Caesar's Double-Strength First Cohorts

[Patrick Waterson]

This seems to be what people actually did, Jim.  Caesar notes when he entered Italy at the start of the civil war that Thermus was holding Iguvium with five cohorts (Civil War I.12), Attius Varus was holding Auximum with ten cohorts (ibid.) and Caesar himself at Arminium sends Antony to Arretium with five cohorts while he stays in Arminium with two cohorts and begins levying troops on the spot (Civil War I.11).  In I.18 Caesar incorporates the (surrendered) cohorts of Attius into his own army.

Meanwhile Domitius, in Corfinium with 'more than 30 cohorts' is cut off by Caesar (I.17).  Caesar himself brings up the 8th Legion 'with 22 cohorts from the latest levies in Gaul'.  In I.23 Caesar orders Domitius' (surrendered) troops to take the oath of allegiance to himself, while in I.24 Pompey orders all the forces raised in the recent levies to be assembled at Brundisium.  A praetor, Lucius Manlius, flees Alba with six cohorts and another praetor, Rutilius Lupus, leaves Tarracina with three.  Meanwhile, several cohorts join Caesar on his march.

One does get the impression that men are being raised in cohorts, and cohorts are only afterwards being assembled into legions (and even then one gets the impression they can switch about a bit).

[Jim Webster]

I would ask the next question, was being in a legion something a bit special?
Remember the religious significance of legionary standards etc.
Also, in some parts of the 'empire' where the civil war was fought out, just what proportion of the men recruited were citizens before they were recruited?
A lot of the literature comments on just how many Italians you found in, for example, Asia Minor, but Roman citizens are less common. Now with the end of the Social war, there could be more citizens, but were they as highly regarded?
Speculating here

Jim

[Patrick Waterson]

I shall have to speculate a bit in return. 

The impression I get is that both sides, but especially Pompey, were dragging men together on whatever basis or excuse they could manage.  In Italy the non-Roman allies (socii) were all now citizens, so no problem there as technically and in practice they can go straight into a legion (or, more accurately, be recruited into a cohort and get assigned to a legion sooner or later), but further afield, especially in places like Pontus and Syria, one does start to wonder.

Caesar (Civil War III.4) gives us the following:

"He [Pompey] had raised nine legions of Roman citizens; five he had brought with him from Italy; one had been sent him from Cilicia, consisting wholly of veterans, and called Gemella, because composed of two; another from Crete and Macedonia, of veteran soldiers likewise, who, having been disbanded by former generals, had settled in those parts; and two more from Asia, levied by the care of Lentulus. Besides all these, he had great numbers from Thessaly, Boeotia, Achaia, and Epirus; whom, together with Antony's soldiers, he distributed among the legions by way of recruits. He expected also two legions that Metellus Scipio was to bring out of Syria."

Given the number of ex-soldiers, settlers and general dogsbodies apparently living in the Near East, it is possible that the people in these legions were all Roman citizens.  It is also quite likely that numbers of the locals had applied for Roman citizenship, if only as a way of ducking out of taxes, and now found themselves having to undertake the military service part of citizenship.

Being in a legion would, I think, be considered special, as the legions were the field armies proudly bearing eagles and led by consuls whereas cohorts not embodied in a legion were usually out-of-the-way garrisons, far less spectacular and not so good for boasting to the girls when one got back home.  Naturally, in a civil war where both sides are scraping the bottom of the barrel for troops, the bar might be a bit lower or more flexible than usual.