§ 1. In camps there is the highest discipline and the highest order.
-
Two maniples have charge of the place which is before the tribunes; they are taken from the hastati and the principes. That place is the principia, where assemblies are held and all business is transacted.
-
Three maniples erect the tribune’s tent. Vegetius, book 3, chapter 8.
-
From these men two watches are also formed, one before and the other behind the tent.
-
They served in the place of attendants. Alexander Severus permitted there to be no attendants: he would not allow anyone except soldiers to go before tribunes or commanders.
-
The triarii furnished the cavalrymen, as citizens of higher rank, with a guard. Polybius. They tended and watched the horses.
-
One maniple each day kept watch for the commander.
-
There were guard-posts at the gates, for entire cohorts and troops of cavalry kept watch. Sometimes several cohorts did so at a distance from the camp. They called these rural guard-posts. There were certainly several of them, and it was a capital offense to abandon them unless the men were swept away by great force. Thus Polybius and Suidas. Suetonius likewise says of Augustus: “He punished centurions who had deserted their post with death, just as he punished common soldiers.” The chief matter was the careful distribution of the passwords.
-
Pammenes showed how great a care must be taken over the password. For after he had been shut in with a few men and could not escape, he learned the password of the enemy’s camp from a deserter; trusting in it, he led his men through the middle of the camp, killed many of the enemy, and escaped.
-
The procedure concerning passwords was in truth different from ours. A small tablet was marked and returned before darkness; sometimes useful commands were announced in that order. Now only passwords are announced. The tribunes received them from the commander, and the tesserarii from the tribunes.
-
A maniple kept watch at the praetorium by night. Three further watches were established by night: one at the quaestor’s quarters and two at those of the tribunes.
-
The velites fill the rampart; small tablets are also given to the watchmen.
-
Nothing was stricter than the rounds. Cavalrymen went around by night; sometimes, in danger, the tribunes and the commander himself did so. At times the watches were established with no intervening space. Later the centurions also made the rounds. Finally this became the particular office of those who were called circuitores. The decurion who ranked first in the troop performed this duty.
The tribune designated for these men in writing which watch they had to make and how many rounds. The man making the rounds goes with his friends. The punishment for a soldier or a circuitor who failed in the night watches was cudgeling to death.
-
Diligent care of the watches was exacted by bells rung in a fixed order at the same time. Alcibiades, fearing negligence among his men on watch, commanded that, when he himself was about to display a light from the citadel, everyone should raise up lights, and that whoever neglected to do so would pay the penalty. Thus, while they kept watch attentively for this signal, they avoided the danger.
-
Paulus Aemilius ordered the sentries to keep watch unarmed, so that they might remain awake more diligently. Plutarch, Paulus.
-
All newcomers must be questioned, so that the matter of spies may be ascertained.
-
Our first watch is from sunrise to noon; the second extends to sunset; the third to midnight; the fourth to sunrise. Ordinarily the masters of the watches make their rounds through them twice, and sometimes the commanders and those to whom the commanders entrust them do so.
-
If the enemy attacks by night, the sentries sound the alarm and indicate from what direction he is coming. The sentries join together and await the enemy. The alarm is then sounded at the commander’s guard-post.
-
By frequent admonition the army must be trained not to be moved by any event or by any voice it hears unless it proceeds from the commanders and prefects. This must especially be guarded against by night, because that time is most liable to alarms.