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BANDITS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE<br />
with the result that even ancient writers referred to them only from time to<br />
time. The point at which a Roman began to speak of social disorder was<br />
clearly much higher than might be true of a person today.<br />
The ubiquity of banditry cannot be expressed in statistical terms. However,<br />
to demonstrate it we need not resort to statistics. On the other hand,<br />
once we regard it as demonstrated, we must not overestimate its effect. Most<br />
people did not fall victim to bandits. However, the likelihood of suffering<br />
this misfortune was high. For the people of the Empire, the bandit was<br />
probably not so much a physical threat as a psychological one, a symptom of<br />
anxiety. People lived in open or hidden fear of the bandit. 123 According to<br />
Velleius Paterculus, in a passage already much cited here, thanks to the pax<br />
Augusta every inhabitant of the Roman Empire, even those in the most<br />
distant regions, needed no longer fear attack by bandits (metus latrociniorum).<br />
This was propaganda. It was part of the standard repertoire of the propaganda<br />
of the Roman ruler, and the more it emphasised pax, securitas and<br />
other endlessly lauded blessings of human existence, the more it suggested<br />
how bad these actually were. 124<br />
In the next chapter I discuss ‘figurative’ <strong>latrones</strong>, investigating various<br />
types and looking at the picture presented by Roman authors. The findings<br />
of this chapter produce an important supposition, i.e., in characterising<br />
people as ‘bandits, rebels, rivals and avengers’, the ubiquity of the bandit<br />
allowed writers recourse to a motif that provoked a very lively response in<br />
their readers. This partly explains why the bandit motif was so popular and<br />
why it was extended to so many and varied categories of offender.<br />
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