Rome should have been in a Malthusian trap which should have made it easy for the army to find recruits among Roman citizens yet for much of the Empire’s history this doesn’t seem to have been the case as the Empire relied on Germans to fill the lower ranks.
Does this imply that Roman citizens could not serve in the army, or that they would not? In the US today, you can get more Southerners than Northerners to sign up for the army at any given pay rate, and it would not surprise me if similar cultural, ethnic, and economic effects led to Germans being overrepresented in the Roman army.
It’s not quite accurate to say that the Roman Empire relied on Germans to fill the lower ranks of its army, at least before 212. Typically the Romans would form battalion- or regiment-sized units wholesale from a particular territory, from troopers to high officer ranks (sometimes under a Roman commander). Roman citizens (originally only from Rome proper, but from all of Italia after the Marian reforms) formed the famous legions; the provinces formed auxiliary forces of various kinds, and the latter became more important in comparison to the former as the empire grew. They also tended to grow closer to each other in terms of organization; the first auxiliary forces used their native weapons and tactics, but that distinction eroded over time.
Also, the legions were a major public employment project in the late Republican period and the early empire, with 125,000 legionaries under Tiberius at a time when Rome was a city of a million. Manpower shortages grew severe enough by Diocletian’s time that he had to institute conscription, but that may have been a consequence of more need for troops rather than declining enlistment.
If lots of people are starving but the army is well fed you would expect plenty of people to want to join the army.
Right, but why would the army want to pay them? I would not be surprised if the army had some sort of physical standards that the destitute were unlikely to meet.
I would not be surprised if the army had some sort of physical standards that the destitute were unlikely to meet.
If this were true it would mostly explain my confusion, although I would still expect that fear of future starvation would push many parents to get their healthy sons to enlist.
I would still expect that fear of future starvation would push many parents to get their healthy sons to enlist.
Future is uncertain. You have to balance your sons’ chances of dying from starvation against their chances of being ordered to march into the Teutoburg Forest...
Does this imply that Roman citizens could not serve in the army, or that they would not? In the US today, you can get more Southerners than Northerners to sign up for the army at any given pay rate, and it would not surprise me if similar cultural, ethnic, and economic effects led to Germans being overrepresented in the Roman army.
It’s not quite accurate to say that the Roman Empire relied on Germans to fill the lower ranks of its army, at least before 212. Typically the Romans would form battalion- or regiment-sized units wholesale from a particular territory, from troopers to high officer ranks (sometimes under a Roman commander). Roman citizens (originally only from Rome proper, but from all of Italia after the Marian reforms) formed the famous legions; the provinces formed auxiliary forces of various kinds, and the latter became more important in comparison to the former as the empire grew. They also tended to grow closer to each other in terms of organization; the first auxiliary forces used their native weapons and tactics, but that distinction eroded over time.
Also, the legions were a major public employment project in the late Republican period and the early empire, with 125,000 legionaries under Tiberius at a time when Rome was a city of a million. Manpower shortages grew severe enough by Diocletian’s time that he had to institute conscription, but that may have been a consequence of more need for troops rather than declining enlistment.
If lots of people are starving but the army is well fed you would expect plenty of people to want to join the army.
Right, but why would the army want to pay them? I would not be surprised if the army had some sort of physical standards that the destitute were unlikely to meet.
If this were true it would mostly explain my confusion, although I would still expect that fear of future starvation would push many parents to get their healthy sons to enlist.
Future is uncertain. You have to balance your sons’ chances of dying from starvation against their chances of being ordered to march into the Teutoburg Forest...