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Ancient Rome
The Roman Army
"Remember, Roman, that it is for thee to rule the nations. This shall be thy task, to impose the
ways of peace, to spare the vanquished, and to tame the proud by war."
The history of Rome is in many ways, the history of its highly successful armies. Between the
2nd century BC and the 1st century AD Rome expanded from a city-state to an empire controlling
the whole Mediterranean basin. This achievement was the work of its legions
The earliest Roman army formation was the phalanx, the formation used by the Greeks,
Macedonians, and Carthaginians. For the Romans the phalanx proved to be too unwieldy a unit to
fight on hilly and broken ground and they soon began to change the nature of their battle
formations. The result was the legion. Unlike the phalanx, the legion was not a static form; it
varied greatly over the centuries.
The term legion did not originally mean any specific type of military formation. Its origin probably
denoted those who were chosen for military service during the annual public assembly of citizens.
As it developed, the legion became a unit of from 4,000 to 6,000 heavy infantry supported by
cavalry and light infantry. The term infantry simply means soldiers who fight on foot; the terms
light and heavy refer to the kinds and weight of their weapons.
The advantage the legion had over the phalanx was flexibility and mobility. The legion did not
have to move in a solid block of men as did the phalanx. The legion was divided into maniples,
groups of 120 men, which were able to fight in a much more open and versatile battle array; they
marched in lines instead of solid formation.
On the march soldiers carried weapons, armor, cooking gear, and tools. Each day the army would
stop and build a camp surrounded by a wall of logs and a deep ditch. With the army went a train of
baggage animals, armorers, supply staff, engineers, and secretaries.
From the earliest days of the Republic until the end of the 2nd century BC the armies of Rome
were made up of citizens called up for duty each year. Every male citizen between the ages of 17
and 46 was liable for duty. In times of extreme emergency all male citizens could be called up,
even the young and the aged. Each class of citizens had to furnish a specific number of
companies made up of 100 men. These units were called centuries, or hundreds, and they were
commanded by officers called centurions. Even after the units of one hundred were abandoned,
the term centurion persisted as an officer designation.
Shortly before the end of the 2nd century BC a number of changes were made in the Roman army
system that were to change the very nature of Rome itself. Reliance on an annual call-up of
citizens meant that Rome never had a permanent army. This practice was abandoned. The citizen
army was replaced by a standing army made up of landless city dwellers and newly created
citizens from outlying provinces. The allegiance of these new legions was to their commander
rather than to the Roman state. The commander was expected to pay his soldiers in money or
land supplied by the state.
The leader in this reform of Rome's military system was the general Gaius Marius. He reformed
the legion, substituting for the maniple a 600-man unit that was called the cohort. The soldiers
swore an oath to him, binding them to service for a period of ten years. This transformation from a
temporary citizen army to a professional one made better training possible. It also meant that
each Roman commander had his own private army, with legions that were faithful to him for their
term of service.
This new army system paved the way for the destruction of the Roman Republic and the
establishing of the empire. Army commanders not only went abroad making new conquests and
fighting barbarians, but also vied with each other for political control of the Republic. During the
1st century BC, Roman legions often fought each other under the leadership of such generals as
Pompey, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Octavian.
In the end, it was Octavian, later called Augustus Caesar, who defeated all his opponents and
instituted imperial rule at Rome. Once in power, he revised the army system by cutting the
number of legions from 60 to 28, requiring 20 years of service from the soldiers, and setting up a
military treasury to pay the armies in the field and in retirement.
Under the empire the main task of the legions was not conquest, but defense. The extensive
borders of the empire in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa had to be continually held against
domestic insurrection and foreign invasion. Most of the legions were deployed at the outposts of
the empire. More and more, the army's manpower was derived from conquered barbarians rather
than Roman citizens.
In the 3rd and 4th centuries AD the army was again reorganized, first by the emperor Diocletian,
and later by Constantine. The number of men in a legion was cut from 4,500 to 2,000 in order to
gain mobility in fighting border wars. Total manpower was raised to 500,000, and discipline was
strengthened. Constantine reorganized the legions into border guards and organized a mobile
field army for a reserve force.
During the 5th and 6th centuries the western portion of the Roman Empire was overrun by
invading barbarians. The center of power shifted to the Eastern, or Byzantine, Empire, with its
capital at Constantinople. The Byzantine Empire was able to defend itself with a small,
professional army consisting of barbarian mercenaries and landless peasants who volunteered as
lifetime soldiers.
The organization
The strength and organisation of the legions varied in time and was probably not completely
standardised throughout the army. Generally speaking however the legio was organised in ten
cohortes or cohorts. These cohorts consisted each of three manipuli, literally 'handfulls', which
were in their turn subdivided in two centuriae or 'hundreds'. These centuriae were composed of a
number of contubernia or 'tentparties'. Although the name centuria would seem to indicate a unit
of a hundred soldiers, this unit could comprise anything from 30 to over 200 individuals. The
usual establishment strength however is thought to have been 80 men. From the second half of
the first century AD in at least some of the legions the first cohort was reorganised in five double
strength centuriae while the remainder continued to be organised in the old manner.
In addition to the regular organisation of cohortes, manipuli and centuriae of the legionary heavy
infantry there were other subunits for the equites legionis, the legionary cavalry, and the
antesignani or lancearii, the elite legionary light infantry. The exact details of their organisation
are as yet not very clear. For a variety of duties provisional units known as vexillationes or numeri
were formed. The strength and organisation of these provisional units varied greatly and was only
in part based on the more regular subdivisions of the legion.
The officers
Command of the legion was usually given to a legatus legionis picked by the emperor from the
senatorial class who generally had some previous military experience through service as a
tribunus. In Egypt and from the the start of the third century also in other provinces the command
was not entrusted to a senatorial legatus, but to a praefectus legionis, an acting commander
drawn from the equestrian order. The legionary commander was assisted by six military tribunes.
With the exception of the units stationed in Egypt one of these tribuni was usually a young
senator at the start of his public career. Known as a tribunus laticlavius from the broad purple
stripes on his tunic this senior tribune was second-in-command. His collegues from the
equestrian order were known as tribuni angusticlavii and generally had done earlier service as a
commander of an auxiliary infantry unit. A former senior centurion usually performed the duties of
praefectus castrorum, camp commandant, and was the third in the chain of command.
The most important officers in the legions were the centuriones. These men were partly directly
recruited from the Roman knights or the city councilmembers, but the greater part of the
centurions had previously served as soldiers and NCO's in the legions or the praetorian cohorts.
Depending on the organisation of the legion either sixty or fifty nine centuriones ordinarii
commanded the centuriae, while a varying number of centuriones supernumerarii were employed
for special duties. These officers were known by titles derived from the place of their units in the
old battle order. The hastatus prior, princeps prior and pilus prior were the higher ranking officers
commanding the manipuli. The hastatus posterior, princeps posterior and pilus posterior acted as
their deputies. The cohorts were under the command of the pilus prior. Distinguished from their
fellow officers were the primi ordines, the senior centurions of the first cohort of the legion. These
men had achieved their posts by prior service in other postings and were chief advisors of the
legionary commanders. The post of primus pilus, the highest ranking centurion in the legion,
carried great prestige and assured entry into the equestrian order.
An uncertain number of supernumerary centurions performed a variety of tasks both within the
legion itself and in other units. Centuriones exercitatores for example were used as training
officers for the legionary cavalry and the horse guards of provincial governors and the emperor. A
centurio stratorum was employed to oversee the remount system of the provincial armies and on
occasion to command the singulares, the auxiliary soldiers serving as a governor's guard. The
centuriones lanceariorum led the elite legionary infantry known as antesignani or lancearii. Other
supernumerary officers performed duties in the medical service of the legions.
The non commissioned officers
To assist the officers the legion counted a number of NCO's among its strength. These men were
known as principales and depending on their status recieved as duplicarii double pay or as
sesquiplicarii pay and a half. Each centurio ordinarius had an optio as his deputy. Whereas the
centurion led his men from the front, the optio was stationed at the rear of the unit to keep the
legionaries from shirking away in combat. The signifer or standard bearer carried the signum of
the unit. This standard served both as a rallying point for the soldiers and to communicate simple
visual commands to the troops in battle. The task of carrying the signum in battle was dangerous
as the soldier had to stand in the first rank and could carry only a small buckler. It may not be
strictly coincidental that available epigraphical evidence contains a relatively large number of
discentes signiferorum, trainee standardbearers. The signifer also assumed responsibility for the
financial administration of the unit and functioned as the legionaries' banker. The tesserarius was
a third NCO attached to a centuria and in charge of the distribution and collection of the watch
words. Both optio and signifer received double pay, but the tesserarius attached to a centuria was
on pay and a half. Other principales like the cornicularius were attached to the administrative
offices of the legion.
A considerable number of legionary soldiers were classed as immunes. These men were
exempted from the more tedious chores because of the special tasks they had to perform, but
received no extra pay. As many a soldier without immunity was forced to bribe his centurion to
escape the less desirable duties, the immunes would in practice have had some financial gain
from their position. Among the immunes were musicians, military police, cavalry troopers, drill
and weapons instructors, artisans, clerks and medical orderlies. It was usual for both immunes
and principales to have served several years as a munifex, a private liable for all kinds of duty and
fatigues, before they received promotion. Most, if not all, positions were reached after a period of
specialised training as a discens.
The praetorian guard
Under the republic Roman generals had usually formed a guard unit named cohors praetoria after
the praetorium or HQ. Under the empire such units became a privilege reserved for the emperor
under whose auspicia all military operations were conducted. Augustus originally formed nine
numbered cohortes praetoriae consisting of both infantry and cavalry billeted at Rome and some
other Italian cities. This number was later raised to ten units and the cohorts were concentrated in
a large base adjacent to Rome. Command of the praetorian guard was entrusted to one or two
equestrian praefecti praetorio. Three additional cohortes urbanae with a similar structure were
also present at Rome, but not under the direct control of the praetorian prefects.
A praetorian cohort consisted of approximately 500 infantrymen organised in manipuli and
centuriae and under the overall command of a tribunus. This strength was doubled in the course
of the first century AD. The majority of praetorians fought as heavy infantry with smaller numbers
acting as light infantry lancearii and archers. Added to these foot soldiers each cohort contained a
number of cavalrymen. The combined equites praetoriani numbered at least 400 men and may
even have been a thousand strong. Other troopers were known as equites speculatores and
served as bodyguards to the emperor. The praetorian cohort that guarded the imperial palace and
accompanied the emperor in the city of Rome was known as the cohors togata. As their duties
were performed within the pomerium, the sacred boundary of the city, these soldiers could not
wear full armour and equipment and therefore dressed in civilian togae, though keeping their
swords at hand.
Service conditions in the praetorian cohorts were better than in the legions. Pay was substantially
higher and donativa were more frequent. The term of service of sixteen years compared
favourably to the 20 to 25 years in the legions. Promotion opportunities were also excellent. A
large part of the legionary posts as centurio was filled by former praetorian guardsmen. The
cohortes praetoriae recruited originally in Italy and the older coloniae in the provinces, though at
times legionaries were transferred to the guard. From the reign of Septimius Severus the transfer
of picked legionaries became the usual method of filling the ranks of the praetorian guard.
The praetorian guard originally served as the backbone of field armies assembled for campaigns
that involved the emperor, one of his relatives or a praefectus praetorio. Contrary to popular
opinion this meant that the Rome based soldiers had a fair chance of being involved in combat
either against the barbarians from across the borders or rebellious Roman army units. Despite the
increase in the establishment strength of the praetorian cohorts the guards were increasingly
complemented by other formations. In the course of the third century AD the cohortes praetoriae
in the comitatus, the imperial field army, were regularly supplemented by mobile troops from the
legio II Parthica based at Albanum in Italy. Vexillationes of elite legionaries and auxiliaries from
the frontier armies joining these core formations in the imperial field army were slowly developing
into separate units that were permanently attached to the imperial retinue.