called a praetor, interpreted the tables of the law in Rome;
after the conquest of Sicily there were four, with Spain six;
Sulla the Dictator made eight and Caesar, sixteen; they
began to create case law with their decisions, which were
posted on a white board (album) displayed in the Forum.
,More through the influence of Seneca than of Christianity,
Roman Law softened with time, until even slaves gained
certain rights. A creditor could no longer seize the son of a
debtor and put him in irons. Debt, and the means of its
recovery, often by a patrician from a small farmer, had been
the cause of the greatest riots in early Rome. At that time it
was not only legal, but a religious duty to revenge murder of
a kinsman with another death. This law is now only observed
by the Mafia. However, a citizen could still kill a thief if he
came by night or, in the daylight, carried arms.
:::::::::
He gave the legions their eagles, gave the soldiers
their laundry allowance and burial funds with something
over for the regimental dinner.
Healso weighed them down with equipment so that they
were known as ‘Marius’ mules’. The ‘whole armour of God’,
to use the expression used by St Paul, consisted, apart from
‘the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield
of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit’,
of a pike and a dagger which together with the rest of his kit
weighed about forty-five pounds, today’s standard baggage-
allowance for air travel. The Roman soldier ‘messed’ in
groups of six or ten (the sources differ) and lived on wheat
(which was turned into porridge or bread), salt and some not
very nice wine. He might add some vegetables but rarely
meat, except for the occasional bacon. The original of St
George, it will be remembered, was a wholesale pork
butcher in Cappadocia, whose Christianity was irrelevant
until he was lynched by the Roman soldiers for supplying
rotten meat. ‘The profession was mean,’ says Gibbon in one
of his best footnotes, ‘he rendered it infamous.’ A soldier’s
first step on the ladder of promotion would be to become the
head man of his mess, or an orderly; then he would become
the centurion’s second-in-command, then a centurion. His
only route to officer status was to move up the centuriate to
the first cohort. Then he would be made a knight and would
retire, as it were, with directorships. Centurions literally
directed the traffic of the Empire; an indication of the
busyness of Antinous’ home town Bithynion (now Boli in
north—west Turkey and buried under the main road to
Ankara) was that it needed two centurions to control the
traffic. Retired centurions were in demand for decorative
positions (today members of the Royal Corps of Commission-
aires tend to be retired company sergeant-majors) or to be in
charge of security in a large household. The Roman army
trained some soldiers as questionarii — torturers — someone had
to do it.
A centurion in full rig, with a crest on his helmet, greaves
on his shins, his scale armour clanking with medallions from
campaigns all over the known world, and carrying in‘ his
right hand the vine rod of authority with a nasty little switch
at the end, was, for most people, the visible symbol of Roman
power and, as we know from the New Testament, the
nearest to them. An officer and gentleman would never pass
through the rank of centurion, and indeed the distinction
between him and the other ranks has been emulated in all
modern armies except the Israeli, which functions more like
that of one of the early states of Greece. Under the Republic,
twenty-four young men were elected annually by the Comitia
(the Assembly of the Plebs) to serve in the legions of the
consuls, also elected, so the link between the army and
politics was strong. Too strong thought Augustus, so he
added to each legion 120 horses for the young gentlemen to
ride — not very effectively because they had no saddles or
stirrups - and allocated six tribunes to each legion to serve
as aides-de-camp rather than as commanders. A well-
connected young officer — and only exceptional men like
Marius got anywhere if they were not - would be taken up by
the general, perhaps an old boyfriend of his aunt, and mess
with him and then be appointed colonel of a regiment of
auxiliaries. These were the third prong in the Roman
military system — the Praetorian Guard and the legions being
the first two — and were equal in number, but not prestige, to
the legions.
Auxiliaries were what we might call ‘colonial’ troops,
recruited in the provinces, sent elsewhere,‘ less well paid,
longer serving, but ending up with citizenship and a vote for
themselves and their family, a more generous dispensation
than that afforded to, say, the Gurkhas, who fought for the
British in two world wars. (In 1991 when so many English
and Scottish regiments were reduced or abolished it was
suggested that the Foreign Office compensate these fierce
little fellows, who had had to be restrained from presenting
their British commanding officers with the genitalia of their
enemies in the trenches of the Somme).
Mobility within the Empire was one of its greatest achievements.
The Roman roads were so good that harald was able to march from
Yorkshire to Hastings in 3 days.
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