[-24-] Now that I have once been brought into a discussion of the legions, I shall speak of the forces as they are at present according to the disposition made by subsequent emperors:  in this way any one who desires to learn anything about them may do so easily, finding all his information written in one place.  Nero organized the First legion, called the Italian, and now wintering in Lower Moesia; Galba, the First legion, called Adiutrix, in Lower Pannonia, and the Seventh (Gemina), which is in Spain; Vespasian, the Second, Adiutrix, in Lower Pannonia, and the Fourth (the Flavian) in Syria; Domitian, the First (Minervia), in Lower Germany; Trajan, the Second (the Egyptian), and the Thirtieth (Germanic), which he also named after himself.  Marcus Antoninus organized the Second, which is in Noricum, and the Third, in Rhaetia; these are also called Italian:  Severus the Parthian legions, i. e., the First and the Third in Mesopotamia and between them the Second, the one in Italy.

This is at present the number of legions which are enrolled in the service, exclusive of the cohortes urbanae and the pretorian guard.  At that time, in the days of Augustus, those I mentioned were being supported, whether twenty-three or twenty-five altogether; and then there was some allied force, whatever the size, of infantry and cavalry and sailors.  I can not state the exact figures.  The body-guards, ten thousand in all, were divided into ten portions, and the six thousand warders of the city into four portions, and there were picked foreign horsemen to whom the name Batavians is applied (from the island Batavia in the Rhine), because the Batavians are noted for superiority in horsemanship.  I can not, however, state their exact number any more than that of the evocati.  He began to reckon in the latter from the time that he called the warriors who had previously supported his father to arms again against Antony; and he retained control of them.  They constitute even now a special corps and carry rods, like the centurions.

For the distribution mentioned he needed money and therefore introduced a motion into the senate to the effect that a definite permanent fund be created, in order that without troubling any private citizen they might obtain abundant support and rewards from the proposed appropriation.  The means for such a fund was accordingly sought.—­As no one showed a willingness to become aedile, some from the ranks of ex-quaestors and ex-tribunes were compelled by lot to take the office.  This happened frequently at other times.

[A.D. 6 (a. u. 759)]