Table Of ContentEXPLORATIO
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EXPLORATIO
Military and political intelligence in the
Roman world from the Second Punic War
to the battle of Adrianople
NJ.E. Austin and N.B. Rankov
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LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 1995 by Routledge
Published 2014 by Routledge
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OXl 4 4RN
711 Third A venue, New York, NY 1001 7 USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,an informa business
an informa business
First published in paperback 1998
Transferred to Digital Printing 2006
©1995 N.J.E. Austin and N.B. Rankov
Typeset in Baskerville 10/12 by Florencetype Ltd,
Stoodleigh, Devon
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-0-415-04945-0 (hbk)
ISBN 978-0-415-18301-7 (pbk)
ISBN 978-0-203-03305-0 (eISBN)
Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint
but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent
CONTENTS
listefF~m ~
list efP lates vu
l'reface
1x
Abbrev£ations
x1
1 INTRODUCTION: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL l
2 THE HOSTILE HORIZON: STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE 12
3 MAKING CONTACT: TACTICAL INTELLIGENCE 39
4 GROPING TOWARDS EMPIRE: THE REPUBLIC 87
5 THE VIEW FROM ROME: THE EMPEROR'S
PERSPECTIVE 109
6 FACING FACTS: THE GOVERNOR A.'JD HIS OFFIC/UA1 142
7 THE WATCH ON THE FRONTIER: THE GOVERNOR'S
PERSPECTIVE 17 0
8 BRIDGING THE GAP: EMPERORS ON THE
FRONTIERS 185
9 HIERARCHIES OF INTELLIGENCE: THE FOURTH
CENTURY 214
10 FULL CYCLE: THE DEVELOPMENT OF ROMAN
INTELLIGENCE 244
Notes 256
BibliograpJry 263
GeneralI ndex 269
Index efS ources 285
FIGURES
=
[Talbert RJ.A. Talbert (ed.), Atlas of ClassicalH istory (London/New York,
1985); Wacher = J. Wacher (ed.), The Roman World,V ol. I (London/New York,
1987)]
1 The Roman Empire on the eve of Caesar's conquest
of Gaul (after Talbert, p. 102) 96-7
2 Plans of governors' palaces at:
(a) London (after P. Marsden, Roman London
(London, 1980), p. 91) 163
(b) Cologne (after G. Wolff, Das ramisch-germanischKed ln
(Koln, 1981), Abb. 81, p. 162) 164
(c) Carnuntum (after A. Obermayr,
RomerstadtC arnuntum( Wien/Munchen, 1967), p. 252) 165
(d) Aquincum (after J. Szilagyi, Aquincum (Budapest/Berlin,
1956), Beilage II (opposite p. 24)) 166
(e) Lambaesis (the principiaa, fter Y Le Bohec, la troisieme
legionA uguste( Paris, 1989), Fig. 5 7, p. 4 20) 167
3 The limes Porolissensi(sa fter Wacher, Fig. 8.27, p. 183) 182
4 The Roman Empire in AD 214 (after Talbert, pp. 17 ~ 1) 186-7
5 The Roman Empire in AD 314 (after Talbert, pp. 176-7) 216-17
6 Britain (after Wacher, Fig. 9.1, p. 200) 247
7 The Lower German limes (after Wacher, Fig. 8.4, p. 146) 248
8 The Rhine-Danube limes (after Talbert, p. 140) 249
9 The Danubian limes (after Wacher, Fig. 8.30, p. 189) 250
10 Dacia (after Wacher, Fig. 8.26, p. 181) 251
11 The eastern frontier (after Talbert, p. 162) 252
12 Egypt (after Wacher, Fig. 10.1, p. 224) 253
13 Mauretania Caesariensis, Numidia and Africa Proconsularis
(after Wacher, Fig. 10.14, p. 253) 254
14 Mauretania Tingitana (after Wacher, Fig. 10.7 , p. 240) 255
PLATES
1 The northern frontier: Hadrian's Wall at Walltown Crags (photoN .B. Rankov)
2 The eastern frontier: a view across the Euphrates from Dura Europos (photo
Ruhard Stoneman)
3 Trajan's Column (scene ix): the mushroom message. A man fallen from a mule
grasps at what appears to be a large mushroom attached to his saddle; this is
perhaps the incident referred to in Dio LXVIII 8.1 (see p. 65) (photoG erman
Archaeologicalnl stitut.eR, ome)
4 Segment II of the PeutingerT able,a copy of a fourth-century map of the world
showing routes, rivers, natural features and towns, and also marking distances
between stages. This segment depicts Germany, part of Gaul, the Alps and
Liguria in northern Italy and, at the bottom, part of North Africa (seep. 115)
(photoO sterrdchischNea tionalbibliothekV, ienna)
5 A wooden writing-tablet of the late first/ early second century AD found at
Vindolanda, just south of Hadrian's Wall. It contains what may be an
intelligence report from the field describing British cavalry and their method
of fighting (Tab. Vindol.I I 164; see pp. 171-2) (photoT he Trusf£ese ft he British
Museum)
6 Trajan's Column (scene xxxvii): two exploratoregse sture to the emperor Trajan
to follow them during a campaign of the First Dacian War against the
Roxolani (photoG ermanA rchaeologicIanl stitute,R ome)
7 Memorial of Tiberius Claudius Maxim us, who, as a junior officer of exploratores,
captured the body of the Dacian king Decebalus whose suicide is shown on
the relief panel. Found at Philippi in Macedonia (AE 1969/70.583; seep. 190)
(photoP ref.M .P. Speide~
8 Trajan's Column (scene cxlv): the death of Decebalus. The rider just failing
to prevent the suicide can now be identified as the exploratoTr iberius Claudius
Maximus (see Plate 7) (photoG ermanA rchaeologicaInl stitute,R ome)
9 ,A.ltar dedication of the ExploratioH alic(ensis)d ated to the reign of Severus
Alexander (AD 222-35). Found at the Feldbergkastell in Germany (GIL XIII
74 95 = ILS 9185; see p. 192) (SaalburgM useum;p hotoN .JE. Austin)
10 A beneficiarius-Iancfeo und alongside a group of beneficiarius-inscriptionisn the
sacred enclosure at Osterburken on the Upper German frontier (see p. 200)
(photoL andesdenkmalamBta den-Wiirtt.emberg)
Vll
PLATES
11 The insignia and command of the dux Britanniarum( Duke of the Britains),
as listed in the Notitia Dignitatum,a n administrative document of the early
fifth century preserved in a number of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century copies
(Not.Dig0. cc.X L). The Duke has under his command the prefect of a numerus
exploratorumb ased at Lavatris (Bowes) (photoT he BodleianL ibrary, O:efordM, S.
Canon.M isc. 3 78 >fa ls J 64v-l 65r)
Vlll
PREFACE
Exploratio has had a long genesis. Too long, perhaps; but given the facility
of humans to shift responsibility, an explanation in our case would be that
conditions within the Universities in the 1980s and 1990s have been directly or
indirectly to blame. But for its two authors the subject has retained its freshness,
fascination and even controversy as the ramifications of what we were working
on have widened.
The idea for the book arose out of Norman Austin's doctoral thesis on the
military knowledge of Ammianus Marcellinus for the University of London.
The thesis was subsequently modified into a book Ammianuso n Waifare,p ublished
in the Collection Latomus in 1979. Work on the new project was slowed by his
move to New Zealand and the inevitable upheaval such things occasion in
domestic and academic affairs. A Commonwealth Study Grant in 1981 held
at the Institute of Classical Studies in London gave very great impetus to the
project's revival, and first public exposures of some of its ideas took place
at 'work-in-progress' seminars there and at the University of Nottingham,
and subsequently elsewhere in developing forms. An apparently simple ques
tion from the chairman of the London seminar, Professor Fergus Millar, turned
out in effect to be seminal in the longer term: he asked, 'What evidence is there
for the existence of a filing cabinet marked Intelligencien a provincial governor's
headquarters?'
That question started to be answered properly only as the result of
the completely coincidental meeting with Boris Rankov over a desk at the British
School at Rome in I 985. He was in the last stages of writing his Oxford doctoral
thesis on the beneficiarici onsularis,a nd what started out as social conversation
about each other's work rapidly became close discussion and eventually collab
oration, since what Norman Austin was looking for was material linking
intelligence to administration, and Boris Rankov for some aspects of the work
the beneficiarwii ere doing out on station. Boris Rankov's work on the intelligence
project was subjected to stresses in turn by a move first to Western Australia,
with comparable domestic and academic pressures, and then back to Britain.
He too has exposed central parts of the project to a number of seminars
in Oxford, London and Australia.
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