Deimos – Zeitschrift für Antike Militärgeschichte

Citizenship and Service: From Roman Auxiliaries to U.S. MIilitary Naturalization Programs

2026-02-24T13:03:39+01:00

This article compares ancient Rome and the United States to show that military service has not always been a way for everyone to become a citizen. In Rome, non-citizen auxiliary soldiers were integrated via a standardised legal agreement that conferred citizenship upon honourable discharge, formalised by the diploma militaris. This predictable system met the needs of the population and made it easier for provinces to slowly come together. The United States created a more flexible and episodic system in which military service by immigrants has sometimes sped up the process of becoming a citizen, from the Revolutionary War to the time after 9/11, often because there were not enough soldiers. The American system has been legally broken up and made harder to work with by immigration policy and the all-volunteer force, unlike Rome’s institutionalised approach. The article demonstrates that military service fosters integration most effectively when it is consistently transformed into legal recognition, emphasising the integrative efficacy of standardisation in Rome and the precariousness of service-based inclusion in the United States, all within the context of broader theories of empire, citizenship, and state capacity.

Aurelian and Cniva

2026-03-08T07:33:54+01:00

In 251 CE the ‘Scythian’/Gothic king Cniva defeated the emperor Decius in the battle of Abritus, and in 271 the emperor Aurelian defeated the Gothic leader Cannabas in a campaign north of the Danube. Dexippus and Jordanes supply the former name, and the Historia Augusta provides the latter. This article revisits the hypothesis that Cniva and Cannabas were one and the same person. It argues that the identification is plausible and may help to explain why Ammianus and the Historia Augusta attach special importance to Aurelian’s victory over the Goths.

The East Slope of the Acropolis as a Mnemotopos of Mythical and Historical Wars

2026-03-03T11:10:01+01:00

The Acropolis of Athens was indisputably the religious center of the city and played a pivotal role in shaping various aspects of Athenian identity. This study adopts a holistic approach —integrating literary, epigraphic, topographic and iconographic evidence, to examine the east slope of the Acropolis as a mnemotopos (place of memory) associated with war(s). The primary aim of my paper is to emphasize the significance of the east slope of the Acropolis as the topos and lieu de mémoire par excellence, both for mythical and historical wars.