What Happened to Roman Soldiers After Retirement?

What did retired Roman soldiers actually do all day? After twenty-five years in the legion, a Roman soldier received an honorable discharge and a plot of land in a colony built for veterans. In this video we live through one ordinary day in the life of a retired Roman legionary in Camulodunum, modern Colchester, the first Roman colony in Britain: working his farm at dawn, sitting on the town council, relaxing in the Roman baths and drinking with his old comrades from the legion in the local tavern. We also look at one of the strangest habits of Roman veterans: ordering their own tombstones, carved with the number of their legion in the largest letters. You will see real Roman gravestones found in Colchester, including the tombstone of the centurion Marcus Favonius Facilis of the Twentieth Legion and the cavalryman Longinus Sdapeze, whose carved face was hacked off and only found again almost two thousand years later. Then the peace of Roman retirement ends. In AD 60 to 61, Queen Boudica of the Iceni and the Trinovantes rose against Rome. The veterans' colony had no walls, its defenders made a last stand in the Temple of Claudius for two days, and the Ninth Legion was destroyed on its way to save them. Archaeology still shows the burned layer of Boudica's revolt beneath Colchester today, along with the Fenwick Treasure, gold and silver jewelry buried by a Roman family that never came back for it. This is the real story of Roman army retirement, the daily life of Roman veterans in Roman Britain, Roman farming, Roman baths, Roman taverns and Roman burial customs, and the Boudican revolt that destroyed the first Roman town in Britain. Gaius Valerius, his family and his friends are composite characters created to tell the story; the events, places, people of the revolt, inscriptions and archaeological finds are historical. Sources and further reading: Tacitus, Annals, Book Fourteen, on the revolt of Boudica and the fall of Camulodunum Tacitus, Agricola Cassius Dio, Roman History, Book Sixty on the invasion of Britain and Book Sixty-Two on the revolt of Boudica Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter Fifty-Six, on life above a Roman bathhouse Vegetius, Epitome of Military Science, Book Two, on the soldiers' savings and burial fund The Roman Inscriptions of Britain, the tombstones of Marcus Favonius Facilis and Longinus Sdapeze Philip Crummy, City of Victory: The Story of Colchester, Britain's First Roman Town Colchester Archaeological Trust, excavation reports on the Fenwick Treasure Graham Webster, Boudica: The British Revolt Against Rome AD 60 Miranda Aldhouse-Green, Boudica Britannia Colchester Castle Museum, built on the podium of the Temple of Claudius The British Museum, the bronze head of Claudius from the River Alde If you enjoy the daily life of Roman soldiers, from the first day in the legion to the last day of retirement, subscribe for more stories from the Roman army and the ancient world.