solomon or the hardships of the frontier soldiers, what he has provided has obscured other important aspects of the empire's military history.  A greater focus on these other kinds of evidence for sixth-century military affairs might bring a much more about this period to light.

NOTE:  I'd forgotten about Foss' paper on Theodora.  He does this, only with the Secret History.  I've got a copy, but haven't read it yet (will do so now...)

End of Term, Continued

The term may be over, but the deadlines remain.  Besides the pile of marking that awaits, I have a conference paper to write, two book chapters to finish/tweak, a pile of research grants to review, a volume's worth of Phoenix articles to read, and a webinar to think about.  And all of this is due by the 10th of May. 

All that being said, and perhaps not surprisingly, I want to start with Netflix.  I waited with eager anticipation for the arrival of the new Troy show.  The first episode left me wanting, though I was surprised by how varied the quantity of myths connected to Troy they included (death of Menelaus' father, Paris' first love as a shepherd, the Odysseus' madness and his son story).  Because I wasn't enamoured, and all I really want to do is travel the stars, Lost in Space stole me away a little into episode two of Troy.  I'm more than halfway through, and am thoroughly enjoying it.  Admittedly, I tend to like shows like this more for how they stir my imagination (what would it be like to travel the stars) than anything else. 

Anyway, I did manage to go back to Troy, and I think the second episode was thoroughly enjoyable, at least what I've seen so far.  Although Agamemnon was underwhelming at first, once the issue with the winds cropped up, and the decision was made to sacrifice his daughter, I was impressed with how they presented it.  I wondered too, like the fate of the Trojans as a whole, if it was somehow more emotional (for me the viewer) because I knew what was going to happen.  To have to meet Iphigenia, and see how she reacted to her father's confession - and his anguish, Clytemnesra's pain, Odysseus' subterfuge:  that scene to my mind was something else.  Suffice to say, I'm now hooked, even if I've always wished the Trojans had won.  They may have left out ole smelly-foot's abandoning (Philoctetes), or the thrilling landing on the shore at Troy, but I'm looking forward to what comes next.  It's definitely something I'll be using in myth class next year - and Troy as a whole will be getting much more attention. 

Over the next few days, I need to do some thinking about Procopius, as I'll be participating in the Virtual Centre for Late Antiquity's first webinar on Monday (10:30...or 10am CST) on said historian.  We have a few bigger themes that we're going to discuss, and I guess I should get a better handle on where I land on all of them, or even if there is somewhere I land.  I don't want to give the game away - is it possible to build up suspense for a webinar on Procopius - but they're big issues, some I've been thinking about for the purposes of this SSHRC grant that is getting closer to its end.  Along those lines, rather than spilling the beans, I'd like to highlight a question I asked an undergraduate student (Dan Russell) who defended his honour's thesis just a few days ago:  how would you approach the subject if you didn't have Procopius?  Because the central item (Procopius book one sequel) that will emerge from the grant deals with him, I've started wondering that myself.  How would a monograph-length account of military matters in the sixth century East Roman Empire look if you didn't have Procopius?  To some degree, I'll be answering this in my follow-up, which will focus more specifically on limitanei (think all these trips to Jordan).  But it's easier to do in that case as you have inscriptions, papyri, and the physical remains of fortifications, some of which have been fully excavated.  What do you do if you want to focus on matters that pertain to war and that have a direct impact on the heart of the state, and the central activities that an army is engaged in?  Battle would be difficult, though not impossible, without Procopius:  you'd still have Maurice, Pseudo-Joshua, and Agathias for instance.  You could even cover aspects of Justinian's reconquest thanks to authors like Malalas, Corippus, and the author/s of the lives of the Popes.  It would be easier still if you used Theophanes, though given he both quoted and paraphrased Procopius it would seem a bit like cheating.  This (leaving out Procopius) is an easier question to ask/issue to tackle if you're not interested in war.  It's much more difficult if you are.  Would anyone read/accept an article on the things Procopius covers that doesn't include Procopius? Maybe I'll do a post on this over the weekend to get me thinking about the webinar.

I'm going to stop there.  For all the challenges I faced with my Roman army (and myth) class this year, the former's essays were just about the best, collectively, I've ever read.  I'm not sure if this is because I've gone soft, I've forgotten past years, they're cheating (some), or the abstract/outline assignment actually worked, but I'm pleasantly surprised.  And with that, I'm going to do some Procopius reading/thinking, at least when I'm not thinking about the Jets' playoff run - one more tangent.  I seem to have reached a stage in my sports-fan life when there are very few teams that I really care about (i.e. there used to be so many more):  number one the Sens (Ottawa Senators), two the Jets (Winnipeg Jets), and three the Jays (Toronto Blue Jays).  I used to be much more into certain national team things, and random teams from other sports, but really it's Sens, Jets, and then Jays.  Who was I kidding?

Till next time...

Back to the Future: More Battles

It turns out, at least for me, that moving from one kid to two kids is a lot more draining than the shift to one.  I've had lots of ideas cross my mind, but I haven't had a chance to write anything down.  At the moment, the dog's locked in the basement, the youngest is happily bobbing away behind me in her chair, while the eldest is sorting out dinosaur-themed number cards.

This term I'm teaching a course on Hannibal, and it's been a great experience for all sorts of reasons.  For one, it's allowed me to revisit a topic and period that I'm very interested, but not thought about for a long time.  While I've sometimes thought that the mid-republic and Punic wars were a bit saturated, it seems clear there's still things to be said.  I've been struck by all the exciting new finds that have added to our understanding (the wrecks of ships of the Egadi Islands from the First Punic War, the remains of Roman and Punic camps from Baecula in the Second Punic War).  As before, I've been fascinated by all the research on the wider context of the wars:  the demographic challenges, the international relations issues, and the difficulties with the historiography.  In fact, in terms of the latter, I find myself contemplating undertaking a lengthy of study of Polybius (and if you've read this blog you know where I'm heading):  Polybius as military historian, with an emphasis on his love of all things tactical and generalship-y, and whether we can deduce underlying hints of his lost Tactica (or how many of it we can).  On the other hand, whenever I decide to write this large book on Justinian's wars of reconquest, I've often thought I'd draw heavily on all this interesting work on the impact of the Hannibalic wars.  So, like I've said, very useful.

I'm in the middle of a discussion of Cannae in the class, which is a bit concerning if only because we've only got a few weeks left.  That said, it's been useful for thinking about this Sensory History of War popular-history book, as well as one of the grant offshoots, the book on battle in classicizing histories from late antiquity.  While preparing for the class I've had the fortune of reading Ted Lendon's new two-part study of ancient battle, which was originally, I've deduced, meant to appear in the Wiley Encyclopedia of Ancient Battles.  My name appears in the study (a bit of a thrill), and he makes, not surprisingly (I'm quite receptive to his views), quite a lot of insightful comments. 

One of the points he argues, which I brought up in class, is that we can't or shouldn't expect to know anything about the specifics of any individual battle from antiquity with a few exceptions.  We can know a lot about the generalities - and so here he's in keeping with work by Goldsworthy and Hanson on the face of ancient battles - but the ancient accounts are just too vague and stereotypical to get much deeper.  He also, quite wonderfully, illustrates and introduces the point by referring to Lucian's True History, which includes some fantastical battles between the people of the Moon and the Sun.  I read it all last academic year in my second year Greek class, and I'll be doing the same again next academic year (2018-2019).  Like him, I noticed all these cliched battle (and historiographical) elements, which added considerably to the story.  I can see myself drawing on it at a later point.

Anyway, I think Lendon's points are well-taken, and it's had me wondering what to do with the late antique battle book.  That book will include, essentially, a series of case studies of big ancient battles in late antique classicizing authors (Ammianus, Jordanes, Procopius, Agathias, Theophylact).  It aims to show the variety in approaches those authors adopted (they're not all the same stereotypical accounts), while staying true, so to speak, to the conventions of the genre.  It'll bring in some narrative theory, look at rhetorical practices, contextualize in terms other late antique approaches to battle (panegyric, imperial monuments, epic poetry, chronicles), and make some comments on the classical tradition.

For all the generalities, there are still a fair few idiosyncrasies in the classical tradition, at least that I've picked up on.  Few of the later historians seem to have adopted Herodotus' specific approach to combat.  There aren't many episodes, like that post-Marathon involving Epizelus, where classicizing historians include anecdotes that could be likened to instances of PTSD.  Herodotus' attention to individual casualties from the Battle of Thermopylae also stands out.  While you could make the case that Herodotus includes this because of the gravity of the situation, it's hard to argue this wasn't the situation in many later battles.  Why no catalogue of the fallen in later historians?  While they often do highlight the exploits of elite individuals (cue Lucian), the regular folk get left out, or grouped together at the very least, with some exceptions - I confess that as I write this I'm revisiting my views on the roles of all those bodyguards in Procopius.

Reading Livy and Polybius in tandem has been useful for this too.  My class was divided into two parts and each told to focus on one version or the other of the Battle of Lake Trasimene.  Because the battle takes place in a fairly distinct spot, at least in geographical terms, we can use those two authors to pinpoint the precise location (a valley and then a plain along the lake on the side closest to Cortona).  While the two accounts are hardly long and detailed, they do indicate that there is quite a lot more room for teasing out the individualities of specific battles than Lendon suggests, even if, in this instance, it is largely a question of location.  On the other hand, this might well be what Lendon was implying:  you can find the specifics by looking for the unusual in the battle accounts.  If an historian mentions things that aren't part of the usual battle fodder, then that probably means that it was something that happened in that particular engagement.  We'll see if there's anything in those five case studies that bear this out.

So, all this is to say that not all is lost.  I'm back to battles a lot more than I'd planned on being.  I've also left out my planned inclusion in an SCS panel on lesser battles (I'm going to write on the Catalaunian Plains, believe it or not), which has given me much food for thought. 

Procopius Revisited

Time for some more reflection.  First, I love the fact that Cameron's and Kaldellis' chapters bookend the book.  I also confess a great love - too strong? - for reading about how scholars came to their chosen topics/views.  Reading Cameron's discussion of how she came to Procopius were fascinating.  At the same time, I like Kaldellis' idea that more of us (those writing about Procopius) ought to say why we like reading him.  I admit in my own case I was influenced by three things.  I knew little about late antiquity (why did we cut off there?), but I started doing some background reading to bring myself up to speed.  One particularly influential book for me was Cameron's first edition of the Mediterranean in Late Antiquity. In that book, this fellow Procopius kept popping up.  While I don't remember what stood out, I do remember the sense that he seemed an intriguing figure who deserved closer attention.  I seem to recall too that some of the formative thinking about this took place on a stationary bike at the McMaster University athletic centre (circa 2001, 2002).

Second, I love these sorts of chapters/papers:  ones that highlight key aspects of a topic, some gaps in the scholarship, and avenues for future work.  More often than not, these are the ones that have the most scribbles in my copies.  Given my love for Roman military things, historiography things, and late antique things, it's no surprise that these chapters here really float my boat.

Third, I want to go back to a couple of points that both Cameron and Kaldellis have made (separate ones, more or less), which have given me much to think about.  One is Cameron's emphasis on narrative and storytelling, that I mentioned in my woe-is-me post (which also has me thinking:  what sorts of efforts should we make to publicize our books, and how can I make my work reach more people?).  Cameron notes that his narrative approach relates to writers of sixth century history as well as other types of Byzantine prose writing, like hagiography.  That's a fascinating idea, and I'm sure not wrong.  I remember coming across all sorts of useful discussion vaguely related to these comments in Clark's 2004 book, History, Theory, Text.  Maybe this is one avenue that deserves more exploration:  Procopius and hagiography.  After all, Procopius spends a lot of time characterizing a few individuals in his Wars, to say nothing of his Secret History.  In crafting his portraits of Belisarius, has Procopius adopted and adapted some of the techniques employed by hagiographers? 

Cameron also draws attention to Procopius' writing practices, especially with respect to what he chose to include and exclude.  I talked about this a bit, but I'll be touching on it even more in the sequel.  It seems to me that one of the hardest things to grasp (and it's almost certainly impossible) is why Procopius left things out, and one particular topic I'll be looking at in the book is recruitment.  I suspect that as work continues on this sequel, I might have to address quite regularly why things were left out:  did it suit his literary objectives somehow, is it a desire to make his work more palatable to his audience?  There's so much he likely did know, even the regularly military stuff I'm interested, that he doesn't discuss. 

Yeah, I seem to be trailing off so I'll move on to the next topic.  Cameron stresses that all three of Procopius' works are anchored in material life, while Kaldellis (following Turquois) highlights the materiality of Procopius' writing.  This is how he "structures, textures, surfaces, and fleshes out a world for us" (Kaldellis 2017:  265).  His point is that Procopius has produced a literary simulacrum of sixth-century experience, and he draws attention to a number of topics for which this might be true including weapons, wounds, and forts.  What I need to do, clearly, is read Turquois' thesis in its entirety and bear her conclusions in mind when looking at all the war stuff.  One current project, stemming from the grant, is on battle narrative in late antique classicizing historiography. It might be worthwhile to consider all this as I examine (or continue - it's well on its way) my intended subjects, Ammianus, Jordanes, Procopius, Agathias, and Theophylact.   As it happens, when it comes to open or pitched battle, Procopius might well be one of the weaker ones of the group.  I think, if anything, Agathias and Ammianus might be the strongest in this regard, though only time will tell (and more reading). 

Unfortunately now Cameron and Kaldellis have me wanting to write a third and fourth sequel of my Procopius book, the third on narrative techniques in the Wars as a whole (maybe narrative and character), the fourth on the materiality of warfare in Procopius.  But then I'll never do any of these other things.  Maybe I could combine the two into my eventual study of Agathias?  If nothing else, this book has so far reminded me why Procopius might still be one of my favourite topics.  It's also been a very challenging year or three professionally, and it's stimulating discussions like these that keep me going.

The Monograph Do-over

I've been reading some of the chapters, particularly the opening and closing sections, in Lillington-Martin and Turquois' new edited volume on Procopius, and a few things have jumped out at me, much as I suspected they would.  For one, it's a bit disappointing my book came out as late as it did, as the gestation period of the edited volume meant that no one really had the chance to digest what I had to say.  On the other hand, had the edited volume come out before the book, there's every chance I might have seriously considered tweaking (to put it mildly) some of the book to respond to the interesting points that have been made.  One other, general observation:  some of the avenues for future research proclaimed in this book I have already embarked upon.

Let's begin with the first point.  A couple of contributors (Whitby and Kaldellis) draw attention (or at least refer in passing) to the heroic, even Homeric, character of the Gothic War narrative, especially as it applies to the siege of Rome (537/538).  I discuss all this in detail in the book (chapter 4).  Somewhat frustratingly, I'd initially stumbled across this character to the narrative back at the start of the PhD in 2006.  But things being what they are, Hornblower managed to comment on it before I did, at least in print, owing to the publication of his contribution to the Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare.  Still my chapter, a revised version of what was in the original PhD, discusses this in detail. 

Indeed, Kaldellis (2017:  261) notes that Procopius' "coverage has breadth and detail in the right proportions as a military historian".  That, in a nutshell, summarizes what I argue on the book, though my focus is more narrowly on battle.  To complicate things, the follow-up, or sequel (which I've discussed regularly in this blog) as I'm thinking about it, will look at this more broadly, though more on this a bit later.

Another point that Cameron, Van Nuffelen, and Kaldellis draw attention to (to some degree or other) is the relationship between author and text.  On the one hand, there's caution about how much we can take an author at his word (Cameron, Kaldellis).  On the other, Van Nuffelen notes scholars have hardly ever heeded the advice of literary scholars that author and text are two different things.  I did - and had planned to do more of this in the monograph.  My desire to do so, however, was regularly tempered (by others) at the various submission/revision stage, such that I ended up including a background chapter (one that I'd planned to add to the end - after the reader had seen what I had to say about the text). 

The narrative structure of Procopius' works features too, unsurprisingly.  There's a sense that more could be done on this.  Cameron (2017:  15) identifies this as an approach that "seeks to analyse the techniques by which narrative is constructed" and highlights his techniques of narrative and storytelling , while Kaldellis (2017:  261) says that Procopius' "ontology of action" remains to be studied.  Although my focus was narrower (combat), this, again, is precisely what my book does.  I ask (or answer), how does Procopius tell the story of battle, and what sort of narrative techniques does he employ?  See, for instance, the second sections of my second, third, and fourth chapters.  It involves bringing some narrative theory into the discussion, though also hints of rhetoric and classicism, among other things. 

On the other hand, doubt is cast on the value of genre in understanding a text.  Admittedly, I stressed the importance of genre in understanding how Procopius describes and explains combat.  I even went so far as to claim that Procopius was constrained by his chosen genre (classicizing history).  I think my point, however, was that this explained why he didn't include all those little details that military historians are often so keen on.  Indeed, I also tried to show that for all this influence of genre, he was able to craft some truly remarkable accounts of battle, and that his latent classicism didn't necessarily mean that he couldn't represent reality truthfully (Van Nuffelen 2017:  40 - the prologue, section four in my introduction, and chapter six).  Additionally, I spent a good part of the time showing what makes his accounts of combat in the Wars such dramatic narratives (section three in chapter two, and sections 2a, though maybe 2b and 2c too, in chapter four).

Then there are the avenues for future research (they are many), some of which I've started to take up (or will do soon).  Cameron (2017:  18) says it's inadequate to evaluate Procopius' three works in terms of reliability and truth-telling.  This had been my intention with the follow-up, under the preconception that people would rather read that sort of thing than what I had done in Battles and Generals.  Some months ago that approach seemed better left for something else (a commentary, maybe), and some sort of unifying theme would make for a much better project.  Well, lo and behold, that's when I stumbled across the emphasis on fear, raiding, booty, and defence that unifies all three texts, at least if your focus (like mine) is on military issues.  Along the way I plan to situate Procopius' writing on war in the real-world context.  This means, to follow Kaldellis (2017:  269) to some degree, to look at the sixth century empire's military institutions through an analysis of the papyrological, legal, and narrative evidence, though I too will be using, where warranted, the epigraphic evidence.  Increasingly, it seems, scholars are seeking to understand the relationship between Procopius and Justinian's laws (Kaldellis 2017:  268), and I plan to do this, where possible, and where it pertains to military issues, in the sequel.

So there's me responding to what I've read so far.  There's more, and there will be more, but my bicycle's busted and I think my youngest daughter (all of 1.5 months) may soon crack.

Even Further Reflections on the Roman Military Panel

Black to the blurbs...

Cary Barber, "The 'Lost Generation'..."
Barber noted the extreme war time losses during the Hannibalic war, which might, in the case of senators, have meant a depletion of as much as 60% of their numbers.  The senate, in general, had a regular cycle of death of renewal, but this was thrown off by all the deaths in the war.  For the years from 366-218 BC, there were fewer and fewer men repeating the consulship, in part (or largely?) the result of the Lex Livinia. All the deaths threw this off, and Romans were willing to let men repeat consulships as a result of all the Hannibalic madness.

Michael Fronda, "Titus Quinctius Flamininus'..."
Fronda highlighted the looking at old questions in new ways that seemed to dominate discussion so far.  He commented on narratives and the memories of war, with the triumph itself serving as a kind of narrative (an interesting point - has me thinking about the varied narratives of war in the age of Justinian).  Allies participated in some triumphs, though generally irregularly, starting in 187 BC (probably).  The idea is that Flamininus' triumph in 187 was an experiment in just this (bringing in allies).

Jessica Clark, "Anecdotal History..."
There were a handful of papers that touched on the social war, this being one of them, with her aim being to meld history and historiography.  She noted the Social War was a difficult event to grasp, with some modern scholars starting their discussions before it, or after it.  Evidently, Diodorus Siculus called the war the greatest war that was ever known - and not at the start of his entire work, but just that section.  Struck me as very preface-y, (and I jotted lots of Procopius-themed points, surprisingly) though I gather there are all sorts of problems with the text as is (still I might have to come back to this).  The evidence for the social war is problematic, and she asks whether we'd understand it better with more evidence - though another question is whether we should be asking different questions.

Nathan Rosenstein, "Tributum, Latin Revolt..."
He said two great questions for the republic were:  how did it get such a great empire, and what caused it to fall apart.  Says war and military service played a role in all this, which is part of the reason why they're worth studying.  Touches on the communicative turn (not convinced by), and says warfare was (one of?) the best way(s) for individuals to interact with each other.  This, to me, was a fascinating point, and I think Milne brought up something comparable, either in her talk or in her questions.  While soldiers did spend time fighting, much of it wasn't.  And even when they were at war, they often had to travel to get there (set up camp, etc.).  So, there were plenty of opportunities for men to chat (and sing).  Back specifically to Rosenstein:  Livy provided lots of evidence of the deaths of military tribunes, which suggests they didn't hold back when fighting.  Additionally, war (and the Hannibalic war too) was a means for elites to prove their worth.  Along those lines, cavalry provided many more opportunities to prove all this than service in the infantry (in lines, part of a group, etc.).  Rosenstein notes the changing culture of the soldier in the 1st century BC, though also the 2nd century BC, and the 3rd century BC (and so on).  This brought up an interesting question (in my mind at least):  what would my three men for my army textbook think if they were transported into each others' Roman worlds?  I believe we were into the discussion now, but when soldiers came back from war, how did they integrate back into regular life?  Is the biggest change from the Social War (in terms of military stuff) the integration of all these Roman and Italian men?  Were men recruited from all over?  These last couple of points surprised me (my ignorance) - I'd assumed republican recruitment was more uniform, and hadn't appreciated all this complexity.

Francois Gauthier, "The Transformation of the..."
In this paper he basically says we shouldn't give all this credit to Gaius Marius for his late second/early first century reforms.  I had done, to some degree, in the past, but found his arguments convincing.  Rather, to pick up the social war theme, he said this was the turning point.  I discovered that Roman citizen cavalry hadn't been replaced in the first century BC (or earlier) by allies (this from McCall's book).  Allies were apparently much cheaper to use than Roman soldiers, because they paid for themselves, apparently (to do with taxies, indemnities, and such, I think - plus they pay for their own men and equipment).  There were some useful references to chase down:  Front. 2.3.17, Cic. Verr. 5.60 (can't remember why).  Also, intriguingly enough, Pompey's armies were allegedly comprised of men from 33 ethnicities (this following an article in Historia from the 60s - have to track it down).  There were lots of comments about paying for soldiers, and the challenges this provided.

Jack Wells, "The Lessons of..."
His paper was about Augustan historiography, and really about Roman beliefs about where they came from.  Lots of ways to tell a story, and one interesting figure with a fascinating backstory is Servius Tullius, both a slave and divine.  Most sources rate him highly.  He notes the weirdness about Rome:  any foreigners who show up in early Rome could be made citizens, which wasn't the case for slaves.  Additionally, it was fortune that made you a slave (contra Aristotle's natural slavery views).  If you're a slave captured in war, you've proven some form of honour (this the view of Dionysius on early slaves).  Some interesting points about Dionysius of Halicarnassus, whom I'd never thought much about before:  he does apparently try to explain how the Romans do things to a Greek audience (an interesting point).  One of the big takeaways is the permeability of categories in all this.

Brian Turner, "'Bloodless Victories..."
There are a host of examples in which battles were won but the Romans hadn't suffered any casualties.  All sorts of interesting comments here (like all them, again).  Claudius celebrated taking Britain without any losses, and Turner asked whether the Romans were losing their appetite for war.  Bloodless victories are apparently found in every decade of Livy's book, and apparently Sallust gets into it too.  Men wanted to limit their own losses, and it was asked if there was a practical component to this.  He touches on Mons Graupius, Josephus and Jotapata, Tactius, Civilis, and the Batavian uprising, the Adamklissi monument, and he asks if the discourse of bloodless victory (he's influenced by John Lynn) could influence how a general performed.  One point raised in discussion (and which I hadn't considered), was that Lendon's view of combat was too elitist (all this virtus stuff - did ordinary soldiers really care about it?).  There was a question too about whether all this bloodless victory stuff was really about hiding losses.

Sara Phang, "Reviewing the Marriage..."
An update, of sorts, following her book on marriage.  All very convincing (read her work).  She notes the importance of documentary sources for the imperial era.  She asks what the most useful approach is to studying women, families, and the army.  She gets into who's serving and where are they from.  She sees epitaphs as cultural patterns, and looks at the changing depictions of soldiers on epitaphs - very interesting.  Think I'd contemplated it before, but not really given it much thought.  I think I'd like to get my hands on as many depictions of soldiers on epitaphs as I can find.  Anyway, she notes the contrast between epitaphs, which involved lots of choice on the part of the individual, and the diploma, which was a legal document that allowed for limited choice.  She compared Hdn. 3.8.5 saying soldiers lived with wives to Eck's comments (2011) about a diploma of 206 which suggested that soldiers still lacked conubium at this time.  Noted too Allison's book (2013:  353) where she said women made up 5-24% of the inhabitants on bases.  All sorts of strong evidence for women on bases (skeletons, shoes, jewellery, spindles and textile-production items, children's clothes, infant burials).  She implied too that women were involved in some of the production of military things, which I hadn't considered (and which I should touch on in later studies).

Allison Keith, "Love's Figures..."
A fascinating paper, though I'd really flagged by this point.  My expertise in Latin poetry also happens to be lacking.  Anyway, she looked for epigraphic evidence (in Italy) for some of the slaves alluded to in classical-era Latin poetry.  The few names we find on epitaphs are resonant of Roman imperial conquest - and they could be seen as a celebration of the spoils of war.  Nemesis, evidently, was a popular name.  Inscriptions, as it happens, offer a useful social context and comparanda to what we find in the poetry.  They give us something of the human costs to Roman conquest and imperialism, and this is definitely stuff I want to use in my textbook (and updated chapter for a textbook).  She argues that the contemporaneity of the names in poetry reflects the slaves/people captured in war.  Very useful bibliography including, especially, all the work by K Gaca (only read one of her papers, I think).

Justin Ryan James, "Expressing triumph..."
This about the images of the turn of battle in Roman imperial-era art.  Fascinating stuff.  They show the moments before the turn of battle - and this reminded me of the scenes of myth from Roman art, where they tend to show the moments before the bad shit happens.  I brought this up in discussion, but I'm not sure I was terribly eloquent:  my point was is this a wider genre thing (where the genre is the visual arts generally, perhaps a bit too specific), where there were established topoi, motifs, and tendencies across different themes in art.  Anyway, continuing on from the turn of battle, he noted that cavalry always went from left to right on scenes, but infantry could go in any direction.  The commander is usually the largest person.  There are some images he had which I hadn't come across before, like the Tropaeum Alpium from La Turbie, France, the Etruscan Celtomachy from Florence, Tiberius' Arch, and the architrave from Mantua.  He referred, too, to something from Glanum (Roman legionaries marching?), and Romanius Capito, a grave stele dated to 60-65.  Lots of emphasis on cavalry on these monuments.

James Gersbach, "A reinterpretation..."
His paper was about the war-cry, though he preferred the term "battle expression", which covered everything from sound, to a song, dance, silence, and any sort of experience.  His paper was chalk full of interesting references to sounds and the like.  He argued that these were rehearsed, and that served all sorts of purposes.  Lots of juicy stuff here for my sensory approach to battle book.  Gersbach argued that the socio-political force of these cries were missed by some scholarship.  He asked, too, who is likely to have initiated these cries (this garnered some discussion - spontaneous - paraells to haka and European football chants).  Were they organic - again, like football chants?  Many of my notes are copies of references.  Will have to come back to these.  Intriguing - evidently he's doing a whole thesis on ancient battle cries.

Me..blah, blah blah...eurasian, blah, cavalry.
For me, the very last speaker, I want only to note the great questions I got so that I don't forget them.  There were questions about specialization (greater or lesser in the sixth century), and whether dragoons were a thing (a question that's come up elsewhere - Alofs, for instance).  Justin noted some interesting material about the training of Ottoman horsearchers.  Hmmm...most of the questions might be lost to the sands of time.  But, someone did ask about how professional the men were, and how this might have varied between the ranks.  Were they all professional?  Only some?  I'd mentioned recruitment a little, which seems both haphazard and more official in the sources:  when it comes to the Gothic Wars, it seems a bit haphazard, for generals are often sent to the Balkans to round up men.  On the other hand, we know a bit about the official parts of recruitment from the law codes - and we even seem to have a relevant papyrus, a probatoria (the document even says so), that describes this.  So mixed image.  What do I make of Procopius in these instances?  Is he glossing over official practice for the sake of the narrative?  Are the troops they're getting of a lower quality because of the needs of the situation? - and this reminds me of his comments on the Lycaonians at Callinicum, which he'd said had only just enlisted.  The cost issue surfaced too. I don't know how many horse archers there were (don't seem to be significant), but they would have costed a great deal, especially if the horses were covered with armour, so they never could have that many.  This, then, too, casts doubt on it being an age of Hippotoxotai.

The end.  That's it.  Lots to digest.  Extremely useful for all the things I have on the go.  I'd thought about making a post about raids and early and late Rome, its increasing and then decreasing civility, etc., but my eyes are fuzzy and I should go to the gym to process.

Further Reflections on the Roman Military Studies Panel

For the next post on the Roman military studies panel/sessions at the Montreal CCC 2017, I'm going to give, effectively, a list of interesting points/comments/suggestions I jotted down.  There are fewer for the last couple of panels (I was getting tired - more of the material covered ground I was familiar with).  Here are some highlights (and apologies for overlapping with the first Montreal post).

Fred Drogula, "the Legalization of War".
Evidently early Roman warfare reads a bit like mob warfare, with wealthy clans engaging in raids led by patricians in charge of private war bands.  Ultimately they were looking for plunder.  Drogula asked how did military command become a legally sanctioned activity of the state given these beginnings  - and I wonder how and why it regressed (if you want to call it that) back to this state at the end of antiquity.  Additionally, the gradual expansion of the state led to a change in the nature of war.  Along the way, some intriguing parallels were drawn between early Roman warfare and early modern Italian warfare (think Medici, etc).

Jeremy, Armstrong, "On the Eve of Empire..."
The late fourth/early third century (BC) was a period of significant change, and this included a number of different facets of the Roman state such as:  weapons and armour, allies, citizenship, territory, naval power, military infrastructure, coinage, command, tactics.  Despite all these changes, much had been set in motion earlier.  The manipular legion was a big part of all this change.  Evidently, too, the legion wasn't very phalanx-like, and fighting with a phalanx goes against all we know about warfare in early Italy (it wasn't conducive to this - surprised to hear all this, because I'd assumed the phalanx was the early method, later changed. Goes to show what I know).  Indeed, he argues that the Romans were always manipular in a way because of the gentes, warbands, and tribes of early Rome, which when organized together tended to be divided into the sort of divisions that matched a maniple well.  Ultimately, take Polybius' legion versus phalanx discussion with a grain of salt.

Peter Vanderpuy, "Debt Structures, Warfare, and the rise"
He too noted the gentilicial, clan-based, warfare which characterized early Rome, which was in contrast to the more state-based approach of later times.  V provided an intriguing list of agrarian statues from the 12 tables (some of which had a very modern feel).  He got into the formation of all these new farms that is often associated with mid-republican Rome.  It got into issues of environmental history (more or less).  One interesting point (or series of points) he raised pertained to the costs associated with these new farms:  the suggestion was farming wasn't ingrained, for some would have had a much more successful go of things on this front than others.  Finally, following Berry-Wendell (to some degree), he said the primary cultural output at Rome was its warfare.

John Serrati, "Religion and Roman Warfare..."
His paper touched on gender, and a key figure was Bellona.  Bellona was present at the opening and the close of hostilities in Roman combat.  For him, it was surprising that a female deity had such a prominent place in such a male part of a patriarchal society.  That said, Athena had a big role in Athens too (this me), and it could hardly be praised for its gender equity.  Evidently, there's much we don't know about Bellona (I'd known almost nothing) - though much of early Rome IS murky.  Was Bellona Italian in origin?  Roman?  Who knows.  She served as a war god in Rome up until Sulla (and if this is true maybe we should consider this another strike against him?).  Should note some comparisons were drawn between her and Mars (who wasn't unloved at Rome).

Kathryn Milne, "The Middle Republican Soldier..."
The soldiery were vilified:  there was nothing inherently noble in serving.  So how did the state manage to ennoble the soldier, which it seems to have done at some point or other?  As they served farther and farther from home, his faraway actions were quite different from what he did when he was at home (and this parallels nicely with more recently materials, which she discusses in her thesis, and which I have a copy of).  One possible means of ennobling was the parade (triumph).  Others include decorations, the volume of spoils, and their exotic prizes.  She put a lot of stress on awards, which had a bonding effect, and which made soldiers feel good about themselves (and all this would be relevant to my research on the sixth century).  It was important that the awards be accepted by the community at large for them to have any meaning.  Some comments were made afterwards about the bodies (what did they do with them at the end of battles) and war's universality.

There are more comments from additional papers, but I'm typing this outside (it's 9:17pm at the moment) and it's getting dark, so I'll stop for the moment.  Cheers

Hannibal Eras Course - What I got from the Roman Military Studies Panel at CCC 2017

As I mentioned in the previous post, more than half of the presentations at the Montreal Celtic Conference in Classics 2017.  Additionally, as I might also have suggested, many of the papers gave me lots to think about for the new 3rd/4th year course I'm teaching in the fall, Hannibal.  Though  Hannibal dominates the title, it's less, specifically, about the man, and more about the three wars between Roman and Carthage.  Hannibal is merely meant to suck people in (though it's not yet clear if that's happening).  The point of putting this here is that it forces me to go over the notes I made, and it allows for something like an outline to come together.

In essence, a number of questions in the papers gave me some questions that might be worth tackling in the course including, in no particular order, and from the specific to the general:

1)  How was the army of the mid-republic organized and how did it fight?  (brings to mind Daly's books - how much face of battle business ought I get in to?  And there's the maniple/phalanx business, discussed by Polybius and Koon)

2)  Why did they (the Romans - it's a Romanocentric course for any number of reasons) go to war at all in each of the three cases (first through third)?  (brings to mind the imperialism discussions - the Romans were excessively bellicose a la Harris, maybe they weren't a al Eckstein)

3)  What were the costs associated for all those involved (the Roman government/state, its people, and more)?  (farms were deserted in the aftermath, maybe they weren't, and what role do slaves play in all of this)

4)  What does it mean for our understanding of things if we're so reliant on later (save, to some degree, Polybius) information (Livy, Appian, etc.)?  How do they colour how the war was initially received?  And they need not be histories alone, for the story of Aeneas and Dido from Vergil's Aeneid provides an interesting case.

5)  Is it at all possible to provide balance to a discussion that will be dominated by pro-Roman sources?

6)  What role did the war play in the expansion of the Roman state and its development?

There are some basic questions, which I jotted down at the conference, though which I'd thought about before, like:

7)  What are the sources for the war/s?

8)  What shape was the Roman state in when they started?  In between?  At the end?

9)  What was the course of events in the war?  This is perhaps the most obvious of questions, and it will undoubtedly make up a big chunk of our discussion.  But I'd like quite a lot of our time spent discussing the big issues.

Then there are some additional notes that I made, relevant, though less questions, per se:

10)  Worth discussing whether there was a religious component to the wars, and what it was.  This could range everywhere from the rituals performed before battles (the sacred chickens) to the opening/closing of the doors of the Temple of Janus.

11)  Evidently, both Livy and Polybius note deserters in the war:  if/when I find the references, it would be worth bringing up and connecting it to how Roman soldiers (regular ones) might have experienced the wars.

Finally, some interesting comments.  One is an interesting characterization of the second Punic war  from Michael Fronda - or at least it's jotted down on his handout. 

12)  The 2nd Punic War could be seen as the "big die off".  

13)  The period after that second war was described as one of innovation.  Along those lines, many people (invariably men) come up and become prominent who have no established background.

14)  There's a big boom in Hellenization after the war, though what kind of Hellenization that might have been wasn't clear to me.  Presumably the bringing of all the art to Rome (conquered Greece quote from Horace), though also the (continued) use of Greek as the language of choice for Roman writers, to a point, and the increasing number of Romans educated by/in Greeks/Greek.

And that's that.  I also made a reading list (which might be too ambitious in the time I have, but it includes books by Eckstein, Rosentein, Hoyos, Lazenby, Fronda, Drogula, and maybe too Boronowski, Levene (how much Livy versus Polybius discussion ought I have?), and the various entries in the Wiley companion).  Here's to hoping these points help make for an interesting course, which proves useful not only for the students, but me too.

New Directions in the Roman Military and the Celtic Conference in Classics

When I signed up for this conference (i.e., sent in an abstract in the hopes of sharing the fruits of my SSHRC labours, pre-acceptance), I only had 1 daughter and wasn't sure I'd be going (been turned down before).  The abstract was accepted, and I now have two wonderful daughters.

The call papers stated they (the organizers) were looking for work that presented new research and covered any point between about 500 BC and AD 500.  Fortunately I had new work, and my subject matter wasn't too late.  What neither I, nor the organizers, expected, however, was that the topics would land so heavily on the republican (and earlier) side of things.  Once the dust had settled, perhaps just two papers could be classified as expressly imperial (my own included), with at least three that dabbled in the republican and imperial eras. 

On the one hand, this left me with little meaningful to contribute in the first two days' worth or so.  I taught a full-year history of Rome class back in 2009-2010.  Before that, my last serious dabbling in republican matters came in 2003, in my "Roman Constitution" graduate seminar.  So, not a lot, though I've done some reading here and there (and I'm teaching a course on Hannibal in the fall).  On other hand, getting to listen to all this new work on vaguely similar, though still different, subject matter has proved a boon.  I'm still working on the textbook, which will begin with the late republic, so I've been provided with some new ammunition.  Plus, there's that Hannibal class - and I now have a big list of big issues I want to raise with those few students who take the class (and right now it's only a few, sadly).  One last note:  I just saw Dunkirk in 70mm (not showing that way in Winnipeg), and it's a powerful movie.  So I have that side of war floating around my head too.  In sum:  a very fruitful full days.  A number of threads ran through the papers, and I want to get some of them down before they're lost forever.  I hope to return to these again in the next few days, especially as I continue plugging away on other projects.

In early Rome warfare seems to have been dominated by warlords with private bands, and most of it consisted of raids, and little of it consisted of set-piece battles.  This was, then, a stark echo of what I've discussed before (and am building towards) in this project on Procopius.  It's not all entirely new (the late antique stuff), but it does deserve stressing.  In fact, in private discussion (on the Metro no less), Jeremy Armstrong (the organizer) noted that in some (many?) ways the big wars and battles of the mid-to-late republic with their large armies and pitched battles were the exception to the norm of pre-modern combat.  In some ways, then, warfare in early Rome was very much a reflection of wider practices around the Mediterranean (and beyond?), and warfare at the end of antiquity represented a return to this. 

As someone with surface knowledge of the republic only, it was intriguing to hear about the stress upon the Punic War and the Social War.  I knew about some of the important things that happened in the Punic War and their role in later events, but not all of them - or I'd long since forgotten.  And here's where Dunkirk (and the major war that preceded that war) comes into it.  There was general acceptance that the elites of mid-republican Rome, to say nothing of the regular folk, suffered serious losses during the war, and to such a degree that we can speak of a "lost generation" or two.  What's also interesting about this, however, is the impact that this might have had on the usual pattern of republican political offices, or at least the pattern at the time.  There were so many losses (here consuls and praetors - from the senatorial families) that there was a return to repeated terms of office (checks had been put in place for this some 100 or more years earlier.  Once the war was over, there is even evidence for a strong dissatisfaction amongst the regular troops for all the fighting.  In these matters, then, the republican soldiers and their officers are perhaps not so different from their 20th century Anglo-saxon ones.

To touch briefly on the Social War:  it was this that had a significant impact on the transformation of the Roman army near the end of the republic, not the sole efforts of Martial, though they would have played some part.  People who had been allies were now fighting with each other, and it wasn't only Romans versus Italians, for there was a great deal of mingling.  But also too - and I hadn't considered this - Rome found itself with an economic-military problem at the end of the war.  Evidently, it had long been cheaper for Rome to supplement its military with allied forces.  They paid for themselves, both in terms of salary and equipment and arms.  When the number of Romans jumped at the end of the war, suddenly the Romans had to find a way to pay for a huge number of troops (much more than before).

One final point for now:  after this point I'll have to consult my notes (and that requires additional effort).  It's remarkable how evidence contributes to the kinds of questions that scholars pose.  This gaggle of republican scholars were asking the sorts of questions that are vaguely relevant (or more so) to late antique scholars - it's a shame more late antique scholars don't draw on the comparative material of the republican era (but don't worry, I will).  After all, both groups are generally left with lots of texts to work with (the assorted classical, classicizing, and other texts).  But the imperial scholars can't look at those same sorts of issues:  there's very little evidence about the details of the practice of warfare, but quite a lot on organization and social matters, among other things.  In fact, I guess that's where being a late antique person you get to draw on a bit of both (there are some inscriptions, some more papyri, and lots of legal evidence). 

Anyway, as I say, that's enough for now (going on too long - need to finish this cider and head to the hotel to catch a taxi to head to the airport to head home).  Montreal is beautiful.  I had planned a post on it, but it'll have to wait (if it comes at all).

Dating Vegetius' Epitoma Rei Militaris: some circumstantial evidence

I'm getting closer to being ready, or as ready as I'll ever be, to write my Celtic Classics Conference paper for late July.  Whatever I don't get around for the conference, I'll be sure to get to when I work on converting this into a book chapter.

Today, among other things, I've been reading a couple of papers, one a recent by Janniard on the steppe influence on Roman war making, the other, ostensibly, on Procopius' "new" Byzantine army by Breccia (2004).  While reading these two papers (admittedly a touch more to go with Breccia) I've come across some interesting references to Huns I'd likely forgotten about. 

There is, for instance, some extended discussion in Zosimus' New History on the Hunnic incursions in the last third of the fourth century (4.20ff).  A cursory glance suggests to me that he either got some of his information directly from Ammianus Marcellinus, directly from Eunapius (fragmentary so hard to say), or even some sort of intermediary source.  Much earlier in the text, while discussing Aurelian and his trouble with Palmyra, he also gets into some interesting - and ultimately successful - cavalry tactics.  It turns out the Roman cavalry, when up against the Palmyrene heavy cavalry, employed the steppe-feigned flight.  This interesting episode (1.50.3-4) raises three questions:  is this just a stratagem employed by Aurelian for this specific context; is it a regular tactic employed by Roman cavalry in the third century; or is Zosimus projecting contemporary tactics (late 5th/early 6th century) on an event?  I suspect we'll never know, though I'm sure someone or other has delved into this more deeply.

The Vegetius references to Huns are short and sweet:  there are only two, one at 1.20.2, the other at 3.26.36.  For all intents and purposes, what Vegetius says is that the Roman cavalry of his day is so good that the ancients have nothing useful to add that would be of use.  He implies, too, in the first passage that this improved cavalry performance is attributable to the Goths, Alans, and Huns.  In the second passage, where he repeats his belief that the cavalry of his day is sufficient in quality, Vegetius says that emperor (who's elusive, hence the dating issues - we don't know when it dates, late fourth century, first half of fifth century) is as good at archery as the Persians, and as good at horsemanship as the Alans and Huns.  The implication of all this is that the Romans have adopted something of Hunnic cavalry tactics.  Indeed, in his treatise on veterinary medicine (sadly I'm stating this secondhand), Vegetius praises Hunnic horses even more. 

Before I turn to the dating question, much of what I've been reading about Rome's adoption (to whatever degree) of steppe cavalry tactics varies as to when and to what degree.  The most recent case (save Breccia) is Janniard's, and he sees their big change as coming fairly quickly from the late fourth (first coming into contact with Huns c. 370 or later) into the fifth century.  By the time they meet the Huns under Attila at the Catalaunian Plains, their tactics (and assorted things) have improved to such a degree that they're able to emerge from that battle victorious.

So let's now go back to the date of Vegetius' military treatise.  For some, even most, it's the last quarter of the fourth century, and for even fewer it's some point in the second quarter (or so) of the fifth century.  This new-found awareness of Rome's adoption of steppe tactics has me leaning even more heavily towards the fifth than I had been before.  As you can see, these are extremely circumstantial pieces of evidence.  We have two comments in Vegetius that imply they've already made big changes to Roman cavalry, and that they've adopted a Hunnic-approach.  Given that the Huns first enter history for the Romans around 370 (some might differ on this date), and then peripherally, at least for a few years, it seems unlikely that the Romans would have made wholesale changes before really meeting them in battle.  Ammianus implies that the Romans hadn't really come up against the Huns before Adrianople, despite what Zosimus might be implying (and there are all sorts of questions about the reliability of his text).  If full interaction doesn't take place until the end of the 370s or even the 380s, though more likely the former, how likely is it that the Romans would have been able to make progress with their cavalry thanks to the Huns (Veg. 1.20.2 - nam licet, exemplo Gothorum et Alanorum Hunnorumque, equitum arma profecerint) between the late 370s and the death of Thedosius I, 395 (the latest possible date for the early-dating folk)?  Guess that largely on how quickly they could change their cavalry.  Given too that the Notitia Dignitatum (ND), which for the east is now thought to be spot on, the half of the empire most likely to need steppe tactics, and that we see little evidence for an overwhelming shift in that direction, I think we have to entertain the later date far more seriously than most scholars usually do.  Indeed, most of the steppe-like units that we find in the eastern half of the ND are based in the east, not in the Balkans.

Yes, this is all mostly (entirely?) circumstantial evidence, but I think it makes the case for a later date for Vegetius' Epitoma Rei Militaris all that more likely.

This Revolution Wasn't Televised, or Horses, Huns, and Romans, Oh My!

I continue to chug away, working on this conference paper, which is connected to the grant and its attendant research.  This means more thinking about the steppes, and today the Huns in particular and their role in all of this.  It also means going back to some earlier work for a Roman army textbook, which I think I've mentioned before.  Anyway, about a year ago, when my energy was focused on the army textbook and this grant was an unimaginable miracle (not yet a reality), I spent some time looking at what people had googled about the Roman army, as this seemed a good (or reasonable) way to approach writing something for those coming to something cold (or coldish).  One question that google identified was something to the effect of, "how effective was the Roman army?"  Considering that question led me to work on military revolutions, military effectiveness, decisive battles, and more.  There was much of interest and much that wasn't - or simply concerned with eras I know little about.  
 
While I plan to touch on these sorts of questions (revolutions, effectiveness, etc) at various points in that textbook, it's looking like it will have some bearing on this other work too, including the conference paper, which looks more closely at the Eurasian influence.  I will, in part, be talking about where the warfare that Procopius describes (and the sixth century Romans waged) fits into the greater scheme of things.  Is it representative of Rome's new way of fighting, an age of hippotoxotai?  Is it still largely connected to what came before, the infantry armies of centuries past?  Or is it some sort of hybrid, between these two worlds?  Regardless of where it is (and at present I lean to the middle, a transitional age), attendant issues include when and how all these changes came into being and their impact. 

As I consider all this, one thing that's been most useful is the work that I've done on the Roman military in the Moesias, as it's allowed me to look more closely at organizational changes over an important area over a significant period of time.  It's also put me in an excellent position to understand some of the later changes that came, especially when were are less well informed about how they came about.  It's clear, for instance, that the Romans were constantly and gradually changing their military and everything about it.  In the Moesias they go from a few units of perhaps 1000s of soldiers and maybe a handful of known military bases, predominantly filled with infantry, to dozens, if not hundreds, of units in even more bases, from wee fortlets to larger legionary bases, and still, predominantly, infantry - but with growing numbers of cavalry too.  We can also see in some cases changes both in response to significant military challenges (soldiers shifted to the east from the Moesias, so new troops brought in from parts west and north) and in advance of major military operations (the number of auxiliary units in the Moesias spike in the run-up to Trajan's wars against Dacia). 

We can't observe organizational changes in this same level of detail for any other period of Roman history, so far as I know (thank you diplomata).  This makes for much more guesswork later.  Nevertheless, the general pattern seems to be that many emperors made changes on some level, some more than others.  These might be in regard to specific issues, or more general ones.  Admittedly, the specific motivations of the emperors are hardly ever immediately clear, so a great deal of guesswork, though of the educated sort, is involved.  Generally, though, I get the sense that big, significant, changes didn't come about all that often, if ever, in the Roman world, at least in the military sphere.  Certainly none of them, to my mind, could be called revolutionary to any degree.  In fact, for many of the "big" changes that we can discern, you can usually find a counter-argument to claims about their usefulness.  I'll come back to this momentarily.

The next set of questions surround why they come about.  The sort of changes I alluded to above with respect to troop movements perhaps have more to do with short term issues and so are perhaps less useful for dealing with this sort of question.  But there are plenty of other changes in the Roman military that attract attention, from changes in equipment to changes in tactics, changes in dress, and even changes in soldierly origins.  As I see it, the sort of changes I'm alluding to here - adoption of the weapons and/or techniques of a different people - are usually explained in one of several ways:  technological breakthroughs; cultural change (the move to the Spanish sword in the republican era came down to a so-called sword culture); military necessity (the Huns caused lots of problems and so the Romans responded by introducing the cavalry to match); financial considerations (money issues, like the deteriorating value of pay, led to the implementation of payment in kind to soldiers in the third century before things stabilized); and practical considerations.  To get back to counter-arguments, then, too much emphasis on any one issue, and not enough awareness of the broader context can obscure some things.  For instance, Alofs has shown that the stirrup, which was introduced in the sixth-century in the Mediterranean, did not transform mounted combat despite the claims of some (his bugaboo is Hugh Kennedy).  Although I don't think he mentioned them, the mounted archers of earlier imperial Rome (i.e., not late antique/early medieval era), like the Ala Gallorum et Thracum Antiana sagittaria were stirrup free.  In fact, this is where I think Simon James' book Rome and the Sword hits the mark in any number of ways, for he tends to bring in quite a lot of evidence and perspectives.

So, to get back to the steppes and its peoples' impact on sixth-century Roman warfare, it seems to me that to see their system as offering some sort of revolutionary approach which came about because of the marked inferiority of the Roman military machine (this is the view of Hyun Jin Kim) is an overstatement.  The Romans had mounted warriors for centuries before the Huns came along even if they were fewer in number before the sixth century.  Any increase, which would be hard to illustrate with the same level of detail, might be down to any number of factors.  And if it came about before our earliest confirmed Hunnic contact (the end of the fourth century), it's difficult to attribute this to their influence.  Along those lines, to see Adrianople as proof of the limitations of the Roman military, especially when faced with a nomadic threat, is to adopt a far too liberal reading of our primary source, Ammianus, and to ignore too much of the work that has been undertaken on that battle.  While it certainly seems to have left its mark on some contemporaries (as Lenski's article from 1997 shows), its impact on the organization and tactics of the eastern army, which suffered so greatly in the battle, was not of the sort adduced (a completely new approach adopted), as the Notitia Dignitatum makes clear (the organization of the eastern and western halves, while not coterminous, still have a great deal in common, organizationally speaking).  This isn't to deny an impact from the steppes, it's only to hold off from putting too much weight on the role of the Huns in particular in all of this.