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Centurions: Discipline, Violence, and Authority in the Roman Army My paper explores the function of legionary centurions as violent, coercive disciplinarians in the Roman legions of the late Republic and early-middle Empire. As the Roman legions’ only career officers, centurions had many important functions. Foremost among them was preserving discipline, and it was this duty that especially defined them. Their authority to inflict corporal punishment on both soldier and civilian earned them a reputation for brutality (saevitia), and many literary accounts vividly highlight this characteristic. In commemorative monuments, moreover, the most prominent symbol attached to centurions is their whip (vitis), with which they flogged transgressors. I argue that an analysis of the representations of centurions’ disciplinary role are crucial to understanding more broadly how ideologies of military discipline and authority were generated and preserved in the Roman legions. Punishments for transgressions and disobedience were particularly violent in the Roman Army, yet often viewed as necessary to its reputation as an efficient machine of war. In attempting to offer broader explanations for what motivated Romans soldiers to obey or disobey, however, scholars more recently have attempted to identify other aspects of disciplina and their origins, including traditional Roman attitudes towards self-discipline, or later ideological schemes devised to legitimate a commander or emperor’s authority. Indeed, Phang has argued that every punishment requires a form of legitimation, and cannot rely alone on “pure domination (the imposition of authority by force), which is inefficient” (2008, p. 111). Harris goes further: “The army that needs very brutal discipline (and practices such as decimation) is precisely the army that cannot rely on the courage of its ordinary soldiers” (2006, p. 302). These observations, however, are largely derived from a categorical division in military theory between two kinds of military authority: domination or “formal discipline”, which motivates soldiers through direct, coercive, and often physical means, and manipulation or “self-discipline,” which motivates through indirect practices that promote pride, cohesion, and obedience. While acknowledging the importance of understanding cultural origins of Roman military discipline, I argue that greater attention must be given to identifying the institutional instruments in the Roman legions that guaranteed it. The centurion was one such instrument. By examining literary and physical representations of centurions in light of current military and sociological theories concerning symbols of authority, my paper demonstrates that the centurions’ punitive power contained not only negative or “repressive”, but also positive or “reproductive” aspects, in which Roman ideologies of leadership, religion, and imperial power were expressed and reproduced. The saevitia of centurions was not merely a tool of intimidation, therefore, but an important manifestation of both their own authority and that of the Empire. This argues for two points. First, that the conceptual divide between authority based on domination and manipulation is conceptually misleading when examining the Roman army and the centurionate in particular. Second, that centurions were an important articulation of Roman concepts of violence and authority, and as such, they represent an ideal case study for broader studies of Roman military culture. Bishop, M. C. & J. C. N. Coulston. Roman Military Equipment from the Punic Wars to the Fall of Rome. Oxford : Oxbow Books, 2006. Brand, C. E. Roman Military Law. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968. Campbell, B. The Emperor and the Roman Army. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. Bourdieu, P. Outline of a Theory of Practice, R. Nice trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish, A. Sheridan trans. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977. ---. Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76, M. Bertani and A. Fontana eds., D. Macey trans. New York: Picador, 2003. Franzoni, Habitus Atque Habitudo Militis: Monumenti Funerari di Militari nella Cisalpina Romana. Roma : "L'Erma" di Bretschneider, 1987. Goldsworthy, A. The Roman Army at War: 100 BC-AD 200. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Harris, W. V. “Readings in the Narrative Literature of Roman Courage”. Representations of War in Ancient Rome, S. Dillon & K. Welch Eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, 300-320. Kellett, A. Combat Motivation: The Behavior of Soldiers in Battle. Boston: Kluwer-Nijhoff Pub., 1982. Lendon, J. E. Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. MacMullen, R. Changes in the Roman Empire: Essays in the Ordinary. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Phang, S. E. Roman Military Service: Ideologies of Discipline in the Late Republic and Early Principate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Stoll, O. “The Religions of the Armies”. A Companion to the Roman Army, P. Erdkamp Ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.