ABSTRACT
There were three groups of people in Roman society who, thanks to their living conditions, ran more of a risk than most of ending up as bandits: soldiers, herdsmen and slaves.1 Life as a bandit was often the only alternative to their existence within the law. If a soldier no longer wanted to be a soldier, he deserted and eked out a living as a bandit. Classic instances of this are the deserters Tacfarinas and Maternus, dealt with in detail elsewhere (See pp. 48-55 and 124-35). In the Roman period, most herdsmen were unfree, though their living conditions were very different from those of all other slaves.2 Whereas in the case of soldiers and slaves there was a clear boundary between their appointed condition and banditry, which was crossed by their taking a positive decision to embark on the physical acts of desertion or flight, for herdsmen this was much less clear. Thanks to their freedom of movement, they had the opportunity to indulge in banditry while managing their flocks thereby living a double life. At the time of the slave wars, it was, indeed, a feature of the Sicilian economy that many herdsmen acted in this way with the knowledge and blessing of their masters. Many embarked upon the road to banditry because large landowners were negligent in the care of their slaves and countenanced, indeed counted upon, this illegal contribution to the upkeep of their slave households.3
