What Happened to Roman Legionaries After 25 Years of Service?

What really happened when a Roman soldier retired after 25 years in the legion? In this Ancient Rome history documentary, you live through a Roman legionary's last day of service on the Danube frontier in the age of Emperor Hadrian, from the morning horn inside the fortress to the moment he walks out of the gate as a free man. Discover how retirement in the Roman army actually worked. You will learn the three types of discharge in Roman military law, the honorable discharge missio honesta, the medical discharge missio causaria and the dishonorable discharge missio ignominiosa, and why one serious crime could still cost a veteran everything after a quarter of a century of service. Find out how Roman soldiers were paid, what was deducted from their wages for food, boots and equipment, how their savings were kept in the legion's strongbox beside the standards, and why Emperor Domitian limited those savings after the revolt of Saturninus. See where the Roman veteran's retirement bonus really came from. A legionary discharged with honor received twelve thousand sesterces, paid not from his own wages but from the military treasury that Augustus founded in AD 6 with his own fortune and then funded with an inheritance tax and a sales tax. Learn how the length of Roman military service grew from sixteen years to about twenty-five, and why emperors sometimes kept old soldiers in the ranks long after their term had ended. We also uncover the darker side of the Roman soldier's reward: the land confiscations of 41 BC that cost the poet Virgil his family farm, the great mutiny of AD 14 on the Rhine and the Danube, when old legionaries showed Germanicus their toothless gums, and the veteran colony of Camulodunum, burned to the ground in Queen Boudica's rebellion. You will also see how Roman military diplomas made auxiliary soldiers Roman citizens, why Roman soldiers were forbidden to marry legally, and how veteran colonies and the settlements outside legionary fortresses grew into cities that still exist today, including Mérida, Cologne, Colchester, Timgad, Vienna, Budapest and Belgrade. This is the real everyday life of an ordinary Roman soldier: Roman army discipline, pay, retirement, family, veteran colonies and life after the legion, told as one unforgettable morning in the Roman Empire. Sources and further reading: Tacitus, Annals, Books 1 and 14 Suetonius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars: Augustus and Domitian Cassius Dio, Roman History, Books 54 and 55 Augustus, Res Gestae Divi Augusti (The Deeds of the Divine Augustus) Polybius, The Histories, Book 6 Virgil, Eclogues, and the ancient Lives of Virgil The Digest of Justinian, Book 49, on military law and discharge Hadrian's letter of AD 119 to the prefect of Egypt on soldiers' children, preserved on papyrus Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, Volume 16: Roman military diplomas Margaret M. Roxan and Paul Holder, Roman Military Diplomas Lawrence Keppie, The Making of the Roman Army: From Republic to Empire Lawrence Keppie, Colonisation and Veteran Settlement in Italy, 47 to 14 BC J. B. Campbell, The Emperor and the Roman Army, 31 BC to AD 235 Sara Elise Phang, The Marriage of Roman Soldiers, 13 BC to AD 235: Law and Family in the Imperial Army Adrian Goldsworthy, The Complete Roman Army Graham Webster, The Roman Imperial Army of the First and Second Centuries AD