3 The Identity, Legal Status and Origin of the Roman Army’s Medical Staff in the Imperial Age

Abstract

More than a hundred epigraphic documents on different writing materials refer to medical staff in the Roman army. This paper focuses on the identity, legal status and origin of the Roman army medical staff--a topic which until now has hardly been studied. Various titles were conferred to a large number of medical staff in every unit of the Roman army; the doctors (medici) were the most numerous and had different ranks and status. The onomastic study of the inscriptions reveals a large proportion of Roman citizens in the military medical service. Most of them are ingenui with a Latin name, but freedmen with a Greek origin are frequently attested, though less so than among civilian doctors. These results dispel some misconceptions such as the Greek origin of most military doctors, which can be explained by the legal requirements of the recruitment into the Roman army.