Invisible Romans (36 page)

The emperor was present in many quasi-religious elements of the soldier’s life. Imperial names were given to subunits of the army; the emperor’s image was in every camp on a standard, carried by a special ‘image bearer’ (
imaginifer);
his face graced armor and other equipment; all coins bore his visage; all rewards and medals came from him (via the local commanders). The emperor was the source of largess, not just the regular salary but occasional donatives and gifts at death. The emperor
in turn played the dual role of
commiles
– fellow soldier – and divine leader, a sort of god-with-us.

In the ordered life of the camp, cultic ritual was ordered as well. This order was something foreign to civilian life, where cultic activity was available but entirely voluntary. From Dura-Europos there is a calendar of sacrifices – a trans-empire calendar meant to inculcate in the soldiers the old gods and the imperial house as fonts of being. Here are listed, day by day, religious actions to worship specific gods, to offer supplications to the emperor, to celebrate birthdays of the imperial family with sacrifice, to give thankful remembrance for past victories, and to celebrate the sacred standards of the legion. Besides the obvious use of such occasions to emphasize the focus of the army on the emperor and Rome, the ceremonies themselves regardless of their declared purpose provided occasions for unity, for example parades and festivals, and for diversion. Celebrations were also an opportunity to let go of the tight discipline of the camp. They were drunken, excessive affairs when rules were forgotten at least for a moment. So the ceremonies provided unit identity for the common soldier, and gave his life both relief from the normal routines, and meaning.

As with the marriage rules governing soldiers, the religious aspect of his life helped to create a new allegiance separate from those of civil life. His original enrollment has all the marks of an initiation into a new religious world – the declaration of personage, the tattoo with which he was marked, setting him apart from the unmarked, and the sacred oath to the emperor all refocused the recruit, while the regular religious events of the year reinforced both otherness vis-à-vis the civilian population and unity of the initiated.

All of this is not to say that soldiers did not have private religious lives as well. If it can be said that cultic activity as a group focused on the official religion of the legion and individual cultic activity indicated personal religious beliefs outside this official activity, then the evidence of individual dedications points to the lively existence of private religious life. But this should not be exaggerated. There were no ‘private’ soldierly cults; the two most often associated with soldiers, Mithra and Jupiter Dolichenus, in fact are attested to by far more nonsoldiers’ dedications than soldiers’; in the case of Mithra less than 20 percent of dedications are by soldiers; for Dolichenus it is less than 40 percent. But
although not specifically ‘military,’ these and other cults were a complement to the religious focus of the legion itself.

26. Soldier religion. A soldier makes a small sacrifice at an altar.

Soldiers and social mobility

While it is certain that not all recruits were poor, a substantial portion must have been. The benefits of service detailed above, combined with the continuing status accrued as a veteran, meant that the army was the only institution in the Roman world that could more or less guarantee social as well as financial advancement if one worked hard and lived long enough. Not only did it provide the financial resources (whether well or ill gotten did not matter); much more importantly (for others could make money), it provided a mechanism to move between social classes, something that was virtually impossible in the civilian world. A common soldier could advance to high rank and then, as a veteran, become a town councilor.

This monument is for Gaius Julius Valerio, son of Gaius, of the Papirian district, a veteran of the Thirteenth Severan Twinned Legion, formerly a special assignment soldier, who became a town councilor and presiding magistrate of the colony of Sarmizegetusa. Gaius Julius Valerianus, also a special assignment officer, Carus, a military provisioner and councilor of aforesaid colony, Fronto, a soldier of the First Praetorian Cohort and secretary to the Prefect of the Guard, also a councilor of the same colony, Valeria, and Carissima, their children, set this up to the memorial of their father. The town council allotted the place for the monument. (
AE
1933.248, Sarmizegetusa)

Such mobility among nonsoldiers was almost unheard of and was yet another reason why the army had a great appeal to ambitious, poor, or even not-so-poor, twenty-year-olds.

Negatives of service

Despite all the advantages a man would have seen in military service, there were negatives as well. Most profoundly, a soldier accepted willingly a serious diminution of his personal freedom and rights. His oath put him under the control of his masters, i.e. of his military officers, even to the point of being subject to summary capital punishment. As Artemidorus says, ‘Many freed slaves nonetheless continue to act as slaves and to be subject to another, just as a soldier is a “free man,” but nevertheless is under the command of his superiors’ (
Dreams
2.31). Like others who voluntarily subverted their freedom to another’s will, people such as indentured servants and gladiators, soldiers made a calculation and decided loss of freedom was a price worth paying. But, still, they did give up something that civilian men valued highly.

Of course, the primary day-to-day dangers were from disease – always by far the most lethal element in premodern armies – and actual military action whether in war or in ‘peacekeeping’ operations. Artemidorus says that if an old man dreams of enlisting as a soldier, it often portends his death (
Dreams
2.31). A soldier might live his entire life without fighting in a line battle, for example if he was posted to the III Augusta in North Africa or the VII Gemina in northern Spain. Legionaries along
the Rhine and Danube and in the East might expect more action during a lifetime of service. And some died:

Marcus Domitius Super, soldier of the Second Legion Adiutrix, who lived 32 years and 6 months and died in the German War. Also Aurelius Julius who lived 26 years and 5 months and Revocata their mother who lived 50 years. Concordius their freedman set this up. (
Die römischen Inschriften Ungarns
5.1228, Dunaújváros, Hungary)

Aurelius Victor, soldier of the Second Italic Legion, was lost in battle against the Gothic host. He lived 30 years. Aurelia Lupula made this for a most dear husband. (
CIL
3.11700, Dobrna, Slovenia)

Canius Otiorix, soldier of the Second Legion Adiutrix, died in Parthia. Canius Speratus, his son, set this up also for himself while living and for his wife, also still alive. (
CIL
3.3628, 3630, 10572, Szanto, Hungary)

Any units could be called upon to do bandit-duty at any time. A force list from a garrison at Stobi (Macedonia) names men who died accidentally by drowning and at the hands of bandits; the latter fate befell a soldier of the Twenty-Second Legion:

Januarius Vosenus, soldier of the Twenty-Second Legion … was killed by bandits … (
CIL
13.2667, Lyon, France)

But for most soldiers, the hours of training and drudgery were not followed with any frequency by actual use of their weapons in dangerous situations.

Another disadvantage of being a soldier was the constant possibility of transfer. When men dream of being a soldier, it means that they will suffer ‘vexations, unpleasantnesses, instability, and being away from home,’ so Artemidorus tells his reader (
Dreams
2.31). But the biggest challenge and the most constant stress of life under the standard was to make the culture of the service work for the soldier. Although in theory duties were assigned and regulations enforced with an equal hand, the regular experience of the soldier was likely to be far different. Vegetius
2.19 alludes to the possibility of ‘unjust, excessively heavy assignments or exemption from duties.’ The centurion was the focus of authority for the common soldier; it was he who could make life good or a hell for the soldiers under him. Fear and instilling it in soldiers was a fundamental element of Roman discipline – one terrible centurion was nicknamed
cedo alteram
– ‘bring me another’ – referring to his staff, which he broke over the backs of his soldiers as he beat them for discipline (Tacitus,
Annals
1.23). Besides flogging, the
Digest
lists other military punishments: reprimands, fines, fatigues, transfer to another branch of the army, reduction in rank, and dishonorable discharge. For lesser infractions a soldier might be fed on barley instead of wheat, or made to suffer some psychological punishment such as standing in front of the commander’s headquarters all day, in plain sight of his fellows, wearing only a tunic and without the signifying sword belt. For desertion of a post in battle, or betrayal or desertion from the army, the penalty was severe: execution. Bribery was rampant as a way to avoid excessively harsh treatment, or to gain some privilege. Tacitus notes the need to bribe centurions (
Annals
1.17), and I have already noted the letter from Claudius Terentianus in which he claims that ‘nothing gets done without money.’ Bribery could secure a leave, or a longer one (Tacitus,
Histories
1.46). It could also gain relief from daily fatigues, and increase chances for advancement. Clearly, a soldier had to be ready to bribe if he hoped to keep on the good side of his centurion.

Did harsh conditions of service lead soldiers to mutiny? The historian Tacitus (
Annals
1.16–67) has a famous passage in which mutineers in Pannonia complain about the awfulness of their soldiering. Their issues include abusive centurions and officers, low pay (although Tacitus cites here a denarius a day, surely a good wage at the time), frequent and vicious corporal punishment, many and dangerous military expeditions, compulsory extension of their legal tours of duty, and officials reneging on promises of land as a reward after service was ended. Assuredly, the dangers of service are well taken: war, difficult conditions, and the harshness of discipline. Although in certain circumstances, and if the right leader appeared, mutinies occurred, these are reported only very rarely in the sources. And it is to the point to note that as soldiers became increasingly sedentary and nonwarring, the harshnesses were mitigated but the benefits were not decreased. Vegetius 3.4 notes the
‘idleness and luxury’ (surely a relative thing!) that soldiers at their home base experienced – as welcome for many soldiers as annoying to the commanding officers once they needed soldiers for a real campaign.

After service was over

A common soldier who joined the legions at age twenty could reasonably expect to complete his service and live on after discharge. Of course, he could extend his service, and inscriptions show that many did. But after the normal twenty years’ service, at about forty years of age, he could live at least a few years, given ancient life tables. In other words, one of the appeals of service would be the expectation of honorable discharge and continued life with the status of a veteran; about half of all recruits lived to be veterans, receiving special treatment from the imperial government.

Soldiers were discharged in three categories: honorable, medical (= honorable, with prorating for time served), and dishonorable. Only the first two gained the soldier the rewards, rights, and privileges of being a veteran. Perhaps 6000–7000 veterans were produced each year, with a total of perhaps 50,000–60,000 veterans alive at any given time. Exclusively veteran settlements existed, but were uncommon; there were about fifty founded in the first century of the empire and they become increasingly less common thereafter; fully 300 would have been needed to house all the available veterans during that time period.

Some veterans, especially in the eastern part of the empire, returned to their hometowns; some others settled near the place where they had last served – this is true especially in the western part of the empire. Still others ended up in widely disparate locations. There is an interesting set of inscriptions that illustrates this scattering.
Diplomata,
bronze discharge documents, have been found for five soldiers from a single unit that was to have been settled at Paestum in southern Italy. Although the soldiers involved were noncitizen troops of the fleet, not citizen legionaries, what happened to them is striking. The five documents were found widely dispersed in Kavala (Philippi, Macedonia), Daldodeltzi (Thrace), Pompeii (Italy, north of Paestum), Agaiola (Corsica), and Slamac Slavonski (Pannonia, modern Croatia), thus indicating how these veterans settled throughout the empire. On the other hand some
veterans did settle in the
canabae
right next to the camps where they served. Valerius Pudens did this: