Wikipedia
Milites were the trained regular footsoldiers of Rome. These men were the non-specialist regular soldiers that made up the bulk of a Legion's numbers. Alongside soldiering, they also performed guard duties, labour work, building and other non-combat roles. Milites would usually have to serve for several years before becoming eligible for training to become immunes and thus become specialists with better pay.
The Latin term eventually became synonymous with "soldier", a general term that, in Western Europe, became associated with the mounted knight, because they composed the professional military corps during the Early Medieval Era. The same term, however, could mean the infantry soldier (Milites Pedites). Other usages include the " Milites Templi", referring to the Knights Templar, or Milites Sancti Jacobi ( Order of Santiago).
From the Latin root "Miles" derived words such as " Military" and " Militia".
Category:Military ranks of ancient Rome
Usage examples of "milites".
She and Autun's milites have marched east in the company of Duke Conrad and his army.
And if he has marched all the way north from Aosta, and with soldiers who spent three years in the south with Henry, he'll have lost many of his veterans—not just those who died, but those milites who demand to return home at once to care for their farms and estates.
To his right, he glimpsed Liutgard's cavalry pressing the line on either side of Kassel's milites as they pushed and pushed.
Sanglant led the charge through gaps carved by the milites in the stockades.
The milites had taken the brunt of the assault, and had been outnumbered to begin with.
Although he was full seventy years of age, he took his sword and led his milites to drive off the invaders.
Just yesterday Hanna and the cohort of Lions and sundry milites who were her escort had journeyed through snow flurries.
As the Gent milites clattered back through the gates, they swept through a little market of beggars and poor folk gathered in the broad forecourt beyond the ramparts, almost trampling a ragged woman with a basket of herbs for sale.
The milites did not even notice their victim, tumbled in the dirt while the folk around her muttered uneasily, but Hanna hurried over to help the beggar woman to her feet, only to be spat at for her pains.
The milites who marched east have gone back to their farms, all but the soldiers.
Two well ordered contingents of infantry, one wearing the tabard of the King's Lions and the other Wendish milites out of Saony, flanked a mass of cavalry riding under his father's banner, the conjoined sigils of Wendar and Varre.
The cry rose up from the Saony milites who hemmed them in, yet his countrymen seemed hesitant to strike down one of their own.
But soldiers brought offerings: bread, baked turnips, roast pork, and greens, such fare as milites could expect and would generously share with a captain they admired and respected and a disgraced Eagle toward whom they had cause to be grateful.
Well trained to a man, they knelt respectfully as such milites would before any noble cleric.
His milites were already moving into their new positions around the riders, and two of his clerics had lit censers to purify the road before and behind with incense.