By 133 BC, all of Greece was incorporated into the Roman empire, and after 330 AD the Greeks pretty much took over the Empire, eventually pretty much appropriating the eastern half for themselves.
Between 133 BC and 330 AD, did the Greeks ever serve in the Roman legions in any significant numbers? They probably comprised the bulk of the army after the imperial seat was moved to Byzantium, but what about before? When did the Romans start recruiting Greeks? Were there any legions that recruited themselves predominantly from Greeks? Did Greeks serve as legionaries proper, or merely as auxiliaries?
If a Greek was a Roman citizens, they could serve in the legions. If not, they could serve in the auxiliaries. After 216 AD all free men were citizens anyway. As it is, Greece IIRC was not a major recruiting area, outside of Macedonia. The Balkans, Syria, modern day low countries, Italia and parts of Arabia were.
Not only were there a lot of Greek (and Greek-speaking) troops in the Roman Army, the usual language of the ordinary soldiers (i.e., not the officers) in the eastern half of the Roman Empire was Greek. It’s been pointed out that the movie The Passion of the Christ was wrong both about the language that Jesus spoke and the language that the soldiers spoke:
(Yes, I realize that this is not the best possible source for such facts.)
A distinction needs to be drawn between, Greece and Greek speakers. Greek was the main lingua franca of the near east at the time and you had Greek speaking colonies as far away as India. Lots of Syrians, Anatolians etc would have been Greek speaking as well as many Egyptians.
i was under the impression that lots of Roman legion, at least in the days of the emperors, were recruited outside the Italian peninsula, and often posted to a completely different area. Makes them less likely to interact with the locals and possibly join rebel armies if someone from Spain is stationed in Judea. Although the discipline was harsh (as life often was back then), you had a regular paycheck and at the end of your 20-25 years service, you got a lump sum of money saved from your wages.
Greeks had been used as mercenaries for several hundred years. See Xenophon (a one time student of Socrates) and his experiences as one of 10,000 in service for Persians fighting to see who becomes king in his book"Anabasis".
That’s interesting, and I somehow suspected as much. Do you know if that was because of political reasons, or if the rest of Greece was just too sparsely populated?
Legions were as a rule recruited from citizens. Non citizens were recruited into the auxillaries and they usually served outside their own homelands, although this was not absolute especially on the Euphrates frontier.
According to one “Time team” program where they discovered a medical instrument of Roman origin in a river, the Roman Legions Doctors were almost exclusively Greek.
Not necessarily, but many of the medical techniques of the day indeed came form Greek practice. A lot of the high-profile doctors weer also Greek, but it’s not quite that clear as to the origin or your more everyday sawbones.
Partly. While legions were moved about in the early Empire, thereafter they usually formed permanent bases and began to identify closely with the locals. In fact, this is where the mid to late empire recruiting came from: soldiers were quite often sons of soldiers, and part of a pan-Imperial military culture which was both quite diverse and separate from civilian Roman culture.
Maybe, maybe not. There’s “in general” and there’s " in this case". Because there was a lot of troop movement going on at the time, it’s absolutely not clear that the groups specifically present in the movie and at that time would have spoken Greek. Latins did not routinely speak Greek unless they were well-of and well-educated, and not even all of them. The soldiers present could eawsily have arrived recently or just never bothered to learn much more than a smattering of Greek. And the Judeans also weren’t native Greek speakers although it wasn’t rare, so it’s not like it was the language of choice for anybody.
This is a very complicated question that spans centuries of history, but I’ll try to provide a relatively simple summary.
Plenty of people who for one reason or another would have been considered “Greek” served in the Roman military throughout its long history. Broadly speaking, they would have not served in the legions because only Roman citizens served in the legions. Greeks who served as part of the Roman military apparatus would have been considered allies or occasionally mercenaries during the Republic. During the Empire Greeks could join the auxiliaries. Allies or auxiliaries often accounted for at least half of the man power of Roman armies. In 212 AD all free men living in the Roman Empire were given Roman citizenship, which meant Greeks could join the legions. It’s not accurate at all to say “the Greeks pretty much took over the Empire, eventually pretty much appropriating the eastern half for themselves.” The Byzantine Empire considered itself Roman, and its official language was Latin until the 7th century.
It was, of course, much more complicated than that, with many exceptions to what I just wrote. There were many Greek settlements in southern Italy, and many of these Greek communities became allies (socii) of Rome. After the Social War which occurred around 90 BC these Italian-Greek allies would be granted citizenship, which would allow them to join the legions. Additionally, there would have been some Roman citizens, who for one reason or another, would have settled in Greece and these citizens would be able to join the legions. Additionally, Roman citizenship was occasionally granted to foreigners, who would then also be able to join the legions. Also note the auxiliaries evolved from non-citizen forces used in the later part of the Republic who weren’t necessarily socii but weren’t quite auxiliaries in the formal sense either.
Thanks for all the interesting answers.
A new question has occured to me. How did the Romans keep the peace in conquered Greece? After all, the Greeks had a millennia old tradition of infighting. Apart from that, there’s also banditry to worry about. Were there any legions stationed in Greece for that purpose? I suppose, allowing the cities to form their own militia was out of the question.
What happened to city states that relied upon exploiting and suppressing other city states, like Athens and Sparta? I imagine that Athens must have fallen into decay, once all those funds they extortet from their former “allies” stopped coming in. And Sparta surely must have withered away into insignificance, once they could no longer bleed their helots dry. Did the Romans free the helots, or did they prefer not to interfere with the social order, as long as the taxes were paid?
You just asked a massive history question about which entire books could, and have, been written. In short:
(A) The Romans mostly didn’t need to keep the peace. They divided - but did not conquer. Unlike Gaul or Hispania, they didn’t mostly take over Greece in military actions. rather, they came in to support one underdog faction or another against the Macedonians or Seleucids. However, the ROmans dominated those battles and it was clear who the real power was. Rather than try to take over, the ROmans, first as a result of a General’s proclamation and then by policy, supported complete Greek division. As in, no more Greek Empires: Rome intended to guarrantee any city-state against the rest and keep them all vaguely united in spirit but divided in politcs. Over time (I’m massively simplifying here) they incorporated all Greece into the provincial system. The close and growing ties between Greek and Roman helped enormously.
(B) Athens and Sparta were both powers whose time was long past, although Athens remained a wealthy cultural center, and being given Athenian citizenship was considered a great honor among the cultured. Neither had any real power since well before Rome’s rise in Greece. Both were basically broken during the Pelopponesian War - Athens by plague and military defeat, Sparta by having their entire social system ground down* and then being utterly raped by Thebes in the battle of Leuctra. Athens more or less recovered its pride and culture, if not its martial power. Sparta never had any culture, so once it started losing on the battlefield it lost the Helots and then everything else.
*Sparta’s system was great for turning out soldiers. It was a disaster for population, and there’s good evidence that Spartans were slowly going extinct. As it turns out, orienting your entire young male population towards buggering young boys and making family life impossible isn’t a very god way to expand your population. And the armies involved were tiny - the loss of around 400 Spartans in the Pelopponesian war was itself enough to bring Sparta to the bargaining table.
The Pelopponesian War lasted about 30 years (off and on); the Spartan domination of Greece lastedf about another 30; the era if Theban influence then lasted for 30 before Macedon took over. They didn’t lose Greece for nearly two centuries.