Enlistment

[Taelactin]

I was just wondering whether anyone knew about the process of enlistment. For example, when Crassus was getting his nine legions prepared for the battle at Carrhae, he began to use the 'Press Gang' in order to recruit soldiers since there was not enough volunteers to accomodate his needs.

 

Were farmers simply taken from their homes, and taken to training?

 

The places OF training, I remember reading about something from Vegetius, but I'm not 100% sure, were the training sites in Rome if the recruits were taken from Italy...? Or were training areas simply set up wherever needed (for example, just pitching a training site in the middle of a gigantic open field)?

 

I read about 'three military tribunes' that were in charge of enlisting the soldiers... or something... can anybody confirm this...?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

-Taelactin

[Virgil61]

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot written about enlistment procedures that I've found. Polybius gives a good overview of how legions were mustered under the Republic when enlistment wasn't an option but a requirement of the average able-bodied male citizen. In that instance recruits would present themselves to the all the tribunes of the legions in lines with each tribune taking turns picking their men to spread quality around.

 

I suspect that when the army became more professional there were a variety of different methods to recruit, the best draw being that it was steady work with pay and a retirement benefit of land not to mention the prospect of loot that soldiers could keep. In the principate the legions seemed to be well paid it might have been quite a prospect for a poorer citizen to join.

 

It does beg the question of how legions replenished their numbers. If evidence of the auxiliary unit retired as a whole found in Britain under the Principate is anything to go on and assuming the legions retired on the same schedule then whole units centuries/cohorts/legions may have been recruited at a time.

 

Interestingly the U.S. Army still used the term cohort to apply to company level combat-arms units recruited, trained and deployed as a whole for their first three-year enlistment in the 1980s.