CHAPTER II

THE CAMPS OF THE LEGIONS

It never was any part of the Empire's plan to drive out the native people from lands that it subdued. What it wanted of these people was that they should stay where they were and follow their own customs and provide the necessities and the luxuries of life for their conquerors. The Romans were what we should call a very practical nation. Roman laws, of course, had to prevail in the lands so conquered, but otherwise it does not seem that there was much upsetting of the national habits of the people. But the influence of the conquerors, their way of thought, their discipline and so on, of course worked among the conquered, and the natives of the provinces so became Romanised, as it is called.

In order to understand and to follow the course of this greatest of all stories we ought to try to form a picture in our minds of the world at this time, say from A.D. 100 to 200.

There is the Roman Empire; and that is all the world that seemed to matter to those who were the great actors in the story at that time. We have to regard that Empire as shut in, walled off. The sea, from the mouth of the Rhine to the coast of Africa, is the boundary north and west. There is a strip of Empire in Africa reaching to Egypt, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara desert, and all that strip is protected by a line of forts against incursions {8} from any Ethiopians from the desert. There is Egypt itself. Then there is so much of Asia Minor as from time to time was held as Roman. It included Syria, at all events, but the boundary here was more often changed perhaps than elsewhere, though it did not in many parts remain quite fixed. So we come up to the Black Sea, and to the mouth of the Danube. The Danube, during most of the time that the Empire lasted, formed a boundary line, though the province of Dacia was for a while held beyond it. And we know that there were palisades--a wooden wall--drawn along from the Danube to the Rhine.

That completes the enclosure, with Britain lying apart like a kind of crumb, crumbled off the big loaf.

[Sidenote: Roman "citizens"]

Thus there is this great Empire, fenced within walls and other limits, such as the limits that the sea makes; and at certain places outside the wall there are people looking over--outsiders, whom the Romans called "barbarians," men who said "bar bar," that is to say, who were unintelligible, when they tried to talk. The Brythons themselves were barbarians, of course, to the Romans. So were the Gauls, whom Julius Cæsar conquered in the land that is now France. So were the Iberians, who were the people that the Romans found in Spain. Thus there were many barbarians within the boundaries, as well as outside. But as time went on these natives of the different regions within the Empire became "Romanised." Roman modes of law and of the governing of cities made their way all over the Empire. What we should call "municipal life," that is to say the management of towns by "municipal" authorities, like our mayors and councillors, came into fashion. The natives became more like their Roman conquerors in their thoughts and in their ways of life. Natives and Romans made marriages, and the children of these marriages hardly would know what to call themselves--whether {9} Romans or Gauls. In the early days of Rome, when it was a Republic, the privileges of a Roman citizen were very important. The "citizen" alone had the right to a vote for the election of the officials by whom he and the whole Republic and its dependencies were to be governed. But this right of voting was given more and more freely as the years went on and as other parts of the Empire increased in importance. To all the free men--all who were not slaves--of certain states that had loyally helped Rome when she was hard pressed by her enemies, the right was given first; then to all Italian free men; and soon it was extended widely through the Empire. We notice how St. Paul, at Cæsarea, claimed his right, as a free man of the Empire, to make appeal to the Emperor himself at Rome, and how that right could not be disallowed.

Now one of the rights that "citizenship" had carried with it in the early days was the right, and the duty, of being called up for military service in defence of the Empire and to fight its foes. The "legion" about which we hear so much in this great story, first came into existence in this way. It was a collection (the word "legion" itself is a form of the last two syllables of col-"lection") of the citizens to fight for their city.

As the Republic grew and began to take possession of more and more lands far away from its centre, there was need of armies of quite a different kind from this. The citizens of the first legion went on military service, when called upon; but they looked forward to going back to their farms, or whatever their business was, as soon as the fighting was over. The increasing power of the Republic and the increase of the territory and peoples over which it ruled, made it necessary that the government at Rome should have an army, or several armies, ready to take the field when required. {10} And thus a Roman "standing army," as we should call it, came into existence; its soldiers were men who had no other business than soldiery; the military life was their profession, by which they earned their livelihood.

But the name of legion was still used, although it was used for something very different from that to which the name had been given at first. It grew to be used for what we might call "a division," of an army. The number of soldiers in a legion differed slightly from time to time, but for the most part it was about 6,000, nearly all foot-soldiers. They were heavily armed, with heavy throwing spears, short, double-edged swords and long thrusting spears. Their general way of battle was to discharge the throwing spears in a volley and then to charge in and destroy the enemy, already sorely vexed by the heavy javelins, with the short swords.

The legions, as we have seen already, might be moved hither and thither to any point of the great Empire where their services were needed. While the Empire was being created, and the nations were being subdued, there was frequent occasion for this movement of large bodies of troops; but you must realise that we have now come to a point in the story at which the Empire--especially under the wise Emperor Hadrian--is concerned more with making good the conquests it has already won, than in adding to them. The boundaries, the limits, have been set, as we have just been tracing them--or somewhat like that. The Romans are within the boundaries; the barbarians are without. And wherever the barbarians are there is need of one or other of the legions, acting as a kind of police, to see that no one breaks through the wall.

The result of that is that the legions are not required to move about so much as they were when the Empire {11} was being won. Now that it is won, they are set here and there, like watch dogs, along the boundaries. The positions which they occupy become permanent camps. The legionaries are allowed to marry and to live outside the actual confines of the camp.

[Sidenote: The Legions in Britain]

I think this then may give us some general idea of the picture that we should carry in our minds of the Roman Empire--which is almost as much as to say, of the world--at this point in the story, about A.D. 200. There are in all twenty-five legions. In Britain itself there were three, one at Chester, one at York, one at Caerleon. Now the number of troops in a legion was commonly, as we have seen, 6,000, but twenty-five of these legions did not nearly represent the total army of the Roman Empire, because to each of the legions was attached at least an equal number of auxiliaries, light-armed troops. Thus the establishment of a legion in any district meant a huge increase of population, a very large castrum or camp, from which we get the names of such places as Man-chester, Dor-chester, and Chester itself--Chester being a modification of the Roman word castrum. Besides the auxiliaries, who were light-armed foot-soldiers, there were a few mounted troops attached to each legion, but the chief of the fighting was supposed to be done by the legionaries, or soldiers of the legions. Just as we saw that among the Greeks the hoplites, the heavy-armed soldiers of the phalanx, were considered to form the strength of the army, so it was with the heavy-armed legionaries of the Romans.

The tradition was still kept up, that the legionaries should be men who had the privileges of free citizens of Rome, while the auxiliaries were taken from a lower class of the people who had not these privileges. But we have seen that this privilege was given to more and more as time went on, so that Roman citizenship ceased to be as valuable as it once was, because it {12} had become more common. Recruits to the legions were taken from the natives of the conquered lands. Moreover, since the legionaries in these settled camps were allowed to marry, their sons were naturally disposed to become soldiers, like their fathers, when they grew up.

[Sidenote: Legions independent]

The effect of all this was to make the legions very closely attached to the places in which their permanent camps were pitched. The camps became home to them. They no longer looked to Rome as their home; and by degrees they ceased to look to Rome as the centre at which what we should call their Headquarter Staff resided. They became more and more independent of Rome. If an attack came, or was threatened, from the barbarians beyond the limits which they had to guard, they dealt with the threat or the attack. They were not obliged to send back to Rome for their instructions.

Realise then, for it is of much importance in the development of the great story, the increasing independence of the legions in their large camps, when once these camps had been established as permanent settlements. We left the story, at the end of the first volume, at a point where its threads had been gathered together in the great hand of the Roman Empire. This second volume is largely occupied with the disruption and pulling apart of those threads out of that hand; and the reason why the hand was obliged to relax its grasp and so allow the threads to be torn apart again is twofold. One part of the reason is this independence of the "far flung" legions, which became less and less attentive and obedient to orders from the centre at Rome. Another part of the reason is that the barbarians beyond the limits began knocking at the walls harder and harder and finally broke through.

What is so interesting to see in this story is not {13} only the events that happened, but also (and perhaps more interesting still) the explanation why they happened as they did. I have tried to make clear how it was that the armies of the Empire grew to be almost independent of any orders coming from the centre, and how that independence partly explained the break-up of the Empire.

I must now try to make clear to you why it was that the barbarians knocked as they did at the walls and finally broke through them and so completed the disruption of the power of Rome.

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