CHAPTER XVIII

THE ARMY:  MILITARY SERVICE:  PUBLIC CAREER

In the older days of Roman history the fighting forces had been a “citizen army,” called out for so long as it was needed, and levied from full and true Roman citizens.  In the imperial times with which we are here dealing it had become a standing army.  Soldiering was a profession, for which the men volunteered, and, so far as Roman citizens were concerned, it was now seldom, if ever, the case that military service required to be made compulsory on their part.  It is true that a young man of the higher classes who proposed to follow a public career, leading to higher and higher offices of state, must have gone through some amount of military training, but no other Roman was actually obliged to serve.  The empire was so vast and the total of the standing forces comparatively so small that it was always possible to fill up the legions with those who had some motive or inclination that way.  Theoretically the state possessed a claim upon every able-bodied man, but the population of the empire was probably a hundred millions, and to collect a total of some 320,000 soldiers, made up of Roman or romanized “citizens” and of provincial subjects in about equal shares, was a sufficiently easy task, and the recruiters could therefore afford to pick and choose.  Above all we must clear our minds of the notion that the Roman soldiers necessarily came from Rome, or even from Italy.  They were drawn from the empire at large, and a legion posted in Spain, for example, might be recruited from a special class of Spaniards.

Roughly speaking, the regular army, extending along the frontiers from Chester to Jerusalem and from Jerusalem to Algeria, was composed of two main divisions, called respectively the “legions” and the “auxiliaries.”  Other special or detached forces—­such as the twelve regiments of Imperial Guards and the six of the City Guard—­came under neither of these headings, and we may leave them out of the question for the present.

A legion was a brigade of about 6000 infantry, with 120 horsemen attached to it.  It was recruited from any convenient part of the empire, but only from men already enjoying the rights of Roman citizens, or else from those other provincials who were considered sufficiently homogeneous with the Roman civilisation to stand shoulder to shoulder with such citizens.  In being permitted to serve on these terms a man regularly becomes ipso facto a citizen.  The qualifications required were that you should be free-born—­that is to say, neither slave nor ex-slave—­your physique must be good, and your height about 5 feet 10 inches:  there must be nothing serious against your record or character as viewed from the Roman standpoint; and, if you were not already a citizen, you must belong to one of those organised communes which were the units of administration and of taxation within the