The Roman Army
Marcus Cornelius Fronto

AD 163

Even Viriathus and even Spartacus were skilled in war and quick to strike. But indeed, if you wish to count up the full tale of all the orators, as many as have existed since the foundation of Rome, including those whom Cicero in his Brutus endowed wholesale with the franchise of eloquence, you will scarcely make up the number of three hundred all told, while from one family of the Fabii there fell fighting for their country in one day three hundred soldiers, the bravest of the brave. Not of races many thousands ... to the height of eloquence ...where the subject calls for it ... or to speak on a matter in a lower key...

It was surely, Imperator, not the circus or the breastplate that instilled these wise ideas into you from your earliest boyhood, but books and training in letters. When you read many instances of this kind, fruitful of wise suggestion, in histories and speeches, you used eloquence as your mistress in the art of war.

The army you took over was demoralized with luxury and immorality and prolonged idleness. The soldiers at Antioch were wont to spend their time clapping actors, and were more often found in the nearest café-garden than in the ranks. Horses shaggy from neglect, but every hair plucked from their riders; a rare sight was a soldier with arm or leg hairy. Withal the men better clothed than armed, so much so that Pontius Laelianus, a man of character and a disciplinarian of the old school, in some cases ripped up their cuirasses with his fingertips; he found horses saddled with cushions, and by his orders the little pommels on them were slit open and the down plucked from their pillions as from geese. Few of the soldiers could vault upon their steeds, the rest scrambled clumsily up by dint of heel or knee or ham; not many could make their spears hurtle, most tossed them like toy lances without verve and vigour. Gambling was rife in camp; sleep night-long, or, if a watch was kept, it was over the wine-cups.

By what disciplinary measures you were to break-in soldiers of this stamp and make them serviceable and strenuous did you not learn from the dourness of Hannibal, the stern discipline of Africanus, the exemplary methods of Metellus, of which histories are full? This very precaution of yours, a lesson drawn from long study, not to engage the enemy in a pitched battle until you had seasoned your men with skirmishes and minor successes--did you not learn it from Cato, a man equally consummate as orator and as commander? I subjoin Cato's very words, in which you can detect the express counterpart of your measures: Meanwhile I tested each separate squadron, maniple, cohort, to gauge its capabilities. By little combats I found out the calibre of each man; if a soldier had done gallant service I rewarded him handsomely, that others might have a mind to the same, and in my address to the soldiers I was profuse in his praise. Meanwhile I made a few encampments here and there, but when the season of the year came round, I established winter quarters . . . . tradition tells us that Cato's bust used to be carried forth from the Senate; if by reason of his military exploits, why not the bust of Camillus? why not of Capitolinus? why not of Curius and other generals?...

Lucius had either to take new citizens by a levy for the Parthian war, or out of the reserve legionaries, demoralized by dull and lax service, choose the stoutest men. For after the Emperor Trajan's time the armies were almost destitute of military training, Hadrian being energetic enough in mobilizing his friends and eloquently addressing his armies and generally in the appliances of war. Moreover he preferred to give up, rather than to hold with an army, the provinces which Trajan had taken in various wars, and which now required to be organized. Records of his progresses one can see set up in many a city of Asia ad Europe, as well tombs built of stone as many others.

He made his way not only into frozen lands, but also into others of a southern situation, to the advantage of those provinces which, lying beyond the Euphrates and the Danube, Trajan had annexed to the Roman Empire with the hope that he could add them to Moesia and the province of Asia. These entire provinces, Dacia and the parts lost by the Parthians, Hadrian voluntarily restored. His armies in Asia he amused with "sallies" in the camp instead of with swords and shields; a general the like of him the army never afterwards saw.

The same devotion to peace is said to have withheld him from action absolutely justified, so that in his freedom from empty ambition he is clearly comparable in all the line of Roman Emperors to Numa alone.

Peace ... that the state should be governed by him ... nor being enamoured of a new war against the Parthians, so by long unfamiliarity with fighting the Roman soldier was reduced to a cowardly condition. For as to all the arts of life, so especially to the business of war, is sloth fatal. It is of the greatest importance also for soldiers to experience the ups and downs of fortune, and to take strenuous exercise in the open.

The most demoralized of all, however, were the Syrian soldiers, mutinous, disobedient, seldom with their units, straying in front of their prescribed posts, roving about like scouts, tipsy from noon one day to the next, unused even to carrying their arms, and, as from dislike of toil they left off one arm after another, like skirmishers and slingers half naked. Apart from scandals of this kind, they had been so cowed by unsuccessful battles as to turn their backs at the first sight of the Parthians and to listen for the trumpet as the signal for flight.

This great decay in military discipline Lucius took in hand as the case demanded, setting up his own energy in the service as a pattern. Marching in person at the head of his troops, he tried himself with trudging on foot quite as often as he rode on horseback; he made no more of the blazing sun than of a bright day; the choking dust he put up with like a mist; sweating under arms he minded as little as sweating at athletics; he left his head exposed to sun and shower and hail and snow, and unprotected even against missiles; he was careful to inspect the soldiers in the field, and go the round of the sick; he visited the soldiers' quarters with no unobservant eye; cast a casual but keen glance at the Syrians' dandy ways and the gaucheries of the Pannonians; from each man's manner of life he divined his character. After all his business done, he took a belated bath himself; his table plain, his food the common camp-fare; his drink the wine of the locality, the water of the season; he keeps the first watch easily, for the last he is awake long beforehand and waiting; work is more to his taste than leisure, and his leisure he misuses for work; time not required for military duties he devotes to civil business. In a sudden emergency he has utilized boughs on occasion or leaves by way of bedding, stretching himself at times on the turf as his couch. The sleep he took was earned by toil, not wooed with silence. The more serious misdemeanours only did he punish severely, the more trifling ones he knew how not to see; he left room for repentance. For many a man corrects his own faults, while he thinks them unperceived; when he sees that they are known, he brazens them out ... through so many provinces, so many open dangers of sieges, battles, citadels, ports, and fortresses stormed, he lavished care and counsels, not luxuries, though he showered upon them a thousand spoils...

Lucius in the skilfulness of his measures far superior.... knew that the mail-clad troops were like finny monsters, that diving headlong in the deep sea they escape.... to prance about on the wide champaign. Horses without firm footing on the slippery ground, hands numbed with cold, bows limp with the rain.... A few days before Lucius of his own accord had sent a letter to Vologaesus to put an end to the war by agreement, if he would; but the barbarian, while he spurned the offer of peace, paid dearly for it.

This fact shews clearly how much Lucius had the lives of his soldiers at heart, ready as he was to purchase a bloodless peace at the price of his own glory. With Trajan, as many judge from the rest of his ambitions, his own glory was likely to have been dearer than the blood of his soldiers, for he often sent back disappointed the ambassadors of the Parthian king when they prayed for peace.

C.R. Haines. The Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto. (London: 1920), II:147-151, 207-213.