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BANDITS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Whether this statement is an adequate assessment of contemporary conditions
is another matter. As far as the ancient world is concerned, the
description appears semi-idyllic, and reminds one of the praise that Velleius
Paterculus, a great admirer of the Principate, heaped on the beneficial effect
of Augustus’ peace:
The pax Augusta, which has spread to the regions of the east and of
the west and to the bounds of the north and of the south, preserves
every corner of the world safe from the fear of brigandage. 24
Similarly euphoric attitudes, identical in tone, are to be found in other
writers such as Seneca, Philo, Pliny the Elder, Epictetus, Plutarch, Aelius
Aristides and Vegetius. 25 More could be cited but these would not add to
the picture. Such statements are products of the acceptance of imperial peace
propaganda by Roman authors. Even after making allowance for the exaggeration
which was an indispensable component of the genre, the extent to
which propaganda corresponded with reality cannot be determined with any
degree of certainty. At least, one may suppose, the propaganda of the pax
Augusta and of the early Principate derived significant credibility from association
with long-held memories of the period of civil war which marked
the fall of the Republic. 26 Compared with the conditions of this crisis, the
stability created by the Principate must have seemed like the return of the
Golden Age, especially for ordinary people.
On the other hand one cannot and should not deduce too rosy a view of
individual living conditions in the high period of the pax Romana solely
from specific references (or lack of them) to latrones. In this respect, more
weight should be attached to recent catalogues of cases of unrest and revolt
which occurred in the Roman Empire in the period from Augustus to
Commodus, all of them among the lower classes of Italy and the provinces. 27
Excluded are incidents involving the circle of the emperor and the imperial
aristocracy which, of course, also need to be taken into account in an assessment
of the overall historical picture, and which fall within the lines of
enquiry of this study. From all this one may deduce that even in the most
peaceful phase of Roman history, the everyday life of ordinary people was far
more at risk (from, inter alia, bandits) more often and to a greater extent
than is usual in a modern industrial society. In my view, current textbooks
are unreliable in this respect because they consider incidents of unrest as
being only occasionally important and fail to see them as a constant phenomenon
of normal life in the Roman world. 28
In order to pursue just one aspect of these incidents, namely the bandit
threat, I will now present evidence for, as Brent Shaw, put it, ‘the ubiquity
of banditry’. 29 The ubiquity of the latro can be deduced not only on commonsense
grounds – bandits are to be found in every society – but also, with
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