11-01-2008, 10:43 AM
16 is the age at which the Republican dilectus began (IIRC Polybius says so, not sure there), so it is reasonable to assume this was the age Romans thought you could be a soldier at. I am not sure whether this ever functioned as a minimum age, but doubt it because that's not how Roman law worked. More likely, it was a common sense guesstimate, because there aren't a lot of fourteen-year-old boys physically able to handle the pilum and scutum.
The actuasl recruitment age is another question, and for the Principate we have reasonably good data for that. Soldiers' tombstones typically include the deceased's age and length of service, so (with caveats about veterans, those woth a missio causaria, and the Roman habit of giving ages in roud five-year lustra rather than exact years) we can get a reasonable estimate of the age men joined the army. The answer is typically in their early twenties, with outliers as low as fifteen and as high as 35. The widespread rounding to five-year figures means we can't be more exact than that, but the biggest clustering is typically '20', with a second cluster at '25'.
The actuasl recruitment age is another question, and for the Principate we have reasonably good data for that. Soldiers' tombstones typically include the deceased's age and length of service, so (with caveats about veterans, those woth a missio causaria, and the Roman habit of giving ages in roud five-year lustra rather than exact years) we can get a reasonable estimate of the age men joined the army. The answer is typically in their early twenties, with outliers as low as fifteen and as high as 35. The widespread rounding to five-year figures means we can't be more exact than that, but the biggest clustering is typically '20', with a second cluster at '25'.
Der Kessel ist voll Bärks!
Volker Bach
Volker Bach
