Rome during the reign of Augustus built up a massive standing army that was almost constantly engaged in border struggles with the 'barbarians' in the West and the Parthians in the East for the next several hundred years. I've been reading a lot recently about the training, organisation, equipment etc. of the army but now I'm really curious about what service was like for a typical soldier from the reign of Augustus through to the Crisis of the third century. What, if any, combat would a Roman legionary who signed up for a minimum 25 year stint and possibly additional time afterwards have seen? Would he have been involved in a lot of small-scale skirmishing on the frontier? What were the odds of being part of a campaign personally commanded by the emperor? Would he have been involved in many pitched battles? Sieges? Raids?