Cool, that’s explain the amount of myths and stories involving the heirloom arms and armor on ancient roman media
Comment on It was a lot easier to get a job back in the day
luciferofastora@feddit.org 1 week ago
On the history of this:
In the Republic, Roman soldiers had to provide their own equipment. They were counted and drafted by wealth classes, then expected to bring or buy their own weapons and armour in line with the regulations.
On one hand, this allowed the state to push expenses (and the overhead for collecting taxes to fund them) on the citizens instead. On the other, that meant that citizens were motivated primarily by duty to their city, as well as social expectations (nobody wants to look bad in front of their peers, particularly if you might depend on their assistance at some point), rather than a pure expectation of profit.
They did get a decent salary, so it’s not like that was a net loss, but having to shoulder the initial cost (and armour wasn’t exactly cheap, particularly if you wanted to rely on it for survival) meant not every family could afford to send their kids to war for money. For families that had previously served, the arms of the fathers could obviously be passed to the children if they were still in good shape, which would reduce the burden - if they could afford to shoulder it once, it would be lighter down the line.
There is also an intermediate option, where poorer or younger soldiers could serve not as legionaries, but as lighter velites, whose equipment would be much cheaper. They’d move out in front of the main body to screen the army and harass the enemy with javelins, then retreat before the main engagement happened. The loot from that service might enable them to buy heavier equipment and subsequently serve as heavy infantry.
The evidence isn’t entirely clear, but it seems that this shifted at some point, possibly along the shift from a draft army to professional volunteer soldiers, which was formalised primarily by Augustus. By the end of the first century CE, it appears as if state-operated arms production was the main source of soldiers’ equipment. This would enable poorer classes to voluntarily serve for money (and maybe a shot at some land of their own, at least until Roman expansion started to falter), as the meme describes, which places it somewhere in the Imperial era. As memes go, this one is fairly accurate.
tio_bira@lemmy.world 1 week ago
PugJesus@piefed.social 1 week ago
In the days of the militia-legions, even, it was expected that fathers would be the ones who trained their sons in the art of war, and gear was so expensive (and being equipped for duty core to the identity of a Roman citizen) that it was rarely sold off. “This is my father’s blade, as it was his father’s…”
… of course, given the necessity of repairs and maintenance, there may be some “Ship of Theseus” thought that needs to be applied over a long enough period of time, but the basic idea applies!
PugJesus@piefed.social 1 week ago
Largely accurate, just a couple of nitpicks!
The change to state-issued equipment is suggested to have occurred as early as the Second Punic War, with velites, hastati, principes, and triarii being sorted by experience rather than wealth, as in Ye Olde Days.
The change to volunteer, professional legions occurred about ~100 years before Augustus. Gaius Marius is often credited with the change, but it’s generally accepted nowadays that the change happened organically throughout the whole 2nd century BCE, and Marius probably only formalized it, if he was involved at all in changing formal regulations. Augustus just standardized the term length (previously, terms of 5-10 years were common; Augustus set it to ~20 years, adjusting it upwards a few times) and instituted the retirement bonus.
The equipment was issued by the state, but centralized state manufacturing would not occur until the Late Empire (and would prove to be disastrous). The equipment was bought from private contractors (and retiring soldiers who didn’t want to keep their gear, which was most of them). Some specialized pieces would have been created by the specialist blacksmiths (who traveled with the legion and fought in combat as well) in each legion, but much of it was externally acquired. There’s a whole array of fascinating tidbits we’ve gleaned about the arms trade and military-market integration in recent decades of research on the Roman Empire!
luciferofastora@feddit.org 1 week ago
Huh, this doesn’t entirely line up with my reading of ACOUP’s posts on the dilectus and the "Marian Reforms" (that weren’t a thing).
The Pedant mentions that Polybius describes the second and third steps of the dilectus as assembling explicitly without weapons, then being sent home again to muster again with full equipment. The assumption is that the equipment would be procured or fetched by the soldiers-to-be in the interim.
Scipio does build a “public armaments production center in Carthago Nova in 210, but this may be a one off” (Marian Reforms), and in the view of the Pedant, recruitment of volunteers was an occasional occurrence to sidestep the Senate if they refused to let a commander levy armies the “proper” way but didn’t turn into a regular way to raise troops until the Imperial era.
Maybe I’m reading those articles wrong or missing some complexities. You do list details I’m missing, so I assume I don’t know the whole picture.
PugJesus@piefed.social 1 week ago
Sorry, I should have been clearer - since I was addressing the issue of state manufacturing, I was addressing the legions of the Late Republic and Early Empire, not the earlier militia legions.
To my memory, the post-2nd-Punic-War republic by degrees, turned into an effectively volunteer force simply by the low enforcement of the previously-important process of the dilectus - ACOUP even mentions the lack of serious enforcement mechanisms as why eager compliance was necessary, not just passive acquiescence or fear of punishment.
As the wars of the republic became flung further and further afield, issues with recruitment intermittently rose up - not because of poverty or a decreased population, but because some wars in some regions [cough] Hispania [cough] were not popular. People showed up basically as-volunteers throughout the 2nd century BCE, when the shame of not showing up for the little city-state of Rome’s neighboring wars no longer fetches the opprobrium it used to (and even as early as the Second Punic War itself, implicitly not showing up for the dilectus was ’normal’ enough that it was several absences in a time of crisis and near-destruction of the Republic that actually caught notice).
ACOUP also times the dilectus from 290-100 BCE, which is in-line with what I said, and acknowledges a difference between the “Caesarian” legion of the Late Republic and the “Polybian” legion Mid Republic, with his dispute only being how involved Marius was (which is something I acknowledged in my initial comment, “if he was involved at all in changing formal regulations."). Volunteers were the main source of recruits in the Late Republic, with conscription only ad hoc.
His argument that the legions weren’t really a fully professional force until Augustus is arguable, but basically boils down more to the definition of professional than a difference in the facts. ACOUP’s argument is more based around the standing institution of the legions themselves - Augustus’s changes were to maintain the legions as essentially perpetual entities. While in the Late Republic, volunteer professionals who made a life-career out of soldiering very often would end up ‘bouncing’ from legion-to-legion, as legions were raised and disbanded as-needed.
Thus, the legions are not the institutions they would later be, but many of the troops are legitimate careerists. Whether that’s ‘professional’ or not, like I said, is a question of definitions more than anything.
luciferofastora@feddit.org 1 week ago
That makes a lot more sense, yeah. Thanks for the nitpick and resulting enlightenment!