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British Centurions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

H. Dessau
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Extract

It is very remarkable, though quite intelligible that, while the province of Britain belonged for centuries to the Roman empire, its inhabitants took practically no share in the administration of the empire. No evidence suggests that a native of one of the municipalities, whether colonia or municipium, of Britain ever made his way into the Roman senate or the higher ranks of the equestrian order, and yet, if that had happened, inscriptions would exist among the monuments of Britain recording such honours won by Britons. The literary life of the empire was equally strange to the Britons; as Mr. J. R. Green says, “none of the poets or rhetoricians of the time is of British origin.” So too the lower military commands are never held by Britons. No cohort or ala is known to have been commanded by a man born in the island. Even the lower officers, the centurions, were rarely taken from the province, either for the legions quartered in the island or for those in other parts of the empire. Baehr and I had actually denied the existence of any legionary centurion of British origin, but Mr. Haverfield has pointed out to me a centurion of the XXIIth Legion stationed at Mainz, who appears to have been born in Lincoln (Lindum); and my attention has now been called to a legionary centurion whose British origin is not, indeed, absolutely certain, but who belongs in one way or another to Britain, and deserves to be introduced to the Britons of to-day.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 2 , November 1912 , pp. 21 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © H. Dessau 1912. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

page 21 note 1 Compare Haverfield, , The Romanization of Roman Britain (Proceedings of the British Academy 1905–1906, p. 189Google Scholar, ff); second edition, Clarendon Press, 1912.

page 21 note 2 The Making of England, p. 6.

page 21 note 3 De centurionibus legionariis quaestiones epigraphicae (dissert. Berol. 1900), p. 49Google Scholar, note 1.

page 21 note 4 Hermes, xlv (1900), p. 13Google Scholar, note 2.

page 21 note 5 Hermes, xlv, p. 619, C.I.L. xiii, 6679. That Lindum was the home of the dedicator of this inscription is unquestionable. That he was a centurion, and indeed a primipilus, is a highly probable conjecture of v. Domaszewski.

page 21 note 6 C.I.L. viii, 2877, printed here after the revision of a squeeze of the inscription brought from Africa by the late Professor Wilmanns.

page 22 note 1 He closed his carrer in the reign of Severus Alexander, as the title of the Legio III Parthica in the inscription (line 5) shows.

page 22 note 2 I assume that the centurionates of Virilis are given in the natural order of his promotion. In the enumeration of the distinctions of greater persons, the inverse order is commoner because in their cases specially important or honourable offices, a consulate or praefecture of the Praetorian Guards, can be placed at the head of the inscription. This reason does not apply to centurions. If Virilis had held his four last centurionates in Britain, we could not understand how he came to end his days in Africa with a British wife.

page 22 note 3 Mommsen, Ephem. epigr. v, p. 160, note 1. Domaszewski, Rangordnung, p. 82.

page 23 note 1 In the Chichester inscription, C.I.L. vii, 13, and in that of Bingen, C.I.L. xiii, 7519, the name rests on conjecture and in the former case on an unreasonably bold conjecture.

page 23 note 2 Mommsen, Ephem. epigr. iv, p. 238; v. Domaszewski, Rangordnung, p. 93.

page 23 note 3 Domaszewski, Rangordnung, p. 96, has rightly, given up Mommsen's view. He thinks that Virilis became, after five changes of legion, in coborte nona bastatus posterior. But he has not asked himself why this miserable preferment should be picked out for mention on the tombstone of the old man.

page 24 note 1 C.I.L. vi, 1549=Dessau, Inscr. sel. 1100.

page 24 note 2 The name Alexandri is erased but still legible. The name lasuctan was read by the Delrieu, Abbé (Revue Archéologique, xxxi (1876) p. 128)Google Scholar. Wilmanns hesitated between Fasuctan and Easuctan, and this latter form has been printed in the Corpus. The inscription itself appears to be lost.

page 24 note 3 C.I.L. viii, 1048. For the Phoenician text see Schroeder, Die phoenizische Sprache, p. 272; Lidzbarski, Nordesmitische Epigraphik, p. 436, no. II. In the Latin text the Libyan ending of the name is shortened (Iasucta), but in the Punic text it is preserved. In the latter occur the words Baal b(a)m(a)ktar(i)m, as in some inscriptions found at or near Mactaris (Berger, Comptes rendus de L'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Letters, 1890, p. 40); hence the conjecture that this stone also comes from Mactaris.

page 24 note 4 That Legio XX, or even a part of it, was sent to Africa in the reign of Severus Alexander is not likely (Cagnat, Armée romaine d'Afrique, p. 111).