[Illustration:  FIG. 103.—­SOLDIERS WITH PACKS.]

[Illustration:  FIG. 104—­ROMAN SOLDIERS MARCHING. (Scheiber.)]

Before entering upon this description of service and armour of the legionary troops, it was stated that the legions made up but one-half of Roman army, the other half consisting of what were known as “auxiliaries.”  If there were in the whole Roman empire 150,000 soldiers of the kind described there were also about 150,000 of a different type.  Just as it is a natural part of the British policy to raise bodies of Indian or African troops from among the non-British subjects of the empire, so it was an obvious course for the Romans to raise native troops in Africa, Syria, Spain, Gaul, Britain, or the German provinces on the western bank of the Rhine.  And just as the British bring their non-British regiments into connection with the regular army, and put them under the command of British officers, so the Romans associated their “auxiliary” soldiery, mostly under Roman officers, with the regular force of the legions.  To every legion of 6000 men there was attached, under the same general of division, a force of about 6000 men of non-Roman standing.  The subject people of a province was called upon to recruit a certain quota of such troops, and, when so recruited, the soldiers of this class were required to serve for twenty-five years.  At the expiration of their term they became Roman citizens, and their descendants ranked as such in the enjoyment of Roman opportunities.  Such forces were not themselves formed into “legions” under an “eagle”; they served in separate regiments.  Some of them were infantry almost indistinguishable from the Roman; others were armed in a different manner as to shield, spear, and sword; others were light skirmishing troops using their native weapons, such as javelins, slings, and bows.  A very large proportion were cavalry, and whereas a legion possessed only 120 Roman horsemen, the auxiliary cavalry attached to it would number one or more regiments of dither 1000 or 500 men each.  But it was also part of the Roman policy to employ such auxiliary troops, not in the region in which they were raised and among their own people, but elsewhere, and sometimes even at the opposite extremity of the empire.  Thus in Britain might be found, not only Germans and Batavians, but Spaniards or Syrians, while in Syria there might be quartered Africans or Germans, and in Africa troops from the modern Austria.  We cannot call this custom an invariable one, but it was usual, and obviously it was politic.

[Illustration:  FIG. 105.—­Imperial Guards.]