COBI Roman Auxilia Set 20073

COBI's Roman Auxilia set contains 45 blocks making three figures: two infantrymen with the oval auxiliary shield, and a cavalryman with a gladius, a round parma shield, a crested helmet, a red cape and lorica hamata chain mail, mounted on a saddled horse. All markings are printed; the set contains no stickers.

Twenty-five years for a piece of bronze

Auxiliaries were not Roman citizens. They were recruited from the edges of the empire for skills the legions did not have — cavalry from Numidia, archers from Crete, slingers from the Balearics — and they served twenty-five years.

What they were serving for was citizenship. On discharge an auxiliary received a diploma: two small bronze sheets, wired together and witnessed, recording that he and his descendants were now Roman citizens. The text was copied from a master list posted in Rome, so the document could be checked against the original. Men carried them for the rest of their lives, and enough survive in the ground today to tell us where individual units were stationed and when.

Over time the distinction faded. Auxiliary equipment caught up with legionary equipment, and in 212 an edict granted citizenship to nearly every free inhabitant of the empire — which quietly removed the reason the system had worked.

In the COBI range

The mounted figure and the oval shields are new shapes in the Imperium Romanum line. Romans (20067) supplies the heavy infantry these troops supported.

Specifications

Pieces: 45 · Figures: 3, two infantry and one cavalryman · Also included: horse with saddle