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The Roman Legionary
The Roman legionary is one of the most fascinating figures in antiquity. He embodies Rome’s power and influence. His skills in the art of battle have made him a legend.
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The legionary has now become an icon. But who is the man hiding behind the myth? Archaeological discoveries made in ancient Roman military camps provide valuable clues about how their occupants lived. We’re starting on a barrack street and on either side of me, we’ve got packs and racks of rooms like a motel. This sewer collects waste from all the legionaries who inhabited this complex. These everyday items found on the excavation sites help recreate the life of a Roman soldier as it was some 2,000 years ago. A life of habit and a life of adventure.
There was sometimes a place for love, but violence was at the heart of their existence. It suggests a really aggressive fight. In the face of peril, they trusted the deities they had chosen to watch over them. Little by little, the picture of the man behind the soldier is emerging.
The young recruit Titus Curious Linus has been in the Roman Legion for 2 years now. Like his comrades in the unit, he continues to train in the art of weaponry. Caes Marcus Salmorius, a seasoned legionary soon to be retired, has taken him under his wing. In Roman imperial times, a legion was around 5,000 troops strong. A soldier’s everyday life was probably more aptly defined by his immediate circle, especially what was called his contubernium. This was the group formed by his tentmates or barrack mates, which were eight men who were used to living together and working together. The group fostered a number of fraternal interactions, but mostly it was within this tight group that the everyday personal and professional life of the soldier in the army really took place.
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Long-standing comrades can be randomly dispatched and separated by troop movements, but some friendships overcome the parting. Many greetings to you, Paris, my brother. I wanted you to know I am doing well and that I hope that you are too. You neglectful man who has not sent me even one mail, whilst I act most differently by writing to you, my brother, my garrison mate.
This friendly correspondence between two legionaries has traveled some 2,000 years thanks to the Vindolanda tablets. This is a correspondence between two friends catching up with each other. And it’s great that you can see this friendship blossoming. They are asking after each other’s health. One is apologizing because he hasn’t written for a while. Also, say hello again to your messmates. How is everybody else in the unit? You get a sense that these two guys, Salonius and Paris, have served together. They’re now apart, but they’re good friends and they’re keeping in contact with one another. Letters like this give us a window into a very different type of life for Roman soldiers. One of great comradeship and shared experiences.
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Archaeological digs reveal items bearing witness to moments of recreation shared by garrison comrades.
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What we’ve got here are two examples of a very rare artifact. Two examples of boxing gloves which have never until we found those ever been found anywhere in the Roman Empire. These are made for boxing between Roman soldiers most likely. But it just reminds us that buried under the soil, under the ground of Vindolanda, there are still some incredible and unique things, little insights into different parts of daily life. They show us a landscape of entertainment, of gambling, of all the things that we associate with boxing today were here on the frontier 2,000 years ago.
From time to time, probably away from their comrades’ eyes and from the camp’s agitation, the legionary would wander into more personal activities. On this shard of an amphora, we can see writing exercises using a dry point. A legionary was probably trying to learn Latin and practicing his writing by drawing letters over again.
So, this is a beautiful little leather mouse or a little toy that’s come from the site and it’s been made out of a scrap piece of leather. It’s quite a thick piece of leather, probably the sort of leather that you use to make a shoe. This is a sort of little creature which the Romans would have been extremely familiar with on the site. Little mice like this will be running around in the rooms in which these people were living. So, it’s quite good fun that somebody’s had a sense of humor and they’ve made a little toy mouse. And what I love about artifacts like this is it’s a bit of fun. It’s not just the utilitarian Roman army boot or shoe or weapons. It reminds us that we’ve got a humanity here. We’ve got a community here.
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In the buzz of the forts, pets also had their rightful place.
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We’ve got animal skulls from lots of different creatures here, including some of my absolute favorites, some of their pets. So, here we’ve got a complete dog skeleton. This dog was found in the ditch. The only bit that’s missing is the legs here at the back, the toes of the dog. And the reason for that is that although this was somebody’s pet, it’s still a useful animal. They have taken the hide, the skin off this dog before they’ve thrown the carcass away to recycle it to use to make clothing or other items. We also have a few cats as well, and these are much more rare, perhaps not surprising with all the dogs running around. And of course, they’re much less useful to the Romans than the dogs, but they’re good for hunting down vermin, keeping the mice under control. So, it’s a real vibrant mix of creatures that are in this space.
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The legionary’s living space was set up around his barracks. The architecture of Roman forts was uncomplicated and always based on the same model. Therefore, it’s easy to identify the different buildings from the compound when apprehending a new excavation site.
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So, I’m walking up a barrack street of Vindolanda. On either side of me, we’ve got rows and rows of little rooms like a motel, each door offset from the other to give an element of privacy. The living quarters of the Centurion are situated at the end of a row of barracks used by troops. Commanding 80 legionaries, the rank of centurion grants him the privilege of a larger space to himself.
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Finally, the senior officer commanding the garrison lives in a fast, comfortable residence, the praetorium. Besides the rooms, it comprises private bathrooms, an interior garden, a reception room, and bedrooms for the servants.
So the Roman army regiments here come from all over the Roman Empire, but very often they weren’t led by men from the same province in which they came. And we know this through evidence from the altars left behind by many of the commanding officers who were stationed at Vindolanda. These lovely beautiful stones were found in the praetorium, the commanding officer’s house of the fourth cohort of Gauls. And they’re set up to the genius of the house, the spirit of the house to look after the household while the commanders are there. This particular one is set up by the prefect Petronius Fabricus Erbacus. He’s a citizen of Italia, Italy, and he comes from the province of Brescia.
It seems only logical that commanding officers would come from Italy. But where do the troops all come from?
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In the early years of the Roman Empire during the first century CE, the Roman army was still very much on the move. At first, soldiers were Italian for the most part, but with time, the army started recruiting people who lived in areas around the camps where the legions were stationed. This created a shift in the demographic profile of the Roman troops. The Roman army became multi-ethnic. And if we try and push the categorization further at the individual level, also mostly rural. This is hardly surprising since the population of the empire was mostly rural. Finally, a percentage of soldiers also had a high degree of literacy. So one mustn’t picture the Roman army as an ignorant peasant army.
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Did the typical profile of the legionary vary according to its garrison? Were soldiers stationed in Lugdunum, one of the great cities of the empire, any different from others? The ancient capital of the three Gauls holds many remains of its prestigious Roman history. The antique theater and Odeon are a testament to the importance of the city of Lugdunum some 2,000 years ago.
Behind these constructions in the back of the visit on the famous hill of Fourvière, archaeologists think they may have uncovered the city’s garrison. It is quite extraordinary to discover this military camp in Lyon, the Lugdunensis Urban Cohort’s own camp. The camp had been debated for a long time among scientists, but had never actually been located. Thanks to stratigraphy, we know the military site was occupied between 69 and 197 AD.
The conviction these are indeed the vestiges of this urban garrison is the sheer quantity of recovered military artifacts. Lugio is an archaeologist specialized in Roman weaponry. He is attempting to extract an odd metal shard planted vertically. That’s great. This artifact was in the cross-section. All the offensive weapons present here are typically used by a legionary. That’s right. And add up to a military camp environment. There you go.
Hidden in its corroded envelope, the weapon is hardly recognizable. It looks like a thick pike. Yes, I think it is. Everything about flag holders has a pike look. But there’s something there. The quantity and variety of the items that have been unearthed have improved our knowledge of the Roman soldiers’ military equipment.
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People often picture the Roman army with soldiers all wearing the same uniform. But what archaeological finds show is that in fact the opposite seems to be true. The Roman army had a very heterogeneous outfit. Obviously, not concerning the basic equipment. They all had a gladius sword, shield, a spear, all had body armor, and so on, etc. But we’ve seen differences in helmet shapes, sword shapes, in the decoration of the scabbards, and the decoration of the belts. The only thing that’s common to all are the shape and the decoration of the shield. The shield had to be decorated with a unit or legion’s colors, but the rest was rather disparate.
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Archaeologists are logging all the weapons that have been discovered along the year.
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It’s impressive. With all the artifacts laid out on the table, we realize how many weapons of the first century have been discovered in this warehouse. Yes, this is truly extraordinary. We’ve never found such a massive collection so far remote from the borders of the Roman Empire. Because Central Gaul wasn’t a particularly militarized area at the time, we found almost 300 weapons in just this one armory storage building. That’s what you see here.
Is the plethora of military equipment an indication of how many legionaries lived there? How would the camp be organized and what could be its extent? Excavating a full camp in an urban setting is really quite complex. Camps are very vast. We need to dig thousands of square feet to map the camp entirely. When you deal in urban archaeology, it’s always a challenge because life goes on. Buildings, houses, streets, possibilities are very limited.
To map out underground structures, the team does a geophysical prospection in the immediate surroundings of the site.
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Kristoff Vinesh, who specializes in this technique, has taken the lead of the operations. Come back to the left a little. Perfect. When you want. There you go. The radar method consists of probing the ground with sound waves and recording their reflection. They vary according to the nature of the different layers. Here you can see quite deep reflections.
The electric method, on the other hand, consists of probing with electrodes. Electricity will travel at different speeds according to the density of the ground layers. What’s interesting to us here is this deeper zone which is more conductive. It means that the filling there is different from what’s at the beginning of the reading and different from what’s further down the slope. This could be the indication of something more like a terrace filling.
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Radar Readings on the Meadow
I’m going to show you the radar readings on the meadow. The grassy part is 80 cm down. We’re starting to see things. That’s when it becomes interesting because we start to see a network of lines that are evocative of the antique remains of the site. We imagined a pathway with this orientation in this area. It could be consistent with a gateway at the edge here, the gateway between these two roads along this other road over here. This is very interesting down at a meter 20. The two alignments are still very clear. We can see them very clearly. We can see them distinctly. And there’s a shape here that’s becoming sharper. Nice shape.
The structure appears more precisely at a meter 40. We can see how clean it is. It’s a nice straight square, a little room or a construction of sorts. Combining geophysical and archaeological evidence, the shape of military barracks and surrounding quarters are starting to materialize. [Music]
We’re like children discovering the 3D model of the ruins we had long imagined, coming to life thanks to this new technology. [Music] Some structures are excellent landmarks linking the different areas of the camp with one another. [Music] The sewage system we discovered this year, which is really the extension of the vestiges we dug out the previous years, is particularly interesting to us. It’s like the backbone of the archaeological site. It’s the central element around which all the different parts of the military camp are organized. Year after year, we’ve been studying it and it’s really well preserved. What’s really quite amazing is that the sewer ultimately served as a waste disposal system. At the end of the day, we’re scavengers of the past, and we mostly dig for things people just left there. This is how we discovered many objects linked to their everyday lives: pottery shards, but also toiletries and toys that have been abandoned there, washed away by the rain, and ending up in the gutter. [Music]
These objects are clues as to who the legionaries of this great city really were and what their role was. [Music] The garrison was stationed here in Lyon. The urban cohort of Lyon had several purposes. It had to be ready for combat. That much is certain. But as a colonizing force, it also had a double role of policing force and an administrative role with the governor of the province of Lyon. They also held a judicial role. Therefore, it’s highly unlikely that these men in their daily lives, especially in the role of policemen, wore their whole war-mongering outfit and body armor. He may not always wear his creas, but the legionary never leaves his singulum, his ornate belt, which holds a scabbard for his gladius. This military belt, because it’s ornate, because it’s displayed for everyone to see, affirms in reality the identity of the soldiers as part of a group which is the Roman army.
Stop. Hey. [Music] Hey. [Music] What’s interesting with the visit excavation site besides all the military furniture is that we also found more intimate items used in the everyday life of the legionaries. We have a lovely collection of domestic items, objects of everyday use. See, there you have a nice collection of items for games. Indeed, like this series of dice. Yeah. This year we found quite a few tokens. Tokens made of bone, tokens made of glass paste. Okay. But the varieties of the items indicate several different board games must have lost pieces on this site. Okay. And here those are toiletry items. Indeed, we have a bunch of items related to self-hygiene. Here we have a mirror which is almost complete with the beginning of a handle. This one is also pretty nice because you can still see your reflection in it. We have lots of little things used in hygiene like these little tweezers, this perfume spoon, and an earpick. It shows how important self-care was to the legionaries after all.
[Music] Why were legionaries so concerned with hygiene and self-care? Despite their mandatory celibacy, maybe they still had the desire to seduce. When Augustus created the professional army, he demanded that soldiers be devoted to their new occupation and he put a ban on legal marriage for soldiers who were Roman citizens. One mustn’t imagine this ban as being absolute. It would have been unrealistic to ban any kind of relationship with women during the whole 25 years that military service lasted. There were relationships that occurred which sometimes resulted in children. But it was only at the end of military service that this union became official and that the children became legitimate. Soldiers could therefore have a personal life, intimate and sexual life, a family life despite their military status. Archaeological finds indicate Roman military forts would also house women and children.
Researchers found this object, the top part of a clay figurine, probably made in Lyon. It’s a hooded figure dressed as a gall. This gall was called a cacolitus. It’s basically a doll. And we found several of these in Lyon. They have jointed arms and legs like action figures. A very telling object related to this site. At Vindolanda, the oxygen-poor soil has preserved many items made of wood or leather that once belonged to women or children. Barbara Burley, the museum’s curator, is taking stock of recent finds. We have wonderful examples of what life was like nearly 2,000 years ago. We have objects that really show us that there were women and that there were children living here on site. And I’ve got some of them here on the table for us. This is a fabulous example of this tiny little child’s shoe. I mean, I don’t even know if this child would have been walking yet. It’s so small. And it tells us that they were here as well. And we’ve got lots of children’s shoes. We also have women’s objects. So this is a beautiful woman’s shoe. The reason we know that this is a woman’s shoe is because not only its size, it’s smaller than what we’d expect to find for a man’s shoe, but a lot of times our women’s shoes are showing these lovely decorated stud patterns. And I always wonder if on a dirt surface they would leave these kinds of impressions. We also have these, which I find fascinating. They’re hair combs made of boxwood, probably imported from the Mediterranean. They are such a glimpse into daily life. They show that people were caring just as we do today about how they would present themselves and how they would look. And another example of women living here on site would be this one, which is a spindle whirl. Now, of course, men can spin wool, but it was part of women’s life in the Roman period that they had to be there for the textile production. So you would have made clothes for your own family.
The recent finds at Vindolanda go against the preconceived narrative of a community of men close to women and children. This short wooden sword is proof that children spend time playing games. But other artifacts shed light on another more serious aspect of their daily lives: homework. This is a writing lesson and it’s actually a line from Virgil’s Aeneid. The winged bird flew over the walls of the city. So, wow. We’ve got one of the great texts of the Roman world being copied out at Vindolanda. It came from the commanding officer’s house. And we think what we’ve got here is somebody learning through using the classic text just like we do at school today, how to read and write in Latin. And so they’ve got the first line spot on. They’ve done really well. The second line, you can see it starts to go a little bit and then in a different hand we’ve got “Eg.” This we believe is the teacher writing sloppy work at the bottom of the letter. So one can imagine a certain punishment might have come from this. Perhaps a good beating with a stick or something like that.
Over the last 30 years, archaeology has transformed our vision of life in Roman garrisons 2,000 years ago. [Music] Looking for mixed communities, we look at evidence for the sort of dress or material that women and children might use instead of men. And guess what? We find just as much of that inside the fort as we do outside. But equally, and this is just as important, the Roman soldiers aren’t restrained to living inside their forts. They’re also living in the towns outside the forts. Those are military towns. It’s all one thing. And when we excavate the buildings out there, we find as many bits of armor and military kit and weapons as we do inside here. So that fort wall that goes around us here separating one side of a settlement from another, it wasn’t the great divide. It wasn’t the huge barrier between movement from one space to another. [Music] Therefore, women and children would enter the forts. The legionaries had female companions as a testimony to these relationships. Some moving items have stood the test of time.
This is a woman’s gold ring and it just around the very edge of the stone has an inscription that actually says, “My darling or my soul.” [Music] Claudia Seiver salutes you, Lepidina. I’m sending you this heartfelt invitation for my birthday on the 11th of September. I hope you can join us as your presence would make this day even more enjoyable. This is a very famous letter from Vindolanda. Most of the letter is written by a professional scribe and you can see how beautiful and clear the writing is. But at the bottom of the letter, the farewell greeting, “my dearest sister, my dearest soul,” is written in a different hand. And we think this is some of the earliest female handwriting that survived from Western Europe.
The Vindolanda digs have brought to light touching remnants, hinting both at the lighter side of life in the camps and its darker aspects. Trudy Buck is an anthropologist. Although she regularly takes part in the excavation campaigns, she takes a special interest in the numerous human dramas that would rock the fort’s daily life. For the last few years, one mysterious case in particular has caught her attention.
This is the site of a burial of a 10-year-old child, a girl who was found literally underneath the floor of this barrack building in this far corner. Now, that was extremely unexpected. At first, it was thought maybe it was an ape. We know that the Romans sometimes kept apes or monkeys as pets because the Romans don’t bury their dead inside where they live. They’re very superstitious. They’re afraid of ghosts. And the laws prohibit burying within places that they live. So to find a child here suggests something untoward had happened. It definitely suggests that she was probably murdered. Most of her body was really well preserved. What we don’t have is much of her skull. And this is possibly because she may have been killed by being hit over the head with something which could have caused open wounds. And we know through forensic anthropology methods that if you’ve got an open wound, that place quite often will start to decompose the quickest. And so that’s not definite, but that’s where we think she may have been hit and what killed her. Who was this child? What was she doing in the soldiers’ barracks?
This is an image of the child when she was found. So, she’s laid on her left-hand side and her arms are very sort of tucked up like this in front of her body. Isotope analysis of the well-preserved teeth have led Trudy to believe that the child spent the first years of her life in the Mediterranean basin. Maybe she was a young slave brought back from a military campaign caught in a rivalry between legionaries and murdered. At the time, the killing of a slave was considered a violation of the master’s property. [Music]
Legionaries were not immune to occasional jealousies, quarrels, and squabbles. Some tablets found at Vindolanda tell of tensions, conflicts, or even repudiation.
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Kaillius Secundus salutes you, Julius Vericundus.
[Music] I’ve shown Centurion Decominius the tablets you sent about anger and abuse among the soldiers. This calls for punishment, and we should discuss the matter further.
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Discipline among legionaries was paramount. Even when the empire was not at war, frontier garrisons had to stop local rebels from raiding Roman colonies.
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And the retaliations carried out by the Vindolanda garrison have left their mark. The anthropologist Trudy Buck has been analyzing human remains discovered along the ramparts.
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We found a human skull. Now, this human skull has very likely been on a spike at the side of the ditch. We have another one from the north ditch as well. So, sort of at least two on either side. And it seems clear that they have brought back trophies of the men that they’ve killed in battle, and they’ve displayed them on the side of the ditches that are surrounding the forts.
Along with the skulls, a humorous was also found in the defensive ditch. What’s interesting about this particular bone is its size. This is one of the largest arm bones that I have seen. Another interesting thing is it’s got this shine all the way around the main shaft. This is the type of shine or pattern that you get when people handle bones a lot. This has been some sort of trophy that has been brought back after one of the battles, presumably somebody’s pride in defeating someone who’s quite so large and quite so muscular. And the amount of shine on this sort of really gives an idea that somebody has been telling stories around the campfire about the time he defeated the champion of the enemy.
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As the original skulls were too fragile, 3D replicas had to be made for Trudy to examine the injury signs.
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A sword cut on the right, a bashed-in fracture on the left, and a gladius perforation at the top. This Breton warrior was a tough nut to crack.
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[Applause] It suggests a really aggressive fight, a really big face-to-face combat. And some of the things that we’ve been able to find out about this individual from his skull tell us why maybe he was fighting in this way. We’ve managed to get DNA and isotopes from his teeth. His DNA tells us that one of his parents was Italian. The isotopes in his teeth, the things that tell us where he grew up, suggest he grew up north of Hadrian’s Wall. Now, if that’s where he grew up, that’s presumably where his mother lived as well. So, are we looking here at the product of a rape of a native woman by a Roman soldier? And does that explain why he’s fought so hard, why he’s been so difficult to kill? Because he’s been fighting not just for his people but also for the honor of his mother.
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The wounds sustained by Breton warriors, as shown on their bone remains, as well as the macabre display of trophies, give us a glimpse of the occasional violence of garrison life. Even in the city of Lugdenham, burrowed deep in the heart of the empire and safe from the barbarians, excavations revealed outbursts of past chaos.
This skull was discovered on the excavation site in one of the digs of the military complex. It was identified as a legionnaire and is particularly interesting. Its composition allows us to think it was severed from the body and put on display in the military complex for everyone to see. This rather macabre arrangement was, however, rather common in antiquity.
What circumstances led to the violent death of this legionary from the Leonire’s garrison? His skull was discovered in a particular layer of soil, which means his execution coincided with a dramatic event. Occasionally, a find will give us information about specific events. This seems to be the case here. A major battle took place in Leon on the 19th of February in 197 CE. The battle of Lugdenham is a turning point in Roman history, marking the end of four years of civil war. Two Roman armies were pitted against each other.
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Above all, legionaries were fighters devoted to the cause of Rome. But this did not prevent them from being entangled in fratricidal wars or taking sides in times of trouble.
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When we left our homeland, we were told our goal was to defend the sacred rights of so many citizens.
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We readily gave our blood, sacrificed our youth and our hopes.
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Our spirit on the front line may be unwavering. I am told Rome is awash with cabals and plots and treacherous schemes. Reassure me as soon as possible and tell me we can depend on our fellow citizens’ support while we protect the greatness of the empire. If it should be otherwise, if our bleached bones should be sacrificed in vain, then beware of the legion’s wrath.
In 197 AD, Claudius Albinus, leader of the legions of Brittany, crossed the English Channel and settled in Leon. It was there that Septimius Severus, who had become the rightful emperor by force, came to fight his rival with the legions of the Danube and the Rhine. Whether young recruits or seasoned soldiers, these legionaries who had vowed to defend and protect the empire probably never imagined that one day they would have to fight their brothers in arms.
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The garrison stationed in Leon, the urban cohort, took part in these clashes on the side of Albinus. Septimius Severus won. He not only defeated Albinus, but his troops also plundered the city.
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Leon’s urban cohort, which rallied Albinus, likely put up fierce resistance around and even inside the garrison.
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These arrowheads come from the last phase of the camp’s occupation when it was abandoned, destroyed, and probably captured at the end of the battle of Leon when the town was ransacked. Some of them are intact, but some are broken like these ones. The tip is completely broken off, the barbs twisted. These artifacts are characteristic of a battlefield. They were found on the ground in the camp. It clearly shows that the invasion of the camp at the end of the battle of York was violent.
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Roman provinces were regularly torn apart by coups and power plays. Evidence of the complexity of keeping together such a vast empire made of many diverse people. Invested with divine power, the emperor embodied the unity of the empire. His effigy appeared on the standards carried by the legions. These created a sense of belonging and loyalty running deep in the veins of legionaries.
Shared rituals offered a special occasion for seeking divine protection. War is no trifling affair. Men put their lives on the line. It should only be carried out under the supervision of the gods.
Jupiter, Optimus Maximus, Jupiter, ruler of the earth and sky, and Mars, god of war, are often invoked. Roman,
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Religious life for a Roman soldier was punctuated by public ceremonies that brought together his unit. These were supervised by commanders who performed the rituals on behalf of the army. These were important occasions since the whole unit was gathered together.
Archaeological finds reveal that along with public ceremonies, legionaries carried out a more intimate and more personal spiritual practice.
At the excavation site in Leon, archaeologists have unearthed an intriguing structure. This masonry base is a bit of a puzzle. It’s coated with hydraulic mortar. Of course, the top is eroded, but there’s a clue that may help understand its purpose. We’ve discovered miniature oil lamps, and these were often used for deposit rites. Instead of giving real oil lamps, they would place these objects that are facsimiles. This could be a small altar like the ones you’d find at street corners where it was customary to deposit gifts for deities.
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Soldiers pray to the goddess or god they have chosen to watch over their destiny. The cult of the goddess Fortuna is very important to legionaries. Whenever you go into battle, it’s better to have Fortuna, goddess of luck, on your side. It’s quite common to find these little statuettes of deities. Legionaries would carry these from garrison to garrison and worship them daily with incense, a little wine, and a little food to honor the contract between the goddess and the person to whom the figurine belonged.
Another deity was particularly dear to Roman soldiers, Mithras. The temple of Broccolitia near Hadrian’s Wall and Vindolanda was dedicated to him. An all-powerful god of sunrise, of victory, of light over darkness, of life over death. Mithras also protected the herd and those who defended the land, the soldiers. His statue depicts him wearing a crown with ornaments pierced by rays of light. A legionary who is protected by Mithras and survives the battle and illnesses will be able to retire at the end of his 25 years of service.
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Caillus masti [Music] awaken to you of teams. optim [Music] for TV. [Music] Hello [Music]
Recent discoveries should help us demystify the Roman soldier and the Roman army and realize that our vision is far removed from reality. We were led to believe by modern culture, like cinema and TV series, that legionaries formed an extremely disciplined war machine. We need to shed this idea of a war machine. Soldiers were human. They felt emotions. They were sometimes afraid in combat, and they didn’t always follow orders. And they had lives beyond their military service. They had relationships with civilians. They had families. They had to deal with material and personal matters. They were both warriors and family men with a life both inside and outside of the army. A life that was not that of a faceless automaton but the life of a human being.
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Will Caes Marius Sorius go on to become a merchant, a magistrate, or a farmer? Will he settle on the land allocated to him as gratification? After all, he’s only 50. For him, a new life begins.
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