The Emperor and the Army in the Later Roman Empire, AD 235-395

The army were the undisputed kingmakers in the tumultuous imperial politics of the later Roman Empire. The Emperor and the Army in the Later Roman Empire, AD 235-395 is the first study solely dedicated to understanding how the Roman emperor tried to maintain the loyalty he needed from his army to survive. It examines the military role the emperor played as imperator and reveals the ‘political propaganda’ he employed to persuade the army to back him. It also details the myriad of financial and honorific inducements the emperor offered to keep the support of an unpredictable yet politically crucial institution.

With The Emperor and the Army in the Later Roman Empire, AD 235–395 Mark Hebblewhite offers the first study solely dedicated to examining the nature of the relationship between the emperor and his army in the politically and militarily volatile later Roman Empire. Bringing together a wide range of available literary, epigraphic and numismatic evidence he demonstrates that emperors of the period considered the army to be the key institution they had to mollify in order to retain power and consequently employed a range of strategies to keep the troops loyal to their cause. Key to these efforts were imperial attempts to project the emperor as a worthy general (imperator) and a generous provider of military pay and benefits. Also important were the honorific and symbolic gestures each emperor made to the army in order to convince them that they and the empire could only prosper under his rule.