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Page 1 of 8 XLVII. leg. V Alaudae. Columns 1564-1571. Tr. Alexandr Kolouch. Prf.Shaun Hullis
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The form of the title Alaudae is perfectly certain thanks to inscription CIL IX 1460 legione V Alaudae, and, as has long been known, as a Gallic loan-word it was treated as indeclinable (see also for example Cichorius o. vol. I p. 1295. Vaglieri Diz. epigr. I 382). For this reason, calling the legion V Alauda as some scholars still do (for example von Pfitzner 3. Riese Korr.-Bl. d. Röm. Germ. Komm. 1917, 38, 3 and others), is totally inadmissible.
The characteristic epithet confirms the close relationship between the imperial legio V Alaudae and the Caesarian legion of the same name. Caesar created this legion at his own expense from the men of Gallia Transalpina, although they lacked Roman citizenship: (Caesar) ad legiones, quas a republica acceperat, alias privato sumptu addidit, unam etiam ex Transalpinis conscriptam vocabulo quoque Gallico (Alauda[e] enim appellabatur), quam disciplina cultuque romano institutam et ornatam postea universam civitate donavit (Suet. Caes. 24) see also Plin. n. h. XI 121: in capite paucis animalium nec nisi volucribus apices … praeterea parvae avi, quae ab illo (apice!) galerita appellata quondam postea Gallico vocabulo etiam legioni nomen dederat alaudae. This legion must already have borne the number V in the Caesarian army, surely for the first time when it became a iusta legio through the conferral of citizenship (not, as Groebe Festschr. f. Hirschfeld 459 thinks, already in 51 BC; his statement that the legion appears in the summer of that year as V in the field and his pleading from Caes. bell. Gal. VIII 24, 2 and 26, 2, are contradictory).
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