03-11-2013, 10:13 PM
Keppie's essay 'The Changing Face of the Roman Legions' (collected in Legions and Veterans, 2000) has a useful summary of evidence for declining numbers of Italians. Most of the relevant section is available here:
Keppie (scan down to section V on this page)
While suggesting caution in a wholescale application of findings from limited data, Keppie estimates that two thirds of legionaries recruited under Augustus, Tiberius and Caligula were Italian, by Claudius and Nero the figure had dropped to half, and by Hadrian's day the vast majority were recruited elsewhere; in the east, it seems that most men were local recruits from Augustus' time.
One possible reason for this seems to be that few Italian legionaries returned to Italy after discharge: they were given land on the frontiers, and their sons were born there. By the later second century, Keppie says, a centurion of the Praetorian guard could state with pride on his tombstone that he commanded 'in a praetorian cohort, not... a barbarian legion' (C. Manlius Valerianus, p.60).
This also suggests that the army in the earlier centuries acted as an engine for population change, shifting men out of Italy and settling them on the frontiers generation by generation. Presumably the resulting depopulated land was taken over by slave-farmed estates?
What the remaining Italians did, except for serving in the Rome cohorts, is unknown. But there seem to have been plenty of civilian jobs available at Pompeii, for example...
Keppie (scan down to section V on this page)
While suggesting caution in a wholescale application of findings from limited data, Keppie estimates that two thirds of legionaries recruited under Augustus, Tiberius and Caligula were Italian, by Claudius and Nero the figure had dropped to half, and by Hadrian's day the vast majority were recruited elsewhere; in the east, it seems that most men were local recruits from Augustus' time.
One possible reason for this seems to be that few Italian legionaries returned to Italy after discharge: they were given land on the frontiers, and their sons were born there. By the later second century, Keppie says, a centurion of the Praetorian guard could state with pride on his tombstone that he commanded 'in a praetorian cohort, not... a barbarian legion' (C. Manlius Valerianus, p.60).
This also suggests that the army in the earlier centuries acted as an engine for population change, shifting men out of Italy and settling them on the frontiers generation by generation. Presumably the resulting depopulated land was taken over by slave-farmed estates?
What the remaining Italians did, except for serving in the Rome cohorts, is unknown. But there seem to have been plenty of civilian jobs available at Pompeii, for example...
Nathan Ross
