Legion (Roman)

“ The Roman armies consisted of vast bodies of men which, when not in actual service, were established in permanent encampments in various parts of the empire, wherever it was deemed necessary that troops should be stationed. These great bodies of troops were the celebrated Roman legions, and they were renowned throughout the world for their discipline, their admirable organization, the celerity of their movements, and for the indomitable courage and energy of the men. Each legion constituted, in fact, a separate and independent community. ”

“ The constitution of the legion, too, was especially adapted to enhance the self-reliance of well-drilled troops. Every Roman legion was a small army in itself, containing its proportion of infantry, cavalry, engines of war, and means for conveyance of baggage. A legion finding itself never so unexpectedly detached from the main body, was at no loss for those necessaries without which an army melts away like snow in the sunshine, and was capable of independent action, in any country and under any circumstances. Each man too had perfect confidence in himself and his comrades ”

“ V. THE ARMY.—The Roman army was originally called Legio; and this name, which is coeval with the foundation of Rome, continued down to the latest times. The Legion was therefore not equivalent to what we call a regiment, inasmuch as it contained troops of all arms, infantry, cavalry, and, when military engines were extensively employed, artillery also. The number of soldiers who, at different periods, were contained in a legion, does not appear to have been absolutely fixed, but to have varied within moderate limits. Under Romulus the legion contained 3000 foot-soldiers. ”

“ Led on thus by the tenth legion, the whole army mutinied. They broke up the camp where they had been stationed at some distance beyond the walls of Rome, and marched toward the city. Soldiers in a mutiny, even though headed by their subaltern officers, are very little under command; and these Roman troops, feeling released from their usual restraints, committed various excesses on the way, terrifying the inhabitants and spreading universal alarm. ”

“ After this he was liable to be called out to fight. A certain number of men were chosen from each tribe by the tribune. It was divided into centuries, each led by a centurion; and the whole body together was called a legion, from lego, to choose. In later times the proper number for a legion was 6000 men. Each legion had a standard, a bar across the top of the spear, with the letters on it S P Q R—Senatus, Populus Que Romanus—meaning the Roman Senate and People, a purple flag below and a figure above, such as an eagle, or the wolf and twins, or some emblem dear to the Romans. ”

“ They have mortgaged their credit to its utmost extent to enable them to keep up appearances, and they dread some catastrophe which will interfere with our search, though the only authority we have for the existence of the Roman legion's loot is a scrap of scarcely decipherable writing, which, though genuine enough, may be nothing better than a madman's dream. ”

“ It must be observed that a regular consular army no longer consisted of Roman legions only, but, as Italy became gradually subjugated, the various states under the dominion of Rome were bound to furnish a contingent, and the number of allies usually exceeded that of the citizens. They were, however, kept perfectly distinct, both in the camp and in the battle-field.
The men belonging to each legion were separated into four divisions. 1. 1000 of the youngest and poorest were set apart to form the Velites, the light-armed troops or skirmishers of the legion. ”

“ Three new legions (i., ii., and iii. Parthica) were instituted by Septimius Severus. Each legion had a special name. A list of the legions (thirty in number) in the time of Marcus Aurelius will be found in Marquardt, Röm Alterthumer, iii. ”

“ A legion was a brigade of about 6000 infantry, with 120 horsemen attached to it. It was recruited from any convenient part of the empire, but only from men already enjoying the rights of Roman citizens, or else from those other provincials who were considered sufficiently homogeneous with the Roman civilisation to stand shoulder to shoulder with such citizens. In being permitted to serve on these terms a man regularly becomes ipso facto a citizen. ”

“ Now as for the field legions, each consisted half of Latins and half of Romans, there being in each maniple one century of Roman and one of Latins. There were at that time four legions, and as a legion, including the reserve troops, contained three thousand men, the total is twelve thousand; now the account which mentions twenty-four thousand men must have presumed that there were four field legions and four irregular civic ones. ”

“ The twentieth legion, it is well known, was one of the four which came into Britain in the reign of Claudius, and contributed to its subjugation: the vexillation of this legion was in the army of Suetonius Paulinus when he made that victorious stand in a fortified pass, with a forest in his rear, against the insurgent Britons. The position is sketched by Tacitus, and antiquaries well know that on the high ground above Battle Bridge there are vestiges of Roman works, and that the tract of land to the north was formerly a forest. ”

“ The Roman legion, whether it was composed of four thousand men, as in the early ages of the republic or six thousand, as in the time of Augustus, of was divided into ten cohorts, and each cohort was composed of Hastati, Principes, Triarii, and Velites. The soldiers of the first line, called Hastati, consisted of youths in the bloom of manhood, and were distributed into fifteen companies or maniples. Each company contained sixty privates, two centurions, and a standard-bearer. ”

“ So, being encouraged by the opinions of braver men, he ordered two legions, known as the Jovian and the Victorian, to advance in front to storm the rebel camp.
14. And when they approached, Procopius, who had returned from Nicæa, to which city he had lately gone with the legion of Divitenses and a promiscuous body of deserters, which he had collected in a few days, hastened to Mygdus on the Sangarius. ”

“ On the appointed day, arriving first, he posted his allied infantry with the king's auxiliaries on the wings, the sixth legion in the centre, with which he had united three thousand men of the third, brought up in the night from another camp, with one eagle, so as to look like a single legion. Tiridates towards evening showed himself at some distance whence he could be seen rather than heard. And so the Roman general, without any conference, ordered his troops to retire to their respective camps. ”

“ Our notice of the Roman legion would be incomplete without some description of the camp in which the soldier virtually lived. A Roman army never halted for a single night without forming a regular intrenchment capable of holding all the fighting men, the beasts of burden, and the baggage. ”

“ Marcus Aurelius received this deliverance with deep gratitude. In his heart he connected it with the prayer of the Christians, and caused their persecutions to cease. An ancient historian mentions that the soldiers who had thus supplicated for relief, received the name of the "thundering legion," and were permitted to have a thunderbolt graven on their shields, as a memorial of the tempest that had discomfited their enemies, and saved the Roman forces, when ready to perish. ”

“ The great attention of the ancients to this particular was wonderful, and the highest point of perfection in the Roman legion was, that when it made detachments, though ever so small, they carried with them a just proportion of the component parts of its excellent system—artificers of all denominations. Modern armies differ from those of the ancients scarcely in nothing but the arms they use ”

“ In like manner they ceased to form part of the legion, and from this time forward we find the legions and the cavalry spoken of as completely distinct from each other. After the termination of the Social War, when most of the inhabitants of Italy became Roman citizens, the ancient distinction between the Legiones and the Socii disappeared, and all who had served as Socii became incorporated with the legiones. An army during the last years of the republic and under the earlier emperors consisted of Romanae Legiones et Auxilia s. ”

“ "Is that the Three-and-Twentieth, Strabo mine,
Marching below, and we still gulping wine?"
From the sad magic of his fragrant cup
The red-faced old centurion started up,
Cursed, battered on the table. "No," he said,
"Not that! The Three-and-Twentieth Legion's
dead,
Dead in the first year of this damned campaign—
The Legion's dead, dead, and won't rise again.
Pity? Rome pities her brave lads that die,
But we need pity also, you and I,
Whom Gallic spear and Belgian arrow miss,
Who live to see the Legion come to this,
Unsoldierlike, slovenly, bent on loot,
Grumblers, diseased, unskilled to thrust or shoot. ”

“ Grumblers, diseased, unskilled to thrust or shoot.
O, brown cheek, muscled shoulder, sturdy
thigh!
Where are they now? God! watch it struggle
by,
The sullen pack of ragged ugly swine.
Is that the Legion, Gracchus? Quick, the
wine!"
"Strabo," said Gracchus, "you are strange tonight.
The Legion is the Legion; it's all right.
If these new men are slovenly, in your thinking,
God damn it! you'll not better them by drinking.
They all try, Strabo; trust their hearts and hands. ”

“ Great and incredible are the services done by this legion to the republic. This was the first legion to tear itself from the piratical band of Antonius; this was the legion which encamped at Alba; this was the legion that went over to Caesar; and it was in imitation of the conduct of this legion that the fourth legion has earned almost equal glory for its virtue. The fourth is victorious without having lost a man; some of the martial legion fell in the very moment of victory. Oh happy death, which, due to nature, has been paid in the cause of one's country! ”

“ In many a venturous assault, in many a hand-to-hand encounter, fought out with enemies as fierce and almost as skilful as themselves, they had earned their ominous title; and the very legionaries, though they sneered at their discipline, and denied their efficiency in long-protracted warfare, could not but admit that to head a column of attack, to run a battering-ram under the very ramparts of a citadel, to dash in with a mad cheer over the shattered ruins of a breach, or to carry out any other hot and desperate service, there were no soldiers in the army like the Legion of the Lost. ”

“ It burst over the heads of the astonished people like heaven's thunder, the wild prolonged war-flourish of the legions. From the Tarpeian rock, and the guarded Capitol; from the rampired Janiculum; from the fortress, beyond the Island bridge; from the towered steeps of the Quirinal, broke simultaneously the well known Roman war note!
Upsprang, along the turreted wall of the Janiculum, with crested casques, and burnished brazen corslets, and the tremendous javelins of the cohorts, a long line of Metellus' legionaries. ”

“ It is always so with the Legion, and that is what makes the Legion so terrible in battle—They are not so much fighting with the enemy, monsieur, they are bayoneting the Past, and what the Past has done to them. ”

“ As by studying a hive one feels the mysterious governing spirit, so he felt the spirit of the Legion in its music, its restlessness, its longings, its passions, and its ambitions, uttered and cried to heaven in prayers and curses. As individuals the men were dumb, guarding their secrets, striving to forget ”

“ The martial pride of the legions, whose victorious camps had so often been the scene of rebellion, was nourished by the memory of their past exploits, and the consciousness of their actual strength. As long as they maintained their ancient establishment of six thousand men, they subsisted, under the reign of Diocletian, each of them singly, a visible and important object in the military history of the Roman empire. ”

“ And as the valour of the legions has shown itself worthy of their most illustrious generals, the senate will with great eagerness, now that the republic is recovered, bestow on our legions and armies all the rewards which it formerly promised them. And as the martial legion was the first to engage with the enemy, and fought in such a manner against superior numbers as to slay many and take some prisoners; and as they shed their blood for their country without any shrinking ”

“ Blame the man who does wrong if you will, but blame more the foolish people who, fancying that rapine and pillage can never stalk abroad in their own happy land, let loose the dogs of war upon their neighbours. The Carthaginian maids and matrons acclaimed their returning heroes; the day came when the Roman legionaries taught those very maids and matrons the real meaning of war. ”

“ They sought refuge behind the front ranks of the legions, who alone amidst the general panic preserved their coolness and presence of mind. Had it been a straightforward fight, man to man, they would to all appearance have been quite a match for their foes, so much had their success, a few days previously, restored their courage. But the sudden appearance of the concealed troops and their combined attack on both flanks and on the rear of the Roman legions created such confusion and alarm that not a man had any spirit left to fight or any hope of escaping by flight. ”

“ Had the Legionary's right hand descended, the recruit's left hand would have risen with promptitude and force.
"If that is too big, let the sun boil thy brains and bloat thy skull till it fits, and if it be too small, sleep in it," he remarked sourly, and added that thrice-accursed "blues" were creatures of the kind that ate their young, encumbered the earth, polluted the air, loved to faire Suisse, [#] and troubled Soldiers of the Legion who might otherwise have been in the Canteen, or at Carmelita's--instead of being the valets of sons of frogs, nameless excrescences....
[#] To drink alone ”