ABSTRACT
Even if the emperor provided strong military leadership, was a generous provider of praemia militiae and a protector of the army’s legal privileges, he still had no absolute guarantee of his army’s loyalty. Accordingly, each emperor had to employ additional strategies designed to encourage military fidelity. One such strategy was to engage in “ritualised symbolic interactions” with the army in the hope of forming a closer bond with the troops.1 This chapter seeks to assess the effectiveness of a range of these interactions, including the emperor’s acclamation (acclamatio) ceremony, imperial speeches to the army (adlocutiones) and the swearing of the loyalty oath (sacramentum), in encouraging loyalty to the emperor among the army.
