LATE ROMAN EMPIRE

THE ROMAN DOMINATE (ca. 284 - 476 CE)

Imperium Romanum (Latin, "Empire of the Romans")

Dominus (Latin, "Lord" or "Master")

 

For the purposes of military history, historians often divide the classical period of Imperial Rome into three time frames that help conceptualize the evolution of the Roman state and military. The Early Principate (25 BCE - 197 CE) was the initial dynamic phase, covered by its own gallery and notes herein, when the basic contours of the professional imperial army took shape. The Late Principate (198 - 283 CE) saw the gradual deterioration of both the Roman state and military, culminating in what historians refer to as the Third Century Crisis (235 - 284 CE), a series of cataclysmic events that nearly led to the collapse of the empire. The exigencies of this time period reshaped the Roman state and military, and although politically the era is still known as part of the Principate, it is often treated separately. The Roman Dominate (284 - 476 CE) was a period of restoration and recovery that transformed the late Roman state and military into very different forms from those that characterized the Principate. Basically, the state became more highly centralized, the bureaucracy more oppressive, and the military more defensive and reactive. Although this retrenching saved the empire from immediate collapse, the Romans continued to face severe challenges—environmental, social, political, and martial. The term "Dominate" comes from the Latin, dominus ("lord" or "master"), the title adopted by late Roman emperors that typifies the naked display of power and self-aggrandizement that characterized the late Roman autocracy (compare this with the innocuous-sounding princeps civitatis ("first citizen") of the Principate). The army pictured here is that of the emperor Flavius Julius Valens, called Valens (328 - 378 CE), at the Battle of Hadrianopolis/Adrianople (9 August 378 CE). For me, this battle is a microcosm that illustrates perfectly the difficulties of interpretation when analyzing the army of the Dominate, the operation of the late classical Roman state, and the phenomenon of the Fall of the Roman Empire. This battle was certainly one of Rome's greatest military disasters that set off a chain of events that ultimately led to the destabilization of the West Empire, and early modern historians once pointed to this battle as an example of late Roman military weakness, extrapolating from this a weakness in the empire's defenses that left the empire open to attack by various martially dynamic opponents. I will discuss this battle in more detail under the "History in Depth" section for this gallery, but suffice it to say here that I think this view is false. The Battle of Hadrianopolis was a crushing defeat for the Romans, but it was not the result of a weak martial system, and it was no worse than disasters suffered by other Roman armies during periods with supposedly superior systems (e.g., the battles of Cannae (216 BCE), Teutoberg Wald (9 CE), and Carrhae (53 BCE)). What had changed was the empire's ability to bounce back from such disasters. Ultimately, the western half of the empire, administratively separate from the eastern half throughout most of the Dominate, never fully recovered from the Third Century Crisis and eventually collapsed, the last West Roman emperor being deposed in 476 CE. The West Roman Empire (Patres Occidentalis, "Fatherland of the West") was then succeeded by a number of Romanized Germanic successor states. The restructuring of the Roman state and military under the Dominate was completely successful in preserving the eastern half of the empire—the East Empire (Patres Orientalis, "Fatherland of the East") had always been the more economically developed, urban, and dynamic half of the empire, and it had a long tradition of autocratic governments that laid the groundwork for the Dominate. Although the inhabitants of the East Empire continued to think of themselves as Romans, and the East Roman state was the direct successor of the Dominate, the native Hellenistic culture and Greek language that dominated in the eastern Mediterranean reasserted itself quickly. Thus, historians generally use the name "Byzantine Empire" (474 - 1453 CE) to distinguish between the medieval imperial Roman state and the classical imperial Roman state. The term "Byzantine" comes from the original name of the Eastern Empire's capital, Constantinople—the emperor Constantine I (306 - 337 CE) re-founded the ancient Greek city of Byzantium as the eponymous Constantinople in 324 CE, making it the new capital of the empire. Historians debate placement of the date that marks the division between the Late Roman/Dominate and Early Byzantine periods, but I prefer to mark it with the reign of the eastern emperor Flavius Zeno (474-491 CE), who formally abolished the east-west division of the empire in 480 CE, acknowledging the end of the Western Empire.

 

Although the army of the Dominate was of the same genus as the army of the Principate, it was a different species. The situation is muddied considerably by the fact that the army of the Dominate continued to use many of the same terms inherited from the Principate (e.g., legiones, auxilia, vexillationes), regardless of any functional, tactical, or organizational similarities or dissimilarities. For example, there are formations called legiones that could be either crack units in an emperor's entourage (palatini or comitatenses) or a poorly equipped and trained border unit (limitanei). There are also newly minted designations (e.g., candidati, palatini, cuneus, and scholae) for which there are no precedents in the army of the Principate, and for which there is little or no contemporary explanation. Although much maligned by many early modern historians, there is no evidence that this army was any less formidable than its predecessors (and better than some). Indeed, the expanded role of cavalry in this army, as well as relatively lightly equipped, fast-moving infantry, greatly increased its mobility and tactical flexibility. If one wants to understand the phenomenon of the Fall of the Roman Empire, one needs to look for more complex explanations than military failure in the face of mounting barbarian attacks. The Roman army of this period still relied on a core of close-order close combat infantry, although the cavalry arm was both expanded and diversified. Most infantry (milites) formations of the mobile armies (comitatenses) had a paper strength of around 1,000 fighting men, while cavalry (equites) and frontier units (both infantry and cavalry) tended to vary more in size. These units were a fifth of the size of Principate legions and only double the size of Principate auxiliary cohorts, but they were designed to be highly mobile, quick-reaction forces. They could operate alone to repel relatively small-scale raids or to police the provinces, but the deployment of the constituent elements of this army was dispersed, allowing Roman emperors to quickly cobble together larger armies in trouble spots as needed (essentially, units in a given region of the empire would swarm to a muster point in response to some crisis, then move out as a combined force). Period artistic conventions and the poor state of archeological finds from this period make speaking in certainties about this army impossible. It is believed that soldiers of the imperial field armies were better armed and armored than those of the border armies, but this does not always seem to have been the case. There is some evidence that Roman soldiers continued to be armored primarily in mail or scale corselets, although artistic conventions of the time often show Roman soldiers wearing no armor (these may or may not be accurate portrayals, and there is some evidence to suggest armor may have sometimes been worn under the new uniform coats worn by most late Roman soldiers). Cavalry was of much greater importance to this army than to its predecessors. Contrary to the infantrymen, cavalrymen are often shown armored, especially the new units of extra heavy cavalry known alternatively as clibanarii ("oven-men") or cataphractarii ("enclosed-men")—both men and horses in these units being heavily armored (the heavy armor causing their wearers to bake in the hot sun, hence "oven-men," and being "enclosed" in armor). There were also many more units of light cavalry skirmishers, armed either with bows (equites sagittarii) or javelins (equites promoti). The standard shield for Roman infantry and most close combat cavalry was a relatively large, flat oval shield called a scutum (during the Principate, this term was reserved for the specialized legionary shield, but by the Dominate it seems to have become a general term that simply meant "large shield"). Equites promoti and some infantry skirmishers usually carried a much smaller round shield called a clipeus (once again, this is an imperfect holdover from the Principate, when the clipeus was an oval shield used by the auxiliaries, but by the Dominate the term seems to have simply meant "small shield"). Although hand-to-hand melee was still preceded by a shower of missiles for most close combat infantry and close combat cavalry, the compliment of javelins was gradually supplanted by long-range weighted darts (plumbatae), and both infantry bowmen and horse archers generally made up a larger proportion of any army. The classic Roman short sword (gladius) of the Principate was replaced by a longer sword (spatha) that had its origins with the cavalry of the Principate (probably based on Celtic and/or Germanic long sword designs), but which was now carried by both infantry and cavalry (although some infantrymen carried a shorter sword called a semispatha). Barbarians (Greek, barbaros, "babblers") were increasingly recruited into the regular army, hired as mercenaries (Latin, numeri, "numbers"), or settled on disused land within the empire as federated subjects (foederati)—indeed, the "barbarization" of the Roman army was pronounced. This is often cited as a sign of Late Roman military weakness—the loyalty of barbarians in Roman service being held suspect—but careful observation of the evidence often shows that federates during this period were usually more loyal to the Roman state than were the citizen units of the regular army and (especially) the Roman nobility. My personal opinion is that the failure of the Late Roman state to successfully integrate these immigrants, due to cultural and ethnic chauvinism, combined with internal Roman social instability (particularly the contentious shift from paganism to Christianity), demographic shifts (i.e., population loss from famine and disease), and the machinations of the nobility (aimed at avoiding the paying of taxes and making plays for the throne), are stronger indices of the growing weakness of the Late Roman state, especially in the west.

 

The army of the Dominate was characterized by a strategy of defense-in-depth, with a string of local militia armies (limitanei, "border men") to patrol the borders and protect against small-scale raids, and several imperial field armies (comitatenses, "companions") based at strategic locations within the empire, whose job was to maintain order (i.e., guard against rebellion) and to reinforce the border forces in case of serious invasions (of which there were many). The only large concentrations of troops were near the person(s) of the emperor(s), directly under his/their command. It was thus an army that required strong leadership at the top in order to operate effectively, but when ably led by emperors such as Diocletian (284 - 305 CE), Constantine I (307 - 337 CE), and Julian (360 - 363 CE), it remained one of the best fighting forces on the planet. During the Principate, competent sub-commanders at all levels were often able to compensate for the failings of incompetent superiors (up to and including the emperor), but during the Dominate sub-commanders often lacked both the ability to operate effectively on their own (the system was designed to give each commander very limited access to resources) and the inclination to do so (there was a well-founded fear that performing too well would attract the ire of the emperor and/or members of the imperial court, giving rivals an opportunity to use imperial paranoia against the too-successful commander). Finally, demographic and environmental changes in Europe and the Mediterranean weakened the empire's strategic posture during the Dominate. The desertification of North Africa, both due to global climate change and overly intensive farming practices, gradually reduced grain production in what had been the empire's bread basket, while a cooling trend in the Northern Hemisphere also made other areas of the empire less productive due to shorter growing seasons. Taken in conjunction with the demographic stresses of the period (massive death tolls from earthquakes, famine, disease, and war), the empire faced difficulties in raising and supplying troops that simply did not exist during the Principate.  

 

This was a fun army to model. Aesthetically and tactically, the army of the Dominate was heavily influenced by the ascendant power of the Sassanian Dynasty of Persia (224 - 651 CE), giving this army a very distinct appearance. The Sassanians pioneered the use of uniforms and proto-heraldic devices—the Romans seem to have copied this from them and adapted it to their own aesthetics. This is also an army with a nice balance of different units, including some high-quality cavalry (also probably influenced by the Sassanians). This army is currently entirely made up of figures from Khurasan Miniatures. I love the action poses of the figures I used for the limitanei units—I really wish more 15mm figures manufacturers would develop lines with a variety of dynamic poses like this. The rest of the units are a little stiff, although there is a nice variety in equipment, and the Command unit has real character. Little Big Men Studios has several beautiful lines of shield transfers for the Late Roman army, and the large oval shields of the period really make a show.