Les longues marches des armées romaines. Reflets épigraphiques de la circulation des militaires dans la province d’Asie au IIIe siècle apr. J.-C.

Abstract

A famous dossier of inscriptions discovered within the territory of the Roman province of Asia provides evidence for the repeated abuse of power by Roman soldiers against civilians in the countryside during the later second and the first half of the 3rd century AD. Various interpretations of these texts, which contain petitions of local communities and responses by imperial authorities, have been offered. Thus, they have often been understood as expressions of a condition of military anarchy, which was thought to have been characteristic of the 3rd century crisis throughout the Empire. More recently, these texts have been described as mere products of a regional epigraphic habit in this period, and therefore irrelevant to the historical development of the phenomena they deplore. The present study, however, suggests to interpret this dossier in the context of the numerous inscriptions prompted by the effects of military traffic within the province of Asia, and to the substantial increase in the number of travelling soldiers during military expeditions to the East.