One of the ways a soldier was acculturated into the military life was by shifting religious focus. Deities worshiped before becoming a soldier were, of course, not banned once military service began. But instead of a panoply of local/ethnic gods, the soldier was encouraged to focus on two overriding manifestations of the divine - the emperor; and the 'official’ Roman divinity Jupiter Optimus Maximus along with the rest of the pantheon - as well as Eternal Rome and Augustan Victory as embodiments of the Romai State.
The emperor was warlord-identified-with-the-State. The official religion emphasized the unity of the armed forces as well as the centrality of the emperor in its life. This was the private army of the emperor as the embodiment of Rome. Augustus advanced from the status of his warring predecessors and contemporaries to claim not preeminence in the State, but quasi-divine leadership and, ultimately and increasingly in his successors, synonymy with it. So loyalty to Rome and loyalty to the personified Rome, the emperor, became conflated completely in the soldier’s mind. Loyalty to the emperor was central to the soldier’s life: 'For the soldiers swear continually throughout their service that they will place the safety of the emperor above all else’ (Epictetus, Discourses 1.14.15).
From Vegetius 2.5 and other snippets a reasonable outline is possible: Soldiers swear by the majesty of the emperor to strenuously do all that the emperor might command, protect his and his family’s well-being (salus), never desert the service, nor refuse to die for Rome. Certainly the oath was repeated annually; probably it was repeated each day at reveille; at any rate, its creed was omnipresent. Soldiers took this oath seriously:
This dedication is for the safety of the emperor. As a new recruit I, Lucius Maximius, son o Lucius Gaetulicus, of the Voltinian voting district, from Vienne, made a vow in front o: the Twentieth Legion Valeria Victrix in the name of Augustan Panthean Victories mos holy. Now after 57 years of service and advancement to the rank of chief centurion in the First Italic Legion I have fulfilled my vow. Dated in the year of the consuls Marullus and Aelianus (AD 184). (AE 1985.735, Swischtow, Bulgaria)
The emperor was present in many quasi-religious elements of the soldier’s life. Imperial names were given to subunits of the army; the emperor’s image was in every camp on a standard, carried by a special 'image bearer’ (imaginifer); his face graced armor and other equipment; all coins bore his visage; all rewards and medals came from him (via the local commanders). The emperor was the source of largess, not just the regular salary but occasional donatives and gifts at death. The emperor in turn played the dual role of commiles - fellow soldier - and divine leader, a sort of god-with-us.
In the ordered life of the camp, cultic ritual was ordered as well. This order was something foreign to civilian life, where cultic activity was available but entirely voluntary. From Dura-Europos there is a calendar of sacrifices - a trans-empire calendar meant to inculcate in the soldiers the old gods and the imperial house as fonts of being. Here are listed, day by day, religious actions to worship specific gods, to offer supplications to the emperor, to celebrate birthdays of the imperial family with sacrifice, to give thankful remembrance for past victories, and to celebrate the sacred standards of the legion. Besides the obvious use of such occasions to emphasize the focus of the army on the emperor and Rome, the ceremonies themselves regardless of their declared purpose provided occasions for unity, for example parades and festivals, and for diversion. Celebrations were also an opportunity to let go of the tight discipline of the camp. They were drunken, excessive affairs when rules were forgotten at least for a moment. So the ceremonies provided unit identity for the common soldier, and gave his life both relief from the normal routines, and meaning.
As with the marriage rules governing soldiers, the religious aspect of his life helped to create a new allegiance separate from those of civil life. His original enrollment has all the marks of an initiation into a new religious world - the declaration of personage, the tattoo with which he was marked, setting him apart from the unmarked, and the sacred oath to the emperor all refocused the recruit, while the regular religious events of the year reinforced both otherness vis-a-vis the civilian population and unity of the initiated.
All of this is not to say that soldiers did not have private religious lives as well. If it can be said that cultic activity as a group focused on the official religion of the legion and individual cultic activity indicated personal religious beliefs outside this official activity, then the evidence of individual dedications points to the lively existence of private religious life. But this should not be exaggerated. There were no 'private’ soldierly cults; the two most often associated with soldiers, Mithra and Jupiter Dolichenus, in fact are attested to by far more nonsoldiers’ dedications than soldiers’; in the case of Mithra less than 20 percent of dedications are by soldiers; for Dolichenus it is less than 40 percent. But although not specifically 'military,’ these and other cults were a complement to the religious focus of the legion itself.
26. Soldier religion. A soldier makes a small sacrifice at an altar.
World History
