A Day in the Life of A Roman Legionary

Introduction to Wayfair

0:00Hey there, it's Wayfair here, where delivery and setup are as easy as a few taps on your phone.

Introduction to Wayfair

0:01You're relaxing in an old hammock, scrolling Wayfair's app, when you spot it, a brand new patio set. Next thing you know, Wayfair delivers it right to your patio and sets it up. Oh, you need a new grill too? All right, Wayfair's got you covered. With Wayfair's room of choice delivery and fast expert setup on qualifying orders, life gets a little easier. Visit Wayfair.com or the Wayfair app. Wayfair, every style, every home. At ETSU, you can choose from 85 online programs in fields like business, education, technology, nursing, healthcare, or social services.

0:34Or choose from a custom degree that fits your goals and interests. All taught by dedicated faculty here to support your success. With our flexible programs, affordable tuition, and accessible student resources, you don't have to change your life to change your future. Learn more and apply today at etsu.edu slash online. That's etsu.edu slash online. A naked man stumbles forward, bleeding, as he makes his way between two rows of Roman legionaries. They beat him mercilessly with rods on all sides, paying no attention to his moans.

1:08They know his name. This is a man who's eaten beside them and marched beside them. He too was a legionary just as they are. But it doesn't matter. Because this man has been found guilty of stealing inside a Roman army camp. The officers have pronounced his guilt, and now he has been sentenced to be beaten to death. The horrible sight of this man bludgeoned into unconsciousness and finally death will serve as a very public reminder to

1:39everybody else of the terrible price of breaking the rules in the Roman army. You're listening to Villains and Virgins podcast. Today's episode is a day in the life of a Roman legionary on the march. But before we get into all those details, I need to pause and say a word of thanks to the wonderful community of people who support this podcast on Patreon. As a member of that community, you get access to a bonus episode every month, so that's a whole lot

2:13of extra history content, as well as live history chats that I host on a regular basis, and all kinds of fascinating details that turn up in the margins of the research that I'm always doing here on the podcast. Our next live history chat will be all about the ancient Romans, so if you're interested in this subject in particular, now is a great time to head on over to patreon.com slash Eva Schubert and sign up.

2:43And I have to say a very special word of thanks to those people who support this podcast at the highest level on Patreon. They include Craig Davis, Richard Huebner, Charles Vigneron, Kenneth Jones, Tim Williams, Anthony Farnbach, Rick Kane, Gordon Carl, Agnes Viner, Errol Silverstein, Stephen Skorick, and John Lacasse. And a very special thank you goes to podcast listener Roger Mira, who's been gracious enough to supply us with some of his own photographs of ancient Roman sites. So how many times a day do you think about the

3:18Roman Empire? And let's be honest, when we're thinking about the Roman Empire, we're usually thinking about the Roman army. When I got into the research for this subject, I began to appreciate what an absolutely vast topic it really is. Because to talk about the Roman army is a subject that spans over a thousand years, from the foundation of Rome as a city-state in the 9th century BC, to the fall of the city of Rome itself in

3:50476 AD. And that's not even counting the eastern half of the Roman Empire, which persisted for another nearly thousand years before it too fell in 1453, just a few decades before Columbus made a very famous voyage. So it is a vast span of time that falls under this topic. Most of the attention on this subject is focused on the Roman imperial army, which means the army from round about the time that Julius Caesar became a dictator in 44 AD to the fall of Rome in 476 AD.

4:25But that's still 500 years. And for comparison, let's imagine that we were going to talk about 500 years of the British army. The British had their own empire, of course, and that got started round about the 1500s and persisted into the 20th century. So this would be a period of time that would stretch from when the British army was using muskets all the way to the time they were using tommy guns, or from when they were

4:56using ships of the line to when they were using fighter jets. So when you look at that comparison, you can immediately see how difficult it is to make generalizations about an army over such an enormous period of time. Now, we have more information about the imperial Roman army than we do about the Roman army in the republican era. What I'm going to do today is try to give you a general sense of what a day in the life of a Roman legionary might have looked like in the

5:33Roman imperial army, recognizing, of course, that there are going to be variations over time in things like details of armor, the numbers of men in legions, and so on and so forth. So I'm going to veer away from very, very specific technical details, which would require us to be grounded in specific moments in time, and try to give you a sense of what life was like as part of this unit that would have been more or less consistent over large periods of time.

6:07So the ideal Roman legionary would be recruited between the ages of 18 and 21 years old. And the first thing was that he had to meet regulation height to qualify as a Roman recruit. Regulation height would have been between 5'8 and 5'10, and that makes our young recruit significantly taller than the average Roman male, who typically measured between 5'4 and 5'7. Our young recruit, we're going to call him Valerius, had to be in good physical health and also have good eyesight.

6:41Ideally, he would also understand Latin, although that requirement became more and more flexible as the Roman army began to recruit farther and farther away from its homeland. Roman recruitment sources say that farm laborers were ideal candidates because they were physically sturdy and capable of carrying a lot of weight, whereas young men who came from families of weavers, for example, a much more sedentary activity, were not. Now in the early days of the Republic, the Roman army

7:13was composed of Roman citizens, particularly property-owning citizens. But as Rome moved from a city-state into an imperial power, it expanded its range of recruits, and the requirement of Roman citizenship or the ownership of property no longer applied in the imperial army. This meant that eventually both Roman citizens and non-citizens could serve. And in fact, for non-citizens, a career in the Roman army was one path to gain Roman citizenship. What is amazing to me is how familiar the induction processes sound for new recruits.

7:47So our recruit Valerius is given a physical examination. And then he has to take an oath of loyalty to the emperor. At this point, he's issued with a bronze ID tag. They called it a signaculum, which he was going to put into a little leather pouch around his neck. The Roman army was issuing people with identity tags or dog tags. Some things don't change. Then our recruit is given a small allowance, a travel allowance, to get him to the

8:20unit that he's been assigned to. New recruits were given four months of training. By 105 BC, which is still the Republican Roman army, we have details of this training including things like running, jumping, swimming, and long marches carrying heavy loads. The training also involved weapons drills. And the weapons that a Roman recruit was going to have to be proficient in using involved swords, throwing spears called pila. A single spear would be a pilum. Also slings and bows.

8:52So the new recruit was going to have to become proficient in all of these things, as well as in his ability to maneuver on and off a horse rapidly, even if he wasn't ultimately assigned to a cavalry unit. Training exercises involved using wooden swords and shields, which were designed to be much heavier than the actual combat weapons they would expect to use in the field. And the purpose of this was, one, if the sword was wooden,

9:24you probably weren't going to get a life-threatening injury. But also because it was heavier, you were training strength, speed, and endurance by using implements that were going to be much more difficult than the ones you would expect to use. Sword strokes were typically practiced against a stationary wooden post, about six feet high, embedded into the ground. So recruits would circle this post and they would practice their sword strokes, landing them on the post, and then they would move on to sparring with a partner. There are parallels to this in boxing.

9:58Where you're training with a heavy bag and then you move on to sparring with a partner. In this training process, unsuitable recruits were also weeded out. So just because you'd passed physical inspection at the beginning and been assigned to a unit, you could still fail out of basic training in the actual Roman garrison. And this happened as well. We have some sources that say these training exercises could be repeated at the discretion of a commanding officer in the garrison at any time. So it wasn't just when a recruit was first brought in.

10:34Men who were serving Roman legionaries would also engage in training exercises from time to time. But it seems that the frequency of these things was very much up to the officer in charge. New recruits were assigned a Latinized version of their name, or given an entirely new Latin name if they didn't have one already. The new recruit would be joining a unit of the Roman army which was expected to observe all of the major Roman religious festivals for major deities like Jupiter, for example.

11:06The Roman army also observed the anniversary of the founding of Rome itself, typically with a parade and animal sacrifices. Now, this didn't prevent individual soldiers from worshipping their own gods. And we know that the cult of Mithras, for example, was very popular amongst Roman soldiers at various points in time. So you weren't prohibited from having your own private religious beliefs or objects. But the group observance of these major festivals was something that provided group identity and esprit de corps.

11:36The Romans didn't see religion as exclusive. They were polytheists. So just because you were celebrating Jupiter didn't mean that you couldn't also pray to Mithras on your own time. The term of service, or the amount of time that a recruit would expect to spend in the Roman army varies depending on which period we're talking about, but on average 16 to 20 years was the expected career time. For non-citizens, serving in the Roman army for a period of 25 years could be a route to gaining Roman

12:09citizenship. Roman citizenship would be a very significant advantage for a legionary and his future family. And I say future because during your career in the Roman army for most of the time you couldn't have a wife or family, it was against the rules. I should emphasize that these lengthy terms of service and rules against marriage apply to men in the imperial army, not to men in the early republican army who went home at the end of every fighting season to their farms and their wives.

12:42So it's a very different system we're looking at depending on whether we're looking at the much smaller republican army or the very professional imperial army. Once our young legionary Valerius has passed his training, he's then assigned to his unit, and from this point on he will be moving with his legion. Now Roman legions could spend a lot of time in garrison, in forts that they built in particular provinces, but the Roman empire was ultimately built by the Roman army on the move.

13:13So let's take a look at what that looked like. Let's imagine our young recruit Valerius embedded in a Roman legion that is stationed in Spain. The month is May. Now this is important because Roman campaigning season, the season when you'd have armies on the move, was typically from late March to October. And this wasn't arbitrary. It wasn't just because winter was cold and the weather was bad. It was actually vital because a Roman army on the move relied on the availability of food in the landscape

13:46around them. And there's not a lot of food growing in January. So it's no coincidence that the season that the Roman army was moving around was also the season that there were crops growing, hopefully near harvest. To put any army on the march requires a staggering amount of logistics. We're not just talking about lining men up in rows and getting them to march in the same direction. You've heard the phrase, an army marches on its stomach. Well, there's a whole lot of gear involved in making that true.

14:20It's not just the rations that you have to pack. It's the cooking implements. It's the sleeping hardware. It is mules that are going to carry a lot of this extra gear. You need medical experts. You need engineers. You need specialists who are able to do a whole variety of tasks. So it's not just a matter of getting some units in line the way you would in a parade square and marching them around in a given direction. You also have to care for all the animals that you're going to have along with you carrying these burdens.

14:57And you're going to have to build up and take down a camp every single day. One of the reasons that the Roman army was so successful was that they excelled at the organizational end of moving an army around effectively. So let's go through a typical day. The day started in camp before the sun rose. And if we're looking at Spain in May, this is probably around 5 30 a.m. Legionary Valerius wakes up in his tent in camp. This is a space that he shares with seven other legionaries and possibly one to two slaves or military servants.

15:34This is the smallest unit of the Roman army, the Contrabinium. These are the men that you would sleep with, eat with, and march with. And it's no coincidence that it's roughly the same size as a squad in many modern military forces. In the first hour of the day, the men get out of bed and they eat their breakfast. This was very likely a porridge of some kind. And it was easy to prepare. It would be a kind of a grain-based mush. They're going to pack their gear, their individual packs, as well

16:10as pack up their tent, the cooking implements, and the other tools they've used overnight. Some of this gear will be carried by the pack animals assigned to their Contrabinium, perhaps one or two mules, and a great deal of this material will be carried by individual legionaries on their backs. So what exactly is Legionary Valerius carrying? The single biggest piece of gear that our legionary is carrying is his shield. Now this was constructed out of the Roman equivalent of plywood, layers of wood that were mashed together, and

16:43it was very likely encased in a leather bag for ease of carrying, and also to protect it from getting wet. According to Vigetius, an army source writing in the imperial period, every legionary's shield would have the sign of his cohort painted on the front. On the back of his shield, he would typically write his name, his cohort, and his century. So if this shield was found, there would be no question to whom it belonged. The next large piece of kit he's carrying are his two pila, or the large throwing spears.

17:18Now scholars have tried to figure out the exact length of these spears, and there are varying reports, but they think they were something like 1.8 meters long, or close to 6 feet in length, and they had iron tips. A pilum, thrown with skill, could penetrate a shield and kill the man carrying it. Even if you didn't succeed in killing the enemy soldier, this pila embedded in the shield was going to involve 6 feet of wood hanging off the end. That was going to drag the shield down and make it less

17:53effective, or even force the soldier to discard it altogether, which of course rendered him much more vulnerable to the next attack. The legionary also carried a sarkina, a personal pack, a sack that would contain his belongings, his mess tin, and other personal effects, and this would be carried on a cross piece, or firca, up behind his head. If you want to see what all this gear looked like and how it was carried, there are some wonderful channels that you can look at that are dedicated to accurate recreation of Roman armor and pack arrangements.

18:30One of them here on YouTube is called The Legionary, run by a guy called Chris Cameron, and you can also find him on Instagram at TheLegionaryFR. And scholars have actually relied on people like this to test whether their estimates of how much weight a Roman legionary could carry over distances and mountains are accurate. Now of course, the legionary wasn't just carrying weapons, he was also wearing armor. There would be a metal outer layer, of course, and the design of this varied significantly over time, but it

19:03includes the famous Lorica Segmentata, or the banded metal version that you might be familiar with from looking at things like Asterix and Obelix, or any number of other films that dramatize Roman legionaries. But it wasn't the only style of armor they wore, and again, because we're looking at such a vast period of time, you can expect significant variations. But we have this metal outer layer of the armor. The metal wasn't resting directly against the skin, so there was an underlayer that every legionary would wear.

19:36This was called a subarmalus. It was a thick jerkin made of felt, leather, or other layers of fabric, and the purpose of it was twofold. First, it provided some padding between the armor and the body, which allowed the armor to fit the body better. It also insulated you, and it distributed the compressive force of blows that might be landing on that metal armor, so that they wouldn't go directly into the body, but would be somewhat padded by this thick internal layer. And of course, legionaries wore helmets.

20:10Once again, the details and the design of these varied over time, but head protection was essential. Perhaps a little bit more surprising were the tools that every legionary had to carry, and one of these that was very important was a small hand scythe. You might be wondering, why is a Roman legionary carrying an implement used for harvesting grain or cutting grass? Well, that's because legionaries had to do both of those tasks on a regular basis. Remember how I said an army marches on its stomach?

20:43Well, harvesting grain for the men and harvesting grass for the animals is a very important daily duty for the army on the march, and we're going to get to that a little bit later. But our legionary needs to carry a tool to do these important tasks. He's also going to carry some kind of a digging tool. Some legionaries had a pickaxe, others had something that probably resembled a smaller spade or shovel. Digging was very necessary when building a camp or when building fortifications for besieging some other place.

21:17Then, of course, there were rations. This legionary needs to eat. So, what is the amount of food that he has to carry? There are varying accounts of this. Some accounts report legionaries carrying 17 days of rations. Some reports say 10. Others say 3. There very likely wasn't a fixed number of days of rations that every legionary had to carry all the time. The requirement would vary depending on where the army was going, how long

21:48they expected to be in the field, and how much food they expected would be available from the landscape around them. But some amount of space in the pack and weight on the back is going to be allocated for food. Some of this food is designed to be cooked, so it'll be in the form of grain, and others has to be ready to eat. It's very likely that our legionary carried some sort of dry biscuit in his

22:20pack for eating on the road. In addition to their weapons and their rations, Roman legionaries frequently carried a couple of wooden stakes. These were similar in length to their spears or pila, which is about 6 feet long. And historians think that these stakes were used in camp construction as part of a fortification around the perimeter. So how much did all this gear, armor and rations weigh? How encumbered was legionary Valerius marching around with all of this stuff?

22:53Many scholars estimate that the armor and weapons together, excluding rations, probably weighed about 30 kilograms or 66 pounds. When we add rations to the weight of the armor and weapons our legionary is already carrying, things only get heavier. If we assume that his daily ration was 1.1 kilograms and that he was carrying 10 days of rations, then the total weight that he's carrying goes from 30 kilograms to 41 kilograms, which is close to 90 pounds.

23:25If he was only carrying three days of food, then the weight he had to haul was closer to 34 kilograms or 75 pounds. These are rounded numbers. Now scholars argue about how much of this weight was borne by the individual soldier himself, and how much of it might have been carried by mules and wagons, but there's still a significant amount of stuff that has to be lugged around. Now speaking of rations, what was legionary Valerius actually eating?

23:57The single largest ingredient in his ration was grain, specifically wheat in most cases, and this composed between 60 to 75 percent of his daily ration. But a man cannot live very well eating just bread alone, and the Roman army recognized that men who had well-rounded nutrition were generally more functional. So in addition to wheat, the ration also included legumes, specifically beans and lentils. It also included olive oil, as well as some vinegar, some cheese, and of course some kind of meat.

24:32Salted pork was particularly easy to carry because it was lightweight, it was drier, it was already preserved. But we also know from the archaeological remains of some Roman camps that they were fond of eating beef as well. But it's still early morning, so as legionary Valerius is packing up all of the gear we've just described, he's also hearing the sounds of the camp around him. He can hear the clanking of armour, he can hear the sounds made by horses and mules, and the voices

25:07of other men. He can look out and see tents that stretch for as far as his eye can see. Because a standard legion was something between 4,000 and 5,000 men, depending on what period in Roman history we're talking about. And legions typically moved in company with other legions. So one of these Roman military camps might easily house two or even four legions. So imagine waking up in the morning and looking out on a city of tents that was something like 20,000

25:41men, and you'll get something like the picture that Valerius is looking at. So the army's been up and stirring since just before the sun came up. But by 0700, the scouts have already moved out of camp and onto the road ahead. The scouts ride horses, and they have a number of very important roles. First of all, they're heading out to look at any potential dangers on the road ahead. This might be the presence of enemy forces, or it might be obstacles or ambushes.

26:12So their job is to identify these dangers before the rest of the army encounters them. They also will work on clearing any physical obstacles that actually lie across the route that the army is going to take. The next unit to leave the camp after the scouts will be the vanguard. This is a significant size force, and one of the things that differentiates them from the others is that they're going to leave behind their baggage and support staff. That's going to be clearing the camp much later on.

26:44The reason for this is they want to be fast and highly maneuverable. Their role is to engage any enemy forces that might emerge on the road ahead. The third party to leave camp a few minutes after the vanguard has cleared are the surveyors, and they need to be near the front because their job is going to be to locate and lay out the location of the next camp. So they need to arrive at that new location before anybody else so that they can lay

27:16out what the camp is going to look like. The next unit to move out after the surveyors is the command unit. This consists of the general, his bodyguards, and their support staff. This allows the general to be close enough to the front to get any word that comes in about enemy forces and to provide direction, but not so close that he's likely to be taken out by an ambush. While these units are rolling out in their established order, the rest of the camp isn't just standing around in

27:49formation. There's a lot of work to be done. The entire camp has to be deconstructed. Ditches have to be filled in. Palisades or ramparts have to be removed so that this camp is not ready-made for somebody else to occupy and use against you. Legionary Valerius knows that once the command staff has left, he, his contrabinium, and the main body of the infantry will be the next to move out. So once the deconstruction tasks are finished, he falls in and awaits direction from his officers for when their unit

28:21is going to begin their march. This main body of the infantry is the single largest block of men that is going to be clearing the camp. This involves not just the main body of the foot soldiers, but many of their baggage wagons, support staff, and animals as well. Following them is the baggage train. Now you might wonder what goes in the baggage train. You thought the contrabiniums took all of their tents and their horses and their gear, and they did, but there's

28:52a lot more gear that an army needs to move than just what is required for individual squads to set up. The types of material you would see moving in the baggage train involve things like siege engines or catapults. They involve medical equipment. They involve spare horses in the hundreds and many, many more military servants or support staff. The rear guard leaves last. This is a body of men who are going to be marching behind the baggage train to provide protection to that unit from any enemy forces coming up from behind.

29:26This is really important because seizing the baggage train, which contained a lot of the extra food and money required to keep that army marching, would be a major victory for any enemy force. So it's very important to ensure the security of that unit. Now because the army normally consisted of more than one legion, you'd often be looking at forces of two to four, you have to imagine this orderly procession of units leaving camp as something that could take a couple of

29:58hours to complete. And you would need to give space after the exit of any one unit before the next unit exited the camp and began following. And while all of this is happening, there is also the flank guard that is clearing the camp at regular intervals. The flank guard is usually cavalry, so men on horses, and they're leaving in smaller handfuls at different points as the regular units of the army are leaving in their sequential order.

30:30The purpose of the flank guard is, as their name suggests, to guard the vulnerable sides of these units while they're on the march. And so these guys are leaving in small units continuously to screen the sides of the army on the move. As legionary Valerius, the members of his contrabinium and the main body of the infantry clear camp and begin to set out on their route for today's march, he's very grateful that today he'll be following

31:01one of the famous Roman roads. Progress is considerably slower when the army has to make its way across a raw landscape, and inevitably the route that the infantry follows has been trodden down, muddied, and smeared with horse and mule poop by the thousands of feet that have gone on the road before them. Walking on a road, by contrast, which is well-drained, flat, and level, built out of concrete and stones, as the Roman network of roads always were, makes marching a lot easier.

31:35The Romans built an enormous network of roads across their growing empire, and this enabled them to move large numbers of men, or legions, relatively quickly across the landscape. It also, of course, facilitated trade and travel across the empire, which was a major benefit as well, but the primary use of these roads was military, and the network reached some 50,000 miles or 80,000 kilometers. All of these roads were built to a Roman standard. They were level, they were well-drained, they had large paving stones, and some of them still survive in various parts

32:12of the old Roman Empire to this day. I've walked the Appian Way in Rome itself, a road that originally ran from the great capital all the way to the Adriatic coast, some 350 miles originally. As I walked along this road, I was looking for the little stamp or engravings that marks some of those stones as original stones laid down by Roman forces thousands of years ago. They are still there. Now, despite all the gear that he's carrying, legionary Valerius and his companions are marching at

32:47a pretty brisk clip. Historians think that the Roman army marched at something like 4.5 kilometers or 2.85 or 3 miles an hour, and this was their regular pace. They also had a quick march pace when they really needed to speed things up. So if they were in a hurry, they could march at a speed of 5.5 kilometers an hour, or 3.5 miles. If you've done any kind of trekking, rucking, or hiking whatsoever, you know that a

33:18speed of 4.5 to 5.5 kilometers an hour is very brisk indeed, and the heavier the pack you're carrying, the more punishing that's going to be over time. The legionary was expected to be able to cover 30 kilometers a day, which would have taken over 7 hours. Now, it would take over 7 hours because they wouldn't be marching continuously. Nobody marches for 7 hours non-stop, not even Roman legionaries. So when scholars are crunching the numbers on this, they think that on average they had something like a 10-minute

33:53break every hour. Now, we don't know that they set a clock and every 50 minutes paused, but overall we can estimate that for every 60 minutes of movement, built into that hour there were 10 minutes of rest. These breaks would obviously not be at the discretion of individual legionaries, but at the direction of their officers. These short breaks would allow men to drink, to relieve themselves, to eat some of the biscuit that they packed for resupplying themselves on the move, or to adjust parts of their packs or straps on their sandals that had

34:29become irritating. Now, even though they were expected to be able to march 30 kilometers, not all days were that long. That was just a requirement that any legionary should be able to perform when asked. So many days could be shorter, and some days could be longer. Now, some of you might have walked 30 kilometers in a day, and that's a significant amount of distance, but it doesn't compare to marching 25 or 30 kilometers day after day after day after day.

34:59What is the largest number of days that you've covered a distance of 30 kilometers? It's an interesting question, and it gives you an appreciation of the level of fitness that legionaries had to maintain. Today is going to be an easier day for legionary Valerius and the infantry. They're only going to be expected to march 25 kilometers, or 15 and a half miles. This means that from the time he left the army camp this morning, with the main body of the infantry

35:29at, say, 0800 hours, to the time that he arrives in the new camp at the end of the day today, something between eight and nine hours will have passed. When legionary valerius arrives in the new camp at close to 1700 hours, or 5 pm, the surveyors have already completed their work. They've clearly laid out the perimeter of the camp and where all the necessary pieces are going to go. Assembling a Roman military camp was very much like constructing a miniature city.

36:00And just like your favorite grocery store chain, the same things would be found in the same place every time. So if you go to any location of your favorite grocery store, you can expect to find the produce on one side, the meat on the other, the dairy in the back, and the dry goods in the middle. You don't have to re-navigate each store in that chain to figure out what new and unique place they found to put things in. Roman army camps were very much the same.

36:33They had the same structure, you were going to be building the same city every night. The commander's tent was always in the same spot fairly central, the cavalry had its own corner, there were standard lanes or streets that would connect various parts of the camp, so you wouldn't be navigating all over again from first principles every time the camp was set up. As Valerius and the infantry roll into the camp, the men are quickly separated and assigned different tasks. One of the major tasks is going to be to dig a ditch

37:07around the perimeter of the camp and to construct a defensive rampart, basically the walls. These features would protect soldiers from attack while they slept, and scholars think that it took somewhere between three and four hours to do this every single day. It also seems likely that soldiers were given one-hour shifts so that you wouldn't have some men who had a vastly greater caloric burn or energy expenditure at the end of a long day's march than others. They would often build multiple gates around the perimeter of the camp for ease of

37:41entry and exit the next morning as well. Other men were working inside the perimeter of the camp, setting up the tents with their contrabiniums. Now, the tent was a large leather kind of tent that was big enough to house eight to ten men, so this needed to be set up, along with unpacking a large cooking pot and various other food bags and tools that were associated with each individual squad of men. While camp is being set up, groups of men are also detailed to go outside the camp and forage for

38:17food, water, and firewood. They had to get many of these things from the surrounding area, and in addition to the men themselves, there were a lot of animals to feed. How many animals exactly? Well, for a standard legion that contained between four and five thousand men, they could have somewhere between thirteen hundred and fourteen hundred mules or support animals. All of these animals required food and water, and this is one reason why every legionary had to carry a

38:48hand scythe, because not only would he be harvesting grain in fields for himself and his comrades, he also had to bring back forage, sometimes hay or other vegetation, for animals to eat. And the main foraging need, of course, was water. Horses and pack animals consume somewhere between fifteen to thirty liters of water every single day. So fifteen liters is four gallons, thirty would be eight. This means an army camp had to be set up near a spring or some other natural source of water.

39:21The water source has to be located outside the walls of the camp, so you have to imagine large numbers of men heading outside of the protective perimeter of their camp, out into the landscape outside. This means that in addition to men who are going to be dedicated to gathering water, food, and firewood, you're going to need other men to cover or defend them. So some number of infantry and cavalry is going to be detailed to provide defensive cover for the men who

39:53are involved in the actual foraging activities themselves. We've talked about grain and water, but firewood was the third absolutely vital element, and this is because it was needed for cooking. Firewood was very important because the Roman grain ration was issued uncooked, which means this wheat needed to be boiled or baked in order to be transformed into a format that soldiers could eat. So no firewood, no dinner. Now all of this foraging and gathering is going to take some time, and even

40:25with a defense detail that is dedicated to protecting these foragers, it was still a very hazardous activity, and we do have records of Roman soldiers being attacked while they were out on foraging duty. When all of this construction and foraging was done, it was time to prepare supper. Now surprisingly, it seems that Roman contrabiniums, or squads, prepared food for themselves instead of eating in some kind of centralized mess hall with food prepared by army cooks. Legionaries would construct open hearths at the squad level, and they

40:59would use these to bake their bread and to cook their meat or other food items. So as I've said, a major part of the ration was wheat, wheat that had to be turned into bread. But the wheat was issued as dry kernels, which means if you want to make bread, you have to grind or mill that wheat. So every Roman contrabinium had a hand mill for this purpose, and the task of grinding the unit's grain ration into flour that could then be used to make bread was something that took a considerable

41:35amount of time. Now we have modern reconstructions of these Roman hand mills, and the time that it would take to mill the grain ration for eight men, the daily grain ration, would be something like a hundred minutes. So that's more than an hour and a half. It seems very likely that the Romans didn't do this milling every single day. It seems probable that they had someone in the unit mill several days worth of grain rations at once, and then use them for baking over multiple days.

42:09You couldn't bake too much bread ahead of time either, because it would go bad after something like four days. Now these hand mills weren't particularly small or lightweight. They consisted of two large discs made of basalt stone that would be rubbing against each other with the use of a wooden hand crank. They weighed something like 60 pounds, and this is why every contrabinium needed a pack animal. Plutarch describes these large hand mills being carried on pack animals during Mark Anthony's Parthian campaign in 36 BC.

42:43And he says, quote, the army was not well furnished with mills. These had been abandoned for the most part, since some of the pack animals had died. Now even after you've done all the milling of the grain, you still have to make the bread. And this is a process that could take between 45 minutes to two hours. You had to actually mix the flour with water. You might have to add some leavening or a rising agent.

43:13You had to knead that dough, you had to let it rise, and then you had to bake it. So the longer time of two hours involves rising time when you're using a leavening agent. The shorter time would be if you had some kind of a flat bread, which didn't involve the rising period. But either way, it was a laborious process. While the bread preparation is going on, there's also the cooking of meat and any legumes or other vegetables that our unit is going to eat.

43:46Roman army regulations said that meat had to be boiled or baked. They didn't want their soldiers getting all gourmet with their meal preparations. So you can imagine this open hearth, you can imagine bread being baked, and meat being boiled, and these steams and odors rising all across the camp. Now this describes the evening meal inside a Roman army camp. Obviously life in garrison was different. When you were sitting inside a structure that was more permanent, there was a

44:17different system for food production, and you had time and space for more luxuries. Now of course, all this food production we're talking about describes the life of our everyday legionary like Valerius. It was, as it is in every army around the world, somewhat different for the officers and the commander himself. They ate finer bread, something that was whiter and softer than the black coarse bread that your everyday legionary was making, and they did have support staff or slaves to do the food preparation for them.

44:51You can imagine that legionary Valerius is very grateful on this particular evening that there hasn't been a presence of enemy forces reported by the scouts, and this means that he and the members of his contrabinium can cook and eat a hot meal together. When there are enemy forces nearby, the army is not allowed to make fires, and that means dinner consists of cold, uncooked supplies that they have in their packs, which is considerably less appetizing after

45:21many hours of marching. But if you do have an entire army making cooking fires, the light and the smell of that is going to advertise their presence for some considerable distance around. But this evening the smells of the cooking fires are everywhere, men are warm, they're eating, they're jostling, they're joking with each other, there is smells of meat being cooked, and there are some other smells as well. You see, eventually legionary Valerius is going to need to use the bathroom.

45:52After many hours of marching, he's probably burned well over 5,000 calories, and if he was assigned an hour of digging to construct the camp or foraging, you could easily add another 500 calories or more on top of that. That means there's a lot of food required to fuel all that activity, and there's also going to be a lot of waste produced as a result. One estimate is that two legions, or roughly 10,000 men, would produce something like four tons of human excrement every single day. And that's not even counting all the animal waste, which of

46:29course is going to be expended throughout the camp everywhere, because animals don't use latrines. Researchers think that the Roman army dug ditches between the perimeter and the first row of tents. So these ditches are inside the camp, because obviously you want to be safe while you're going to relieve yourself, but these ditches would be near the perimeter, and they very likely set up some kind of a bench or a post horizontally that men could sit on and hang their backsides over so that they could drop their waste

47:02into the ditch. With this many men and animals, all of whom have the needs of nature to contend with, the smell of excrement would have been distinct and strong from anywhere in the camp. And we have sources that say that enemy forces could smell an army camp long before it came into sight. Now one obvious question you might be having at this point, as I did, was if you have all these legionaries who are sitting on a post and pooping into a ditch, how are they cleaning themselves up after that?

47:37Because Romans don't have toilet paper. The answer to this is going to make you cringe a little bit. So the most commonly reported theory is that the Romans used something that was basically a sponge on a stick. It was called a xylospongium. And this sponge stick rested in a bucket of water that was combined with salt or vinegar to give it some kind of disinfectant properties. And when you'd finish your business, you would grab the sponge stick, use it to clean yourself off, and then

48:09put it back into the disinfectant bucket for the next guy to use. I certainly hope that legionary Valerius was fastidious enough to carry his own xylospongium. However, there are other theories that claim that the xylospongium might have been used to clean the area and not the man. And there is some other evidence that Romans used other things as well. Pottery shards. Now, a pottery shard could be quite sharp, so it's important to note that the evidence we have involves smoothed pieces of broken ceramic, something that deliberately had the sharp edges sanded off so that you weren't in

48:46danger of damaging yourself seriously while trying to clean up after one of these trips. But there are archaeological remains of pottery shards that have human waste product attached to them, leading archaeologists to believe that this was another method Romans may have used to clean themselves after a visit to the latrine. Now, with all of these necessary tasks done, Valerius can return to his tent. The evening meal has been finished, the men are cleaning up, and now with these remaining hours of the day,

49:18legionaries might amuse themselves by playing dice, or attending to hygiene tasks such as shaving, or performing any other small repairs to their packs or their gear that might have become necessary over the course of the day. When it's time for lights out, Valerius knows that the other men in his contrabinium are going to crawl into their beds and rest their weary legs and feet. But he doesn't get to join them. At least, not just yet. And this is because legionary Valerius has been assigned to the first of four night

49:52watches. So men took up the watch in shifts, probably a couple of hours each, and during this period of time they would patrol the perimeter of the camp. They would do this to remain alert for any possible threats or enemy forces that might be approaching while other soldiers slept. The night watch was an extremely important duty. The security of all the men in the army depended on it, and Valerius will do his very best to keep his eyes open, because the punishment for falling asleep on watch

50:27or not being found at your sentry position when you were on duty could be very serious. You could be executed for that kind of negligence. So what are these Roman soldiers doing when they're on watch? Yes, they're walking around looking for threats. Yes, they're scanning the horizon. Yes, they're carrying torches. But we have at least one account of a Roman slave being asked about whether or not he was involved in sexual activity with the Roman soldier who owned him while they were on night watch

51:02duty. So this raises a whole other question about what was going on with sexual activity in a Roman army camp. Now, Romans took a very dim view of homosexual sex between legionaries, between fellow soldiers. However, they were entirely unbothered about sex with slaves, whether those slaves were male or female. The main thing seemed to be that a Roman male should not be having sex with another Roman male of the same status. But going after a youth who hadn't yet become a man or going after a slave was

51:37a totally different thing. It was in a different category. And that's why this story of a slave being asked about whether or not he was involved in sexual activity with his master is unsurprising from a Roman point of view. However, Roman legionaries who were found having sex with other Roman legionaries could be punished quite severely, with death. In the Republican period under General Marius, there was an officer by the name of Gaius Lucius who attempted to

52:08have sex with a younger soldier. The younger soldier responded by killing Gaius Lucius, so killing his superior officer. And Marius, who is the commander in charge of this campaign, considered that killing to be justified. Now, normally killing one's superior officer would be something that would get you executed. But what Marius is saying is that so severe was the taboo against having sex with another Roman male that this younger officer was totally justified in killing a superior officer if he was going to make such an unreasonable

52:43demand. This gives you some sense of how this was viewed, at least in the Republican period. We have some indications that regulations around this loosened up at various points in the imperial Roman army, but there was still a very strong difference in attitudes around homosexual sex amongst legionaries or men of the same status, and sexual activity that might take place between a Roman male and a slave or an immature male. Now, I'm not attempting to suggest that all Roman legionaries were looking for male sexual activity.

53:18In fact, we have lots of indication that there were prostitutes who often traveled with an army on campaign. And this wasn't just a Roman phenomenon. The idea of camp followers, people who follow around an army on the march and sell things, whether that's food, laundry services, or sexual services, is something that's been going on as long as military campaigns. And so, yes, in many cases there would be female prostitutes who were also available to Roman

53:49soldiers while they were on campaign. And when they were in garrison or staying in a particular region for some length of time, there would be local women in the towns that Roman legionaries would also visit. In fact, the number of prostitutes that might be traveling with or embedded in a military camp could be very significant. We have one account from 134 BC, which is Republican era, when a commander called Scipio Aemilianus had to expel some 2,000 prostitutes from his army camp to restore discipline and order.

54:24When you think about that mental picture, that's a lot of prostitutes. After what seems like forever, legionary Valerius sees the men of the second watch coming to relieve him. He gratefully hands over the torch and makes his way through the darkened lanes of the camp toward the tent of his contrabinium, where he will finally crawl into his bed and seek sleep. He knows that the morning is coming much sooner than he would like, and another long day of marching awaits.

54:57The Roman Empire was the biggest empire the world had ever seen at that point, and at its height, it stretched from York in the northern part of what is now England all the way to Baghdad in what is now modern-day Iraq. This was only possible because of the clockwork precision of the Roman army, refined over centuries of practice, and held together by a system of iron discipline with fierce punishments for infractions. But it also offered lucrative rewards, which kept everybody from the lowest legionary to the highest consul firmly determined to

55:34do their part and serve for the glory of Rome. I hope you've enjoyed this episode on a day in the life of the average Roman legionary, and I would love to know if there are other aspects of Roman history or the life of the legions that you would like to see me cover. You can send me a message right here in the comments, or on patreon.com slash Eva Schubert, or you can speak to me directly either on that site or in our upcoming live conversation on all things to do with Roman history. Thank you so much for being here, and I'll see you in the next episode.