How Did Romans Perform Decimations?

You are the general of a Roman legion and the army is refusing to obey your orders, what now?

The Roman Army had a very complex system of awards and sanctions to guarantee the safety and the functionality of its legions. Punishments for disobedient soldiers ranged from simple warnings, to fines, to skipping meals, to being flogged, to sleeping outside of the military camp, to losing retirement benefits, and in the rarest cases, soldiers could be sentenced to crucifixion (after previously seeing their citizenship terminated) or be sentenced to decimation. Decimations (from the Latin word ‘’Decimatio’’ which means ‘’to reduce by a tenth’’), although very rare, were practiced as an extreme measure to fight mutiny, insurgencies and cowardice among the ranks.

Whenever the general of a legion would repute decimation a necessary evil to reinstate order among its ranks, the legion would be gathered and one out of its ten cohorts (between 480 to 600 soldiers), would be selected for the process.

The selected cohort would then be further divided into groups of ten soldiers each, in which every soldier had to draw lots in order to figure out which soldier had to be sentenced. Once the victim was chosen, the nine remaining comrades were then forced to stone him, club him or stab him. The nine comrades, no matter how close they were to the victim emotionally, could not refuse to perform this execution, otherwise they would be executed too right on the spot.

The decimation process does not end though with the victim being killed and the remaining comrades being psychologically traumatized for having killed someone they fought alongside with, it further proceeded with the soldiers being kicked out of the military camp for a whole night, alone, without a fire, at the mercy of the enemies or surrounding animals, and therefore further lowering their chances of survival, especially in winter.
The survivors would then be reintroduced into the army, but with a change in their military rations. The diet of a Roman soldier consisted of approximately 3,000 calories a day, mostly covered through the consumption of wheat bread.

The survivors, were not fed wheat bread, they were fed on barley bread, which is less tasty and less nutritious, for several days or weeks, causing a prolonged sense of weakness and low mental capacity, especially when considering that soldiers had to walk for 30 km (20 miles) a day while wearing equipment as heavy as 30 to 40 kg (70-90 lbs).

Decimations were regarded as a more effective tool to instill fear into the souls of the soldiers, compared to the previous methods adopted by the Roman Army, like clubbing, whipping or executing an entire maniple which consisted of 120 to 160 soldiers.

Decimations were rare during the ancient Roman times, the first documented case dates back to 471 BC during the Roman Republic's early wars against the Volsci which were recorded by Titus Livius. Another famous case is when Marcus Licinius Crassus in 71 BC during the Third Servile War against Spartacus decimated between 1,000 to 10,000 of his soldiers, to the point that his soldiers were more afraid of Marcus than afraid of Spartacus and his 120,000 army of slaves.

The practice was adopted by Cesar Augustus too and, close to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the Emperor Macrinus introduced a less harsh version known as centesimatio, where only one man in 100 was killed.

One case often forgotten is the decimation of the Theban Legion, a group of mercenaries consisting of 6,666 men who converted to Christianity and refused to obey the Emperor’s commands to fight against other Christians. The Emperor, furious and dishonored, ordered decimations after decimations until all the mercenaries were killed.

Although the decimation is popular particularly when studying Roman history, it was not invented by the Romans. Before the Romans, some sources confirm that Alexander the Great used the decimation against 6,000 of his own soldiers.

Writer: Vlad Racovita
Editor: Mashudi
Voice-Over: Colin Sheriff Ghannam
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Credits To:
- Rome Total War Series

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