ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

triumvir for founding Potentia and Pisaurum (184), assisted the proconsul Manlius Vulsoin supplying his troops.The preceding examples deal with the fleet, but the commanders also controlledCOover-land supply routes, especially between supply depots and the army's position.Livy 25.21-22 relates how the Roman consuls secured the supply lines in the siege ofCapua through drawing on the supply outpost in Casilinum in 212-211 BCE. Moreover,that same year, L. Marcius took over the legions in Spain after the death of the Scipiones;one of his first acts after he assumed control over the army was to consolidate supplies. 5The Roman senate, however, was not completely removed from the supply process: theScipiones had sent to the senate for additional supplies before their deaths. 60It is clearfrom Livy that money for the troops and supplies were separate matters. 61This is notconfirmation, however, that the senate controlled a vast storehouse of clothing, arms, andgrain, which they sent to the army as necessary.That the senate was only in charge of the public treasury is obvious from the wayin which Livy discussed the senate's determination that the costs of maintaining so manyarmies were too great for the State: it is a discussion of liquid assets, not of theavailability of material supplies. The following passage relates the senate's concernswhile Hannibal was ravaging the Italian countryside.57 Roth (1999), p. 253 in an interpretation of Polyb. 21.43.2-3.58 Southern (2006), p. 111 and Roth (1999), p. 257.59 Livy 25.37.7.60 Livy 23.48. Livy 26.2.4 similarly relates the senate's promise of food and supplies to be sent to L.Marcius in Spain after the Scipiones' death, although the senate was still debating approval of Marcius'imperium. See also Bishop and Coulston (2006), p. 233.61 Livy 23.48 'dispatches from P. and Cn. Scipio arrived, giving an account of the great successes they hadachieved, but also stating that money to pay the troops was needed, as also clothing and corn for thearmy...' (Roberts, trans.)115