What Did Ancient Roman Soldiers Actually Do All Day Long?

What did ancient Roman soldiers actually do all day? Not what the films show you. The answer survives in their own paperwork: duty rosters, pay records, letters home and a stone speech from an emperor. Follow one of the ancient Roman soldiers, a young auxiliary, through a single day, from the dawn roll call to the last watch on the wall, and see where the army's time and the soldier's pay really went. You'll recognise more of it than you expect: the roll call, the inspection, the deductions from your pay, the letter asking for boots. Ancient Rome ran on forms, lists and small habits. We start with a mutiny in AD 14 and one price tag, ten asses a day. Then we count the ancient Roman soldiers who are never at the roll call, drill under Josephus's eye and in front of the emperor Hadrian, meet the clerks who wrote everything down, read a real pay record line by line, open the letters of Apion and Claudius Terentianus, and climb the wall for the night watch. By nightfall we answer one question: what did a soldier actually hold in his hand? Chapters: 00:00 What Ancient Roman Soldiers Actually Did All Day 04:24 Where Is Everyone? The Roll Call of the Missing 08:44 Drill, Walls and an Emperor Who Came to Watch 17:01 Pay Day: The Soldier's Real Wages 24:14 The Night Watch and the Last Word Sources and evidence used in this video: Tacitus, Annals 1.16-17 and 1.26 (the mutiny of AD 14 in Pannonia and Percennius's speech) Pliny the Younger and Trajan, Letters book 10, nos. 19-20 and 77-78 (soldiers as guards and police) Josephus, Jewish War book 3 (Roman drill, the morning chain of reporting, the nightly camp) Hadrian's speeches at Lambaesis, AD 128 (inscription on the legion's parade ground, CIL VIII 2532 and 18042) Suetonius, Life of Domitian 7 (the fourth pay instalment and the limit on savings) Papyrus Geneva Latin 1 (a soldier's pay account, AD 81) and a pay document from Masada Report of the Cohors I Hispanorum (P. Lond. 2851) and the Dura-Europos papyri of the Cohors XX Palmyrenorum, including the Feriale Duranum Letters of Apion (BGU II 423) and Claudius Terentianus (P. Mich. VIII 467-468) Polybius, Histories book 6 (the night watch, the tessera and the rounds), with the caveat that he describes the Republican army Where the evidence is thin or disputed, like Percennius's speech (Tacitus wrote it decades later), who Quintus Julius Proculus really was, or the 60-drachma line nobody can explain, the video says so. Most documents come from dry places such as Egypt and Syria and span about two centuries. If you like history told through the people who lived it, not the dates and the generals, subscribe for more stories of ancient Roman soldiers and the ordinary people of ancient Rome. #romansoldiers #ancientromansoldiers #ancientroman