Рецензии на относительно свежие книги по позднеримской армии:
Reconstructing the late Roman army
John W. Eadie
PAT SOUTHERN and KAREN R. DIXON,
THE LATE ROMAN ARMY (B. T. Batsford, London 1996). Pp. 206, figs. 83, pis. 19.
ISBN 07134 7047 X. Ј30.
TERENCE COELLO,
UNIT SIZES IN THE LATE ROMAN ARMY (Tempus Reparatum; BAR International Series 645, Oxford 1996). Pp. 71.
ISBN 0 86054 830 9. Ј19.
Although there have been
discoveries of papyri and numerous explorations of
urban centers and peripheral fortificiations since the
publication of A. H.
M. Jones' Later Roman empire 284-602 (1964), the texts he marshalled remain
the foundation of all modem reconstructions of the late Roman army. Finding
opportunities for novelty in the interstices of the fragmentary and
ambiguous relicta is a formidable task but, as the authors of these books
demonstrate, the reconstruction of the late Roman army continues to progress.
Southern and Dixon (S.-D) begin their excursion in the late 2nd c. in order
to explore the changes in recruitment, conditions of service, equipment, and
fortification that marked the transformation of the army of the principate.
Their assessment of reforms before the reign of Diocletian (chapt. 2)
reproduces the consensus - Marcus Aurelius is credited with greater use of
vexillations and the introduction of careers open to talent, Septirnius
Severus with increases in pay and the size of the army, Gallienus with the
separation of legionary and cavalry units -but this search for the
"unprecedented and original" serves to introduce the central question:
How did emperors and their military commanders respond to the escalating
demands of the late 2nd and 3rd c.? For S-D, the adaptations they sponsored
anticipated and influenced the definitive re-configuration of the army under
Diocletian and Constantine.
Because the evidence for the renovation is late and lacunose, S-D are
reluctant to apportion credit for specific reforms. Even the creation of the
mobile reserve, arguably the centerpiece of the late Roman army, cannot be
securely dated. Comita tenses are attested in papyri and inscriptions from
the reign of Diocletian, but it is only in 325 (CTh 7.20.4) that comita
tenses (field army) are distinguished from the ripenses (frontier army) in
function and status (p.18). Similarly, in the Notitia Dignitatum "the sole
source from which it is possible to reconstruct Diocletian's army, ... the
troop distributions ... do not necessarily reflect the arrangements by
Diocletian" (30). Nor is the archaeological evidence from the frontier
zones, admirably surveyed in chapt. 7, a more reliable chronological guide.
While it is clear from the size and distribution of frontier forts that
there "had been a drastic reduction in unit strengths, the date at which
this may have occurred is not established" (30). Whether Diocletian or
Constantine was the author of a specific measure is unimportant; what
matters, as S-D clearly recognize, is that they together were responsible
for the creation of the military system that shaped later responses to external threats.
Military effectiveness, S-D believe, was seriously compromised by two major defeats:
"neither east nor west fully recovered from the effects of Adrianople 1378]
and the Frigidus [[394]" (p.53). To compensate for the loss of trained
manpower at Adrianople, (where two-thirds of the army may have been
casualties, p.171), the eastern emperors immediately accelerated
conscription of recruits from among the settled population. Emergency
measures of this sort were not unprecedented, but in the 4th c. and
thereafter neither the promise of rewards - regular pay, donatives, opportunities for advancement, exemption from
taxes - nor punitive legislation could be counted on to produce the numbers
required. The only volunteers were barbarians, who were inducted as
foederati (i.e., through "treaties" with ethnarchs) or in the regional
"recruiting drives" conducted during the 6th c. (p.72). By this time the
foederati had become regular troops in the eastern army, "paid, trained, and
disciplined like the rest of the army" (p.58), but in the west, S-D suggest,
this "barbarization" was mismanaged. The late Roman army suffered from
several destabilizing factors - lack of standardization in training and
discipline, billeting of troops in urban centers, mediocre leadership
(pp.169-77) - but the western demise during the 5th c. Came about because
"it was no longer possible to integrate the barbarians into existing units,
or to train them as Roman soldiers, or to Romanize them sufficiently so that
Roman traditions and fighting methods could be passed down to succeeding
recruits" (p.180). S-D rightly reject the traditional notion that
"barbarization" alone accounts for the "decline", observing that barbarian
troops were "with few exceptions loyal to Rome" (p.50), but it is difficult
to see how the stress on failed assimilation constitutes an alternative
explanation. Moreover, I question whether such failures can be fully
understood without close analysis of the economic dislocations that
constrained imperial choices (attested in the ineffective efforts of western
emperors to collect taxes in the frontier provinces). Some of the space
given to equipment and siege warfare (chapts. 6 and 8) might more profitably
have been allocated to an examination of the economic dimensions of the
"decline" of the western empire.
Coello's objective is more modest. Though he surveys some developments
before Diocletian and after Theodosius, he gives little attention to
barbarization, the decline of military effectiveness, or the 5th-c. collapse
of the western army. Instead, he sets out to examine in some detail the
contemporary evidence (literary, documentary, archaeological) for unit sizes
in the 4th-c. army. To establish a base-line for comparison, he provides a
succinct review of the data for the principate (conveniently displayed in
Tables, chapt. 1), observing that even these data are less secure than some
believe. Like S-D, Coello is conscious throughout of the inherent ambiguity
of the 4th-c. evidence. Units of variable size (including principate legions
of 5000) appear in the literary accounts (chapt. 3); neither the Panopolis
papyri (dated c.300) nor the Notitia Dignitatum (c.395-420), which figure
prominently in the calculations of Jones and Duncan-Jones, explicitly
indicates unit sizes (chapt. 4); the archaeological evidence from the
frontier zones (chapt. 5) includes sites demonstrably constructed for
smaller units (e.g., Lejjun, fortlets along the Strata Dicletiana), as well
as larger forts (e.g., Noviodunum, Bostra) capable of accommodating units of
principate strength. Coello's belief that "formations must have been smaller
than their equivalents from the principate" is not based on these data but
on a compelling inference: Diocletian's doubling of the number of legions
from 33 to 66 would have imposed "insuperable problems of recruitment" had
the legions remained at their principate strength of 5000. Problems of
recruitment, of course, would have been compounded by "the growth of the
central reserve forces ... By the end of the fourth century well over 300
mobile units existed ... Mobile units 5000-strong would have
produced a total of these units alone of a quite incredible half a million
men" (p.60).
S-D and Coello clearly do not share the disdain for evidence exhibited by
some modern scholars, and they have taken care to provide, from different
but complementary perspectives, an informed and instructive tour d'horizon.
Their intelligent sorting and assessment of discrete data serves to define
the limits of the investigation and to discourage the creation of premature
syntheses. Indeed, they have demonstrated that only through the discovery of
additional evidence (with archaeological investigation being the most
promising) will a more satisfactory reconstruction of the late Roman army
become practicable.
