POV: Your Life as Every Rank in a Roman Legion

On a column of white marble in the heart of Rome, more than two thousand carved soldiers spiral toward the sky. At the summit stood the emperor, master of the largest empire the Roman world would ever know. Far below him, thousands of legionaries marched, dug and built along frontiers that stretched from the Rhine to the Danube, bound to a system that measured every man by his place in the line. Trajan's Column was raised to celebrate the conquest of Dacia, yet most of its soldiers are not fighting. They are clearing forests, raising walls and carrying loads. Through their world, and through the letters, pay records and tombstones they left behind, we trace the hierarchy of the army that held the empire together. You begin as a recruit at the gates of the fortress of Bonna, sworn to twenty-five years of service in the First Legion Minervia. You march under a heavy pack, fight a wooden post with a wooden sword, and learn that a soldier's pay can vanish before it reaches his hand. Through skill, endurance and the favour of a hard old centurion, you rise to optio, then centurion, and finally first spear of the entire legion. But advancement has its limits. As camp prefect you command the fortress itself, the highest post a man of ordinary birth could reach. The ranks above you were never meant to be earned in the line. Above you stand men born into the senatorial order: Hadrian, who served as a young broad-stripe tribune and later commanded your own legion in the Dacian War, and, at the very summit, the emperor Trajan, the soldier-ruler the Senate named Optimus, the Best. Ten ranks. One legion. A ladder built from discipline, service and birth. From the muddy parade ground of a frontier fortress to the top of the column in Rome, discover what it meant to climb the ranks of the army that built an empire. Chapters 0:00 Rank 1: Recruit 2:53 Rank 2: Legionary 5:33 Rank 3: Immunis 7:58 Rank 4: Optio 10:05 Rank 5: Centurion 12:30 Rank 6: Primus Pilus 14:14 Rank 7: Camp Prefect 15:52 Rank 8: Senior Tribune (Hadrian) 17:47 Rank 9: Legate (Hadrian) 19:36 Rank 10: Emperor (Trajan) 21:45 The soldiers in the stone