Session organisers / Chairpersons:
S. Thomas Parker, North Carolina State University,Raleigh, USA (E-mail: thomas_parker@ncsu.edu)
Scholars have long debated the identity of these enigmatic frontier forces in the late Roman period. Who were these so-called “second-class troops” (viz. the comitatenses)? When, if ever, did these limitanei evolve into a kind of “peasant militia”? What was their military mission and how effectively did they perform this role? To what if any degree were they logistically self-supporting from their own lands versus externally supplied? The rather scanty documentary sources on these frontier soldiers are often seemingly contradictory but there is a growing amount of archaeological evidence (especially botanical and faunal) from various frontiers that significantly supplements and may well challenge traditional portraits drawn from the documentary evidence. It also seems likely that the nature of the limitanei varied among the far-flung frontiers of the Roman empire. This session invites papers from all imperial frontiers that may shed light on this question.
Confirmed participants for this session:
- S. Thomas Parker: New Evidence about the limitanei on Rome’s Arabian frontier
- Alan Rushworth: Limitanei: the African perspective
- Rob Collins: Landscapes of the Limitanei at the Northern Edge of Empire