Question about the Roman army

[Macilrille]

i believe the actual requirement was 'ten campaigns' not necessarily ten years. in fact pre late republic it was very rare for armies to be away from their homes for even a year at a time. you have to remember, these are citizen soldiers, national guard types. with farms and businesses that must be tended to. yoeman farmers and all that.

That was exactly the problem that killed the res Publica Romana, I have gone on at length in several threads on that. Quite enlightening posts if I may say so. here I just refer to Brunt, "Social Conflicts in The republic of Rome", 1971. It is ten years or 6 campaigns. Note that they need not necessarily be ten years in a row or six campigns after each other. It may be spread out over a man's "fighting age".

[Atilius]

I'm not so sure there's a clear answer to your question.

Polybius states that a cavalryman was required to serve for ten years and an infantryman for sixteen, but given the size of the citizen population and the number of legions Rome normally fielded, that can't be correct. For instance, in 225 BC the Romans employed a very large army: 10 legions totalling about 50,000 men. Yet there were about 300,000 roman citizens capable of bearing arms at this time, so only 1 in 6 was performing military service. A man was eligible for service for 30 years (ages 17-46), so even if this large army had been maintained permanently, average total service would have been about 5 years.

For five of the six years from 185 through 180 BC, Livy reports army recruitment in unusual detail. A total of 105,400 legionaries entered service and it appears that throughout this period, 8 legions totalling about 40,000 men were maintained. This indicates that the average length of continuous service was only 2 to 3 years. For those campaigning in Spain it was certainly longer than that, and for those serving in Cisalpine Gaul and Liguria it must have been shorter. Many would have served just a single year in this period. Assuming a recruitment pool of 300,000, 8 legions could have been maintained indefinitely if each man served for a total of just 4 years.

I've seen references to a six year limit on continuous service in several books but I don't know the basis for that figure. I doubt that the army of the mid Republic had a rigid limit for time in constant service, but it is probably true that few served more than six years at a time. For example, Livy mentions a discharge of veterans in 210 BC. Given the heavy losses in the first three years of the 2nd Punic war, few veterans would have been alive and in Italy in 210 BC, so the bulk of these men would probably have been recruited after Cannae in 216 BC.

On the other hand, it should be noted that in 210 BC, with Capua and Syracuse back under Roman control and Tarentum under siege, the Romans were finally beginning to win the war. In that very year, the Romans began to reduce the size of the army, which had reached 25 legions in 211 BC. If the war had not turned in Rome's favor, it's not clear that this discharge would have taken place.