The Military sacramentum in the Epistulae of Pliny the Younger: Analysis and Interpretation

Abstract

The Military sacramentum was a requirement as important for Roman military organization as it was difficult to locate and define for modern research, which has traditionally prioritized some sources over others. Among the literary sources that have received the most attention, there have been works that have been used far more --such as Livy's Ab urbe condita or Tacitus' Annales and Historiae-- than others, and among these works, the Epistulae by Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus stands out. In this work, inserted into the rich literary genre of epistolography, there are two mentions made by the author of the sacramentum, which, despite being few, provide a tremendous amount of information. The objective of this work is precisely to underline the importance of this information, long overlooked, and to provide some interpretations that shed light on the time of recruiment of recruits into the Roman Army, as well as on the influence this phenomenon had on the Christian lexicon of the Latin West from the third century AD onward.