The areani or arcani were a force of the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post- Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediter ...

, based in

Roman Britain Roman Britain was the period in classical antiquity when large parts of the island of Great Britain were under occupation by the Roman Empire. The occupation lasted from AD 43 to AD 410. During that time, the territory conquered wa ...

during the later part of the Roman occupation of the island. They had played some part in the campaign of

Constans Flavius Julius Constans ( 323 – 350), sometimes called Constans I, was Roman emperor from 337 to 350. He held the imperial rank of '' caesar'' from 333, and was the youngest son of Constantine the Great. After his father's death, he was mad ...

in Britain in 343; later they helped to instigate the

Great Conspiracy The Great Conspiracy was a year-long state of war and disorder that occurred near the end of Roman Britain. The historian Ammianus Marcellinus described it as a ''barbarica conspiratio'', which capitalised on a depleted military force in the p ...

in 367-368. Due to their participation in the Conspiracy, Count Theodosius disbanded them. The term ''areani'' is a

hapax legomenon In corpus linguistics, a ''hapax legomenon'' ( also or ; ''hapax legomena''; sometimes abbreviated to ''hapax'', plural ''hapaxes'') is a word or an expression that occurs only once within a context: either in the written record of an entire ...

, occurring once only, in a passage in

Ammianus Ammianus Marcellinus (occasionally anglicised as Ammian) (born , died 400) was a Roman soldier and historian who wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from antiquity (preceding Procopius). His work, known as the ''Res Gest ...

: {, class="wikitable" , - ! Ammianus Marcellinus Liber XXVIII III VIII; A.D. 368 28, 3, 8. !! English translation , - , ...haec etiam praecipua. Areanos genus hominum a veteribus institutum, super quibus aliqua in actibus Constantis rettulimus, paulatim prolapsos in vitia a stationibus suis removit: aperte convictos, acceptarum promissarumque magnitudine praedarum allectos, quae apud nos agebantur, aliquotiens barbaris prodidisse. id enim illis erat officium, ut ultro citroque er longa spatiadiscurrentes, vicinarum gentium strepitus nostris ducibus intimarent ... , , "During these outstanding events the ''areani'', who had gradually become corrupt, were removed by him heodosiusfrom their positions. This was an organization founded in early times, of which I have already said something in the history of Constans. It was clearly proved against them that they had been bribed with quantities of plunder, or promises of it, to reveal to the enemy from time to time what was happening on our side. Their official duty was to range backwards and forwards over long distances with information for our generals about disturbances among neighbouring nations." The duties that Ammianus describes, traveling and reporting the news of the tribes to Roman leaders, are appropriate to military scouts. They may have lived in the paramilitary zone between the Antonine Wall and the ''Vallum'' to the south. The term "areani" means "people of the sheep-folds", and many of the homesteads in their frontier region were indeed sheep-folds. It has been suggested that the term is a misreading of "arcani", the secret ones. The term "arcanus" is known from Hadrian's Wall; Vindolanda tablet 162 bears the text "miles arcanu...", written in a good capital hand.Vindolanda Inventory No. 85.244
Vindolanda tablets online.

References

Late Roman military units Defunct intelligence agencies