Tirocinium
(“a recruit's term of service”; from
tiro, a
“recruit”). The Roman term for the interval between the assumption of the
toga virilis (in the sixteenth or seventeenth year) which marked the
beginning of independence and of liability to compulsory military service, and the entrance on
a military career or official activity in general. Under the Republic this time was fixed at a
year. It was looked upon as the last stage of education, and in this a youth qualified himself
either in the army for service in war or in the Forum for a political life.
In the latter instance the young man was handed over to the care of a man of proved
experience in public affairs, whom he attended in the Forum and in the law-courts. In the
former case he followed in the train (
cohors) of a general, where,
without performing the service of a common soldier, he fitted himself for the position of an
officer.