Marriage, families, and survival in the Roman imperial army: demographic aspects
Walter Scheidel
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, November (2005)
Abstract
Marriage and families
General context In the standing army of the Principate, the term of service in the legions rose from sixteen to twenty and later twenty-five years, while metropolitan guardsmen served for twelve to sixteen or even twenty years. Recruits committed much of their lives to the military: perhaps half of them did not live to see their discharge, and half of those who did would be dead twenty years later. A statistically ‘average’ soldier who enlisted for twenty-five years at the age of twenty could expect to spend up to three-quarters of his remaining life span on active duty.1 Under these circumstances, family formation was difficult to reconcile with military service. While Republican soldiers had often served in their late teens and twenties and married afterwards in keeping with conventional norms, this sequence became less practicable for imperial soldiers as the length of (continuous) service grew both formally and de facto. In addition, the peripheral deployment of most imperial troops that placed many recruits in alien environments may have further impeded marriage until more localized modes of recruitment became more common from the second century AD onward.
The ‘marriage ban’ for Roman soldiers
Legal provisions only exacerbated this problem.2 From the early Principate, and most likely since the reign of Augustus, Roman soldiers were legally incapable of entering recognized marriages. At the very end of the second century AD, Septimius Severus was said to have granted them the right to ‘live with’ (i.e., marry) their wives. By the fourth century AD, in any case, wives and children had come to be considered typical features of soldiers’ lives, although the earliest surviving explicit reference to their formal marital capacity dates from as late as AD 426. We do not know if officers such as centuriones were also subject to the ban while it was in effect. Equestrian and senatorial commanders were exempt, yet barred from marrying women from provinces in which they performed their duties.
Walter Scheidel
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, November (2005)
Abstract
Marriage and families
General context In the standing army of the Principate, the term of service in the legions rose from sixteen to twenty and later twenty-five years, while metropolitan guardsmen served for twelve to sixteen or even twenty years. Recruits committed much of their lives to the military: perhaps half of them did not live to see their discharge, and half of those who did would be dead twenty years later. A statistically ‘average’ soldier who enlisted for twenty-five years at the age of twenty could expect to spend up to three-quarters of his remaining life span on active duty.1 Under these circumstances, family formation was difficult to reconcile with military service. While Republican soldiers had often served in their late teens and twenties and married afterwards in keeping with conventional norms, this sequence became less practicable for imperial soldiers as the length of (continuous) service grew both formally and de facto. In addition, the peripheral deployment of most imperial troops that placed many recruits in alien environments may have further impeded marriage until more localized modes of recruitment became more common from the second century AD onward.
The ‘marriage ban’ for Roman soldiers
Legal provisions only exacerbated this problem.2 From the early Principate, and most likely since the reign of Augustus, Roman soldiers were legally incapable of entering recognized marriages. At the very end of the second century AD, Septimius Severus was said to have granted them the right to ‘live with’ (i.e., marry) their wives. By the fourth century AD, in any case, wives and children had come to be considered typical features of soldiers’ lives, although the earliest surviving explicit reference to their formal marital capacity dates from as late as AD 426. We do not know if officers such as centuriones were also subject to the ban while it was in effect. Equestrian and senatorial commanders were exempt, yet barred from marrying women from provinces in which they performed their duties.
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