The Roman Army, 31 BC–AD 337: A Sourcebook

168 The Roman Army
277 CJ 12. 33(34). 1
Emperors Severus and Antoninus Augusti, greetings to their Antonius.
If you wish to put your name forward for military service, present
yourselves to those who have the right to check recruits. But you should
not be unaware that those who seek to enlist because they are involved
in litigation, are normally dismissed from the service on the demand of
their opponents.
278 D 22. 5. 3 .6
(Callistratus (3rd C.AD), Book IV On Judicial Enquiries)
Witnesses should not be summoned without good reason to travel a
long distance, and still less should soldiers be summoned from the
standards and their duties for the purpose of giving evidence; the divine
Hadrian established this point in a rescript.
279 D 49. 16. 3. 1
(Modestinus (3rd C.AD), Book IV On Punishments)
Military punishments are of the following types: reprimand, fines,
imposition of fatigues, transfer to another branch of the army, reduction
in rank, dishonourable discharge. For soldiers are not condemned to
the mines or to hard labour, and are not subjected to torture.
Veterans and sons of veterans were also immune from certain punishments (D
49. 18. 3).
The legal texts show that Roman law, which normally served the interests
of the upper classes, gave a privileged position to soldiers, who, being generally
from a poor background, lacked the usual criterion for special treatment—
social eminence. This demonstrates the importance of the part they played in
life and society in the Roman world and in the nexus of imperial politics, since
their loyalty was critical for emperors. The jurists recognized that soldiers were
likely to have a superiority in court, and we may see this point in certain other
restrictions on the legal activities of soldiers—on accepting as gifts items involved
in litigation (D 4. 7. 11), on acting as agent for a third party (CJ 2. 12. 7), on
purchasing land in the province where they served (D 49. 16. 9 pref.). It is
difficult to define how soldiers were ‘more formidable’ in court and to what
extent Juvenal, with a satirist’s licence, was exaggerating the problem. For
civilian plaintiffs it was doubtless difficult to pursue through the usual legal
process soldiers who could exploit official unwillingness to have them taken
away from the camp. It was a principle of Roman law that a suit should be
brought in the forum of the defendant, i.e., where he lived. That might mean a