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.
{14}