Section II — Recruiting and Distribution — The Auxilia of the Roman Imperial Army by G. L. Cheesman

Section II Recruiting and Distribution

In making a levy for the auxiliary regiments, the imperial government was under no obligation to be at pains to legalize its position. In an ancient state it was assumed, as a matter of course, that the government had the power to call upon every citizen, if need arose, to take his place in the fighting line. Even the privileged cives Romani were never freed under the Empire from the legal obligation to military service, however much they may have been spared in practice, so that there can have been little doubt about the position of peregrini. Only in the case of the civitates foederatae was the government theoretically required to limit its demands to the number of men stipulated in the original foedus.

So much for the position in theory; in practice, of course it was not to the interests of the government to raise troops without considering the susceptibilities of its subjects, more particularly since the inhabitants of those districts which would furnish the best soldiers would also prove the most dangerous rebels if the demands made upon them exceeded their endurance. One instance of the conciliatory policy followed by the early Empire has already been noted; the exemption of the Batavians from all burdens but military service flattered their pride and enlisted their clan-spirit effectually on the side of the Romans. Evidence of a similar policy is apparent in the selection of the ethnical titles borne by the majority of the auxiliary regiments. In spite of the obvious convenience of such a step it was unusual for all the auxilia raised in one province to form a single series with a uniform designation. Wherever the clan-spirit existed, the name of the clan was accepted as the official title of the contingent which it furnished to the imperial forces.158 In Tarraconensis, for example, while the more civilized part of the province was represented by the alae and cohortes Hispanorum, several of the wild tribes of the north and west, such as the Aravaci, Vardulli, and Vascones gave their name to the regiments which they supplied.159 The Gallic levies reveal a similar policy; while the contingents of the comparatively peaceful Lugdunensis seem to be covered by the general title of Galli, a list of the levies of Belgica contains the name of almost every tribe in that warlike province.160 Indeed it is probable that during the first years of the Empire many of these tribal contingents fought, like the Batavians, as allies rather than as subjects of Rome, and knew little of Roman training or discipline.

In the East the historic position of the great city-states of Syria received similar recognition. Among the numerous regiments of archers contributed by this province we can distinguish the contingents of Ascalon, Tyre, Antioch, and Apamea, as well as corps from Chalcis, Damascus, Hemesa, and Samaria, who represented the incorporated armies of the old client states.

The incidence of the levy upon different provinces can best be judged by a statistical table giving the number of regiments raised in each. This is not easy to construct owing to the confusion caused by the duplication of numbering, and the consequent danger of counting the same corps twice over, or of reckoning two corps as one. There were, for example, in Pannonia two cohorts, each bearing the title ‘I Alpinorum’, which can fortunately be distinguished from one another because they are both mentioned in the same diploma, but there are scores of similar cases which can only be decided as yet on a balance of probabilities. This extremely inconvenient system seems to be due to two causes. In the first place, when new regiments were raised some time after the original levy they seem to have begun a fresh series instead of being included in the old ones. This process can be followed most clearly in the case of regiments raised after 70, which were distinguished by a title derived from the name of the reigning emperor. Thus we have cohorts I and II Flavia Brittonum, I Ulpia Brittonum, I Aelia Brittonum, and I Aurelia Brittonum.161 Secondly, it seems probable that when newly-raised regiments were drafted into different provinces they were numbered in a different series in each province. This suggestion is supported by the fact that where a regiment bearing a high number is found, it generally appears that the rest of the series was originally stationed in the same province, whereas isolated cohorts generally have a low number. For example, the greater part of the Gallic levies were originally stationed on the Rhine. Consequently, we find few duplicate numbers and several series which run up to four or even higher. The Thracian regiments, on the other hand, on account of their special utility as archers, were distributed very widely throughout the Empire during the first century, and of the twenty-seven corps known to us, seventeen are numbered I or II, and are distributed over eight provinces.

Apart from this difficulty the following list contains in any case more regiments than ever existed at any one time. Fresh regiments must have been raised to fill the gaps caused by such disasters as the defeat of Varus and the rebellion of Boudicca, but in only a few cases can we distinguish the earlier from the later levies. It is only possible to put in a separate class those regiments which bear a title derived from the Flavians or later emperors, and were probably raised after 70. Still, if these limitations are borne in mind, the following table may serve to show approximately the quota which each province contributed:

	A. Raised before 70.		B. Raised after 70.
Recruiting area.	Alae.	Cohorts.	Alae.	Cohorts.
Britain	2	10 162	0	6
Belgica	5	45	1	11 163
Lugdunensis	25 164	24 165	0	0
Aquitania	0	7	0	0
Narbonensis	2 166	0	0	0
Alpes 167	1	12	0	0
Raetia	0	18	0	1
Noricum	1	1	0	0
Pannonia	5	17	3	1
Dalmatia	0	7	0	4 168
Moesia	1	3 169	1	2 170
Dacia	0	0	1	6
Thrace	9	20	0	2
Macedonia	0	3 171	0	0
Galatia	1 172	0	0	6 173
Cilicia	0	3	0	1
Cyprus	0	4	0	0
Crete	0	1	0	0
Cyrenaica	0	4	0	0
Syria	3 174	15 175	1	12
Palestine 176	2	10	0	0
Arabia	0	0	1	6
Egypt	0	2	0	0
Africa	2	5	3	6
Mauretania	0	0	0	3 177
Tarraconensis	11	49 178	1	4
Lusitania	0	9	0	0
Corsica and Sardinia	0	4	0	2

The first point to notice in this list is the smallness of the contingent from the senatorial provinces. So small is it that Mommsen desired to see here evidence of a constitutional principle.179 The auxilia were ‘gewissermassen eine Hausmacht des Kaisers’ and as such raised only in the provinces governed by his legati. Such instances as were then known of regiments raised in senatorial provinces were, he thought, susceptible of explanation. The alae Vocontiorum, for instance, represented a civitas foederata which was not, strictly speaking, a part of the senatorial province of Narbonensis. It does not, however, seem possible to maintain this theory. The Cohors I Cretum 180 is a certain case of a regiment from a senatorial province, nor can it be really doubted that contingents were also drawn from Cyprus 181 and Cyrene.182 Indeed, it is difficult to see what legal or political obstacle should prevent Augustus and his successors from utilizing the military material available in the senatorial provinces. Even if Mommsen is right in believing that conscription, as opposed to the enrolment of volunteers, could only take place in a senatorial province with the authority of the Senate (and this theory is questioned by both Gardthausen and Liebenam),183 there is no reason why levies should not have been made for the auxilia under these conditions when they certainly were made for the legions.184 In no case did any military power remain in the hands of the Senate, since the recruits would immediately be marched away to garrison imperial provinces. As a matter of fact, the reason for the smallness of the senatorial contingent seems to have been a practical one. Few auxilia were raised from Narbonensis and Baetica, because the greater part of the inhabitants of these provinces had received the franchise and were consequently eligible for service in the legions. Achaia, Asia, and to a certain extent Macedonia, were treated as being on the same footing, partly because Greeks did actually serve in the Eastern legions, partly because of the Philhellenic policy of the imperial government, which would not deny to the Greek states, although they were technically unenfranchised, the privileges enjoyed by the enfranchised urban communities of the West. Also no doubt the Greek of the period was not rated highly as a fighting man. On the other hand, from Cyrenaica, Crete, Cyprus, parts of Macedonia, and Africa 185 useful troops could be and were obtained. The way in which the system worked is shown by the case of Noricum, which, although an imperial province, included many enfranchised communities and contributed recruits to the Rhine legions in the middle of the first century.186 Its contribution of auxilia in consequence is limited to one ala and one cohort, as against the eighteen regiments furnished by the neighbouring province of Raetia.

In contrast to Narbonensis, it was upon the remaining three Gallic provinces that the levy fell most heavily. From this district came more than a quarter of the auxiliary infantry 187 in the pre-Flavian period and nearly half the cavalry. The Gallic troopers indeed maintained for a century the reputation which they had won under Caesar’s command, and Strabo,188 writing in the reign of Augustus, places them above all other cavalry in the imperial army. Arrian,189 too, notes their reputation and the number of Celtic words in the cavalry drill-book, although in his day their position had been taken by the Pannonians, already prominent in the campaign of 69.190 Spain sent the largest contingent after the Gallic provinces, and also contributed a few words to the drill-book,191 but we hear nothing of the quality of the Spanish troops and they soon lost their early importance. The predominance of the auxilia of Spain and Gaul in the pre-Flavian period is, however, a clear indication of the determination of Augustus to base the Empire on its Western provinces. Archers alone, and these in comparatively small numbers, were drawn from the East,192 which was still regarded as the home of dangerous and un-Roman ideals.

Lastly, a word must be said about a group of regiments which do not appear in the above lists and are too numerous to be passed over. These are the cohorts which bear the titles voluntariorum civium Romanorum, ingenuorum c. R., Italica c. R., and campestris.193 Collectively these regiments constitute the cohortes civium Romanorum to the soldiers of which Augustus left by his will a donative equal to that of the legionaries.194 From various passages in the literary authorities it appears that they represent the result of two levies made by Augustus in Italy, the first during the Pannonian rising, and the second after the defeat of Varus.195 When free-born citizens could not be found in sufficient numbers the levy was extended to freedmen.196 This is corroborated by the evidence of the inscriptions, since the title ingenuorum clearly implies the existence of regiments whose members could not make this boast.197 Originally, as the provisions of the will of Augustus show, these cohorts occupied a peculiar position, and were practically on a level with the legionaries, in consequence of which their commanders bear the title of tribunus.198 The presence, however, of the Cohors VIII Voluntariorum on the Dalmatian diploma of 93 shows that unenfranchised recruits had been accepted even during the pre-Flavian period, and in the following century only their title distinguishes these regiments from the ordinary auxilia.

The evidence hitherto considered has mainly served to illustrate the original distribution of the burden of military service and the respective quotas furnished by the different provinces to the auxilia at the time of their organization. To trace the further workings of this system it is necessary to examine the principles on which the auxiliary regiments were distributed among the military areas and to trace the relations between this distribution and the method of recruiting.

A casual glance at the military diplomata, which give a fair idea of the composition of the more important provincial garrisons between the reign of Vespasian and that of Commodus, suggests that it was the settled policy of the imperial government to destroy the possibility of national cohesion and local sympathies among the regiments raised from their subjects by distributing the contingents of each recruiting district over as wide an area as possible, and making every frontier army corps a mosaic of different nationalities. It will be shown later that this theory, which has been frequently adopted by modern writers, will not stand before a closer scrutiny of the evidence as an explanation of the state of things existing in the second century; it can also be shown that such a principle of distribution was not the original policy inaugurated by Augustus.

Our earliest evidence relates to the composition of the garrison of the Danubian provinces, and the account of the great rising which took place here in the year A.D. 6 by the contemporary observer Velleius makes it clear that the strength of the rebels lay in the training which many had received in the Roman army. His reference to the military knowledge of the leaders and the discipline of the rank and file indicates that regular auxiliary regiments, raised locally and stationed near their homes, had mutinied in sympathy with their fellow tribesmen.199 Concerning the state of things on the Rhine frontier we have more detailed information which points to the same conclusion. The account in the Annals of the campaigns of Germanicus mentions cohorts of Raeti, Vindelici, and Gauls in addition to the tumultuariae catervae of the local militia.200 Later in the century we find an Ala Treverorum engaged in putting down a revolt of their own countrymen in 21,201 an Ala Canninefatium engaged in the disastrous expedition of L. Apronius against the Frisii in 28,202 and Vangiones and Nemetes helping to repulse a raid of the Chatti in 50.203 Finally, when we turn to the narrative contained in the Histories of the events of the disastrous year 69, we find abundant evidence that at this date three-fourths of the Rhenish auxilia were drawn from Gaul proper or the Teutonic tribes of Belgica. The only regiments mentioned by Tacitus which are not of local origin are (1) Thracians, who appear on every frontier owing to their special qualifications as archers;204 (2) Spaniards, who may have entered the province in 43 with Legio IV Macedonica, which was transferred from Spain to the Rhine to replace the troops sent to Britain, and (3) Britons, who probably began to arrive from the newly conquered areas a few years later.205 Epigraphical evidence adds to the list a few regiments from the Danubian provinces and some corps of oriental archers.206

In other provinces the same policy can be traced, although the evidence is less abundant. In Africa, for example, the deserter Tacfarinas seems to have served in his own province,207 and in Palestine we find Samaritan regiments garrisoning Caesarea.208 On the whole there is sufficient evidence to show that although each of the great frontier armies contained imported elements, in particular the ubiquitous Thracian and oriental archers, the original policy of the imperial government was to draw the auxilia in each case from the nearest recruiting-areas.

Both the advantages and the defects of this system are sufficiently obvious. It saved trouble, a reason which had already commended it to the administrators of the Republic, and it avoided the dangerous and widespread discontent which, as the case of the Thracians shows, would have followed any wholesale attempt to remove the newly organized regiments to distant provinces.209 Lastly, the men would be fighting on ground which they knew against an enemy with whose methods of fighting they would already be acquainted. On the other hand, there was of course the obvious danger that in a border war which assumed the character of a national struggle the local auxilia might desert to their own countrymen and use the training which they had acquired in the Roman service to increase the strength of the hostile resistance. As a set-off to this danger the Romans reckoned with some justice that tribal enmity was usually stronger than national feeling, and in fact there were many tribal chiefs like Flavus, the brother of Arminius, who were well content with the rewards and distinctions which recompensed their fidelity.210 Events, however, made it clear that this confidence was misplaced. A time was to come when the border tribes would identify themselves readily with the cause of imperial defence, but the influences which were to bring about this result were often slow in their operation, and the first century saw on almost every frontier a more or less serious outbreak of national feeling, in which the auxilia often participated. Yet even the most serious of these revolts, that of Civilis in 69, showed how the new leaven was working. The political conceptions of the mutineers were borrowed from their conquerors, not from their ancestors, and in the darkest hour of the revolt a Gallic cavalry regiment, the Ala Picentiana, was the first to return to its fidelity.211

The first district in which the Augustan policy broke down was the Danubian provinces, and a glance at the names of the regiments stationed here in the pre-Flavian period shows that the lesson of the great rebellion was not thrown away upon the imperial authorities. In Pannonia a diploma of the year 60 212 shows us the following seven cohorts, I and II Alpinorum, I Asturum et Callaecorum, I and II Hispanorum, I Lusitanorum, and V Lucensium et Callaecorum, forming part of the garrison of the province, and we may add the Ala Aravacorum on the strength of an early inscription.213 In Dalmatia early inscriptions give the following cohorts:

I Campanorum Voluntariorum civium Romanorum. iii. 8438.

VIII Voluntariorum civium Romanorum. iii. 1742.214

III Alpinorum. iii. 8491, 8495, 14632.

I Lucensium. iii. 8486, 8492, 8494, 9834. All these must date before 80, when the regiment appears in Pannonia.

This list might perhaps be lengthened, but it is sufficient for our purpose. It is clear that after the rebellion Augustus imported into the disturbed area a number of regiments from other provinces, particularly from Spain, where the large garrison maintained during the earlier part of his reign could now safely be reduced. The Pannonian and Dalmatian regiments, on the other hand, were transferred elsewhere—several of them, as we have seen, to the Rhine, where they served to replace the troops who shared the fate of the legions of Varus.215

The same sequence of events took place on the Rhine in the years 69 and 70. The temporary success of Civilis was largely due to the wholesale defection to his standard of the Gallic and Teutonic regiments then stationed on the Rhine frontier. After the suppression of the rebellion in the summer of 70 a number of these regiments were disbanded or sent elsewhere,216 and their place was taken by the auxilia who had accompanied the new legions sent into the province by Vespasian. Of the 29 regiments which appear in the Rhine in the second century only 11 bear titles indicating a local origin, and some of these had probably not belonged to the pre-Flavian garrison but had only returned to their native country in 70 after a long stay in other provinces. It has been noticed, for example, that of the two veterans of the Cohors I Aquitanorum, to whom the diplomata of 82 (D. xiv) and 90 (D. xxi) were granted, one is a Thracian, the other a Galatian; further, that one of these diplomata was found near the site of the later town of Nicopolis ad Istrum, where the owner had presumably settled after his discharge. This suggests that the regiment had been stationed in Moesia and only returned to its native province in 70 with the Moesian legion VIII Augusta.

It is on these two frontiers, the Rhine and the Danube, that the transfer of troops can most easily be traced, because of the importance of the military events which caused it to take place. In other parts of the Empire other tendencies were at work during the first century which produced the same result in less noticeable fashion. One need only mention the steady drift of troops from the Danube to the East in the reign of Nero,217 and from the Rhine to the Danube a little later,218 and it is easily intelligible that the second-century army list shows few traces of the original policy of Augustus.

If, then, it were correct to assume that the title of an auxiliary regiment is always a correct index of its composition, it would certainly be justifiable to comment on the extraordinary mixture of nationalities in the frontier garrisons of the second century. Fortunately, however, the frequent mention of the origin of individual soldiers on diplomata and sepulchral inscriptions 219 gives us the means of checking this assumption and of working upon a surer basis of fact. The following lists give the inscriptions of this type from Pannonia arranged in two groups according to their date, the year 70 being taken as the dividing line; that is to say, the soldiers mentioned in the first group were enrolled before that date. Some inscriptions which could not be dated with any certainty have necessarily been omitted, also others where there was reason to believe that the soldier mentioned was enrolled when his regiment was in a different province.220 To the second group, which illustrates the recruiting system from the Flavian period onwards, a list of similar inscriptions from Dacia has been added. In each case the title of the regiment is followed by the nationality or place of origin of the soldier, stated in the form given on the inscription, and by the name of the province from which he was drawn. For reasons which will appear later the evidence concerning the oriental regiments is omitted.

I. Soldiers recruited before 70 and stationed in Pannonia.
Ala II Hispanorum et Aravacorum 221	Hispanus	Spain	iii. 3271.
Ala II Hispanorum et Aravacorum221	Sueltrius	Narbonensis	iii. 3286.
Ala Frontoniana Tungrorum 222	Andautonia	Pannonia	iii. 3679.
Cohors II Hispanorum	Cornacas	Pannonia	D. ci (before 60).
Cohors II Hispanorum	Varcianus	Pannonia	D. ii (60).
Cohors I Lusitanorum	Iasus	Pannonia	D. xvii (85).
Cohors I Montanorum	Bessus	Thrace	D. xiii (80).
Cohors I Montanorum	Dalmatia	Dalmatia	D. xvi (84).
II. Soldiers recruited after 70.
II. A. Pannonia Superior.
Ala I Ulpia Contariorum	Helvetius	Germania	D. xlvii (133).
Ala I Ulpia Contariorum	Bessus	Thrace	iii. 4378.
Ala I Ulpia Contariorum	Siscia	Pannonia	iii. 13441.
Ala I Hispanorum Aravacorum	Azalus	Pannonia	D. c (150).
Ala Pannoniorum	Apulum	Dacia	iii. 4372.
Ala I Thracum Victrix 223	Boius	Pannonia	vi. 3308.
Cohors II Alpinorum	Azalus	Pannonia	D. lxv (154).
Cohors I Britannica	Dobunnus	Britain	D. xcviii (105).
Cohors V Lucensium et Callaecorum	Castris	Pannonia	D. lix (138-46).
Cohors V Lucensium et Callaecorum	Azalus	Pannonia	D. lxi (149).
Cohors I Ulpia Pannoniorum	Azalus	Pannonia	D. lx (148).

We may add here a recently discovered inscription from Samaria:

I(ovi) O(ptimo) M(aximo) mil(ites) v[e]xil(larii) coh(ortium) P(annoniae) sup(erioris) cives Sisc(iani) Varcian(i) et Latobici sacrum fecerunt. A. E. 1909. 235. 1910. p. 6.

The vexillation had presumably taken part in suppressing one of the Jewish rebellions in the first half of the second century.

II. B. Pannonia Inferior.
Ala I Thracum Veterana Sagittariorum	Eraviscus	Pannonia	D. lxxiv (167).
Cohors I Alpinorum	Eraviscus	Pannonia	D. lxviii (154-60).
Cohors I Thracum 224	Andautonia	Pannonia	iii. 4316.
II. C. Dacia.
Ala I Gallorum et Bosporanorum	Bessus	Thrace	D. lxvii (158).
Ala I Hispanorum Campagonum 225	Dacus	Dacia	vi. 3238.
Ala I Tungrorum Frontoniana 226		Thrace	iii. 799.
Vexillatio equitum Illyricorum 227	Sebastopolitanus	Pontus	D. xlvi (129).
Ala I Illyricorum	Dacus	Dacia	vi. 3234.
Cohors I Ulpia Brittonum	Britto	Britain	D. lxx (145-61).
Cohors III Campestris	Scupi	Moesia Superior	iii. 7289.
Cohors I Vindelicorum	Caesarea	Palestine(?)	D. lxvi (157?).

The facts disclosed by these inscriptions are very significant. In the first list, as is natural, we find traces of the troops transferred into Pannonia from other provinces after the great rebellion. It is more important, however, to notice that before the end of the reign of Tiberius natives of the province were already being accepted for service in these imported regiments.228 In fact there is nothing here to suggest that any attempt was made to preserve the national character of these Spanish and Alpine corps by obtaining fresh drafts from the districts in which they were originally raised. Those recruits who do not come from Pannonia itself are drawn merely from the neighbouring provinces of Dalmatia and Thrace.

But it would perhaps be misleading to infer from this evidence alone that local recruiting was universally adopted in the first century, although it was certainly common. It is possible that in the Flavian period, when the memory of the rebellion of Civilis was still fresh, some attempt was made to check a national cohesion by combining drafts from different provinces in the same regiment. This at least is suggested by the nationalities of twenty-one soldiers of an auxiliary regiment which are recorded on a sepulchral inscription at Tropaeum Traiani in Moesia Inferior.229 This monument was erected in memory of men killed in action during one of the Dacian campaigns either of Domitian or Trajan, so that its evidence applies to the recruiting of the Flavian period. Twelve of these men came from the Lower Rhine, two from Lugdunensis, and three from Spain, while Raetia, Noricum, Britain, and Africa supply one each.230 In Pannonia, too, some Spanish soldiers appear rather mysteriously in an Ala Pannoniorum on two inscriptions which can hardly be later than the beginning of the second century.231 There are even traces of a similar policy having been pursued in the recruiting for the legions during the same period. In a list of seventy-six soldiers who were apparently enrolled in Legio III Augusta towards the end of the first century, we find men from seven different provinces.232 In any case, however, no attempt seems to have been made to preserve any connexion between an auxiliary regiment and the tribe from which its title was derived.

When we come to the second century there is no more room for doubt; for all cohorts and alae on the Pannonian frontier, leaving out of account, as before, the oriental regiments, local recruiting has become practically universal. Seventy per cent. of the recruits come from the two Pannonian provinces, the majority from the Azali and the Eravisci, tribes which never gave their name to an auxiliary regiment. Even the Thracian regiments, which might have maintained their original character without much difficulty, form no exception to the rule. In Dacia the exceptionally large auxiliary garrison 233 could not be supported entirely by local levies, but the deficiency was mostly made up in the nearest available recruiting-grounds of Moesia and Thrace.

A few examples may be adduced from other provinces to show that the methods employed on the Danube frontier were not exceptional. In Germania Superior three soldiers of the Alae I and II Flaviae Geminae describe themselves as Baetasius, Elvetius, and Secuanus, and the Raetian diploma of the year 107 was granted to a Boian who had served in the Ala I Hispanorum Auriana.234 In Africa a soldier of the Cohors VII Lusitanorum gives ‘castris’ as his place of origin, as do the majority of the veterans discharged during the second century from the African legion III Augusta.235 Concerning the Eastern provinces we have very little evidence, but it may be noted that of the large number of regiments raised by Trajan in this part of the Empire the majority remained stationed in the East throughout the following century, and there is no reason to suppose that they were not kept up by local levies.236

The recruiting of the legions during the second century seems to have followed the same lines. The high proportion of men of Legio III Augusta in Africa who give ‘castris’ as their birthplace has already been noted. Similarly of 39 soldiers discharged from Legio II Traiana at Alexandria in 194, 22 come from the ‘castra’, 8 from the Greek towns in Egypt, and only 9 were not born in the province.237 Of 133 soldiers discharged in the following year from Legio VII Claudia stationed at Viminacium, 104 come from Upper or Lower Moesia, and of the remainder all but one come from the Danubian provinces.238 Further evidence on the recruiting-area of the auxilia during this period can be obtained from another source, the inscriptions of the Equites Singulares Imperatoris. This corps, which seems to have been raised towards the end of the first century, possibly by Domitian,239 formed thenceforward a part of the imperial guard, and was stationed at Rome. It was recruited mainly from the same area as the auxiliary alae, and a certain number of the men were selected from them.240 On a hundred epitaphs of members of this corps who recorded their place of origin, the provinces are represented in the following proportions:241

Britain	2
Germania Inferior	1
Germania Superior	2
Belgica	1
Raetia	10
Noricum	9
Pannonia	30	242
Dalmatia	1
Thrace	11
Moesia	4	242
Dacia	7
Syria	4
Africa	2
Mauretania	3

The list shows that this corps d’élite was not representative of all the cavalry of the Empire; the proportion of orientals is far too low. It was still upon the Western provinces that the emperors of the second century relied, and from these, therefore, that the guard was recruited. As regards these provinces, the composition of the Equites Singulares reflects fairly accurately the relative importance of each as a recruiting-ground for the auxiliary cavalry of this period, and the change which has taken place in the military situation since the days of Augustus is at once apparent. The Galli 243 and Hispani, who were then the flower of the imperial cavalry, and continued to give their names to nearly half the cavalry regiments in the service, have entirely vanished. Speaking generally, in fact, the inland provinces no longer contribute, and the recruiting-areas have contracted to the purely frontier districts. The relative importance of these, too, has altered since the beginning of the first century. The tribes on the Lower Rhine are still well represented, but the contingent of the German provinces is entirely surpassed by that of Pannonia. If we assume that the honour of serving in the Guards was bestowed upon the natives of each province in proportion to the size of the contingent which they supplied to the cavalry of the line, this increased importance of the Pannonians follows naturally upon the universal adoption of local recruiting for the frontier armies; since not only had the balance of military power now definitely shifted from the Rhine to the Danube,244 but local conditions required an exceptionally high proportion of mounted men.245

The preceding survey of the evidence has purposely omitted that dealing with the oriental regiments, which seemed, on account of its exceptional character, to merit a special discussion. In Pannonia and Dacia we find three such regiments, the Ala I Augusta Ituraeorum and the Cohors I Hemesenorum in Pannonia Inferior, and the Cohors I Augusta Ituraeorum, stationed in Pannonia during the first century, and transferred to Dacia at the time of the creation of the province.246 Thanks to the recent work of Hungarian archaeologists, the second of these corps, the Cohors I Hemesenorum Miliaria Equitata Civium Romanorum Sagittariorum, to give it its full title, is perhaps better known to us than any other auxiliary regiment.247 Probably enrolled in the Roman army at the beginning of the second century, at the time of the annexation of the small client kingdom from which its name was derived, this regiment had been transferred to Pannonia by the beginning of the reign of Antoninus Pius, and certainly remained in the province until 240.248 Throughout this period it seems to have been stationed at Intercisa, where upwards of fifty inscriptions, chiefly sepulchral, have now been discovered, the majority of the latter belonging, as the frequent use of the name Aurelius shows, to the end of the second and the beginning of the third century. Of the five soldiers whose birthplace is mentioned on their tombstones, three came from Hemesa itself, one from Samosata, and one from Arethusa,249 and the owner of a diploma which dates from between 138 and 146 came from Syria.250 It is clear, then, that during its whole stay in Pannonia this regiment was not recruited, like the majority of the auxilia, from the neighbouring district, but was constantly in receipt of fresh drafts from the province in which it was originally raised. As further proof of the tenacity with which this connexion was maintained, we find that at the end of the reign of Severus the soldiers dedicated a temple to their deus patrius Sol Aelagabalus.251 An examination of the evidence dealing with the other oriental regiments leads to the same result. Soldiers discharged in 98 and 110 from the Cohors I Augusta Ituraeorum and the Ala of the same name, give Cyrrhus in Syria and Ituraea as their places of origin, and another Ituraean is mentioned on a sepulchral inscription of the latter regiment in Pannonia.252 Oriental regiments, and in particular oriental archers, appear also on other provinces 253, and although there is a lack of dated evidence we can hardly doubt that a rule which was maintained along the whole Danube frontier also held good elsewhere.254

The reason for the adoption of these exceptional methods in the recruiting of the oriental auxilia was probably the purely military one that good archers were born in Syria, and could not be made elsewhere, but the consequent presence in every frontier army of an oriental element, holding firmly to its own customs and religious beliefs, was a fact of more than military significance. In particular it must be remembered that the enfranchised children of these oriental auxiliaries were qualified and readily accepted for service in the legions. In the inscriptions of the Cohors I Hemesenorum we have abundant evidence of this process, which gave oriental ideas an opportunity for wider penetration.255

The British regiments, too, show a tendency to keep up national recruiting, although the evidence on this point is still scanty.256 In this case the explanation is probably to be found in the intractable nature of the tribes of North Britain, which made it appear undesirable to use the contingents which they supplied near at home. Certainly all the British regiments seem to have been sent abroad, and only one soldier of British origin is found in the province.257 It would appear, in fact, that the army of Britain was maintained largely by drafts from the Rhine area, but the evidence at present is an insufficient basis for any general conclusions. In Dacia, too, as was natural, the auxilia raised immediately after the conquest were transferred elsewhere. Here, however, there does not seem to have been the same objection to local recruiting for the troops stationed in the province, and the practice was certainly, as has been shown, in force during the second century.

The Numeri

It is clear, then, that in the second century the cohorts and alae of the Augustan system, with certain definite and limited exceptions, were recruited locally from the provinces in which they were stationed, without any general attempt to justify the ethnical titles which they still bore. At the same moment, however, as this principle seems definitely established, there begin to appear on inscriptions certain regiments of a new type which stand outside the prevailing system. These regiments are given the name numerus, which does not seem to have had any very precise meaning, and for which it is difficult to find an English equivalent. They also bore tribal titles, a list of which is given below, together with the names of the provinces in which numeri of each tribe occur.258

Brittones. At least ten numeri in Germania Superior. The earliest inscriptions date from the reign of Pius, and the theory is generally accepted that these Brittones were newly conquered tribesmen from the district lying between the two frontier walls, deported after the campaigns of Lollius Urbicus. These numeri also bear secondary titles derived from the names of the districts in which they were stationed, e.g. Murrenses, clearly connected with the river Murr.259

Germani. Dacia.260

Palmyreni. Africa,261 Dacia,262 and probably Britain.263

Mauri. Dacia (as a vexillatio from Mauretania Caesariensis).264 Frequently also in the two Mauretanias.

Raeti Gaesati (i.e. Raetians armed with the gaesum, a kind of heavy spear). Britain.265

Syri. Dacia,266 Mauretania,267 Moesia Inferior,268 and possibly Britain.269

The titles show that these numeri are closely connected with the five nationes, Cantabri, Gaesati,270 Palmyreni, Daci, and Brittones, who form part of the army described by Hyginus, and are distinguished from the cohorts and alae of the regular auxilia. In fact the term numerus is not invariably found on inscriptions, and for a corps which simply described itself as ‘Syri sagittarii,’271 natio may easily have seemed a convenient term. It is also clear from Hyginus that what distinguished the numeri from the older formations was their looser organization and more barbarous character, and their titles show that they were drawn from the outermost borders of the Empire, or the most uncivilized districts within it.

Evidence about the character of these troops is scanty; being the least civilized part of the army they were not very prone to indulge in inscriptions. We do not even know the size of a numerus, or, indeed, if these regiments had any definite size at all. The nationes of Hyginus range from 500 to 900,272 but the low rank of the praepositus numeri below the praefectus cohortis,273 and the smallness of the accommodation arranged for these regiments in German forts, suggest 200 to 300 as a more probable figure. Smaller they can hardly have been, since they are divided into centuries and turmae.274

As regards recruiting, the Palmyrenes, at any rate, obtained fresh drafts, not from the province in which they were stationed, but from their native home. The numerus Palmyrenorum, which was stationed at El-Kantara in Africa, has left inscriptions covering the whole period from the middle of the second to the middle of the third century, which show clearly what pains were taken to preserve the original character of the regiment.275 Similar inscriptions of a numerus Palmyrenorum in Dacia give evidence of the same principle.276 Unfortunately, we cannot tell whether this was the case with all the numeri, or whether the Palmyreni occupied in this respect the same peculiar position as the oriental regiments among the regular auxilia.277

But whatever the later practice, the original intention of the imperial government in raising this new class of troops seems to be clear. The local recruiting of the regular auxilia presupposes a rapid progress of ‘Romanization’ among the provincials and the disappearance of all such national feeling as had caused the mutiny of the German and Pannonian auxilia in the first century. From the military point of view, however, this advance in culture, although it facilitated the raising of recruits, was by no means an unmixed blessing. The old levies of wild tribesmen, schooled by centuries of local warfare, who strove to preserve in the Roman service their local reputation, had qualities which were lacking to the regiments of civilized Latin-speaking provincials, in which national methods of fighting 278 had been replaced by a uniform training and clan feeling by esprit de corps. It was to provide a leaven of the old spirit that the numeri were raised from the wildest of the border tribes, and not only encouraged to fight after the manner of their fathers, but even permitted to continue the use of their native tongues.279

The first experiment of this kind was made by Trajan, when he brought over Lusius Quietus and his Mauri gentiles for the Dacian war,280 but it was probably Hadrian who made the numeri a regular part of the military system. It is in his reign that they first appear on inscriptions, and it is to the numeri that we must refer the passage in Arrian’s Tactica, in which the emperor is praised for encouraging his troops to keep up their national methods of fighting, and even their national war-cries.281 The tribes to whom he refers are Κελτοί (by which Germans are probably meant),282 Dacians, and Raetians. For the first and third there is epigraphical evidence, and the last two appear also among the nationes of Hyginus. It appears, then, that Hadrian was not, as is sometimes stated, the originator of the system of local recruiting; rather he found it already in existence, and sought to correct its defects by utilizing again in the service of the Empire the clan spirit of uncivilized tribes, which had often proved so useful in the past.

The Praefecti

The previous discussion of the methods by which the auxilia were recruited has dealt only with the private soldiers, and, as a natural corollary, with such officers as were promoted from the ranks. To the position of praefectus, however, the private soldier could not normally aspire, and he attained it, if at all, only under exceptionally favourable circumstances.283 Normally, the commanding officers of the auxiliary regiments were drawn from an entirely different social stratum to the men, and although the method of their appointment varied and the area from which they were drawn shifted its boundaries at different periods, these changes did not follow the same lines as those which we have been tracing in connexion with the recruiting of the rank and file.

The auxiliary commands are familiar to all students of the Roman Empire from inscriptions of men who went through the equestrian career, the first stage of which was formed by the posts of praefectus cohortis, tribunus legionis, and praefectus alae. It has, however, been pointed out by von Domaszewski 284 that this system was not established until the middle of the first century. Under Augustus and Tiberius, not only was the relative rank of these posts still undetermined, but they were filled in many cases not by young men beginning the equestrian cursus, but by veteran centurions from the legions, especially the primipili. We have noticed this system in the army of Caesar, so that here, as elsewhere, Augustus was continuing a republican practice. The following inscriptions,285 which are both of early date, give typical careers of this character.

1. C. Pompullius C. f. Hor(atia) prim(us) pil(us), trib(unus) mil(itum), praef(ectus) eq(uitum).

2. M. Vergilio M. f. Ter(etina) Gallo Lusio prim(o) pil(o) leg(ionis) XI, praef(ecto) coh(ortis) Ubiorum peditum et equitum, donato hastis puris duabus et coronis aureis ab Divo Augusto et Ti: Caesare Augusto, &c.

This system is heartily commended by von Domaszewski, on the ground that the auxilia were thus commanded by more skilful officers, and were more under Roman (i.e. Italian) control than was the case in the second century.286 The assertion, however, seems far too sweeping, since by no means all the auxiliary regiments were commanded by men of this class; there were, on the contrary, many praefecti at this period who came neither from Italy nor even the more Romanized provinces. The Histories of Tacitus show clearly that at the end of the pre-Flavian period a number of auxiliary regiments, particularly those drawn from the more independent border tribes, were commanded by their own chiefs. This practice had not sprung up during the reign of Nero, but was a natural consequence of the development of these corps from contingents supplied by states nominally ‘in alliance’ with Rome.287 The eight Batavian cohorts who play such an important rôle in the rebellion of 69 were so commanded,288 as well as an ala of the same tribe.289 Iulius Civilis himself was a praefectus cohortis,290 and two Treveri, Alpinius Montanus and Iulius Classicus, commanded a cohort and ala respectively.291 All these officers, as their names show, had doubtless received the franchise, but they were employed in their capacity as tribal chiefs, not as Roman citizens, and are to be distinguished from the praefecti, who were drawn at this period from the Romanized districts of Spain and from Gallia Narbonensis. It is chiefly as commanders of cohorts that officers of this type appear, since many of the alae dated back, as we have seen, to the period of the civil wars, and had long lost their original character as tribal regiments. This explains the fact that among Italian officers of this period, the title praefectus alae or praefectus equitum appears far more frequently than praefectus cohortis, although the cohorts were of course more numerous than the alae.

During the first half of the first century, therefore, we have a system which differs widely from that revealed by the equestrian cursus honorum. The establishment of the equestrian monopoly of the auxiliary commands was, in fact, only completed by a series of reforms carried out during the period which began with the administrative activity of Claudius, and ended with the reorganization of the army by Vespasian after the disastrous Civil War of 69.

The first of these changes was that the praefecti ceased to be drawn as before from among the veteran centurions of the legions. Early in the reign of Claudius the post of praefectus alae disappeared from the career of the primipili, who were promoted henceforward to the tribunate of one of the cohorts of Household Troops at Rome.292 Centurions of lower rank were still advanced to the command of cohorts both in this and the succeeding periods, but such cases are very rare.293 A trace of the old connexion between the legionary officers and the militia equestris still survives, however, in the regular use of a centurion as praepositus cohortis—that is to say, as temporary commander in case of the death or absence of a praefectus.294 The numeri, too, were often placed in charge of an ex-centurion bearing this title, an arrangement which was probably called for by the intractable character of these barbarian irregulars.295

The employment of tribal chiefs as praefecti also became less frequent, as the auxiliary regiments, transferred from one province to another, and recruited from different nationalities, gradually lost their original character. The mutinous officers of the Rhine army, who were doubtless cashiered by Vespasian, were probably the last examples of praefecti drawn from this class.

Lastly, the respective rank of the different posts in the militia equestris was finally determined; and the order praefectus cohortis—tribunus legionis—praefectus alae is hardly ever varied after 70, except that the tribunate of a cohors miliaria sometimes appears in the second place.296

The result of these changes was that henceforward the auxiliary officers were practically all of one type, men of equestrian rank entering upon what was now the accustomed cursus honorum of their class. That this system was not universally adopted at an earlier date is not surprising. The equestrian praefecti were young men directly appointed by the emperor, without any previous military training; before the auxilia could be entrusted to their charge a certain advance in civilization and tractability had to be made by the provincials, and the veteran centurions and tribal chiefs of the Augustan system were more fitted to deal with the men who composed the auxiliary levies during the first hundred years of the Empire. As it was, these regiments contained in the second century far fewer representatives of the governing class than the native corps in our own Indian army. With the exception of the praefectus, who himself was not necessarily an Italian, the officers—that is, the centurions and decurions—were practically all, as we have seen, promoted from the ranks. But to the Roman Empire, in which rulers and ruled, never separated by any deep racial or religious gulf, were gradually made closer akin by the bond of a common civilization, our rule in India affords in this respect no real parallel.

The majority of these praefecti were, at the beginning of this period, of Italian origin, taken from the leading families of the country towns, the class which formed, under the rule of the Flavian emperors who were themselves sprung from it, the backbone of the Roman bureaucracy. The Romanization of the Western provinces led to an increasing proportion of men from the provincial municipia being admitted into the imperial service, but until the reign of Marcus the Italian element still predominated. The praefecti mentioned on five diplomata from Pannonia Superior and two from Dacia dated 133, 138, 136-46, 148, 149, 157, and 145-61 were natives of Sassina, Bovianum, Faventia, Suessa, Rome, Hispellum, and Picenum.297

The accession of Septimius Severus possibly accelerated the speed at which the provincial element was increasing, but there is not, as has been suggested by von Domaszewski, any sign of a violent and wholesale exclusion of Italians from this branch of the service. This point may be illustrated by the following inscriptions of Italian praefecti, which can be dated after 193:

VIII 9359. Caesarea. M. Popilius Nepos domo Roma, a praefectus of the Ala Gemina Sebastenorum in Mauretania Caesariensis. The inscription honours a procurator who is dated by Cagnat to 201-9.

A. E. 1908. 206. Puteoli. T. Caesius Anthianus, a native of this town, was praefectus of the Cohors II Augusta Thracum at the beginning of the third century.

The earliest provincial praefecti came from the thoroughly Romanized districts of Spain and Gallia Narbonensis, natives of which appear even in the pre-Flavian period. These were followed in the course of the second century by representatives of nearly all the Western provinces; Africa in particular sent praefecti from its many flourishing towns to almost every frontier during the latter half of the second century, and the accession of the African Septimius Severus at its close possibly gave his fellow countrymen a specially favoured position in the succeeding period.

Only in Britain and Gallia Lugdunensis do the Celtic chiefs seem to have made no attempt to maintain in the second century the military position held by their fathers in the first. It is hardly likely that their absence from the lists of praefecti298 is due to deliberate exclusion on the part of the imperial government. It was more probably a voluntary abstinence, due largely to the fact that these military commands were now regarded merely as an introduction to the civil service, not as a career in themselves. The Celtic nobles were not uninfluenced by the tendencies of the age. But although they might speak and read Latin with ease, decorate their homes with the material products of Roman civilization, and employ Greek rhetoricians to tutor their children, these country gentlemen living in the midst of their estates preserved a very different outlook to that of the leading townsmen of the municipalities of Africa or even Narbonensis. The Celt retained his martial qualities down to the last days of the Empire in the West, but seems to have found little that was congenial to him in the prospect of forming part of that great administrative machine, in the perfection of which almost every other province in the Empire took its share.299

The Eastern provinces of the Empire occupy, as usual, a somewhat exceptional position. As in the West, these provinces began to contribute praefecti in some numbers towards the end of the first century. A certain C. Julius Demosthenes of Oinoanda went through the ‘militia equestris’ in the reign of Trajan, and his son, Julius Antonius, followed in his footsteps in the succeeding generation.300 To a citizen of Caria, L. Aburnius of Alabanda, probably, as his name shows, the descendant of one of the families of veterans settled by Augustus in the south of Asia Minor,301 the wars of Trajan presented opportunity for a military career of considerable variety and distinction. This officer was successively praefectus fabrum, tribunus legionis III Augustae, praefectus cohortis III Augustae Thracum equitatae, praefectus cohortis III Thracum Syriacae equitatae, praepositus302 cohortis I Ulpiae Petraeorum, praepositus annonae302 on the Euphrates during the Parthian War, tribunus legionis VI Ferratae, during his tenure of which post he was decorated by Trajan, and praefectus alae I Ulpiae singularium.303 These cases are not isolated, and it is clear that a military career was open to the Greeks and the more or less Hellenized orientals who constituted the equestrian class in the Eastern provinces. But while the praefecti from the Western provinces were sent indiscriminately to every frontier, the majority of those drawn from the East seem, during the first two centuries, to have been confined to service with the Eastern commands. Aburnius, for example, only left the East once for service with the Legio III Augusta in Africa, and his son’s career seems to have been similarly localized.304 We should perhaps add Moesia Inferior to the list of provinces in which Eastern praefecti appear frequently during the second century, since those mentioned on the diplomata for 134 and 138 came from Palmyra and Side respectively.305 But Moesia Inferior was reckoned in other respects as coming within the Hellenic sphere of influence. These restrictions are probably due to the low estimate which was placed throughout the first two centuries on the military qualities of Greeks and orientals, in spite of the value of the latter as archers.306 But we may also see evidence of the unbridgeable gulf which still existed between the two halves of the Empire, and of the reluctance of the Hellene to embark upon a career in what he considered to be the barbarous provinces of the West. It is only with the advent of the semi-orientalized dynasty of the Severi that praefecti drawn from the Eastern provinces appear in any numbers on the Western frontiers.

In all this the course of events is what one would naturally expect. The spread of uniform culture throughout the Western provinces of the Empire, the prosperity of the ubiquitous municipalities which were its material expression, and the general extension of the franchise which accompanied this development, involved a steady increase in the class qualified and eager for the equestrian career. The admission of these provincial equites to the posts for which they were qualified followed automatically without special encouragement from any particular emperor,307 and the diverse origins of the praefecti at the beginning of the third century are one of the best proofs that can be adduced of the prosperity and civilization of the provinces at this period. It is impossible to follow von Domaszewski in concluding from the evidence that at this date the inhabitants of Italy and the more civilized areas in the provinces were deliberately excluded from the militia equestris, and that the auxiliary regiments were given into the hands of barbarians.308 The army was indeed beginning to suffer from the introduction of a barbarian element, but it is not among the officers of the auxilia that this element is most noticeable. The following list of praefecti, who can be dated to the first half of the third century, does not bear out the accusation:

vii. 344. Britain.309 Aemilius Crispinus natus in provincia Africa de Tusdro (dated 242).

viii. 2766. Britain. P. Furius Rusticus. Lambaesis. Severus or later. Britannia Inferior is mentioned.

xiii. 6658. Germania Superior. Sentius Gemellus. Berytus. Date probably 249.

xiii. 7441. Germania Superior. Flavius Antiochanus. Caesarea. Date 191 or 211.

I. G. R. R. i. 10. Raetia. T. Porcius Porcianus. Massilia. 3rd century.

iii. 1193. Dacia. C. Julius Corinthianus. Theveste. circa 200.

C. I. Gr. 3497. Dacia. T. Claudius Alfenus. Asia. circa 200-210.

These men cannot fairly be called barbarians. Massilia of course speaks for itself, but in Theveste, Thysdrus, and Lambaesis Roman culture was no new thing at the beginning of the third century. The same may be said of Caesarea, if the capital of Mauretania be meant. Berytus, too, was a colony famous for its Roman character, and Asia was not a province notorious for its barbarism. The increased oriental element, which is certainly noticeable among the auxilia of this period, although not to the same extent as in other branches of the service, is a more significant fact. But however undesirable one may consider the influence of oriental religions and ideals to have been, the conflict cannot be called one between civilization and barbarism. The real matter at issue is the wisdom of the imperial government in utilizing the material which the spread of culture and prosperity provided, and substituting for the old hegemony of Italy a governing class drawn from all parts of the Empire. It is true that this policy was a failure, and that the Empire organized on this basis did not succeed in erecting defences strong enough to resist the external pressure brought to bear upon them in the third and fourth centuries. But if it was a failure it was not necessarily a mistake.310 It is more than doubtful whether a narrower policy which rigidly maintained the supremacy of the Italians and denied to the majority of the provincials all share in the administration would have been more successful: it is certain that, had the progress of civilization lacked the stimulus which the hope of political power supplied, the after-effects of the Roman Empire in Europe would have been less.

Footnotes

158 The distinction was not necessarily connected with the position of civitas foederata in the technical sense. Several important civitates foederatae, such as the Aedui and Remi in Gaul, did not, so far as we know, give their name to regiments, and many of the tribes which did were not civitates foederatae.

159 In Asturia, however, the administrative conventus formed the recruiting districts; hence the regiments of Astures, Bracaraugustani, and Lucenses. Mommsen, Conscriptionsordnung, p. 47.

160 We find regiments of Batavi, Canninefates, Cugerni, Frisii, Lingones, Menapii, Morini, Nemetes, Nervii, Sunuci, Sugambri, Tungri, Ubii, Usipi, and Vangiones. In the other Gallic provinces the only tribal names which occur are the Bituriges and Aquitani from Aquitania and the Vocontii from Narbonensis.

161 A Cohors II Augustia Nervia Pacensis Brittonum is mentioned on a Pannonian diploma for 114 (D. xxxix) and the name of Cohors I of the series should probably be restored on the Dacian diploma dated 145-61 (D. lxx). This title is unintelligible; it does not seem possible to connect it with the Emperor Nerva.

162 For further information as to the evidence on which this table is based see Appendix II.

163 Including one ala and four cohorts of Batavians who replace the regiments which mutinied under Civilis.

164 Including all the alae with titles derived from proper names but no racial title. Inscriptions show that they were mostly recruited in Gaul, but some should perhaps be given to Belgica.

165 Including all the cohorts which bear the general title Galli.

166 The Ala Vocontiorum which appears in Britain is to be distinguished from the regiment of the same name in Egypt.

167 The cohorts of Alpini, Montani, and Ligures, which represent the contingents of all the little Alpine provinces.

168 Four cohortes miliariae which appear late in the second century and were probably raised at the time of the Marcomannian War.

169 The regiments of Bosporani. Some of the auxilia of Moesia are perhaps included among the regiments of Thracians.

170 The Ala Vespasiana Dardanorum and the cohorts I and II Aurelia Dardanorum.

171 A cohors Macedonum E. (A. E. 1909. 58), and two regiments of Cyrrhestici.

172 The mysterious Ala VII Phrygum. When this regiment was only known by one inscription (vi. 1838) the number was naturally emended. It has, however, been confirmed by the diploma for 139 and a Greek inscription (A. E. 1899. 177). The explanation is still uncertain. It is incredible that Phrygia really contributed seven alae, six of which have mysteriously vanished.

173 Three cohorts of Paphlagonians and three of Galatians raised by Trajan.

174 Including two alae Parthorum.

175 Including the three ‘cohortes sagittariorum’.

176 Including the Ituraean regiments.

177 There is no reason why these regiments should not have been raised between 40 and 70, but they do not appear on inscriptions until much later.

178 Some of the cohorts of Hispani may of course have come from Baetica.

179 Conscriptionsordnung, p. 56.

180 It appears on diplomata of 93 and 103. D. ciii and A. E. 1912. 128.

181 A cohors IV Cypria is mentioned on the Dacian diploma of 110 (xxxvii), and a cohors Cypria appears in the Crimea.

182 We find on inscriptions Cohors I Cyrenaica, II Augusta Cyrenaica, III Cyrenaica sagittariorum, and III Augusta Cyrenaica. (See Cichorius in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. cohors). The difficulty is that Cyrenaica is sometimes used as a purely descriptive title to indicate previous residence in the province. It is thus borne by the Cohors II Hispanorum scutata and the Cohors I Lusitanorum. Arrian, however, had Κυρηναῖοι, both cavalry and ὁπλῖται, in the army under his command in Cappadocia in Hadrian’s reign, so that in some cases at any rate Cyrenaica = Cyrenaeorum, just as Gallica is sometimes used for Gallorum. A levy in Cyrenaica is mentioned by Tacitus (Ann. xiv. 18), but he does not say whether legionaries or auxiliaries were required.

183 Gardthausen, Augustus, p. 631. Liebenam in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. dilectus.

184 The crucial passage is of course Tac. Ann. xvi. 13 ‘eodem anno dilectus per Galliam Narbonensem Africamque et Asiam habiti sunt supplendis Illyrici legionibus’, which appears to come from the acta senatus. But the evidence for imperial control is very strong, and the Senate may merely have been consulted as a matter of courtesy. Tiberius used to bring military questions before the Senate in the same way—‘de legendo vel exauctorando milite ac legionum et auxiliorum descriptione’, Suet. Tib. 30—without giving up his prerogative.

185 Later, of course, the franchise became as widely spread in Africa as in Spain. In the first half of the first century, however, this was not yet the case, and the example of Tacfarinas (‘natione Numida, in castris Romanis auxiliaria stipendia meritus’, Tac. Ann. ii. 52) shows that auxilia were recruited in this province while it was still completely under senatorial control.

186 xiii. 6860, 6864. Dio, lxxiv. 2, brackets Italy, Spain, Macedonia, and Noricum together, as the ‘civilized’ provinces from which the Praetorians were recruited before the reforms of Severus.

187 If the cohortes voluntariorum be excluded from the reckoning.

188 Strabo, p. 196 κρείττους δ’ ἱππόται ἢ πεζοί, καὶ ἔστι Ῥωμαίοις τῆς ἱππείας ἀρίστη παρὰ τούτων.

189 Tactica, 33.

190 See the boastful words of the Gascon Antonius Primus. Tac. Hist. iii. 2 ‘Duae tunc Pannonicae ac Moesicae alae perrupere hostem: nunc sedecim alarum coniuncta signa pulsu sonituque et nube ipsa operient ac superfundent oblitos proeliorum equites equosque’. Cf. also Tac. Ann. xv. 10 ‘alaris Pannonios, robur equitatus’.

191 Arrian, loc. cit.

192 The list shows that the majority of the oriental regiments were not raised until after 70.

193 Two cohorts numbered III and VII bear this title, for which I can find no explanation. To be distinguished from these is the Cohors I Campanorum voluntaria (vi. 3520), which was stationed first in Dalmatia, then in Pannonia. Apparently it really was originally a regiment of Campanians, since a soldier gives Suessa as his birthplace (iii. 14246¹). The statement of Cichorius that the Dalmatian Cohors I Campanorum is identical with the Pannonian Cohors I Campestris is misleading. On no Pannonian inscription does the title occur otherwise than in the abbreviated form ‘Camp.’ On the other hand, the Roman inscription cited above speaks plainly of the coh(ortis) primae voluntariae Campanorum in Pannonia Inferiore.

194 Tac. Ann. i. 8.

195 Dio, lv. 31, lvi. 23; Velleius, ii. 111; Suet. Aug. 25. Similar regiments may have been raised at a later date, e.g. the cohorts I and II Italica c. R., which seem to form a fresh series and appear only in the East. Can they represent the remainder of the 4,000 oriental freedmen whom Tiberius enrolled to put down the brigands in Sardinia (Tac. Ann. ii. 85)? If any survived, the Eastern provinces would have been the natural place to send them to.

196 Cf. the previous passages with Macrobius, Sat. i. 11, 32 ‘Caesar Augustus in Germania et Illyrico cohortes libertinorum complures legit, quas voluntarias appellavit’.

197 There were at least thirty-two cohortes voluntariorum, among which VI is the highest number borne by a cohors ingenuorum (xiii. 8314, 8315). At about this point the supply of free-born recruits probably gave out, since cohors VIII does not bear this designation.

198 Seeck suggests that, as the Western legions were recruited mainly in Italy at the beginning of the first century, these cohorts represent the contribution of the enfranchised communities in the provinces. Rheinisches Museum, xlviii. 611. This, however, is not only opposed to the literary evidence, but inscriptions also show us soldiers of Italian origin. Cf. iii. 9782 (Cemenelium) and A. E. 1909. 130 (Placentia).

199 The original mutineers in Dalmatia seem to have been militia rather than regulars, cf. Dio, lv. 29 καί τινα καὶ σφεῖς δύναμιν πέμψαι κελευσθέντες, συνῆλθόν τε ἐπὶ τούτῳ καὶ τὴν ἡλικίαν σφῶν ἀνθοῦσαν εἶδον, but the phraseology of Velleius (ii. 110) leaves little doubt that regular auxiliaries were also implicated.

200 Tac. Ann. ii. 17.

201 Ib. iii. 42.

202 Ib. iv. 73.

203 Ib. xii. 27.

204 ‘Immissa cohorte Thraecum,’ Tac. Hist. i. 68.

205 ‘Praemissis Gallorum Lusitanorumque et Britannorum cohortibus,’ Ib. i. 70. The regiments referred to are probably the Cohors III Britannorum and the Cohorts VI and VII Lusitanorum which appear in Raetia at a later date. Cf. D. lxxiii, I. G. R. R. iii. 56.

206 Early inscriptions mention Cohorts VII and VIII Breucorum (xiii. 7801, 8313, 8693), IV Delmatarum (Ib. 7507, 7508, 7509), I Pannoniorum (Ib. 7510, 7511, 7582), I Ituraeorum (Ib. 7040, 7041, 7042, 7043), I Sagittariorum (Ib. 7512, 7513, 7514), and Silauciensium (Ib. 8593). The last title is unintelligible, and possibly corrupt. The soldier mentioned is a certain Tib. Iulius Sdebdas from Tyre, so the regiment clearly came from the East, and its title should perhaps read Seleuciensium—i.e. from Seleucia.

207 Tac. Ann. ii. 52.

208 Josephus, Ant. xx, 6, 1. Bell. Iud. ii. 12, 5. The small garrisons maintained in the provinciae inermes seem also to have been of local origin; cf. the Ligurum cohors, vetus loci auxilium stationed in the Alpes Maritimae, Tac. Hist. ii. 14. See also D. xx and xxvi for the composition of the garrison of Sardinia.

209 Tac. Ann. iv. 46. See above, p. 19.

210 ‘Flavus aucta stipendia, torquem et coronam aliaque militaria dona memorat,’ Tac. Ann. ii. 9.

211 ‘Non tulit ala Picentiana gaudium insultantis vulgi, spretisque Sancti promissis aut minis Mogontiacum abeunt,’ Tac. Hist. iv. 62. I follow the diplomata in using the form Picentiana—not Picentina, which Tacitus preferred.

212 D. ii.

213 iii. 3271.

214 This supports the statement of Macrobius, already cited, that some of the cohorts voluntariae were stationed in Illyricum.

215 The list given above probably does not contain all the regiments originally sent to the Rhine. A large proportion of the auxilia stationed in Britain are of Danubian origin, and these troops are more likely to have come from Germany, than, as has been sometimes suggested, with Legio IX Hispana from Pannonia.

216 It seems that all the eight Batavian cohorts which supported Civilis were dismissed, and that the Cohorts I and II Batavorum, which we meet on second-century inscriptions, were new creations. The Alae Petriana and Sebosiana and two cohorts of Tungrians, which had formed part of the Rhine army in 69, appear later in Britain. But they had left the Rhine to take part in the civil war in Italy, and were not guilty of complicity in the mutiny.

217 Legio IV Scythica remained permanently in Syria; V Macedonia and XV Apollinaris were in the East from 62 and 63 respectively to 70. Auxiliary regiments probably accompanied these legions, and some in all likelihood remained with the first named.

218 It is true that although five legions (I Adiutrix, X Gemina, XI Claudia, XIV Gemina, and XXI Rapax) were transferred from the Rhine to the Danube between 70 and 107 the list of auxilia does not alter so much as might be expected. Still the transference of some regiments can be traced, e.g. the Ala Claudia Nova and the Cohors V Hispanorum were sent to Moesia Inferior between 74 and 82 and remained there. Cf. D. xi, xiv, and ciii.

219 In 1884 Mommsen collected the existing evidence in Eph. Ep. v. pp. 159-249, and stated his conclusions in the Conscriptionsordnung. Later epigraphical discoveries, while clearing up many points of detail, have left his main argument unaffected, and it forms the basis of the following discussion.

220 e.g. a certain T. Flavius Draccus of the Ala I F(lavia) D(omitiana) Brit(annica) M(iliaria) c(ivium) R(omanorum) describes himself as a civis Sequanus (iii. 15197). Now the title D(omitiana) shows that the inscription must have been erected between 81 and 96, and Draccus, who had served 22 years, was enrolled, therefore, between 60 and 74. But his regiment, which formed part of the Vitellian army in 69 (Tac. Hist. iii. 41), must have been in Germany or Britain before that date. Probably it was sent in 70 to Germania Inferior, won its title, like other regiments of that province, for loyalty at the time of the rebellion of Saturninus in 89, and was transferred to Pannonia shortly afterwards.

221 The regiment was in Moesia Inferior by 99 (D. xxxi) and remained there. The Pannonian inscriptions therefore probably belong to the pre-Flavian period, as the soldiers had served 30 and 17 years respectively.

222 This soldier, T. Flavius Bonius, was apparently given the franchise by one of the Flavian emperors, but might then have been serving some time.

223 Allectus into the Equites Singulares Imperatoris. A date is indicated by his name Ulpius Titius.

224 The soldier bears the name Aurelius, and the style of the monument suggests a third-century date. See below, p. 128, n. 4.

225 Allectus into the Equites Singulares at Rome.

226 The soldier has the Thracian name of Mucapor.

227 Probably a corps d’élite formed originally for the Dacian War and placed afterwards on a permanent footing. In the reign of Antoninus Pius it seems to have been given the title of Ala Illyricorum.

228 The Pannonian to whom D. ii belonged cannot have been enrolled later than 35, and owner of D. ci was probably enrolled earlier still.

229 iii. 14214.

230 Unfortunately the name of the cohort to which the men belonged has been lost. The names of some men of the Cohors II Batavorum are preserved, but without their nationalities.

231 iii. 2016, 4227. The regiment may of course have been sent to Spain and have returned only after a long absence, say with Legio VII Gemina in 69 (Tac. Hist. ii. 11).

232 viii. 18084. The majority come from the Eastern provinces.

233 There is evidence for a garrison of at least 25,000 men in the second century, but it probably reached a higher figure. See Appendix I.

234 xiii. 7024, 7025, 7579, D. xxxv.

235 viii. 3101. For the recruiting of Legio III Augusta cf. Cagnat, L’Armée romaine d’Afrique, 2nd edition, pp. 287-303.

236 We find the Ala I Ulpia Dromedariorum, the Cohorts I, III, IV, V and VI Ulpia Petraeorum, II and III Ulpia Paflagonum, I and II Ulpia Galatarum, and I Ulpia Sagittariorum all in Cappadocia, Syria, or Palestine in the second century, and only one of this series of regiments, the Cohors III Ulpia Galatarum, can be traced elsewhere.

237 iii. 6580. The non-Egyptians all come from the Eastern provinces, except two from Africa.

238 iii. 14507. 7 come from Dacia, 7 from Pannonia, 5 from Dalmatia, 3 from Thrace, 6 from Macedonia, and 1 from Pergamum.

239 It is impossible to go into this question here. The soldiers mentioned on vi. 31138, who were discharged in 118, must, if they served their full time, have been enrolled before Trajan’s accession. The corps seems to have replaced the old Germani corporis custodes, disbanded by Galba; Suet. Vit. Gal. 12.

240 In the hundred cases only five men are actually described as allecti from an ala, but the fact may not always have been mentioned on the tombstones.

241 I have taken the first hundred inscriptions on which nationality is recorded, beginning with vi. 3173.

242 The contingents of the two Pannonian and the two Moesian provinces cannot be distinguished, because in a large number of cases the deceased is simply described as Pannonius or Moesus.

243 Using this term to apply only to the contingents of Lugdunensis. The inhabitants of Belgica still appear.

244 Between 70 and 107 the garrison of the Danubian provinces was increased to ten legions, chiefly at the expense of the Rhine army, in which the legions were reduced from eight to four.

245 In 69, when Antonius Primus boasted of the superiority of the Danubian cavalry, there were, according to Tacitus, sixteen alae in Pannonia and Moesia (Tac. Hist. iii. 2). In the second century seventeen regiments can be traced in the two Pannonias and Moesia Inferior, while in Dacia, which covered Moesia Superior, were ten more. These figures, moreover, are probably below the real total. See Appendix I.

246 It appears in a Pannonian diploma for 98 (D. xxvii) and in the first Dacian diploma for 110 (D. xxxvii).

247 See Archaelogiai Ertesitö, 1905 and following, and for the inscriptions A. E. 1906 and following.

248 D. lviii (138-46), iii. 3331.

249 iii. 10316, 10318. A. E. 1906. 110. Ib. 1909. 150. Ib. 1910. 137.

250 D. lviii. The name of the town is missing.

251 A. E. 1910. 141. Cf. 133.

252 D. xxvii, xxxvii; iii. 4371. Another inscription (iii. 4368) mentions a Batavian, but he is a decurion who may have been transferred on promotion from another corps.

253 For orientals on the Rhine, cf. xiii. 7512, 7514.

254 Throughout the Empire the archer regiments seem to have been exclusively Thracians or orientals, but the latter alone preserved their national character in the second century.

255 iii. 10315, 10316.

256 The difficulty is to establish clear cases of men who must have entered a regiment after its original formation. The ‘Britto’ of the Dacian diploma for 145-61 (lxx) seems to be one.

257 ‘Nectovelius natione Brigans’ in the Cohors II Thracum. The inscription comes from Mumrills and probably dates, therefore, from between 142 and 180. Eph. Ep. ix. 623.

258 The numeri have been discussed by Mommsen in the latter part of the Conscriptionsordnung, a discussion which naturally forms the basis of the following pages.

259 xiii. 6526, 6542, 6592, 6622, 6629, 6642, 7749. Elantienses—6490. Gurvedenses—7343. Murrenses—6471. Triputienses—6502, 6511, 6514, 6517, 6518, 6599, 6606.

260 A. E. 1910. 152.

261 viii. 2486, 2505, 18007, 18008, 18026, &c.

262 iii. 837, 907, 7999, 14216.

263 The Palmyrene vexillarius, whose tombstone was found at Corbridge in 1911, is most likely to have belonged to a numerus formed from his countrymen. Eph. Ep. ix. 1153a.

264 D. lxvii (158).

265 Eph. Ep. ix. 1191, where all the references are collected.

266 iii. 8032.

267 viii. 21015, 21017.

268 iii. 7493.

269 If Mommsen’s interpretation of Eph. Ep. vii. 957 as n(umerus) m(ilitum) S(urorum) S(agittariorum) be correct.

270 Hyginus, 29. Accepting this emendation for the meaningless Getati of the manuscripts.

271 iii. 12601 a and b, 12605. The inscriptions date from the reign of Hadrian, showing that this usage was an early one.

272 Hyginus, 30.

273 Praepositus is more usual, and probably the original title. Later we find the title praefectus, and the inclusion of this post at the bottom of the equestrian census, below the previous three posts, gave rise to the phrase a quattuor militiis. Cf. xiii. 6814 and von Dom. Rangordnung, p. 131.

274 Von Dom. Rangordnung, pp. 60, 61.

275 viii. 2505, 2515. The latest inscription is a dedication to Malagbel, the native god of Palmyra, for the safety of Gordian III.

276 iii. 907, 14216 (Oriental names).

277 If the Brittones were really, as has been suggested, transported wholesale to Germany, these numeri also would have preserved their national character.

278 These disappeared during the period, which came in the history of almost every regiment, when it contained drafts from different nationalities.

279 This is shown by Hyginus, 43, as von Dom. has pointed out, Rangordnung, p. 60.

280 Dio, lxviii. 8 and 32.

281 Arrian, Tactica, 44.

282 The Κελτοὶ ἱππῆς, however, which are mentioned in the Ectaxis, 2, are probably, as Ritterling (Wiener Studien, xxiv. 127-40) suggests, cavalry of the Cohors Germanorum M. E.

283 The nearest case I know of is xiii. 3177, where we have the order signifer-centurio-tribunus, but this is in one of the Cohortes civium Romanorum, which occupy an exceptional position.

284 Rangordnung, pp. 112-15, 122-30.

285 ix. 996, x. 4862.

286 Rangordnung, pp. 57, 72. He also considers that at this date the centurions and decurions of the auxiliary regiments were drawn from the ranks of the legions, a suggestion which has already been discussed. See above, p. 38.

287 See pp. 16-20.

288 Tac. Hist. iv. 12 ‘(Batavorum) cohortibus quas vetere instituto nobilissimi popularium regebant’.

289 Ib. iv. 18. Its praefectus Claudius Labeo, ‘oppidano certamine aemulus Civili,’ was clearly a Batavian.

290 Ib. iv. 16.

291 Ib. iii. 35; ii. 14; iv. 55. To the same class of officers belonged ‘Chumstinctius et Avectius tribuni ex civitate Nerviorum’, who played an important part in one of the campaigns of Drusus. Epit. Livy, cxxxxi.

292 v. 7003 is an example of a career of this kind which dated from the reign of Claudius.

293 ix. 2564; A. E. 1902. 41.

294 Cf. iii. 1918 ‘I. O. M. Sulpicius Calvio c(enturio) leg(ionis) I Min(erviae) praepositus coh(ortis) I Belgarum’.

295 Cf. viii. 18007 ‘… M. Annius Valens leg(ionis) III Aug(ustae) praepositus n(umeri) Palmyrenorum’; xiii. 6526 ‘… M. Octavius Severus (centurio) leg(ionis) VIII Aug(ustae) Praeposit(us) Brit(tonum)’. The office of praefectus numeri does, however, occur; iii. 1149. See above, p. 87.

296 xi. 5669 ‘C. Camurio C. f. Lem(onia) Clementi … praef(ecto) coh(ortis) VII Raet(orum) equit(atae), trib(uno) mil(itum) coh(ortis) II Ulpiae Petraeor(um) miliar(iae) equit(atae), praef(ecto) alae Petrianae …’.

297 D. xlvii, li, lix, lx, lxi, lxvi, lxx.

298 In a list of over two hundred and fifty praefecti whose place of origin is known I have not come across one from either of these provinces. But it is of course impossible to be sure that such a list is even as complete as the existing evidence permits.

299 For the military qualities of the Gauls in the fourth century cf. Ammianus Marcellinus, xv. 12, xix. 6.

300 A. E. 1899. 177.

301 Such men probably stood a better chance than the Greeks. See my article on the Caristanii of Pisidian Antioch in J. R. S. iii.

302 Possibly curator, the Greek being ἐπιμελητής.

303 A. E. 1911. 161. A son, or other relative, who erected the inscription was praefectus cohortis II Hispanorum equitatae, C. R., tribunus cohortis III Ulpiae Petraeorum.

304 It is true that we do not know where the Cohors III Thracum Syriaca was stationed, but the other units in the series of four bearing this title all appear in the East. The Cohors II Hispanorum, in which his son served, is probably that mentioned on an inscription from Ancyra. iii. 6760.

305 D. xlviii and cviii.

306 Cf. Tacitus’s remarks in the Annals, xiii. 35, with the account in Dio Cassius, lxxv. 11-13, of the siege of Hatra by Septimius Severus, especially τῶν μὲν Εὐρωπαίων, τῶν δυναμένων τι κατεργάσασθαι and the promise of one of the officers ἐάν γε αὐτῷ δώσῃ πεντακοσίους καὶ πεντήκοντα μόνους τῶν Εὐρωπαίων στρατιωτῶν, ἄνευ τοῦ τῶν ἄλλων κινδύνου τὴν πόλιν ἐξαιρήσειν.

307 This point has been well made by Dessau in Hermes, 1910. The evidence does, however, suggest that an unusually large proportion of Africans obtained commands during the reign of Septimius Severus.

308 This is put very strongly on pages 133 and 134 of the Rangordnung, ‘die Italiker und die Weströmer sind von der militia equestris ausgeschlossen.’

309 The first name is that of the province in which the praefectus was stationed. His place of origin is placed last.

310 Its best justification is the solidarity of the Empire in the fourth century, which appears so markedly in the pages of Ammianus, and exercised so powerful an influence over the minds of the barbarian invaders.
⁂

← Back to The Auxilia of the Roman Imperial Army