This blog follows the equipment of Publius, a Roman legionary of the second legion under Emperor Augustus in 19 BC. He fights in Iberia against rebellious tribes that resist Roman rule with guerrilla tactics.

Caesar's Legacy

The first century BC was a very turbulent period in Roman history, characterized by civil wars and political unrest. Due to growing inequality in Roman society, a great conflict had emerged between land reformers and conservative aristocrats. Gaius Julius Caesar had become very popular with the people under these circumstances because of his populist politics. This not only allowed him to become consul and proconsul (governor) of Gaul, but also to win the conflict between the populares and optimates and be appointed dictator for life. His rule came to an end on the Ides of March in 44 BC, when he was murdered by a conspiracy of optimates, enemies whom he had spared as a show of power.

The conspirators, who called themselves the liberatores (liberators), were led by Marcus Iunius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. They saw Caesar as a new king and a threat to the republic and the power of the senate that needed to be eliminated, despite the fact that Caesar had been a father figure to Brutus for much of his life. However, they had miscalculated that a large part of the people and army would stand behind them: the legions loyal to Caesar and his followers drove them out of the Italian peninsula. These troops were now led by the three most important successors of Caesar, namely Marcus Antonius, his right-hand man, Lepidus, the praetor who had appointed him dictator, and Gaius Octavianus, his young great-nephew. Despite his lack of experience and young age (18 years old when Caesar died), this Octavianus would manage to seize Rome's power in the coming decade.

The Second Triumvirate

In the first year after Caesar's death, a great conflict arose between Octavianus and Marcus Antonius over Caesar's inheritance. This allowed the liberatores in the Eastern provinces to build an army. Under the leadership of the son of the old arch-enemy of Caesar, Sextus Pompeius, a fleet blocked the grain supply to Rome to starve the city. Marcus Antonius, Octavianus, and Lepidus came together and formed the so-called Second Triumvirate (rule of three) to stop the liberatores. Caesar's successors received dictatorial powers from the senate for this.

In 42 BC, Marcus Antonius and Octavianus made short work of the armies of Cassius and Brutus at Philippi in Macedonia in two battles. The leaders of the liberatores committed suicide one by one after both their defeats, so as not to be taken prisoner. Marcus Antonius ensured that the body of Brutus was treated with respect and buried, because the two had been closely friends for their entire lives during the civil war and Brutus would only have participated in Caesar's murder if Antonius was spared. Marcus Antonius remained in the East of the Roman Empire, while Octavianus returned to Italy.

On the home front, Octavianus showed less mercy to their enemies and brought about a terror comparable to the rule of Sulla. The estates and possessions of Romans who had sympathies for the liberatores or criticism for the triumvirate were confiscated; traitors were murdered in bloody fashion.

Meanwhile, cracks had already formed in the triumvirate. Octavianus managed to mislead Lepidus behind the army of the young Pompeius in North Africa in 36 BC. Due to the poor performance of their general, Octavianus managed to make large parts of Lepidus' army defect to him. This made him the ruler in the west and Lepidus fell out of the triumvirate. Marcus Antonius began at the same time to behave like a Hellenistic king and became dependent on the Egyptian queen Cleopatra from that same year, who had been placed on the throne by Caesar 10 years earlier. Marcus Antonius broke his marriage to Octavianus' sister and became the stepfather of Caesarion, the child Cleopatra had with Caesar. Between 33 and 32 BC, Octavianus managed to turn the Roman people and senate against Marcus Antonius by effectively using propaganda that depicted him as a traitor and Eastern despot, who under Cleopatra's influence wanted to make the Eastern part of the Roman Empire a Ptolemaic monarchy.

Octavianus had become the favorite successor of Caesar in the eyes of the senate, the people, and Rome's armies. In 31 BC, with the help of his general Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, he defeated the Ptolemaic fleet at Actium in Greece; in the following year he conquered Egypt. Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra committed suicide shortly after one another, and Octavianus had the young Caesarion executed. With this, Octavianus achieved final victory and was not only the most powerful man in the Roman Empire, but in the (former) Hellenistic world.

Augustus: The First Emperor

Because he had ended an almost centuries-long series of civil wars, Octavianus was received in Rome as a hero. He retained the dictatorial power from the triumvirate and was elected consul year after year. In 27 BC, he received a new title from the senate, Augustus (the exalted one), which emphasized him as a figure appointed by the gods to rule Rome. Although this was true in everything but name, he ensured that he was never considered a monarch. He let the senate continue to exist and, in addition to 'the exalted one', did not receive the title of emperor, but princeps: the 'first among equals' of the senate (princeps senatus) and the people of Rome (princeps civitas). This title was also unofficially used by the consuls of the republic, and in this way Augustus also grounded his appointment as sole ruler in Rome's traditions. Although he was seen as the man who restored the republic, he was in fact the one who delivered the final blow to the old political structure.

To ensure that his sole rule was accepted, Augustus provided a large amount of propaganda. For this, he made very effective use of Roman symbolism and tradition, which he subtly reformed to justify his power and present himself as a man of action who had brought peace and stability. The emperor cult that had arisen did not depict him as a despot or military ruler, but as a pater patriae, a kind of 'father of the people' who was the ultimate patron with all Romans as his clients. Just as a father in patriarchal Roman society ruled over the family, Augustus ruled over the Roman Empire.

In particular, the bringing of peace was strongly emphasized in his propaganda. Thus, in 29 BC, after the deaths of Cleopatra and Marcus Antonius, he had the doors of the temple of Janus in Rome closed. These doors had been an important symbol in Roman society since the time of kings: they remained closed in times of peace and were opened when Rome went to war. Throughout Roman history until the time of Augustus, the doors had only been closed a few times for short periods; the last time was more than 200 years ago, after the end of the First Punic War in 241 BC. With this, the emperor symbolized that after the wars with Carthage, the conflicts with the Gauls and other Latin peoples, and finally all civil wars, he had at last brought peace back to Rome. He also had texts such as the Res Gestae Divi Augusti (the deeds of the divine Augustus) distributed throughout the empire in the form of inscriptions, a kind of reports in the first person in which he described his accomplishments and virtue to the people.

Although he presented himself as a bringer of peace, Augustus soon set Rome on the warpath. Under his rule, the Romans conquered the last parts of Iberia, the Alps, and the Danube regions. He also tried to conquer Germania as far as the Elbe, but this failed with a spectacular defeat, the Varus Disaster in the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD. Finally, Augustus died in 14 AD, and his adopted descendants would succeed him; the foundation of a dynasty that would bring anything but peace to the Roman Empire in the coming century.

The Army of the Principate

The armor of the legionary was provided by the Roman government during the principate. This produced armor, weapons, and clothing in special fabricae, workshops throughout the empire. Weapon equipment was produced and reused on a large scale: this made the equipment of the legions consistent. The difference between the hastati, principes, and triarii had become obsolete in this period. Instead, the army was composed of Legionaries, auxiliary cavalry, and auxiliary archers. The advantage of this was that the focus was on a consistent type of infantry with consistent equipment, training, and organization.

The equipment of a legionary was designed to be as practical and functional as possible. After all, a legionary had to not only be able to fight in his full equipment, but also march long distances in a day or stand guard for long periods.

Roman legionaries like Publius had similar clothing and equipment, but were not uniform. Although they received their equipment from the Roman state, much was also shared or taken from previous generations. So Publius received his helmet, shield, gladius, belt, and sandals from the state, but he wears the old mail shirt and spear of his father Titus, an old veteran who still fought in the thirteenth legion under Caesar in Gaul and his civil war against Pompeius.

Equipment of Publius the Legionary

Clothing

Tunica (Tunic)

In Roman society, the wool (or linen) tunic was the most important garment for both men and women. It was very fashionable in the republican period to make it long and flowing, to give the same appearance as the more formal toga worn by Roman citizens. However, this was not practical for legionaries, so they wore a short tunic.

The tunic that Publius wears is made of wool and dyed red. In modern depictions, legionaries often wear red because this color was a symbol for the god of war Mars. However, it is unclear whether legionaries even wore a colored tunic, since the state had their equipment produced as cheaply as possible. Also, the color was not uniform per legion (or even per cohort). Soldiers often wore tunics from other batches, or had clothing sent from home.