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Beneath an orchard in southern Wales, not far from the legionary fortress at Caerleon,
a Roman tomb was discovered.
Among the roots and ruins were charred bones, broken urns, a coin from the reign of Trajan,
and eight inscriptions set up by the families that had built and shared the tomb.
One of these, incised on a rough limestone slab, commemorated Julius Valens, a veteran
of Legio II Augusta who had died at the age of 100.
Although there is no way of knowing whether Julius Valens was actually a centenarian,
there is no reason to doubt that, like Tiberius Julius Xanthus – a naval officer who reached
the age of 90 – or Lucius Tonneius Martialis, a legionary scribe who died at 93, he had
lived for decades after his retirement from the Roman military.
The professional Roman army of the imperial era demanded lengthy periods of service from
recruits.
By the second century AD, most legionaries, auxiliaries, and sailors served between 23
and 28 years.
Some men – like the standard-bearer who died, apparently still on active duty, at
the age of 72 – remained in the ranks considerably longer.
These years of service were dangerous.
Even during the comparatively peaceful early imperial era, death in battle was always a
possibility.
Although disasters on the scale of the Teutoburg Forest – where three legions were lost – or
the mauling of Legio XII Fulminata during the Jewish War were rare, any skirmish could
be fatal: a tombstone found near Hadrian’s Wall commemorates a centurion and his son,
killed by raiders who had infiltrated their fort.
The hazards of campaigning were not confined to battle.
A strength report for a cohort stationed in the Balkans during the reign of Trajan, for
example, records losses from bandit ambushes and drownings at river crossings.
Even the weather could be deadly.
During the reign of Nero, when a Roman army was forced to winter in the frigid Armenian
highlands, some soldiers died of hypothermia, and many more lost limbs to frostbite.
A few years later, another army, camped just outside Rome at the height of an Italian summer,
was laid low by heat exhaustion and fever.
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Returning to the hazards of life in the Roman army.
Discipline was brutal.
Minor infractions were punished with beatings.
For a more serious offense, a soldier might have his hands hacked off or his legs broken.
The death penalty was decreed for anyone who slept through their watch or deserted in battle.
The most infamous of all military punishments was decimation, the execution of every tenth
man in a unit deemed guilty of cowardice.
Though rare, it was far from unheard-of: in one notorious instance, Octavian – the future
Augustus – decimated a cohort that fled from a band of Illyrian rebels, and had two
of its centurions executed for good measure.
The greatest threat to a Roman soldier’s survival, however, was disease.
Despite considerable investment in medical personnel and infrastructure – medics followed
the troops to battle, and many camps were equipped with hospitals – the absence of
anything resembling germ theory left Roman soldiers vulnerable to a wide range of maladies.
A probably typical strength report from an auxiliary cohort stationed along Hadrian’s
Wall lists more than 10% of the men there as unfit for duty on account of wounds, illness,
or inflammation of the eyes.
On the other side of the empire, an Egyptian legionary’s letters to his father describe
how – in addition to being injured while policing a riot at Alexandria – he had been
laid low by a nasty case of food poisoning from bad fish.
If a soldier survived to the end of his enlistment, he was formally discharged.
Every other year, on January 7, men whose terms had expired were mustered out and granted
the rewards of their service to the state.
If they did not already possess it, auxiliaries received Roman citizenship.
Legionaries were given a massive bonus – equivalent to more than a decade of pay – either in
cash or in land.
What were the odds of a Roman soldier surviving to enjoy his retirement benefits?
We have, of course, no way of calculating a precise average for any given region or
period.
But thanks to the thousands of tombstones set up for soldiers and veterans across the
empire, we can at least paint an impressionistic picture.
To gain some sense of the evidence, I downloaded the first volume of Inscriptiones Latinae
Selectae, a century-old collection of about 10,000 Latin inscriptions.
Turning to the section on legionaries, I read through a hundred or so epitaphs.
Most of the men in this meager sample set had joined the legions in their late teens
or early twenties.
And many of them had died in their 30s and 40s, often while still serving in the ranks.
A survey of the tombstones belonging to soldiers of Legio III Augusta, stationed in North Africa,
gives an average age at death of about 47.
Since most legionaries served about 25 years, and since here – as throughout the empire
– the average age of enlistment was around 20, most men were thus approaching their life
expectancy by the time they were discharged.
In the demographic regime of the ancient Mediterranean, we would expect roughly 78% of men who enlisted
in the legions at age 20 to still be alive at age 35.
About 69% would be expected to reach 40, and 60% would attain the age of 45, roughly when
most would be discharged.
The actual survival rate would have been lower than this, thanks to violent death, disease,
and early discharge.
In the light of these facts, it would be reasonable to estimate that about half of the soldiers
who enlisted in the imperial Roman army survived to retirement.
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