§1. The lawful terms of service were twenty years for infantrymen and ten for cavalrymen. If anyone withdrew himself from military service within that time, he was either liable to death or, after being beaten, was sold. Thus Matienus, a deserter from the army, after being beaten for a long time with rods, was sold for one sestertius. The term of service of the praetorians was reduced to the sixteenth year, that of sailors extended to the twenty-fifth.
This length of time, which seemed to many to have stabilized Roman military service, caused great loss. For it made that service as hateful as possible and provided many brave men with an occasion to buy themselves out of it. For apart from the fact that it was laborious and dangerous to be exposed to various enemies for twenty or twenty-five whole years, it could not even be just that, while so many hundreds of thousands sat at home in the theater or securely attended to their fields, a few should be afflicted with perpetual military service.
I speak of those who were not volunteers but were compelled and gave in their names according to law. That inequality displayed the state as badly constituted. Why should citizens banished to the Rhine or the Danube for twenty whole years be absent from their own people, while young city-dwellers were meanwhile nourished at home in leisure?
Nor was it useful to the state. For while some were detained in wars for so long, it was necessary for the rest to become unwarlike. Thus the state was left destitute of brave men. Indeed, although many took part in twenty or thirty battles, attacked cities, fought in skirmishes, and were diminished by hunger, plague, and flight, very few at all completed their service and reached twenty campaigns—much less twenty-five, since more die in the fleet. But even if those men returned home, broken by labors or mutilated, poor, and ignorant of domestic affairs, they could accomplish little for the state. Hence mutinies arose from them not seldom.
Suetonius, chapter 49:
“Whatever soldiers there were anywhere, he bound to a fixed rule of pay and rewards, defining according to the rank of each both the periods of service and the advantages of discharge, lest after discharge they could be solicited to revolution either by age or by poverty. And so that expenditure for maintaining and rewarding them might be available perpetually and without difficulty, he established the military treasury with new taxes. And so that what was being done in each province could be announced and learned more quickly and readily, he first stationed young men at short intervals along the military roads and afterward vehicles. The latter seemed more convenient, so that those who carried letters all the way from the place could also be questioned if circumstances required anything.”
Who can doubt that the worst provision has been made for a city and kingdom in which those who sustained twenty years of the most burdensome military service are endangered by poverty?
§2. Hence benefits were devised: that they should be led into colonies, and that land and at the same time money should be given to them. But it is also burdensome to the state to enrich upon their discharge soldiers whom it had maintained with pay for twenty years.
For let us suppose that 4,000 veterans are discharged in each year, and that five iugera, agricultural equipment, and a young slave are given to each, twice as much to centurions, and three times as much to cavalrymen: this makes 25,000 iugera. If these are given for many years, it is necessary that within a short time all the soil pass to the soldiers. Nor can any state make such great distributions without injury to others.
Experience taught this so thoroughly that, when the state could not render those rewards at once, the soldiers were formally discharged and retained under the standards, exempt from all duties except battle against the enemy. Tiberius, an avaricious emperor, made discharges extremely rare, awaiting death from old age and profit from death. Hence the just complaint in Tacitus: that old men sustained thirty or forty campaigns. Nor can those men be brave who follow military service with so unwilling and sorrowful a disposition.
§3. Hence it came about that the soldiers, when they understood that they alone labored and that the strength of the empire resided in them while the rest were only a shadow, arrogated to themselves the right of naming the emperor and seized almost everyone’s wealth for themselves. Hence also the saying: “Cherish the soldiers; despise the rest.”
It is therefore much more equitable and safe either to accept volunteers or to shorten the term of service.