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BANDITS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE<br />
Pliny the Younger when he was governor of the province of Pontus-Bithynia<br />
swore that it was precisely those who belonged to their community who<br />
made it their duty not to commit crimes. In a sort of litany, rehearsing what<br />
was apparently the current range of common offences, they named ‘theft,<br />
banditry, adultery, breach of trust and failure to restore deposits’. 39 In a<br />
treatise on jealousy and envy, Cyprian, too, enumerated, for the purposes of<br />
comparison, typical evil deeds and evildoers. His choice almost exactly matches<br />
that of Pliny’s accused Christians: the adulterer, the bandit, the robber, the<br />
perpetrator of deceit. 40 Such criminals and their crimes appear to have been<br />
chosen from the experience of everyday life, since only then could they have<br />
served as valid and illuminating comparisons for contemporary readers. With<br />
regard to the legal distinction between <strong>latrones</strong> and other, lesser, robbers,<br />
Cyprian’s formulation is interesting terminologically: ‘bandit’ (latro) and<br />
‘robber’ (praedo) figure as two separate types of criminal. They are clearly<br />
distinct from each other not only by virtue of what they are called but also<br />
in terms of what they are supposed to have done. The hallmark of the latro<br />
is murder (homicidium), that of the praedo merely the stealing of property. 41<br />
The relatively high number of people living as bandits in the Roman<br />
period may be seen in a remark by the physician, Galen, concerning the<br />
procurement of human corpses for dissection. At a pinch, he says, doctors<br />
could use the bodies of those condemned to death, especially in the arena, or<br />
those of bandits, which lay about unburied in the mountains. 42<br />
The impression of the ubiquity of <strong>latrones</strong> receives special confirmation<br />
from utterances of Roman authors concerning travel. According to the jurist<br />
Ulpian, the greatest risks of travelling were: being killed by <strong>latrones</strong>; being<br />
caught in the collapse of an inn; or being run over by a cart. 43 In the parable<br />
of the Good Samaritan, a man travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho is attacked<br />
by bandits. Half-dead, he lies at the roadside, ignored by all. Only a<br />
traveller from Samaria takes pity on the victim, bandages his wounds and<br />
takes him to an inn. 44 The instance of the person attacked by bandits was so<br />
much a part of everyday life that Jesus could generalise it as a paradigm<br />
of the man who needs the help of his neighbour. The apostle Paul, in his<br />
second letter to the Corinthians, looks back and summarises the troubles and<br />
dangers which he saw he had been exposed to: ‘In journeyings often in perils<br />
of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by my own countrymen. . . .’ 45<br />
Pliny the Elder tells of dogs that had protected their owners while travelling.<br />
A nobleman called Vulcatius had been successfully defended by his<br />
dog against a footpad (grassator); the senator Caelius was shielded by his dog<br />
from armed attackers until the faithful beast had breathed its last. 46 Seneca<br />
knew that occasionally the appearance of a wild animal had caused <strong>latrones</strong><br />
to abandon their victim. 47 (Very wisely, he does not suggest what benefit<br />
such an occurrence brought the victim!) Travellers who carried weapons for<br />
protection against bandits could themselves be taken for bandits because<br />
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