ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a type of ‘bandit’ found in the context of political and military resistance to Roman rule: the rebel.1 This type comprises certain leaders of native resistance movements against Rome. Such opposition is characteristic of both a limited phase and a restricted area of Roman history. The period of native wars of resistance begins at the height of the creation of the Empire in the second century bc and ends during the early Principate with the general completion of the Romanisation of the conquered regions. About this time, the last generations of provincials who had been born before the Roman conquest, or who had at least inherited and maintained ideals of freedom and independence from the time of the occupation of their homelands died out. Furthermore, by the end of the first century ad Roman provincial rule had assumed a form which allowed it to become at least more tolerable to its subjects. With regard to geography, the type of native resistance examined here remained specific to the Roman West. The inhabitants of the provinces of the Hellenistic East had had much longer to become accustomed to life under the rule of a hegemonic power than those of parts of Gaul, Britain, Pannonia, Dalmatia, Spain and North Africa.
