09-10-2011, 03:20 PM
As I'm new on the forum, I'll begin with a salvete omnis and a thanks for providing this venue!
I was wondering what evidence we have for beneficarii and soldiers with special duties and benefits, during the Republic - before the army became a standing, professional body, but after it ceased to be a seasonal levy.
The subject is quite broad, but I'm interested in evidence both internal to the army (were the treasurers, medical orderlies, and secretaries of Scipio Africanus' legions taken from the ranks of the legion or from his own slaves and freedmen?) and in the broader provincial administration (in addition to the civilian staff of lictors e.a. who, I believe, persisted into the Empire next to the soldiers).
I'd be mostly interested in the times of Polybius, but evidence from the late Republic is also welcome.
I'm aware that the nature of the pre-Imperial legions, largely impermanent and not staying in the same province for quite as long, makes such a use of the army comparatively difficult; I'm also aware that the political nature of the principate makes a reliance on (usually loyal) soldiers who are around anyway more advisable and cheaper than to use other professionals, but was the status of beneficarius an Augustan invention or 'merely' a standardisation?
Many thanks,
Max C.
I was wondering what evidence we have for beneficarii and soldiers with special duties and benefits, during the Republic - before the army became a standing, professional body, but after it ceased to be a seasonal levy.
The subject is quite broad, but I'm interested in evidence both internal to the army (were the treasurers, medical orderlies, and secretaries of Scipio Africanus' legions taken from the ranks of the legion or from his own slaves and freedmen?) and in the broader provincial administration (in addition to the civilian staff of lictors e.a. who, I believe, persisted into the Empire next to the soldiers).
I'd be mostly interested in the times of Polybius, but evidence from the late Republic is also welcome.
I'm aware that the nature of the pre-Imperial legions, largely impermanent and not staying in the same province for quite as long, makes such a use of the army comparatively difficult; I'm also aware that the political nature of the principate makes a reliance on (usually loyal) soldiers who are around anyway more advisable and cheaper than to use other professionals, but was the status of beneficarius an Augustan invention or 'merely' a standardisation?
Many thanks,
Max C.
M. Caecilius M.f. Maxentius - Max C.
Qui vincit non est victor nisi victus fatetur
- Q. Ennius, Annales, Frag. XXXI, 493
Secretary of the Ricciacus Frënn (http://www.ricciacus.lu/)
Qui vincit non est victor nisi victus fatetur
- Q. Ennius, Annales, Frag. XXXI, 493
Secretary of the Ricciacus Frënn (http://www.ricciacus.lu/)
