I've been reading up on military culture in ancient Rome and it feels like there's a lot of questionable punishments being employed. Of course I understand my modern sensibilities are probably influencing a lot of that assertion. Still it seems hard for me to see people just willingly killing their best friend(decimation) or just being beat severely cause they messed up in drill wouldn't cause some lingering resentment. So I guess the question is simple were there any examples of Roman soldiers (and by that I mean those that met the requirements to enlist in the legions free born, roman citizen, and all that jazz not auxiliary since those would necessarily have additional reasons to mutiny given they weren't romans.) mutinying in direct result of said punishments.
You’re right - Roman soldiers didn’t like it any more than we would. Tacitus writes about several and about the lengths emperors and imperial hopefuls would go to to ensure both their troops remained loyal. Read his Annals for fantastically readable discussions of mutinies and attempted mutinies.
Four are described in this article: Four Mutinies: Tacitus "Annals" 1.16-30; 1.31-49 and Ammianus Marcellinus "Res Gestae" 20.4.9-20.5.7; 24.3.1-8 by Mary Frances Williams in Phoenix, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Spring, 1997), pp. 44-74
We tend to romanticize Roman warrior culture (as we also do with Sparta) but these were mere humans of course.
The most shockingly modern is perhaps the story of Percennius, who before he was a soldier was an “applause leader” - sort of an MC at a theater. He whipped the fellas into a frenzy (we are told, by the unsympathetic Tacitus) in part by convincing his colleagues that they were treated like slaves (literally like the way slaves were treated).
Tacitus had a wonderfully modern eye in his way and invites us to imagine why the soldiers were liable to be persuaded even as the possibility of doing so entirely freaked him out.