Big battles capture our attention, as they captured the attention of our sources, but in reality tended to be rare. A lot of campaigning was different, with smaller objectives and different ways of doing things. If we are to understand how the Roman army worked, and how frontier systems were meant to function, then we need to undertand raids. Some of this is discussed in my book ‘Pax Romana’, but this is much more detailed – the material for an article I may write one day, if ever I get the time.
This is the first in a series of one off talks, often based on lectures I have given in the past. I’ll admit that this one is a bit of a monster. The problem is that few people have sat down to think about how raiding and small scale attacks were carried out and how the defenders tried to deal with them. More than big battles, this was ‘typical’ warfare in the Roman era and the wider ancient world – and indeed for much of human history. This talk began as a lecture at the Roman Army School run by the HAdrianic Society. I was asked to expand on it the following year, and the thing grew and grew. Having gone through it all for this video, it has sunk it why I rarely complete the discussion whenever I have given a similar presentation!
Now over the years I’ve written a lot about Warfare in the ancient world obviously particularly the Roman period I started very much as a romanist looking at the Roman army and trying to understand how it functioned I’ve written about the great conflicts the Punic Wars those Titanic struggles
Particularly the first and second Punic War that involved years and years of conflict many major battles and huge loss of life and wider destruction and eventually culminated in the much shorter third Punic War that extinguished Carthage as a political entity so big Wars are important and the major battles are dramatic episodes
Within those conflicts and there’s something we tend to focus on know if people talk about Alexander the Great at War they tend to think of granica cissus gamila and hias they’re less likely to think at least first first of the many sieges that occupied so much of his time but
Also of the lower level marching campaigning surprise attacks reprisals that occupied him for much of his short life Alexander did spend a lot of his time at War but he only fought those four major battles during his Reign and if you include kirona you could say he only really participated in five major
Battles in his entire life and again even when we look at the most intensive periods of fighting in the Second Punic War it was rare to have more than one battle a year certainly within the same theater and there were some years without an encounter on that scale and
That was one of the most intensive if you go through Julius Caesar’s narratives of his campaigns in Gaul then you’ll see the big battles and sometimes more than one of them in a campaigning season particularly at the beginning in 58 BC but you’ll also see sieges and
You’ll see a lot more smaller scale activity and the raid which is perhaps the epitome of this is what we’re going to talk about and discuss today now by raid I’m using the term fairly broadly we’re looking at the occasions when somebody decided to attack Roman territory or the Romans decided to
Advance beyond their controlled area and move beyond the Frontiers and attack somebody else whether to dominate to intimidate or as a reprisal a reaction to earlier attacks and there is a pattern that you see in Roman foreign relations from very early on whereby Roman wars are explained as a response
To attacks on Roman citizens Roman territory or Rome’s allies Rome’s allies become the most common pretext for war attacks upon them lead to the Romans saying well if we’re going to be an effective Ally we need to show them that we will protect our friends and therefore punish the people who have
Attacked them now much of this Warfare is not about major battles though some quite significantly sized actions will occur in some occasions during the course of a raid or in a response to a raid depending on its size the objective is usually to take something to achieve something very
Often these are physical rewards their plunder their booty they are livestock um human captives or they might be more symbolic trophies for some of the the tribal peoples head hunting is very important and taking the severed heads of your enemies offers proof of your status your courage your bravery as a
Warrior and for the leaders of those groups of Warriors their particular status as someone who brings Victory who brings success so these can be important symbols and useful things within your society and within the politics of your Society to show that you are someone who matters whose leadership needs to be
Acknowledged whose word needs to be taken seriously someone who can compete with other similar War leaders but also not just within your tribe but those Beyond so we’re going to be talking about that sort of warfare so it can be as a reprisal it can also be the
Perception that the Romans are too strong to confront in open battle therefore we will raid them we will Ambush small detachments or destroy small outposts and more importantly we will pick on the vulnerable we will plunder them we will steal their cattle their sheep we will steal their people
Or we will kill them or we will burn their settlements as a sign that we are people to be feared and taken seriously but it can be a type of warfare to which people Resort when they’re not willing to risk a major battle with the Roman
Army or in that they actually think well if we we we’ve got the number of people to do it but we don’t want to risk it because we know the Romans are good at that sort of fighting conversely the Romans can adopt the same attitude they will sometimes choose to raid when it
Isn’t in their interest or within their capacity at the moment to fight a major battle so raiding is something that is very frequent and we’re going to extend it because we’ll need to look at as much evidence as we can possibly get so we’re going to look at Large Scale banditry as
Well and some of the discussions of piracy and incidents of that that tell you something about how these things were um were arranged how they were done what people were trying to do and how they tried to do it on both sides so whether you are the attacker the Raider
Going out there for your plunder For Your Glory to make the enemy pay pay or suffer or to humiliate them whatever the the purpose might be or whether you are the defender who is faced with this problem that people are coming into your territory and attacking you where you
Are weak where you least expected how do you respond to this how do you try to control this sort of fighting one constant theme in the history of Roman Frontier relations both from the Roman perspective but also from other people’s out there is that if you have a few
Small attacks and a few plundering raids that come in and are successful and go home then the odds are that more will come and they will get larger and more frequent so that if you don’t deal with this sort of low-level fighting then often you will move to more of it
Greater intensity and eventually perhaps to large scale Invasion we’re not primarily talking today about campaigns that are meant to occupy permanently any of the targets of um these attacks so it isn’t about Invasion and Conquest it’s about go in hit the enemy achieve what
You want and get home again so as I say raiding banditry piracy and we’ll look at it from both sides whether the Romans are the Defenders being attacked or their allies of people being attacked or whether they sometimes are launching reprisal raids or preemptive raids on in
Their own right because each will show us something about the mechanisms involved just people how how they tried to do this and how it actually works because one big problem with the ancient world is that people often talk about things they talk about battles they talk about wars they talk about political
Rivalries without thinking in detail in Practical terms just how did these things work out how were they carried out how were they conducted what did people have to do on what scale did they occur both time scale both geographical scale and in terms of the number of
People involved and the sort of cost involved to winners and losers in these sorts of things so this is very much a talk about how these things were done and to do that we need to look at a very wide range of evidence from the ancient sources backed up by archaeology but
Also some parallels from other periods and an element of Common Sense where we’re trying to think about okay how would you actually do this and what does it mean so that hopefully this is a useful framework of thinking about one of the most frequent types of warfare in
The ancient world but one that is not systematically studied by Scholars we tend to ignore it we tend to think occasionally about it when we’re looking at Roman Frontier systems but also it’s of relevance to those studying Iron Age societies before the Romans arrive so you have questions about when you look
At say a hill fort one of the big ones like maiden Castle or hambledon Hill in Britain as to whether or not these were intended as serious defensive um and protected places whether they were somewhere you lived or whether they were somewhere where you ran to fled to and
Sought refuge in the case of raiding then that’s another matter but it if we’re going to understand that people often jump to conclusions and will tend to say well this isn’t defensive because look they’ve built this hill for but actually just next to it there’s a hill
That’s even higher now that might be thinking in two modern terms because that’s only really relevant if the anyone likely to attack has missile weapons capable of reaching from that Higher Ground into your fortified Place into your Hill Fort and in most cases in the ancient world that’s not true you
Don’t have even early modern artillery and most armies don’t even have the torsion artillery that is available to the macedonians and the Romans and the more organized civilized States call them what you will so this is a useful thing to think about because it does have ramifications
For our understanding of all sorts of societies and relationships between different communities not just in the Roman period but before and more widely still I guess before I start I really ought to justify to some extent the claim I’m making that raiding and this sort of small scale military
Activity is very very common in most of the ancient world at most periods being because again I think it’s there in the sources but people don’t necessarily highlight it and of course then we’ve got to consider just how frequent it might be so let’s begin with the Romans
As far as possible I’ll take sources from the Roman period but I will go a little bit earlier and later at times just because sometimes it seems to help flesh out what we Glimpse from our Greco Roman sources and makes more sense of them so let’s begin with vas pulus talking about
The rule of the emperor Ty ious and he talks about the Pax austa which has spread to the regions of the East and of the West and to the bounds of the north and of the South preserves every corner of the world safe from the fear of
Brigandage again so the emphasis on the Roman peace there of a historian who is very very uh enthusiastic in his portrayal of Tiberia so a very friendly source and obviously a patriotic Roman who’s been a an officer probably an equestrian officer in the Army who’s Taken part in campaigns in Europe and um
Served out on the border with the parans so a man of considerable experience unfortunately only a small part of his work survive and we don’t have his detailed accounts of campaigns against the German tribes and this s thing which would be wonderful to give us more idea
Of what’s going on with something that we tend to see more through short passages and then we Glimpse in the archaeology but again he’s emphasizing that the big threat to the Roman peace is not so much major Wars against Great Powers it’s against brigandage banditry raiding and there are times where the Romans
Include under this Banner quite specifically groups of people who’ve come from outside the Empire but who attack into the province to steal to murder and to get away with their plunder so this is a source where the Romans are even emphasizing that this is a problem that will happen unless there
Is a good Emperor and a good Empire like the Roman Empire and Tiberius able to impose order able to stop this sort of thing from actually happening so again we’re not talking about the big battles the big conflicts we’re talking about something much um smaller let’s come
Back let’s go a little bit earlier let’s go to the 3dr century BC and there’s an interesting P Papyrus from toic Egypt now this talks about Sailors and seaf farers who come ashore and how they are to be received by the officials of the toic Kingdom what’s the attitude to them
He says but if any being driven by a storm are not able to anchor on the promet when they come to the harbor and its impertinences let them announce the police the reason and the place in which they have anchored to those who have reported the chief of police will send a
Guard adequate to protect them while they are mored so that no violence may be done it’s not really specific as to on which side this violence is is expected to come from and there may be an element of both obviously if some Merchants are blown ashore or there’s
Not room for them in the harbor and they’re forced ashore and they land somewhere and they’ve got lots of nice shiny valuable things then any criminal element locally might think well this is a good opportunity let’s go and Rob them or simply anybody who thinks they
Can get away with it and doesn’t have any particular reason to like these strangers that have come from elsewhere but there’s also the concern that these strangers might be people who are perhaps posing as Traders but perhaps they they’re not um averse to a little bit of kidnapping to take people as to
Sell as slaves or theft again on the basis that they’ll be going away soon so they won’t be able to be caught by the authorities so there’s an effort by toic authorities and we can argue another time about whether the use of the word police is a a legitimate translation in
This context it’s it’s more the idea I want to emphasize that you never quite knew when strangers arrived in your ter territory for most of the most of ancient history whether or not they were friendly and this is something to which we’ll return later because it’s significant about how the process of
Raiding works most people come probably for harmless reasons probably to trade reasons that are beneficial to both of you they have something they want to buy um they want to sell you you might have something you want to sell them it works both ways now obviously people who come from
The sea have a particularly easy means of Escape afterwards but it can also be true of those who come by land and there is a connection that you see in the Iliad in The Odyssey the assumption that people who arrive by sea might decide to do a bit of plundering particularly if
They have a lot of warriors with them therefore they’ve got the capacity to do it so here’s an interesting quote from the Odyssey when adus visits the underworld and apart from dealing with the quties on at the time he talks to several of the Greeks with whom he’d
Fought at Troy but who are now much to his surprise because he hasn’t had much news on his long and arduous Journey back home is discovering that they have in fact died so when he meets Agamemnon who has in fact been murdered at home in fact on the basis of in the story
Obviously um he talks to agon meon Lord of men what Doom of distressful death over masted you did Poseidon Rouse some hideous blast of contrary winds and Destroy You among the ships that went with you or did hostile men strike you down on land as you drove off their
Flocks and herds or battle to win their town and women it’s it’s quite a startling assumption whereby he talks about these as hostile you would think unsurprisingly if agamemnon’s men have landed and then decided Well let’s take what we want from this you know we’re not going to
Pay we’re just going to It capture their women take their cattle to eat we’re going to burn their town down and plunder it that unsurprisingly the local don’t look too favorably on this so therefore they fight the point I want to emphasize is not so much how historical this is
Though clearly both the ilad and the Odyssey assume a level of realism within their story this is something to which its audience could relate the idea that yes this is the sort of thing that Kings and their Warriors might do and this is the sort of thing that might happen to
You now whether implied is the assumption that had aemon landed and the locals realized this is a great king of of Greece with lots of um troops at his back lots of Warships full of armed men if we’re very polite to him if we welcome him if we give him gifts then we
Can be friends but if we’re a bit standoffish we could look out for trouble because he needs to be treated with respect there is an element you get coming back again and again in the ancient world that if you’re strong then you’ll get treated better than if you’re
Perceived to be weak and that how you deal with with others with strangers with whom you don’t have any particular connection up to this point is very much based around a perception of how strong they are in relation to how strong you are therefore if you’re the stronger one
They need to show respect to you otherwise you can um use Force to take what you want you can plunder them but also if they’re stronger than you then you need to be very careful and very polite to make sure they don’t attack you first so let’s come back let’s go more
Firmly into the Roman period and let’s look at stories that are told by Greek and Roman sources of some of the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula and particularly the lucanians in the area roughly speaking that would become modern day Portugal and several sources attest to the similar idea you have from
Dorcus one special custom is followed among the iberians and especially among the lucanians among those who are at the prime of Life those poor forest in property but outstanding in strength and courage furnish themselves with weapons and resources Gather in the harsh mountain regions and forming quite significant bands they overrun Iberia
And collect wealth by plundering this is something that will appear as I say again and again where people cannot support themselves because they don’t have land they don’t have property they don’t have animals but they’re young and they’re strong then they turn Raider they turn Bandit they
Turn Warrior and you have tacitus will talk about this with the Germans that if there wasn’t much going on in their own tribe ambitious Warriors would go off and take service with the leader in another one to get the chance to fight you can win Glory that way and a
Striking feature as well we’ll talk about this in some detail in in one of the historical lectures sometime in the future when I get around to it but for those of you who remember pompy’s campaign against the Pirates in the60s BC he settles it quite quickly and
Primarily he does this not by the physical dist destruction of the pirate strongholds but by transplanting the population to areas of better land and other cities where they can actually support themselves they don’t need to be Pirates anymore because they have a livelihood with which they can support
Themselves and families so this is something again that crops up again and again in the ancient world if you don’t have enough and you’re strong then you take it from someone else and that’s an assumption that appears again and again in the sources now it might not be
Universal but it does appear to be common now this is another one from strabo talking about the same area it’s a long long quote so I won’t um read all of it but here we’ve got if you part way down it was the Mountaineers who began this
Lawlessness this was likely to be the case for since they occupied sorry land and possessed but little property they coveted what belonged to others and later in defending themselves against the Mountaineers it’s sorry and the latter defending themselves against the Mountaineers were necessarily rendered powerless over their private stat so
That they too began to engage in war instead of farming and the result was that the country neglected because it was baren of planted products became the home only of brigands it’s quite interesting that even an ancient source can see a relation between an area that suffers depredations from one group of
Attackers tries to defend itself the people there have a choice you can either be robbed all the time and starve or you defend yourselves you know it’s all a little bit Magnificent Seven or Seven Samurai depending on your your tastes in movies I I like both both of
Them personally um but it’s this idea that in those cases you go and hire someone to protect you but otherwise you arm yourself and you prepare yourself or you build fortifications or you seek refuge in places of difficult access to defend yourself but if you are forced to
Spend all that effort fighting and if you cannot cultivate your Fields as well as you could before or care for your flocks your herds as well as you could before you become poorer which makes you more desperate and now that you’ve become armed you might choose to to raid
Somebody else so there’s an element of vicious circle about all of this that once it starts others can start to turn towards similar acts of violence sometimes reprisals against the people who’ve attacked them but also finding other victims Elsewhere on their borders that they feel can make up what they’ve
For what they’ve lost from the others and if you look at most IR AG settlements in most parts of Europe and also more widely um throughout the ancient world many are protected fortified is perhaps too strong a word we’ve talked already a little bit about the hill forts of um Iron Age Britain
And some of these are absolutely huge Maiden Castle being one of the biggest and you can see it’s got three Banks of uh ramp Parts ditches Gates only at either end and those involve a very complicated approach where presumably all the time apart from getting disorientated and lost you’ve got people
People lobbing bricks down um shooting sling bullets at you they found large quantities of Sling Stones ammunition in Danbury for instance um piled up ready for the Defenders to bombard anyone attacking them so this looks like a pretty formidable military uh position you can justify fortification in this term
Although you’ve then got to say well it’s a very long perimeter so that’s vulnerable can the enemy distract you in one place and then manage to scramble over somewhere else so do you need a lot of people to defend this you obviously need a lot of people to build it in the
First place it’s in Dorset now in Southwestern England and one of the Striking things about that area that probably corresponds to the territory of the durat triay is the large number of Hill fors often quite close together and that rather suggests that you’ve got not one c one or two centralized authorities
And Powers but lots of Chieftain leaders who dominate from their own particular stronghold but you’ve also got within the Iron Age The Farmstead that might be half a dozen Huts perhaps not even that many that very often has a ditch around it and sign of a rampart Stockade you
Know these are common these are fairly typical settlements in Roman Britain the the in ag people in Britain generally speaking don’t seem to go for villages but they do go for Farms extended family farms presumably and many of them have some degree of protection now we’ll come
Back to just what this means but you’re talking about a rampart perhaps though it might be a stockade rather than something where you have a a fighting platform behind it depending on the size uh both are attested or at least plausible reconstructions of the archaeology in various sites and a ditch
Around it now the ditch probably has at least one end entrance perhaps only the one which allows you to go in and out presumably that would be blocked by some sort of gate temporary fence barricade whatever it might be now this is milit in military in military terms not a
Hugely for formidable position in that it’s quite small so a large Force attacking it could probably overwhelm it but again this is something we’ll talk about a bit later on what should we be thinking about as the threat that these sorts of defensive measures are meant to
Meet and to counteract because I think sometimes archaeologists and Scholars tend to come to something like this and they think always in terms of large battles big armies and then they look at the societies involved well how often is that type of warfare likely to occur I
Think the key to understanding many of these things and indeed Roman Frontier systems is actually to look at what we’re talking about today and consider raiding and often conducted by relatively small groups of people now let’s see again we come back I’ve already mentioned pompy and the Pirates but to
Emphasize how it’s Poverty of land the inability to feed yourselves and particularly in the case where you have a population that can no longer support itself um on the resources available to it and within that population a lot of young men who are willing to take the risks of um going to
War going on the war path going raiding so again this is service supicious Val galber in 150 BC and this is from aan account now this would lead to a famous Massacre of the lucanians but before that happens and the pretext for the settlement involving the tribes coming
In with their families with their flocks with their possessions to be resettled by the Romans was this that galber understood as the Roman proc Consul that they’d only broken the treaty with the Romans and attacked Rome’s allies because they were forced to through poverty for he said poorness of soil and
Penury force you to do these things but I will give my poor friends good land and settle them in a fertile country in three divisions so again it’s it’s just as pompy understood it’s a relationship between this is our population we can’t support ourselves therefore to survive
We’re going to take it from someone else and that then can have that knock on effect where others are forced onto the war path as well so again Cicero talking about um pompy and arguing in favor of his Imperium he talks about so this is
Back um in the 1 Century BC we who in former days besides keeping the whole of Italy safe were able to guarantee the safety of all our allies in the farthest coasts by The Prestige of our Empire D Los although set far from Rome in the aan
Sea and visited by men of every country with their merchandise and their cargos packed through the island packed though the island was with riches small though it was and defenseless had nothing to fear the perception that when there is a strong central Authority in this case cisero is claiming that until now the
Romans have dominated the area they’ve seemed sufficiently strong that they’ve deterred pirates from going to DS which had become a major trading post and particularly one of the centers of the Mediterranean slave trade so huge numbers of valuable slaves passed through this area as well as other Goods
That were tempting targets for those who could steal them and then sell them on and make a profit themselves so he is of course arguing for pompy to be given the command so that he can go and sort this out and sort out other problems then later on
With myth rantis and again he’s talking about the um another speech a little bit later and it’s um talking about Macedonia in the consulship of nias cernia piso this is when Cicero explains what happens when there isn’t a strong force a strong Authority that is out
There to curb the people who might be inclined to go raiding to go stealing to go become Bandits and Raiders says this province is now so harassed by barbarians whose greed has made them break the peace that the people of thessalonica dwelling in the very heart of our Imperium are forced to abandon
Their city and fortify their Citadel that our great Military Road the Via ignatia through Macedonia as far as the helis bont is not only endangered by raiding barbarians but even studied and dotted with thian encampments so this is the the picture that the Romans give us time and time
Again is that if you’re not strong if you’re not seem to be strong then you will be attacked or your allies will be attacked so as an imperial power you’re only going to keep those allies if you continually present this image of strength which deters anybody else from
Attacking them and keeps them safe because otherwise they’re going to either find somebody else who’s a bigger stronger Ally something Caesar plays upon in Gul time and time again and you have ARA Vistas for instance and the German tribes at other times or you might arm yourself and then
If you arm yourself and fight effectively why do you need the Romans as friends because you’re doing everything for yourself so again there is an assumption that Warfare and in most cases that Warfare is primarily raiding though it can be on a very large scale and it can lead to Invasion and
Permanent occupation or more serious attacks of other sorts is very very frequent Julius Caesar for instance claims that upon the incidents of war and before Caesar’s coming to Gul this would happen well nigh every year in the sense they would either make one and attacks themselves or repelling such
They’d have to fight to defend their own territory or they’d be going robbing somebody else now obviously Julius Caesar has intervened in Gaul stretching to the very limit his remit as governor of the province allocated by the Senate to intervene ever further a field eventually end up
In Britain bridge the Ry twice all of these things so it is in Caesar’s interest to present the gals as warlike and unstable and dangerous to Rome’s allies which therefore means dangerous to Rome’s interest therefore I have to do all this and I have to go and dominate them and defeat them and
Conquer them so he’s inclined to exaggerate but again as with everything Caesar says it’s an exaggeration that would be accepted at Rome and he didn’t have freedom to invent all that much because so many of his own officers are writing regularly back to Rome and there
Are other people in Rome who have at least personal knowledge of the transalpine province of of um Gul modern day provance and perhaps Beyond but certainly of that area but again it’s a it’s a it’s a constant theme in the commentaries so think of how he describes the helvetti
And the reason for their migration so the helveti are closely confined by the nature of their territory such circumstances their range of movement was less extensive and their chances of Waging War on their neighbors were less easy and on this account they were greatly distressed for they were men
That longed for war so Caesar is presenting them as a warlike Nation by their very Nature by their society so they like to feel strong they like to see powerful and they feel that they’re confined by again the area of roughly modern day Switzerland but it’s it’s a little more
Complicated than that there are too many mountains in the way there aren’t enough Rich targets Within Reach of the helvetti for them to go out and to dominate and to plunder and therefore they think well let’s move to some nicer lands where we’ve got not only better
Farmland but also lots of people we can pray upon and Rob and plunder and then they’ll either submit to us which makes us stronger or they’ll end up as um continual victim sheep to to Shear whenever we want to so again this is a theme that’s there
Time and time again it’s this perception again that if somebody seems weak and they have things worth taking that there is a good chance that neighbors or people from even further a field will come and will take it from them by force because they can and War in this era in
The Wider ancient world rarely seems to see need much pretext it is simply a case of we keep peace with enemies that either we have longest established friendship with and to our mutual benefit or more often it’s because we’re we’re a bit afraid of them we don’t want
To take the risk war is too risky against them therefore peace is a better idea is a safer bet but that within that you can have individuals within Society who will decide that actually there’s nothing in their interest in keeping the peace they have nothing they don’t have
Land they don’t have wealth therefore let’s go and fight and take some and this you know is the motive of many Societies in many periods of history and it often might be a minority of people who do this in the same way that it’s a minority of people from the Scandinavian
Nations who go Viking in later centuries but they will be a very visible um presence in the wider world and there that’s what people will think of when they come to think of those Nations not of the farmers and the Traders and the merchants who sit at home and the
Craftsmen who get on with doing things and there is some overlap sometimes again we’ll we’ll come back to that but this is the constant theme Warfare and warfare in its form of raiding is always likely to happen unless there is a sense of strength and fear intimidation to um
Deter it there’s also the downside of that of course that that if somebody continually intimidates you you’re not likely to like them so whenever they seem at all vulnerable you’ll be all the more inclined to go and attack and raid them so it it isn’t one of those things
That solves the problem but it’s an aspect of it now let’s go slightly outside and look at again a rather revealing passage from part of the oler cycle this early medieval Irish literature that seems to hark back to stories and traditions from the Iron Age it involves chariots and head hunting
And all this sort of thing so in the toin the the cattle raid of koui which is one of the the centerpieces of this you have in a sense the explanation for why mave of conort the queen of conort will launch this big raid into the
Kingdom of aler that will hit at a time when its Warriors are vulnerable and will leave to all the heroic um defense by kullan The Hound of aler the great hero of the cycle and this is how it’s explained which is quite interesting it’s once
When when the Royal bed was laid out for alil and mave and I apologize for my pronunciation of the Irish is not one of my languages so I don’t uh I’m guessing with uh the names in the for in conort they had this talk on their pillow so
First of all the king starts it struck me how much better off you are today than the day I married you you know yeah this is in um first lessons to uh new husbands or any else this is not what you say or vice versa um and Ma replies
I was well enough off without you King obviously doesn’t realize the danger signal so then your wealth was something I didn’t know or hear much about except for your women’s things and the neighboring enemies making off with loot and plunder so the queen then obviously is still
Pretty miffed by this it Still Remains ma said that my fortune is greater than yours to which the king replies you amaze me no one has more property or Jewels or precious things than I have and I know it and then they go and they compare basically their wealth and who’s got the
Best of this the best of that and eventually it’s the King has a better bull than the Queen the queen discovers there’s an even better one in ster so therefore gathers her Army and leads this big Invasion to raid and to take um this this famous bull so whilst this is
Heroic poetry it is not intended to be 100% realistic these are stories that apart from being embellished and modified over the century because they’re written down much later than the society they claim to describe nevertheless it’s the same assumption that the king claims that oh well you know you weren’t very rich because
People were just stealing things from you they knew you were weak and therefore you don’t have the power that I had you don’t frighten your enemies and that the whole motivation is well competition between a king and a ke Queen over Prestige over honor over wealth leads to the major war of this
Great epic poem because they go out to capture the ball so let’s go again we’ve we’ve taken ourselves outside um the Roman World a little bit both before and after but it’s just a reminder and you could repeat much of this evidence for many areas of the ancient world the broader
Classical World in most periods raiding does seem to be very common whether it’s people from the steps raiding Northeastern um part regions of the cenan Empire or it’s in North Africa and we’ll come back to some of those cases before it’s in toic Egypt or earlier Egypt whether you
Know you could go on to I don’t know the sea peoples or any other in earlier near Eastern history you have this pattern raid theft a lot of the raiding to humiliate to intimidate but also for profit now let’s go to something more formal and this is from Al
One of the U codifiers of Roman law and he talks about the duties of a proc Consul drawing on earlier sources as well as the later ones and it’s there in the the digest so it is right for a competent and conscientious Governor to suit with that the province of which he
Has charge is peaceful and quiet he will achieve this without difficulty if he carefully ensures that evil men are expelled and hunts them out he should hunt out sacrilegious persons brigands kidnappers and thieves punish each one according to his CL crime and should also bring forced against those who
Harbor them since a criminal cannot Escape detection for long without their help and then if we go a little bit further on into the digest again um the source is opion ultimately where he talks about the different types of enemies because obviously the implication if you’re reading that earlier passage about the governor
Rather suggests large-scale crime Bandits perhaps rather than foreign enemies but let’s look at this because this is how the Romans start to Define in their own mind and legally just um what people are considered to be so enemies of those on whom the Roman people has forly declared war or who
Have themselves declared war on the Roman people the rest are described as Bandits or Robbers for that reason a man captured by brigands is not their slave but a man captured by enemies for example by Germans or parthians is their slave and can recover his original status by the right of post
Linium so this is a case where Roman citizen has been captured and does he lose his rights because if you’re captured by a formally recognized foreign enemy then effectively you become a slave and there’s a process you have to pass through to become a citizen again even when you’re
Released so but they have this distinction there are the bandits and some of the people who would be Raiders coming from outside the Empire and Crossing into Roman territory would probably fall into that category because it’s occurring at a time when there isn’t formally declared war between the
Romans and whichever society and group they come from so that’s the background to raiding but now let’s look at the mechanics of raiding itself because if we think about how it was done we can probably make more sense of how Roman Frontiers are arranged how Iron Age settlements are
Defended how people are organized and just how it’s supposed to work because we’re dealing with a different set of problems to those faced by an army fighting a conventional war on and again this this applies to both sides so let’s consider and I think in many ways one of
The best ways to think about a raid is actually to come to something much more modern and think of the parallel of the operations room the Ops room in um the Battle of Britain or when the Allies were launching their bombing campaign against Germany and German occupied territory in Europe where we’re familiar
With the picture of from films and from real archive footage of the big map and the people often waffs the the women auxiliaries in the British context and quite often in the German context as well pushing around markers showing where reports of enemy Air Raids have
Come in are coming in so that they can move the fighters in direct them in to intercept in the most favorable conditions for the Defenders the attackers have been planning all of this before they’re trying to out with the Defenders but the key thing is with a raid and that’s the thing that
Distinguishes it most from other types of warfare is that in almost every case a raid is meant to go into enemy territory do things and then return home or return to your base now there are a few cases um we’ve already had the one with cernus piso where Cicero is
Criticizing his governorship of Macedonia claiming where the Raiders are so confident that they actually set up camp and base in Roman territory so that they can raid in a more methodical way but the idea is still there in the main they’re probably not thinking of occupying that forever but it’s a case
Of this is useful to us to can make it easier to do what we’re doing so the key thing is rather like it’s very obvious with aircraft in a modern context that they have only so much fuel therefore this limited range they can travel so
Far to bomb a Target or to escort the bombers to that Target and then they’ve got to get back to their bases because if you don’t do that you’ve lost all your bombers and you haven’t got them back for another raid and another raid that’s the other point that’s useful to
This raids are not generally meant to win a war or a conflict on their own this is not a one-off right this will frighten you so much or do so much damage that we’re done the war is over you will seek peace they are more of a cumulative process whereby you attack
Again and again and again and you wear the enemy down and you also gain the plunder you want if that’s what it’s about so again it’s worth thinking about about the ticking clock effectively when you launch a raid you’ve only got a limited amount of time in most
Circumstances and you want to get there and you want to get home so let’s think let’s go to Caesar again as we move on to the mechanics of things now Caesar claims that the German tribes accounted the highest praise by devastating their borders to have areas of wilderness as wide as possible around
Them they think it the true sign of Valor when their neighbors are driven to retire from their lands and no man dares settle near and at the same time they believe they will be safer there by having removed all fear of a sudden inroad so Caesar is saying really it’s
It’s all the things we’ve been talking about so far a German tribe is an organized body a group that is warlike living amongst lots of other warlike communities and that’s always the nature once you know if somebody starts it then everyone else has to arm to defend
Themselves but they they work on this principle they want to intimidate their enemy so if they can keep this depopulated strip of land around their own territory that serves two purposes one it shows how tough they are how hard they are how frightening they are don’t
Mess with us because we are strong and we will defeat you that’s the message it sends so that’s an element of intimidation but intimidation is partly meant as well to stop people attacking you you don’t appear vulnerable therefore you’re not attacked but also Al it gives warning
Because it means that the enemy have got to start from further away but of course that implies that there’s somebody out there who’s at least keeping an eye on what’s going on in that area and let’s have a hint of reality this is from a sadly now lost
Inscription that was found up near Hadrian’s Wall and it’s um to or from a a prefect of Cavalry quintus calpernius Conesus who after after slaughtering a band of Coro onai fulfilled his vow to a god of the most efficacious power now that’s a very rare mention of a Roman source that
Actually talks about meeting and defeating a band of Raiders now we we this is the only time that name for Sam and age Community ever appears so unless there were just very few of them and the Romans killed them all this one occasion it reminds us of how complicated tribal
Identities and allegiances might be and again this is as as so often this is a theme we can talk about another time so let’s um have another one as well where this is from several in very similar inscriptions set up by the Emperor Commodus and we all know him as
The um the Mad Mad bad Emperor from Gladiator or from if you go back further fall of the West uh not fall of the West for of the the Roman Empire the old Malik Guinness as marks aurelus film and this is is where Commodus fortified the whole Bank River Bank with
Forts bergis constructed from the ground and also with Garrison Prides stationed at advantageous places against the clandestine Crossings of robbers at clandestinos lat trulum transist transitus so again the Romans are referring to people coming from outside the Empire as robbers in this case as um latron is the the root of the word
Bandits it’s often mean Lee in Greek um but these are people coming from out the outside the Empire attacking in and you’ve set up these outposts to try and deal with them and then there’s another example that probably relates to Northern Britain and refers to a centur in cochos
Fermos who seems to be quite a superstitious or just very religious chap depending on how you look at it because he set up an awful lot of altars in Britain and elsewhere in the Roman Empire but here again we come back to the digest this collection of legal
Rulings and laws that explains how Roman law should work and it comes back to the thing we mentioned before about the restoration of Rights of a citizen when you’re captured by Raiders depends on who the Raiders are whether they are formally recognized as enemies or whether they’re just criminals but this
Is quite an interesting one from the 2 Century because it talks about a woman condemned for a crime to hard labor in the salt Works was subsequently captured by Bandits of an alien race in the course of lawful trade she was sold and by repurchase returned to her original
Condition the purchase price had to be refunded from the Imperial treasury to the Centurion cus firmers so this is someone who’s been forced to be a slave as a result of um criminal activity or at least so know the Roman authorities claim sent to a hard labor captured by Raiders by
Bandits taken off and then sold as a slave but sold into the Roman Empire because she’s purchased by the Centurion cus fermos who when her identity is revealed it turns out that she isn’t his slave and they didn’t have a right to sell her he is compensated because he
Was innocent you know he didn’t know that the bandits or Merchant whoever he actually bought her from he didn’t know that they didn’t have a right to own her and sell her so it’s again it’s that reminder that Roman law will treat human beings very much as property in the
Slave sense and that’s that’s the Roman attitude and then finally this is a fairly recent discovery this marvelous inscription from not far from Modern alburg and this refers to a victory in 260 ad and it’s worth going through at length even though it’s it’s it’s quite a big inscription because again it
Reminds us of the sort of thing that’s going on so it’s in honor of the Divine house and to the Blessed goddess Victoria because the barbarians of the race of the semnones or yungi again they don’t seem to quite know who these Germans were who these Barbarian Raiders were but they were
Slaughtered and routed on the eth and seventh days before the calends of May by soldiers of the province of rtia by soldiers from Germany and by militia after freeing many thousands of Italian prisoners and in the realization of his vow Marcus simplicius Galis via perfecti Imus acting in place of the governor
With the same Army and with proper gratitude erected and dedicated this altar on the third day before the eyes of September when our Emperor potimus Augustus and horatius were consuls now there’s all sorts of stuff about the GIC Empire in the 3D Century that we could go into in that but the interesting
Thing is that they have caught a presumably quite large band of Raiders and over two days have defeated these Germanic tribes and who’ve been all the way to Italy have taken captives and were on their way home with them again it’s a reminder this is a RAID you want to
Profit from this raid to profit from this raid you need to get home and in this case the Romans have stopped them on the way back so let’s consider some of the things the Raiders might want to do so Raiders who come into the Roman provinces might have all sorts of
Objectives in mind one of the most obvious and most frequent is captives but there are other forms of plunder and sometimes you have a situation whereby there’s an element of wanting to hurt someone who’s perceived to be an enemy or perceived to be a victim to show your status your courage
By inflicting damage so you might come to kill as well and many societies your anthropologists will trace this will have aspects of murder raid where Warriors are going into enemy territory because they need to prove themselves as Warriors and that might be by killing and it can be a right of passage at
Various stages in their life and you might destroy as well as gather things that you can take home as plunder so there’s a rather Grim find from again the 3D Century ad from a Viller reagens BG hating in Germany where 13 of the inhabitants were slaughtered and some of
Them were dismembered some of them were scalped there were clear marks on the skulls of this before the bodies what’s left is tipped down a well at this Villa now in this case a group of attackers has come and clearly decided that they don’t want these people as captives
They’re too much trouble or they simply are not looking for that but they want to um to torture to mutilate to kill and you know all the unpleasantness you might have Warriors that are coming to do this sort of thing to rape to murder um as well as simply to take things they
Can steal probably the balance of the sources is that killing for the sake of killing is in most cases secondary but not in all and more often what they want is plunder they want loot now again there have been a couple of of really impressive finds dredged up from the
Rind in recent years and this is one of them where a wagon is loaded up with plunder taken from the Roman provinces and the Raiders who’ done this were trying to get back across the river back home to safety but they were floating this wagon full of of their their loot
Their plunder on a raft that must have sunk and that was it it was lost now most of what’s in there Is Not Gold and jewels and silks and all the you know really expensive High status prestigious exceptionally valuable objects that do exist in the Roman Empire it’s actually
It’s shiny things it’s tools it’s metal work it’s Ceramics it’s all sorts of things that are fairly mundane to be honest but they might not be available to someone who’s living beyond the Roman Frontier and the further east they go know these things are likely to be all
The rarer and also crucially all the more expensive so some of this are these are useful things these are worth stealing but it is more like someone breaking into a house and stealing a television or um you know a a computer these sorts of things you
Know it’s it’s not going into the bank of England and stealing all the bullion or going into an art gallery and stealing a valuable painting that’s what they’ve bothered to gather and that’s they think is worth bringing literally carting all the way back home potentially over quite considerable distances in the same way
That the people inter um intercepted and defeated those yungi or simones whoever they were it was worth taking all those captives back now there is an element whereby these things do have value clearly they’re useful objects and slaves are useful as a labor force but also there is the prestige element of it
It isn’t just that you have acquired these things that are useful but you have taken them from an enemy from foreigners and you have shown by doing that that you are strong that you are brave that you are a great warrior so there is extra Prestige attached to all
Of these because of the way you’ve acquired them that makes the whole thing worthwhile so that’s a reminder again about what what sort of things Raiders might want to do what how they would consider this to be a successful raid to be a victory um there’s
Also sadly it’s a a chunk of it is is broken off but again a fairly recent discovery from the rots down to the Red Sea ports um Beyond Egypt where by an AER has been found they were using what we call ostria fragments of pottery as note paper to write on because Papyrus
Was expensive so for for quick notes down you would note it on whatever Shard of pottery of something that have been broken you didn’t need anymore and so we have on this ostron so these ostria they’re the um fragments of pottery they used as notep paper by um the Romans in
Many arid areas in parts of Egypt North Africa the something the most common because Papyrus was expensive and you often need a lot of copies of documents but they’re they’re useful for little notes little reports now this one is was written by a chap called Antonia cell a
Cavalryman from the century of proculus in cohor 2 eorum equit and it’s sent to one of his officers to casus Victor Centurion in the same cohort now as far as we can tell cell Antonio C the man is in charge of this little Way Station but
He doesn’t have any formal rank he is simply a cavalryman in an auxiliary unit and that rather suggests that he’s not in charge of a lot of men and the whole tone and detail of the report suggests this is very small scale and he describes an attack by 60 barbarians on
The Outpost the way station of patua so presumably there aren’t too many Romans there but there were civilian Travelers Sheltering in and around the fort the attack began at the 10th hour of the day and went on till the second hour of the night and again around Dawn the next day
Homogene an infantryman of the century of serenus was killed two other soldiers are wounded a horse is injured or killed they’re from the century of proculus sadly most of the detail of this uh document has been lost but it seems to talk about um civilians that are killed some children are captured
Bodies are found um there’s a chunk missing out of the the text which is is deeply frustrating and this was a report to be circulated to all the the outposts along the myos hos Road that’s this this route down to the port at myos hos and it was to go to prefect centurions
Durians duplicar double paymen cipari that’s one and a half paymen and post commanders um the curator curator like um Antonio cell who presumably don’t have formal ranks so it’s lots of little Det attachments and it’s one of those enigmatic passages that seems as if it stepped straight out of a John Ford
Weston you know you can the sudden attack that occurs in several phases you know it’s not this massed Onslaught by lots of Barbarians who don’t care about their own losses they’re being careful but they harass they’re going for the civilians presumably or perhaps they’re trying to get the weapons off the Roman
Soldiers but the civilians are most likely and the goods they’re carrying and the people that they they abduct children and women you know they’re looking for captives that are us useful marketable as slaves or useful within their own Society but it’s very small scale it is
Not the sort of thing that you’d expect to be reported in a a history of the Empire written by um you know an amanus melinus or a Caesar or a tacitus or anything like this is very very small scale were it not for this fragmentary um document we wouldn’t know
Anything about it and we can’t even locate the place precisely you also get hints elsewhere so let’s go to the the talmud and the Jewish sources that are obviously very difficult to date because they bring together themes and rulings and rabinal discussion and thoughts and interpretation from a wide range of
Periods um this one is generally dated to around about ad200 but it’s it’s hard to be sure now this says that it is ordained that if Gentiles come on Sabbath upon Villages that are close to the border the inhabitants issue forth fully armed to meet them and return
Fully armed this law applies even in the case that they come only to loot straw or wood if they fall upon Villages further in the interior one may draw out armor only if they attack with the intent to kill so it is to do with what
Someone is allowed to do on the Sabbath um and in the case where you’re on the borders it’s presumably considered to be more dangerous that if you don’t come out to stop the attackers stealing your wood and your straw then they’ll come back and they’ll steal more and they’ll
Kill you where whereas in the interior any raiding group that’s got that far it’s presumably less common you can fight them if they’re coming to kill you or to kill somebody within your community but you’re not supposed to do it otherwise other rulings are similar this
Is from a a different text and that talks about None Shall raise a dog unless he’s kept on a chain except in a town adjoining the frontier in which he is permitted to keep the dog Unchained but only at nighttime so again it’s that sense of threat and it might just be the
Sort of threat that somebody going to burgle your house but it might also be that a dog will bark and will warn you of a larg group of Raiders that’s later in date but seems to be dat dated on on Roman uh material you get other discussions where they talk about
Provisions for watchtowers Watchmen looking out for natural disasters wild animals and Raiders and that the signal for warning or for an alarm was blowing a Rams Horn trumpet so again it’s a reminder of just how would somebody you know you’re up there on a tower you’re
Up there in a a high position to watch you’re acting as a sort of guard or Sentry how do you actually alarm people and in this case fairly obvious but it’s a good reminder that they do things in a practical way they sound a trumpet and you will notice that in Jewish
Communities even of second temple period ones that are in areas more exposed to Frontier um and other communities often have an element of the defensive about their structures you could see that even about the Community you know they have a tower there and walls around it so this
Is somewhere down by the Dead Sea where you’re never quite sure you know who’s going to be coming along in the night or even in daytime so communities just like the Iron Age farm with its Rampart around it there are large parts of the Roman Empire where people have an
Element of concern for their security but not necessarily security against this isn’t going to stop a major Army you know the The Kuman Community is by the look of it from the trace of the archaeology and the swiftly overrun by the Roman army when it comes through
It’s not meant to hold off a legion but it might hold off some robbers it might even hold off a bigger band of Bandits so let’s come back to a final Point there’s a a wonderful quote from amanas marcelinas after he’s described a series of engagements and campaigns on
The Western frontier in Gaul and this area many of which involve hundreds rather than thousands of groups on both sides that seem comparatively small and he also mentions that beside these battles many others less worthy of mention were fought in various parts of Gul which it would be Superfluous to
Describe both because the results led to nothing worthwhile and because it is not fitting to spin out a history with insignificant details now given as I say the small scale of what he does describe that’s really interesting and he just reminds us look there’s lots going on this is a
Troubled area there’s lots of small scale fighting War Fair raiding whatever it might be um one of the uh most useful and insightful studies of warfare in amanus and in that period in later fourth and early fifth century Gaul is Hugh elton’s book Warfare in Roman Europe and he notes that amanus never
Seems to describe an attack that has to be met with fewer than 400 Roman troops so that may be the threshold for what he considers to be a sort of proper action but even that’s you know that’s not huge that’s by the standards of the army of the principate that’s sort of cohort
Sized unit dealing with it so let’s think about let’s try and work through it really as to how You’ be if you’re someone out there who wants to launch a raid most likely a raid from outside the Roman empire into the Roman Empire how do you go about it you know
How is it actually organized and done and obviously first off you need Warriors you need people willing to go with you and there is an emphasis in source is about the Iron Age um G peoples the um the Germans of the freedom individual Warriors had to do what they wanted to do
Particularly amongst the Germans but probably also in quite a lot of other groups that there were very few Chieftain who could say you have to go and do this I’m going to launch a raid you’re coming with me and instead participation was mainly a matter of choice now another theme that is
Constantly emphasized and seems to crop up in society after Society is that many Aristocrats Chieftain Kings leaders of any sort display their power by the number of Warriors who live in their household anyway it’s the idea that will be extended later on into Anglo-Saxon husars so you have these people who live
Off you they feast in your hall if it’s that sort of society but they are as an obligation they have to fight for you so you have small groups of professionals probably the wrong word but almost full-time or semi fulltime Warriors people who for whom that is their main occupation and again
You get that mention we talked about earlier of tacitus saying that um German Warriors who are ambitious and find their own tribes at peace go off and seek service in the household of somebody in another tribe that’s at War so you can gain Glory as an individual
Which will give you status within the society by fighting under almost any circumstances you know it’s it’s the bravery the individual Courage the individual skill the success that counts these tend to be relatively small numbers now obviously it depends on the importance of the leader the size and
The organization the structure of the society um where he is but we’re probably talking for many leaders of dozens and for the major leaders perhaps a few hundred um you know there’s uh again come back to amanus one of the main Kings of the alamani has 300 00 men
In his household 300 warriors fighting with him and that’s probably a pretty important man so we’re mostly looking at fewer than that and we might want to think about well a few dozen a few score perhaps even fewer you know there might be the leader who just has a
Handful of men as his Warriors that will be obliged to go with him or will suffer dishonor if they don’t because that’s part of the obligation you know you you live with them you serve them you take an oath to them and therefore you’re willing to fight and risk your life for
Them along with others who decide that when somebody says I’m going to launch a raid you know it’s it’s a a sort of classic um heroic poetry thing you announce something at a feast and everyone says I will join in or not as the case may be so a lot will depend on
The reputation of the man in question now with any society like this you might be able to intimidate your neighbors to joining um with others you might have put them under obligation to join you but but more importantly there’s your reputation if you are known as someone
Who is a great warrior and a successful Raider then people are more likely to say okay he’s going off again I’ll go with him because I stand a good chance of gaining plunder gaining glory and coming back home safe whereas if you were someone whose um missions whose
Expeditions off to plunder whether it’s other tribes whether it’s the Romans or the Roman provinces doesn’t really matter if they failed if people have got killed or your the the winnings have been meager if you’re perceived as unlucky any of these things these are fairly Loosely organized societies these
Are not soldiers that are obliged to go can be ordered to go now the numbers don’t have to be great on the ostron we’ve been talking about just a few minutes ago 60 Barbarians at least that’s how many the Romans say they are and it might well be that the Defenders
Have inflated the numbers because it seemed like 60 it seemed like a lot coming at them particularly during the night so you know that’s your impression and it’s sounds more impressive when you report it or they might be Faithfully accurate or there might have been you know hundred other Warriors who decided
That they weren’t really interested so didn’t take part but in most societies there’s an element of personal choice that can at any stage be exercised so you can abandon someone if you go on a raid and it doesn’t seem to be going well so this is all about again it
Emphasizes the importance of successful raiding for status Within These communities because it gives you all sorts of advantages apart from the Tang ible ones of um plunder and you know Glory that that Glory can be translated into power as can the plunder and we might want to
Remember that if you think of um you know gono he was raiding with less fewer than 20 Warriors in the latter operations but thousands of troops had to be deployed to bring them in and you know large numbers of Apache Scouts to track down the Apache because they were
The only people who could find them and keep up with them and chase them now that’s an extreme case obviously the Landscapes of Southwestern America of Arizona New Mexico all these areas isn’t really matched in quite the same scale and population density in the Roman Empire though on some of the
Frontiers there are you know in Africa and things there are areas that are similar but it’s just a reminder that it’s rather like criminals in the sense that the police can be kept busy by a relatively small number of criminals because the police don’t know where they’re going to strike next and you
Need to guard lots of places companies will have their private security guards to look after their Factory their office whatever it might be their their shop their warehouse and they’ll have to put them on all of them because they don’t know that somebody might not strike their
Nexts and if you don’t have them that’s an invitation to say well you can come and rob me you know Clos circuit television performs much the same um purpose in that if there’s an area that’s watched then that’s perceived to be a more dangerous Target to take out
So again we don’t need to be talking always about vast numbers of Raiders but we come back to the point from early on that if small raids go in and succeed then the odds are that bigger raids will come in um subsequently so let’s assume that the a Chieftain has decided to
Launch a raid on the Roman empire into the Roman provinces he needs to gather Warriors he may have a few of his disposal maybe he’s got quite a lot at his disposal and they are probably the better equipped and in many cases even if they do not particularly plan on
Fighting in as Cavalry as we would understand them they know how to ride and that adds an extra element to your raiding capacity because of course if you’re mounted you can go further and whether that’s mounted on a horse or in some regions whether it’s mounted on a
Camel but it makes you faster it makes you able to cover more ground more quickly than if you’re on foot although again in some cases you might be on foot and that might allow you to be more stealthy or the terrain if it’s particularly rugged you might not be
Able to ride there too easily let’s look there’s a a still from the the fall of the Roman Empire of Barbarians pouring through the woods that’s the sudden attack that’s what you want um or at least it’s not what you want because that’s obviously a big
Battle and an ambush you want to be a bit more subtle than that but in the end you’re your Chief who needs to persuade enough people convince enough people cool enough people to come with you on a raid now what do you want Glory obviously Prestige probably some tangible benefit
And we look at a passage from tacitus describing some large scale raids in ad50 and again it’s quite long so I won’t read the whole thing just the the highlighted section and this talks about the Panic caused by um incursion of the chatty now again they’re described as you know you know
In terms of Bandits the it’s um the latron and the the leot has sent auxiliaries uh infantry supported by Cavalry to head off the Raiders or if they scattered to envelop and surprise them the Roman troops separated into two columns one of which marching to the left entrapped a newly returned
Detachment of pillagers who after employing their booty in a deor were sleeping off the effects and they’re massacred because they they’re basically caught drunk now again these Raiders have presumably come because they want plunder but they also want to enjoy themselves and in this case they’ve had a great booze up because they’ve
Obviously discovered wine or beer or whatever it might be they’ve eaten a lot they’ve drunk a lot they may have done all sorts of unpleasant things to any captives they have as we have from that Regensburg um site but they’ve taken time but these are people who’ve come
Not to destroy the Roman Empire they’ve come to plunder to have a good time to celebrate show How brave they are but actually then to slip off before the Roman army terms up in big numbers instead they’ve got themselves drunk and they are slaughtered in those circumstances there’s another case that
We’ll might look at later where amanus Marcelina centuries later talks about a group that’s surprised while again they’re sleeping they’re partly drunk and some of them are by a river dying their hair red these Germanic Warriors and they’re surprised by the Romans now let’s continue the passage of tacitus
Because there’s more and their companions that’s the other group of Barbarians who’ taken the shorter route by the right sorry I’m getting it wrong these were actually we’re talking about the Romans not the um The Barbarians they taken a shorter route by the right inflicted Graver loss on the enemy who met them
And risked a set engagement so in this case the Raiders hadn’t necessarily come to fight but are willing to do so or feel obliged to do so when they’ve bumped into a Roman column or Roman column is caught up with them and they think they can take them out but in fact
They fight and suffer even worse but Laden with their spoil and honors they return so the rans have succeeded now the legot was waiting with Allegiance in the hope that the chatty anxious for Revenge would afford him the opportunity to battle they however being afraid of being caught between the
Romans on the one side and their Eternal enemies the cherisy on the other sent deputations to Rome with hostages and triumphal honors are awarded to the Roman leot so it’s interesting the Romans are thinking in terms of the local Commander is thinking well these raids have come in I’ve punished them
But because I’ve hurt the chatty maybe that will provoke them to mass a big army and risk a battle with me in which case I can fight a proper fully fledged glorious pitch battle Hammer them and add reputation for myself and to my family’s name all great stuff very Roman
What an aristocrat wants to do but in the proper context of the Imperial period and that he only gets the ornaments of a Triumph not a proper Triumph because only the Imperial family can have those or only really the emperor um in most circumstances by this
Stage so that’s a case where groups of coming me they’ve been caught in different circumstances and behaved in different circumstances so let’s go on to amanus marcelus and here’s um another incident this is from 353 ad about the aoran so we’re moving over to um the eastern part of the
Empire and they normally keep peace but they now abandon everything because think the conditions are disturbed by sudden raids and instead of secret plundering Expeditions as with impunity stimulated for the worst by their growing boldness broke out in a serious War especially in aspirated by the indignity of some of their Associates
Who’ve been taken prisoner thrown to the beasts in uh the amphitheater so the Romans have captured some of this tribe that have been raiding within the Roman Empire this is one of those what Scholars tend to call an internal Frontier where you have people living in a mountainous area who are not that
Settled and are inclined to chance their arm raiding whenever they think they can get away with it and they have raided they start to raid more wi widely as I said partly a reprisal because the Romans have captured some of them and executed them in the arena come down from the
Mountains observe an Anchorage and they see ships in the harbor Moon still being Cresent so not shining with full Brilliance they catched the sailors asleep they massacred them all and without resistance carried off the caros LED either by their value or their usefulness so again they’re choosing
Things that they think are useful for them or valuable or prestigious and that they can carry as well you’ll also physically be able able to get it away so news spread um other ships avoid the port from now on after a while the Raiders move in land because nobody else
Is coming in to be attacked blocked the roads lived on the property of Travelers um Roman soldiers are not responding as they should um while those in the regions each unit strove to the best of its power to check the Marauders range more WI Ely now in solid bodies sometimes even in isolated
Plans but the soldiers are defeated because again they don’t know where the Raiders are and there also there are a lot of Raiders numbers and hardiness of the zorian Mountaineers and the mountainous terrain however bands caught in open country were massacred and so they moved on this time to pamilia but
After traversing mountain passes they’re stopped by a flooded River the delay they look for boats and food they’re caught by the legions and they kill a lot of them but the some Marauders Escape they keep moving they attack several more targets until eventually they are caught by a significant part of
The Roman field Army and they’re scattered after their usual fashion made for the trackless waste of the high mountains so again that’s an incident where you see the escalation people who habitually raid have cented a chance and they’re angry with the Romans because the Romans have killed some of their own
So they raid on a larger scale and because it’s not stopped they um raid for longer they go for bigger targets when they get chased they move to another area raid there and it takes a long time before the main body is defeated but even then a lot of them escape and get
Home okay so we had our have our Chieftain he’s gathered together a group of followers some the Warriors of his household some other enthusiasts who want to prove themselves want plunder drawn by his reputation or willing to chance an arm you’ve then got the situation where once you start on the
Raid and the plan where again it’s all to do with the the ticking clock there’s a limited amount of time to do this the azorian were able to move from one area to the next but in the end they get caught although a lot of them still
Escape so the first thing you really need is to know what you want to attack you need targets you need intelligence for one of a better word and that’s something that can be gathered in various ways so that you’ll tend to know if you live next door to
Somebody for a long time whether it’s another tribe whether it’s the Roman Empire the best routs into and out of their territory and the ones that are easier to Traverse the ones that are more secret but also where their main communities are perhaps where their outlying Farms are but you won’t
Necessarily know all the details and the further a field you go and the further a field you go the more likely you are to have bigger less well protected perhaps wealthier targets that will be easier to surprise so if you want to do a big raid you need intelligence for from quite a
Distance away then how do you get that now again com back back to the talmood there’s an interesting ruling about ownership of a slave that is quite revealing this if somebody brought a bought a slave from a gentile he does not agree to circumcision the new Master
May attend to his persuasion for 12 months and if he remain adamant he should not be sold to an he should be sold to a non-jew so basically if the slave is unwilling to convert to Judaism you don’t force him you sell him to a gentile who’s not going to be bothered
About that but the r Rabbi Simon Bazar said said in a town on the border he that’s the slave should not be kept at all since he could pass on to his Kinsmen matter he had heard so that’s why somebody who is a slave from the community that’s deciding to raid is a
Potential source of information obviously if he runs away then he can bring all sorts of information with him but also if he just can be talk to now there is an emphasis on a link between trade and raiding and War and it comes back to going back to the ilad The Odyssey and
That perception that if people turn up in ships whether it’s the Phoenicians whether it’s Greeks you never quite know whether they’re going to try and sell you something or whether if they get the chance they’ll abduct a few of your youngsters to sell as slaves or they
Might even launch a full raid and Rob you enslave you steal your property because you don’t know and Merchants will go back to their home communities and part of their trading part of their livelihood is also trading information to others they will say to people ah there’s a nice Village here
And there’s a farm here or this Villa is particularly wealthy or nearby there there is a temple that has lots of treasures dedicated within its its Precinct you need to know about these things the likely targets are the Farms the settlements the very large settlements are only accessible if
You’ve got a lot of people in your raiding band to take them on so you have to find something that is suitable that is manageable for you in scale to attack that doesn’t have too many occupants particularly too many that are able to fight but also has sufficient o
Occupants to capture an enslave if that’s what you’re going for sufficient wealth to steal if that’s what you’re going for cattle or sheep or whatever other forms of of um plunder that you can take and steal and take back with you things of value to you that make
This raid worthwhile make these risks worthwhile so you have to go and know about those things and that isn’t obvious information and the more you know the better if you know that there are likely to be lots of people there at one time but fewer at another time of
Year then maybe you go and there are fewer um all of this is important and a lot of it comes there’s that trading link it is very striking that tacitus singles out one Germanic tribe as being allowed to come Beyond The Border posts trading posts of the Roman Empire actually into communities
Within the provinces to trade and there tends to be regulation in quite a lot of treaties not simply with um the disorganized the Loosely structured politically um tribal peoples of around the Empire’s borders but also even with the cenan Persians later on you will have this stipulation that trade will
Only be conducted through a particular named City because you don’t want too many people wandering around your community having a look at what’s there and then going back home and telling people well there’s this really juicy and Wealthy Villa just up this little quiet Valley and nobody else is close by
So they won’t hear what’s going on and this is a great place to raid and steal the same of course applies to the Romans if they’re launching a raid as a punitive Expedition if they’re attacking into enemy territory for whatever reason but particularly with raiding you want
To be able to go in hit something that’s worth hitting or steal something that’s worth stealing or kill people kill or capture people who are worth killing or capturing and then get out so you need to know where to go the idea you sometimes get from the movies whether
It’s uh Viking longships that just come out of the Mist and stumble across the fishing Village and Slaughter everybody or the monastery or um you know the the Apaches or the commanches turning up in a western to raid a ranch or a farm groups like this are successful because
They’re clever about what they’re doing they find out as much information as they can because the more time you spend wandering around looking for things the more chance is that you will run into Defenders and there might be more of them than you can handle as the chatty
Found in that um quote we looked at a little while ago now amanus again tells us from the 4th Century of the Romans where the unattached Tribune horarias thoroughly acquainted with the languages of the Savages is sent on a diplomatic mission to the find out what the tribes were
Planning but also to spy out the land he achieves this and the Roman arm is able to concentrate and attack suddenly and know where it’s going so you can gather information through diplomacy and that’s another aspect that everybody’s doing um whatever they they say about everyone’s
Aware of this there are again you can go back to something I cover in Roman Persia very clear rules for when Persian ambassadors come into Roman territory as to how many attendance they can have so they’re not sneaking in a raiding band um under cover of a diplomatic Mission
But also where they can go and where they can stop because you don’t want to let them get too much information about your defenses and exactly the pl same applies the Persians will be doing the same thing when the Romans come to them one way also you can get
Information is by from cap IV by talking to people from within those communities so in 358 ad again we’re in amanas Julian send some officers out to capture a prisoner from the alamani and a young alaman was seized LED in on the condition of having his life Spar he
Promised to show them the way again you need to know not just your targets but how to get there what are the roots are there Rivers you’ve got to cross and if so how difficult are they to cross you know is this something that needs a boat
Needs a Ford needs a bridge if it’s really big and if so how safe is that he led them the Army followed prevented from going forward by a barricade of tall fell trees when they finally by long and Securus detours reached the spot every man in the Army wild with
Anger joined in setting the fields on fire raiding flocks and men if they resisted butchered them without compunction and this Devastation prompts the king of the local tribe to seek peace so again you’re looking at raiding extending into larger scale Warfare I mean these are big raids the
Romans are launching but by intimidating the enemy they’re not fighting a pitch battle they convince the enemy to give in they make the enemy frightened of the Romans and this intimidation this balance of of fear works both ways and is very common it’s it’s there again and again on all
Sides so let’s think this is another interesting um incident from Caesar from 53 BC if we go back earlier who talks about a raid now this is partly a passage where he’s excusing some of his rather um less good decisions that has led to a near disaster but nevertheless
There are he’s punishing the aerones the tribe that have destroyed Katan sabinis Legion and a half and besieged Cicero now I’ll only again read um skim through this and read the the highlighted bits basically across the r the report reached the Germans the uberon were being pillaged because
Julius Caesar has declared that anybody who wants to can attack this tribe he wants them punished N More they were all invited to come and plunder so 2,000 Horsemen from the sugri get together boats and rafts they cross the Rind 30 Mi below the spot where the bridge had
Been built Garrison left by Caesar coming first to the borders of the uberon they caught many persons scattered in Flight captured a great quantity of cattle of which barbarians are very Covetous but they learned from prisoners that Caesar and the main Roman army is some distance away one of the
Prisoners said why do you pursue this miserable and slender booty when you now have the chance of the utmost fortune and directs them to atuka where the Roman army has concentrated all its stores its wealth Garrison so small can’t man the walls no one dares to step outside the entrenchments with this hope
Offered them the Germans left in a secret place the plunder they’d got so far and made for atuka using by guide the very Man by whose information they had learned the news so here you’ve got a case where a group of Raiders has come to raid a GIC tribe but then when they
Capture one of these having done quite well thank you very much with some cattle somebody says look there’s even better plunder over there and you don’t like the Romans anyway you’ve just you know any more than you like or dislike us they’re vulnerable comes back to this
Idea there’s a prize waiting to be plucked over there and you’re brave warriors who are the men to do it so they decided to change their mind they put into some sort of um they hide according to Caesar if it’s cattle they’re leaving men to look after them
As well and then the main body goes off to attack the Roman Garrison it doesn’t go well for them um even after an initial success but nevertheless this is an idea where you’ve gathered some intelligence you’ve heard about something worth plundering and then you learn on route of something else change
Your plan and in fact it doesn’t quite work out for you so you have again it’s this picture of vulnerability which comes back it’s another aspect of intelligence what what are the risks involved you know can I get in safely and get home again or are
There lots of angry locals or is there a big Roman army or a big tribal Army that’s going to gather that will punish me if I don’t get out really smartish now in 868 when the Romans were in the midst of their Civil War the one that followed the death of
Nero the Rox salani some of the stian massacred a couple of cohorts they um 9,000 of them according to tdus cross the danu into the Roman province but their success made them more intent on booty than on fighting consequently when they were straggling and off their guard the third Legion with some auxiliary
Troops suddenly attack them on the Roman side everything was ready for battle the sarmatians are massacred defeated they lose a lot of their plunder a lots of the lives of their Warriors now that’s a case where the intelligence is a Roman army has arrived they didn’t really know
About because it’s part of the moving towards Italy for the Roman Civil War so again they have comes back to intelligence you need to know what’s there what are the dangers what are the risk what are the permanent garrisons what might turn up and how strong are the defenses where
Are the most vulnerable spots and what’s the balance between what you know is a risk but what you’re likely to achieve and will bring you more Fame and Glory as a warrior so that’s how the ticking clock starts after that we move on to the question of
Surprise again it comes back to the analogy with the the air raid or indeed any attack if the Defenders are waiting for you then your job is going to be that much harder and you’re going to have to fight regular Warfare perhaps a fullscale battle to get through them
Which isn’t really something you want to do again we come back to this idea this raid is mounted by people who want to achieve some success get some plunder but they don’t plan on dying there may occasionally very rarely in history have been groups who were determined
To do damage to the enemy they hate it and then die in the process but overall the overwhelming majority of Raiders are there to go in get some glory and come out again these Warriors sociey praise courage praise prowess and they will celebrate a heroic death but they also
Don’t plan on having them all the time the idea is particularly for the chieftain involved this is a Prestige thing for those those taking part it adds to their glory and there’s some tangible benefit but you can only have those benefits if you get home so if
You’re like the grou group of Chatty that celebrate and get drunk and then get surprised by the Romans or the others that choose to fight a Roman army and are defeated then yes you’ve shown How brave you are but you’ve also lost the po purpose of the raid has
Failed so you need that surprise because you don’t want to make it harder for yourself than it’s possible and ideally for most of the groups most of the time you want to go in do as little fighting with trained well equipped numerous soldiers as possible and then come home
With the slaves with the cattle with the plunder and with the prestige so you want to make it as easy as possible you know this is not something where it’s all about direct confrontation if you can possibly avoid it so you’re dealing with stealth with speed particularly with the smaller
Groups and the smaller raids that are involved surprise is something that is a big advantage to you and you have it when you start off because in most cases The Defenders whether the Romans or whether they’re a tribal group won’t know you’re coming they won’t be prepared they won’t be waiting but you
Can’t rely on that situation lasting for so long now again go back to Caesar or in this case the uh eight of the GIC Wars written not by Caesar himself but one of his officers herius and he talks about Caesar making a large scale attack now this is sort of
Plundering attack it’s vasto laying waste to the tribal territory so it’s a very big raid bigger than most what we’re talking about and how he catches the GS by surprise many are tilling their Farms without the least fear caught by the Cavalry fast moving Roman Horsemen ahead of their army before they
Could Flee for Refuge into the strongholds for even the ordinary sign of a hostile inroad which is usually perceived by the wholesale burning of farm buildings had been emitted by Caesar’s command in order that his supply of forage and corn might not run short which to advance further and not
To um fright not to frighten the enemy so he’s not burning crops and things because he wants them but also he’s trying to surprise the enemy now a small band of Raiders is not likely to want to do this because they announce their presence by burning things so as soon as
They find something that’s worth attacking they are beginning to declare themselves and there is a danger of them being spotted in the first place now if we think about Hadrian’s Wall obviously this is a very serious danger this is an obstacle you have to get past it’s also true with other lines
Of Roman Frontier defenses so these are not necessarily there to stop you Crossing because in the end you can probably with a small group get across even a a linear obstacle like Hadrian’s Wall somewhere the odds are there won’t be too many soldiers at any one spot
That even if they see you and if you go at night maybe they won’t even see you you can sneak across if there aren’t very many of you and if you’ve got ladder rope something like that to get across of course if you’ve got horses ponies anything like that you’re not
Going to be able to get those across the wall secretly which means you need to secure one of the crossing points one of the gateways through a mile Castle or elsewhere and that’s immediately more of a challenge so right from the start something like that has made it harder
For mounted Raiders to cross that line it’s been Mar and even with other lines of defenses one of the other things about them hrin wall has its turrets you get the lines of towers like the or small Outpost like the Bergie that um Commodus was recorded building on those
Inscriptions we looked at earlier watchtowers very familiar feature on many Roman Frontier areas but also within other communities people up on those have a rais platform if you’re moving in daylight and there isn’t fog or something like that then the chances of you’re being seen are significantly higher once you are seen
If those people can report whether by blowing a horn ringing a bell Galloping off as a messenger or running with with word that something has happened you are starting to lose surprise so you try to avoid going through these heavily defended areas if you do you go through
Them with great care as stealthily as possible and unless you are convinced that the Romans don’t have people manning them there aren’t Defenders therefore there’s nobody looking or there’s nobody to come and bring help if they do send for it now again let’s have a look this is
Coming to um aulus The Metamorphosis one of these um novels from the Roman period people would tend to be suspicious of Travelers they didn’t know and in this case a group of Travelers are advised to Journey with care and only in daylight because there’s a threat of wolves and herdsmen and
Animals travel together in a compact group and well armed for their own protection because this is dangerous country however because they’re traveling like that the workers on an estate which we happen to pass assumed from our numbers that we were a band of robbers and being worried about their possessions and extremely frightened
They set dogs on us they were mad enormous creatures fiercer than any W forbear and they’d been carefully trained for guard Duty suddenly this great danger was followed by even worse trouble from the rooftops and Hill nearby the farmers furiously began to hurl rcks down on us so this shows where
The locals people on a a bigest estate are just suspicious of anyone they don’t know particularly anyone who looks armed and potentially dangerous and therefore react in a hostile manner so surprise is something that can very quickly and very easily be lost and that adds to the ticking clock element
Because once you have been spotted particularly if it’s by someone able to give the alarm then things get more and more difficult now we’ve already come across the Rams Horn trumpet used in some Jewish settlements to give the alarm at the site of Raiders you get similar Impressions from other communities in
Different parts of the Greco Roman world and if we look at Cicero’s varial rations now in this case he’s talking about plundering and looting Expeditions organized by the Roman governor of Sicily VES but he talks about the Temple of Chas a local River guard at asaurus in
Sicily and because it’s it’s famous and prestigious VES doesn’t demand the gold and treasures from it but he arranges for a band of um armed Men by two of his employees who go in at night to break into the temple the keepers and guards of the temple had timely warning of
Their coming a signal well known to the neighborhood was sounded on a cow horn a crowd gathered from the surrounding farms and the um the robbers the band are attacked and put to flight now this probably they’re not using form military weapons in this case on either side but
Here you have a situation where somebody’s trying to rob a temple the guards on the temple Sound the Alarm by again a cwh horn in this case everybody gathers there’s danger there’s robbers they gather with whatever weapons they’ve got whatever they can improvise they attack and drive off the
Robbers now we can see this it’s obviously very um natural if Roman troops are in the area and somebody spots band of Raiders that the alarm is going to go out those Roman troops will organize some form of response but we also need to remember like the workers
On the the estate in aulus like the local inhabitants the farmers nearby here in Sicily that other locals might gather they don’t want to be robbed so as Caesar put it before Caesar’s um officer they might if they if the alarm comes in that case because of um signs
Of burning noise from uh and smoke from attackers if the alarm goes out people might go to a place of refuge and they might take their valuables anything they can move including cattle and hide somewhere or go behind walls go behind somewhere that’ll be more difficult to take if
They have warning they might also Gather in numbers and if you don’t look too formidable they might decide to fight as well now again we come back to the situation where a group of armed Warriors the halfth troop of some um Chieftain plus lots of highly motivated
People might on balance be a better fighting force than a group of farm laborers than a group of farmers herdsmen whoever they might be but if they have to fight it will take them more time which means the alarm can go further if they have to fight some of
Them might get hurt and they’d really prefer not to do that the best raid is one like the best robbery that comes completely by surprise and you can kill at will with an enemy that’s unprepared is not waiting for you so alarms that go up whatever their their situation make that more
Difficult now there’s another um situation from the um the verine arations where again another Temple this one of Hercules at agrigentum where an armed body of slaves are sent by one of the the same leaders that VES employs descend on the temple again late at night Roman Governor is actually in the
Town um The Watchmen and the guards at first did their best to resist and repel the attack but they’re knocked about with clubs and cudgel so it’s not to edged weapons it’s a sort of stage down from fullscale Warfare but the attackers break down the doors and try to pull the
Statue free from the P pedestal meanwhile shouts of alarm had informed the whole town that an assault was being made on their ancestral Gods no unforeseen Invasion by an enemy or surprise attack by Pirates but a company of armed criminals come from the governor’s house not a man in agrigentum
That night so old or infirm that he did not get out of his bed when news aroused him and lay hold of the first weapon that came to hand so that in a short time there was a rush to the temple from all parts of the Town takes about an
Hour and then the crowds mass and the Raiders flee so you have this situation of warning can gather populations populations are not necessarily defenseless it depends on the scale of the threat they’re facing which means that again depending on the size of the raiding band they’ve got to be very
Careful what they try to attack and what risks they take because even a group of of semi- armed civilians can pose problems so again it’s it’s all part of the the calculation the leaders have to make is to where they go and they need more information to do that but time is
Not on their side once they are revealed then the odds are some sort of response will come in any normal situation where there isn’t a civil war where the Garrison hasn’t been Stripped Away not only will locals either hide themselves in their goods so you can’t steal them
And you can’t kill them or they will fight back and again you don’t want to take casualties because it’s it’s like Viking bands it’s like commanches or anyone like that the Warriors in these groups are valuable and they are not easily replaced they are not soldiers
Where you can just go and conscript and train some more or recruit some more and they’re not part of a huge army they are a relatively small group and too many heavy losses too often are starting to shift the balance between this being a successful raid and this being a
Failure so we go back to aulus because there’s an interesting story story here whereby again it’s a story told by a character who’s pretending to be somebody else so it’s by its nature fictional but it’s also meant to be plausible to be convincing and he talks about this this
Character pretends to be a robber and tells this story of how he broke into a little Inn by the shore late at night but where by chance an imperial procurator who’ lost favor and been sent to this out of the way place and his wife and his Entourage was sleeping they
Steal everything but we ran into serious danger before we got away the moment the procurator’s wife heard the sound of the door sorry the the procurator the wife ran into the room stirred up the whole place with repeated shouts she calls the soldiers and her servants by name she
Rouses everybody it’s the the woman of the family who sorts them out but raises everyone there are some troops so there’s a a bodyguard element there are servants these are armed and they only escape from this suddenly rather more formidable Prospect than they’d expected because everyone’s confused and a lot of
Them stayed hidden and didn’t come out so they got away however he’s made a mistake he attacked an inn that looked vulnerable but in fact there’s a Roman official and his wife there and the wife who is clearly um presented in the story is a far more formidable character than her
Husband she appeals to Caesar to the Emperor who acted Caesar banned the Gill the cadium of heus the robber that’s the the character this Fell’s invented pretending to be the band we should say and it disappeared forth with with such is the power of even a nod from a great
Prince his entire band had been hunted out cornered cut down by regiments of soldiers veloni militarium um so that’s detachments of soldiers rather than formed units I alone Got Away pretend dresses up as a woman and rides a donkey to get past the patrols now curiously enough from the same sort of region
Where the novel’s Set uh there’s an inscription from 176 around about then so again roughly contemporary with aulus where a vexation is taken from the lesons in moisa and sent under a marxis Valerius Maximus as prepositus acting Commander to deal with or dislodge a band of thracian brigands um in the area
And we know from that man’s career inscription so it’s quite interesting that you actually have a real life example of the sort of story that this character pretending to be him as the Bandit is telling where the Romans have decided this is actually a problem and they commit troops and then a relatively
Small group of Bandits is in serious trouble it’s not their job they’re not they’re not being paid enough they’re not earning enough they’re not stealing enough to go toe-to-toe with the Roman army so when it comes in strength they’re in serious trouble and that’s true of any raiding band The chatty who
Were caught and some of them are massacred whilst drunk whilst they they passed out the other group try and fight but they are defeated by regular well-armed well- dead Roman troops that’s the big risk the odds are the Defenders can Mass more people or more effective soldiers than you’ve got so
With to fighting capacity therefore if you lose surprise once the warnings gone out once help starts to arrive Defenders start to muster then everything gets more and more dangerous for you more and more difficult for you so if you’re looking at one of the the frontier areas where there are Roman
Forts Roman outposts you can see this network the outposts the watchtowers the turrets the small fortlet whatever they might be are the trip wire they’re the warning the Clos circuit cameras that reveal the presence of Raiders of a threat and then send that information to somewhere where there is a larger number
Of troops who might be able to deal with it now if it’s a very small band of just you know a handful of men then maybe a fored itself can deal with them the go back to the Egyptian case that that outpost on the Red Sea Road they’d were
Small numbers but they had fought back and they do chase after the barbarians after they’ve left with their their captives and plunder so some of this can be very small scale it can be dealt with and you can see even the Garrison of half a dozen men or so in a turret might
Deal with a couple of Raiders or might try to but they’re probably not going to try and deal with 20 or 30 or 50 so that sort of thing the information the first information that can go out could be horn blowing a smoke signal flags wave
That could be very simple and seen over particular the smoke over a long distance that could be simply danger someone’s a field you know there’s enemy out there there’s a threat out there at which point everyone starts to prepare now we don’t know the routine of Roman
Garrisons to what extent yes there’d be centuries but to what extent you would have groups of men who could be made ready to move and take the field even if only over a short distance in so many hours you know to what extent are you always prepared it’s going to depend on
The circumstances of that region what the perceived threat is what the um level of activ ity is of the um commanders of garrisons and what other duties they’ve got to do so where this comes in their list of priorities but in many cases where there’s a serious danger and in Frontier systems like
Hadrin wall the antonine wall even the unconnected areas on other Frontiers then you have um garrisons that presumably have men who can be made ready fairly quickly and obviously the ones who can respond the fastest in most circumstances will be cavalrymen it’s again another sign of the usefulness of
The cohortes equat where you’ve got at least a small number of Horsemen there and if you’ve got Horsemen in milecastles in fortlet they can carry a message and report an incursion much quicker than somebody on foot now you might also be doing if the alarm has
Gone up you go and you send out a patrol to try and find out who’s out there how many there are what the danger is work out where they’re going so all of this takes time you know you don’t imagine an instant response because the Romans again they’re like a police force today
They’re not expecting they don’t know a crime is going to be committed at 2:30 in the morning in this particular house so that they can be waiting for it they have to wait to see the report they see what’s going on then they respond and they’re planning for all sorts of other
Contingencies because again the big Advantage the attackers have they can choose where and when they attack the Defenders don’t know that they’ve just got to wait perhaps gather intelligence hope to hear about these things but the odds are unless it’s a really big raid they’re not going to hear about it until
It’s already in their territory so all of these things are balanced but they gradually it’s it’s sand running out of the timer for the um the Raiders Because unless they’re confident enough that they can defeat any Roman force that can be brought against them then they have
To think about leaving they have to get away without fighting the Romans but of course they’ve come for a reason and one of those reasons one of the main ones is plunder so that comes back to intelligence where are you going if you’re just relying on hopefully stumbling across someone well that maybe
Might work on a busy road sometimes but it’s very risky and what if no one turns up again reputation is important people are not going to keep on following a leader that um leads you nowhere and gets no plunder so it comes back to having identifiable targets things you
Know about and you know how to get there once you’re there then you’ve got to actually take the um the plunder now that might mean fighting the family that runs their Farm or the extended family group or the household of a villa the the the slaves there the herdsmen the workers who might
Choose to resist you if they haven’t escaped now maybe you can take them by surprise but maybe they bolt the doors and hole up inside what do you do do you burn the place down to try and get them out do you launch a fullscale attack do
You take the risk of casualties do you also spend the time this will take to steal things and this is a reminder of how things we don’t necessarily see as defensive as fortifications are actually rather important so many Villas particularly the later period Grand Villas you get in
Roman Britain often have what looks like a tower and this is conventionally written off well of course it’s not defensive it’s just so the great man can go out and look on his Estates and Survey them and that may be true but it’s also somewhere where somewhere
Someone can be and they can see any sign of trouble out in your Fields they can see your Workman Galloping back quickly to get to the main house know it’s it’s a viewing platform pure and simple it’s like going up to the top of your house
To look out of your highest window to see what’s going on that’s important if you have gateways they’re not going to resist an army with a battering run but they can slow down a gr of Raiders if you’ve got high walls again people have got to climb over them and it’s the same
Even with the ditch that might surround a little Farmstead of roundhouses it’s yet yes it’s to stop your animals straying but it also makes it far more difficult for anybody other than you to get those animals out because the only way in and out for them is probably
Going to be that one entrance way so if somebody comes at night and while you’re all asleep tries to steal the couple of cows you’ve got or your pigs or whatever it might be they’ve got to sneak in Without You noticing and then they’ve got to sneak those animals out without
You noticing if there’s lots of them again maybe they can fight but again if there’s warning everything is hard hard for them or you might if you got enough warning you might have skidaddled out with everything you can you can drive off so again things that are not
Defensive or fortifications in a a strictly military sense in large scale Warfare are significant in this context of raiding where the the line blurs with robbery and where it’s just important that you have um something to to slow them down it’s a little bit like having a lock on
Your front door it is not going to stop an assault by a platoon of paratroops but it will make it more difficult for a burglar to break in without making noise and revealing his presence which might trip an alarm might wake you up might allow you to give the alarm might allow
You to respond to raise the house You’ got to think in those terms this is a different sort of world Gathering plunder took time it might involve dispersal particularly for a large band even for a small small group you have to find what you’ve come
To steal to take you have to secure it in the case of animals in the case of human beings you might have to fight sometimes to get them and then you’ve got to bring it together and move it and transport it back home otherwise the the purpose of the Expedition becomes rather
Pointless because you’ve lost anything you’ve taken and you’ve lost the prestige with it so once you get to the area as a group of Raiders there are all sorts of tasks that require you to spend more time and depending on the situation you don’t necessarily know how much time
You’ve got it comes back to this race against the clock because you’ve got to assume that the Romans or whoever the Defenders are are gathering and they are going to do something about this incursion into their territory and in most cases you’ve raided not in Superior
Force to the enemy Army should they must it or the main host of the tribal uh all the war bands gathered together all the Warriors turned out if it’s Romans attacking um a tribal people or One Tribe attacking another you give them time to react you give them time to find
You and you give them time to strike now we’ve already mentioned the incident where the group of the chatty get caught whil’s drunk and then I mentioned something from amanas let’s just look at that passage in a little bit more detail this is from 366 where jinus learned from a faithful
Scouting party the group of plunderers having laid waste the nearby Villas was resting by a river coming closer and hidden in a valley made obscure by the Thick Growth of trees he saw some bathing some coloring their hair red as was their custom and others drinking and taking advantage he immediately gave the
Signal by horn and attack the bandits camp and wipes them out or at least defeats them to the point where they surrender um and they’re at his mercy and as is often the case in the later Roman Empire you start recruiting people rather than necessarily killing them all
Or enslaving them all as you might have done in earlier periods so you become vulnerable and it’s quite striking that they are surprised this is a group of Raiders that have relied upon on surprise on speed of movement for the success of their expedition they’ve gone into Roman territory the Romans didn’t
Know they were there they’ve used surprise they’ve used concealment they’ve used speed the Romans countering them use exactly the same techniques and exactly the same methods to catch them and defeat and Destroy them now again we could look at um going back to Caesar where in 53 BC and again
It’s this incident it ceeds the bit where the Germanic tribesmen cross the r and go to start plundering their barones and then decide that actually let’s go and plunder the Romans instead because they seem like they seem to be offering a better opportunity so again it’s this is why Caesar takes this
Decision in the first place why he doesn’t want to risk his own Army to go and to ravage to plunder to capture to destroy to kill um the uberon as punishment because there’s no definite body of troops any stronghold any Garrison population was scattered in all directions each man had settled where a
Hidden Valley or a wooded locality offered some hope of defense or security these localities were known to the Dwellers round about and thus the matter required great care not for the protection of the army as a whole but for the preservation of individual soldiers for the passion for plunder was
Apt to draw many men too far a field so reluctant to list his risk his own men Caesar sent Messengers around to the neighboring states and invited in the hope of booty to join him in P pillaging the uberon and that’s what prompts those Germans among others to come and do that
This is something that applied to both sides dispersing to plunder to ravage does mean dispersal does mean that you are vulnerable you are not ready to fight an organized enemy who turns up in any sort of strength and again strength is relative if this is a band of 20 30
40 50 Warriors then the appearance of 30 or 40 Roman soldiers in a group is a pretty devastating threat and this is something you know if you get larger then obviously it’s bigger forces involved and that lure to plunder which is common in many armies in many periods
Whether they need food and resources just to supply themselves in the field or the hope of gain is something that is frequently used as a basis for an ambush so we read in tacitus of some auxiliary cohorts that are ambushed by the syores of Southern Wales because they’re lured
On in the hope of plunder there are description of this in 2 Century BC in Iberia in in that time so you could be lured Roman troops are sometimes lured into Ambush by the hope of gain so are other Raiders and people of anybody so it’s a major
Risk so once you’ve gathered all that plunder assuming you’ve managed to do this you’ve got everything together you’ve done what you came for you’ve killed you’ve perhaps permitted all sorts of unpleasant atrocities by modern standards but that’s the nature of warfare and violence in the ancient period you’ve gathered cattle you’ve
Gathered sheep you’ve piled up the wagons full of any shiny object you could find anything useful anything metal anything valuable and perhaps if you’re really lucky gold and silver and all those things you’ve then got to transport them they are very very bulky if they’re human beings you’ve taken as
Slaves then they need to be guarded because they’re not likely to be keen on the idea of this enslavement so they might try and Escape they might in certain circumstances fight back so we have this relief from M of two chain naked captives from a Roman Monument if
You look at the Adam kissy monument that I’ve talked about in another video and I’ll I’ll spend some time on in the future you have these depictions of women and children that appear to be amongst the captives taken by the Roman army in their victory over a migrating
Or raiding or invading group of various types of tribal peoples you see them earlier on in the monument assuming that’s the order of the things arriving in a wagon now people who’ve brought all their goods that’s great but then you’ve got to get them home so you’ve come whatever
Distance it is into hostile territory into the Roman provinces or from the Roman point of view into tribal or foreign areas beyond the Frontiers you’ve then got to get all this plunder back now given that you can move in relatively quickly because you’re unencumbered when you attack and you
Have the surprise on your side by now if the enemy haven’t gathered to fight you already they will very very soon so you’ve got to move quickly but the problem is you can’t move quickly because you’ve Laden yourselves down with all these prisoners with all this plunder with all these um you wagons
Full of booty and it makes a difference to how you can travel a small body of men perhaps even a small body of Horsemen can swim or forward rivers and streams that would be far more difficult if not impossible for you to take a wagon across or even for you to take
Captives that might well include women and children these tended to be high uh value slaves because you could either absorb them into your community taking a lot of strong young men as slaves was always a great risk because they might choose to turn against you they can
Fight back you take the vulnerable and then you’ve got to get them home and you’ve got to face the weather you’ve got to F face the The Roots back so you might be channeled into following proper track perhaps even roads because that’s the only way you can transport a lot of
Your plunder a lot of the stuff you’ve taken and you’re facing the weather so you know in other periods of History we hear about raiding happening at certain times of year for instance before the cattle go to Winter pastures when they’re still fat from the summer before
The ground gets too water log too wet too muddy to slow down movement similar situations probably existed depending on the conditions in various parts of the empire so now you’ve got the ticking clock the final stage this is getting home and getting home without being caught by the Romans
Or whoever else has pursued you and if you think about all the things we talked about as the frontier defenses whether it’s the depopulated strip of land around tribal territory that Caesar talks about the big thick Thorn Hedges that he talks about with the belgic tribes um that they hedge their their
Territory around it’s almost a marker a warning to people that if you step Beyond this point then we will fight you and we are dangerous violent people who will sort you out you need to be frightened of us so don’t do it it’s basically keep off my land that’s the
The symbol and it’s probably no coincidence that Caesar’s Army runs into a belgic army as it’s Crossing these boundaries into their territory but we’ve also got think back to Hadrian’s Wall to the turrets to the garrisons to all the system perhaps a linear boundary which is going to be
Very very difficult for you to get across if you do have wagons full of plunder if you do have livestock again you can’t easily carry a horse and haul it up over hen’s wall to the other side you can have even more trouble with cattle with with sheep with human
Captives as well who might not be so agile to climb a rope or a rope ladder and certainly are going to be less stealthy you’ve also got rivers are a major factor within this for any sort of substantial booty so you’re looking at you’ve got to find a bridge or you’ve
Got to find a ferry or some Crossing Place if there is a major Obstacle of that sword think back again to the example of the wagon full of plunder that had sunk in the rain in the 3dr century and that several of these have been found this is difficult you’re
Facing these physical obstacles all of which is slowing you down and it is striking that again and again and again in our sources any attacker anybody who raids into enemy territory is most likely to meet major resistance on their way home so this is true whether it’s it’s Raiders coming
Into the Roman territory like the chatti earlier on whether it’s a Roman army penetrating if you look at the campaigns of germanas as they go east beyond the rine into hostile territory they are nearly always confronted by a tribal Army when they’ve turned and they’re on their way back now there are several
Reasons for this and the time is the main one it takes time for the alarm to go up it takes time then once the alarm has gone out for everybody to gather for everybody to arm for an army to muster Roman troops depending on the situation depending on the distribution of
Garrisons their state of Readiness perhaps can be a little bit quicker but tribal armies as well they’ve got to do this they’ve got to gather with sufficient Food Supplies to keep them in the field for a few days but they have the advantage that at this stage they
Tend to know where the enemy are and they can also predict which way they’ll have to go home because in most cases any substantial force or any Force that’s gathered large amounts of PL Under You can predict the tracks it will have to follow the routes it will have
To follow and therefore it’s very common for an army to come and position itself blocking the route home and there you have to fight a battle to get get through them before you can continue and um think of that third Century site in the the hearts horn in Germany where
Again it looks like a Roman Expedition that’s gone East has turned back West and is attacking from east to west against a position held by local tribes and fights its way through the pattern is there again and again and again and it doesn’t matter who you are who’s attacking and who’s defending nearly
Always your greatest danger is on the way home so that’s a big big problem and we read of difficulties as armies are retreating and very often Barbarian groups in particular tend to get surprised to the RO by the Romans when they’re Laden down with plunder sometimes when they’re not ready at all
Um you know they’re drinking and lazing around and dying their hair red by the river or they’ve all got drunk and divort themselves like the um the chatty earlier on but other cases they are simply slow they are vulnerable so getting home is just as important as any
Other stage in the raiding process because again we come back to what we’ve said before these Raiders in the main are not out on a suicide mission they don’t want to go cause Mayhem kill destroy mutilate mistreat just to tell show the enemy that they hate them and
They want to destroy them these these are people who wish to go they wish to win Glory they wish to humiliate the enemy but they also wish to profit and all of that requires getting back home and getting back home with as much of your plunder as you can hold on to and
Also as many of your people as you can to be a successful leader of these sorts of raids you don’t want the reputation of someone who gets nearly everybody killed and loses most of the the spoils that they’ve taken you want someone do you want to be a success story you want
To be able to tell people come with me not only will you live but you’ll win great Glory great great prizes and therefore I’m the man to follow I’m a Chieftain to note to to acknowledge to accept to um whose favor is worth seeking within the wider community of
The tribe or whatever it might be so that’s the pattern you go in and the chances are that very few defensive systems even the most organized ones um held by the Romans can actually stop Raiders as they’re attacking any more than in go back to the early analogy of
An air raid it’s quite hard to intercept the Defenders all the time before they reach their targets right The Defenders the attackers it’s hard for the Defenders to do that because you’ve got to guess right and you’ve got to position your people in time to be in
The right place to meet them but you know they’ve got to go home and you can predict pretty clearly which way they’re going to go so you can Marshall more more forces to meet them then so this is a pattern that we see Raiders have a good chance of getting in
Although when you look at the formidable nature of a structure like Hadrian’s Wall if it is properly manned then you are making it very very difficult indeed to launch any sort of small raid you could maybe manage with just a few men sneaking across at night but anything in
Between anything involving a few dozen let alone a few hundred let alone a few thousand is probably going to have to fight its way in from very early on and the odds are that unless the Roman garrisons are severely depleted then they will gather in sufficient strength
To defeat and destroy you before you can really achieve anything and certainly before you can get home but in other respects it’s most likely that stage will happen that big risk comes once you’ve penetrated once you’re starting to plunder and then when you turn around and try and take everything home and
This is an extremely Grim business and we’ve only got to think back to those mutilated bodies and skulls at reagens BG there’s an account from a cenan Expedition that’s taken lots of um civilians from the provinces captive of them hamstringing those who couldn’t keep up as they were retreating they
Didn’t want to be slowed down to the pace of the oldest the weakest the most vulnerable they couldn’t be bothered to kill them perhaps they wanted to send a message to the Romans of just how big and bad and nasty and frightening they were but also this element of Cruelty they just leave
Things there leave these people dying unable to move and again thinking well perhaps that’s going to slow the rans down if they stop to help them so this is a grim business and it’s Grim business whichever Army is doing it Roman raids and expeditions to punish or
Intimidate the tribes tend to be very brutal tribal raids into Roman territory tend to be very brutal and it it’s true wherever you go in the Empire the ancient world was a grim Savage place there are however degrees of this some groups are more Savage than others and
There’s an element in some of these cases where they are deliberately being as appalling as possible because they want to frighten the enemy and that brings us on to our final stage retribution because after all a raid like this is something that if it succeeds and sometimes they do then the
The message goes out more widely that we are vulnerable we have things worth taking and we’re not strong enough to protect them that if you are skillful and if you are brave and if you are bold you might be able to get in you might be
Able to attack us you might be able to Rob us so one of the things that raids tend to spark it’s one of the reasons why you can’t separate this lowlevel military activity from the big battles the big campaigns the big Wars is that one can lead to the other you can use
This raiding within a wider conflict as um a method as a strategy to adopt at one period as a way of harming your enemy either because you can’t harm him in battle because you’re not strong enough or because he’s not willing to face you in battle and you can’t force
Him to do that but retribution Romans mount a lot of punitive Expeditions they’d be called by 19th early 20th century Imperial standards where you go out to punish to frighten the communities beyond your Frontier or within internal Frontiers if they’re in a lawless area so that they will not do
Anything you don’t want them to do they’ll stop raiding they’ll stop attacking because the punishment they receive as a result of doing this is not worth the gain they they will acquire from actually raiding so this is a time of you know there are from hrin war
We’ve got the the case from vand you get um evidence like this from Tran’s column skulls mounted over the Gateway of forts or on the ramparts you can send messages that way obviously the best way to deter Raiders is to catch a reasonable number of them and punish them in some way or
Another quite possibly in a fairly gruesome way but make sure they don’t get home with their so they can show off their plunder so that they can boast of their Glory show off the herds the captives all of those things know you hear stories of tribal groups passing around captured Roman standards in
Britain in G this sort of thing to show off marks of success look the Romans aren’t as strong as you thought they were it’s worth fighting them so if you don’t control this rating it can very easily spiral up into something else and obviously if you’re the recipient you’re
Bound to be pretty angry about this so it comes back to the mix of intimidation as well as defensive measures like the Germans having their strip of depopulated land around tribal territory it’s a warning sign don’t mess with us but you have to back that message up and
It’s the same with the Romans there’s an element where visually Frontier lines whether it’s a fixed one like hrin wall or a continuous one rather or the antonine wall or whether it’s the L somewhere else lots of watchtowers lots of garrisons soldiers appearing at various times it’s intimidating and it’s visually something
That’s a reminder the Romans are strong watchtowers in particular could serve this purpose even if there’s nobody there if you don’t know whether someone’s up there or not watching and therefore able to send out a warning if they see you out and about doing things that the Romans don’t like then you’ve
Still got to be careful again it’s like closed circuit television there might not actually be film or the equivalent digitally in the camera it might not be switched on but if people think it is they tend to modify their behavior accordingly and go somewhere else now of
Course one of the big problems with any defensive thing like this is If you defend one area very strongly then people tend to move to another one which perceived as more vulnerable and you can see that in some campaigns for instance um the conflicts against tacfarinas in North Africa under Tiberius his
Reign but the Romans and The Barbarians would each seek to intimidate the other to prevent raiding like this so you can negotiate but you can also display your strength you can go out and you can raid in return probably that’s what it’s going to mean it’s plundering it’s destroying ing communities it’s rounding
Up cattle taking captives perhaps they’ll come out and meet you in battle remember we go back to that incident with um tacitus describes about the chatti where the Roman legatus was hoping he could provoke the tribe into a mass battle but they don’t bite that
Would be a good symbol that would be a good demonstration of Roman power and a glorious episode for the Commander in question on the other hand if they submit without that being necessary well that’s also good if they’ve shown suitable humility so let’s just go back and look at an
Incident from 51 BC where again it’s about retribution where cisero the oror no great Soldier but someone who’s found himself as proconsular command in csia couple of Legions and various allies at his disposal has formed an army to meet a a feared Patheon attack that hasn’t happened he’s near the edge of his
Province with Syria the boundary he’s near the area of Mount am Manus it’s rugged country that throughout on and off throughout the Roman period And before and afterwards tended to encourage the the Mountaineers who Liv there the people who Liv there to to raid a bit around the area if they could
Get away with it so Cicero tries to fool them after pretending to go away from the mountain to other parts of csia marching away for a day he sneaks back at night with the Army in light marching order expeditor and on the third of October climbs Mountain arm is climbing
Mountain amanus before first light the next day breaks up his formations his cohorts and his auxiliaries he’s basically got two under strength Legions plus auxiliary and Allied troops separate attacking parties couple of columns so three columns and they move out they surprise them because again it is striking how often people who when
They fight rely on surprise on stealth on Sudden appearance will fall prey to exactly the same same tactics used against them so they storm several Villages and they um kill a large number of the enemy storm the forts burn them mop up operations for 4 days and then he
Attacks this place called pindism um a a major town he describes it as though again even he admits that nobody will have heard of this it’s not a famous place and this is the next stage up so it’s escalating the type of warfare I surrounded them by ditch and Rampart
Blockaded them by six forts in a large Camp assaulted them with an earthwork mantlets and towers and by bringing into play large numbers of Siege engines and archers and a good deal of personal industry I completed the operation on the 57th day without any inconvenience or expense demolishes parts of the city
Or most of the city Burns it down and they surrender and their neighbors were equally malignant and rebellious but after he’d taken Pinn Dennis so oh dear Mis Mis printed that he took hostages from them so they submit so this is a dis display of Roman force and savagery
Terror tactics in many respects but that’s how a lot of Ancient Warfare works the Romans go in and the locals think yes it’s not worth raiding them at the moment but again that attitude will change because this is not something that has given them any cause to love
The Romans they will remember the burning houses they will remember the dead they will remember the stolen cattle all of this so they will also think well we’ve raided in the past once the Romans go away once they’re weaker maybe we can get at it again
And then you know the end of The Siege Cicero has a festival gives the spoils except for the horses and captives sold but things like this can go wrong because these are major campaigns with all the risks of major campaigns so during the Seas of pind nisus bibulus
Who’s the pro Consul of neighboring Syria he’s also the man who’s been Consul with Caesar and shared various other offices and always been in juliia Caesar’s shadow um Cicero reckons he was jealous of of him Cicero so he attacks in exactly the same area the same Mountain
Areas begins his task of looking for a bay leaf and a wedding cake but instead things go badly wrong the whole of his first cohort was lost as well as Aus dento the Primus pis and of noble stock and the rest of the centurions of the same cohort along with a military
Tribune seus lucilius son of Titus gavius Kio who has both wealth and position it was really a mortifying reverse an inopportune so the Romans under cico have demonstrated Roman might Roman willingness to be Savage to be scary to be frightening and then Along Comes bibulus who tries to do the same
Thing but makes mistakes goes wrong one Detachment is ambushed he loses most of the men and the offices of his first cohort so all of this is about sending a message of strength and power and in this case you’ve sent two one that you’re strong followed very quickly by
Another one that actually the Romans don’t know what they’re doing and they can be beaten it’s all about maintain aining an aura of in invincibility it comes back to that the same idea that Caesar claimed the Germans Express with their depopulated strip of land it’s all about reputation it’s symbols that show
You we are tough we are hard don’t mess with us don’t attack us and beg and pray that we don’t attack you so you better be nice to us and that’s the same whether it’s the Roman Empire dealing with tribal peoples and to a great extent with organized kingdoms but also
Those kingdoms and those tribes in return with their atude to the Romans so it can all go horribly wrong in the same way that think back to the first Anglo Afghan War when you have the disastrous Retreat from cabul and the the only European only Dr Burton gets back to
Um uh the main British position and famously zown and that’s that’s a message whereby that story of the weakness of the Imperial power of the disaster of the massacre of their soldiers that will be remembered particularly in these peoples where you have an oral culture so songs can be
Just as fresh generation after generation and it perhaps makes them more immediate because it’s something your grandfather sang to you and it makes it more real than something you read in a history book perhaps so let’s just look to finish at an episode from tac farinas and his um war of resistance
Against the Romans in North Africa or his career seeking his own Ambitions however you choose to look at it in Tiberius his Reign and he was a numidian by nationality he’d been an auxiliary in the Roman Camp whether at a senior level as an officer it was often the case with
Tribal leaders we don’t know though there is a there’s a piece of Roman snobbery that comes up again and again the sense that all their most dangerous enemies were people that they taught themselves so you learned how to fight with the Roman army and that’s what makes you so dangerous you could say
That about satorius about armenius about civilist um Sparticus even there’s a tradition that he he had been um a Roman served in the Roman army at one point so T farinas Begins by recruiting gangs of vagrants accustomed to robbery for the purposes of plunder and forms them into
A military body organizes them on the Roman pattern to some extent and over gets recognized by a group of people the Muslim musul armi and he allies with some of the mortanian keep keeps his army concentrated whilst the others go off the Allies go and raid and they disseminated fire Slaughter and Terror
Others forced to join them but at that point the Roman proconsul of North Africa and of course this is that one province that for a while still has an army a single Legion in it most of the time that’s commanded by a senatorial proconsul rather than an imperial
Leot and he’s defeated the tacfarinas risks a pitched battle with the Romans it all goes horribly wrong he gets beaten and routed but he escapes along with some of his men so after that he changes his tactics because that clearly hasn’t worked fighting all mass so he
Goes back to desalter raids too Speedy for reprisals but they build up his reputation and they build up the confidence of his men they attract supporters then by destructions of villages by plunder on a larger scale and then finally he actually is bold enough to surround a Roman cohort that’s
Garrisoned and as is so often the case the Roman cohort Garrison comes out of its walls led by its Commander tries to drive them off but in fact the cohort panics the commander killed and they run away and they’re um you know this is one of those times where clearly the unit
Either this wasn’t a very popular um officer or a good leader or there was something wrong with the unit and its morale it lacked confidence or they were were badly LED in other ways we don’t have many details so again tacfarinas and his men are encouraged the Roman survivors of that cohort
Decimated one of the the later examples of that punishment of executing one in 10 but when TF farines moves on and assaults another Garrison another prium at Fara then a group of veterans apparently so presumably this is part of the Legion the the the veterans who are
No longer obliged to um perform fatigues and other duties but are still kept with the colors so these are tough old sweats they come out and fight and they beat the numidians off so they lost heart at that and then think well sieges are a bad idea so he
Falls back on again the the translation that I’m using here uses Guerilla Warfare which is is not in the Latin and instead it he explains that they they yield ground when the Romans come close and press them and then harass them from the rear indeed so long as the
Barbarians adhered to this strategy he befooled with impunity the ineffective and footsore Romans but when he deviated to the coastal district and encumbered himself with a train of booty which kept him near a fixed encampment a pronus kianus with Cavalry and auxiliary cohorts reinforced by the most mobile
Mobile of the legionaries for a successful engagement chase the new midians into the desert so again it’s one of those problems you move elsewhere to an area that’s vulnerable and plunder that but as you gather plunder you’ve got to look after that plunder you’ve got to protect it you have a a temporary
Base you’ve then got to move it it makes you vulnerable the Romans can find you they catch you you can’t can’t run away and flee without abandoning your plunder and therefore you’re defeated again so tacfarinas clearly wanted more than simply plunder he sends an embassy to tiberias asking for territory for
Himself and his army so again it comes back to that idea we’ve had right at the start that you you plunder and you raid because you have to because you don’t have land to support your people to raise families to to provide for them therefore if you’re given land then you’ll stop plundering
Um however the Romans reject this the new Pro proconsul sent to hunt him down and he forms three colums to chase the um the numidians and attack farinas in the center and with the flower of his troops was the commander himself who by securing appropriate positions with fortresses and entrenchments had
Rendered the whole District cramped and dangerous for his enemies turn where they would they found some part of the Roman forces on the front on the flank often on the in the rear and numbers were destroyed or entrapped by the methods the Romans have broken up into three large columns but they’re also
Setting up bases garrisons fortified outposts at key points to make it difficult for the numidians to move around freely without risking a being seen by the Romans who can then report to a larger force or in the case of some of these garrisons being harassed by the
Troops within them if they’ve got the strength to do it however the numidians react you can’t catch all of them like this they’re still slipping through his grass so next the Roman Commander subdivided his tripartite army into yet more numerous detachments headed by centurions of tested courage you’re breaking down into
Smaller detachments because that’s the level of War you’re having to fight against these enemies not even when summer was spent would he fall in with a custom by withdrawing his men and quartering them for Winter’s rest he arranged a chain of forts flying Columns of men familiar with the desert kept
Hounding tacfarinas from one desert Camp to another until at last having captured tacf Farin as his brother he returned too hastily however the Romans think they’ve defeated this threat they think they’ve intimidated and killed enough that the numidians under attac farinz won’t be back to raiding but in fact
There’s still a lot of them out there and the reasons why they’re raiding in the first place still apply so you’ve also dispersed a lot of your troops into small detachments into little garrisons which creates all sorts of problems so the war continues and tacfarinas gain
Some allies more or less openly and with uses lightly armed bands whose numbers report magnified in proportion to the distance from The Province itself every man of broken fortunes or turbulent character rushed to his standard with an alacrity all the greater because the Romans who’ beefed up the uh Frontier
The provincial Army to two Legions have now withdrawn one of them ninth isan has gone away so it’s back to one Legion plus auxiliaries trying to deal with this trying to cover this wide area and the big problem is with defending lots of places that ties up lots of your
Troops who are no longer mobile and of course can you Garrison everywhere strongly enough so that there isn’t another region that’s vulnerable so um and he besieges a town you know tares is bold enough to do that now the Roman Pro Consul Della arrives raises The Siege but again starts to occupy other
Posts but that’s requiring more and more men and he tries to prevent other Chieftain joining the enemy forms four mobile columns this time each under the command of a legate or a Tribune and led by local guides it’s a key feature of Roman Warfare and many successful
Imperial Powers get the locals to fight on your side because they’re the ones who really know the terrain they know how to operate in it and particularly when you’re on the fringes of the desert in North Africa and you’re in some rugged um country then you get the
Locals because they know how to live there they know how to move there they know how to track there and they know their enemy as well and in nearly every region there are enough locals who dislike the people who partic happen to be fighting the Romans at the moment
More than they dislike the Romans so they see this as an opportunity to pursue their own Ambitions their own rivalries their own vendettas in the same way that go back to you know jono and the Apaches were brought in by Apache Scouts and without those the US Army would have had far
More trouble actually bringing in that very small band that again whose numbers were magnified because they were very mobile they were very clever they moved around they fought well and skillfully so people get frightened and people start reporting them everywhere and think there are far more of them than there
Are and so he sends this light cohorts mounted squadrons um and without being informed of their destination were hurried at full speed they managed to find through intelligence that’s probably to do with the Diplomatic activity with local leaders and with hiring local guides they find out where tacfarinas is camped
And they attack at dawn kill tacfarinas capture his son and disperse his followers seems to be a interaction it’s one of those cases where tarus has had to stop for a while to support and feed his people and also to gather his plunder so is vulnerable the Romans can
Find him the Romans can attack him so you have all the different stages within a major war of raids on both sides of pursuit on both sides but it gives you an idea of how this can expand into a big war and then apparently contracted lots of smaller engagements but how
They’re related and how each side tries to to outwit the other and also how the Roman army can adapt to fighting in this way this isn’t necessarily a type of combat a type of fighting that we think would favor the Romans but actually they can become
Pretty good at it because they do have significant advantages and again when we have mention of it’s often translated as light units or light infantry or light Cavalry the word is usually expeditor or expedi which just means without baggage with the minimum of kit but not necessarily without not necessarily
Trained to fight in dispersed order or anything like that just ordinary troops that adapt to the situation as required so there’s always a problem you have things that people will want to steal you have Villas that are rich you have towns and Villages that are rich
You have people all of these things have value and will attract anyone who will attack and steal them if they think they can get away with it this is the pattern of the ancient world it comes back to this this raiding as seen as a as a
Natural thing you don’t really need a good reason to do it you don’t have to hate the people involved you just have to think that actually you can get away with this they are vulnerable so that you have problems and there are areas that it’s very hard to defend again the Roman
Army is simply not big enough to spread itself out and defend everything in full strength and yes you can build a wall like Hadrian’s Wall in that narrow strip of land Rel atively narrow um between the either coast of of Northern Britain and similarly the anonim wall you can
Build the L Stockade in on the German Frontier again to or you can use a river you can have these barriers that are whether natural or created but again Manning them all the time ins sufficient strength is a very difficult task and the Army will have other requirements
And troops will be sent away there is a pattern that you find again and again where room rumors or accurate information that much of the Roman provincial Garrison has gone elsewhere encourages people to think well now it’s a good time to attack so again it comes back to this impression of vulnerability invites
Attack but on the whole most of these Raiders are not there to fight a fullscale war they’re not there to fight a fullscale Siege a Roman army like ciceros might decide to spend best part of two months besieging a relatively small wall Mountain Village because they
Want to make make the point that this is what the Romans will do if you upset them and it’s a good way of trying to intimidate the tribes think but you are not Out Of Reach of Rome and of course the siege craft of the Roman army in the
Late Republican Imperial period is very impressive and very scary if you are one of these tribal peoples they they are they can get to where you live and they can take you out in the same way that they can go when they choose to to a fortress like Masada and they can
Support themselves in the very harsh conditions of the desert by the Dead Sea until they finish that ramp until they are in a position to capture the Fortress so let’s look at a a case where a group of Barbarians in the 4th Century according to amanas do try attacking a
Roman army in Winter quarters and this is when the emperor Julian is attacked a host of enemy attacked fired with increased hope of taking the town full of confidence because they’ learned from the statements of deserters that two Roman units were absent bitted elsewhere to make it easier to supply them so
Again that sense the Romans are vulnerable therefore it’s worth a go let’s attack them Julian defends the town but there’s no direct attack they’re not ready for an assault when they get there they realize the Romans and the walls of the town are a bit stronger than they expected no one’s
Giving into to them the threat wasn’t enough to Blackmail people into um giving you money giving you cattle giving you whatever you wanted for a month they hang around but then they withdraw Crest Fallen Ming they’ve been silly and foolish to have cont contemplated the blockade of a
City we come back to the idea of the Roman army that is in many areas spread around Frontier areas it might be along communication routes it might be in significant um positions but it’s there it can’t be concentrated as a field Army all the time because you couldn’t
Concentrate in enough places it is spread fairly thinly and it’s got its outposts it’s got its watchtowers it’s got its garrisons maybe it’s got its its rivers its um Frontier lines like adrien’s wall but unless there are people there Manning them those fortifications don’t matter cuz after all if Hadrian’s Wall
Is virtually abandoned then you can go and you can capture a mile cast and you can go through the gateways and head on South you might have some trouble crossing the valum but even so if nobody’s there to stop you you’ve got the time to either build yourself a
Quick ramp down one side and up the other or to manand or to haul down animals um even your plunder coming back defense of Frontier systems relies on the Manpower of the army and a Manpower that’s mobile it isn’t simply about you can’t just wall off everything that you
Think is valuable and stay behind those walls and hope for the best that does become something like the policy in later Antiquity and it’s something reflected in Theus but that’s where you don’t have sufficient numbers of troops available all the time time to go and confront the enemy in the open in the
Way that you would before when as with Tac farinas on at least two occasions Roman garrisons are attacked presumably by larger forces of numidians and in each case the Garrison comes out from behind its ramparts and fights in the open once very badly it runs away but the second time it hammers The
Barbarians so you’ve changed that emphasis from a mobile Army that always wants to fight in the open always wants to fight um Pitch battle if it can but again it requires the troops to be there and it requires them to be in a reasonable state of training a reasonable state of health their
Equipment in good condition and reasonably well-led and it requires most of the frontier systems make more sense if you look at them as trip wires they’re intended to spot any enemy coming in send messages and then gather troops they are not places where the Army is actually planning to fight the
Enemy and if they do have to fight them there it’s usually a sign that things have gone wrong or it might be a way to delay them so this is a very um longer talk than IID planned but it’s it’s always been the way this is a topic that
I’ve always found interesting because I think it’s something that isn’t systematically studied and I think once you’ve thought about the mechanics of raiding and how it all works then a lot of things make more sense and that’s true of Roman Frontiers but it’s also true of Iron Age fortifications ramparts
Hill fors and the like and the the little defenses around a village again it comes back to just what is the threat you feel you’re facing we sometimes we go back into this sort of very clas vitan sense where everything is to do with a major war between organized armies organized
States and even people who will emphasize how other societies are different sometimes fall into that trap they don’t think enough about how Warfare can change how Warfare can be conducted in very different ways because again if it’s just a few people coming at night to steal your C
Than the little Rampart around a family farm is something of an obstacle and it can help you and your your sons and your household and your family defend those animals if you’ve got people out there giving warning you’ve got time to go and hide somewhere and Hill fors again very
Few have been excavated on a sufficient scale to tell how densely occupied they are whether some of them are as as crowded really as some of the opor in Gaul where you have know clearly developed permanent housing that’s that’s occupied for a long time um industrial activity Craftsman all this
Sort of thing as well maybe we have that in some sites in Britain Maybe not maybe some of them some people live there some of the time and others use them as a place of Refuge because again you think about and think oh well yes you know you could
Take this if you’ve got a major Army but is any enemy that’s likely to turn up going to have a major Army and how often are you dealing more with a band of Raiders who if you do retire behind your walls and you’ve drien your sheep and
Cattle up there then maybe they’ll look and think no we didn’t catch them it’s not worth risking an assault which might get some of us killed whether or not it succeeds then let’s just go somewhere else try and find and surprise somebody next time and at the very least you can
Go away with the constellation well they were so scared of us they went and hid behind their ramparts that shows that we of whatever tribe we happen to be or the war band of this particular leader are the toughest hardest people around and therefore people are frightened of us so
That’s good for our reputation that people flee when we arrive they don’t come out and fight because they’re too scared so you have to think of a different sort of language of how people interact of how they think about threats what those threats are how they respond
To them and all of this helps you to come in a much more nuanced way when you look at Roman Frontiers and you look at all these other aspects as well so I hope this rather detailed look at something a little bit different something a little bit um unusual has
Been of Interest I took talk about this to some extent there’s a section of one of the chapters impacts Romana where I use some of this material to go through how a raid works but much much more briefly than this this was trying to show this is there is more evidence out
There you could have gathered more but this is a substantial part of it that gives enough to give an idea that there is why I’m why I’m making these claims why I’m interpreting things in this particular way so anyway I hope this has been of Interest
10 Comments
cool.
fantastic, thank you very much!
IIRC Pax Romana makes interesting mention of How Rome
dealt with raiding bands via a system of fortlets + small
roaming detachments of Roman soldiers which could move
fast-to intercept/hunt-down raiding bands with impressive
success..in effect the Romans more or less adopted the
ways of the raiding bands to defeat them.
Absolutely brilliant.
The academic paper we need: "The Influence of Boar with Wine Sauce on Motivational Levels during Counter Raids, Contrasting With and Without the Use of Magic Potion"
Where's the intro music?!
What a timely topic. Just goes to show how a knowledge of ancient history, or history in general, can give you insights into current events.
I own your books, however this 2 hrs is magnificent!
So little documentation on the societies that lived on the fringes of the Roman world, always very cool to hear what little tidbits we know.
Best content