Missio causaria

Also: medical discharge, causarius, causarii

Roman discharge from the army because a soldier was no longer physically or mentally fit to serve. What a soldier received depended on when, and how long he had served.

Questions this entry answers

  • What happened to injured Roman soldiers who could not fight?
  • Did Roman veterans get a pension?
  • What was missio causaria?

Definition

Missio causaria was discharge from the Roman army because illness, injury or impairment had made a soldier unfit for service. It was distinct from honourable discharge at the end of a full term (honesta missio) and from dishonourable discharge for misconduct. A soldier discharged this way was a causarius.

Historical context

Most of the detailed evidence is from later Roman law, of the second and third centuries AD. In the first and second centuries, medically discharged veterans appear to have received privileges close to those of an honourable discharge: the right to a legal marriage and land or a cash grant. In AD 213 the emperor Caracalla limited those full privileges to causarii with at least twenty years of service. How the process worked earlier, in the reign of Tiberius, is not securely documented.

How it worked

A soldier's fitness was judged, and if he could no longer serve he left the army. Some discharged veterans were settled together: Cassius Dio reports that Pompey founded Nicopolis in 66 BC with veterans and soldiers unfit for service. Epitaphs show how men described themselves afterwards. Aurelius Dassius, discharged after nineteen years, used the language of an honourable discharge on his.

What it meant for the patient, the soldier, the civilian

Leaving early meant losing years of predictable pay and the life a soldier had organised himself around: the barrack room, the eight men, the routine. A man who could walk but not march, carry or hold a line was no longer a soldier, whatever his record. What he did next, and how he lived with the injury, rarely entered the record at all.

Examples from history

  • Aurelius Dassius. Medically discharged after 19 years' service; his epitaph frames it as honourable.
  • Marcus, the composite legionary of The Hands That Survived Rome, about AD 35. The film shows him leaving, and does not invent a discharge board, because the procedure in his time is uncertain.

Sources

Sources listed
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Primary source

  1. Cassius Dio, Roman History, 36.50.3 (trans. E. Cary, Loeb Classical Library).

    Not yet checked against the source

  2. Vegetius, Epitoma Rei Militaris, II.21 (trans. N. P. Milner, Liverpool University Press, 2nd ed., 1996).

    A late Roman source. Not evidence for first-century procedure.

    Not yet checked against the source

Scholarly secondary source

  1. Van Lommel, K. (2013). "The terminology of the medical discharge and an identity shift among the Roman disabled veterans." Ancient History Bulletin 27, 65–74.

    Not yet checked against the source

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