Roman legions

Gilliver, Kate 2012. Roman legions. Martel, Gordon, ed. The Encyclopedia of War, Wiley-Blackwell, -.

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Abstract

The legion, consisting of around five thousand infantry and a small cavalry contingent, was the principal military unit of the Roman army. Traditionally, service in the legions required both Roman citizenship and property ownership, assessed through the five‐yearly census, though the latter qualification was gradually reduced to the point that it had become almost meaningless by the late second century BCE, and had been completely abolished before Augustus established the Roman army as a permanent, professional organization a century later. Though citizenship remained a requirement for legionary service throughout the remainder of Rome's history, until the general grant of citizenship to all free adult males under Caracalla in 212 CE, suitable recruits without the status, such as the illegitimate sons of serving soldiers, would be granted it on enlistment to maintain the ideal that only citizens served in the legions. Legions on campaign were usually accompanied by non‐citizen units drawn from states allied to Rome, which provided heavy and light infantry, cavalry, and missile troops, so that armies were flexible forces containing a variety of different troop types. Legions during the Roman Republic were raised for specific campaigns, often only a few months long, and disbanded at the completion of military operations, but with the establishment of an overseas empire, legions might be retained for longer periods of time, leading to increased periods of continuous service on the part of legionaries; Augustus finally established the individual legions on a permanent basis, so that some legions were in existence for several centuries. While the citizen legionary units are given considerably more emphasis in the surviving literary sources than the non‐citizen units, and a wealth of archaeological evidence illustrates legions of the imperial period, there is still much uncertainty about the organization of the legions.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	History, Archaeology and Religion
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DE The Mediterranean Region. The Greco-Roman World
Publisher:	Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN:	9781405190374
ISSN:	140519037X
Last Modified:	18 Jan 2019 13:00
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/117968

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