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Four times I helped the public treasury so that I provided 150 million sesterces to those who were in charge
of the public treasury and when Marcus Lepidus and Lucius Arruntius were consuls I paid out of my own
patrimony 170 million sesterces into the military treasury which had been founded on my advice and from
which bonuses were paid to those who had served for twenty or more years.
Augustus, Res Gestae 17
Prosaic and dry, these sentences may nevertheless be said to encapsulate the secret, perhaps even the wonder,
of the Roman imperial monarchy: a stable institutional arrangement had been created to finance the cost of the
army and the discharge of soldiers. This claim appears in the summary of his lifes achievements, which Augustus,
the first emperor (r. 27 BCE14 CE), drafted and gave instructions posthumously to publicize on bronze plaques in
front of his mausoleum on the Campus Martius in Rome (Witschel 2008). Nevertheless, a paragraph toward the end
of the document has received far more attention during the last century of scholarship. In what would be chapter
34 of modern editions of this text, Augustus notoriously, and disingenuously, claimed to have restored the Roman
republic to the control of the people and senate after his decisive and final victory at the battle of Actium in (p.
413) the civil wars of the 40s and 30s BCE. From then on, it was alleged, Augustus had participated in republican
political life according to the constitutional precedents, not arrogating to himself greater powers than his colleagues
in holding office but only surpassing everyone else in personal authority (cf. the emphasis on politics and culture
in Galinsky 2005).
The image of Augustus ruling the Roman empire in godfather-like fashion on the basis of his personal authority is
alluring; it has taught historians to throw into sharper relief the ties of patronage and clientage, which in life around
the Roman court organized relations between monarch and aristocracy (von Premerstein 1937; Saller 1982). But it
is also misleading; it leaves a false impression of a monarchy underwritten by feeble institutional supports and
forced to rely on the individual authority and charisma of the ruler (Lo Cascio 2000, 8; Flaig 2011, 7678). The
claim to have restored the republic was, as the historian and senator Tacitus pointed out with his unerring
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Yet, the sidelining of Rome the city and the tendency toward a regionalization of government bespeak a more
complex development than is implied by the notion of an increasingly absolutist, distant, and centralized form of
rule. After all, few emperors of the late antique world held command of the whole empire; this was a feature of the
principate. But by the turn of the first century, particularly successful provincial families were beginning to
contribute emperors. Spain, North Africa, and Syria all saw members of their noble elites elevated to the imperial
purple. This rise of the provinces continued with undiminished vigor in the third and fourth centuries. It was
Machiavelli, the student of Renaissance power and politics through Roman eyes, who probably first made the
observation that the military force, which enabled conquest, was insufficient as a tool of government. (p. 416) (p.
417) Provincial societies had to be ruled by other means (Il Principe, chap. 3). Local landowning elites had to be
co-opted to administer the Roman peace and collect the imperial taxes. However, if these groups could do most of
the work of government on the ground, then they might also be able to take over the empire. Even more than the
minimalist republic, the monarchy had been successful in aligning such elites around the realm to the cause of
empire. It was not only the rank and file of the army that was increasingly recruited outside Italy; the same
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Realistic strength
Notional strength
218201BCE
2nd Punic War
2025
110,000137,500
20091 BCE
510
22,00044,000 (80%)
27,50055,000
9062BCE
2035
88,000154,000 (80%)
110,000192,500
6159 BCE
15
66,000 (80%)
82,500
44BCE
3436
149,600158,400 (80%)
187,000198,000
4331 BCE
5166
224,400290,400 (80%)
280,500363,000
31 BCE161 CE
2528
110,000123,200 (80%)
137,500154,000
Marcus Aurelius
30
132,000 (80%)
165,000
Septimius Severus
33
145,200 (80%)
181,500
Note: The figures given above inevitably simplify a more complex reality and dispel with many details whose
inclusion would have made the table more exact, but also less clear (Brunt 1971, 404, 418, 424, 43233, 449,
480512; Hopkins 1978, 33; Rankov 2007, 7172). For instance, the 510 legions given for the second century
BCE indicates the normal range, while a few exceptional years saw a few more legions put into service. For all
periods, I have used a figure of 5,500 as a baseline for calculating the notional strength of the legion, thus
ignoring historical variation. In practice, legions would often have been staffed at less. Scheidel (1996,
132137) has argued for a plausible range of 5,000 to 4,600. Brunt (1971, appendix 27) found legions of the
late republican period to be closer to 4,000. Perhaps this was due to the urgency and haste with which the
legions of the civil wars had to be raised. On the other hand, the contenders had every incentive to cram as
many men into their armies as possible and so Brunts estimate may be closer to the norm than sometimes
thought. Preindustrial armies seem generally to have fallen short of the theoretically possible. I see no reason
why Rome, existing under similar organizational and technological constraints, should have marked an
exception to this rule, so 80% of notional strength has been adopted to estimate the plausible number of
legionaries. Finally, as our most certain time-series information on the Roman army relates to the number of
legions, no attempt has been made to include auxiliaries whose numbers normally matched or even exceeded
those of the legionaries. At any rate, all that is possible is rough estimates of the size of the Roman army.
Adding more details, or more careful attempts to estimate size at specific points in time, would not alter the
conclusions, but only produce an illusion of unwarranted historical exactitude. The main result, though, is clear:
After the Second Punic War it is especially the civil war periods of the first century that drive up numbers.
When we emphasize the military dimension of its activities, a state may be conceptualized as a violence-producing
enterprise or, to put it differently, and perhaps more accurately, a seller of protection (Lane 1958; Steensgaard
1981; also above, chapter 1). In return for the payment of taxes, it offers protection against the predations of other
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Spain
France
Ottoman Empire
1470
20,000
40,000
103,500
1550
150,000
50,000
118,000
1600
200,000
80,000
140,000
1700
50,000
400,000
140,000
Note: Needless to say, this table too, based on Tilly (1992, 79), Kennedy (1988, 71), Inalcik (1994, 8889), and
Murphey (1999, 41, 45, 49) is a gross simplification of a complex historical development and ignores important
differences in types of recruitment and forms of military tenure. The figures, though less uncertain than the
Roman, are rounded, broad, in part impressionistic, estimates or constructs. They reveal the steadily expanding
scale of early-modern European warfare. Between them, the three powers included in the table controlled most
of the former Roman world. In terms of mobilization for warfare, the seventeenth century appears as a
watershed where the early-modern experience begins to outstrip the Roman. For individual campaigns no
power ever mobilized its entire potential army strength.
Eventually Augustus settled for twenty-eight legions (+ a guard in Rome). When three of these were eradicated by
a coalition of Germanic tribes in the Teutoburg Forest in 9 CE, no attempt was made to replace them. For most of the
principate the number of legions lay in this range, rising slightly toward the end of the period. These are our only
certain coordinates. A legion, at full strength, seems to have held between 5,000 and 6,000 men. Proceeding from
a mean of 5,500, the legions could have comprised some 140,000 to 165,000 citizen soldiers at full strength. Most
of the time, however, the figure is likely to have been less or even substantially less (Brunt 1971, appendix 27;
Scheidel 1996, 121). Most states in preindustrial history have demobilized much of their armies in peacetime. The
Roman republic had been no different. The monarchy changed this somewhat by transforming the republican
military into a standing army. Even so, the army was by far the biggest expense on the imperial budget (Cassius
Dio 52.28 with Mattern 1999, 129) and the temptation, not to say the need, to save in peacetime must have been
irresistible. Indirect confirmation of this practice comes from reports that active campaigning (p. 421) significantly
increased the costs of the military, no doubt, albeit not solely, because more troops were recruited to fill up the
ranks (pace Birley 1981, 39; cf. Tacitus, Annals 13.7; Cassius Dio 56.16.4; Isaac 1986; Mattern 1999, 142143).
This consideration applies even more to the auxiliary troops of the imperial armies. Tacitus comments that under
Tiberius their size corresponded more or less to that of the legions (Annals 4.5). This should be taken as no more
than an indication of very rough orders of magnitude. Neither Tacitus, nor the Greek historian Cassius Dio
(55.24.5), who wrote a century later, was able to provide detailed information on the auxiliaries as they were on the
legions. Many auxiliary regiments certainly maintained a continuous existence over several decades as can be
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The Localization of Power: Provincial Elites, the Dialog of Privilege, and the Fiscal Constraints of
Empire
Such government without bureaucracy, as it has aptly been phrased (Garnsey and Saller 1987, chap. 2), worked
because tradition tended to reinforce the position of the most powerful segments of provincial society. With the
later experience of European state formation in mind, we can see that one of the most noticeable aspects of the
Roman case is the creation and financing of a large standing army without initially developing an elaborate civilian
bureaucracy to administer the imperial possessions (Rosenstein 2009). Customary rule, however, did not fossilize
social relations; in practice it spawned a process that saw local, mostly landowning, elites strengthen their hold on
provincial resources and enhance their position in society. It was on these groups that the imperial government
relied to take care of the business of administration in the local city councils and the collection of the tribute and
taxes that financed the army and the other expenses of the emperor. To the imperial authorities, backing the order
of tradition meant supporting and adding to the privileges of the few. Divide and rule was an iron law of empire
necessitated by the need to extract more from provincial communities than was put into them; not everyone could
benefit equally (Brunt 1990, chap. 12; Bang 2009). Across the Roman world, elites responded to the invitation to
share in the power of the empire and administer its peace on the groundto be sure, some with greater
enthusiasm than others. At bottom the alliance was, as Michael Mann (1986, chap. 9) has taught us, an example of
compulsory cooperation. But this also offered opportunities. All over the empire, governing elites, sometimes
after some initial foot-dragging, gradually oriented themselves toward the models of aristocratic high culture
propagated by the imperial court.
This process has often been addressed under the heading of Romanization, a term that is now controversial, but
equally difficult to avoid. Anyhow, some qualification and modification is required. Most importantly, the
development in question was not the result of a centrally directed policy, or only to a very limited extent, but
depended as much on provincial initiative (Woolf 1998). In that respect, a parallel may be sought in the conversion
of Christian and other provincial elites (p. 439) and populations to Islam under the Abbasid Caliphs. Here, too, the
change was rarely effected by the active efforts of, let alone forced by, royal government, but was rather the result
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Table 15.2. Army Expenditure and the Economy of the Roman Empire
Year
Population size
Army size
9 CE
100
100
100
100
150 CE
130
116
151
118
150 CE
140
116
151
118
150 CE
140
130
173
135
Note: This table attempts, in broad and simplified terms, to model the probable development of the weight of
army and state expenditure in the Roman imperial economy between the age of Augustus and the reign of
Antoninus Pius. The year 9 CE has been adopted as baseline (100) because the imperial army after the loss of
three legions against the Germanic coalition of Arminius was at its smallest. By the time of Antoninus Pius it had
climbed from 25 to 29 legions. At the same time, the population is believed to have risen from some 4550 to 60
70 million. Assuming a steady per capita income the aggregate imperial economy would have grown some 30
40%. The pay of the soldiers was increased by one-third under Domitian. Combined with the rise in the numbers
of legions, this would have caused the nominal costs of the army under Antoninus to be 50% higher than under
Augustus. During the same period, however, the denarius was moderately debased. The silver contents were
reduced from 3.65 grams to 2.85 per denarius or a little more (Walker 1976, 110117; 141. A conservative
estimate that slightly underestimated the real extent, see Ponting 2009), practically annulling the effect of the
nominal rise in soldiers wages. As a consequence, the economy seems to have grown faster than the costs of
the army. The last line allows us to see that even if we believe the Roman army to have expanded more than
indicated by the number of legions, say by some 30%, the increase in expenses would still, in relative terms,
have been less or just equal to the growth of the overall economy. In short, as the expenditure on the army was
by far the most important post on the imperial budget, the share of the imperial economy claimed by the
government most likely fell. Alternatively, as contemplated by Scheidel (2009b, 6061), the relative weight of
the army in the imperial budget would have dropped in relation to civilian expenditures. But there are limits to
this alternative option. With such a large standing army, even moderately expanding, it seems unlikely that its
share of the budget would have been significantly reduced. Why the need to debase the coinage, if a larger
buffer of nonmilitary expenditure had been available to help out a cash-strapped government? Two further
considerations add strength to our hypothesis. The assumption of an economy only growing in tandem with the
population would by many be considered rather conservative. A group of economic historians (e.g., Lo Cascio
and Jongman in Scheidel, Morris, and Saller 2007) are inclined to argue that the Roman empire experienced real
per capita growth in this period thus making the aggregate economy even bigger than envisaged here and the
share commanded by the state correspondingly less. Finally, only government debasement of the coinage has
been included in the model. But to this should very probably be added a moderate general inflation, which again
would work toward hollowing out the effects of increased nominal military expenditures.
(p. 446) A first sign of the tightening fiscal situation may be found in the expansion of the equestrian section of
the imperial service that begins in the second half of the second century. By increasing the number of procuratorial
positions, government seems to have attempted to strengthen its hold on tax resources (Eich 2005). But as yet the
move to administrative reform was modest. Marcus Aurelius could still aspire to keep taxes stable while trying to
make ends meet by auctioning off items from the massive and ever-accumulating palace collections of art works,
delicate craftsmanship, and precious materials (Cassius Dio 72.32.3 and fragment in Zonaras 12.1). But the
Antonine dynasty was living on borrowed time. When in 192 CE his son and successor Commodus fell victim to one
of the nervous conspiracies endemic to life at court, the coffers were practically empty. The scene was set for a
rerun of the civil war that had followed the collapse of the Julio-Claudians. This time, however, the situation called
for more than a parsimonious Vespasian to restore financial stability. The first to attempt to fill the void, Pertinax, a
seasoned general and statesman, quickly came to a bad end. Acting the role of the economizing lord might earn
an approving nod of applause from the landowners in the senate, but it did not cut much ice with the praetorian
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Striving to hold on to and mobilize resources, government rewrote the administrative geography of the empire
(Jones 1964, 5152, chaps. 12, 13, 16). The large provinces of the old order were carved up and divided into
smaller and more easily managed territories (see map. 15.2). In total, the number of provincial units just about
doubled, from the forty to fifty of the principate to approximately one hundred (Barnes 1982, 201225), while
appointed governors found at their service a larger and permanent office staff. Instead of the very lean
arrangements of the previous period, they now had available an officium for which the norm seems to have been
100 members. At the same time, governors were divested of their traditional military command of the troops
garrisoned in their province. For these a separate set of officers now existed while the governor concentrated on
dispensing justice and overseeing the collection of taxes (Slootjes 2006). Denser management of provincial
society developed in tandem with a more elaborate administrative hierarchy. An extra layer was introduced with
the bundling of the provinces into twelve larger regional districts, so-called dioceses headed by a vicarius.
Attached to the various courts of the several co-regents, a series of central bureaus shot up to handle imperial
finances and legal matters (Kelly 1994; 2004). From the turn of the second century, Roman jurisprudence, which
under the principate to a large extent had been elaborated by the scholarly commentaries produced by learned
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Army Total
Schweden 1632
183,000
20,000 (Lutzen)
101,000
18,000 (Lutzen)
77,000
400,000600,000?
300,000?
Note: Based on Parker 1988, 4041; Elton 2007, 285): Battle strength is normally well below total numbers in
organized armies. At all times, large sections of an army can be expected to be occupied on garrison duty and
patrolling and the mobile part often scattered across several theaters of war. The number of soldiers that late
Roman emperors were able to bring to battle was of the same order of magnitude as the leading contenders
during the Thirty Years War. This may well reflect the basic logistical constraints of preindustrial conditions.
Even so, it is noticeable that the much larger numbers hypothesized for the late Roman army did not translate
into a markedly higher rate for battle strength. When, moreover, we take account of the intensity of fighting
during the Thirty Years War, it seems all the more remarkable that the western court should have found it
necessary to denude the Rhine frontier to gather troops in a field army of such size in order to counter the
invasion by Germanic troops in the early fifth century. Either the late Roman army was significantly less efficient
than the armies of the early seventeenth century or its numbers have been estimated unrealistically high.
The pressures that spawned reforms to build up the organizational muscle of imperial government were twofold.
The military demands of the third century increased the need for state expenditure; but a tighter revenue situation
had also made it more challenging for the empire to keep up its incomes. While recurrent visitations of the Antonine
plague squeezed the economy, the claims of increasingly strong aristocratic elites competed with the tributary
demands of the emperors. Simply to maintain the established level of state activity required greater effort. There
was a limit to how much the imperial government could expand its military capacity. With the advent of the fourth
century, however, one of these brakes lost force; the pandemic had run its course and the population was on the
way to recovery. But not so the other one: provincial elites had emerged even stronger on the other side of the
crisis; and they expected to be rewarded liberally for their support. (p. 456) It was the richest and most powerful
segments of provincial society that would staff the enormously expanded imperial service (Whittow 1990; further
on local elites Lepelley 1983; Delmaire 1996; Schmidt-Hofner 2011).
The fundamental work of Weber has taught generations of sociologists and historians to think of aristocracy and
(modern) bureaucracy as opposing terms, embodying a confrontation between personal privilege and impersonal
regularity. Few have paid much attention to Webers observation that the ambition of modern bureaucracies to
operate according to impersonal rules and routine regulations developed on the basis of the ability of social elites
to curb monarchical discretion by consolidating their privileges (Weber 1972, 584585, 594606, 827828, 834
835). Historically, high bureaucratic office did not necessarily develop separately from aristocratic rank. Quite the
reverse, at court aristocrats were able to lay claim to positions that would otherwise have had to be filled by the
emperors domestics (cf. Millar 1977, 69110). Such offices were relatively unimportant to the landowning
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