How many Roman legionaries survived to retirement?

YouTube ^ | March 19, 2022 | The Historian's Craft

[SunkenCiv]

Roman soldiers famous received a plot of farmland, and citizenship (if they weren't already Roman citizens) when they were discharged from the Roman army. The terms of service could see troops under obligation to serve between sixteen and twenty five years, depending on the time period. But, being a soldier is a dangerous job, and Roman fought many conflicts. So, how many soldiers actually made it to retirement? How many got that piece of land?

SOURCES:
Marriage, Family, & Survival in the Roman Imperial Army: Demographic Aspects, Scheidel
The Complete Roman Army, Goldsworthy
A Companion to the Roman Republic, Morstein-Marx & Rosenstein

How many Roman legionaries survived to retirement? | March 19, 2022 | The Historian's Craft

[SunkenCiv]

About 12 percent attrition over the 25 year period of enlistment, which could easily be at least as good as the rest of the population from which the legions were drawn. Getting a farm at discharge was a big boon for the veterans. During the so-called republic, patriotic volunteers risked everything to save the city-state, and found that whatever home they'd had before had been taken over by some a-hole from one of the three dozen extended families who owned most of Italy. IF the soldier was lucky, he'd be able to find the family he'd left behind and they wouldn't have been enslaved by those very same a-holes.

[SunkenCiv]

Oh, c’mon, whattaya need teeth for?

[SunkenCiv]

If they got in a tight spot, which mostly happened during civil wars, facing their own kind, it could get hairy, but defeated forces in the civil wars knew when to call it quits and generally were not wrong to expect decent treatment.

When Caesar defeated Pompey at Pharsalus, Caesar pursued his fleeing adversary with one of Pompey's own legions under his command. They arrived in Alexandria and at some point Caesar sent about half of them back to Rome. That was the force he used to knock the ever-lovin' crap out of the numerically superior Greco-Egyptian army of Ptolemy the last.

[SunkenCiv]

“You think that’s funny, do you? Biggus, Dickus?”

[Larry Lucido]

Well, no good deed goes unpunished. I understand that both Hannibal and Scipio Africanus were banished and/or persecuted in retirement.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Actually, like almost everything else, Roman dental care was pretty advanced for it's time.

They had much better teeth then what you could find in a backwater like Briton.

The more things change.... (Ow! Stop hitting me. It was a joke you bad tempered Brit!)

[Rebelbase]

I don’t know about pensions but the Empire recognized certain cities as “Colonias” which were retirement centers for legionaries and were provided with a higher level of public services than typical Roman towns.

Sometime before Rome abandoned England during the Boudica led uprising a Colonia was attached and the retired legionaries were all slaughtered.

[ptsal]

Rome bkmk

[Mount Athos]

For those who don’t want to watch the video the answer was “definitely over 50%”

[SunkenCiv]

The big difference in the battles with Hannibal was, Rome had a citizen volunteer force, and not a professional standing army, while Hannibal's gang of cutthroats, er, army was largely made up of skilled and experienced mercenaries. Life and politics in Rome and in Carthage were somewhat similar, but trade and wealth meant the Carthaginian army and navy were hirelings, or nearby allies in N Africa.

Hannibal's dad had conquered a chunk of Iberia using an essentially private army, and perhaps had political designs on his home city. He and his sons harbored a real hostility toward Rome, and after Hannibal had a couple of major victories, he remained unable to close the deal or conquer Rome itself. After more than a decade running around Italy -- mostly avoiding battle btw -- he was evacuated by the Carthaginians, who found a sudden need for his army because Scipio was in Africa.

Having Hannibal in Italy all that time had suited the other posh families just fine.

Scipio had figured out the winning strategy, but couldn't get senatorial support because there was no room for the untrained and inexperienced idiot patricians to lead another army or two down to annihilation. Financing for his operation was via private money, a pattern that persisted throughout later Roman history.

Scipio beat Hannibal's sorry, overrated ass. Hannibal was given mercy by Scipio, but within a few years he fled Carthage. He'd been conniving with one of the Alexandrian successor states, Rome found out about it, and his local rivals were going to hand him over because they were just sick of his ****.

Hannibal wound up fleeing to Antiochus III, who wasn't all that popular among other Greeks. Hannibal joined in the eventual war Antiochus conducted with Rome, which the Romans and their Greek allies won.

Hannibal then connived with other enemies of Rome until he died while fleeing from place to place.

[SunkenCiv]

Yes, of course, he saved Rome, then (like Donald Trump) was attacked with lawfare. Later on, the same happened to Pompey, then to Caesar. Those three dozen families were just a bunch of mafia-style gangs.

[nicollo]

“OLD POEM”
(Chinese)

At fifteen I went with the army,
At fourscore I came home.
On the way I met a man from the village,
I asked him who there was at home.
“That over there is your house,
All covered over with trees and bushes.”
Rabbits had run in at the dog-hole,
Pheasants flew down from the beams of the roof.
In the courtyard was growing some wild grain;
And by the well, some wild mallows.
I’ll boil the grain and make porridge,
I’ll pluck the mallows and make soup.
Soup and porridge are both cooked,
But there is no one to eat them with.
I went out and looked towards the east,
While tears fell and wetted my clothes.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42290/42290-h/42290-h.htm

[SunkenCiv]

One of the remarkable survivals of written material from Roman Britain contained the phrase (in Latin of course) "dirty little Brits". :^)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks, nice!

[seowulf]

As I recall reading a while back, they kept raising the term to retirement because the available supply of farmland for soldiers became scarce; much like the same strategy we’re using by increasing social security eligibility age.

[Larry Lucido]

Indeed.

[Larry Lucido]

That’s my understanding, fleshed out somewhat. I’ve heard Hannibal died before capture and I’ve heard he poisoned himself to avoid capture. Either way, he was never captured alive.

[SunkenCiv]

Boudicca was a genocidal c-word, and wound up demagogue-ing her fellow bloodthirsty moron tribesmen to attack the Roman governor, who'd carefully chosen the battle site to his advantage. Roman losses were small, the c-word died along with 70 to 80 thousand of her followers.

The Romans then ruled Britain for another 350 years.

It would be nice to find the real actual one and only site of the battle. I suspect the captured British survivors were tasked with finishing their own wounded and then incinerating them in one great pyre. 70,000 x perhaps 32 teeth could mean, a great pile of surviving teeth (2 million) and that suggests a pretty good supply of testable DNA.

The Iceni capital was replaced with a grid style Roman colonial town. Literally no trace of the original has been found, my guess is, it was never any great place, and then the B led them to extinction / slavery, and the Romans just erased all trace before building their colony.

[SunkenCiv]

The Roman topics seem to be more successful than average for GGG.

[SunkenCiv]

I was refreshing my memory during my big droning post (I did add "small" HTML tags), and there were different versions even among ancient writers. The poison may not have been his idea, and may have come as something of a surprise. IMHO, his supposed last remarks were probably made up by some alleged poet.