Requisitioned Transport in the Roman Empire: A New Inscription from Pisidia

Abstract

To appreciate the importance which the Romans attached to transport and communications we need surely look no further than the roads which they built. To the modern observer this gigantic network of highways, which was not to be equalled or surpassed before the present century, is one of the most telling symbols of the control which Rome exercised throughout her empire, and of the organization which was imposed on it. The traffic which they carried has attracted less attention, but is clearly no less worthy of consideration. The roads of the empire had been designed and built to suit the state's needs, above all those of its armies, and one would reasonably expect the government to have devoted as much care and attention to the means by which goods and personnel were transported along them as it had to building them in the first place. Even if the sources were silent, and they are not, we could readily assume that post horses and carriages, pack and draft animals, and all the other paraphernalia of a state transport system would be needed at all times both for the use of civilian and military officials, and for the carriage of supplies and provisions. Under the empire the burden of providing this transport fell largely on the subject communities of Italy and the provinces, and the complaints of these communities against the unauthorized seizure of men, animals, waggons, hospitality in billets and other facilities for state transport form a recurrent theme in Roman history. Although authors of the republican period frequently refer to such requisitions, our information for the system by which this transport was provided and organized comes largely from a long series of imperial documents, beginning in the reign of Tiberius and culminating in a group of rescripts from the emperors of the fourth and early fifth centuries collected in book vm of the Theodosian Code.