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Soldier and Society in Roman Egypt: A Social History. By Richard Alston. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Maps. Tables. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. viii, 263. $59.95.
This book is the largest comprehensive study of the Roman army in Egypt since the standard work of J. Lesquier, L'armke romaine de l'Egypte (Cairo, 1918). The starting point is Egypt's submission to Roman rule (30 BC), the conventional terminal date is the accession of Diocletian (AD 284).
Alston's book is not intended to be a history of the Roman army in Egypt. His major theme is the relationship between soldier and civilian in an individual province of the empire. Egypt makes a suitable case study because it is only in this province that the papyrological evidence enables us to draw a fairly detailed picture of the everyday activities of soldiers, the everyday transactions of veterans and the interaction of the military with the Egyptian population. Papyri give us an opportunity to escape the macropolitical level of aristocratic historiography and to observe the soldiery at the level of the simple village.
After describing the geographical and demographic conditions of Egypt and sketching the organization of the imperial legions and auxiliary forces, Alston approaches his theme from different directions. He estimates the strength of the garrison as varying between 21,000 in the...