Centurion

[Nathan Ross]

When you say patronage I take it you are referring to loyalty to an emperor or higher up military official?

Patronage operated at every level of Roman society, but is largely invisible to us now. As Summerly says in his thesis, it's very difficult to judge how patronage worked in the promotion and transfer of centurions: occasionally we find a dedication to a patron on a centurion's tombstone, for example, but there's not much to go on.

Loyalty to an emperor - in a time of civil war or rebellion particularly - would certainly help in getting noticed and promoted, as would valour in battle. There seem to have been links between some very well-connected men and higher officials, like Praetorian Prefects, who would have favoured their own supporters. More likely, though, it was the personal ties between centurions and their immediate superiors - in particular tribunes and senatorial legates commanding legions or governing provinces - which were most useful.

Many centurions served on the staff of senior officers; other may have come from towns and cities that had patronage links with particular equestrian or senatorial office-holders. When the senior man moved to a new appointment -  a legate to a different legion, or a governor to a different and more prestigious province - he would have taken a few of his own 'clients' with him and installed them in better positions. The patron would have represented the interests of the centurion both to the imperial bureaucracy and (as they moved higher up the ladder) to the emperor himself.

(p.s. in case it wasn't clear from my last post, you can download a pdf copy of Summerly's thesis (main text and appendix) using the link above!)