Legions of Rome (8 page)

Among other examples, Starr, quoting three other eminent scholars, cites the cases of Isidorus and Neon, two non-citizen Egyptian recruits to the 1st Cohort Lusitanorum Praetoria who immediately changed their names to Julius Martialis and Lucius Julius Apollinaris on enrolling. Octavius Valens, an Alexandrine recruit to the same unit, could not have possessed Latin rights either, despite using a Latin name. [Ibid.]

Claudius attempted to stamp out this practice, forbidding peregrines to adopt
Roman family names. But under later emperors the practice revived, and, as Starr notes, auxiliaries came to take on Latin names “at their pleasure.” [Ibid.] Until the reign of Nero, auxiliaries recruited into the German Guard (the imperial bodyguard) took Greek or Latin names, or cobbled Latin names to their native names on joining. [Speid., 4] During Nero’s reign, numerous serving members of the German Guard bore tri-part names which included their native name and “Tiberius Claudius.” [Ibid.] This was in honor of Nero’s predecessor Claudius, in whose reign these men would have joined the unit.

In the reign of Trajan, auxiliary troopers of the Augustan Singularian Horse, the household cavalry, routinely added the names Marcus Ulpius to their own immediately on joining. This would always mark them as men who served the emperor. Likewise, in the reign of Hadrian, when recruits joined this same unit, many took the names of that emperor, Publius Aelius. [Ibid.]

By the second century, the practice of non-citizens using multi-part Latin names was not only commonplace but was accepted at the highest levels, as is made clear by a
c
.
AD
106 letter of Pliny the Younger to Trajan, in which he wrote, “I pray you further to grant full Roman citizenship to Lucius Satrius Abascantus, Publius Caesius Phosphorus and Pancharia Soteris.” [Pliny,
X, II
]

Latin names were in extensive use by men serving in second-century auxiliary units despite the fact they had yet to gain Roman citizenship. This is plain to see in an
AD
117 report from the 1st Lusitanorum Cohort in Egypt. The report details the receipt of new recruits from the province of Asia and their distribution to various centuries within this auxiliary cohort. The names of the standard-bearers of those auxiliary centuries are all either double- or triple-barreled. [Tom.,
DRA
]

The few surviving records of complete careers of centurions and decurions who served in auxiliary units reveal that those men were Roman citizens, having started out as legionaries before being promoted and transferred to auxiliary units. Yet a ration report from the cavalry wing stationed at Luguvalium in Britain, in the late first or early second century, refers to most of the decurions who commanded the sixteen troops of cavalry at the fort by single name. But all these were nicknames, among them: Agilis (Nimble), Docilis (Docile), Gentilis (Kinsman), Mansuetus (Gentle), Martialis (Warlike), Peculiaris (Special Friend), and Sollemnis (Solemn).

An example of a peregrine who adopted a multipart Latin name as soon as he joined the Roman navy is second-century Egyptian seaman Apion, who wrote home
to his family in Egypt to tell them that he had arrived safely at the fleet base at Misenum on Italy’s west coast and joined the crew of the warship
Athenonike
. Almost as an aside, he finished his letter with, “My name is now Antonius Maximus.” [Starr,
V, I
]

XXVIII. NUMERI

From the second century, units made up of foreign troops called
numeri
—literally “numbers”—served with the Roman army as frontier guards, supplied by northern neighbors including the Sarmatians and Germans. Numeri was a generic title for a unit that was not of standard size or structure. No information exists about them. More than twenty numeri units served in Britain alone. [Hold.,
RAB
, Indices]

XXIX. MARINES AND SAILORS

Marines served with the two principal Roman battle fleets, at Misenum near Naples, and at Ravenna on the northeast coast, on the Adriatic, as well as with the lesser
fleets around the empire. Marine cohorts also acted as firefighters at major ports such as Ostia and Misenum.

Always non-citizens, and frequently former slaves, marines and sailors were considered inferior to both the legionary and the auxiliary. The marine, the
miles classicus
, was paid less than the legionary and served longer, for twenty-six years. Seamen operating the oars and sails of Rome’s warships served under identical conditions to marines, and also received weapons training, to allow them to repel boarders and to act as boarders. Both marines and seamen were organized into centuries, under centurions, aboard their vessels. A libernium, the smallest Roman war galley, typically had a crew of 160 seamen and forty marines.

Marines were trained to operate catapults that fired burning missiles from their ships. They were also involved in close-quarters combat, throwing javelins at enemy ships alongside, often from elevated wooden towers erected on deck. And they formed boarding parties to take enemy ships.

II
THE LEGIONS

“Heaven certainly inspired the Romans with the organization of the legion, so superior does it seem to human invention.”

V
EGETIUS
,
De Re Militari
,
FOURTH CENTURY AD

The Roman legion was more than just a collection of armed men. Each was an institution, with a distinct identity, and a history, sometimes of fame, sometimes of shame. The original imperial legions were not numerous—just twenty-five at the death of the first emperor, Augustus, and thirty a century later under Trajan. Many remained in existence for over 400 years. Although, by the time Rome’s fall loomed, many of her once feared and revered legions had disappeared or been relegated to border guard duties. Some legions were consistently reliable, some overcame humiliating defeats to claim glory, while others seemed fated to lead lackluster careers. These are the legions which made Rome great
.

I. LEGION ORGANIZATION

“The peculiar strength of the Romans always consisted of the excellent organization of their legions,” said Vegetius. [Vege.,
II
] He was writing in the late fourth century, when the military organization introduced by Augustus more than 400 years before had been so degraded over time as to make the legions of Vegetius’ day pale imitations of the imperial originals.

From 30
BC
, Augustus took the 6,000-man republican legion, with its ten cohorts of 600 men, and turned it into a unit with nine cohorts of 480 men, and a so-called “double strength” 1st cohort of 800 men charged with the protection of the legion’s commander and eagle standard. To this, Augustus added a legion cavalry squadron of 128 men, making a legion, on paper, amount to 5,248 men, including 59 centurions, plus three senior officers, its legate, its broad-stripe tribune and its camp-prefect. Added to this were five thin-stripe tribune officer cadets.

Cohorts 2 to 10 were broken down into three maniples, each of 160 men, with every maniple made up of two centuries, each now of 80 men as opposed to the 100-man century of the republican legion. The 1st cohort comprised five maniples, or ten centuries.

The smallest sub-unit in the imperial legion was the
contubernium
, or squad, of eight men. These eight men shared the same tent, cooked together, ate together, fought and died together. In 1963, Lieutenant-General Sir Brian Horrocks, a renowned British corps commander during World War
II
, was to remark that in an average group of ten fighting men, two are leaders, seven follow, and one doesn’t want to be there. [Horr.,
SSW
] A similar generalization could probably have applied to the men of a legionary contubernium.

Tacitus spoke of “the military custom by which a soldier chooses his comrade” in his day, indicating that legionaries were encouraged to choose a comrade from their squad who would watch their back in battle and who, if the worse came to the worst, would bury them and ensure that the terms of their will were followed. [Tac.,
H
,
I
, 18]

II. LAWRENCE KEPPIE’S LEGION NUMBER FORMULA

Explaining the origins of the 5th to 10th Legions

From Livy, we know that in the second century
BC
, Rome had the 5th, 7th and 8th legions stationed in Spain. We find the 5th and 8th there in 185
BC
and the 5th and 7th there in 181
BC
. A little earlier, the 11th, 12th and 13th legions had been campaigning in Cisalpine Gaul. [Livy,
XXXIX
, 30, 12]

Modern legion scholar Dr. Lawrence Keppie suggests that, following the series of legion numbers 1 to 4, which were reserved for the consuls, the Senate of the Republic traditionally allocated the legion numbers from west to east across the empire, with legions 5 to 10 in Spain, 11, 12, and 13 in Cisalpine Gaul, and with higher numbers sent to the East, with the 18th Legion, for example, stationed in Cilicia. [Kepp.,
MRA
, 2] Much circumstantial evidence supports this formula.

On the basis of the Keppie formula, it is highly likely that when Julius Caesar took up the post of governor of Baetica, or Further Spain, in 61
BC
, the 5th, 7th and 8th legions were still based in Rome’s then two Spanish provinces, along with a 6th and a 9th. Plutarch says that there were already two legions based in Baetica
that spring, when Caesar arrived in Corduba, the provincial capital, and immediately raised a new legion in the province. [Plut.,
Caesar
] Following the Keppie formula, it is clear that this new unit would have been the latest incarnation of the 10th Legion. Caesar would not raise the 11th and 12th, in Cisalpine Gaul, until two years later.

Caesar himself wrote that in 58
BC
he was served in Gaul by “four veteran legions”—as events were to show, these were the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th. [Caes.,
GW
,
I
, 24] It
is probable that he had asked the Senate to give him the three that had served under him in Baetica two years earlier, plus another Spanish-based legion. Caesar says that the Senate soon returned the legion complement in Spain to six. [Caes.,
CW
,
I
, 85] The Keppie formula suggests that the 5th and 6th legions were left behind in Spain when the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th joined Caesar for his Gallic campaigns.

Later events point to the Senate sending the 2nd, 3rd and 4th to the Iberian peninsula to replace the four legions given to Caesar, together with another unnamed Italian legion, possibly the Martia, while retaining the 1st Legion in Italy. We know that the 2nd Legion was definitely one of those replacement legions sent to Spain by the Senate. [
Alex. W
.,
I
, 53] These six legions in Spain were under the overall control of Pompey the Great, who at that time governed Spain from Rome, and by 52
BC
Pompey had loaned the 6th Legion to Caesar for use in Gaul. By 50
BC
, Pompey had recalled the 6th Legion to Spain. [
See
6th Ferrata Legion
]