The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History - Karatunov.net

C u lt u re o f t h e R o m a n A r m y 147
outside their forts and were often given barley rations instead of wheat. This is
p s ych o l ogical punishment with an in-built el em ent of p u blic hu m i l i a ti on , a
procedure that Augustus adopted when he made a soldier stand outside his tent
clad in only a tunic and holding a clod of earth. Commanders were at liberty to
d ream up va ri a ti ons on this them e , and soldiers had few means of making a
protest.
The main forms of p u n i s h m ent inclu ded exec uti on , be a ti n g, p aym ent of
f i n e s , ex tra fati g u e s , dem o ti on or loss of ra n k , and dishon ora ble disch a r ge
( Ca m pbell , 1 9 8 4 ; Wa t s on , 1 9 6 9 ) . Al t h o u gh certain punishments were prescribed
for certain offences, they were not rigidly applied by commanders, who
usually used their discretion. The death penalty was reserved for serious crimes
such as inciting mutiny or rebellion, insubordination, going over to the enemy,
or striking an officer. On some occasions emperors and commanders could order
executions quite arbitrarily, usually when it was necessary to set an example
or to restore discipline that had become lax (see Tacitus, Annals 11.18; 13.35).
The stern Domitius Corbulo treated his eastern troops very severely, going so
far as to execute a man who put his sword down while digging a trench.
Loss of armor and weapons could incur the death penalty, but more often
flogging was the punishment. Ruffus states that the theft of pack animals was
treated even more severely because while the theft of weapons affected only one
or two men , the theft of p ack animals en d a n gered the whole troop, so the
penalty was to cut off the hands of the offender (Brand, 1968).
Punishments such as loss of rank could mean that a soldier remained in his
own unit without his previous rank (gradus deiectio), or he could be moved to
another less prestigious unit (militiae mutatio). A cavalryman could be sent to a
part-mounted cohort (cohors equitata), and legionaries could be transferred to
an auxiliary unit. There is a record of just such a circumstance in the strength
report of cohors I Augusta Lusitanorum, where a legionary was transferred to an
auxiliary unit, but it is not specifically stated that this is a demotion as punishment
for some misdemeanor (Fink, 1971; Watson, 1969). Fines and loss of pay,
with or without the imposition of extra fatigues, were probably the most common
forms of punishment, but there is less information about it for the Imperial
peri od . Du ring the Rep u bl i c , l egi ons could be deprived of p ay or put on
half- pay, but the small-scale activities of officers exacting penalties from individuals
tend to go unrecorded.
A more hard - h i t ting punishment was dismissal from the servi ce , wh i ch was
a pprox i m a teto cashiering (missio ign o m i n i o s a) , s i n ce this stri pped the soldiers
of a ll the privi l eges that would have been their due if t h ey had served their full
term and been hon ora bly disch a r ged (honesta missio) . In the Jewish Wa r, Ti tu s
d i s m i s s eda soldier who had been captu red by the en emy, even though he had
m a n a ged to escape , because soldiers should not be captu red alive . The threat of
the loss of pen s i on and privi l ege s , and the pro h i bi ti on on joining any other