Cohort Three of Italian Auxiliaries is a Roman Reenactment Group from the South Central part of the United States.  We have members and associates in Arkansas, Louisiana, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

    We attempt to recreate the less well known half of the Roman Army.  Everyone knows about the Legions, but standing beside or often in front of the Roman Legions of the Early Empire were the Auxiliary Cohorts.  These units were recruited from non-citizens and part of their service bonus was the acquiring of citizenship for themselves and their offspring.  Sometimes auxiliary cohorts were given their citizenship early as a result of a heroic action.  Auxiliaries provided cavalry, scouts, missile weapon specialists, and often the assault troops for the Roman army.  They usually had different weapons and armor from the regular Roman Legionary.  In some places the Roman auxiliary troops manned the first lines of defense.  In Britain, auxiliaries guarded the frontier posts of Hadrian’s Wall.  In Judea at the time of Jesus Christ, no Roman legions were officially stationed there, only auxiliary troops.  It was probably an auxiliary soldier who thrust his spear (hasta) into Jesus’ side, not a legionary with a pilum!

    After the slaughter of 3 legions in Germany, in AD 9, (which included many auxiliary troops as well), August Caesar raised several cohorts of auxiliaries from the non-citizens of Italy.  We know that Cohort 1 and Cohort 2 of the Italians were sent to Judea.  There were 5 cohorts in Judea, and we know the names of four of them.  Perhaps the third cohort was also raised in Italy.  Auxiliary service was for 25 years, which would put many Italians finishing their service during the years of Jesus Christ’s ministry.  One cohort of Italians was an escort to Paulus (St. Paul), a Roman Citizen, a few years later.   These were probably auxiliary troops as well! 

    How could an Italian not be a Roman citizen?  Many people in the Italian province, and even living in Rome were not citizens in the first century Annos Domini.  Of course, slaves were not citizens, and visitors from other lands were not citizens, but also freedmen and their sons and grandsons were not citizens.   If your parents had moved to Italy from afar, you might want to join the Army to earn your citizenship, if your father was a freedman or a son of a freedman, you might also want citizenship.  Service in the Legions was only for citizens; so one attractive option open to the non-citizen to improve his lot was enlisting in the Auxiliary Cohort.

    Cohors Tres Italica goes to Roman reenactment events as the other hand of the Roman Army.  We bring along different weapons, wear mail or scale armor, and carry oval or hexagonal shields.  We have archers, slingers, cavalry, and spearmen to fight for the Roman Army.  Join up TODAY! 

new Email is:

RomanRecruiter@hotmail.com

    Cohors Tres started out as an SCA Roman "warband" in 1988, but over the years we decided that we wanted more authentic equipment and we didn't want to "fight" late medieval knights or swashbucklers with rattan sticks or epees.  In the 1990's we started having our own get togethers, and when the Gladiator film came out, we found many more people all wanting to do the same thing!   The Third Cohort of Italians was at the organizational meetings of the ISPA, and even though we are outside the geographical boundary of this group, we are an associate member unit and attend many of their events.

      While we mainly work with a first century AD Roman Auxiliary impression, many of our members also have a Late Roman impression for interaction with other groups, and as a change of pace.

This site has too many ads and you wade through them to check email and add photos

so we will keep it but not check the email or update it.