Mauri. Dacia (as a vexillatio from Mauretania Caesariensis).[264] Frequently also in the two Mauretanias.
Raeti Gaesati (i.e. Raetians armed with the gaesum, a kind of heavy spear). Britain.[265]
Syri. Dacia,[266] Mauretania,[267] Moesia Inferior,[268] and possibly Britain.[269]
The titles show that these numeri are closely connected with the five nationes, Cantabri, Gaesati,[270] Palmyreni, Daci, and Brittones, who form part of the army described by Hyginus, and are distinguished from the cohorts and alae of the regular auxilia. In fact the term numerus is not invariably found on inscriptions, and for a corps which simply described itself as ‘Syri sagittarii,’[271] natio may easily have seemed a convenient term. It is also clear from Hyginus that what distinguished the numeri from the older formations was their looser organization and more barbarous character, and their titles show that they were drawn from the outermost borders of the Empire, or the most uncivilized districts within it.
Evidence about the character of these troops is scanty; being the least civilized part of the army they were not very prone to indulge in inscriptions. We do not even know the size of a numerus, or, indeed, if these regiments had any definite size at all. The nationes of Hyginus range from 500 to 900,[272] but the low rank of the praepositus numeri below the praefectus cohortis,[273] and the smallness of the accommodation arranged for these regiments in German forts, suggest 200 to 300 as a more probable figure. Smaller they can hardly have been, since they are divided into centuries and turmae.[274]
As regards recruiting, the Palmyrenes, at any rate, obtained fresh drafts, not from the province in which they were stationed, but from their native home. The numerus Palmyrenorum, which was stationed at El-Kantara in Africa, has left inscriptions covering the whole period from the middle of the second to the middle of the third century, which show clearly what pains were taken to preserve the original character of the regiment.[275] Similar inscriptions of a numerus Palmyrenorum in Dacia give evidence of the same principle.[276] Unfortunately, we cannot tell whether this was the case with all the numeri, or whether the Palmyreni occupied in this respect the same peculiar position as the oriental regiments among the regular auxilia.[277]
But whatever the later practice, the original intention of the imperial government in raising this new class of troops seems to be clear. The local recruiting of the regular auxilia presupposes a rapid progress of ‘Romanization’ among the provincials and the disappearance of all such national feeling as had caused the mutiny of the German and Pannonian auxilia in the first century. From the military point of view, however, this advance in culture, although it facilitated the raising of recruits, was by no means an unmixed blessing. The old levies of wild tribesmen, schooled by centuries of local warfare, who strove to preserve in the Roman service their local reputation, had qualities which were lacking to the regiments of civilized Latin-speaking provincials, in which national methods of fighting[278] had been replaced by a uniform training and clan feeling by esprit de corps. It was to provide a leaven of the old spirit that the numeri were raised from the wildest of the border tribes, and not only encouraged to fight after the manner of their fathers, but even permitted to continue the use of their native tongues.[279]
The first experiment of this kind was made by Trajan, when he brought over Lusius Quietus and his Mauri gentiles for the Dacian war,[280] but it was probably Hadrian who made the numeri a regular part of the military system. It is in his reign that they first appear on inscriptions, and it is to the numeri that we must refer the passage in Arrian’s Tactica, in which the emperor is praised for encouraging his troops to keep up their national methods of fighting, and even their national war-cries.[281] The tribes to whom he refers are Κελτοί (by which Germans are probably meant),[282] Dacians, and Raetians. For the first and third there is epigraphical evidence, and the last two appear also among the nationes of Hyginus. It appears, then, that Hadrian was not, as is sometimes stated, the originator of the system of local recruiting; rather he found it already in existence, and sought to correct its defects by utilizing again in the service of the Empire the clan spirit of uncivilized tribes, which had often proved so useful in the past.