Centuries of peace and plenty ushered by emperor Augustus allowed Rome’s legions to grow
massive and strong, becoming some of the most efficient troops in world history. They would
need the advantage, as in the late second and third centuries, with enemies on all sides,
the legionary system of Imperial Rome would be put under pressure which would bring its
almost total collapse. It would eventually adapt and bear the weight, leading to the
period of the late empire. Welcome to our video on the Roman army of the middle empire,
how it was organised, and its progression and adaptation throughout the years of turmoil.
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During the late second century, it was clear that the needs of Rome’s military were rapidly
beginning to change, and a shifting strategic situation would soon make adaptation essential.
The 100s AD had been a time of peace and plenty in the Roman Empire - a golden age which Edward
Gibbon described as the happiest time in human history. However, upon the death of Emperor
Commodus in 192, the Empire began a spiraling decline which would last almost an entire
century, helped along by increasing external threats along its eastern and northern borders,
rampant disease, and internecine civil war. The Roman army had to come to terms with these
conditions, and, despite suffering greatly along the way, managed to do just that, and
arguably became even stronger than before out of necessity. When Marcus Aurelius and
Lucius Verus assumed the Roman throne in 161, there were 29 legions in the army. This figure
was almost immediately reduced to 28 when one of the legions, possibly legio IX Hispana,
was destroyed in a war with the Parthians. It was not until 165 that Marcus Aurelius
created the new, legions II and III ‘Italica’, in order to face the Marcomanni and their
allies on the Rhine-Danube frontier. Legionary recruitment had been drastically changed since
the Republic and Early Empire, so let us delve into a bit of detail about how middle-imperial
legionary enrolment took place. When were men brought into the Imperial legions
during this time, it was done so primarily through conscription, but a good number of
troops still enrolled voluntarily with expectations of good pay and potential advancement to a
rank which was both profitable and prestigious? Legions I and III ‘Parthica’, raised by
Septimius Severus, for example, were recruited primarily by conscripting the defeated Roman
units of his civil war opponent, Pescennius Niger in 194.
This recruitment process as a whole was known as the dilectus, or ‘levy’ in our terms,
and Herodian’s description of Caracalla’s visit to Alexandria in 215AD gives us some
idea about how a dilectus might have been conducted. An edict was issued by the Emperor
stating that all of Alexandria’s young men should assemble on an open area of ground,
probably in a similar landscape in spirit to the Field of Mars, or campus martius in
Rome. Caracalla wished to create a phalanx in honour of Alexander - whom he was obsessed
with. The young would-be phalangites were made to
muster in ordered ranks so that the emperor could examine each man, judging if their stature,
age and condition measured up to the army’s standard or not. It’s worth noting that
this occasion was not exactly a routine muster of Roman legionaries and so it could be an
outlier. However, it is an example of how an experienced Roman commander and emperor
- Caracalla - was used to rallying troops for military purposes.
The army usually favoured men from agricultural backgrounds, rather than urbanites like the
Alexandrians or those in Rome itself, mainly because such recruits were accustomed to hard
work and tough conditions. We can sense from some of the surviving sources and physical
evidence that there seems to have been a sort of classism in imperial society about membership
of different parts of the Roman army. For example, the gravestone of a praetorian centurion
proclaimed that he had ‘faithfully commanded a century in a praetorian cohort, not in a
barbarian legion’. Naturally, this figure seems to have thought himself far too good
for the mere rabble of brutish farmers. The ‘barbarian legions’, made up of provincials
had the last laugh however, as Septimius Severus disbanded the praetorians in 193 and reformed
them purely from the ranks of ordinary legionaries. The characteristics and bearing of the primarily
rural, increasingly provincial and ‘culturally backwards’ legionaries often shocked the
more sophisticated segments of Roman society, such as the famous senator Cassius Dio. He
was familiar with the relatively soft and cultured praetorians, reporting that the Pannonian
soldiers who entered Rome with Severus in 193 were ‘most savage in appearance, most
terrifying in speech and most boorish in conversation’. Evidence from even more Roman gravestones
suggests that most legionaries enlisted were between the ages of 17 to 23, though it wasn’t
uncommon for older or younger recruits to join up. It’s quite easy for us to picture
a particularly large 15 year old from Egypt going down to the recruiting station thinking
of adventure. Being ‘big’ in those days isn’t the same as how we think of it, however.
Vegetius states that the ideal height of a soldier was 5 feet and 9 inches - 1.77 metres,
and that soldiers of the first cohort of a legion should be at least 5 feet and 7 inches
- 1.72 metres. This first cohort was often the elite formation of the legion, so the
increased height requirement can’t have hurt in an age of melee combat with swords
and other close quarters weapons. After Septimius Severus came to power, discharge
became an annual occurrence among the legionaries, who henceforth served for a fixed period of
26 years. However, the Third Century Crisis and its intermittent civil wars messed all
of that up. From around 244 or thereabouts, a 40-year period of more or less constant
foreign war and internal strife began, which resulted in soldiers being kept in service
far beyond their regular term. Much later, in the reign of Emperor Aurelian from 270
to 275, we find a soldier named Aurelius Iulianus who had served in Legio II Parthica for 33
years. Naturally, some troops were more than happy
to continue serving their empire, but only if they were adequately compensated for doing
so. Pay was, is and will always be crucial for maintaining armies, and during the turbulent
period of Rome’s middle-empire, it became essential. This mercenary attitude was personified
by the soldier-emperor Septimius Severus, who advised his sons upon his deathbed to
‘be harmonious, enrich the soldiers and scorn all other men.’
During his life, this ruler had presided over the first pay increase for Roman legionaries
for over a century. 100 years before, Domitian had increased military pay to an annual sum
of 300 silver denarii paid in 4 separate installments. Low-level officers were granted that pay and
another half on top of it, while senior officers received double. Severus increased the soldiers’
pay by around 50%, making the basic wage 450 denarii, pay which was often supplemented
by so-called ‘donatives’ - special gifts from the emperor on celebratory occasions
or when he felt like sharing booty after a campaign.
After Severus’ death, Caracalla doubled the pay again to 900 denarii, but that was
a step too far and it placed a massive strain on imperial finances. Pay rises turned out
to be an even bigger problem and when his successors tried to return army wages to more
reasonable levels, it caused unrest and mutiny. This restraint didn’t last long. When Maximinus
Thrax - the ‘big guy from Thrace’ as Professor Gregory Aldrete called him - came to the throne
in 235, he AGAIN doubled the soldiers’ pay to 1,800 denarii. It’s worth noting that
the third century saw massive inflation, so increasing pay by such ridiculous degrees
might not have been as indulgent as it seems. The legionary infantry’s tactical command
structure remained relatively unchanged throughout the turbulent third century, with its cohorts,
centuries and contubernia units. However, there were a few differences in command and
composition which were gradually starting to appear, and that need to be outlined.
Legionary high command gradually changed throughout the third century, perhaps due to the ‘barrack
emperors’ and their distrust of the senatorial class in Rome. Until around 260, most legions
were still commanded by a senatorial officer known as a legatus. Even early on though,
some legions, such as legio II Traiana, based near Alexandria in Egypt, were commanded by
a praefectus or ‘prefect’ - a former legionary Primus Pilus who had been promoted to the
equestrian order. The Emperors might have looked at Egypt’s
undeniably protected status, with senators being banned from going there and its politics
being almost totally restrained. So, at some point between 260 and 268, Emperor Gallienus
finally issued an edict prohibiting senators from military commands entirely, and by the
Third Century’s end all legions were led by professional prefects.
Next we must outline how the soldier-emperors began to deal with the increasing levels of
pressure on Roman borders by changing how Roman armies operated around the empire on
a fundamental level, and how they were deployed. From around the time of Marcus Aurelius, the
deployment of entire legions to specific battlefields was gradually toned down, and by the mid third
century, it was incredibly rare for a full legion to leave its base and fight abroad.
For the entirety of Lucius Verus’ Parthian War, the men of legio I Minerva, legio II
Aduitrix and legio V Macedonica served in the east in their whole capacity.
However, in the empire’s subsequent wars on its northern border from 168 to 180, many
legions were deployed not as whole units, but in sliced up detachments known as vexillationes
- so-called because they would march under a banner known as a ‘vexillum’, or ‘vexilla’
in the plural. When referring to this type of unit, vexillationes were not bound by any
kind of specific size like, for example, a cohort was, and could designate a unit split
from a larger legion of any size. Already in 170AD, Marcus Aurelius’ recently
established legions II and III Italica were operating in vexillationes, and this trend
only increased in frequency as the years went on. An inscription from the city of Solin
in modern Croatia records how vexillationes from legio II Pia and legio III Concordia
were combined and fought together to protect the city from barbarian invasions during the
Marcomannic Wars. From this point on, the ‘legion’ as a
unit began its transition from a mobile army in itself to a kind of static reserve which
was stationed at a particular location. From that base, it would detach vexillationes as
needed for garrison duties or service in larger field armies. The employment of this ‘static’
default system would also allow completion of other duties without compromising its primarily
role of frontier defence and provincial law enforcement - two roles which were becoming
increasingly important as the empire calcified and went on the defensive.
The advances of this system were practical in nature, despite the initial appearance
of weakening individual legions. More mobile Vexillationes could be moved around the empire
far quicker than the larger legionary formations, and could therefore more quickly respond to
faraway threats. Moreover, because of their smaller size, they were more easily supplied
during their long marches to where they were needed, placing less of a strain on the empire’s
logistics and populations on the army’s line of march.
When many of these smaller formations were massed together into a field army, they were
capable of destroying the larger militaries Rome often faced, such as the Persian armies
fielded by the well-organised Sassanid Empire. However, when needed, they could also be detached
and dispersed to combat less numerous opponents. In essence, they were a strategically flexible
tactical unit, compared to the massive administrative unit which the legion had been.
As a standard, a combat vexillation usually was comprised of one or two cohorts - 600
to 1,200 men - who retained their centurial tactical organisation, and would fight in
this manner in the field. This meant that these units were essentially mini-legions
carrying the number and names of the parent legion. While the arrangement was usually
intended to be temporary, the ravages and turmoil of the third century made it virtually
certain that some vexillationes would essentially become estranged from their parent legions,
having been detached for so long. Equipment in the Roman army, which had been
so typically uniform for centuries, began to diversify beginning in the mid-second century,
with such notable weapons as the gladius no longer being seen as catch-all pieces of gear.
Imperial infantry for the most part stopped using short-swords and instead adopted medium
and long blades, though it should be noted that some shortswords remained in use. Some
of the longest Roman swords from this time are so large as to resemble the heavy rapiers
of the early-modern period. However, this change in weaponry doesn’t
seem to have affected Roman swordsmanship doctrine too much, and there is no evidence
that primary weapon usage switched to slashing rather than thrusting. Vegetius still advocates
the use of a sword’s point in combat rather than its edge in his account of legionary
training, and Ammianus Marcellinus confirms the assertion when he states that legionaries
used their swords to ‘thrust’ at a battle much later, indicating a continuity of practice
in the middle empire. Many modern scholars have referred to the
aforementioned longer-blades as spatha, but Ammianus refers to them as the gladius, which
could just be a colloquial term at this point for a ‘roman sword’ whatever its design.
Other weapons, such as the pugio dagger and the pilum seem to have remained relatively
standard in frontline soldiers. It seems like the Romans also discovered that
additional armour was, in fact, good during the middle-empire, and because of that began
producing heavier defensive equipment. Ringmail shirts commonly began to consist of full-length
sleeves down a soldiers’ arms and could even extend far down the thighs, while scale
cuirasses were reinforced with chest plates. Use of the famous legionary lorica segmentata
armour, consisting of iron plates and hoops was limited, but it continued until at least
the middle of the third century. To supplement its relatively low level of
limb protection, articulated armguards known as manicae were used, in addition to greaves
and even thigh guards. Helmets also became heavier and more protective during these years,
with the Imperial Italic series of helmets ceasing production by the early third century.
All legionaries subsequently adopted heavier pieces of headgear of single-bowl construction,
reinforced by cross-pieces and with very deep napes, leaving only a small t-shaped opening
for the face. This type of helmet offered excellent protection for the vulnerable head
and neck, but the cheek pieces would obscure peripheral vision and the lack of ear-holes
would make listening difficult. They remained dominant until the close of
the third century, when they were replaced with Sassanid-style ridge-helmets and spagenhelms.
They were of a poorer quality when compared to earlier models, but this kind of ‘austerity’
measure was necessary after the disasters of the third century.
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