Legio I Augusta Roman Standard

The Legio I Augusta, perhaps the heir of an earlier legio I of Caesar or Pompey, was reorganised in the Augustan age and linked to the name of the princeps as a unit of special prestige.

First deployed in the civil wars on Caesar’s side, it fought at Pharsalus in 48 BC and then, after the dictator’s assassination, passed under Lepidus and then Octavian, fighting at Actium against Antony and Cleopatra. It was probably in the great reorganisation of the armies following the victory at Actium that the legion received the title Augusta, as a seal of the loyalty it had shown to the future Augustus.

Between 30 and 16 BC Legio I Augusta was stationed in Hispania Tarraconensis, where it took part in the harsh Cantabrian Wars, although the sources recall the disgrace of losing one of its standards, an episode that cost the legion a severe punishment and, according to some traditions, the temporary withdrawal of the honorific title linked to the emperor’s name. The unit was later associated with operations along the Rhine, where its “ashes” merged into Legio I Germanica, destined for the Germanic fronts of the imperial age.