Authors: Robert C. Knapp
This is very different from the family dedications that dominate in the civilian world; the soldiers are family to the other soldiers, and this is exactly what the marriage ban was intended to produce.
Central to the creation of that military family was cutting off the basis of the civic family, the procreation of children – and thereby the projection of that civic family as a unit into the future. Just as children and the passing on of inheritances both real and social was the key
raison d’etre
for the civil family, procreational celibacy was the key to the continuance of the military family; only by eliminating the possibility of creating legitimate children could a soldier’s connection with the civic family’s civil orientation be broken, and a steadfast focus on the military family assured. Tertullian correctly saw that such celibacy sets a man apart from society and creates a society within a society, in his case Christian, in the Roman case, military.
It is clear that procreational celibacy along with its radical goal of the creation of a military society had nothing to do with sex, women, or children in the broader sense. Soldiers were always free to find sex where they could and to create liaisons with women; there were no prohibitions. The prohibition was against forming
legitimate
families; it was intended to and perhaps succeeded in keeping these relationships outside the core life of the soldier. An unforeseen consequence of the significant decrease in extensive wars of aggression after Augustus was that the legions became increasingly garrison forces; the boon of the absence of permanent women and children (wives and children) in a peripatetic soldier’s life became a curse once the legions became more and more sedentary. The progressive loosening of the rules regarding procreational celibacy – permission for soldiers to have the rights of married men (Claudius), testamentary and inheritance rules that increasingly allowed soldiers’ illegitimate children to inherit like legitimate children (Flavians, Trajan, Hadrian) – culminating in the removal of the marriage ban by Septimius Severus parallels the increasingly immobile posting of the legions and the rise of permanent, stone-built legionary camps and outposts. The system of a separate military society breaks down. By the third century
AD
all traces were gone of Augustus’ attempt to thwart would-be warlords through the creation of a military family loyal only to the
pater familias militum
– the ‘father of the soldiers’ family.’ It is perhaps not surprising that the acknowledgment of this through the elimination of the marriage ban by Septimius Severus took place at the beginning of a century of renewed discord, warlordism, and the dominance of soldiers’ demands in the political life of the Roman community. Augustus’ experiment broke up on the rocks of human nature.
Whatever the variety of relations with women was during service, it is clear that upon discharge the soldier’s woman could, if the soldier so wished, be accepted as
uxor,
a legal wife, with full privileges of a married woman, thus making any de facto situation during a soldier’s enlistment official upon discharge; no punitive action was taken for the soldier having ‘violated’ the anti-marriage rule. The legal disability was significant, however, for a liaison during active duty. Most particularly, without legal Roman marriage, passing on one’s name and possessions through family inheritance was impossible. The child could not be enrolled on the birth album (proving Roman citizenship). Regardless of
the legal status of father and/or mother, any child was illegitimate and could not inherit as a legitimate son until the loosening of the inheritance rules. Of course, the child could be named an heir, but that did not have the same social force as a son inheriting as a son. If a soldier had a wife and child at the time of enlistment, the marriage was dissolved and the child (probably) declared illegitimate; certainly any subsequent children suffered this diminution in status. Another disability arising from lack of legitimate marriage was the elimination of a dowry from the wife. Also, there could be no prosecution for adultery, since there was no marriage at law.
Despite all this, marriage and family were clearly important in the personal lives of many soldiers. The percentage of men who established unions and, indeed, whom they chose as companions must remain unknowable. Perhaps if the names of wives given in inscriptions are good evidence, most soldiers preferred Romanized women. Here are two examples:
Lucius Plotidius Vitalis, the son of Lucius, of the Lemonia voting district, a soldier in the Fifteenth Legion Apollinaris, lies here. He lived 50 years and served 23. Annia Maxima set this monument up to a most dear husband. (
AE
1954.119, Petronell, Austria)
To the Underworld Gods. Aurelius Victor, soldier of the First Italic Legion, lived 36 years and was a soldier for 18. Valeria Marcia his wife and Valeria Bessa his daughter, his heirs, set this up to one who was well-deserving. (
CIL
3.13751a, Kherson, Ukraine)
Other evidence indicates that many of the wives were freedwomen, so a slave girl was the origin of the relationship.
Gaius Petronius, son of Gaius, from Mopsistum, lived 73 years and served 26 in the cavalry wing Gemelliana. He lies here. Urbana, his freedwoman and wife, set this up. (
ILS
9138, Walbersdorf, Austria)
There are also numerous inscriptions noting a soldier on active duty with a wife and family. Here is one:
To the Nether Gods. This is dedicated to Marcus Aurelius Rufinianus, who lived 10 years, our son. Likewise to our daughter, Aurelia Rufina, still living. Marcus Aurelius Rufinus, a soldier in the First Legion Adiutrix, and Ulpia Firmina his wife, their parents, set this up for them and also for themselves. (
Die römischen Inschriften Ungarns
5.1200, Dunaújváros, Hungary)
What is clear from all this is that soldiers openly formed marriages and had offspring, whatever the official rules said about it. This openness would not have been possible if the anti-marriage regulations had been strictly enforced. So Augustus’ attempt to force an exchange of a civil family for a military one ran up against the deepest cultural drive in the civil population, the propagation of the family; not surprisingly, both flaunting of marriage ban and agitation for its amelioration began immediately and lasted until soldiers were at last officially allowed to marry in the early third century.
What did common soldiers do for heterosexual sex? Certainly, there was no attempt to enforce or encourage celibacy among the legionaries. Sex with women was part of being virile, and being virile was fundamental to being a soldier. Violent rape, a practice fully condoned by the officers when conducted under battle circumstances, was assault akin to slaying male enemies, not a ‘sexual’ act; it should not be confused with soldiers seeking sexual outlets. However, there were two easily accessible nonviolent outlets that had no long-term repercussions: prostitutes and slaves – who were often one and the same person. The
canabae
near the camps probably had prostitutes along with other merchandise. In addition, one’s own female slave was available willy-nilly at any time, and many soldiers had slave girls while on active duty.
A different kind of relationship could easily develop with local girls from near the military postings. A soldier might take up a liaison with a girl who would set up house for him and provide him with sexual gratification as well as other household duties; these were called
focariae
(‘hearth girls’). One even left a grave inscription documenting her relationship with a marine:
Marcus Aurelius Vitalis was a soldier from Pannonia who served 27 years in the praetorian fleet at Ravenna. Valeria Faustina, his
focariae
and heir, set this monument up to a fine person. (
CIL
11.39 =
ILS
2904, Ravenna, Italy)
As these inscriptions attest, women often had relationships that led to the informal marriage so many soldiers enjoyed, along with the resulting children. So one way or another, the common soldier did not need to lack for sexual gratification with women.
The first serious treatments of homosexuality in the imperial Roman army appeared only a few years ago. Other treatments belabor the apparently severe punishment of homosexual behavior in the republican army, using the examples that elite sources provide about officer culture, which are heavily colored by vanities of ‘honor’ and ‘virility.’ At the least, such violent punishments (even if probably seldom meted out) reveal that homosexual behavior existed in those early armies. However, for the army of the high empire there are not even elite sources for attitudes or action regarding homosexual behavior among common soldiers in the legions. A few bits and pieces of evidence can help to form at least a general picture, however.
Male relations with male slaves and with male prostitutes, while perhaps frowned upon by the elite in a hypocritical sort of way, were widely accepted as a fact of life. As common soldiers, and especially centurions along with other officers, held slaves, this sort of relationship existed in the army as well. In Plautus’
Pseudolus
(1180–81) a soldier’s slave is accused of as much: ‘At night, when the Captain was going on guard, and when you were going with him, did the sword of the officer fit your scabbard?’ In
Epigram
1.31 and elsewhere, Martial speaks of the sexual relationship of a centurion, Aulus Pudens, with his boy slave Encolpus. Likewise relations with male prostitutes were presumably acceptable. It seems highly unlikely, then, that soldiers having become used to sexual satisfaction with male slaves and paid partners always drew the line if a fellow soldier might make an advance or indicate availability.
The one thing that might have inhibited homosexual behavior between social equals (i.e. both common soldiers) would be a cultural position that is well attested for both the elite and the nonelite: the passive or ‘receptive’ partner in a relationship was stigmatized as effeminate, and being effeminate was the opposite of what a male should
be, masculine. It was part of soldierly culture to be manly, not effeminate. Therefore, a soldier might resist a sexual relationship because of its negative cultural overtones – in a word, guilt at transgressing an important cultural norm of manhood. It does seem that this taboo held for the citizen army of the middle republic and perhaps even for the late republic, which is the period from which all the elite testimony about the horrors of male homosexuality in the army appears. Then the anecdotes disappear. During the imperial period there is no tale of officers debauching subordinate soldiers; no indication of rules and regulations governing homosexual relations among the soldiers; nothing. Why this is the case has been variously explained. One historical incident provides a clue: When two soldiers were accused of being part of Saturninus’ plot to kill the emperor Domitian, they said they could not possibly have been because their known condition of being ‘penetrated ones,’ i.e. passive partners in homosexual activities, marginalized them so much that no one would have included them in a plot (Suetonius,
Life of Domitian
10). This presents a picture of soldiers who know that some of their confrères engage in the passive role in male-to-male relationships, mark this down as a stigma, but do nothing further; there is no ‘outing,’ no punishment beyond a certain marginalization within the soldiers’ community. While such social pressure would have had some effect at the very least to make soldiers careful to hide their activities with each other from their fellow soldiers as much as possible, clearly these activities persisted. But for the most part, as long as a soldier maintained either the outward trappings of masculinity or, if for whatever reason he appeared ‘feminized’ to his fellows, he continually demonstrated his ability to act like a man in exercises, fatigues, and war, nothing would happen beyond a bit of sniping from those around him.
Religious life
One of the ways a soldier was acculturated into the military life was by shifting religious focus. Deities worshiped before becoming a soldier were, of course, not banned once military service began. But instead of a panoply of local/ethnic gods, the soldier was encouraged to focus on two overriding manifestations of the divine – the emperor; and the ‘official’ Roman divinity Jupiter Optimus Maximus along with the rest
of the pantheon – as well as Eternal Rome and Augustan Victory as embodiments of the Roman State.
The emperor was warlord-identified-with-the-State. The official religion emphasized the unity of the armed forces as well as the centrality of the emperor in its life. This was the private army of the emperor as the embodiment of Rome. Augustus advanced from the status of his warring predecessors and contemporaries to claim not preeminence in the State, but quasi-divine leadership and, ultimately and increasingly in his successors, synonymy with it. So loyalty to Rome and loyalty to the personified Rome, the emperor, became conflated completely in the soldier’s mind. Loyalty to the emperor was central to the soldier’s life: ‘For the soldiers swear continually throughout their service that they will place the safety of the emperor above all else’ (Epictetus,
Discourses
1.14.15). From Vegetius 2.5 and other snippets a reasonable outline is possible: Soldiers swear by the majesty of the emperor to strenuously do all that the emperor might command, protect his and his family’s well-being (
salus),
never desert the service, nor refuse to die for Rome. Certainly the oath was repeated annually; probably it was repeated each day at reveille; at any rate, its creed was omnipresent. Soldiers took this oath seriously:
This dedication is for the safety of the emperor. As a new recruit I, Lucius Maximius, son of Lucius Gaetulicus, of the Voltinian voting district, from Vienne, made a vow in front of the Twentieth Legion Valeria Victrix in the name of Augustan Panthean Victories most holy. Now after 57 years of service and advancement to the rank of chief centurion in the First Italic Legion I have fulfilled my vow. Dated in the year of the consuls Marullus and Aelianus (
AD
184). (
AE
1985.735, Swischtow, Bulgaria)