| Syria | XVI. | Flavia (Samosata, on upper Euphrates). | |||||
| ” | IV. |
| |||||
| ” | VI. | ||||||
| ” | III. | ||||||
| Judaea | X. | Fretensis (Jerusalem). | |||||
| Arabia | III. | Cyrenaica (Bostra). | |||||
| Egypt | II. | Trajana (near Alexandria—a disorderly city). | |||||
| Africa | III. | Augusta (Lambaesis). | |||||
| Spain | VII. | Gemina (Legio, Leon, in N.W. Spain). |
The total of legionaries may be put at about 180,000 men, the auxiliaries at about 200,000. If we exclude the “household” troops at Rome, the police fleets on the Mediterranean, and the local militia in some districts, we may put the regular army of the Empire at about 400,000 men. This army, as will be plain, was framed on much the same ideas as the British army of the 19th century. It was meant not to fight against a first-class foreign power, but to keep the peace and guard the frontiers of dominions threatened by scattered barbarian raids and risings. Field army there was none, nor any need. If special danger threatened or some special area was to be conquered—such as southern Britain (A.D. 43) or a little land across the upper Rhine (A.D. 74)—detachments (vexillationes) were sent by legions and sometimes also by auxiliaries in adjacent provinces, and a field force was formed sufficient for the moment and the work.
Change from the Third Period to the Fourth.—Two principal causes brought gradual change to the Augustan army. In the first place, the pax Romana brought such prosperity to many districts that they ceased to provide sufficient recruits. The Romans, like the British in India, had more and more to look to uncivilized regions and even beyond their borders. Hence comes, in the 2nd century and after, a new class of numeri or cunei or vexillationes who used (like the earlier auxiliaries) their national arms and tactics and imported into the army a more and more non-Roman element. This tendency became very marked in the 3rd century and bore serious fruit at its close. And, secondly, the old days of mere frontier defence were over. The barbarians began to beat on the walls of the Empire as early as A.D. 160: about A.D. 250 they here and there got through, and they came henceforward in ever-growing numbers. Moreover, they came on horseback, bringing new tactics for the Roman infantry to face, and they came in huge masses. We may doubt if any military system could have permanently stayed this astonishing torrent. But the Empire did what it could. It enlisted barbarians to fight barbarians, and added freely—too freely, perhaps, if there was any choice—to the non-Roman elements of the army. It increased its cavalry and began to form a distinct field force.
Fourth Period.—The results are seen in the reforms of
Diocletian and Constantine the Great (A.D. 284-circa 320). New
frontier guards, styled limitanei or riparienses, were established,
and the old army was reorganized in field forces which
accompanied or might accompany the emperors in war (comitatenses,
palatini). The importance of the legions dwindled; the chief
soldiers were the mercenaries, mostly Germans, enlisted from
among the barbarians. New titles now appear, and it becomes
plain even to the casual reader that in many points the new
order is not the old. The details of the system are as complicated
as all the administrative machinery of that age. Here it
is enought to point out that the significance of such officers and
titles as the dux and the comes (duke, count) lies ahead in the
history of the middle ages, and not in the past, the history of
the Roman army itself.
War Office, General Staff.—Under the Republic we do not find, and indeed should not expect to find, any central body which was especially entrusted with the development of the army system or military finance or military policy in wars. Even under the Empire, however, there was no such organization. The emperor, as commander-in-chief, and his more or less unofficial advisers doubtless decided questions of policy. But the army was so much a group of provincial armies that much was left to the chief officers in each province. Here, as elsewhere in the Empire, we trace a love if not for Home Rule, at least for Devolution. There was, however, a central finance office in Rome for the special purpose of meeting the bounties (or equivalent) due to discharged soldiers. This was established by Augustus in A.D. 6 with the title aerarium militare, and had, for receipts, the yield of two taxes, a 5% legacy duty and a 1% on sales (or perhaps only on auction-sales). The legacy duty did not touch legacies to near relations or legacies of small amount.
Bibliography.—Liebenam, “Exercitus,” in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie; Von Domaszewski, in Mommsen-Marquardt's Handbuch der römischen Altertümer (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1884), vol. v, pp. 319-612; H. Delbrück, Geschichte der Kriegskunst, vol. i., 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1907); E. Lammert, “Die Entwicklung der römischen Taktik,” in Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, ix. 100-28, 169-87; Cagnat's article “Legio” in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines; E. G. Hardy, Studies in Roman History (London, 1906-9); Th. Mommsen, “Das römische Militarwesen seit Diocletian,” in Hermes, xxiv. 195-279.
- (F. J. H.)
ROMAN ART. (1) Introductory: History of Recent Research.—The scientific study of ancient Roman art dates from a comparatively recent period. The great artists of the Renaissance, headed by Raphael and Michelangelo, showed no lack of appreciation for such models as the bas-reliefs of Trajan's Column; and it is sufficient to name Mantegna's “Triumph of Caesar” in order to recall the influence exerted by Roman historical sculpture upon their choice and treatment of monumental subjects; but their eyes were fixed on the Greek ideal, however imperfectly represented by monuments then accessible, and the supremacy of this standard became established beyond challenge. In the 18th century Winckelmann, the founder of the science of classical archaeology, directed the gaze of students and critics towards the glories of classical Greek art, which he divined behind the copies which filled the palaces and museums of modern Rome;[1] and the rediscovery of the extant remains of that art, which began early in the 19th century and still continues, has naturally absorbed the attention of the great majority of classical archaeologists. Nevertheless, towards the close of the 19th century, when the main lines of Greek artistic development had been firmly traced and interest was aroused in its later offshoots, critics were led to examine more closely the products of the Roman period. As early as 1874 Philippi had published a study of Roman triumphal reliefs;[2] but his intention was to show that they were derived from the paintings exhibited on the occasion of a triumph—a theory which can no longer be maintained—and not to determine their place in the history of art. In 1893, however, Alois Riegl published a series of essays on the history of ornament under the title of Stilfragen, in one of which he expressed the opinion that “there was in the antique art of the Roman Empire a development along the ascending line and not merely a decadence, as is universally believed.” This thesis was taken up two years later by Franz Wickhoff in a preface contributed to the reproduction in facsimile of the illustrated MS. of Genesis in the imperial library at Vienna. Wickhoff contended that, whilst the art of the Augustan period was the culmination of that which had flourished under the Hellenistic monarchies, it was succeeded by an outburst of genuinely Roman artistic effort, which reached the height of its achievement in the reliefs and portrait-sculpture of the Flavian period, and gave birth in the 2nd century A.D. to the monuments of the “continuous” style of representation exemplified by the imperial columns. Wickhoff's work has become familiar to English readers through Mrs Strong's
- ↑ The eleventh book of Winckelmann's Geschichte der Kunst, which deals with art under the Romans, contains notable proofs of the author's sureness of vision; for example, he divined the true date and affinities of the reliefs in the Villa Borghese, afterwards wrongly attributed to the time of Claudius (see below).
- ↑ “Über die römischen Triumphalreliefs und ihre Stellung in der Kunstgeschichte” (Abhandlungen der sächs. Gesellsch. der Wissenschaften, vi., 1874).
