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![Chapter 7 - “Feasts and Harlots, Baths and Idleness”
The Geography of Billeted Troops in Late Antiquity
from Part II - War and Agency
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 January 2026
By
Sarah E. Bond
Edited by
Susanna Elm
and
Kristina Sessa
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Summary
This chapter explores the written and material evidence for civilian quartering of Roman troops in late antiquity. The civic duties to extend hospitium or hospitalitas are reconstructed from the Republic until the late Roman Empire, focusing on the period between the fourth century ce and mid-sixth century ce. By looking at the literary evidence for housing troops in civilian homes penned in the Republic and early Principate, the convention of using moralizing rhetoric to describe soldiers quartered in cities is established. This classicizing rhetoric is then used to reframe later allegations concerning the effects of Constantine’s alleged movement of frontier troops into cities. This reconsideration of the extant evidence for Roman troop quartering questions and amends how we should write the lived experiences of civilians living in late Roman cities.
Keywords
Keywords: Roman law
troop billeting
quartering
Zosimus
corruption
luxury rhetoric
Roman daily life
late Roman corruption
Edward Gibbon
Dura Europos
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War and Community in Late Antiquity , pp. 180 - 207
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009603638.011[Opens in a new window]
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2026](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:byohyhodi6iknxngf3oypcge/bafkreibiviqdb3yducrx7xdiufjt5uusthy2lffigfllrwb2jr6jsmcs3y)
