ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with latrones, robbers or bandits, in the proper, legal, sense of the word: ‘real’ bandits. By contrast, all other sorts of latrones, dealt with in the following chapters, will reveal themselves as bandits in a figurative, metaphorical sense – ‘specious’ bandits. What all the latter have in common is that, as a result of involvement in political events, they were vilified as latrones by official or semi-official circles in Rome. However, the significance of the designation of different types of politically motivated agents as latrones becomes clear only after it has been established precisely what, and according to which contemporary criteria, a ‘real’ bandit was. The first task of this study is therefore to describe the state of real banditry within the Roman Empire.
