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The Auxilia of the Roman Imperial Army

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The Auxilia of the Roman Imperial Army
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Author(s): G. L. Cheesman
Date Published: 2010/10
Page Count: 152
Softcover ISBN-13: 978-0-85706-332-8
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-0-85706-331-1

The essential element of the Roman army

While the legions of the Roman Imperial Army became both legendary and emblematic of the power of ancient Rome throughout its empire, it was inevitable—as with all empires which have expanded to the point where they must control vast and widely dispersed territories—that the core forces of the original state would be insufficient to allow such widespread policing or effective defence throughout the empire as would often be necessary. Auxiliary troops have been employed throughout history, and those from this early period, raised among and manned by the peoples of the Roman world played a vital—if often unsung—role in the service of the state by providing specific military specialities and reinforcements for the legions on campaign and in garrison. This finely researched work examines the role of the auxilia from its strength to its organisation—both infantry and cavalry—in the first and second centuries AD. Recruitment and distribution of units is considered together with its role at war and in defence of the vulnerable frontiers of the empire. The work concludes with an examination of arms and armour employed by auxiliary forces. A book for serious students of the subject, this title is available in softcover and hardcover with dust jacket for collectors and for use as a durable reference work.

The employment of tribal chiefs as praefecti also became less frequent, as the auxiliary regiments, transferred from one province to another, and recruited from different nationalities, gradually lost their original character. The mutinous officers of the Rhine army, who were doubtless cashiered by Vespasian, were probably the last examples of praefecti drawn from this class.<br>
Lastly, the respective rank of the different posts in the militia equestris was finally determined; and the order praefectus cohortis—tribunus legionis—praefectus alae is hardly ever varied after 70, except that the tribunate of a cohors miliaria sometimes appears in the second place.<br>
The result of these changes was that henceforward the auxiliary officers were practically all of one type, men of equestrian rank entering upon what was now the accustomed cursus honorum of their class. That this system was not universally adopted at an earlier date is not surprising. The equestrian praefecti were young men directly appointed by the emperor, without any previous military training; before the auxilia could be entrusted to their charge a certain advance in civilization and tractability had to be made by the provincials, and the veteran centurions and tribal chiefs of the Augustan system were more fitted to deal with the men who composed the auxiliary levies during the first hundred years of the Empire.<br>
As it was, these regiments contained in the second century far fewer representatives of the governing class than the native corps in our own Indian army. With the exception of the praefectus, who himself was not necessarily an Italian, the officers—that is, the centurions and decurions—were practically all, as we have seen, promoted from the ranks. But to the Roman Empire, in which rulers and ruled, never separated by any deep racial or religious gulf, were gradually made closer akin by the bond of a common civilization, our rule in India affords in this respect no real parallel.<br>
The majority of these praefecti were, at the beginning of this period, of Italian origin, taken from the leading families of the country towns, the class which formed, under the rule of the Flavian emperors who were themselves sprung from it, the backbone of the Roman bureaucracy. The Romanization of the Western provinces led to an increasing proportion of men from the provincial municipia being admitted into the imperial service, but until the reign of Marcus the Italian element still predominated. The praefecti mentioned on five diplomata from Pannonia Superior and two from Dacia dated 133, 138, 136-46, 148, 149, 157, and 145-61 were natives of Sassina, Bovianum, Faventia, Suessa, Rome, Hispellum, and Picenum.<br>
The accession of Septimius Severus possibly accelerated the speed at which the provincial element was increasing, but there is not, as has been suggested by von Domaszewski, any sign of a violent and wholesale exclusion of Italians from this branch of the service. This point may be illustrated by the following inscriptions of Italian praefecti, which can be dated after 193:<br>
Caesarea. M. Popilius Nepos domo Roma, a praefectus of the Ala Gemina Sebastenorum in Mauretania Caesariensis. The inscription honours a procurator who is dated by Cagnat to 201-9.<br>
Puteoli. T. Caesius Anthianus, a native of this town, was praefectus of the Cohors II Augusta Thracum at the beginning of the third century.<br>
The earliest provincial praefecti came from the thoroughly Romanized districts of Spain and Gallia Narbonensis, natives of which appear even in the pre-Flavian period. These were followed in the course of the second century by representatives of nearly all the Western provinces; Africa in particular sent praefecti from its many flourishing towns to almost every frontier during the latter half of the second century, and the accession of the African Septimius Severus at its close possibly gave his fellow countrymen a specially favoured position in the succeeding period.<br>
Only in Britain and Gallia Lugdunensis do the Celtic chiefs seem to have made no attempt to maintain in the second century the military position held by their fathers in the first. It is hardly likely that their absence from the lists of praefecti is due to deliberate exclusion on the part of the imperial government. It was more probably a voluntary abstinence, due largely to the fact that these military commands were now regarded merely as an introduction to the civil service, not as a career in themselves.<br>
The Celtic nobles were not uninfluenced by the tendencies of the age. But although they might speak and read Latin with ease, decorate their homes with the material products of Roman civilization, and employ Greek rhetoricians to tutor their children, these country gentlemen living in the midst of their estates preserved a very different outlook to that of the leading townsmen of the municipalities of Africa or even Narbonensis. The Celt retained his martial qualities down to the last days of the Empire in the West, but seems to have found little that was congenial to him in the prospect of forming part of that great administrative machine, in the perfection of which almost every other province in the Empire took its share.<br>
The Eastern provinces of the Empire occupy, as usual, a somewhat exceptional position. As in the West, these provinces began to contribute praefecti in some numbers towards the end of the first century. A certain C. Julius Demosthenes of Oinoanda went through the ‘militia equestris’ in the reign of Trajan, and his son, Julius Antonius, followed in his footsteps in the succeeding generation. To a citizen of Caria, L. Aburnius of Alabanda, probably, as his name shows, the descendant of one of the families of veterans settled by Augustus in the south of Asia Minor, the wars of Trajan presented opportunity for a military career of considerable variety and distinction.