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Men-at-Arms
O
SPREY
PUBLISHING
Roman Centurions
31 BC–AD 500
The Classical and Late Empire
Raffaele D’Amato • Illustrated by Giuseppe Rava
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com
Men-at-Arms • 479
Roman Centurions
31 BC–AD 500
The Classical and Late Empire
Raffaele D’Amato
Series editor
Mar tin Windrow
•
Illustr ated by Giuseppe Rava
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com
ROMAN CENTURIONS 31 BC–AD 500
THE CLASSICAL AND LATE EMPIRE
INTRODUCTION
For the safety of the Emperor, the vow that I,
Lucius Maximus Gaetulicus, son of Lucius,
of the tribe Voltinia, from Vienna, made
as a new recruit in Legion XX Valeria Victrix
– to Imperial Victory, All-Divine and Most Reverend –
I have now fulfilled as chief centurion of
Legion I Italica, in the consulship of Marullus
and Aelianus, after 57 years of service
(Inscription of AD 184 from Novae in
Lower Moesia – modern Bulgaria)
A fighting centurion of Legio II
Augusta, from the Arc d’Orange
in southern France, 29 BC or
AD 21; see Plate A2 for
reconstruction.
(in
situ;
author’s photo)
I wanted to hold slaughtered Dacians. I held them.
I wanted to sit on a chair of peace. I sat on it.
I wanted to take part in famous triumphs. It was done.
I wanted the full benefits of a chief centurion. I have had them.
I wanted to see naked nymphs. I saw them.
(Inscription from Africa by anonymous veteran of
Trajan’s Dacian Wars – AE, 1928, 27)
W
hen an imperial Roman soldier signed his
contract for 25 years of military service, his
greatest ambition was to become a centurion
– the most experienced, reliable and admired class of
officers in the Roman military machine. The senior
officers who commanded and staffed Roman
formations were essentially non-specialists, with little or
no formal training, so the army relied upon the
centurions for the crucial level of command between
the military tribunes and the common soldiers.
In modern terms, we might characterize the legionary
centurionate as a large and stratified organization of
‘warrant officers’, holding all appointments between
platoon and battalion commands. It was these
professional fighting men – sometimes with as much as
20 years’ experience under their belt – who maintained
day-to-day training, discipline and organization, and
who provided personal tactical leadership in battle.
Many of these elite combat officers were destined
to rise to more senior posts in the army, and later in
the civilian administration, and in the process they
transformed the social status and wealth of their
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families. The serving and former senior centurions of the legions were a
group enjoying considerable influence both within and beyond the
armies, and on occasions members of this class were instrumental in
setting up and casting down Emperors of Rome.
In this necessarily short work, following my Men-at-Arms 470 on
centurions of the pre-Augustan periods, I have assembled only a
selection of the many references to centurions left to us by ancient
writers; my aim is to give a general idea of their place in military and civil
society, of their military careers, and of their equipment. Details of their
regular duties and tactical leadership are not repeated here from
MAA 470, in order to leave space for other material. For the same reason
I have not touched here upon the centurions of the Imperial Fleets – for
which see my MAA 451,
Imperial Roman Naval Forces 31 BC–AD 500
– and
only very briefly on the Late Roman officer rank of
centenarius.
ORGANIZATION
Bronze
gorgoneion
or Medusa
mask, 1st century AD, as visibly
applied to the breast of the
ringmail shirt worn by the
centurion on the Arc d’Orange –
see page 3. Originally the eyes
and mouth were painted in white
and red, giving it an even more
striking appearance – it should
be remembered that in Classical
mythology, those who faced the
gorgon’s stare were turned to
stone. (Museo Archeologico
Nazionale, Este; author’s photo,
courtesy of the museum)
T H E E A R LY P R I N C I PAT E
Legionary centurions
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In the early 1st century AD a single legion was usually composed of
60
centuriae,
with a complement of about 5,240 men. Three or more
centuriae
(six, according to Pseudo-Hyg.,
De Mun. Castr.
I, 7, 1, 30) were
formed into a
cohors,
a unit of about 240–500 men (Josephus,
BJ,
15, 6;
Pseudo-Hyg.,
De Mun. Castr.
I, 2); the legion was thus divided into ten
cohorts. The
centuria
was the basic sub-unit, usually of 80
milites gregarii,
under the
centurio
(Josephus,
BJ,
I, 4,3;
hekatontarchês
in the eastern part
of the empire,
BJ,
VI, 1, 8). However, Martial specifically mentions a
centurion who led 100 men (Ep., X, 26). Each
centuria
was further divided
into ten
contubernia
– tent and messing squads.
The precedence of units and sub-units within the legion reflected the
order of march or advance. The First Cohort,
cohors prima,
had twice the number of men (Pseudo-Hyg.,
De
Mun. Castr.
III), so it was usually 800–1,000
strong; during the 1st century AD it
consisted of five, not six, double-sized
centuriae,
commanded
by
centurions termed collectively as
primi ordines
(thus giving the
legion a total of 59 rather than
60 centurions). Within all
cohorts the centurions’ titles
of appointment still reflected
the three old troop-types of
the Consular legion – the
hastati, principi
and
pili.
The
Second to Tenth Cohorts each
had six centurions, titled, from
junior to senior, as the
hastatus
posterior, hastatus prior, princeps posterior,
princeps prior, pilus posterior,
and
pilus prior.
The number of the cohort prefixed each of
these titles; e.g., the
nonus hastatus posterior
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commanded the second of
the two
centuriae
of
hastati
–
and was thus the most
junior centurion – within
the Ninth Cohort.
Within the
primi ordines
the ascending order of
superiority was
hastatus
posterior, princeps posterior,
hastatus, princeps,
and
primus
pilus.
These First Cohort
centurions outranked all
centurions of the other
cohorts. The
primus pilus
(‘first javelin’) was the
senior centurion in the
whole legion (Mart.,
Ep.,
I,
31; 93). He commanded the senior (front, or right-hand)
centuria
within
the First Cohort, and thus that whole cohort. Only eight officers in a fully-
officered legion outranked the
primus pilus:
the legate (legatus
legionis)
commanding the legion; his second-in-command, the senior tribune
(tribunus
laticlavus);
the camp prefect (praefectus
castrorum);
and the five
other tribunes (tribuni
angusticlavii),
who apparently served as staff
officers to the legate.
The term
centuriones ordinarii
(SHA,
Firm.
XIV, 2) was applied to
centurions actually in command of centuries, as opposed to those
detailed for detached service – e.g. on the staff of a governor, in the
Praetorian Guard, or commanding independent, non-legionary units.
Each centurion, however senior, had his own allocated
centuria;
this
was a self-contained sub-unit, and was identified by the centurion’s
name. The tents of the ten
contubernia
making up a century were
grouped together in the marching camp, and in permanent posts
each
centuria
had its own accommodation in a barrack block – usually
ten double rooms, with the century office and the centurion’s living
quarters at the end. Writing of Vespasian’s army, Josephus (BJ, III, 5,
3) stated that ‘their times also for sleeping and watching and rising
are notified beforehand by the sound of trumpets, nor is any thing
done without such a signal; and in the morning the soldiers go every
one to their centurions, and these centurions to their tribunes, to
salute them’.
The term
principales
indicated all men ranking between the common
milites gregarii
and the centurions – roughly, what we would call ‘non-
commissioned officers’. Within each
centuria
they comprised the
signifer
(standard-bearer – in the century of the
primus pilus,
the
aquilifer
or eagle-
bearer); the
optio
(the centurion’s second-in-command); the
cornicen
and
bucinator
(hornist and trumpeter); and the
tesserarius
(administrative
assistant – what we might call the ‘orderly room clerk’).
Detached appointments: the
auxilia
A centurion’s sword of Mainz
type, and decorated greaves,
from a lost monument in
Avignon dating from the
1st century BC or 1st century
AD. (Musée Calvet, Avignon;
author’s photo, courtesy of
the museum)
The non-citizen
auxilia
or auxiliary units made up approximately half of
the Roman army, and were organized in infantry or mixed
cohortes
and
cavalry
alae.
These separate units of
c.
500 or
c.
1,000 men were usually
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