56 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Similarly, the claim in a passage of panegyric by Velleius ( Hist. 2.126)
that the countryside was free from fear of banditry should not be taken too
literally. Even in Italy a Roman eques could vanish with his entourage when
on a journey (Pliny, Ep. 6.25) and in less accessible areas of the empire,
where mountains, deserts or swamps provided havens for the outlaw,
brigandage remained rife; the arrest of bandits was a major concern for city
authorities in Asia Minor in the 130s ( Digest 48.3.6.1). It is possible that
some of these robbers had an added role as symbols of the discontent of the
peasantry with their masters and with Rome. In the late second century a
certain Claudius in Palestine and an army deserter called Bulla Felix in Italy
are reported to have achieved remarkable feats against the Roman
establishment; Bulla is said to have demanded food for the poor (Dio
77.10.5). In Judaea, fi nds of numerous underground hiding complexes
within village settlements may suggest local support for outlaws. But
whether bandits in general acted as the champions of the oppressed, or
popular opinion (or romantic fi ction) simply portrayed them as such, cannot
be discovered.^2
Neither urban riots nor rural violence enter the literary sources except
occasionally. Rather more frequently mentioned, because a much greater
threat to the Roman order, are national revolts that required full- scale
military actions for suppression. Roman writers rarely expatiate on such
rebellions by peoples already regarded as conquered. Reconquest was
treated as a policing matter that brought little glory. Augustus’ propaganda
is silent about operations in Spain in 26–25 BC because the pacifi cation of
the province had been celebrated just before. Tacitus is explicit that Tiberius
played down the signifi cance of the Frisian revolt ( Ann. 4.74.1). It is not
always possible to tell whether an apparently national rebellion was in fact
an action by a Roman aristocrat whose provincial origin was held against
him by his enemies, as may be the case with the uprising led by Vindex in AD
68.^3 The boundaries may be unclear in the sources between a peasant protest
at the extortion of taxes (when the main aim may simply be pillage), a
campaign of violent rampage by a group of brigands, and a full- scale war
aimed at the recovery of liberty from Roman rule. An inscription referring
to military action against provincials, or archaeological evidence of
widespread urban destruction, or a regional programme of reconstruction
could refer to any or all of these phenomena. Provincial unrest could be
fomented by an outside power, most obviously in the backing given to the
false Neros by Parthia in the late fi rst century, or, more often, by a deviant
Roman offi cial seeking power for himself through civil war. Any combination
of such factors may indeed have contributed to any one episode.^4
Nonetheless, despite such problems in analysing the evidence, good
grounds remain to suppose that provincial revolts against Rome were a
frequent threat in the fi rst century of the Principate and a continuing, if rare,
problem thereafter. Revolts were mostly sudden and seem often to have
taken the Romans by surprise. The provincials concerned were evidently