Bucellarius

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Bucellarius (also buccelarius or buccellarius ;. Pl bucellarii , buccelarii or buccellarii ) means a member of in the late Roman existing time (usually mounted) household troops , the individual commanders and partly talking also individuals.

Surname

The word bucellarius is derived from the late Latin bucca (bite) or buccella (bread roll). According to the historian Olympiodoros of Thebes , soldiers have been called colloquially since the time of Emperor Honorius (around 400) because of the food they preferred, but the name also appears in the official Notitia dignitatum . Originally they were only bodyguards and not necessarily limited to the military.

Origin and development

The beginnings of these troops may be partly due to the Germanic allegiance , which could have seeped more and more into the imperial military in late Roman times. However, older research since Otto Seeck has probably exaggerated this aspect, as the bucellarii phenomenon was to be found throughout the empire. In addition, privately raised troops had already existed in Republican times, as the example of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus shows. Overall, recent research has taken a much more differentiated position on the problem of the “barbarization” of the imperial army and considers many phenomena today to be originally Roman, which were previously attributed to Germanic influence.

The strength of the troops consisting of bucellarii , which also had a fixed ranking system, could be numerically considerable. The Eastern Roman general Belisarius is said to have had 7,000 bucellarii in the 6th century , but to a lesser extent Stilicho and Aëtius also had such household troops before him . Up until the time of Honorius , these troops consisted only of Romans, but in the following period foreign mercenaries often served in such groups.

Numerous problems were associated with the bucellarii : Patronage of this kind by individual military personnel posed a not inconsiderable risk for the state authorities. In the course of the migration of peoples , in which the western Roman state was weakened more and more, the bucellarii enabled ambitious military masters , often their own To pursue politics (see the example of Aetius). In the internal disputes in the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, the bond between the bucellarii and their patron and commander played a not insignificant role. How much these associations represented a concrete threat to the emperor is, however, controversial in recent research.

Even wealthy landowners, like the Apions in Egypt, maintained real private armies on their extensive estates. Apparently the estates were a primary source of recruitment, which explains why not only the military but also private individuals were initially able to dispose of bucellarii . The increase in the number of these private troops, which actually clearly violated the law, caused the Eastern Roman Emperor Leo I to expressly forbid private individuals to maintain such units around 460 . The bucellarii of the high imperial officers were excluded from this . In the Eastern Roman army , bucellarii were additionally dug up for campaigns in the 6th century and used there as elite groups; Until around 580 they were not paid for by the imperial treasury but by their respective commander; Under Emperor Maurikios at the latest , they were then integrated into the regular army and henceforth paid by the state. From the remains of the Bucellarii, the theme Bukellarion was founded in the 8th century .

Even in the Germanic successor states in the west, bucellarii initially continued to exist after the fall of West Rome . Even in the Visigoths they were legally fully recognized as a private institution. They appear, among other things, in Franconian associations, which in the early days of late antiquity (5th / 6th centuries) of the Merovingian Empire were apparently still equipped and organized in a similar way to Roman troops. These bucellarii probably played a kind of mediating role between late Roman military institutions and Germanic- early medieval “vassals”, even if numerous detailed problems make a precise classification difficult.

literature

  • Okko Behrends :  buccelarius. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 4, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1981, ISBN 3-11-006513-4 , pp. 28–31.
  • Hans-Joachim Diesner : The Bucellariertum of Stilicho and Sarus up to Aetius (454/55) . In: Klio 54, 1972, pp. 321-350.
  • JHWG Liebeschuetz : The End of the Roman Army in the Western Empire . In: Ders .: Decline and Change in Late Antiquity . Aldershot 2006, chap. 10 (the collection of articles is only numbered according to the original page numbers of the articles).
  • Oliver Schmitt: The Bucellarii. A study of military allegiance in late antiquity. In: Tyche 9, 1994, pp. 147-174.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Cf. Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange : Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae Latinitatis . Vol. 1, Frankfurt a. M. 1710, col. 703f., Online ; Codex Theodosianus 14, 17, 5.
  2. ↑ Olympiodorus, fragment 7.
  3. ↑ Notitia dignitatum omnium, tam civilium quam militarium, in partibus Orientis 7: Comites catafractarii Bucellarii iuniores .
  4. ↑ See Claudian , In Rufinum , 2, 76f. The term has been interpreted quite differently in research, see Behrends, p. 28ff.
  5. ↑ Otto Seeck : Bucellarii . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume III, 1, Stuttgart 1897, Col. 934-939.
  6. ^ Prokopios of Caesarea , bella , 7, 1.
  7. ↑ See Liebeschuetz, Chapter 10, p. 269.
  8. ^ Itzhak F. Fikhman: Economy and society in late ancient Egypt: Small writings . Edited by Andrea Jörgens. Steiner, Stuttgart 2006, pp. 125f.
  9. ↑ See Behrends, p. 29.
  10. ↑ So-called lex Iulia de vi publica seu privata
  11. ↑ Codex Iustinianus 9, 12, 10.
  12. ↑ Behrends, p. 29.
  13. ↑ This at least suggests Prokopios, bella , 5, 12.