AWA409 - What did the Constitutio Antoniniana mean for the Roman auxilia?
Ancient Warfare Podcast
The History Network
4.3 • 645 Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
Carlos, an economics professor (!), asks: Hi Murray,
I am a long-time AWM subscriber, born in Hispania, working in Britannia, and mostly living in Raetia. Love the podcast.
My question is this. With the Constitutio Antoniniana, all young men within the Imperium became citizens and could enlist in the legions instead of the auxilia. Hence, the auxilia presumably attracted less recruits. With Diocletian's reforms, whatever remained of the auxilia was absorbed into a fully new structure with limitanei, comitatenses, and auxilia palatina, the latter being elite. This suggests that the distinction between legions and auxilia might had become fuzzy at that point, else one could just have assigned the auxilia to the borders.
What do we know about the evolution of the auxilia from the Constitutio Antoniniana to Diocletian's reforms? Were they still around, with named units slowly vanishing for lack of recruits, or did they become something else by enlisting non-citizens? Did they become part of a wild mixture of units with all-barbarian numeri in the chaos of the third century and its many revolts? Surely, at the very least, Tacitus' old statement that auxiliaries and legionaries were roughly equal in number is no longer valid for the third century?
Murray Investigates.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers with me Murray, your weekly |
| 0:09.0 | fix of 10 minutes of ancient warfare related musing. |
| 0:13.6 | We'll see. |
| 0:14.0 | I used musing, not ranting and raving, but generally my musing is followed by ranting and raiding |
| 0:18.1 | as I attempt to answer the question of a viewer, reader or listener. |
| 0:23.3 | Today's question comes from Carlos, who is a economics professor, which is fantastic. |
| 0:31.8 | You can, of course, ask us a question too. |
| 0:33.7 | Email, comment on a previous video or podcast. |
| 0:36.6 | You can even back us on Patreon, one of three |
| 0:39.4 | different levels, legionary, Optio and Prynkeps. Prenkeps, no, legionary, Optio and Centurion. |
| 0:45.2 | Princorps, what level would that be? That would be a lot of money. Anyway, I digress. |
| 0:49.0 | And you don't have to be a Patreon to ask us a question. Hi, Murray. I am a long-time ancient warfare |
| 0:55.6 | answers subscriber, ancient warfare magazine subscriber, born in Hispania, working in Britannia, |
| 1:02.6 | and mostly living in Ritea. Nice. That's what we all do as ancient historians as we think |
| 1:08.2 | about modern world locations in ancient world terms, |
| 1:12.6 | which is very problematic for ancient Greek military history, because of course we all, |
| 1:17.5 | well, I use Oxford University pronunciation of ancient Greek place names. |
| 1:22.6 | So I'll talk about the island of you Boyer. |
| 1:24.6 | And when you mention all the city of themes, and when you mention that to a |
| 1:28.7 | modern Greek, they're like, where? And you're like, oh, yes, Evia? Oh, yes, why no. You're like, or divia. And they're like, oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. You've got to remember all of those. Anyway, my question is this. This is from Carlos. With the constitutio Antoniniana, all the young men within the Imperium became citizens |
| 1:44.6 | and could have list in the legions instead |
| 1:46.7 | of the auxilia. Hence the Tutio Antoniniana, all the young men within the Imperium became citizens and could |
... |
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