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FLAVIUS
VEGETIUS RENATUS BOOK
TWO RECORDS AND ACCOUNTS Several posts in the legion requiring men of some education, the superintendents of the levies should select some recruits for their skill in writing and accounts, besides the qualification to be attended to in general, such as size, strength and proper disposition for the service. For the whole detail of the legion, including the lists of the soldiers exempted from duty on private accounts, the rosters for their tour of military duties and their pay lists, is daily entered in the legionary books and kept we may almost say, with greater exactness than the regulations of provisions or other civil matters in the registers of the police. The daily guards in time of peace, the advanced guards and outposts in time of war, which are mounted regularly by the centuries and messes in their turns, are likewise punctually kept in rolls for that purpose, with the name of each soldier whose tour is past, that no one may have injustice done him or be excused from his duty by favor. They are also exact in
entering the time and limitation of furloughs, which formerly were never granted
without difficulty and only on real and urgent business. They then never suffered
the soldiers to attend on any private person or to concern themselves in private
occupations, thinking it absurd and improper that the Emperor's soldiers, clothed
and subsisted at the public expense, should follow any other profession. Some
soldiers, however, were allowed for the service of the praefects, tribunes and
even of the other officers, our of the number of the accensi or such as were raised
after the legion was complete. These latter are now called supernumeraries. The
regular troops were obliged to carry their wood, hay, water and straw into the
camp themselves. From such kind of services they were called munifices.
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