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4 results

  • Chapter 1 - The High Command from Julian to Theodosius I (361–395)

  • Anthony Kaldellis, University of Chicago, Marion Kruse, University of Cincinnati
  • Book:
    The Field Armies of the East Roman Empire, 361–630
    Published online:
    27 April 2023
    Print publication:
    11 May 2023, pp 1-22

  • Summary

    This chapter surveys the organization of the east Roman military from the failure of Julian’s Persian expedition to the death of Theodosius I in 395. It demonstrates that there is no evidence to support the emergence of the Notitia system during this period and, in fact, positive evidence indicating that the Roman military continued to operate in its fourth-century configuration, with a central reserve army, the comitatus, commanded by a magister equitum and magister peditum, while smaller regional commands were managed by local limitanei or, in exceptional cases, a comes rei militaris. The sole exception was the magister militum per Orientem, the chief general on the eastern frontier, whose office went from an ad hoc appointment to a formally constituted command during this period.

The Field Armies of the East Roman Empire, 361–630
  • Anthony Kaldellis, Marion Kruse
  • Published online:
    27 April 2023
    Print publication:
    11 May 2023
  • This book presents a new history of the leadership, organization, and disposition of the field armies of the east Roman empire between Julian (361–363) and Herakleios (610–641). To date, scholars studying this topic have privileged a poorly understood document, the Notitia dignitatum, and imposed it on the entire period from 395 to 630. This study, by contrast, gathers all of the available narrative, legal, papyrological, and epigraphic evidence to demonstrate empirically that the Notitia system emerged only in the 440s and that it was already mutating by the late fifth century before being fundamentally reformed during Justinian's wars of reconquest. This realization calls for a new, revised history of the eastern armies. Every facet of military policy must be reassessed, often with broad implications for the period. The volume provides a new military narrative for the period 361–630 and appendices revising the prosopography of high-ranking generals and arguing for a later Notitia.

  • Coded Polemic in Ammianus Book 31 and the Date and Place of its Composition*

  • Michael Kulikowski
  • Journal:
    The Journal of Roman Studies / Volume 102 / November 2012
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    07 June 2012, pp. 79-102
    Print publication:
    November 2012

  • The Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus poses numerous structural puzzles for the historian, among them the anomalous final book, numbered 31 in the manuscript tradition. This book, which treats the Gothic rebellion of a.d. 376–378 and the campaign of Adrianople, is loosely connected to the other extant books, which conclude with events of a.d. 375. The present article argues that Book 31 was in origin a separate monograph, drafted in Greek at Antioch in the aftermath of the Roman defeat at Adrianople. Perhaps modelled on the Scythica of Dexippus, its contents reflect the Antiochene and Constantinopolitan polemic of its moment. For reasons that must remain speculative, Ammianus later translated his work into Latin and appended it to a finished draft of the Res Gestae.

  • 6 - Senators and senates

  • from PART II - GOVERNMENT AND INSTITUTIONS
  • Edited by Averil Cameron, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997, pp 184-210

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses the total revolution in the nature of the imperial senatorial order. It considers the institutional changes put in place in the course of the century, the new career patterns which resulted, and the evolving political role of senators, both in central, imperial politics and in the governing of localities. The most obvious institutional innovation of the fourth century was the creation of the senate of Constantinople. The new body did not spring fully formed from the head of the emperor Constantine, however, having at least three marked phases of development. The link between the bureaucracy and the senate was fully institutionalized in the reign of Valentinian I and Valens. The fundamental changes in the nature of the senatorial order naturally affected the type of careers being followed by its members. Individual senators and institutional bodies dominated by senators were involved in a wide variety of ways in imperial politics: the formulation of policy and regimes.