Rights of the Roman soldier

[D B Campbell]

But there are lots of injuries that would handicap a man, but not enough to disqualify him as a fighter. A badly healed fracture, stiff joint, missing finger, eye, teeth . . . I doubt the legions would have readily granted a missio causaria on such grounds, especially not in times of manpower shortage.

It's interesting that the diploma (quoted above) specifies that the men who were invalided out had been "made useless/ineffective in war". I wonder what their definition of "useless" was?

(I imagine it would be folks who could no longer bear arms, rather than those who were just feeling a little unwell. :wink: )