05-02-2005, 08:44 PM
Quote:Yes, and Matt Amt reffers , in his web page, to a Thrcian auxiliary called BASSA, who, when entering the Roman army modified his name to TITVS FLAVIVS BASSVS.
Citizenship was needed if you wanted to join a legion. Auxiliaries were granted citizenship at their missio honesta, so if they wished they could then enlist into a legion (but who would want that after already 25-30 years in the military?)
But sometimes that citizenship was granted ('by the emperor') to peregrini upon enlistment. It was a custom to take the praenomen and gentilicium of that emperor (see Bassus), and to choose his own cognomen. His own peregrinus-name (which was latinized if nessecary) is then an obvious choise, but sometimes a whole new cognomen was prefered.
My year-work promotor at uni thought it was a 'fun' idea to investigate if within all the cognomina of legionary soldiers there was a preference for 'military' names like Victor, Fortis, Martialis,... The end-goal was to see if it was possible to distill those 'new' citizen-soldiers by this preference.
I did a case study (with a comparitive part) on legionaries from the 'Italian' regions and legionaries from Northern Africa.
The conclusion wasn't what my promotor had hoped for. Those 'military' sounding cognomina were equally popular (or not popular) with the civilian population as with the military population. The cognomina of legionaries followed the normal spectrum of cognomina in those investigated regions. So two years of dusty study of the CIL and the likes and nothing to show for...
Oh those were the happy days :lol:
Hans
Flandria me genuit, tenet nunc Roma
