Young Centurion?

[Lucius Galerius Falconius]

I always thought there was a age restriction to 30 years of age required to be a centurion.

But I read that if you were an equestrian you could enlist in the army as a centurion before you start as a prefect of a cohort, so he'd be like a 17 year old centurion..is this possible?

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Could you be a prefect at 17? hock: I can't imagine an army as successful as the Roman being led by a green 17 year old and getting the success it did....
A centurion would need experience.... :? roll:

[Carlton Bach]

I've never heard of an age minimum for the centurionate. I guess it's possible, but you must keep in mind that the Principate army is a very different beast from the Republican. I can't see any great poroblems inherent ion taking some equestrian kid and cycling him through the orders of, say, III Augusta or a similarly safe force.

I think it bears stressing that we have only a very limited understanding of what centurions actually *did* most of the time. Popular imagination views them as drill sergeants, but evidence for that view is at best limited. We encounter them acting as local representatives of authority, in connection with craftsmen's collegia, getting regions assigned in Egypt like some kind of ICS official, collecting taxes and carrying important messages and killing undesireables, so you could easily wonder who's minding the shop all the while (my guess is the optio). A position like that might well serve to give a callow youth a taste of military life. Practical as the Romans were it is certainly not out of the reqalm of possibility that every legion had a centurion slot or two for the purpose, on the understanding that they never be allowed to actually command troops.

[Lucius Galerius Falconius]

Could you be a prefect at 17? hock: I can't imagine an army as successful as the Roman being led by a green 17 year old and getting the success it did....
A centurion would need experience.... :? roll:

No, I meant being a centurion BEFORE your prefecture of a cohort at like age 25.

So centurion from 17 - 25 or something of that matter.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

I suppose anything was possible back then, as life was a fast learning curve..... hock:

[Lochinvar]

Hey Gaius, we know we're getting old when even Archbishops start to look young !! :lol: :wink: :roll:

[Tarbicus]

No, I meant being a centurion BEFORE your prefecture of a cohort at like age 25.

So centurion from 17 - 25 or something of that matter.

Most legionaries didn't even sign up until their early twenties, did they? Older than the average modern sign up age, I thought.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Hey Gaius, we know we're getting old when even Archbishops start to look young !! :lol: :wink: :roll:

Whew! I'm still ok then! :lol:

[Kate Gilliver]

ILS 2669 = CIL 6.3603, Rome
L Pullio Peregrino 7 legion deputato qui vix ann xxviiii mens iii die i hor IS eq R.

Lucius Pullius Peregrinus, legionary centurion sent in a deputation (possibly to the emperor), who lived 29 years, 3 months, 1 day, 1 and a half hours (how on earth did they know?!!!), Roman Equestrian.

No reason at all, in the Principate, why an aristocratic young man, especially an Equestrian like Peregrinus, shouldn't be appointed to the centurionate at a very early age. Just found this example flicking through Dessau - there's probably others if anyone wants to go trawling through the whole of CIL!

Average age at recruitment of Leg IV Macedonica is round about 21-22, I seem to recall. There were regs. on minimum age of recruitment. Vegetius (1.5) says it was puberty, but Livy (22.57) states that recruits of 17 years were being levied in 216 BC (in the aftermath of Cannae), and that some were still wearing the toga praetexta indicating they had not taken on the full trappings of adulthood. That could be younger than 17, but it's a time of national emergency and no doubt recruiting officials didn't worry too much about minimum ages.
Gaius Gracchus passed legislation in 123 BC banning the conscription of anyone below the age of 17 (Plut. Gaius Gracchus 5), which suggests that some boys were being conscripted or voluteering despite being below what appears to have been the legal age of 17.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

So the ywere ay least making efforts to outlaw it, much the way we have in our own times in some societies. I won't digress on that vein.
Enlisting them at 17 would be different that having them in charge at that age though surely! 21 up wards would seem to be a more logical age outside of the emergency situation, where experience is brought on the hard way.

[Marcus Julius]

My guess is, it might depend on your political connections.

[Jon Eaton]

Equestrians could receive direct commissions into the centurionate at a much earlier age than men from the ranks:

CIL III 1480 - Sex. Pilonius Modestus was commissioned as a centurion aged 18, served 19 years and died aged 37.

AE 1939 157 - Ti. Claudius Fatalis was commissioned aged 19, served 23 years and died aged 42.

[taira1180]

I remember reading in the complete roman army from Goldsworthy, a centurion of 14 years old (in the principate), he was from an equestrian family; he must be promoted some time latter, but i doubt that he was ever in charge of real troops at that age.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

I can't remember that bit myself. But they got married at that age too, so anything is possible! They didn't use as much padding on their children as we do today!

[vergilius]

I read dates of marriage or first sexual contacts that would be quite shocking today. So I guess that you could be a centurion at a very young age. Besides at that age you are more reckless (heroic) and cruel (very handy in those days). The ss used very young boys too for that reason