Indiscipline in the Roman Army of the Late Republic and Principate

Abstract

The Roman military relied on consistent order and discipline on the part of soldiers and officers; there were formalized rules and laws to enforce it. Military behavior contrary to this formal order is called indiscipline/military disobedience. This chapter shows how careful reading of the ancient sources with an awareness of the approaches based in sociology reveals specific details about indiscipline that permit to discuss episodes with more certainty and clarity. It explores the different types of indiscipline: military conspiracy, mutiny, expression of grievances and insubordination. Mutinies presented a threat to officers, campaigns, and peace. Several mutinies in the late Republic resulted in the death of officers. The chapter presents a case study of indiscipline that illustrates how sociological approaches have improved the analysis and ability to explain indiscipline in the Roman army.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 25 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.