Chapter 5 - Society and Identity

Summary

This chapter considers aspects of the military’s place in Roman society, especially in relation to the issue of identity. The first section examines how features of military life served to develop a sense of the armed forces as a distinct community, particularly from the Principate onwards, including military privileges, restrictions on soldiers marrying, and the role of symbols and rituals. The second section addresses the debate about relations between soldiers and civilians, and the extent to which the military can be considered a ‘total institution’. The presence of non-combatants in military camps is discussed (slaves, prostitutes, merchants), alongside interactions with civilian society in such contexts as marriage patterns and requisitioning and billetting. The third and final section focuses on the military and religious practices, which were another context in which soldiers sometimes interacted with civilians. Consideration is also given to the role of state-sponsored religious rituals during the Principate and under the Christian emperors of Late Antiquity, and the validity of assumptions about specifically ‘military cults’ (Mithraism, Jupiter Dolichenus) is discussed.