In his book on relations between soldiers and civilians in Roman Egypt, Richard Alston (1995:3-4) bemoaned a tendency in past decades for the study of the Roman army to be treated as ‘‘almost a sub-discipline of ancient history’’ (and, one might add, of archaeology), with inward-looking preoccupations and obsessions, emphasizing the study of organization, rank, deployment, and the typologies of military installations. This approach has, quite rightly, put off many students and scholars. However, the study of the Roman army is important and interesting, but only if we re-integrate it into the wider context of Roman history as a whole. This is easy to do, since one or another aspect of the Roman army is relevant to just about every major sub-discipline of, and approach to, Roman imperial history - including politics, provincial administration, social and economic history, and the study of local cultures within the empire. The Roman army was a crucial source of imperial power and its support made and broke emperors (see Peachin, this volume). Its members were the most numerous representatives of the Roman state and performed many of the basic tasks required to run the empire. It was the state’s greatest financial burden, present in each and every province. It was composed of individuals from all groups of Roman society and acted as a means of social mobility for some. Its members formed a distinctive institutional group within Roman society but, as representatives of Roman power and culture, interacted daily with members of each and every local culture in the empire. For all these reasons, some knowledge of the Roman army is crucial to an understanding of the Roman Empire. This chapter is intended to provide a sketch of the history and character of the Roman army as an institution and then to explore its role in the wider study of Roman imperial history.
World History
