Late Roman Army Questions

[Nathan Ross]

Before the 5th century most Foederati would have been... dispersed amongst legions... recruited to be normal Roman soldiers.

This is where things get complicated, I think!

What's the earliest known use of the term foederati in the late Roman sense? (I know it was used in the republic for socii etc)

As far as I know, the term was quite late, and referred only to large 'barbarian' groups, whether settled in the empire or not, who fought en bloc, often under their own leaders (although the leaders may have been 'dignified' with some Roman military title!)

Earlier (2nd/3rd/early 4th) settlements of barbarian groups within the empire would either have been dedicitii (prisoners of war - perhaps like the Sarmatians settled in Britain by Marcus Aurelius) or laeti (entire social groups brought into the empire, like the Frisii and Franks settled in Gaul by Probus and Constantius I). These groups were both, I think, required to provide military service, although since they had come into the empire in a state of submission (probably), they did not tend to form their own units but, as Ammianus Marcellinus suggests, may have been drafted into regular Roman ones.

I'm pretty cloudy on most of the above though, and what the difference between the various types of 'foreign fighter' might have been at this point I'm really not sure!

3rd-4th century Roman armies did use large barbarian bands from outside the empire - Galerius and Licinius both had Goths in their armies, apparently fighting under their own tribal leaders. I don't know whether we could, in hindsight, call these troops foederati or not, or what they might have been called at the time (aside from the ubiqituous auxilia, which Roman writers used, confusingly, to designate all sorts of things!)