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