The Auxilia of the Roman Imperial Army

by George Leonard Cheesman

The majority of these praefecti were, at the beginning of this period, of Italian origin, taken from the leading families of the country towns, the class which formed, under the rule of the Flavian emperors who were themselves sprung from it, the backbone of the Roman bureaucracy. The Romanization of the Western provinces led to an increasing proportion of men from the provincial municipia being admitted into the imperial service, but until the reign of Marcus the Italian element still predominated. The praefecti mentioned on five diplomata from Pannonia Superior and two from Dacia dated 133, 138, 136-46, 148, 149, 157, and 145-61 were natives of Sassina, Bovianum, Faventia, Suessa, Rome, Hispellum, and Picenum.[297]

The accession of Septimius Severus possibly accelerated the speed at which the provincial element was increasing, but there is not, as has been suggested by von Domaszewski, any sign of a violent and wholesale exclusion of Italians from this branch of the service. This point may be illustrated by the following inscriptions of Italian praefecti, which can be dated after 193:

VIII 9359. Caesarea. M. Popilius Nepos domo Roma, a praefectus of the Ala Gemina Sebastenorum in Mauretania Caesariensis. The inscription honours a procurator who is dated by Cagnat to 201-9.

A. E. 1908. 206. Puteoli. T. Caesius Anthianus, a native of this town, was praefectus of the Cohors II Augusta Thracum at the beginning of the third century.

The earliest provincial praefecti came from the thoroughly Romanized districts of Spain and Gallia Narbonensis, natives of which appear even in the pre-Flavian period. These were followed in the course of the second century by representatives of nearly all the Western provinces; Africa in particular sent praefecti from its many flourishing towns to almost every frontier during the latter half of the second century, and the accession of the African Septimius Severus at its close possibly gave his fellow countrymen a specially favoured position in the succeeding period.

Only in Britain and Gallia Lugdunensis do the Celtic chiefs seem to have made no attempt to maintain in the second century the military position held by their fathers in the first. It is hardly likely that their absence from the lists of praefecti[298] is due to deliberate exclusion on the part of the imperial government. It was more probably a voluntary abstinence, due largely to the fact that these military commands were now regarded merely as an introduction to the civil service, not as a career in themselves. The Celtic nobles were not uninfluenced by the tendencies of the age. But although they might speak and read Latin with ease, decorate their homes with the material products of Roman civilization, and employ Greek rhetoricians to tutor their children, these country gentlemen living in the midst of their estates preserved a very different outlook to that of the leading townsmen of the municipalities of Africa or even Narbonensis. The Celt retained his martial qualities down to the last days of the Empire in the West, but seems to have found little that was congenial to him in the prospect of forming part of that great administrative machine, in the perfection of which almost every other province in the Empire took its share.[299]

The Eastern provinces of the Empire occupy, as usual, a somewhat exceptional position. As in the West, these provinces began to contribute praefecti in some numbers towards the end of the first century. A certain C. Julius Demosthenes of Oinoanda went through the ‘militia equestris’ in the reign of Trajan, and his son, Julius Antonius, followed in his footsteps in the succeeding generation.[300] To a citizen of Caria, L. Aburnius of Alabanda, probably, as his name shows, the descendant of one of the families of veterans settled by Augustus in the south of Asia Minor,[301] the wars of Trajan presented opportunity for a military career of considerable variety and distinction. This officer was successively praefectus fabrum, tribunus legionis III Augustae, praefectus cohortis III Augustae Thracum equitatae, praefectus cohortis III Thracum Syriacae equitatae, praepositus[302] cohortis I Ulpiae Petraeorum, praepositus annonae[302] on the Euphrates during the Parthian War, tribunus legionis VI Ferratae, during his tenure of which post he was decorated by Trajan, and praefectus alae I Ulpiae singularium.[303] These cases are not isolated, and it is clear that a military career was open to the Greeks and the more or less Hellenized orientals who constituted the equestrian class in the Eastern provinces. But while the praefecti from the Western provinces were sent indiscriminately to every frontier, the majority of those drawn from the East seem, during the first two centuries, to have been confined to service with the Eastern commands. Aburnius, for example, only left the East once for service with the Legio III Augusta in Africa, and his son’s career seems to have been similarly localized.[304] We should perhaps add Moesia Inferior to the list of provinces in which Eastern praefecti appear frequently during the second century, since those mentioned on the diplomata for 134 and 138 came from Palmyra and Side respectively.[305] But Moesia Inferior was reckoned in other respects as coming within the Hellenic sphere of influence. These restrictions are probably due to the low estimate which was placed throughout the first two centuries on the military qualities of Greeks and orientals, in spite of the value of the latter as archers.[306] But we may also see evidence of the unbridgeable gulf which still existed between the two halves of the Empire, and of the reluctance of the Hellene to embark upon a career in what he considered to be the barbarous provinces of the West. It is only with the advent of the semi-orientalized dynasty of the Severi that praefecti drawn from the Eastern provinces appear in any numbers on the Western frontiers.

In all this the course of events is what one would naturally expect. The spread of uniform culture throughout the Western provinces of the Empire, the prosperity of the ubiquitous municipalities which were its material expression, and the general extension of the franchise which accompanied this development, involved a steady increase in the class qualified and eager for the equestrian career. The admission of these provincial equites to the posts for which they were qualified followed automatically without special encouragement from any particular emperor,[307] and the diverse origins of the praefecti at the beginning of the third century are one of the best proofs that can be adduced of the prosperity and civilization of the provinces at this period. It is impossible to follow von Domaszewski in concluding from the evidence that at this date the inhabitants of Italy and the more civilized areas in the provinces were deliberately excluded from the militia equestris, and that the auxiliary regiments were given into the hands of barbarians.[308] The army was indeed beginning to suffer from the introduction of a barbarian element, but it is not among the officers of the auxilia that this element is most noticeable. The following list of praefecti, who can be dated to the first half of the third century, does not bear out the accusation: