The married quarters mentioned above require a few words of explanation. Numerous critics of the Roman army have assumed not only that celibacy is a valuable military ideal, but that it was actually attained until Severus issued his famous edict permitting soldiers to marry while still on active service.[362] Previous to this it is assumed that they had no relations with women but those of the least binding description. Seeck, indeed, has carefully explained that the ‘children of the camp’ could not have been reckoned upon as a valuable source for recruits, because the rate of mortality is notoriously higher among illegitimate than legitimate children.[363] This theory is sufficiently refuted by the fact that, as we have seen, nearly fifty per cent. of the recruits for the Legio III Augusta in Africa were giving _castris_ as their birthplace long before the reign of Severus.[364] A recently discovered edict of Domitian has shown further that such unions were sufficiently permanent to be officially recognized by the government during a soldier’s period of service, although only legalized at his discharge.[365] The effect of Severus’s edict was merely to anticipate this act and give legal sanction to existing and perfectly well understood social conditions. Practically the change was probably of small importance, since it seems fairly clear that married quarters were not allowed inside the fort walls after this edict any more than before it, nor were married men allowed to remain permanently outside. Cagnat has shown that the arrangement of the internal buildings of the legionary fortress at Lambaesis, which are proved by epigraphical evidence to have been still existing in the third century, is entirely opposed to such a supposition, and to the general theory, which has often been advanced, that from the time of Severus onwards such a fortress became merely a club-house and exercise ground for the greater part of the troops.[366] These arguments are concerned only with the legionaries, but they are worth introducing because the erroneous views here discussed have often been made to apply to the army as a whole. In the case of the auxilia, indeed, there was never any justification for their acceptance. The evidence of the diplomata was always sufficient to show that even in the first century the auxiliary soldiers, like the legionaries, formed family ties during their period of service which were officially recognized on their discharge.[367] The same picture is given by early sepulchral inscriptions, of which the following, from the Pannonian fort of Teutoburgium, may serve as an example: ‘Ti(berio) Cl(audio) Britti f(ilio) Valerio, dec(urioni) alae II Aravacorum, domo Hispano, annor(um) L, stip(endiorum) XXX, et Cl(audiae) Ianuariae coniugi eius et Cl(audiae) Hispanillae filiae vivis ex testamento Flaccus dec(urio) frater et Hispanilla filia heredes faciundum curaverunt.’[368]