VIRI MILITARES OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE I - II CENTURIES: IMAGE AND CAREER

Abstract

The article deals with the complex problem of viri militares (military leaders for the most part) as a phenomenon of Roman ideological and social life. The relevance of the problem is due to its insuficient study with the obvious signiicance of its solution for understanding the state and political mechanisms of the early Roman Empire. In the conditions of the formation and development of the system of imperial autocracy, the commander's status remained for the carriers of republican traditions (which are still represented by representatives of the senatorial nobility) as one of the means of ensuring aristocratic identity. Meanwhile, the real content of the empire and the auspices for the highest magistrates in the era of the Principate is often replaced only by the appearance of full-fledged military leadership, now under the full control of the princeps. In this regard, in literary works, which are, in fact, the works of Roman historians, the expression vir militaris (viri militares -plural) and those close to it in meaning are a means of glorification in relation to the spokesmen of aristocratic views and a method of latent criticism of the imperial power. In the list of qualities attributed by the authors to the generals, allusions to the generals of the republican time are especially noticeable. On the other hand, the epigraphic data, analyzed in combination with the information contained in the literary-historical narrative, reveal signs of the community of commanders of the senatorial rank that apparently took shape with the beginning of the Principate. For the latter, it appears that military activity in the cursus honorum system (the standard senatorial career) was a kind of specialization. The рrinceps were sometimes forced to stimulate it, even despite the fact that some commanders fostered by the authorities could become a threat to the imperial autocracy. In the analyzed careers of representatives of the nobility, some regularities are found that show that most of those who eventually attained the status of governors of the militarized (imperial) provinces passed through the phases of vigintivirat (chiefly in the college of viokurs), laticlave tribunate, commanding a legion with the rank of imperial legate.