06-18-2015, 08:30 PM
I often read the following explanation. Even if we will never know:
A centurio was a lifetime job. All day long until you get retired, with a nice pension. Well there might have been a risk: we don't know of any fixed age of retirement for centurions or length of service like we know it for the miles or the principalis.
The militia was not a lifetime job. A lot of careers ended rather soon after praefectus or tribune. Without a pension. There could be times of unemployment between deployments and promotions, so equestrians often switched between military and civilian life back and forth. That was rather the way of a senator following the senatorial career. A mode some equestrians surely appreciated very much. Perhaps some municipial nobles goaled for just 1 post anyways, in order to get the military title and prestige, but with the clear goal, to go back to civilian business as soon as possible.
Others thought the other way around:
- they prefered the guaranteed income, employment and pension, because their equestrian family was not that rich.
- they perhaps prefered to escape from their pater familias once and forever and not come back after 3 years
- they prefered a real job and wanted to be an officer and nothing else in between.
Well, also in the militia we find some real vires militares with a very impressing and rather not interupted career. But they most propably went not the one way or the other, because it was significantly faster.
Of course, these are just the most popular speculations of historians, I know of.
A centurio was a lifetime job. All day long until you get retired, with a nice pension. Well there might have been a risk: we don't know of any fixed age of retirement for centurions or length of service like we know it for the miles or the principalis.
The militia was not a lifetime job. A lot of careers ended rather soon after praefectus or tribune. Without a pension. There could be times of unemployment between deployments and promotions, so equestrians often switched between military and civilian life back and forth. That was rather the way of a senator following the senatorial career. A mode some equestrians surely appreciated very much. Perhaps some municipial nobles goaled for just 1 post anyways, in order to get the military title and prestige, but with the clear goal, to go back to civilian business as soon as possible.
Others thought the other way around:
- they prefered the guaranteed income, employment and pension, because their equestrian family was not that rich.
- they perhaps prefered to escape from their pater familias once and forever and not come back after 3 years
- they prefered a real job and wanted to be an officer and nothing else in between.
Well, also in the militia we find some real vires militares with a very impressing and rather not interupted career. But they most propably went not the one way or the other, because it was significantly faster.
Of course, these are just the most popular speculations of historians, I know of.
Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda voluntas
