The Roman Legion

Assembled from 39 blocks · 3 evidence · 38 related

1. Story
2. The standing heavy-infantry formation of the imperial army, nominally c. 5,000-6,000 men in ten cohorts, supported by roughly an equal number of non-citizen auxiliaries. After the Marian and Augustan reforms it was a professional long-service force paid from the imperial treasury, which made it simultaneously the guarantor of the frontier and the single largest claim on imperial revenue. Total army strength is a modern reconstruction: commonly given as c. 250,000 under Augustus rising to something like 400,000-450,000 by the early 3rd century, in c. 33 legions plus auxiliary units. These are estimates built from unit lists, not payroll records.
3. Knowledge
4. Roman Citizenship (civitas Romana)
5. The Roman Road Network
6. The Roman Legion
7. Connections
8. Rome
9. Roman Citizenship (civitas Romana)
10. The Roman Road Network
11. Hadrian's Wall
12. Augustus (Gaius Octavius / Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus)
13. Gaius Julius Caesar
14. Caracalla (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus)
15. The Punic Wars
16. Caesar crosses the Rubicon
17. The Augustan settlement: Octavian becomes Augustus
18. Construction of Hadrian's Wall begins
19. The empire reaches its greatest territorial extent
20. The Antonine Constitution (Constitutio Antoniniana)
21. Alaric's Goths sack Rome
22. Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustulus - the contested 'fall' of the Western Roman Empire
23. Carthage
24. The Roman Legion
25. The Roman Aqueduct System
26. Leptis Magna
27. Trajan (Marcus Ulpius Traianus)
28. The Antonine Constitution (Constitutio Antoniniana)
29. The Mediterranean Sea (Mare Nostrum)
30. The Roman Legion
31. Via Appia
32. Londinium
33. Construction of the Via Appia begins
34. The empire reaches its greatest territorial extent
35. Digital mapping shows most of the Roman road network is unlocated
36. Evidence
37. An imperial legion had a nominal strength of c. 5,000-6,000 men in ten cohorts, with roughly equal auxiliary numbers alongside. Total army strength is reconstructed as c. 250,000 under Augustus rising to a peak of roughly 450,000 by 211 CE in c. 33 legions and c. 400 auxiliary units. All totals are modern reconstructions from unit lists, not from any surviving muster roll.
38. Bronze certificates issued to discharged auxiliary soldiers record grants of Roman citizenship to the veteran and, in defined periods, to his children, together with the right of legal marriage. They are the hardest documentary evidence that citizenship functioned as a distributed reward mechanism tying provincial non-citizens to the imperial system through military service.
39. Hadrian's Wall, inscribed in 1987 under reference 430, is a component of the transnational 'Frontiers of the Roman Empire' property together with the German Limes and the Antonine Wall. It runs c. 117 km with milecastles at approximately every Roman mile, indicating a regulated and permeable frontier rather than a sealed barrier.