Questions on the Legions at Teutoburg Wald

[Crispvs]

Perhaps also the fact that when Augustus acceeded to the name 'Caesar' he was an impetuous 18 year old. By the time of the battle of Actium he was a more mature 31. By the time of the clades Variana he was an elderly man of 70. Now, whilst there is a good deal of variation in this, in my experience, 70 year olds tend to be a lot less passionate than 18 year olds, although they are still perfectly capable of complaining when things don't go their way ("Varus, give me back my legions!"). Perhaps by the time he reached 70 (which was extremely old in Roman terms) he had lost some of the drive that had led him to create the principate, the empire and the resultant Pax Augusta and was more concerned with maintaining what he created during his heyday than creating things anew. Thus he could complain about the loss of his legions but he might not have the drive to do anything about it. Add to that the comments above about retaining the pax Augusta and I don't think we need to go much further in looking for answers to the question of why the numbers XVII, XVIII and XVIIII were never used again, particularly as things became so dependent on the will of the Princeps. Remember Pliny the Younger's correspondence with Trajan - Pliny, despite being the provincial governor, seems to have needed Trajan's permission in order to carry out any activity. It would make a lot of sense for an emperor to prohibit anyone other than himself from raising armies, so if the emperor did not command it, presumably no new legions could be raised. By the time new legions did start being raised again the sequence of numbering no longer seems to have applied (much like the situation today in both the British and American armies) and new legions were simply numbered from 1 onwards.<br>
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Crispvs <p></p><i></i>