Note 412 — WAS THE ROMAN ARMY PROVIDED WITH MEDICAL OFFICERS?

De Bello Africano, cap. xxi. The exigencies of war sometimes converted the stronger soldiers into the only available transport corps for the sick and wounded. Xenophon speaks in the Anabasis (lib. iii. cap. iv.), of the number of Greeks capable of fighting being diminished, because some soldiers were employed in carrying the wounded, and others in carrying the arms of the latter. One anecdote subsequently told by Xenophon seems to show that, occasionally at least, if not as the common rule, one soldier was deemed capable of carrying a sick or wounded companion. For he informs us, that towards the end of the expedition, when publicly accused of being sometimes too severe to the soldiers during the long retreat of the Greeks, the only person who came forward to substantiate the charge, was a soldier whom he had compelled to carry a sick comrade, and who, it turned out, had subsequently dug a pit to bury the invalid before he was completely dead. The army held that Xenophon had not beaten the complainant so much as he actually deserved for this conduct.—Anabasis, lib. v. cap. 8.