I know that the Roman empire wasn't keen on private citizens carrying arms, and specifically dedicated a lot of energy toward preventing banditry. But by the late empire, we also start to see many of private citizens outfitting their own armed body guards / bucellarii, elites hunting, and a gradual privatization of organized violence.
I'm curious about what different people's experiences of weapons would be in, say, the 50 years before and after 400 CE. Let's limit this to the western empire.
How many ordinary, private citizens would have weapons? Was there a blanket ban on private arms (outside the elite), or did people have a spear in the closet? How would this vary between city and country?
How about elites? I know hunting culture was big, and imagine that means elites would have a fair number of spears and shields at least. I know we frequently find spearheads when we excavate villas.
What about soldiers? Did they each own and care for their own weapons, or were they stored in a central armory in the barracks? Did soldiers keep their weapons when they retired?
And how do private armed guards like bucellarii fit into all of this?
I'm interested in this question mainly because I want to understand the context for what came after. In 6th century England, half of the men were buried with weapons (spears, at a minimum), and weapon ownership, and participation in community defense, was pretty democratised. I know this is a huge change from 150 years prior, but I want to understand, specifically, how this change would have influenced attitudes and experiences of/toward weaponry as they became everyday civilian objects that had to be cared for and maintained by essentially every free man. But understanding the change requires understanding what that experience looked like before the post-Roman citizenry was armed, so I turn to you for help.
Reading suggestions are also appreciated.
Have you checked out Stuart Laycock's Britannia: A Failed State? His conclusions are more than a little goofy (Roman Britain=literally Yugoslavia, also some claptrap about primordial ethnic conflict) but he did a really good job of mapping out belt buckles and has some pretty interesting categorizations of them.
More substantively, I would disagree with you about the Roman state discouraging private arms. Judtinian's Codex 3.21.1 reads:
We grant everyone the right to resist a soldier or a person in private station who enters fields as a nocturnal plunderer, or besets frequented roads with intentions of robbery, and who is worthy to be subjected to immediate punishment pursuant to such permission and to receive the death and incur the danger which he himself threatened. For it is better to forestall, rather than to punish the deed. 1. We therefore grant you permission to avenge yourself and make an act which is too late to be punished in court subject to this edict. Let no one spare a soldier when he becomes a robber and should be opposed by weapons.
In particular, the last sentence:
nullus parcat militi, cui obviare telo oporteat ut latroni
(Do not spare soldiers, who out to be opposed with a weapon as a bandit) implies private arms. I suspect that in this case, as in many others, the state had neither the power nor inclination to regulate individuals.
That being said, cool questions, sorry I can't answer directly.