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1 results

  • Decimatio: Myth, Discipline, and Death in the Roman Republic

  • Michael J. Taylor
  • Journal:
    Antichthon / Volume 56 / 2022
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    13 December 2022, pp. 105-120
    Print publication:
    2022

  • The military punishment of decimatio, the cudgelling by lot of one in ten men in a disgraced unit, often described as a cornerstone of Roman military discipline, was never practised during the third and second centuries BC. The punishment was possibly used as an extraordinary measure a couple of times in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. It soon fell into total desuetude but was cultivated as a rhetorical construct that proclaimed theoretical powers commanders no longer dared effect. It was only revived, or rather reinvented, during the Late Republic, a violent moment that saw the confluence of antiquarian enthusiasm with military dynasts whose unrestrained powers allowed them to manifest what had previously been an aristocratic talking point.