The army was the biggest (typically 300,000 soldiers) and by far the most effectively organized power grouping in Roman politics. It combined hierarchy, training, a clear command structure, discipline, regular pay, flexibility in unit-size (from small maniple to army-size groups of several legions), and aggressive persistence in the pursuit of fixed objectives. It had no similarly effective rival or imitator in civilian politics. During the late Republican period of imperial expansion, soldiers, in search of bounty and security, had repeatedly intervened in central Italian politics. But under the emperors, as part of the Augustan settlement, the army was effectively depoliticised. This was an amazing political achievement.

After 31 BCE, frontier armies intervened directly in central politics only twice in more than two centuries: in 69 (after the death of Nero), and in193 (after the assassination of Commodus, and the auctioning of the imperial thone by the palace guards). The Roman peace meant both an end to imperial expansion (with the exception of Britain, Dacia (modern Roumania) and the absorption of marginal client kingdoms eg Mauretania (modern Morocco)), and the internal pacification of conquered provinces. As a result, for almost two centuries, most inhabitants of the Roman empire never or rarely saw a soldier. Rome had become a civil society.

This radical shift towards depoliticizing the military was engineered by a whole series of evolutionary changes. The great bulk of the army was eventually dispersed along distant frontiers, in garrisons which usually held only one legion (of 5¬6000 soldiers), so that centre-threatening co-operation between rival commanders became very difficult to achieve. Governors of provinces in which legions were stationed were typically chosen only after years of loyal service, and almost never from among the top echelons of the senatorial elite; ie army commanders by social rank were not regarded as potential claimants to the throne. They held office for only shortish terms (typically three years). Under-officers, - tribunes, prefects and centurions -, also either held office for short terms and/or were shifted to different legions on promotion, so that no long-term loyalty could be built up between under-officers and men.

Soldiers serving in legions (about 150,000 men), on the expiry of their service of 25-26 years were paid a loyalty bonus equal to thirteen years pay. The length of soldiers’ service was increased from an unsustainable sixteen years, first to twenty and then to twenty five years; this extension of military service both reduced costs, because a large proportion of soldiers died during these extra years, and mitigated problems of recruitment. This new system of cash bonuses to veterans on retirement, inaugurated in 6 CE, helped divert Roman legionaries from their traditional ambition to end their days owning Italian land, - a process which had contributed so much to land-seizures and the consequent political instability of the Late Republic. Instead, veterans increasingly of provincial origin, typically settled in the provinces, along the frontiers where they had already lived the bulk of their lives.25 The depoliticization of the army under the emperors was based on long service along distant frontiers, on the regular grant of a large bounty on retirement, on the increasingly provincial origin of the army, and on the severance of the link between citizens at Rome (soon disfranchised) and their empowerment by military service. There were fewer citizen soldiers, and effectively no citizen voters.

Locating the new imperial army along the distant frontiers contributed significantly to the rural depopulation of Italy even though the imperial army was necessarily, substantially and increasingly of provincial, ie not Italian, origin.26 A simple calculation illustrates probabilities. A legionary (ie citizen) army of 150,000 soldiers needs on average 7500 recruits per year; it may seem, it has seemed to some scholars, a smallish number from a free population of 5 million people. But if soldiers were recruited at age 20, they would have equalled 17% of all Italian citizen 20-year olds (if Italy’s free citizen population equalled 5 million, then in ancient conditions of mortality (e0 = 25.0), there were only male 45,535 survivors to exact age 20).If the soldiers then spent their army service in the provinces and settled there, Italy would be rapidly depopulated by emigration at this rate. 12 NB this calculation is not a statement of fact, but of parametric probability. Fertility obviously depends on the females left behind, as much as on the soldiers who emigrated; and about that we know nothing. But at first sight it seems that an unforseen consequence of Augustus’ and his successors’ policy of locating citizen troops along the frontiers was an immediate and significant depopulation of Italy.

Surviving evidence of burial inscriptions, which may or may nort be statistically representative, suggests that during the reign of Augustus, 68% of legionaries were of Italian origin. By the middle of the first century, this proportion had fallen to under half (48%), and by the end of the century to 22%; in the second century, apparently, only 2% of citizen soldiers were of Italian origin. No wonder that in AD 9 after the crushing defeat of a Roman army (3 legions each nominally of 6000 soldiers were killed in north Germany), Augustus who feared that the Germans would invade Italy, had great difficulty in raising recruits and resorted against all tradition to recruiting ex-slaves.

Military costs remained by far the largest element in the Roman state budget; in the first century CE, they accounted for over half the total (c. 450/800+ million). And although we with hindsight know that the Roman army did not often intervene in central politics, Roman emperors must always have feared that it might. The army had to be placated. What is surprising then is that, given the army's potential for disruption, soldiers' pay in terms of silver never surpassed the level which it reached in the reign of Augustus. Or put another way, every time that the nominal pay of soldiers was subsequently raised (in c83?, 193, 212), the silver coinage was soon debased so that the cost in precious metal to the treasury was held roughly constant. Soldiers collectively did not exercise their armed might to increase their sector share of total wealth. For whatever reason, it looks as though total army costs had reached the limit of what Roman financial administrators could raise or allocate to the army within the state budget.

The dispersion of the legionary armies and their auxiliary (non-citizen) counterparts, hundreds of miles from Rome along the frontiers, left a power vacuum at the centre. It was filled partially by the palace (praetorian) guard. This palace guard was a small elite troop, a few thousand strong, of highly paid soldiers, garrisoned in Rome. It was commanded by usually two prefects, whose powers were designed to balance each other. They were considered to be extremely influential within palace politics, but they were also only knights (albeit with the rank of consuls) and so socially disbarred from becoming emperor (until Macrinus in 217, but he reigned for only one year). On several occasions, the palace played a key role in securing the throne for a particular candidate. And for Roman historians, ancient and modern, individual successions to the throne have often seemed to be the very stuff of politics.

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