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Batavians on the Move: Emigrants, Immigrants and Returnees

2012; Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference; Issue: 2011 Linguagem: Inglês

10.16995/trac2011_115_122

2515-2289

C. van Driel-Murray,

Socioeconomic Development in Asia

Scholars of the Roman army have always been acutely aware of the continuous displacement experienced by military personnel.Tombstones, inscriptions and diplomas record the career mobility of officers, who changed stations every two to four years, accompanied by their families and households.Such transfers undoubtedly formed an important conduit for the spread of knowledge concerning lifestyle, fashion and the material expression of appropriate behaviour to far-flung provinces.During campaigns whole armies criss-crossed the Empire, leaving individuals stranded in unlikely stations.Fifty years ago, Professor Jules Bogaers charted the movements of the Legio X Gemina zigzagging between Spain, Carnuntum, Nijmegen and Vienna (Bogaers1960/61: Fig. 5), journeys which help explain the appalling mortality amongst young recruits which coloured Saller and Shaw's grim view of soldiers' personal lives (Saller and Shaw 1984).Similar demographic effects are recorded in the early deaths of the Batavian lifeguard in Rome, but rather than illustrating a 'lack of family life' such monuments bear witness to the high mortality following forced marches and transfers to new environments (Bellen 1981).Auxiliary units were equally mobile.Maarten de Weerd ( 2006) has shown that the Batavian units operated outside the lower Rhineland almost continuously throughout the first century.Britain was their arena for much of the later first century, but by the time of Trajan most had been deployed along the Danube and in Dacia.From this point on, the conventional view is that replacements would be found locally and the ethnic character of the Batavian units would gradually wither.Conversely, forts along the Rhine would be expected to draw increasingly on recruits from the surrounding tribes.The concept of 'local recruitment' has achieved almost universal acceptance and is the basis for many of our ideas concerning military deployment, strategy and demography.But is it true?Here I will attempt a reconsideration of the 'local recruitment' thesis in particular with regard to the Batavian units.These are especially well studied, and though I believe a wider case can be made for continuing ethnic recruitment, with the regular transfer of men-and indeed women-to distant garrisons, it may be that this particular tribe is exceptional.In an impressive analysis of the epigraphic evidence for the development of Batavian concepts of ethnic identity and the motivation leading to its public display, Ton Derks (2009: 262) argues convincingly that the neighbouring tribes-Cugerni, Ubii and even the Treveri-did indeed lose their tribal consciousness by the end of the first century, and this may in fact also be true of the Cohors I Batavorum which remained in Britain. Local recruitment?The travels of a single Batavian family are illustrative: in A.D. 113 the Batavian M. Ulpius Fronto was discharged from the milliary Cohors I Batavorum, then stationed in Pannonia