10-05-2014, 08:20 PM
The recruitment of slaves into army as soldiers (volones) is only known on one occasion during the Punic war, I think. There were other occasions of great peril and disruption (during the civil wars of the late republic, and the Marcomannic war) when slaves were freed and enlisted directly into the army.
Otherwise slaves would not have fought as soldiers - free status was a requisite of military service, and Trajan instructed his governor Pliny to execute any slave trying to enlist illegally.
There were slaves who served the soldiers - they were called calones - but they performed menial tasks: gathering firewood, cleaning, perhaps cooking. It was apparently quite normal for soldiers to have several slaves - the future St Martin of Tours was praised for only keeping one slave to attend him when he served in the Scholae. Josephus (I think) mentions that these slaves spent so long in a military environment that they could act as quite effective soldiers themselves if armed, but in practice this would have been a rare and desperate expedient.
There is, in any case, no possibility of slaves serving in the army of Constantine, unless they somehow managed to conceal their origins effectively enough to pass as freeborn.
Otherwise slaves would not have fought as soldiers - free status was a requisite of military service, and Trajan instructed his governor Pliny to execute any slave trying to enlist illegally.
There were slaves who served the soldiers - they were called calones - but they performed menial tasks: gathering firewood, cleaning, perhaps cooking. It was apparently quite normal for soldiers to have several slaves - the future St Martin of Tours was praised for only keeping one slave to attend him when he served in the Scholae. Josephus (I think) mentions that these slaves spent so long in a military environment that they could act as quite effective soldiers themselves if armed, but in practice this would have been a rare and desperate expedient.
There is, in any case, no possibility of slaves serving in the army of Constantine, unless they somehow managed to conceal their origins effectively enough to pass as freeborn.
Nathan Ross
