Legion transfers

[Nathan Ross]

If I remember Summerly's thesis

It's been a while since I last read Summerly, but I thought he'd found that long distance transfers became more common after the earlier Julio-Claudian period. I may have to look at it again!

However, that they did - and that men from the ranks could also be moved in this way - is suggested by CIL XI.390: Lepidius Proculus starts as a soldier in V Macedonica, is promoted to centurion in the same legion, and decorated in the Jewish War under Vespasian, then gets a transfer to VI Victrix, then to XV Apollinaris, before becoming Primus Pilus of XIII Gemina.

Vi Victrix at this date were based in Germania Inferior, and if they'd sent a detachment east to the Jewish War Josephus would have mentioned it. So Proculus, a former enlisted man, was moving from one end of the empire to the other in the early Flavian era.

We don't really know why these transfers happened, of course - in some cases, it might be explained by a mobile vexillation, or perhaps by a governor moving provinces and taking some client officers with him. Patronage almost certainly played a part, as you suggest. But I don't think there can always be such a neat explanation.

Petronius Fortunatus (ILS 2658) was also from the ranks, promoted to centurion ex suffragium legionis after only four years service, then then transferred thirteen times over a fifty-year career. He must have spent a considerable amount of this time travelling from one posting to the next, and there must surely have been some sort of central bureaucracy in Rome directing his transfers.

I'm not aware of any new research on this subject, but DB Campbell's article 'Backbone of the Legions: Some centurions and their careers' (Ancient Warfare Special, 2010) has some interesting discussion of the evidence.