How did the Roman army maintain control over some 400,000 (at maximum) personnel, especially given their long terms of service and their frequent mobility? “Personnel management” and control were achieved not just through (for example) severe punishment for desertion, but through a relatively sophisticated system of documents, proof of the close association of literacy and power.
The army clerks produced documentation concerning recruitment, daily tasks and long-term missions, the giving and confirmation of orders, furlough, and annual reports on the composition of units. These records show a high degree of uniformity over space and time. The bureaucracy required literate clerks and propagated a documentary culture. However, the degree of modernity of the military bureaucracy has often been overestimated, as I will argue.1 This chapter will cover documents pertaining to military personnel management during the principate, not financial accounts or documentation concerning discharge privileges and praemia.
Our evidence comes from various findspots around the empire and from different periods: the main finds are wooden writing tablets from Vindolanda (and a few from Carlisle) near Hadrian’s Wall in northern England, dating to the turn of the second century ad; ostraca from Bu Njem or Gholaia, a small frontier outpost in the Libyan desert occupied in the early third century ad; papyri from Dura-Europos on the River Euphrates, occupied by the Cohors XX Palmyrenorum milliaria equitata sagittaria, an unit of Palmyrene archers in the early to mid-third century ad; and ostraca from Mons Claudianus, an imperial stone quarry in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Individual papyri and ostraka from Roman Egypt also attest military records.2
World History
