page_title: Late Roman army
section_title: Danubian military junta
hierarchical_section_title: Late Roman army / Evolution of the 4th-century army / Danubian military junta
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Roma, esterno delle mura Aureliane tra porta san Sebastiano e porta Ardeatina (viale di Porta Ardeatina) English: The Aurelian walls between Porta San Sebastiano and Porta Ardeatina (Viale di Porta Ardeatina)
context_page_description: In modern scholarship, the "late" period of the Roman army begins with the accession of the Emperor Diocletian in AD 284, and ends in 476 with the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, being roughly coterminous with the Dominate. During the period 395–476, the army of the Roman Empire's western half progressively disintegrated, while its counterpart in the East, known as the East Roman army remained largely intact in size and structure until the reign of Justinian I.
  The Imperial Roman army of the Principate underwent a significant transformation as a result of the chaotic 3rd century. Unlike the army of the Principate, the army of the 4th century was heavily dependent on conscription and its soldiers were paid much less than in the 2nd century. Barbarians from outside the empire probably supplied a much larger proportion of the late army's recruits than in the army of the 1st and 2nd centuries, but there is little evidence that this adversely affected the army's combat performance.
  Scholarly estimates of the size of the 4th-century army diverge widely, ranging from ca. 400,000 to over one million effectives.
context_section_description: By the 3rd century, Romanised Illyrians and Thracians, mostly primipilares and their descendants, came to dominate the army's senior officer echelons. Finally, the Danubian officer-class seized control of the state itself. In 268, the emperor Gallienus (ruled 260–68) was overthrown by a coup d'état organised by a clique of Danubian senior officers, including his successors Claudius II Gothicus and Aurelian (270–75). They and their successors Probus (276–82) and Diocletian (ruled 284–305) and his colleagues in the Tetrarchy formed a sort of self-perpetuating military junta of Danubian officers who were born in the same provinces (several in the same city, Sirmium, a major legionary base in Moesia Superior) and/or had served in the same regiments.
  The Junta reversed the military disasters of 251–71 with a string of victories, most notably the defeat at Naissus of a vast Gothic army by Claudius II, which was so crushing that the Goths did not seriously threaten the empire again until a century later at Adrianople (378).
  The Illyrian emperors or Danubian emperors were especially concerned with the depopulation of the border provinces due to plague and barbarian invasions during the Crisis. The problem was especially acute in their own Danubian home provinces, where much arable land had fallen out of cultivation through lack of manpower. The depopulation was thus a serious threat to army recruitment and supply. In response, the Danubian Junta pursued an aggressive policy of resettling defeated barbarian tribesmen on imperial territory on a massive scale. Aurelian moved a large number of Carpi to Pannonia in 272. (In addition, by 275 he evacuated the province of Dacia, removing the entire provincial population to Moesia, an act largely motivated by the same problem). His successor Probus is recorded as transferring 100,000 Bastarnae to Moesia in 279/80 and later equivalent numbers of Gepids, Goths and Sarmatians. Diocletian continued the policy, transferring in 297 huge numbers of Bastarnae, Sarmatians and Carpi (the entire latter tribe, according to Victor). Although the precise terms under which these people were settled in the empire are unknown (and may have varied), the common feature was the grant of land in return for an obligation of military service much heavier than the normal conscription quota. The policy had the triple benefit, from the Roman government's point of view, of weakening the hostile tribe, repopulating the plague-ravaged frontier provinces (and bringing their abandoned fields back into cultivation) and providing a pool of first-rate recruits for the army. But it could also be popular with the barbarian prisoners, who were often delighted by the prospect of a land grant within the empire. In the 4th century, such communities were known as laeti.
  The Danubian emperors ruled the empire for over a century, until 379. Indeed, until 363, power was held by descendants of one of the original Junta members. Constantine I' s father, Constantius Chlorus, was a Caesar (deputy emperor) in Diocletian's Tetrarchy. Constantine's grandson Julian ruled until 363. These emperors restored the army to its former strength and effectiveness, but were solely concerned with the needs and interests of the military. They were also divorced from the wealthy Roman senatorial families that dominated the Senate and owned much of the empire's land. This in turn bred a feeling of alienation from the army among the Roman aristocracy which in the later 4th century began to resist the military's exorbitant demands for recruits and supplies.
caption: The Aurelian Walls of Rome, built by Aurelian in 270–5. Rome's first new wall since the construction of the Servian Wall after the Gauls sacked Rome 650 years earlier, they symbolised the pervasive insecurity of the 3rd-century empire. Original height: 8m (25 ft). Doubled in 410 to 16m (52 ft) after second sack of Rome in 410. Both walls and towers were originally crenellated, but this has survived only in small sections. Most of the 19km circuit still stands today
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