Legions of Rome by Stephen Dando-Collins Read Free Book Online

several cases finding, “a great deal of shocking rapacity and deliberate inaccuracy”). [Pliny, VII , 31]
    By the second half of the second century, military tribunes were increasingly appointed to the command of auxiliary units, probably because of the growing number of supernumerary tribune appointments. For instance, Pertinax, a future emperor, served as a tribune of cavalry on his way to becoming a successful general. [Dio, LXXIV , 3]
    XX. THE PREFECT
    After his junior tribuneship, a young Equestrian officer gained the rank of prefect and was appointed to command an auxiliary cohort—either an infantry unit or an equitatae unit which combined infantry and cavalry. After serving for several years, he would be transferred to the command of an equitatae unit or cavalry wing. He still held the rank of prefect, but a prefect of a mounted unit outranked an infantry prefect. A promising candidate could eventually be appointed a tribune of the broad stripe.
    XXI. THE QUAESTOR
    Every consul and every provincial governor had a quaestor appointed to his staff; Mark Antony initially served as quaestor to Julius Caesar during the Gallic War. The quaestor was a former broad-stripe tribune. In the provinces, a quaestor’s responsibilities included military recruitment in his province. He automatically entered the Senate on completion of his term as quaestor.
    A junior magistrate, the quaestor was entitled to one fasces and one lictor. The fasces represented the magistrate’s power over life and death. Its symbol was an axhead projecting from a bundle of elm or birch rods tied with a red strap. Rods of birch were used to beat a condemned man; the ax was then used to behead him.

    The Legate (Legatus Legionis)
Imperial Legion Commander
A senator typically in his early thirties and serving for three to four years.
    In 1919, the Fascist Party of Italy took the ancient Roman fasces as its symbol, a word from which the fascist name derived. Benito Mussolini’s Italian fascists adopted other imperial Roman symbols such as the eagle and military standards, hoping that some of the old glory would rub off. The fascist name, the eagle and the standards were in turn appropriated by Hitler’s National Socialist Party in Germany, the Nazis.
    XXII. THE LEGATE
    In Augustus’ military reforms, the legion commander was the legatus legionis , or legate of the legion. A member of the Senatorial order, he was typically in his thirties. The oldest legion legate on record is 62-year-old Manlius Valens, commander of the 1st Italica Legion in AD 68–69; his appointment was the result of a political favor from the emperor Galba.
    Augustus set the maximum tour of duty of a legionary legate at two years. Under later emperors this stretched to an average four-year appointment. Tiberius was infamous for leaving men in appointments long term once he had found a place for them, and under him service was longer than usual.
    The legate could be distinguished by his richly decorated helmet and body armor, his embroidered scarlet cloak, the paludamentum , and his cincticulus , a scarlet waistband tied in a bow at his waist. He was entitled to five fasces and five lictors.
    By AD 268, the emperor Gallienus had decreed that senators could no longer hold legion commands, and by the end of the third century all legions were being commanded by Equestrian prefects, who then outranked tribunes. [Amm., V , 33]
    XXIII. THE PRAETOR
    The praetor was a senior Roman magistrate. From the middle of the first century, former praetors were increasingly given legion commands. Outranking legion legates, they were entitled to six fasces and lictors. Both Vespasian and his brother Sabinus held praetor rank when they commanded legions in the AD 43 invasion of Britain.
    After AD 268, under the decree of Galienus, praetors no longer held commands.
    Propraetor was the title given to governors of imperial Roman provinces—as opposed to proconsul, the title given to “unarmed”