2 Soldiers, Cities, and Civilians in Roman Syria

the Roman world as a whole. These issues are examined over a broad

sweep of time, from Augustus to the fifth century A.D., and relate to the

physical fabric of the Roman empire, to issues of change and continuity,

of center and periphery, of homogeneity and diversity. In less abstract

terms, they force one to investigate in detail the questions of who main-

tained the empire, how they did so, and how they affected the culture,

society, and economy that surrounded them.

The relationship of armies and cities forms an interesting theme in the

Roman east. Their peculiar interrelationship in the early and middle em-

pire is suggested by such passages as the following, in which Tacitus nega-

tively discusses Corbulo's troops in A.D. 55.2

Sed Corbuloni plus molis adversus ignaviam militum quam contra

perfidiam hostium erat: quippe Suria transmotae legiones, pace

longa segnes, munia castrorum Romanorum aegerrime tolerabant.

Satis constitit fuisse in eo exercitu veteranos, qui non stationem, non

vigilias inissent, vallum fossamque quasi nova et mira viserent, sine

galeis, sine loricis, nitidi et quaestuosi, militia per oppida expleta.

(Ann. 13.35)

[But it was more difficult for Cobulo to counter the laziness of his

troops than to counter the trickery of his enemies. For the legions

that had been transferred from Syria, slothful after a long period of

peace, only with reluctance undertook the duties of a Roman camp.

It was generally agreed that there were in that army veterans who

never had served at a guard post or on watch duty, who viewed the

rampart and ditch as novel and unusual things, well-groomed and

wealthy men, their military service spent in towns.]

A passage in the same author's Histories describes the reaction of an

audience in the theater at Antioch, when informed by Mucianus, a parti-

san of Vespasian, that Vitellius planned to transfer the Syrian legions to

the Rhine frontier and vice versa in A.D. 69.

2. E.L. Wheeler ("The Laxity of Syrian Legions," in The Roman Army in the East, ed.

D. Kennedy [1996], 229-76) argues at great length, and correctly, that these negative views

of the Syrian legions are a literary topos. Their interest in this context stems not from their

judgments regarding the quality of the eastern Roman armies but from their relevance to the

relationship between the Roman army, cities, and their populations.