Most legionnaires probably joined up at 13 or 14. I think their widows and children got the farm if they died in action but not if they just go sick or something. Land back then was not something you could buy, especially if you were poor, so a small farm very far away from Rome was an estate that your descendants could live off of forever. Anyone back then who owned real estate was very close to being nobility.
As I recall if they completed their enlistment they got; Roman citizenship, that farm, and a small pension. Remember most legionnaires were not much more than serfs, the promise of all that was kind of like promising a GI today that he would be made president when he retired if he did not get killed in action. Also they got food and kit while they were in, not something the poor could be sure of unless they sold themselves into slavery. It always sounded to me like their choices back then were the army, outlawry, or surfdom.
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Keith Whaley wrote:
Graywolf wrote:
A term that became prevalent in Vietnam. But it actually dates from the Roman Legions where what a guy expected from his 40 year enlistment was to acquire a farm and live happily ever after. By extension it came to mean he got out of the army by dying.
That was back when the male life span was something between 38 and 45?
A forty year enlistment? What did Mom do, drop him off on the Legion's doorstep, umbilical cord and all, and head off into the fields?
Boy. I'm going to have to read up on that!
keith
Cotty wrote:
On 29/10/04, Graywolf, discombobulated, unleashed:
Flat on it's back. Feet in the air. Belly up. Out to lunch. Bought the farm. DOA. Etc.
Bought the farm?!
Cheers, Cotty
-- graywolf http://graywolfphoto.com/graywolf.html
