This distinction assumed that bandits were criminals rather than combatants representing a people or state. It did not matter whether they came from inside the empire or from beyond its borders, or whether they operated in large numbers: such predatory groups were not granted even the limited rights given to foreign enemies, but were effectively outlaws, subject to far harsher punishment. A citizen captured by enemies in a war lost his or her status, becoming a slave of the captor and having to undergo a process to be reaccepted into society. Someone taken by bandits remained a citizen because the capture did not happen during a war.32
Bandits and pirates were criminals rather than legitimate foes worthy of respect, so it became increasingly common to brand opponents as such outlaws in order to demonise them, something made easier by the prevalence of raiding as the most common form of military activity. Thus Pompey’s great operation against the pirates in 67 BC involved fighting many organised cities and states, a great number of which were annexed. In Rome’s civil wars, rivals were dubbed bandit leaders – Augustus depicted Sextus Pompeius as a pirate leading a fleet of runaway slaves. Men challenging allied kings were similarly dismissed as bandits, even when their aims were primarily political.33
Banditry appeared in many areas of the empire, although it was more common in frontier provinces, or where terrain offered places of refuge. The conquest of Spain was completed under Augustus, but under Tiberius there were raids launched by the inhabitants of the Cantabrian mountains and these may well have continued on and off for some time. A legion remained based in Spain for centuries, something hard to explain since there was no external frontier nor any hint of widespread rebellion. The area around Mount Amanus where Cicero had campaigned similarly remained troublesome, as did other mountainous or barren and inaccessible regions. In each case the locals continued to raid and plunder just as they had done in the past unless forcibly restrained. It was an assertion of independence, although less an attack on Roman rule than a desire to follow their traditional habit of preying on neighbours and travellers.34
Something rather different was the banditry in more settled, urbanised regions, simmering away in normal times, and rapidly increasing during disturbances. Josephus wrote of many leistai, sometimes as named individuals, seeing their activities as adding to the tension which provoked the rebellion in AD 66. He was uniformly hostile in his description of them, but admitted that at least some claimed to act for a cause rather than simply for profit. As we have seen, some fought Herod to challenge his right to rule, while others rejected him as a foreigner and similarly resented Roman rule and taxation. How a good Jew should act on such matters was a much-debated issue in these decades. ‘Tell us, therefore, what thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar or not?’ was the question some Pharisees and Herodians asked Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel. The range of answers to this and other questions was very wide, but a significant minority advocated resistance and even rebellion. Among Jesus’ disciples were Judas Iscariot – a member of the sicarii, although Josephus claims they appeared later – and others such as the brothers James and John, called ‘the sons of thunder’, whose names hint at past revolutionary associations. Barabbas, the man released by Pilate instead of Jesus, was a leistes ‘who for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison’. The two robbers crucified on either side of Jesus were also leistai, for theft without violence did not warrant execution.35
Herod and his heirs, and then successive prefects and procurators, campaigned against bandits and enjoyed many successes, but failed to solve the problem and others soon appeared to replace those killed, arrested or executed. Some of this resilience came from belief in a cause, whether political or religious – the two are hard to separate in Judaea in this period. There were also serious social and economic problems, creating men who turned bandit, a number of whom had more hatred for absentee aristocratic landlords than for more distant Rome, although it is equally clear that some of the leistai were no more than armed robbers out for personal gain. These underlying factors fed off each other, encouraging people to seek a way out through protest, religion or violence, helping the situation to spiral out of control. There were counterparts to some of these men in Gentile areas, if perhaps fewer of them and few indeed wanting freedom from Roman rule. In AD 66 genuine bandits combined with political revolutionaries, and the enthusiastic or desperate from the wider population, to spread disorder over a wide area. Similar groups very probably played a major part in the rebellions under Trajan, where inter-communal attacks are widely attested, and also under Hadrian.36
Politically motivated banditry aimed in the long run at political change, most likely involving rebellion against Rome. Yet after Hadrian there were no more Jewish rebellions, and revolts were unknown in most other provinces before this time. As early as Tiberius’ reign, the soldier, senator and historian Velleius Paterculus boasted that the Roman world was kept ‘safe from the fear of brigandage (latrociniorum)’. Successive emperors boasted of the peace their guidance of the state brought to the world, much as modern governments claim to reduce the levels of serious recorded crime. In spite of this, crime continues and is not always perceived as less prevalent.37
From the Roman period there is plenty of evidence to show that banditry continued in many areas, and this was certainly the case in Judaea. Once again, our evidence for the Jewish experience under Roman rule is better than that for any other people, and some scholars suggest that in spite of the failure of the rebellions, some bandits acted from resentment of Roman rule rather than simply a desire for profit. This is worth considering, since if some Jewish bandits were men resisting the empire for a cause, then it is possible that some of the ones attested in other regions similarly aimed at throwing off Roman rule. If that was so, then the failure to escalate this resistance into all-out rebellion may suggest a Roman army being used very effectively as an occupying force to hold down provincial populations, even when troops were not stationed in an area.38
The argument depends heavily on Talmudic literature, collections of sayings and judgements by rabbis not written down until long after our period, but claiming to represent the wisdom of earlier teachers. Its late date and the moralistic style of these texts make it very hard for us to date or to judge whether incidents recounted were real or hypothetical. Bandits appear often, while the attitude to foreigners and the Romans in particular is at best ambivalent. While it is not all pervasive, a sense of occupation by a brutal and rapacious foreign empire is evident in some of these writings, for instance in this comment on a passage from Deuteronomy:
. . . these are the oppressors who have taken hold of the land of Israel . . . but tomorrow Israel inherits their property and they will enjoy it as oil and honey. ‘Curds from the herd’: these are their consulars and governors; ‘fat of the lambs’: these are their tribunes; ‘And rams’: these are their centurions; ‘herds of Bashan’: these are their beneficiarii [senior soldiers on special service away from their units] who take away [food] from between the teeth; ‘and goats’: these are their senators; ‘with the finest of the wheat’: these are their women.39
Roman soldiers are rarely depicted in any favourable light, save in a story where the garrison in Sepphoris turns out to deal with a fire in a neighbouring village on the Sabbath. The owner of the property on fire sends them away, and a rainstorm extinguishes the blaze for him, but even so once the Sabbath is over he sends them a gift of money. The man in question appears to have been important locally, so some would see this as no more than favour shown by the authorities to the rich and well connected. Otherwise the troops come across as alien and often sinister. If a woman was captured by soldiers it was assumed that she might well have been raped or consented to have sexual intercourse with them, but if she was a hostage of bandits then it was assumed that she would not be violated. Bandits are portrayed as likely to behave better than soldiers in this respect. Even so, the former kill and steal and most of their victi
ms are Jewish. One condemned bandit sent word to a prominent rabbi to say that he had murdered the man’s son, wanting the family to know that he was dead rather than missing; to interpret this as a sign that bandits were more than simple criminals and had a political or religious agenda strains the evidence. A curious ruling over a man following a nazarite vow who had been forcibly shaved by robbers to violate this may be hypothetical, but suggests a level of deliberate brutality on their part, if only to promote fear.40
Bandits were often associated with caves as hiding places, and excavation at a number of sites in Judaea has revealed carefully dug tunnel complexes with living space and store rooms underneath villages. According to Dio, during the Bar Kochba revolt, the rebels ‘occupied the advantageous positions in the country and strengthened them with mines and walls, in order that they might have places of refuge whenever they should be hard pressed, and might meet together unobserved under ground; and they pierced these subterranean passages from above at intervals to let in air and light’. Some of these hidden bases may well be associated with that rebellion, but by their nature they are very hard to date and it is more than likely that some were used at other periods and may well have remained in use for a long time.41
The garrison of Judaea more than doubled in numbers and increased significantly in quality after the first rebellion, and rose to two legions plus auxiliaries in the second century AD. This was a large concentration of troops for the size of the province, even when it was enlarged to become Syria Palestina, and in itself suggests that the emperors considered the area to be troublesome. Marcus Aurelius is said to have commented on the intransigence of the troublesome Jews. Given, too, the matter-of-fact acceptance in the Talmudic texts of bandits plaguing the roads and even raiding at night into villages, it does seem fair to say that Judaea had a significant problem with banditry for most of the Roman period. As fellow Jews, the rabbis were more likely to speak of them as individuals and concern themselves with their affairs and the conduct of their families – for instance whether the wife of a condemned man should have sex with him. They appear to have seen some bandits as behaving better in at least certain circumstances than Roman soldiers – or perhaps behaving less badly would be more accurate. There was no ringing endorsement of the bandits as fighters for the common good against an oppressive power or as defenders of Jewish culture.42
In one story Roman troops surround a village and threaten to sack it if the villagers do not hand over to them a wanted bandit who had taken refuge with them. A rabbi made the man give himself up, but the moral of the story was that Heaven disapproved of his action. Some caution is necessary with this and other hints of sympathy for the bandits – or shared antipathy to the authorities – for the rabbis and the bandits or rebels all came from the same society. If there was some instinctive fellow feeling, there was also a good deal of intimate knowledge. Roman retribution was terrible, but tended to be clumsy. The vengeance of an angered bandit could be far more cruel in its precision, especially when such men mingled with the communities or even lived in hideouts beneath their villages. In plenty of modern trouble spots it would be difficult to find anyone willing to risk speaking out openly to condemn the armed militia or terrorist group in effective control of a region.43
After Hadrian, there is no evidence for concerted resistance targeting only the Romans or those seen as collaborating with them, and neither is there the same sense of organised violence against Gentile communities in the wider area. The bandits were there, but they preyed on the rest of the community, robbing and killing Jew and Gentile indiscriminately. If some claimed to resist the imperial oppressors, this does not seem to have altered their behaviour, and none ever gained much momentum or had any prospect of inspiring rebellion in the rest of the population, even if they ever thought of this. No doubt many Jews resented Roman rule and lamented the destruction of the Temple, but they did not look for leaders to help them shake off this oppression, from among bandits or anyone else.
It is unlikely that the picture was very different elsewhere, among communities with less sense of common identity and separateness from the wider world. Evidence for concerted resistance simply does not exist for most of the provinces, and even the few exceptions suggest that it was extremely limited. A collection of stories known today as the Acts of the Pagan Martyrs records individuals in Alexandria who stood up to the Roman authorities and were alleged to have mocked repressive governors – and even bad emperors like Commodus – face to face. A theme of anti-Semitism pervades these texts, with the Romans condemned less as an occupying power and more because they are seen as pro-Jewish. There is a nostalgia for a time before Rome ruled, but it is wistful and does not promote rebellion. For such material to have circulated and survived, some Alexandrians must have shared the sentiments of such stories, but as always this was not enough to persuade them to do anything about it, still less to unite with others in common cause against the empire.44
All in all, there is no convincing evidence for banditry as a form of prolonged resistance to Roman rule anywhere in the empire once provinces became settled. Even in Judaea, any trace of a political or religious agenda became no more than a pretext for straightforward robbery and violence once the major rebellions were over. Banditry was a constant threat, usually small in scale in most areas most of the time, but apt to increase rapidly during any crisis of central authority. It did not strike more at representatives of Roman authority than anyone else.
Much of the evidence for this chapter has come from Judaea or other areas with significant Jewish populations. There is far less evidence for inter-communal violence in other parts of the empire, although as we have seen there is some. This may be because local hostility was rarely so bitter, or perhaps because there were fewer opportunities for it to erupt into such large-scale violence. The region that eventually became the province of Syria Palestina consisted of a jumble of different populations living side by side and sometimes in the same cities, but divided by religion and a long history of conflict. As power over each region passed from allied king to Rome and back again, its structure often made little administrative sense. For a while in the first century the Decapolis was part of the province of Syria even though it was not joined to the rest of the province, but was effectively an island surrounded by the territory of allied rulers. Alexandria was exceptionally large, with three major sections within the population, none of them fond of the others. Even so the frequency of rioting there should not be exaggerated, just as in the long run we cease to hear of inter-communal violence in Judaea and the surrounding areas.45
Other cities were less turbulent, even if the possibility of rioting remained. This could be political, as leaders vied for office and employed any means to intimidate their opponents and control elections. Another threat to public order came if food supplies ran short, when angry crowds were apt to turn on anyone believed to be hoarding grain supplies in the hope of selling when the market price was at its highest. In each case the same causes had provoked unrest and violence long before the Romans arrived. Like much of the banditry, and wider raiding by mountain tribes and opportunistic piracy, these were well-established features of life in much of the ancient world. It is now time to look at how the empire under the emperors was governed, and how far it was able to check such things.
X
IMPERIAL GOVERNORS
‘He took such care to exercise restraint over the city officials and the governors of the provinces that at no time were they more honest or just, whereas after his time we have seen many of them charged with all manner of offences.’ – Suetonius, speaking of the Emperor Domitian, early second century AD.1
‘FIRMNESS AND DILIGENCE’
Around 160 years after Cicero landed at Ephesus on his way to govern Cilicia, another former consul arrived there on his way to his own provincial command of Bithynia and Pontus. Pliny the Younger (Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus) had not dawdled like the reluctant Cicero, but even so arrived later t
han he hoped, his ship delayed by bad weather. More delays followed as he pressed on to his province. The heat was excessive, making overland travel by carriage arduous, and Pliny went down with fever and had to stay some days at Pergamum, but when they took passage on trading ships operating along the coast they were again held back by the weather. It was not until 17 September AD 109 that the new governor reached Bithynia, allowing him to celebrate the birthday of the Emperor Trajan on the next day.2
Pliny was a ‘new man’ like Cicero, his family coming from one of the towns of Italy, in his case Comum (modern Como, on the picturesque lake of the same name). He was also a highly successful advocate in the courts and a prolific author who published nine books of edited letters in conscious emulation of his famous predecessor. Pliny’s correspondents included many of the distinguished senators of the era, notably the historian Tacitus, and dealt with domestic themes, literature, admirable behaviour by prominent men and women, and the conduct of some of the important trials in which he was involved. There were also a number of letters soliciting favours for himself or his associates. Wholly absent is Cicero’s concern for the outcome of elections, for building political friendships with others, for the changing balance of power and influence within the Senate and with the details of legislation. The reader of Pliny’s Letters can be left in no doubt that this was a state controlled by a princeps, whose influence – malign in the case of Domitian and benevolent in the case of Trajan – was everywhere. It is no coincidence that the only one of Pliny’s published speeches to survive is a panegyric of Trajan, for senators under the Principate were dependent on imperial favour to a degree that Cicero could scarcely have imagined, even during Caesar’s dictatorship.3
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