The Augustan Principate and the Emergence of Biopolitics: A Comparative Historical Perspective

This paper uses Foucault’s concepts “discipline” and “biopower” to expose the complexity of power relations in Augustan Rome and its historiography. Focusing on Augustus’ Res Gestae and Tacitus’ Annales, I argue that the absolute sovereignty of the emperor did not preclude the advancement of techniques to classify, hierarchize and normalize individuals, nor did Imperial sovereignty work against the development of a discourse about the enhancement and protection of the population. By demonstrating the conceptual and historical relevancy of Foucault’s modern power triad of “sovereignty-discipline-government” to first century CE Rome, the paper suggests that biopolitical societies have a far more extensive history than the one said to have started around the turn of the eighteenth century

The experience of Roman legionary service from Augustus to Septimius Severus

This thesis applies combat motivation theory to the Roman imperial legionary, attempting to understand soldiers’ attachments to their various units, and the motivational mechanisms which the army exerted on its soldiers. The result is a bottom-up exploration of the social environment of the legion, foregrounding issues of identity, community, and social networks. Detailed study of soldiers’ relationships with civilians, and with the members of extended military communities, leads to a full picture of the social context in which Roman legionaries served. This thesis extends a number of key developments in Roman army studies, including the ‘legion as society/community’ approach, social network theory, the application of military sociology, and the study of the extended communities, providing detailed discussion of numerous issues, some of which until now have only been cursorily considered in modern scholarship. Chapter 1 considers the idea of the ‘primary group’ in the context of the Roman army, and the importance of interpersonal bonds more generally. The primary group has dominated modern military sociology, leading some ancient historians to apply the concept to the ancient world; I attempt to test the evidence. In chapter 2, I consider attachment to the legion, again testing whether modern analogies to regimental systems hold water. Chapter 3 considers the soldiers’ relationship with the emperor, and how this distant figure manifested himself in the lives of the soldiers. Chapter 4 discusses remuneration, including pay, rewards, and promotion opportunities. Chapter 5 turns to discipline, reassessing the army’s reputation for exceptionally harsh discipline while also offering an examination of training and drill. Chapter 6 further builds the picture of the legionary’s social world by considering relations between soldiers and civilians, entering a long-standing debate on the isolation of soldiers from regular provincial society. Chapter 7 contains a lengthy discussion of the extended military community, attempting to elucidate some of the different experiences that its constituent groups might have. Here, suppliers, slaves, and prostitutes are treated in particular detail. Chapter 8 makes the case for recognising the detachment of soldiers from units as a key part of the legionary experience, and after exploring the organisation of this practice in detail, considers its implications for the other themes of the thesis

Centurions: The Practice of Roman Officership

This dissertation examines the military and social roles of legionary centurions in the Roman legions during the late Republic and Principate. It combines textual accounts of centurions from such authors as Caesar, Tacitus, and Cassius Dio, as well as epigraphic and archaeological evidence, including funerary monuments, dedicatory inscriptions, and the physical remains of legionary camps. By evaluating this evidence with reference to contemporary military and critical social theory (which integrates concepts of civil-military relations, compliance, social structures, and symbolic systems), I argue that centurions were crucial to defining and preserving important Roman military practices, and that an analysis of their position reveals important developments in Rome's military hierarchy and imperial administration. The dissertation is organized into six chapters. The first chapter addresses the centurion's disciplinary role in the legions, and reasserts the significance of corporal punishment in Roman military culture. Chapter Two investigates the centurion's idealized behaviour in combat, and how it affected views of his leadership and personal authority. The third chapter demonstrates how in the Roman world these practices in asserting authority were complementary rather than contradictory. Chapter Four evaluates centurions' place in the legion's command structure, including career structures, military expertise, and corporate identity, and identifies them as the singular corps of officers in the legions. The fifth chapter explains their intermediate position in the legion's social hierarchy between soldiers and aristocratic commanders, and how this position was important to integrating soldiers into the Roman military community. Finally, Chapter Six assesses political and administrative roles of centurions, arguing that they were the chief representation of Roman imperial authority among local populations. My dissertation has two fundamental goals. The first is to combine and analyze textual, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence for centurions in order to establish their military, political, and cultural roles in the Roman Empire. In doing so, the dissertation provides the first comprehensive study of the duties, characterizations, and expectations of the Roman legions' intermediate officers. The second goal is to demonstrate that this analysis of centurions is crucial to understanding how attitudes toward violence, military discipline, social status, and personal authority were manifested both within the Roman military community and throughout the Roman Empire

Rule and revenue in Egypt and Rome: political stability and fiscal institutions

'In diesem Artikel werden die Bestimmungsfaktoren für Finanzinstitutionen und Steuerlasten mit Hilfe einer Fallstudie aus der Antike untersucht. Auf diese Weise soll Levis Modell der Besteuerung, entwickelt an der Besteuerung im antiken Römischen Reich, überprüft werden. Dieses Modell impliziert, dass hohe Diskontraten in Zeiten politischer Instabilität Herrscher dazu verleiten rücksichtslosere Finanzregime zu errichten. Die Belege fiskalischer Reformen während des Übergangs Roms von der Republik zum Prinzipat scheinen diese Hypothese zu unterstützen. Trotzdem ist dieser Zusammenhang unter Historikern immer noch Anlass für Diskussionen. Ägyptens Übergang vom hellenistischen Königreich zur römischen Provinz unter dem Prinzipat stellt einen analogen Fall dar, für den allerdings bessere Daten zur Verfügung stehen. Im Einklang mit der Hypothese von Levi zeigt sich auch hier ein Zusammenhang zwischen Diskontrate und Finanzregimen.' (Autorenreferat)'This paper investigates what determines fiscal institutions and the burden of taxation using a case study from ancient history. It evaluates Levi's model of taxation in the Roman Republic, according to which rulers' high discount rates in periods of political instability encourage them to adopt a more predatory fiscal regime. The evidence for fiscal reform in the transition from the Republic to the Principate seems to support her hypothesis but remains a matter of debate among historians. Egypt's transition from a Hellenistic kingdom to a Roman province under the Principate provides an analogous case for which there are better data. The Egyptian evidence shows a correlation between rulers' discount rates and fiscal regimes that is consistent with Levi's hypothesis.' (author's abstract

Salus Patriae: Public Health and the Roman State

The Romans had a term for public health, salus publica, which was frequently invoked in a political context, but the concept is rarely discussed in historical studies of Roman political ideology, medicine, or infrastructure. This dissertation offers a diachronic analysis of the development of the term from the middle Republic to the beginning of the third century CE using four case studies: Senatorial responses to epidemic disease, the construction of aqueducts, the state recognition of medical authorities, and the healthcare of the military. While medical theory and hydraulic technology are relevant throughout, in each case changes in the abstract and concrete meaning of salus publica are more closely tied to broader political and social changes including the expansion of the empire, the self-presentation of the emperor, and the role of the individual citizen in the Roman state