lent overview of the polis and its characteristics.
19 Thucydides 4.69; Xenophon Hellenica 5.3.1.
20 Hansen and Nielsen, Inventory, 667–8.
21 On Greek walls and the polis, see Camp, “Walls and the Polis”; Hansen and Nielsen,
Inventory, 135–37.
22 Thucydides 2.4.5.
23 Xenophon Hellenica 6.5.9.
24 On Mounichia, see Aristotle Athenaion Politeia 19.2, and Garland, Piraeus, 35–36;
on the Mouseion, see Camp, Archaeology of Athens, 166–67, 265. For cities with multiple
strong places, see Aristotle Politics 1330b5.
25 Plutarch Dion 41.
26 Herodotus 5.72.
27 Herodotus 5.101.
28 Arrian 1.7.1, 1.7.10.
29 On cross walls ( diateichismata), see Lawrence, Greek Aims, 148–55; Sokolicek, “Zum
Phänomen.”
160 Lee
30 Diodorus Siculus 16.11.2.
31 For the agora as the key to a city, see Aeneas Tacticus 2.1, 3.5, 22.2; Arrian 1.8.6–7;
Polyaenus. 5.5.1.
32 Herodotus 5.100–101.
33 Arrian 1.8.7.
34 Diodorus Siculus 13.104; Hellenica Oxyrhynchia 15.2.
35 Xenophon Hellenica 3.2.27–29.
36 Aeneas Tacticus 30.1–2.
37 Xenophon Hellenica 3.3.7.
38 Aeneas Tacticus 29.6.
39 Thucydides 3.27.
40 Aeneas Tacticus 3.5.
41 Xenophon Hellenica 2.4.24, 2.4.33.
42 Xenophon Hellenica 5.4.8.
43 Xenophon Hellenica 2.4.27.
44 Thucydides 4.48.
45 Xenophon Hellenica 6.5.9.
46 Diodorus Siculus 16.19.4.
47 On Greek city planning, see Martin, L’urbanisme; Hoepfner and Schwandner, Haus
und Stadt.
48 Hoepfner and Schwandner, Haus und Stadt, 19–20; Cahill, Household and City Orga-
nization, 21–2; Gill, “Hippodamus,” 7–8.
49 Aristotle Politics 1330b6.
50 Aristotle Politics 1330b7. For more on Hippodamian planning and Aristotle’s rec-
ommendations, see Cahill, Household and City Organization, 15–18.
51 Thucydides 2.3; Aeneas Tacticus 2.1–6.
52 Xenophon Hellenica 2.4.11.
53 Xenophon Hellenica 2.4.12–19.
54 Cahill, Household and City Organization, 75.
55 For overviews of Greek domestic architecture, see Hoepfner and Schwandner,
Haus und Stadt; Cahill, Household and City Organization.
56 Barry, “Roof Tiles,” provides a thorough discussion of the use of roof tiles in
urban combat.
57 Xenophon Hellenica 7.1.19.
58 Xenophon Anabasis 6.5.26–27.
59 Xenophon Hellenica 4.4.12.
60 Lee, “Urban Combat at Olynthos,” 19–20.
61 Arrian 1.8.7–8; Diodorus Siculus 17.13.
62 Diodorus Siculus 16.20.3–4.
63 Isserlin and du Plat Taylor, Motya, 91–92.
64 Diodorus Siculus 16.76.2–3.
65 Plato Laws 779B.
66 Cahill, Household and City Organization, 29.
67 On the topography of Sparta, see Raftopoulou, “New Finds from Sparta,” 127;
Shipley, “Lakedaimon,” 592; Waywell, “Sparta.” For the attack of 370–369, see Xenophon
Urban Warfare 161
Hellenica 6.5.27–31. On the center of town, see Aeneas Tacticus 2.2. Plutarch Agesilaus 31
mistakenly describes Sparta as having city walls in the fourth century BC.
68 On these Spartan buildings, see Pausanias 3.14.6, 3.16.2, 3.20.2.
69 Aeneas Tacticus 2.2.
70 Xenophon Hellenica 7.5.11.
71 On discipline, see van Wees, Greek Warfare, 108–13. On hoplites in cities, see also
Ober, “Hoplites and Obstacles.”
72 Plutarch Cleomenes 21.
73 Lee, “Urban Combat at Olynthos,” 15–16.
74 Xenophon 2.4.10–20. On this battle, see also Diodorus Siculus 14.33.1–4; Krentz,
Thirty at Athens, 90–92, 99–100.
75 Xenophon Hellenica 2.4.10.
76 Arrian 1.8.7.
77 Athenian cavalry action: Pausanias 1.15.1. See also Habicht, Athens from Alexander
to Antony, 74–75.
78 Plutarch Pyrrhus 32.
79 Camp, “Walls and the Polis,” 47.
80 “Walls of bronze and iron”: Plato Laws 779b. Aristotle ( Politics 1330b10) wrote, “to
claim that cities do not merit having walls around them . . . is like not having walls for
private houses on the grounds that the inhabitants will become unmanly.”
81 Krentz, “Strategic Culture,” 62–65.
82 Krentz, “Strategic Culture,” 168–70; Rusch, “Poliorcetic Assault.”
83 Plutarch Agesilaus 31.
84 Polyaenus 4.2.18.
85 Gehrke, Stasis, 243–44; Polyaenus 8.68–70.
86 Thucydides 3.74.
87 On the idea of payback, see Tritle, From Melos to My Lai, 121–2, 131.
88 Xenophon Hellenica 2.4.11.
89 Xenophon Hellenica 7.5.11.
90 Plutarch Dion 45.
91 For Aeneas’s work in wider historical perspective, see Dufour, La guerre, 63–64.
92 For a translation and commentary, see Whitehead, Aineias the Tactician: How to
Survive Under Siege.
93 Aeneas Tacticus 19.1, 22.15.
94 Aeneas Tacticus 1.9, 2.1, 3.5, 22.2–4.
95 Aeneas Tacticus 39.1–2.
96 On Mogadishu, see Bowden, Black Hawk Down.
97 Lintott, Violence, 261.
98 Thuc. 1.22.
162 Lee
7. Counterinsurgency and the Enemies of Rome
Susan P. Mattern
The Romans, like every other imperial power in history, lacked the
resources to rule by overwhelming force. The Roman economy
was by some measures advanced—population density, urbanization,
monetization, and mining activity all reached levels in the Mediterra-
nean world of the second century CE that remained unequaled until
modern times. But scholars agree that the imperial government col-
lected taxes amounting to less (perhaps much less) than 10 percent
of GDP, this tax burden being unevenly distributed in an economy in
which much of the population produced or earned barely enough to
survive. With this income the Roman state supported an army of less
than one-half million men, charged with the occupation, expansion,
and defense of an empire of 60–70 million inhabitants, with an area of
4 million km2.1 As the only large public labor force available, the army
also performed nonmilitary or paramilitary functions such as manning
tollbooths and guard posts, escorting VIPs, collecting taxes, guarding
prisons and work gangs, and construction.2 Italy, the empire’s center of
power and the homeland of the Roman people, did not export a large
number of emigrants, either as colonists or as soldiers. The excep-
tion is a brief period under Julius Caesar and Augustus, when perhaps
200,000 cashiered soldiers—mainly Italians, veterans of the civil wars
who could not safely or practically be kept under arms—received land
in overseas colonies because Italian land was in short supply. While
they were instrumental to the cultural transformation of the western
empire, they were a single generation, catalysts only; these colonies
never formed an ethnically distinct population or a ruling class. That
label belongs, in the west, to a Romanized native aristocracy, and in
the east and on Sicily, to the Hellenic or hellenized local aristocracy
/> that predated the arrival of the Romans.3 Nor did Rome export a large
bureaucracy; the governor of any given province, his civilian staff, and
officials of equestrian rank might number in the dozens, though they
also brought an entourage of friends, slaves, and freedmen.4 The Ro-
mans were aware of these limitations.
Modern scholars have identified forces that made the empire feel
like a compelling entity to its inhabitants. Taxation unified, monetized,
and urbanized the economy; the allure of civilization led to profound
cultural change, especially in the west; certain imperial ideals and
forms—Roman law and legal procedures, the image of the emperor,
the imperial cult—emanated everywhere and generated a sense of
shared participation in a vast project.5 But the Romans accomplished
all of this with a rudimentary state and a vanishingly small senatorial
ruling class, mainly through social mechanisms.
To prevent and respond to insurgency, the Romans relied on a com-
plicated network of relationships that reached into almost every stra-
tum of society, plus intensive military occupation of the most volatile
areas, a reputation for horrific brutality when challenged, and the
ability to muster, although with difficulty and at great cost to them-
selves, an overwhelming force when the military resources of the em-
pire were concentrated in one place. A rhetoric that distinguished the
Romans from their less civilized, less virtuous, and less disciplined en-
emies and subjects masked a reality in which elements of the subject
population worked together with the Romans, and in which it was
difficult to distinguish Romans from their subjects. None of the means
the Romans used against rebellion and insurgency worked in the sense
of eradicating the problem. The Romans managed insurgency but did
not eliminate it; innumerable major and minor uprisings are attested
throughout the imperial period, and banditry was endemic in all peri-
ods and areas of the empire. There was never a time when the Roman
army’s size could safely be reduced—its task of occupation having
come to an end—or freed for major new conquests. On the contrary,
the Roman army grew gradually as the empire’s territorial size also
grew gradually.6
164 Mattern
Major rebel ions and minor acts of insurgency are documented
throughout the imperial period. One scholar has counted references to
more than 120 separate instances of insurgency from the reign of Augus-
tus, the first emperor, through 190 CE; this counts only the events docu-
mented in ancient sources, but it is safe to assume that many episodes
escaped mention by contemporary historians.7 Shifting areas within the
empire remained mostly free from Roman domination, under the con-
trol of local “bandits” or strongmen.8 Two major rebel ions are docu-
mented in detail by eyewitness sources: the revolt of Vercingetorix in
52 BCE, which Caesar described in his Commmentaries on the Gal ic War,
and the Jewish revolt of 66–73 CE, chronicled by Josephus. Josephus
commanded rebel troops in the revolt, was taken prisoner by the future
emperor Vespasian, and wrote an account of the war in Aramaic (this
version has been lost) and later in Greek (this version survives).9
These were not the only violent rebellions against Rome. In an infa-
mous episode of 9 CE, the German chief Arminius defeated the Roman
legionary army under its commander Quintilius Varus in the Teuto-
burg Forest, with the stunning result that Rome never claimed domin-
ion over “Free Germany” again. Other famous incidents include the
revolt of Boudicca in Britain under Nero, the revolt of the Batavians
under Civilis during the Roman civil war of 69 CE, and the revolt of the
Jews under Simon Bar-Kokhba in 132–35 CE.10
Some scholars have described a traumatic and humiliating process
of consolidation immediately following conquest in which new taxes
and the drafting of troops were especially resented, the population was
volatile, and the danger of rebellion was high. The Romans shared this
view. Roman writers (the views of native rebels do not survive) em-
phasized the idea of liberty, the threat to ancestral values and lifestyle,
and the corruption of Roman administrators when they described the
motives for these early revolts.11 Examples of this type of revolt—led by
native leaders soon after conquest, in response to the hardships of con-
solidation—are those of Vercingetorix in Gaul, Arminius in Germany,
and Boudicca in Britain.
But insurgency and revolt also occurred in provinces long incorpo-
rated into the empire, for different reasons. In provinces with open fron-
tiers—unpacified regions beyond them, or inaccessible regions within
Counterinsurgency 165
them—a zone of long-term or permanent instability could develop as
locals switched loyalties among different power brokers in response to
shifting circumstances (such regions included northern Spain, north-
ern and eastern Britain, the African provinces, and other areas with
endemic banditry; see below).
Also, local aristocrats in “Romanized” provinces of long standing
might lead revolts when they perceived an opportunity; the best ex-
amples are from Gaul (the revolt of Julius Florus and Julius Sacrovir in
21 CE and the revolt of Julius Civilis in 69 CE). Gaul had rapidly become
urbanized and Romanized; in the first century CE many families had
Roman citizenship, and an act of Claudius in 48 CE allowed some Gal-
lic Romans into the empire’s ruling class, the Senate. But these leaders
could call on a sense of native identity, one perhaps newly developed or
more highly developed as a result of Roman conquest (“Gauls” didn’t
know they were Gauls until Julius Caesar labeled them as such). Finally,
would-be kings or emperors of high rank and great influence might in-
voke local alliances in the civil wars with which they bid for the throne
(for example, Sertorius in Spain, Vindex in Gaul, and Avidius Cassius
in the East; the civil wars that ended the republic drew on a myriad of
such alliances).12
This scheme oversimplifies; but the point that hardly any province
was reliably peaceful is valid, although the nature and intensity of in-
surgency changed over time. At least three uprisings in Asia and Achaea
were led by men claiming to be the emperor Nero, who had commit-
ted suicide when deposed in 68 CE. In the province of Bithynia, now
northern Turkey, the emperor Trajan banned organizations of any kind
( collegia) because of the region’s reputation for insurgency; although
we have little further evidence to shed light on Trajan’s concerns, the
emperor would not even allow a fire brigade, and his edict was part
of the basis for the persecution of Christians.13 By the time the Bar-
Kokhba revolt broke out, Judaea had been a Roman protectorate or a
Roman province for nearly 100 years. During the political and military
crisis of the third century CE, huge parts of the empire in the East and
West—Syria and Egy
pt under Queen Zenobia of Palmyra, and Gaul
under its own line of emperors—revolted and operated independently
for decades before they were eventually subdued, but for the most part
166 Mattern
I shall leave this turbulent period out of my discussion and focus on the
better-documented era from about 100 BCE through 200 CE.
To keep the peace, the Romans relied partly on their perceived abil-
ity to punish, an idea they articulated using value terms rather than
more abstract, strategic language. Roman historians write as though
revolt were an insult and a challenge to which the appropriate response
was vengeance extreme enough to reinstill awe and fear in their rebel-
lious subjects. In some cases they attempted genocide, the extermina-
tion of a tribe or people, a concept well attested in Roman literature.
They used terror as a policy tool, in the sense that they inflicted ex-
treme brutality on a mass scale to frighten their subjects. Although
Rome never reoccupied territory across the Rhine after Arminius’s
revolt, campaigns under the future emperor Tiberius, and eventually
under the latter’s nephew and adopted son Germanicus, laid waste to
territory, slaughtered noncombatants, and aimed for the annihilation
of the Germans.14 The Romans also used mutilation, mass deportation,
mass destruction, and mass slaughter short of genocide to punish,
avenge, and deter. After the Bar-Kokhba revolt, the emperor Hadrian,
who led the expedition to repress the revolt in person, expelled the
Jews from Jerusalem and refounded it as a Roman colony. One ancient
source tells us that over half a million souls perished in the war and that
few survived. Other evidence attests to a rich rabbinic culture in the
region after the revolt—depopulation and extermination are difficult
policies to carry out thoroughly and successfully—but the Roman in-
tent to inflict extreme brutality is documented here and in many other
examples. This is the meaning behind the saying Tacitus attributes to
the British rebel Calgacus, “when they have made a desert, they call it
peace.” Famous passages from Polybius and Josephus, historians who
described the conquest of their own people, reflect the reputation for
brutality and invincibility that the Romans wished to cultivate.15
Rome’s investment of resources in some of these campaigns was
very high. The revolt of Illyricum in 6 CE occupied ten of the em-
Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome Page 26
