put into effect the decisions of the Roman government? The Roman magistrates had immediate agents in their staff of strong-arm men, errand-runners,
and announcers. But these were few, and it is only in the command of real soldiers, given to him by his imperium, that the executive power of the Roman
official eventually lay.
The army was not exclusively deployed in the remoter or more barbarous provinces. True, in the mid second century Britain had three, the Rhine four, and
the Danube ten of Rome's twenty-eight legions; but most of these were placed, even in this period when the frontiers were hardening, so that they
commanded large areas of province as well as foreign soil; and before the Flavian period even more legionary bases were within the Empire. Detachments
from these legions or auxiliary troops were anyway widely dispersed through the provinces, especially in their capitals. In the East the nine legions (above
all in Egypt) were positioned even more clearly with control of the local populace in mind; and settled Africa and Spain both retained a legion each.
Besides these, in coastal or riverine cities there were large naval bases. Rome had its own huge, complex garrison. Wherever the Emperor was there was a
large body of troops. There were always soldiers moving from one detachment to another, above all on the great roads connecting frontier areas-living off
the land by permission, by the generosity of local magnates, or by extortion, with their privileges (only military courts tried soldiers) and the needs of
imperial security to justify even their crimes. 'Your teeth are shattered?', asks Juvenal, 'Face hectically inflamed, with great black welts? You know the
doctor wasn't too optimistic about the eye that was left. But it's not a bit of good your running to the courts about it. If you've been beaten up by a soldier,
better keep it to yourself (16. 10 ff.). The government of the Roman Empire was what we would call military rule.
It would have been hard, indeed, for the Roman Empire to be run on any other system. Even the civil services of modern states, like the British, have often
developed from military models, retaining, for example, the concept of leave. There were few possible structures of authority available that could cope
with the scale involved in Roman administration: the city-state had already proved an inadequate institution for world government, and the authority of the
patriarchal family was too limited. Participatory institutions there were, like the cartels which undertook the public contracts described above or collegiate
organizations of city populations, worshippers, artisans, and so on; and all these bodies played a part in imperial rule, since through representatives they
could deal with the rulers of the state, make petitions, and receive replies; through their privileges and corporate influence security might be maintained in
sensitive areas like the larger cities of the Empire. But none of these offered the convenient, disciplined, extensive structure of the army, and so the army
came to have the public image we have just seen in Juvenal. Using its own courts, answerable only to itself, privileged and greedy, it became a tyrannical
force because it was omnipresent in government.
Soldiers were involved in public building; they surveyed land; they manned the customs posts at provincial boundaries; and their value to the collection of
other taxes is sufficiently demonstrated by the fact that they were from time to time forbidden to take part in it. During the second century a secret service
of government spies, the so-called 'grain militia' (frumentarii) came into being, the predecessors of the sinisterly bland agentes in rebus of the later Empire.
Examples could easily be multiplied, but it is enough to end by referring to the vivid testimony of two papyrus lists of soldiers' duties, in one happy case
referring not to atypical Egypt, but to the Danube. From Moesia we hear of soldiers with corn-shipments, on mine duty, requisitioning horses, running
prisons; and from Egypt of harbour-dredging work, duty at the mint, at the paper factory (so essential to Egyptian administration), and on general river-
guard duty, a police activity further illuminated by the countryside surveillance attested in a new document of this kind. Altogether there were few places
in the Empire where it will have been odd to meet a soldier. 'To the soldier, at his demand-500 drachmae' is a typical note in the pathetic list of protection
payments made by a wretched Egyptian subject of this government. In this at least the Egyptians were by no means unusual.
Administration Household-Style
Most governmental actions were undertaken by a very few people in every ancient state. Ancient government "was top-heavy, in that a great deal of what
seems to us mundane -work was done by the men with most authority; there was relatively little delegation or selection of business. In the Roman Empire
in the second century A.D. only some hundred or so men actually held imperium by direct grant or delegation at any one time: on them in thory fell the