Legionary Recruitment and Veteran Settlement During the Principate

J.C. Mann, Margaret M Roxan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138405073
• eBook ISBN: 9781315425474
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book is a study of the settlement of legionary veterans during the principate, and discovers why legionary veterans were settled in colonies, when such settlements ceased to be made, and where the men preferred to settle when the choice was left to them.

CHAPTER ONE
Legionary Recruitment and Veteran Settlement in the Late Republic

According to Velleius, from the time of Marius’s sixth consulship only veteran colonies were founded by Rome. After referring to the colonies of the second century BC, he says: neque facile memoriae mandaverim quae nisi militaris post hoc tempus deducta est.¹ There is no evidence to suggest that either the coloniae civium Romanorum or the Latin colonies founded down to the middle of the second century BC, or the colonies founded in Italy or overseas later in the same century were veteran colonies of the later type. Nor is this perhaps surprising, since the pre-Marian army was still, in theory at least, a national army, and such a person as a veteran, in the later sense, did not theoretically exist.

In some cases, it is true, provision was made for the re-settlement of men after service. Land in Samnium and Apulia was granted to certain men who had served overseas in the Second Punic war,² But there is no evidence for any other settlements in Italy in the second century, in spite of the fact that men were kept under arms for longer and longer periods. Only in Spain do we hear of arrangements being made for ex-servicemen, and here it was not a question of providing land for them, or of settling them in new communities, but rather of organising them in the settlements which they had already made.³ The best attested case is that of Carteia, where legionaries settled down of their own volition, with Spanish wives. Their sons sought for recognition from the Senate, and were allowed to form a Latin colony.⁴

But while official settlements were rare, no doubt individual legionaries did sometimes prefer to remain in the provinces in which they had served, rather than return home. In many such cases they will have formed alliances with peregrine women, and the children of such alliances will naturally have been peregrini. No nuclei of Roman citizens will normally have been created as a result. Nor in most cases will the issue of such alliances have been highly Romanised. In other cases, men no doubt settled alongside emigrant Italian traders and financiers, and the men and their descendants will have been merged in conventus civium Romanorum. Probably, however, most men preferred to settle in Italy after service.

The problem of the discharged soldier first really appeared under Marius. Then for the first time they were able to make a concerted demand for recompense after service, and this took the form of demands for the assignment of land. As has been shown by E. Gabba,⁵ the men recruited after as well as before the time of Marius were probably largely of rural origin. Increasing demands for recruits in the second century had been met by the lowering of the census for the lowest class that could be recruited, and Marius’s recruitment of the capite censi was merely a logical development of this.⁶ Marius, whatever his faults as a politician, was a soldier of the first order. It is quite certain that he would choose the best recruits he could find, for the difficult and dangerous campaigns he had to undertake.⁷ The ancient world generally regarded the countryman as better material for military purposes than the townsman,⁸ and it seems that Marius subscribed to this view. This is implied by Appian,⁹ who describes how Appuleius, seeking supporters, sent messengers τοῖς οὖσιν ἀνὰ τοὺς άγρούς, οὗς δὴ και μάλιστ έθάρρυν ὐτιεστρατευμένοις Μαρίω. Probably many of Marius’s recruits were the sons of peasants, living near Rome for the most part, who were disqualified from enlisting under the old system. Others may have been dispossessed peasants. This seems to provide the most reasonable explanation of the fact that Marius’s troops after demobilisation sought land, on which to settle, rather than merely monetary rewards. Marian settlements are attested as taking place in Sardinia¹⁰ and Africa.¹¹ These were far from Italy and it may be that this was the best that Marius could obtain for them, but it is also possible that the men themselves had realised the quality of the land which they had fought over, in Africa at least, and sought to settle there as a result.¹² It seems unlikely that the proposal to settle them so far from their homes could have been made to secure their support, unless they were prepared to make the move of their own free will.

During the later republic, veterans generally sought for land rather than money grants from their generals, and the latter were generally prepared to make the effort to obtain land for them, when they wished to retain their support. The character of the men who composed the armies of the late republic is frequently described in the lowest terms, no doubt with some justification in many cases, where men were attracted to the colours mainly by the hope of booty and the promises of the rival commanders. In these cases, there can have been little serious desire to settle on a farm after service. No doubt many of them regarded the land allotted to them merely as a form of capital which could be easily realised.¹³ And, of course, in the demand for land, from the time of Marius onwards, there was a ready-made model deriving from the Gracchan period, the lex agraria.¹⁴ But not all legionaries were necessarily of that type. Like Marius’s men, a good proportion of later recruits must have been prepared to settle down as farmers after discharge, otherwise the practice of granting land would soon have ceased: instead it came to be regarded as the normal procedure.

There seems to be no good reason why some kind of provision could not have been made by the Senate itself for the men who served in the army. Long service under arms was essential for the control of the expanding empire. But there was little opportunity for learning any trade or skill during service. Many men must have had to leave the army with few or no resources with which to start again in civilian life. The grant of some gratuity would have been no extraordinary reward for their service. But the Senate made no such regular grant, with the inevitable result that men gave their support to those who would obtain something for them – or would promise to do so. This failure on the part of the Senate must have been an important cause of the eventual fall of the republic. The settlements of veterans actually carried out in the late republic have been discussed by Gabba,¹⁵ but he does not make this important point. Although he claims that the senatorial oligarchy did not oppose the assignment of land to veterans in principle,¹⁶ it is nevertheless clear that none of the settlements known was made on the Senate’s initiative.

Those of Marius’s veterans who were settled in Africa received generous allotments of land, but they did not form colonies. A few inscriptions show that the connection with Marius was long remembered.¹⁷ Descendants of these settlers were to describe themselves seventy years later as clientes c. Marii when, having been forced to serve under Scipio, they deserted to join forces with Caesar (Bell. Afr. 35, 4).

Gabba has shown the comparatively slight effect of the Sullan settlements on the communities on which they were imposed.¹⁸ There is little evidence for overseas settlements in the succeeding period, except in Spain, where Pompey may have settled some of his veterans, in 73 BC at Valentia, and in 55 BC at Corduba.¹⁹ A passage in Dio (36, 50) seems to imply a similar veteran settlement in Asia Minor in 66 BC: Pompey founded Nicopolis, τοῖς τραυματίαις καὶ τοις άφηλικεστέροις τῶν στρατιωτῶν. Pompey apparently assigned the city to the kingdom of Deiotarus, along with other inland districts of Pontus.²⁰ In Strabo’s day it lay in the kingdom of Ar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Legionary Recruitment and Veteran Settlement in the Late Republic
• Chapter Two: The Evidence for Legionary Recruitment and Veteran Settlement during the Principate
• Chapter Three: The Development of Legionary Recruitment and Veteran Settlement in the Principate
• Appendix: The Dating of the Lambaesis Dedication-lists
• Abbreviations Used in the Text and Tables
• Introductory Note to Tables
• Tables 1–32
• Note to Table 33
• Bibliography
• Footnotes
• Index