Couple of questions on recruiting practice

[Matthew Amt]

Ave, and welcome!

4.) Does anyone happen to have some new info regarding Romans having dog tags?

There have been discussions on this before, and as I recall there just isn't anything solid. Certainly there are not hundreds of surviving dog tags, as there would have to be if they had been standard issue.

5.) Same as 4.) concerning a special legionary / auxilliary tatoo. What do you think would it have looked like? May be SPQR or a number?

The only evidence for any kind of tattoo or brand is rather late, I believe, long after your era. I've seen it interpreted as the letter "M" on the hand, for "miles". There was likely some private tattooing among soldiers, though I just don't remember what kind of evidence there is for that at the time (people tend to mention Ice Man and Scythians, not the hardest of evidence for first century Romans!). NOT "SPQR", which was not a military thing by any means, but used for public monuments and official documents, that sort of thing. (It's safest to assume that everything in "Gladiator" is wrong...) Note that in descriptions of recruits or deserters, there is no mention of an army tattoo or brand, just things like "scar over right eye".

My conclusion is that there was no use of dog tags or permanent markings for soldiers in the first century BC/AD.

7.) The more or less legitimate children of the legionaries. a) How and b) where would they have spent their childhood and youth until entering the legions?

Playing and then working like any other kids at that time, living with their mothers and any other relatives of the household. Farming or doing whatever craft the family did. Probably a lot of the economy around an army fort was geared towards support of the military, either goods or services.

8.) Would they (the kids) likely been given latin names even if not recognized by their fathers?

Oh, I expect most of them were acknowledged by their fathers, it was the Roman government which did not consider them legitimate. Their parents could very well be considered married by local law and custom, it just couldn't be an official Roman marriage. Presumably they would not formally use proper Roman names until after their father's discharge, but I doubt many people cared what anyone called their kids under the circumstances! However, if the father refused to acknowledge his children, my guess is the mother would give them local names and not worry about the Roman custom. Probably safe to assume that Rome would not make them citizens if their father basically labelled them as illegitimate by refusing to accept them.

9.) Is there evidence that the Roman military took care of these kids?

Why should it? The whole point of forbidding soldiers to marry was to remove the problem of dependents. Sure, there might have been kids who grew up as unofficial "mascots", but officially they are not the army's problem.

11.) Once again on names: when a not-roman enlisted, was he given a completely new latin name or just his name latinised? Or both?

Generally he took the praenomen and nomen of the ruling emperor, with his personal name Latinized as a cognomen, as I understand it. Note that for the first part of your era, auxiliary forces were not necessarily regularized permanent units, but hired wholesale and short-term. So they wouldn't take Roman names nor get citizenship for serving. I'm not sure when the auxiliary forces were regularized to the form we generally think of, but I have heard that even serving in a regular permanent auxiliary unit was not necessarily a guarantee of citizenship upon discharge. Don't know when that practice became the rule.

That get you started? Vale,

Matthew