How were Roman Legions disarmed/disbanded before entering Italia?
Upvote:12
Legions were supposed to disarm (edit: disband) themselves before coming back to Rome, in order to discourage any coups.
As far as I know, legions weren't required to disarm or disband when returning to Rome, which makes sense: you didn't want the army to be unable to defend the capital if the Gauls or rival generals attacked the capital.
The rule relating to Caesar crossing the Rubicon was that Caesar had been granted proconsular authority only over Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum (and later over Transalpine Gaul as well). This meant that he had no "power of command" (imperium) outside of those provinces -- it would have been just as illegal for him to lead an army into Spain or Greece as it would to lead it into Italy. Technically, he lost imperium when he crossed the border, i.e. his soldiers were under no obligation to follow him over the border and he had no authority over them. However, Legio XIII Gemina (like just about every legion Caesar commanded) were fiercely loyal to him, and continued following his orders even though it was against the law. To clarify: my understanding is that the law didn't say that legions were automatically disbanded when they crossed into Italy, but that it was illegal for a general with imperium to lead the army somewhere where he didn't have imperium.
So who could lead an army in Italy? Anyone given that authority by the senate. This was generally the consuls, the highest elected officials in Rome. When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, these were Gaius Claudius Marcellus Maior and Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Crus. With Caesar's approach, however, effective control was given to Pompey, who was already under orders from the senate to raise 130,000 soldiers to defend Rome from Caesar. Note that these soldiers were in Italy at the time, armed and ready to fight -- so clearly leading an army in Italy wasn't itself illegal! Pompey opted to retreat to Greece with the soldiers under his command, where his allies could provide troops and supplies to him and his army. The rest, of course, is history.
I couldn't find a lot of information on the no-armies-in-Italy rule, so hopefully someone else will contribute some here. There was definitely a no-armies-in-(central)-Rome prohibition, based on the Pomerium. This law was important enough that most of Sulla's commanders refused to violate it in 88-87 BC. Incidentally, all of this is based on pre-Imperial Roman history -- in 28 BC, the Caesar Augustus was granted imperium over every single province, so he (and all future emperors) outranked every general, magistrate, governor, proconsul or consul anywhere in the empire.
To answer the rest of your question, I don't think Roman legions were often deliberately disbanded: there's records of legions mobilized over several hundred years, which I assume means that soldiers would be honorably discharged after serving for a standard 25 year term -- and, if they weren't Roman citizens, be granted citizenship for their service. I know there are some records of legions being disbanded, either because they could no longer be trusted, such as Legio IV Macedonica (in which case a "new" legion with the same number was immediately raied) or after a particularly brutal loss, such as Legio XVII, which was lost in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest and whose number would never be re-raised. but I don't think Roman legions would be uniformly disbanded at a particular place or time.
Upvote:14
It wasn't an issue of disarming as much as disbanding. Unless the legion was under the control of the local (Rome) ruler, it wasn't allowed to enter the city as a unit:
Governors of Roman provinces were appointed promagistrates with imperium (roughly, "right to command") in their province(s). The governor would then serve as the general of the Roman army within the territory of his province(s). Roman law specified that only the elected magistrates (consuls and praetors) could hold imperium within Italy. Any promagistrate who entered Italy at the head of his troops forfeited his imperium and was therefore no longer legally allowed to command troops.
So the rule was against a general and his troops entering as a functioning military force.
If a general entered Italy whilst exercising command of an army, both the general and his soldiers became outlaws and were automatically condemned to death. Generals were thus obliged to disband their armies before entering Italy.
So when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, he entered the area of another's command:
In 49 BC, perhaps on January 10, C. Julius Caesar led a single legion, Legio XIII, south over the Rubicon from Cisalpine Gaul to Italy to make his way to Rome. In doing so, he (deliberately) broke the law on imperium and made armed conflict inevitable
all above from Crossing the Rubicon .
More post
- 📝 Did ancient peoples apply starch to clothing?
- 📝 Why does the M61 Vulcan have a flash suppressor?
- 📝 Which culture first referenced bigfoot?
- 📝 Who are the five figures in the niches in the 'Monument of Marchese Spinetta Malaspina'
- 📝 At what point do armies tend to break?
- 📝 Is there a term for the principle of preferring earlier statements over later statements made by historical eye witnesses?
- 📝 Did "droit du seigneur" actually exist in medieval Europe?
- 📝 Virtus romana vs h*m*sexuality
- 📝 Was American slavery economically advantageous primarily due to being able to also sell offspring?
- 📝 How do they prove adultery before video/digital evidence was available?
- 📝 Who was the earliest historian of the Greco-Roman world to write something substantial about China?
- 📝 Was sexual abuse/assault a unique feature of American Slavery or was there similar abuse in previous slave systems?
- 📝 Why did antique guns and swords from the Franco-Prussian War make part of the demilitarization program to which Germany was subjected?
- 📝 What was Martin Luther's incentive for reformation?
- 📝 Were there any Russians in the 1849 Gold Rush?
- 📝 Did Northern troops attempt to re-enslave African Americans in Southern plantations during the Civil War?
- 📝 Are the war plans published in "Dropshot: The American Plan for World War III against Russia in 1957" genuine?
- 📝 Ancient and medieval canteens (water-bottles)
- 📝 Who were the first people to get divorced in Western* Christendom?
- 📝 Were there early modern precursors to eugenics?
- 📝 Who revoked their signatures from the union agreement at the Council of Florence?
- 📝 Why did few French and no Dutch pilots (but many Poles and Czechs) take part in the Battle of Britain?
- 📝 When were public roads cleaned electromagnetically?
- 📝 What were the neoplatonists' attitude towards Christianity (or religion in general)?
- 📝 Who were the Deer Touchers?
- 📝 How accurate is the fatalistic samurai culture in James Clavell's novel Shogun?
- 📝 Why did the United States want to "make Europe prosperous once more" with the Marshall Plan?
- 📝 What kind of building materials did Cavendish use in determining the density of the earth?
- 📝 When were the first mosques established in Constantinople?
- 📝 When and how did people begin to consider slavery immoral?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 How were Roman Legions disarmed/disbanded before entering Italia?
- 📝 How alcoholic were ancient Greek and Roman wines, before and after dilution?
- 📝 How quickly could the Roman legions march? How did it compare to their cavalry?
- 📝 How rich were carpenters in Roman Galilee in the 1st century AD?
- 📝 Where were the western legions when the Roman empire fell?
- 📝 How did people say “I have to go to the bathroom” before the bathroom and pipes were common?
- 📝 How were interracial relationships between African-Americans and Latinos treated in Southern states before the Loving decision?
- 📝 How were the borders of the Holy Roman Empire established?
- 📝 How many citizens were in each century of the Roman electoral system?
- 📝 What Roman legions in Hispania revolted against Caesar before the battle at Munda?
- 📝 How were middle ranking Nazis known to the allies before the end of the war?
- 📝 Before the use of Anno Domini dating (BCE/CE), how were years numbered?
- 📝 What Roman legions were present in London (UK)?
- 📝 What were the incentives for joining the Roman army before the Marian reforms?
- 📝 How important were reprints of scientific articles in scientific practice and communications before the the copier, the computer and the internet?
- 📝 How were political factions in the late Roman republic different from political parties today?
- 📝 Before and during WW2, how were war games played?
- 📝 How common were professional musicians before the advent of recorded music?
- 📝 How many Western Roman rump states were there?
- 📝 How were provincial Roman accounting and taxes handled under Hadrian?
- 📝 How were the territories added to (and thus the limits set in) the Holy Roman Empire
- 📝 Right before D-Day, how were naval mines cleared secretly?
- 📝 How were Icelandic bishops elected before the union with Norway?
- 📝 Matchsticks were invented in 1805 . How did humans get fire in everyday lives before then?
- 📝 How exactly were the titles of the Roman emperors passed on to their heirs
- 📝 How many words were written before Gutenberg
- 📝 How effective were archers/ slingers / skirmishers in Greek, Roman and Medieval Period?
- 📝 How were the Roman Triarii trained?
- 📝 In real terms how many alcoholics were there before prohibition vs after prohibition?
- 📝 What were paper airplanes called before there were real airplanes? (i.e. untethered winged flyers, not kites or balloons)
