Seventy years ago, Forni laid down the ‘rules’ for the recruitment of legionaries during the Principate: most men joined between the ages of 18 and 21; recruitment gradually spread from Italy to Provence, Spain and Africa, but by the reign of Hadrian local recruitment was the norm. The situation has proved more complex for the auxilia. Recent studies have concentrated on examining the recruitment by individual units or in specific areas, with Alex Meyer's study of the recruitment from Spain representing the latest such study. M. seeks to drill down to the next level and investigate ‘the social and cultural influences that may have affected individual soldiers’ (2), following the trend of studying the Roman army as ‘community’. A challenge, but one worth pursuing as we have relatively little evidence for these elements in the lives of individual soldiers, especially in the western provinces where we largely lack the letters and documents of the East. Is he successful?
The available evidence resides mainly in inscriptions and diplomas; the issues presented by this material are discussed in ch. 1. The following chapter offers a description of the development and structure of the auxilia. We then move, in ch. 3, to a consideration of the auxiliary units raised in the Iberian peninsula. Here, M. accepts without qualification the conclusion of R.P. Saller and B.D. Shaw (‘Tombstones and Roman family relations in the Principate’, JRS 74 (1984), 124–56), that of the 80 known auxiliary soldiers from Britain, only two were demonstrably of British origin. Unfortunately, he misses John Mann's (‘Epigraphic consciousness’, JRS 75 (1985), 204–6) argument that the poor epigraphic consciousness in Britain may have played a part in the creation of these figures. Nor can the deliberate movement of local recruits out of the Lower Rhineland after a.d. 69–70 be regarded as a reflection of general practice (32). One major problem is that local soldiers are less likely to have recorded their origin than those who came from outside the province.
M. concludes that the Iberian units serving in other provinces continued ‘to accept soldiers from their home territory even after the original levy and while concurrently accepting recruits from elsewhere’, these local recruits first appearing in the alae in the Augustan-Tiberian period but in the cohorts not until Claudius; by the end of the first century recruitment was mainly local (51–3). It would be interesting to know whether the equites in the cohorts followed the pattern of the alae or the cohorts, but the evidence does not exist. In short, the situation was complex and a warning to all seeking to formulate simple rules. This conclusion is supported by M.'s suggestion that horsemen were frequently sent from Iberia to other provinces in order to counter deficiencies in local recruitment.
When it comes to retirement, few of the Iberian soldiers returned home, yet what is interesting is that while about half of the veterans in the study stayed within 25 miles of their unit, over a third travelled over 100 miles to settle into a new home (75–6), a contradiction of currently held academic views.
In ch. 5, M. moves into personal relationships. This is prefaced by a useful review of the present literature on the subject and the flaws in these analyses. M.'s conclusions are challenging: soldiers are ‘equally likely to be commemorated by or with a soldier from a different unit as … by or with a soldier from their own unit’ (95). This is unexpected. How were such links made? M. surmises that some were made when soldiers served in the same unit or when units were stationed together. The family was also important even though it might be dispersed. I suspect that we underplay the role of letter writing in maintaining communications across considerable distances. M. notes that rank does not appear to have been a significant factor in relationships between soldiers, posing a challenge to a strongly hierarchical view of the Roman army (114).
M. is indeed successful in his aims, offering not just challenging conclusions but also an exemplar for similar studies. He acknowledges the disadvantages of a small body of evidence, but recommends further studies along the same lines as they allow a more nuanced approach to the evidence than ‘the large-scale, quantitative analysis of epigraphic evidence’ (116–17). In this way we will understand better the lives of individual Roman soldiers.
The discussion is supported by the text and translations of inscriptions and six maps. Strangely, the individual items in the bibliography are not in chronological order.
