Update Status

• 27th Nov 2016: all legions have now been added in first pass. Further updates can be seen under News and below under update dates.

Notes

• The purpose of this section is not to give a detailed history of the Roman imperial legions, but to provide summary timeline information of where the legions were based, their relocations to different bases and list which major campaigns they were involved in. This to support the prosopographical entries of the legion officers (legates and tribunes), which may just list the legion name and only sometimes estimated year and province.
• The period covered is from Augustus ca. 30/27 BC (when many legions of the civil wars were demobilized) until 284, when Diocletian became emperor and started a complete reorganization of the Roman army. For legions in existance in 30/27 BC a brief summary of their provenance and prior history is included.
• The base sources for the legions of the principate are
  1. Ritterling, E.: entry "Legio" in Real-Encyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Band XII (1924-25)
     • cols.1213-1367 an historical survey with 13 tables showing the deployment of legions
     • cols.1367-1829 entries on all recorded legions in numerical order
  2. Le Bohec, Yann & Wolff, Catherine, edd. Les légions de Rome sous le Haut-Empire, Actes du Congrès de Lyon, (17-19 septembre 1998). Lyon, Université Jean-Moulin, Paris, De Boccard, 2000. 2 volumes ([Collection du Centre d' études romaines et gallo-romaines; nouvelle série 20] (unfortunately only a few articles are available to me, not the whole volume)
• Also useful are
  1. Keppie, Lawrence: The Making of the Roman Army, Routledge, London, 1998, has appendices with useful summaries on the legions.
  2. Parker, H.M.D.: Roman Legions, Oxford University Press, New York, 1928 (reprinted several times) still useful
  3. Pollard, Nigel & Berry, Joanne: The Complete Roman Legions, Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2012, has a useful bibliography and gives good summary information on their careers with excellent references to inscriptions etc.
• There is still much uncertainty about when legions were relocated between different provinces, so many dates in the table below are uncertain or approximate.
• Note that the participation of a a legion vexillation (a detachment of typically 1000 or 2000 men) in a campaign outside their province is often uncertain and only based on one or more inscriptions stating that a soldier or officer from that legion participated in the campaign.