“Why do we obey like slaves a handful of centurions, and still fewer tribunes? When are we to venture to demand our rights if we do not now approach the new and still tottering Emperor with either entreaties or force? It is through our own fault, through our own want of spirit, that we have gone on for so many years putting up with thirty or forty years’ service, old men as we are, and most of us crippled with wounds. Even after our discharge there is no end to our service; we camp under the flags and suffer the same burdens under another name. And if any man does happen to get out of all these dangers and difficulties with his life, he is dragged off to distant lands, where he is given under the name of a farm a morass or a precipice. The service itself is severe, and poorly paid; body and soul are valued at ten asses a day! Out of this we have to find clothes, arms, tents, buy off the centurions, yes, and pay for our own discharge.[1] The stick, the wounds, the bitter winter, the summer marches, the cruelties of war, or the barrenness of peace are everlasting. We shall never get any comfort till the service is entered on fixed conditions, a denarius a day for pay, sixteen years for a discharge; and we are not to be kept on under the flags, but stay in our camps and get our pension in cash. Do the prætorians face greater dangers than we do? But they get two denarii a day, and return to their homes after sixteen years. We don’t have to patrol the city at night, but we do have to live among savages and look at the enemy out of our very quarters.” [1] “Vacationes munerum.” The translation in the text is the accepted one, but the phrase may simply mean “leave.” The custom of feeing the sergeant for this purpose has not been unknown in the English army.