Ian Haynes. Blood of the Provinces

In this excellent monograph, Ian Haynes offers a comprehensive study of the Roman auxiliary forces that builds on the substantial work of George Leonard Cheesman, Eric Birley, and Michael P. Speidel (to name a few) and deploys a formidable range of evidence: epigraphic, papyrological, archaeological, and literary, which places it among those rare volumes that consider the full range of evidence available. The book is not only about the auxilia. It considers the effect the presence of military forces had on the provinces in which they were based and how their presence influenced the development of provincial society (not to be confused with “Romanization”). Haynes rightly supports the view that the Roman army was not a monolithic, homogenous entity, but actually was made up of separate provincial forces. After a useful introduction, which surveys previous work on the auxilia, the book is divided into seven main parts, with a total of twenty-two chapters. Part I considers the development of the auxilia in the period from Augustus to the Severans and how its soldiers gradually became incorporated into the Roman ethos and institutions through the granting of citizenship upon retirement. Indeed the whole point of the volume is to explore how a range of different peoples in the empire, defined by various rights and obligations, became part of the larger Roman Empire.

Ancient history · Citizenship · Empire · Ethos · Political science · Roman Empire · Classics · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies