• Roman Army Structure
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[video=youtube;wCBNxJYvNsY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCBNxJYvNsY[/video]
25 years is a hell of a long time to serve in the military. Even more so back then I'd imagine.
[QUOTE=OvB;50570528]25 years is a hell of a long time to serve in the military. Even more so back then I'd imagine.[/QUOTE] That was probably the point. Attract foreign volunteers by promising them a plot of land, pension and citizenship but make it ridiculously hard to acquire. Probably the only auxiliaries that lasted the 25 years were the commanders.
There's historical evidence as well that a lot of auxiliaries who served the 25 years never got to see the plot of land or pension. That sucks kinda hard.
[QUOTE=OvB;50570528]25 years is a hell of a long time to serve in the military. Even more so back then I'd imagine.[/QUOTE] "Service guarantee's citizen ship." It's a damned good incentive if you're a young man, being told if you spend your young life fighting for the Empire you'll be granted land and money for you, your children,your children's children,so forth.
I thought it was going to be this video. [video=youtube;YKBWAYZOXqA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKBWAYZOXqA[/video] Though both are good, the one in the OP is a nice little overview of the entire Roman army, while this is specifically about Legions.
[QUOTE=OvB;50570528]25 years is a hell of a long time to serve in the military. Even more so back then I'd imagine.[/QUOTE] The citizenship wasn't for you, it was for your children. If this seems brutal, consider this was a time period where the next best thing was Greece, which had a style of citizenship where if you were an Athenian with a Spartan parent, you were neither an Athenian or Spartan citizen. Forever. 25 years for guaranteed citizenship for you and your line was incredible, and many people would jump at that. Also, getting three square meals a day traveling the world as a legionary beat living in Roman squalor or wasting away on a Latifundia.
Even before the Marian reforms, soldiers didn't have to provide for their equipment. They did purchase it, yes, but equipment was purchased in bulk by commanders iirc.
[QUOTE=OvB;50570528]25 years is a hell of a long time to serve in the military. Even more so back then I'd imagine.[/QUOTE] I wonder what cop movies were like back then. "It's my 24th year so let's make this quick"
the creator of the youtube video just ripped the video off of vimeo with no credit. here's the original video: [video=vimeo;31781946]https://vimeo.com/31781946[/video] that's a lot of men
[QUOTE=Canuhearme?;50570834]The citizenship wasn't for you, it was for your children. If this seems brutal, consider this was a time period where the next best thing was Greece, which had a style of citizenship where if you were an Athenian with a Spartan parent, you were neither an Athenian or Spartan citizen. Forever. 25 years for guaranteed citizenship for you and your line was incredible, and many people would jump at that. Also, getting three square meals a day traveling the world as a legionary beat living in Roman squalor or wasting away on a Latifundia.[/QUOTE] How many battles would a Roman Auxiliary see in general during that 25 year tenure? I wonder what the turnover rate was for new soldiers. If it was anything like games of Rome: Total War.... I don't think anyone saw 25 years.
[QUOTE=OvB;50571065]How many battles would a Roman Auxiliary see in general during that 25 year tenure? I wonder what the turnover rate was for new soldiers. If it was anything like games of Rome: Total War.... I don't think anyone saw 25 years.[/QUOTE] Depends on the time period and where you were stationed, but generally the average Roman Auxiliary didn't really see much in the way of combat. Pax Romana was absolutely a thing, and for the most part the Roman Empire contented itself to a policy of fluffing their borders with client-states and puppet rulers than actively station legions around them. The typical Legionary was expected to keep the peace and patrol the roads - [I]or build[/I] the roads, if they weren't there. [sp]Protip: Don't get stationed in Judea.[/sp]
[QUOTE=Canuhearme?;50571143][sp]Protip: Don't get stationed in Judea.[/sp][/QUOTE]what happened in Judea? insurgents?
[QUOTE=Joazzz;50571237]what happened in Judea? insurgents?[/QUOTE] Jewish Zealots would straight up knife Legionaries at night. Upon which the Romans would crucify whole families.
[QUOTE=Joazzz;50571237]what happened in Judea? insurgents?[/QUOTE] Insurgents would be an understatement; the Jews rebelled so hard against Roman rule that the Empire had to call in forces from as far as Gaul or Iberia to handle the revolts. We're talking full-on scorched earth the likes of which wasn't seen since the Punic Wars, a complete destruction of the Jewish state so total they changed the province name from "Judea" to "Syria Palaestina." If you ever wanted to know where the Jewish diaspora of Europe came from, it started here. [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish–Roman_wars"]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish–Roman_wars [/URL]
[QUOTE=Canuhearme?;50571391]Insurgents would be an understatement; the Jews rebelled so hard against Roman rule that the Empire had to call in forces from as far as Gaul or Iberia to handle the revolts. We're talking full-on scorched earth the likes of which wasn't seen since the Punic Wars, a complete destruction of the Jewish state so total they changed the province name from "Judea" to "Syria Palaestina." If you ever wanted to know where the Jewish diaspora of Europe came from, it started here. [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish–Roman_wars"]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish–Roman_wars [/URL][/QUOTE] Damn, I never knew about this. Thanks for posting this.
Reminds me that there are whole sections of history which I know nothing about.
[QUOTE=Canuhearme?;50571391]Insurgents would be an understatement; the Jews rebelled so hard against Roman rule that the Empire had to call in forces from as far as Gaul or Iberia to handle the revolts. We're talking full-on scorched earth the likes of which wasn't seen since the Punic Wars, a complete destruction of the Jewish state so total they changed the province name from "Judea" to "Syria Palaestina." If you ever wanted to know where the Jewish diaspora of Europe came from, it started here. [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish–Roman_wars"]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish–Roman_wars [/URL][/QUOTE] Is this part of the reason why Christians (who received a fair amount of influence from the Romans after they converted) persecuted the Jews until recently?
[QUOTE=Jamsponge;50573044]Is this part of the reason why Christians (who received a fair amount of influence from the Romans after they converted) persecuted the Jews until recently?[/QUOTE] The European hatred of the Jew is a very long and very complicated story. The Jewish-Roman Wars created the diaspora and a cultural antipathy towards the Jews in Greco-Roman society (Jewish people were often associated with brutishness and violence) due in large part to the Wars and their incompatible views on religion, but to know why this incompatibility formed it's important to know how Roman religion functioned. The Romans are often compared to the Greeks in worship, and people like to consider the Roman Jupiter to be analogous to Zeus. There is truth to this, but not enough to say it's accurate. The Romans viewed the Gods as concepts more than people, ideals to live by and venerate. Zeus was an asshole king that raped what he wished and bolted the rest, Jupiter was a revered father and symbol of law. This worship of concepts and beliefs is what allowed the Romans to integrate so many other religions into their fold; Thor was Mars, Britannia became Minerva. For a while, it worked. Except for Judaism. Their belief in a fatherly and law-giving being seemed like a good fit for Jupiter, but when the Romans tried to integrate this belief into Judea, the people reacted [I][B]harshly.[/B][/I] Monotheism was incompatible with Polytheism, and when you threw in the theocratic machinations of the Jewish priests, you were left with a hotbed of religious violence that literally birthed the word "Zealot." The Christians obviously inherited some of this cultural distrust towards the Jew, but what really revved up the antisemitism was the race for converts within the Empire once Christianity took hold. Pagans were easy enough to convert, as were those who worshiped mystery cults like Sol Invictus or Mithras (mystery cults are another fascinating aspect of Roman culture that is unfortunately beyond the scope of this post). Jews living in the Empire, however, stuck to their guns with the dogged resilience that helped them through the Wars. The Jewish diaspora yet again became a minority, a sort of redheaded stepchild among the now Christian population that refused to convert, and because they were [I]technically[/I] valid in the Bible they simply couldn't be as violently converted or annihilated as the pagans (if you think the Christians weren't violent once they came into power, [I]oh boy[/I] do I have some bad news for you.) The rest is history. Jews became the Other, a race associated with thuggery and strangeness that set them apart from the rest of the Christian population. Much like the early Christian, they became a scapegoat, an excuse for poor rulership or missing children. Worse, the gospel of John often portrays the Jew as a being shrouded in darkness or in support with the devil, and when the average peasant considered the Jew lived in their own communities, speaking in strange languages and worshiping in strange temples, was it really such a stretch to say they weren't? Furthermore, the Jewish practice of Usury was considered a sin in Catholicism, and while lending was practiced by merchants and kings alike, anyone who's played Crusader Kings 2 would know those merchants and kings now had an excuse to not only refuse repayment, but expel the Jewish population under the pretenses of "removing the Other" and thus "wipe their debt clean."
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