Roman military manuals from the 2nd century BC to the Justinianean era reveal that Roman warfare evolved gradually rather than through revolutionary reforms, with the army maintaining core principles of heavy infantry (legions) supplemented by auxiliary forces while adapting to changing enemies and circumstances. The surviving manuals, written by intellectuals like Onander and Frontinus rather than professional soldiers, emphasize ethical leadership and tactical principles over technical specifications, reflecting the Roman military's focus on discipline, morale, and combined arms tactics rather than technological superiority. This gradual evolution demonstrates that Roman military effectiveness stemmed from organizational flexibility, training, and the ability to integrate diverse auxiliary forces rather than from rigid uniformity or technological innovation.
Roman strategy & tactics from Scipio Aemilianus to the Justinianean Era: an overview - Part 1Added:
Hello everyone. Today we make an episode that is probably going to take multiple videos to finish which is a microscopic overview of Roman warfare between the 2n century BC to roughly the age of Justinian.
You probably wonder why do you make this kind of videos? Uh especially considering that I often in fact go in far depth into sort of also relatively at least secondary. I don't like the term obscure topics. Whatever we we cover, I always have the impression that is sort of too important to be even covered in in a single or more videos and and that it deserves in fact much deeper attention. You call that niche normal. I can make actual niche content as well as especially the the most affectionate of you really know. uh however this is exactly the point sometimes and I made this point many times itself uh in the past because I have videos of this genre as well it's only through these massive overviews that you can blend together all the more disperse content right if you are curious also just to have a um a synthesis a critical overview to see how I navigate the topic and what kind of sort insight we should get from it. Overall, this is a good exercise for for everyone involved because obviously it requires a bit of not of abstraction actually even more concrete eye so to say but some theoretical framework that other videos wouldn't otherwise have. And from your side of course like there is there may be a challenge like if you've never really focused on certain aspects of the war conceptualized them and so it may sound challenging and and new and whatever but this is the reason also why is here to to begin with and it's obvious that I don't know again how long this is going to take before starting but this is still going to constitute a pretty unsett satisfactory overview of the wall, right? Meaning that even though again there is this microscopic scale uh in of uh of browsing inside, this is not meant to be a definitive um observation of the entire picture.
All right, it's rather some orientative scoping exercise that can turn out to be useful in many other ways.
Talking about the Roman army is obviously a challenge in in a time which you have often just being presented the the broader picture in in many circumstances. There are some Roman uh his history scholars that have at some point recently turned to YouTube. I was a kid when I used to read G's Wart's um books on on the Roman army and now I listen to him and say well okay maybe here I could add part of of better other perspective. This is the beauty of sort of historians dialectical comparison.
There are so many different ways of looking at this. And it also shows really how in fact naive all those perspectives on like we need to you know pinpoint this this view and find a citation for this. History does not work like that. Like it works like that in your early 20s right up to mid 20s. Uh after that you're supposed to have already gone beyond to have been able to build like enough knowledge and insight and criticism, analytical skills to form fact a definitely also an informed op adequately informed opinion of the world that can contribute to the debate. um while still being in fact quite grounded on on actual evidence because this is the problem like most people don't know that most specialists in any field or also more the say the authorities in the field do not agree with one another isn't a super imposable picture that simply derives from the fact that these people are experts or otherwise are bad or have some sort of bias that fundamentally undermines what we understand as a as a academic standard as a scientific rigor. On on the contrary, most people fly lower and do not really get how it is above and it is actually more beautiful but also more challenging than it seems really. So we can all find different ways sometimes to the same topic. Um I wasn't sure in fact even what to start from this. Um, I think a year ago or so, I made a video about the sources on the Roman army, probably the classical literature, the primary sources that you should read uh in order to get acquainted with it. He also made more uh even more distantly a video about in fact how to properly approach in a broader conceptual sense the Roman army. So you understand how we get step by step always deeper even in these presentations and I think a good way to start is a reference to sources and specifically to manuals. All right, Roman military manuals and six of them have survived from the relevant historical period we're covering today. Naturally they're they all come I think by this point with English translations.
It's good obviously to be able to read um Atlantic and Latin to say the least for not not even just for studying ancient history but in any case right uh we will briefly browse these we have onander a platonic philosopher rather than a professional soldier this is typical of the elenistic sort of context in which much of these manuals were properly written because the Romans didn't have a model on their own. They had something that in any case they had developed imitating by genre um from the from from the Greeks cuz Romans do stuff do not sit down and write about that.
Naturally also these were also in the linenistic word normally dictated to scribes to specialized slaves and onander wrote his treatis strategicos also known as thus sort of the commander the general in the early first century AD around 49 to 5758 and we know this because he dedicated it to Quintus Veranius.
Veronius Napos was the console of 49 AD who later served as legate in Britain still have to finish a series on Roman Britain for that matter and died there around in fact 5758 providing a firm terminus antiqu for the work's composition and Ozander explicitly addressed the treatise to Romans of senatorial dignity race to consular or general rank through the wisdom of Augustus Caesar. Right? It it focused on the ethical qualities, background and conduct expected of an ideal Roman general emphasizing psychological insights and leadership principles that influence later Byzantine military thought. This is for telling you even in fact as a broader arise of what what these manuals were about, right? you know that I discussed Renaissance manuals a lot and we pointed out how um the early modern u thinkers not not even commanders because these manuals circulated much less in the hands of those who actually wage war than we normally think right that was no such a thing like a military revolution in the Renaissance let alone driven by some sort of loose adaptation of certain classical era military concepts or formations whatever um compared but to to already more advanced in fact art of war of that point Anazando again was not a soldier himself but as we know also from other sort of Atlantic helenistic authors at some point you you don't really need to be uh in order to talk warfare alo at an informed level and he really in clubs of speaking stressed moral forces, right? What kind of standards like what kind of rigor, discipline, what virtues at the end of the day were necessary in order to rise to probably the higher level that had been in fact set by Agugustus as the medium of of God and therefore sanctioning a golden age as far as his commanders were also uh concerned. All right. so picked from the elite itself but for a specific military uh inclination and reputation. Consider how in the sense like the treaties we list now are somehow even less notorious I would say in today's pop culture and lines etc than later uh Byzantine era manuals or at least the strategic that we will mention uh here too and that however do not uh instead take in consideration that the actual tradition which especially Byzantine in fact classicistic um literature was was drawing from had been sedimented from quite quite a while. This is not sort of stripping the Byzantines of their in particular like helenically um characteristic intellectual genius, right? the capacity to systematize to observe like the beauty of the strategical as we will repeat now because we discussed it many occasions is properly blending that Roman practicality uh and also in part sort of clarity uh straightforwardness with this great intellectual sophistication and capacity effect of observation but there there is in fact a world from which this gener is coming from that is to be counted in across the the centuries as one of great secularization of thought but also providing with a standard with a sort of what what should we actually discuss and why consider that there were lots of other treaties right the same Augustus actually wrote one about taxes so unfortunately that did not uh survive to our era but this is for saying how um at some We could even make a video about this like why were these traits written to begin with and they were obviously inspirational who were always obviously speaking to people who already knew how to to make war because they got into it by by career by status already was considered like in in romantic like a duty to have served in in the military and before accessing civil uh politics so to say even though sort of the higher magistrates obviously entailed a part of Imperium as well. And so um the obvious that is unfortunately also shown by the the absence of evidence regarding for example I don't know what did a centurion actually know like we don't have manuals written by centurions. We we can't think that even at some point somebody wrote something. uh but it wasn't important for probably the intellective and cultural horizons of the era to to to know what essentially the top NCO or the lower officers rank would actually think in a it's something that had to be remembered ideally in the affirmation of a perfect divine power that in and of itself at the higher level of command already owned all the wisdom and insight that was necessary And and you understand through this how functional these manuals really were for in fact a moral dimension that is the most important in warfare as opposed to the technical one. Right? Instead probably properly as the the Romans would have said adminus from which in fact the same term administration comes from is left to the lower edgulence that uh do not see relief from from top.
other important order Finus, right?
authoring a tactical manual later in the same first century that uh has since been lost but uh producing a companion work called in fact the strategy the strategimata which survives uh and offers an exceptional collection of deceptive military tricks drawn from elenic and Roman history intended to surprise and outmaneuver an unsuspecting foe composed After a84 during the reign of the mission, Vum Fontinos served as a general in Gmania where he participated in fact in campaigns against the Katin in the early 80s as legate of the army of lower Germany, Gmanian frier. It covered topics like discipline, concealment of plans and psychological factors in warfare with references to the mission as Gerbmanus reflecting in fact the events uh of his own um service including in fact an example where the same emperor ordered dismounted cavalry to fight on foot against the kativ who repeatedly fled into forests interfering with mounted uh engagements. This is quite interesting because um for for two reasons. Um indeed these tactics were absolutely performed and and uh the fact that the Germans at large did not really meet the Roman legions in open field because they were perfectly aware of of this imagery there but in fact harassed them and in this sense deprived them also the maneuverability and um sort of cavalry shock uh effect in in certain circumstances happened. I don't know even with the Irish against the English in the high middle ages this kind of things but uh could not in this sense also stop a dismounted cavalry men from attacking in fact on foot and um this we covered also in other videos that highlight how sort of in fact non-technical again the hierarchy of powers really is right how if you have a moral force that is capable of chasing an enemy to the force. Ideally, like you don't send your best cavalry men to do that, right? But there were lots of auxiliaries as well. And in in certain circumstances, you know that the the same Roman legionaires were although not particularly conceived for mounted combat could definitely engage in that too. Aside from obviously the the Turai that were present uh in the in the legions proper that they were just a token like a symbolic force so to say there was a proclivity to to adaptation that we tend not to uh think very much when you think about legionary infantry in fact but that could really do something different. It's obvious that you don't send the hyper highly trained Roman legionaire to perform tasks highly a traditional guerrilla war. In fact, also lighter more lightly equipped forces can can find but they would occasionally found them find themselves in the condition of doing so. But the other aspect that aligns with what we were saying before that is interesting about this strategy mata is the fact that also in here we shouldn't get this sort of nominalistic uh heretic idea that you know the the Romans or any other people knew a set of tricks that nobody else knew. Right?
Knowing of them for the in fact educated elite that was the same one that went to to war etc was a way to sort of inform it better to provide them with this uh broader set of um sort of an anecdotes that would ideally provide you like with sort of a given solution to depending on the circumstances but always remember that it's not until the 18th century in the same phone clauses really that mills manuals are actually conceived to be positively expandable in in a truly practical sense regarding probably the the overall theory that they're able to provide to you provided by the way as the same for clause as it says that still direct military experience naturally in positions of command is preferable um for mastering that at a high level. So given that here we're talking the same uh height so to say of command we have to understand also how much more directly imbued probably with military knowledge and exper think about even just the tales of your father of your ancestor this continuous presence let's say of the various Roman nilar clans in all over the world really across three continents that would alone confer them this immediate practical commandative situation Having slaves is also basically uh what what offered to kids even just how probably to be humanly capable of commanding people. This is an incredibly important aspect in this upbringing as well. So you read this stratag today and you say oh wow look you know here this historian told us that in this battle this thing happened so look here it's written in the manual as well. it didn't really matter to them, right? They could have found it curious in the way how certain things kind of overlap. But this this more like um notionistics, right? Also, when you read Sununzu, you wouldn't believe someone would tell you never besiege a city where otherwise war could have not been wed to begin with. you have if anything to understand behind the um these anecdotes and so not at all this the systematic military wisdom that was in this sense theoretically provided only starting from the 19th century um in and it's not again a complement to the 19th century per se if not under that specific intellectual point of view right um why also because in in this sense people were much more detached commanders probably were much more ded detached from warfare later on um and were also commanding admittedly at that point something bigger papoleonic era in this day and age in fact manuals it is until the renaissance where they start having some minimal relevance especially in the early period right that manuals were not even needed if not as a dis as a way of saying you know ideally let's conceptualize this but then when it gets to actual fighting uh it depends obviously on the situation and there are other qualities that come into place.
Fontinus is again interesting because he had had actual military experience. Then you have um Arian Flavius Arianos. This was an Atlantic historian and Roman governor of Capedokia under Hadrien. So roughly 131 137. Look at this provincial government.
his tactics. The ars tactica essentially paraphrases the earlier hellenistic writer as clipodus.
This is also a way to go that starts in fact sounding a bit by Byzantine in nature coping. If you look at the leo the wisest tactica it's notoriously just the strategic rewritten with a minimal like last phrase at the end of of the paragraph.
uh if we you know he was in the mood um to insert it to add the minimal um change in flavor but that was supposed to be adapted to a broader sort of context that especially in Byzantine mentality was to simply insist within itself and in the the Greeks had originated this kind of thinking that this older Dorian orders this is even before Roman times had to be preserved to the point of crystallization that if you simply paraphrase another author's work and everybody knew that by the way because was one of sort of the most important authors back in the day it would be kind of okay. Um there is in Arian however also the incorporation of Adrianic reforms.
Um the uh enhancing for example like the with the work with a useful section Roman cavalry training and battlefield techniques as well. Uh and then you have most famously the order of battle against the Allens that I think I made an entire video on the Ectaxis Kata Alanon or Akas Contra Alanos written around 135 uh detailing marching columns through enemy territory along with the formations adopted specifically to counter shock cavalry from the from the islands. I also made multiple videos about them in their warfare. This was a smation nomadic people would threaten in fact Roman Capedokia after having been summoned by the barrier king Farah Manis II leading fact to this incursion into Transcalcas and up to Capedokian 135 and yes I I here have I I talk I think about Arian in that list of there's no standalone video excuse me I check one second if I yeah it's the one on the sources the Roman So, we already briefly commented uh on that at some point.
We'll surely make a standalone video because you know what this is about. It's the description of a defensive fall like infantry array supported by missile troops and auxiliary units from in fact Capadokia to repel this Allen heavy cavalry charges.
drawing surely directly from Arian's own experience commanding forces in that campaign where he gathered around 18,000 soldiers though the nomads in fact ultimately retreated without a major engagement which was somehow also in their style together with this Iranics uh in general we'll come back on this kind of warfare because we stopped talking a bit about ancient warfare lately however the so we browsed also the actual content of the of the kata.
And we observed that the description of this array is fundamentally just more like an illustration of some specific units. Their commanders, they're all taken sort of in consideration called by name. Um and there is not really much of a technical uh explanation of how this array would have had to work, right? Uh there are there are indications on obviously on the location, the sizes of the true and all this stuff, but it's more like an illustration of how composite this force really was and how they were all mutually interdependent of one another.
We don't actually understand from the work how this array against the islands should have practically worked also because we don't really know for the entire history of the Roman army exactly how much space actually this formations occupied etc. people sort of break their heads on on this numbers that are if they actually had any clue about where what primary sources say and or in what's their context to begin with they would know that there's no way to know right there are very few figures properly in in all the arc of Roman warfare that tell us sometimes also quite um quite uh opposite things right if you listen to polibius uh and then the Jetsus he would have regarding the Roman uh order of battle for having infantry respectively like an open or order and and a fallank like uh formation um and obviously things change no army is equal to another one and so on and there isn't a rigid kind of oh look here I see a pattern so I will fantasize or speculate about this and I will tell you how the Roman army was actually nobody knows this is notori like if you are have are worth two cents as a historian. You know that this is the the basis of it all and then only on top of this we can build other considerations uh for understanding other actually also more important uh aspects of warfare than how sort of large formation was of how deep the ranks were all this kind of stuff.
Um and in fact when you read Arian regarding to this ar to to counter the allens it's understood that there is some kind of mutual support combined arm tactics whatever but how this ar against the allens would have worked or whether this was meant properly to defeat the allens or in this expedition or the allens in general it's not said and it's not important in fact we shouldn't even probably take that too seriously after all. All right.
Now, passing to Vagettis, he composed his manual, the Apito Marilitaris, also known as more simply the re military during the late fourth or early fifth century. This is for telling you, by the way, how scarce these manuals are altogether. We pass from the first, the second century to to the fourth, the fifth. Uh and Vagatis is in indeed incredibly important. If anything, it was the only of these military manuals that were studied in the west during the middle ages. So some historians would like to make him also in this case a bit more influential than he actually was. I know very specific um scholars that wrote works like saying ah look this medieval battle in the early 14th century by the paleolus that had read the jets here align with one thing that is said in in the in the manual uh like a a mos panel thing like I don't know having sort of wings certain troops placed here and there like can always happen in very simply simple ways by the way it's not obstruuse um combination of troops or alchemic cabalistic proportions of of forces that no source describes nor in antiquity nor in the Middle Ages nor ever because it doesn't matter really that much of for how combat is fought or lost and these are just sort of modernistic alienations from reality as usual right but regarding the jets is that that I'm not by the way trying to minimize the importance of these works they are incredibly important they're incredibly striking. What they lament is how they're often misinterpreted um or mistaken properly by moderns in ways that in fact we we already know historaphically we we can't properly do.
Regarding Vagis's works dating, we have internal evidence pointing to the reign of Valentinian the third or possibly even Theodosius the first ruling out Valentinian the first. Um, Vagetsus' text mixes contemporary practices with older methods in a somewhat confused manner, requiring readers to exercise great cion. Yet, it retains considerable value as a reform-minded compilation advocating revival of traditional legionary discipline in training amid growing barbarian influences.
Some manuscripts link revisions or dedications to figures associated with the early fifth century, reflecting concerns over federatic reliance and novel matters in western Mediterranean around the 430s to 40s with a reference to the deified gracion placing their for composition after 383 and possible illusions to events up to 450 even at least in certain manuscript traditions because obviously we got all this from the middle ages as well. Uh and in this sense, Vetus is an incredibly fascinating red because he's reflecting a bit beyond the mere technicalities of warfare. At least he's framing them in in an ideal of the Roman military that he thought in fact he passed down even as a sort of complaint.
This happens moments of crisis, people discourage themselves about the current uh situations rather than looking at still what actually works. Uh and so you have this strange milange of information about the Roman army that by the way justice is somehow aware and open about the relative incoherence of at least he opens the work famously by claiming that he does not have a military experience or capacity in particular on his own. So he's obviously describing the ideal model of an army that he located at the time say of of Caesar of Augustus and that he did not see in his present times because he was witnessing to the decline of the empire especially in the west and uh and in general probably the ways of war that had made the Romans great to conquer the world uh and now fading away. Right. So, um it's actually however very rich and deep um in uh properly in descriptions and vision. So, there are very interesting and also technical data that are definitely expandable.
When reenactors say, "Yeah, but we we tested the plume. They they tell us something different in range compared to what the authors at the time. Does it even matter?" You see this is where I want to throw this pro provocation fundamentally by saying like but do we really think I don't know that how long the a plumbata range really was at the time um aside from the ubas of pretending that you would know better how to build one to to toy with one without properly a late Roman military properly combat context.
Do you think that there is any and this my criticism is extended also to other periods of reconstructionism, the middle ages and so on that this has any actual historical relevance in explaining how major political, strategical and tactical circumstances could could be narrated, could be explained today. Right? It it's something frankly uh a bit disturbing.
Finally, as we were saying before, we have the Maitzius or Sao Maurice Maicius Strategicon, an early Byzantine work from the late 6th century, attributed in fact to the Millier, at least the court of Emperor Moraurice, who ruled between 582 and 602, providing many insights into earlier Roman organization and tactics, including drill movements executed to Latin commands still at the time. H it's only in the following generation fundamentally the the Byzantine army would they and empire in general would undergo some further um final helenization certain terminology etc. Uh because in the Roman army in particular like up to that point Latin had been the official language uh and um the work notoriously covers caliber formations, ambushes, baggage trains, surprise attacks, siees and the characteristics of various enemy peoples.
uh that as we also dedicated multiple videos to in fact already with practical emphasis on flexible combined arms tactics against foes like the others who had established as you know this powerful presence in the panonian plane after the mid 560s Persians Slavs and others while showing familiarity with elenistic models like onander and alien as a matter of fact and Maurice himself had commended success uccessfully against the Persians before his accession later led campaigns pushing back a Slavic advances across the Danube. Um this is incredibly important uh not just because it sort of sets properly the standards of Byzantine military treatis where it's blended in separably with passages from Lao Leo's treaties in the following centuries. However, it it's it's probably the peak again of the fantastic effervesence and alchemy of Roman and Greek military thinking adapted in fact to the to this era essentially just in one one of Maurice later in the late six early 7th century and it's it's a fantastic work. It's actually the most interesting of these texts. However, as we've seen in the videos about in fact sixth century Byzantine army training and all this stuff that mostly are based in fact on what the strategic says.
There is a pinch of again Greek idealism and um sort of categorism and much what is described obviously fits some general military practice. We can assume there are lots of tactical modules that explain exactly how this or that unit should be located, how they should interact with one another.
And this surely derives from some level of probably theoretical recruitment training that was given to this or that unit and tactical sort of expendability of the same from the side of the commanders. In any case, it is somehow still anecdotal, right? And actually, the most important part, in fact, is the the one that describes the military costumes of all the various barbarians, all the various enemies of of the empire that is, I would say, actually incredibly spot on, right? If for what we know, and this is in fact also a major source for each of these peoples, most of which did not in fact leave us anything. Actually none of them left us anything like the strategic but also in many cases did not leave us even anything written. I mean think about the the hours the Slavs and so on. So um it's it's a slightly different perspective sometimes but when you look from obviously the ones for example these peoples would have described themselves but at the same time it's incredibly superimposable with all what we know in fact about these peoples and their ways of war including other Byzantine sources chronling battles campaigns and they all make a lot of sense. So also the first part as somehow ideal as it may sound surely again has its own basis. Uh this kernel of truth this is val for all of these manuals telling you the truth.
Why did we talk about these manuals?
Well, because if one wants to have an idea of how schematically like the Roman army would fight throughout these several centuries, they would ideally have to go at least to some theoretical foundation provided by in fact works aiming at giving you uh the same. But as always, it's um really a wider body of literature that provides you and probably narrative sources in in in particular with the necessary evidence how to reconstruct the strategies and tactics of the Roman army during this period. You would also ask me that why do you why do we talk now about you know the Roman army between 150 BC to 500 BC? Because in many ways this is the so-called imperial period telling the truth the Roman army was already might to be reconed from at least another century but there is no doubt that a properly imperial and professional character only takes place starting more or less from from that period. Uh the second century recruitment crisis is a bit of a sort of misnomer right there was never really a moment at which the Romans chronically lacked men power. It was more like a a political and and social problem help to actually provide those forces in the institutional framework of a decaying um quote unquote republic that they never actually called in that way at least in barling the modern term that we use for it. The latter end is arbitrary. We could have extended it to the time of Heraclus. uh actually however the mid6th century in particular is such uh actually it stopped in the age of Justinian so actually was by title I don't know I probably maintain 500 maybe 550 because Justinian's plague uh really changes the face of the world even if in the moment probably they didn't realize how much in also in terms of military affairs like it's difficult at some point to even speak of veritable reforms throughout specific times and There are very specific ones that at some point we will also focus more on because how did these um armies really change like people have often an idea that there is an autocratic um commander that basically arrives and changes the army that up to the day before was in a certain way.
The reality of it is that these armies were already changing on their own and these commanders as politicians came to um essentially sanction the change and therefore work wealth for that matter with the same armies to gain the reputation that it was if anything later attributed to them. Anecdotally speaking, you think that Marius actually reformed the Roman army in any meaningful military sense like that he actually started to quote unquote uniform whatever this means at this point like all the the various legionary of course the the Roman armies look like that already from from quite a while telling the cohorts were already around possibly from from a century so we will get all into that because also notorious for anyone again who knows the bare minimum about this topic. So when we get to the sixth century, we we realize that there's a massive civilizational shrinking that will be heavily compounded by the later war against Persia where Constantinople went but basically remaining exhausted together with with the same Iranians where the Arabs basically spread across this vast territory not much by any particular power but because they sort of toppled the the local regime in some cases probably was very much hated by by the locals uh and um there there were no resources to defend and so that there the Byzantine Empire loses half of its territory in the following generations mostly to to the Muslims and has properly to readapt to remold itself in fact on a very different system. I also made multiple videos on the thematic in fact quote unquote reforms or army. So if you're interested uh in that uh I've already provided I I'm glad that we are at a time invar where we can say okay well actually I tackled that very radical crucial uh topic was it even that was two videos for for one episode so to say because the topic is so very important um and we will have to come back even more specifically from a military point of even a deeper military point of view on that because it's really an epoch change but even there we realize it's mostly like a gradual change. So we yeah we mostly talk here in the latter period the last great sort of late antique military that the Byzantines incarnated and with which they successfully in fact reconquered most of the Mediterranean would still function of that latent thick uh mechanism.
lots of videos for that matter on the sixth century, right?
Um, as we were saying before, the actually broader pool and the one that really shows how literate you are in this topic can be drawn from contemporary historical accounts, technical writings and subjects such as the construction of torsion, artillery, even how again marginal this can be overall the building of encampments, uh, veterinary practices, all everything gets in into the the cake so to say to to as a rest up for the perfect uh ideal, the perfect level of reconstruction possible, the Roman army.
for not talking about artistic representations of battles, heroic poetry. This is particularly underrated as well as obviously for the ancient world in consistent part archaeological findings that however are virtually irrelevant without in fact this documentary evidence.
Reconstructing Roman military organization and tactics is therefore uh and will always be to some extent an ongoing process of assembling often ill-fitting pieces from many different sources. on firepunk. Personally, I never really liked talking about quote unquote heresies whenever you have this repetitive videos about ah did you get the politic fallance wrong or this and then that's basically some sort of mental I don't say what um regarding some people that some decades ago decided to create a model had nothing to do with what already historians like in the previous centuries already knew what you know say Atlantic warfare was in f like And so we should now be spending in turn like time and energy to to debunk that when it just suffices to to have a decent classical education and experience with primary sources to reconstruct campaigns and battles and having only through that like the best understanding of how the in this case the Roman art of war uh really function right that's literally the only way for so many videos on the the olitic uh heresy uh I I don't see many videos on that reconstruct act as we do on Stratunk by the way uh battle after battle of the Paloponyian war from primary sources and with the beautiful sort of morals uh uh sort of in terms probably of explanation but also in terms of same moral view of of clashes etc that are really in fact the most important aspect of the wall as we were pointing out regarding even such an apparently benal thing like the sort of the the order of Roman heavy infantry gaps inevitably remain and must be bridged with reason conjecture.
There are many ways of doing this and mostly this proceeds by comparison by analogy so to say also through a potent diiacronic uh culture you cannot it doesn't make any sense to study I don't know any ancient army without knowing anything about medieval modern contemporary armies right it just shows you the degree of u misconception that you're going to unavoidably fall into as you probably have no terms of comparison if you study the art of war without particular scanning. You realize that certain things work always the same way.
others change according to some degrees.
that you also must have a powerful sort of political and social awareness regarding the various cultures of of the various eras and that therefore are practically unrelated with the idea of some deterministic structuralistic technicistic and uh in a sense also completely abstract idea conjecture how the Roman army would have worked just because you for the first time find from a turary source or like one figure that you were going to spend uh among your friends just to show that you read something. Um now as we're also hinting at for regarding archaeology, new discoveries frequently appear and need to be incorporated.
There are many interesting ones like it's from some years ago. For example, the first discovery or of a fragment at least of a bronze Lorica um so-called segmented armor actually that actually alone gives you a pretty obvious realization of how the history of technology really works. what kind of so materials were used, but how the design in some ways was more important than than metal in dictating in fact the the shape, the functionality uh in or that at least the quality of armor can vary, but in a sort of practically expandable sense. What matters in in in a battle that we can't often reconstruct in fact time is whether somebody would have had that armor or not and how many were armored or unarmed. not what kind of type of armor because at that point the same metal could be different and and therefore people try to fundamentally project some absolutes on how these armies really looked like in in general terms and just like as what I was saying before regarding the concept of uniformity people read the term under the Marian reform uniformed ro and um legionary infantry uh in and fundamentally homogeneous types based on the precaps model. So everybody thinks that to most people really tend to to think that this was uniform that everybody looked like that and that also within the same say course there wasn't a specific segmentation of the troops depending on how they were deployed uh in the in the array etc about which we don't know almost anything. So it's completely even useless to to be particularly fixated with unless you approach this with a degree of open-mindedness that fits in fact a sort of a greater experience in in in the art of war matters. For this reason, the puzzle is still far from complete, leaving room for others to contribute obviously in the future. But bearing in mind what the limits are, there are certain things that you do not know when it gets to arms and armor. Maybe the more time passes, the more we're going to find. But having some broader monolithic insight from or even just historaphical insight from the ancient world is sort of quite complicated, especially for these topics. It's extremely unlikely to say the least that we're ever going to find a new hidden manuscript nobody had ever read that tells us specifically how um even in fragment uh like a Roman legioner was specifically armored right it's maybe it's easier to find underground frescos whatever to to tell us some of that in any case uh you never have the picture of a of a broader army at work you have like in the beautiful columns like depicting as we were talking about the Marsh command also the the other day you have yes an idea of how these guys would have looked like also in units information but they are few overall you don't have a beautiful sort of panoramic view of a Roman legion uh these works this artistry was always symbolic in many ways which doesn't mean it wasn't accurate or realistic But aside from obviously the divide existing between sort of celebratory monuments where things looked a bit fancier regarding how a soldier for example might have been kept um and the frontier that gives us something in archaeological terms that that is obviously different.
We today have a a pretty good idea of this picture. But the most important thing is to stick to to the realization that there is just so much that you can know about this. And I say it because again I come from a generation that as we see from the internet tended to be fundamentally obsessed with these ideas because as moderns and as mostly from different bias that I'm not going to explain are fixated with technology etc. we assume that what matters is simply what you have in your hands when you're fighting as opposed to how much you want to rip off um the the guts of the person in front of you, right? And so when it comes also to reconstructing with this waristic idea, no, that's how they actually looked like this this is the only evidence that we have. We have to stick to that. That's not a serious thing, right? So if anything it's what you have to do in order to grow knowledgeable about this topics is to read as much as you can primary secondary tertiary sources to get an idea of where we are ourselves right so as I was saying before I'm not going to enter in how we see the Roman army whether I like the vero or you can't criticize loot or whatever this is not so important maybe we're going to make some videos about this at some point can be interesting What I mostly always stressed on because in continental Europe we tend to have this attitude is go back to the primary sources always learn the uh properly the the semantic depth of terminology try to imagine this content look at battlefields like properly take a um the exact measures the distances try to toy with that um don't do like I will not say which channel which pertains to fit uh in fact with video game means like an army in a specific landscape without even wondering whether I don't know an army was deployed on a certain amount of ranks or another and pretending that that's how the battle went and now we know because I have a thing that projects how many how troops would have been deployed in a certain uh geographical space um so I'm I'm not even going to to to descend into this there there is something that is military logic ical and is worth pursuing as a broader concept. Other things are simply unknown and you should be um reasonable enough to to leave it at that unless something again comes up in the meanwhile. We may be lucky but uh we also have to be concrete and studying especially a lot of art of war from all eras is crucial.
And by the way, anyone undertaking this work of trying to better understand the Roman army should keep three hardearned principles in mind. Never relying unquestioningly or on even the most imminent modern author or translator.
This is incredibly important. This is I something I said also in the video about Veritas and Kitas that got I think cut in the in the recording because I a point but there was that atrocious u mistransation from the li translator that Okon Connelly um made uh decades ago that basically translated the libician long heavy javelin as pike as sarisa literally like the Macedonian and fallings bringing lots of people after him to literally presume that the Carthaginian army had Macedonian fallances uh style infantry sort of and um which was impossible for all a series of reasons that that if you know about properly the the nature of prun politics in society you know could have not been the same it's even unlikely that Zamadu was any of the Macedonian uh reinforcements ments that actually a source points out.
considering the the disastrous economic situation which Macedon found itself at the end of of the 3rd century BC and um and and all O you find still an offspr for example this ridiculous picture of the Carthaginian pike bearer which is absolutely ridiculous and uh is meant in fact to refer also to the long as well this for telling you how bad certain even the lack probably of linguistic competence can can be for studying this stuff but it's something deeper it really if you have never really encountered specific intellectual figures I had the luck back in the day to do so that properly acquaint you with the depth and the complexity of this for apparently banel topics like how a in fact a weapon was named in the sources are like you can't go that far right my Bass and Schwarber really slowly covering all the the lenistic era uh period and you always have from from primary sources is incredibly beautiful and revealing concepts that are much more important than any technical description for that matter to always return to the original sources that's first and foremost the most important thing so from there you should be able to develop the thorough knowledge of military techniques from both before and after the period in question. You can't again um and even beyond as I as I said before you can't pretend to understand what the Roman manipulion was if you have no idea why it even came up and and obviously avoiding to fill up the the gap of trying to explain this by making up some fantasy conjectures. There there is a proper historioggraphy. There are sources alone if you just want to start from the primary ones. Equally, you should also ask yourself but you know what was really this manipulion?
When did we actually come up come up with with with this concept itself and why do we call it like that? How it came into being? How on which um say on on which timeline? Because again armies always change. So you can't even stop saying, "Okay, well at some point Marios arrived and there's the cortal legion."
No, it was basically the same army. And and the the sooner in fact you abandon this this kind of character categorization, the more sort of open and focused on the continuum you are, the better it's going to be because frankly these armies were practically all the same like in sanitary Europe and Mediterranean like what kind of armies felt in a different way from heavy infantry. I kept more or less in the same way. I mean that the same term fallank is notoriously used by the Greeks for practically any kind of heavy infantry they ever encountered. um which obviously doesn't mean that they fold uh literally in the same identical way but it was evidently even in ter terminologically speaking a much loser term that is meant in fact something else in particular probably a steamrolling uh so to say tree log right that probably in fact steamroll the the enemy forces other very important thing is avoid assuming that any newly noticed detail has never been observed before that opposing arguments do not exist. This is literally the best arena to probably demolish your own opinions, right? You have to wrestle with with them and that especially realize that there is a widerography on these topics already and that this serography in turn is also right or wrong, right? don't do like normally the the Anglosphere academic culture did that is putting on the four scholarship as opposed to primary sources especially as far as ancient history is concerned. Um and given that the dividends is fairly limited I mean for the middle ages you can't study all the sources and say even just western Europe like nobody can there are too many right so you can be more or less expert on this areas or not for the ancient world at least if you take say I don't know the Greeks the Romans after all are the where most of our information comes from to begin with like you can't kind of dominate that in your lifetime if you focus on the military side of the story that feasible. All right.
But in this sense, you should be able to read for example again well I will not make as promised scholarly examples because I would digress too much but in general like we have also a level of cap sorry a capacity in general to spot whether something that we have started to build as a system with a lot of knowledge that makes sense within it is actually compatible with what others say. Right. Personally in historaph I always found a lot of categorism especially in the 80s in the 90s and so on like there's always this sense when you read these articles from back then and even in part like the following decades that there is this obsession with fixing categorical um milestones like saying this was this type of army then it changed into this doesn't make any sense. That's also what the aforementioned um oitic heresy sort of came from. And yet people also unfortunately focus on this iconoclasm by presuming that since ah look the scholar was wrong. Haha, you're not better than the scholar, right? You know the scholar came up with that um knew something more and better than you. But also especially when you um you are to explain the B picture in general you tend as an average person not to be particularly more competent in any case than that scholar not to have particular bias. Right? From the politic heresy we still have videos online that claim things like that the Greeks could not have a thickly packed heavy infantry because Greece has mountains.
As if like this is this is serious. This is a serious point. If you don't understand that, of course, there is plenty of of of room for Atlantic finances to have actually worked the way they're pretty unequivocally described as heavy infantry because that's how heavy infantry fundamentally worked to begin with say in into Cidus um in ais xenophon so like it's a it's a bit uh complicated to claim that you are this great dismantler that's using reason because you you are still at the level of if There are mountains in the interland. I don't know there are not fertile planes or places where to clash also or simply the fax couldn't even simply go into more um rugged terrain fundamentally. So it really depends on many things and in general um even the the the banking sounds a bit too categorical and heretical probably in attitude and mindset. That's unfortunately how polluted we are from an intellectual point of view from this point of view. Um and so let's look at some of these aspects and then naturally will and can profitably spark some further scholarly controversy and debate and and everything but that here we present obviously as a YouTube channel where I okay made thousands of videos mostly about the art of war. I have as you know my professional background in specifically in the field and uh I think can be useful to anyone who wants to approach this topic. Now some things I'm going to say are probably going to sound particularly bananel right but we also have to start from the core elements otherwise we can't descend uh in other details and considerations that are especially relevant in part as we'll see now concerning things we already said in this video for example let's start from this concept the fact that at the heart of the Roman army throughout its history stood the legio The Legion, a large well- drilled infantry formation trained primarily or or at times exclusively for close combat.
This already could be profitably debated, meaning that yeah, again, heavy infantry was fundamentally the the bulk of not just the Roman army as we'll see now other many other militaries out there. But it doesn't mean that legionnaires were incapable of fighting in other fashions or circumstances. Just there were other troops that historically were cheaper and more specialized at the same time coming from the subject peoples that could work like in that effect secondary roles that were again more dangerous but could in fact require less um specialized allound training like the legionnaires that are maybe this is a a provocatory concept but consider the legionaires being probably the knights in a traditional sense of the Roman legion. Not because they weren't the equitist, they were the proper knights with their sort of prime chivalry tradition. People I made an entire video that I don't like to make uh to to title that way, but that is quite importantly so for this specific topic, namely the fact that the Romans had actually a pretty darn good cavalry, probably citizen cavalry. um it was incredibly qualitative and it seems like the pop culture has not gotten the memo on this.
On the contrary, for reasons I'm not going to digress on, they attribute greater cavalry capacity to peoples actually did not have the level of of Roman cavalry command or training or even equipment for that matter. Uh and uh that's somehow disappointing. Don't get me wrong, those were the proper knights, right? So what I'm talking about regarding the legionaires is mostly the fact that these were free men and therefore conceptually and you have to watch the videos on Roman religion and my metaphysics for that the proper free men and noblemen of um the world as such because yes obviously Roman so legioners were fundamentally plebbeans um in origin they could come from from different backgrounds telling the truth nothing prevented people from a lower uh from a higher order to in fact to to enlist. There were different ways of doing that. In fact, considering the status at the same time, but not just the Romans uh in this sense thought of themselves as God's chosen people for world conquest, but they actually carried out the latter. Right? So even the fortestator uh in in the Roman military as a Roman citizen was a metaphysically superior lord over all these subjected peoples.
As a matter of fact, this is true also for other populations as well. And so while the concept of free men is eroded ipso factor by this same idea also comparing different free men across different peoples at the same time the idea of the kingum militaris and I say this mostly because I'm a medivalist as you know um is deeply embedded in fact in the same Roman legionary tradition what becomes the kingum military the chingulum militarist in the kiasical pronunciation in the middle ages is not derived merely from the probably from the aquis right is derived from he who bears the sword in the world to begin with. And so it's a much higher sacred principle. All right? It's not to say, of course, the auxiliaries did not bear the sword, but um they bore that because the Romans decided to. All right? And they were often also equipped by the Romans with their own um in fact arms and armor, even horses at some point, but obviously were subordinated to the Romans. And if you think about it, you have this core of heavy legionary infantry that constituted fundamentally half of the Roman military. Then the other half were auxiliaries and there was no it was a pretty actually well here we go through different stages.
Initially there weren't even too many if considered properly the the principate.
You have basically just 250,000 men controlling the the empire already at at the peak territorial extension. It's something sort of uh minimal if you think about all the people who lived um across the world and not just inside what we considered Roman Empire but also outside and especially that if you also consider what happened in later period as well. So I don't know how much I'm going to regress regarding these topics but in this sense the quality of the legionnaire also in maintaining the various subject populations all across the empire uh through their heavy infantry nature is in in itself the the demonstration that were decisive over these other peoples. you know, a parody of numbers.
All right, one auxiliary per legionnaire. All right, you know this stuff. I don't think there's much to digress on, but if you're interested, obviously I made plenty of videos on on the Roman army. I have an entire playlist playlist dedicated to this. We talked about how fundamentally the the Italians did this.
how the later Roman army transformed from why who was a Roman in late antiquity and in the sense why why was there some further certification of the military in quality and um and uh competence in this sense I presume you know that and as we go on here given we're talking all these various eras we're talking essentially several hundred years lots of changes really occurred in the meanwhile. Um now unlike the spear pike armed heavy infantry of the helans, the punx or the massedans who kept their long weapons in hand for trusting Roman legioners seem to have relied on a combination of handthrown missiles and sword.
So close combat uh including with missile element and people somehow tend to distinguish however the Romans from these other populations um as well as from for example the Kels or the Germans the Dian a bit too much as as we remain in the sanitary world. So steps excluded more or less we actually are looking at pretty similarly looking by the way armies to begin with.
If you had seen, I don't know, the Romans fighting in in the plains of northern Germany under bruises against the the the the Langobi so to say at this high um the Sabbian like you would have probably looked like a striking overall similarity of the types of hosts, right? It may seem strange, but these are old people. Aside from people who are obsessed with racial differences across Europe, that did exist. But, you know, aside from the fact the Roman legioners were selected for height, but that the overall uh height difference was just a few h inches between southern and northern Europe and aside from the relatively different genetic makeup of in fact otherwise more very similar Europe to to today's in those terms. the ways to form the the lines, how to engage with one another historically was were always very similar. There wasn't much uh to to change like the it's completely false that the barbarians did not have an order uh or or a discipline.
Um it's completely false that the Romans won by technology or or people somehow are schizophrenic regarding things. It's either quantity or quality depending of what kind of enemies they would like not to have been defeated by the Romans. And as we were saying before, even when we get to the helenistic model or better the fallenic one because Hen even the Cartagians were helenistic as we explained before they didn't have Sarisai but Helenism is more like in in the military field a school of war, right? It's combined arm tactics. The Carthaginians actually even surpassed the Macedonian combined arms that in turn however had also been proper of armies like I don't know the Aimemened one for for that matter even though each one with their own specific bias. So when we look at for example the Romans uh fighting against the Macedons all right in the first centuries uh in the second century the third century before Christ the um the actual makeup there is also pretty similar. the fact that the massedans had the spears by the way were not even particularly long, right? The the painting on there is all a question in terms of the the actual figures like the um the measureration uh reference.
They had probably four to five meters long bikes, right? They weren't something incredibly long. It takes a lot of training and SARS sites were were incredibly costly. They added enormously by the way to the already pretty heavy um cost of having properly some heavy infantry uh trained uh intensely trained for this maintaining alignment this massive forces. by the way for for a falax like must not be properly outflanked because it is true that in close combat there is a different dynamic compared to the more aggressive Romans in a sense there was a moral difference this is true but that's in fact the only the the the most important one that eventually allows the Romans to take over um the Macedonian fall was never frontally broken not even a pitnap basically the Romans break that it's the the the fall that sort of breaks by itself Even even though again Polibus's account can be profitably criticized for that matter because he's trying to make sense to to to positivistically and rationalistically tell us why the Romans prevailed. He didn't have actually a clue because he had never really seen himself regardless of his um early military experience. In fact, a Roman manipulion and Henistic Macedonian falank fight against one another without mentioning of course were this was still a combined armed tactic system. So there was cavalry were missile troops that are however the lights most of cavalry can be heavier light but I mean mostly the same problem flankment occurred for the Romans as well. the the the idea that the massians would simply rise their pikes and surrender or flee once they were outflanked whereas the Romans you know were fine we have been attacked and flanked and would have kept going fighting is actually not the case there are lots of battles we've seen most famously faralos last summer that actually end basically with the outflanking even though of course uh that wasn't uniquely what made that per but virtually like once you were out flank you you tended to to break under obviously the pressure in fact of the enemy heavy infantry uh in the center right uh the Romans also fought against some kind of earlier olitic falank even though we don't clearly understand the extent of this also because most of the powers who used that were small pol and that had failed essentially to develop that more updated Macedonian system.
So even again the notion that the Roman legionaires would simply fight with their swords and nothing else is is can be profitably criticized. Surely many of them actually fought with spears right that were part of their equipment throughout a great part of the the entire era. And so even though there is properly a conceptual and u heroic vision in the idea of unsiving the gladius and properly launching yourself at the assault of the enemy formations and the Romans did that because they complemented that with heavy javelins as you know before the charge um they could also fight in different ways and we don't know actually that much about that. One one thing I missed before that it's however pretty common for me to say in this videos normally is is that the fact that we actually don't I already said that we don't know what these armies actually look like on the field right but especially like when we look at the Roman army for all the things we know we realize that in relative terms uh the this knowledge is pretty scarce right we know a lot about the Roman military because there was something called the Roman Empire empire, right? But in qualitative terms, we do not know the Roman army better than say I know the classical era Atlantic falls. All right?
Because the type the people who wrote about this were different, right? In classical headlas, you could have the same people who fought in the fings of writing to you and telling you name by name all the people who had fallen at battles like Maritan or uh Plataya that we also covered recently for that matter.
Nobody hears a Roman proletarian telling us about you know his deeds in in Gaul in Egypt etc. It's a couple of different scenario which is absolutely valid for the elenistic world as well. I mean we know definitely much more but disproportionately more about classical helenic tactics than helenistic Macedonian ones. This is notorious because simply the composition of those armies, the political context of re is very different and so society is very different and um and we get as a consequence different type of sources for that right without mentioning that when we look at the the fallenic tradition we're looking perhaps at the single most exceptional way of war that developed in the ancient world as I tried to explain here the fact of having again spears and pikes even that require if anything enhanced training and work with a pretty effect frontal stopping and also aggressive capacity because that was the point uh is um in fact the product of henistic civilization right however not just the same classical Greece already vote as with spears like with that was the primary weapon in fact of most peoples including the the italics the Latin the the Romans uh at some point and we will talk more about the archic Roman army and explain actually the genesis of manipular tactics is my possibly most favorite topic ever in military history but for some reason I still haven't made a video about it I could talk about it for for hours on end the um the overall picture right is that the the not just the spear is the primary weapon of most peoples out there. But that the notion of having a spear and or multiple spears/javelins was basically standard across Europe and the Mediterranean. All right. You know, it wasn't much about the Roman legionaire that taken in himself was fundamentally revolutionary, exceptional or anything that other people's also hadn't faced. Right? When we look at the same Roman arms and armor designs, this is valid for many other peoples out there telling you the truth.
Segmented armor. Here we were talking about segmented armor for Mauia, India.
Uh in the sort of centuries before the Romans came in contact with or actually in the same centuries the Romans came into contact with St. Mass. Um and um frankly and and God knows since when they existed there is segmented armor also misop what does this mean? Is that the Romans quote unquote copied this?
No. So let's erase this other nonsense that the Romans basically didn't have anything unique. They had a very specific italic background that produced weapons like the the scutum uh the the same peel and these were all essentially italic born because they were pretty much everywhere since ever like the idea of having a heavier javelin and a broader oval shield. It fit the broader purpose that would have existed all across Europe. There is no derivation from for example the Kelts. They were just all basically the same people at some point. Um and we'll talk better about this topic as well. But in this sense, it's obvious that the Roman legioner was no different practically in a conceptual sense from any type of of soldier had historically existed in this broader sort of borderline barbarian and elenistic world, right? And that of course the Romans as the dominant universal ecomic world power of the era develop and and improve also on previous models. This is particularly to be seen in a for example military engineering. The Greeks had already like during the lenistic era pioneered lots of stuff. The Romans basically come on top of that and fix it adapted to their own um needs.
Technology again also especially of that kind is somehow overrated in explaining also how the Roman military for for instance the same the adoid one was successful as a matter of fact. Um but in this sense the even the adaptation of the legionnaire sort of the more iconic again segmented armor shingle squared um shield uh the the manica whatever they say the dean wars era uh or trajanic legioner so to say look is aside from incredibly varying from the same iconography of the of of the very era the very context just like the enhancement and the perfectioning in that case the heavier uh infantry men heavily more heavily armored infantry it costs really a lot by the way so for armies with hundreds of thousands men you also have to ask yourself about how many did actually the possibility to be equipped like that on a regular basis just of amount had already existed before right it doesn't quite change that much overall and so we can digress on the basis of this model all the different aspects of Roman combat. Think about the initial missile uh of the pilum proper the pil plural because they normally used more of them right as far as we understand they had two right and they were modulated at some point for the very specific range they had to throw uh them from at a very specific moment of the charge. Right.
The PM was mostly used in an offensive sense even though from Caesar for example we have instances of course use it defensively could go both ways we just don't know um in which circumstances most would also be spent for example between a charge and another these battles that lasted entire days presumably they skirmished just like the functionally throwing all these unmasked heavy javelins at the moment of a charge which was also the thing and guess what other peoples did exactly the same what do you think that I don't know the kills or the barians or whomever had actually javelins for like they didn't throw them before the the charge. Maybe they were not on average so heavily drilled like the fact rigidly disciplined Roman heavily heavy infantry but in general also the sense that the Romans were just the most hyperdisiplined and that's how they just won. It's not quite correctly how the Romans just won. there isn't just discipline in war that helps a lot and obviously the Roman military topped practically any opponent in that but you don't just win because of that right otherwise you know nobody else would take the field against you which admittedly as we were hinting at before so with the catillite that was often uh the case especially in fact at the fringes of the world in any case um the the pumbus this heavy short range weapon cast just before contact it could pierce armor lodge in an enemy shield, encumbering and unbalancing the opponent. This seems to have in fact been the aforementioned perfection of the of the the typical heavy javelin used by these other peoples. And by the way, many legionnaires would be across the the the centuries the same the same peoples right at some point. And it it evol had developed over centuries with socketed or tank design sometimes weighted um and while many bent on on impact rendering reuse difficult recent analysis and experimental test suggests not all did so intentionally or dramatically. By the way bending could occur on ground strikes or when wrenching the weapon free. But the long shank primarily enable deep shield penetration and disabling rather than deliberate sabotage. Right. with Mario's era innovations possibly involving a weak wooden pin to cause twisting instead though archaeological evidence again indicates this redesign was not universally adopted either and so it's not really the point per se it's just considering who used them and why especially if you understand this that as we were pointing out before in the ratio between legionnaires and auxiliaries that the Romans evolved from a people again so from this warlike tribal um italic background um always using the the the auxiliaries in the form of the si that were however fighting basically as the Romans vote.
It wasn't much of a difference. They could be subject people at some point less affluent but we know also from the social war that the forces were indistinguishable.
that there's even a a passage um from from the second Punic War that tells us that actually like at least the front ranks of the Carthaginian army looked they had lots of italics among them at that point but in in um Hannibal's Italy so to say um were indistinguishable from from from the Roman ones with the scutum and everything.
Um so the the notion is that there is a phase in which the Romans again emerge as probably an ethnic people from the Aenine Peninsula and in that sense they have to make up for every kind of soldier. All right. If you look at say the fact the polibian era more or less at least the the typical Palibian archetype so to say was an all-around army where Italics in general whether Romans or allies this was not so important performed practically every single tactical task. Think about the Bellas uh and so also Italic cavalry that was more numerous than the the Roman citizenry one there were a fully complete army and so we have eventually this idea that in in the Marian era instead you have in fact ever less um national cavalry so to say uh you don't have apparently the Bellitas anymore we know that again the Roman legioners had a skirmisher citizen skirmishers throughout the period. So there is no doubt about this.
But overall the idea is that everything shrinks to some sort of heavy uh infantry model that is just assisted by specialized auxiliaries as we were saying before. And so therefore also our understanding that these people more or less vote with this combination and only in the later antiquity returned into this overall now all homogenized apparently homogenized Roman army that had also exhausted a bit the the tactical specialties of the various peoples that had that effect as an ethnic oldmark of the military capacity in the in the same Roman service as auxiliaries.
had to revert to skirmishers to to archers to everything that before had historically just been debuted to the allies that kept existing. By the way, if you look at I don't know the the army of Theodosius or the one of Justinia, you find all kind of auxiliaries from gods to Turks etc. So the I think about the simakari that the were these peoples that were at some point during the 3rd century crisis and after the constitution of of the so-called constitutinana since auxiliaries were basically spent like all peoples in the empire had somewhat gentrified at least were called from outside the empire itself and this may sound strange in a time in which the sort of outside the empire peoples we're starting to press at the frontier wanting to get it. It's actually part of the same mechanism also turning these guys against the others and so extending further the range of recruitment because the other out beyond the the the quote unquote borders that in this sense do not exist because one of the greatest misconceptions about the Roman army is that basically they just controlled the peoples inside the empire whereas they actually considered equally the peoples outside the empire. Right? Why do you think that the Germans stayed quiet for for centuries? Um when the Romans were just next door and it's it's partly Roman stability, but that goes in parallel with their military power. They controlled literally also for for s for for hundreds of of of kilometers well beyond the rine and the dan because they had a massive deterrent by the way concentrated as you know with their legions like constituting the greatest force in along those river frontiers and so you have really lots of very interesting things going on in a way you can't picture the Roman army over time back to the pelum this um javelin was first supplemented and and later largely replaced by lighter longer ranging projectiles and in fact this is an illusion that we just explained like it's not like heavier javelins did not exist or something similar to them designs were gradually changing but I mean how different can a javelin be after all in certain in a pre-industrial context um Because you have again not just the legionary as the the heavily armored at least in any case heavy infantrymen.
You have lighter troops in the same Roman army as they became Roman and needing to perform these lighter elements this lighter functions as well.
Just like also many peoples back in in the early days like were fighting with Rome with lighter javas were all so such universal weapons that we we do know in fact the same Roman legioners could switch to in particular circumstances in different types of combat. Well, the heavy infantry consistently carried an effective sword. At first the the gladius type again this is what we're looking at today. Obviously I have actually another video incoming on archic Roman weapons for that matter.
There's this notion that the gladus pianises would have been a short weapon.
This is this is nonsensical. Like I mean not even the mines and Pompei types like when that were objectively more uh suit better suited at least for trusting in close quarters um absolutely uh weren't daggers as as we intend them right in the gladius bianesis even less right the was a pretty brilliant combination of essentially Latin swords and some kind of Iarian falcata curved blades sort of fusion in one with a very center shifting in fact towards the the the tip which is in fact not much actually something used for trussing but also for chopping as if you look at the description of the battle of Kunoskei the massins found out the hard way with limbs um and heads severed with ease and by the way in the hands of sort of incred incredibly bloodthirsty again Italic soldiers and uh that the Romans were properly channeling even within their tribal background and in fantasy but still at this point within a already within at this point a rigidly disciplined um sort of order exalting still their individual side of the story.
So nobody really understands what these words would have been short that they were actually weren't. Uh then of course there is a greater length towards the later period exemplified by the spata that however becomes also more elite weapon right and um and not just in comparison in fact to the now newly stratified lighter infantry like there was sort of more of a spear use in in late at least it seems and again we have probably this relatively false picture mostly stemming from the early imperial period where we think the legionary was just basically a swordman because most of the auxiliaries as facto basically used the spear like in most circumstances but the legioners used that too and here we are listing by the way type of equipment that in fact would have been similar to the ones of other people's as well you have the helmet evolving in this case from the Monte Forino or colos types for example in the earlier period to imperial glic or italic styles and then things change once again toward the later period with some more um Iranic influence styles especially for the elite that becomes ever more nightly together with the spata and ever more cheaply produced um helmets such as the the interchange I made an entire video about that and it's the early for has been cheap enough that it could be used by tribesmen as well historically and given probably to the Marian mules as well. The interchises are also the product of late Roman fabric and the concentration of arms and armor production especially in the core regions of the empire better controlled by the state which was not quite a thing even when in fact there were uh properly private manufacturers that were subcontracted with probably the public with the army um arms and armor production we we hear of them since the time of Kikaro right so actually after Margarus a bit after the generation after that we can document naturally but things would have worked similarly also before in fact we we know very few about this but we can kind of understand it on the basis of how already Roman society worked that the idea of the state supplying arms and armor the fact that in part this were still considered as um sort of a property temporarily entrusted to the soldiers also into the early imperial era and is all mixed with what we were saying before regarding the uniformity of it. We think of uniform troops because they had somehow homogenized themselves towards a tactical function but not because they actually looked all alike. Actually, you could on top of the stately issued weapons. Also, I equip yourself with something more, something better depending on who you were. We find plenty of this that does not stop the decorations. Obviously, there was a a functional level of hand-to-hand combat, whereas you would have not found like, I don't know, a Roman legionaire with a double-handed axe just on a regular basis. But if you think about the Dolabra, it's so the Roman pickaxe that was said to be this more operationally effective considering all the the heavy military engineering that the Roman military did.
I mean, the the Roman legionary is technically an assault engineer that even that weapon was used. in fact with great effect especially against armored opponents very often the same Romans.
armor as you know developed from the favorite iron male Lora Amata.
uh amata stands for properly hooked right because of the various rings to iron plate at some point at least they over overlapped obviously I don't even need to point it out the lora segmentat is actually a modern term uh they just call it as body armor right for example we would say quiras but quiras looks more like the musulata properly full plate armor uh that they could have I mean full to extent of of the torso. Um it's interesting because plate armor is has always existed in the form even just of helmets or greaves or other parts.
But um the the idea is that they surely had some vocabulary at the time that we're also not specifically aware of to describe different types of armor. All right. The chain mail armor remained more widespread as far as we understand.
probably the segmented one was sort of very well represented and found also in archaeological context but not uniformly issue also because again the state probably and likely did not have the means to even issue not not necessarily this or that armor but a type of armor just per se or spending extra for that they didn't care just like the idea of color uniformity we surely think that at a company level such as like the one of a of a maniple Right. They they would have or battalion they had some mean locally because some of these troops or at least the troops equipped themselves in part with locally produced including arms and armor. They had smiths. They had if you know of the various forts as we were saying the the ones where the legions were mostly stationed for hundreds of years especially along the the the Ry the Dan but not only wherever they were. They had their own local arms and armor production. They didn't really wait, I don't know, um, for the Mediterranean to send them armor. They produce it locally, right? And there was all in fact a level of exchange of monetization, logistical systems that yes did help. At some point, there was the mean to send large amounts of arms and armor here and there, especially for the major expedition. Actually the depots of this arms and armor were eventually sent from the these legionary bases to for example I don't know when the Deian wars broke out and Traan probably invaded Dean in big scale like surely from all the empire arms and armor were sent including from legionary camps fortifications that were turning into cities basically um also on far away frontiers right we've seen partially the logistics of the Trojanic army right will come back on it. But the this probably the cost even for example of dye right dying allegedly even if they had wanted to do so like the Roman army all in one color this was an incredible expense the state would have never paid for that it was completely useless again identification normally happened in through like the various units in an autonomous way and it functioned pretty well. This is true also for other peoples. They had a partial level of uniformity even among the barbarians by the way. But that uh in this sense did not require a super structure would start paying like showering them with the it did not exist not even in late antiquity technically with the fabric things work that way. They just sort of complemented these other sort of also private types of subcontracted types of arms and armor provision production uh for for for the army.
You have a um you I I will not spend here much words to compare the the various types of of armor and how they were effective or not effective here and there. I would say only this that you know when first of all in terms of material it doesn't matter if you know you're fighting in the Syrian desert and you're cooking inside the armor or at least it's incredibly uncomfortable to to fight into it. Like if you have to save your life from from parked Arabs that's that's actually okay. All right. You will not exchange it for lighter armor.
At least in general could happen, but it depended more on who you were tactically, operationally speaking than the obvious thing that happened. I don't know, also during the Crusades apparently like the the Latins were more likely kept in in the Holy Land than they were in Europe, right? But it also depended on the type of enemy they were fighting, for example. So again, environmental factors are probably BS as much as the allegedly specialized type of anti- uh arrow is often said like the segmented armor was introduced because of they they started fighting these nah, you know, it's plenty of segmented armor in Britain for that matter. Um it's just a good type of armor like another. It has this design. It has pros and cons that you would have had mostly to test in actual historical action, but it didn't even really matter. What mattered in battle was to have metal armor to begin with covering your toes in the first place, right? And really making an important change tactically um operationally, logistically, and so on.
You could also switch, right? Again, also auxiliaries had the heavier type of armor given certain tasks. Uh they weren't trusted in certain cases. There was nothing really fixed about it. Um there were surely some type of armor that that were better suited for example to counter archery. We understand that peoples in the steps tended to have more um sort of scale armor to to degree and that is kind of functional but it's also not everything right. You're not simply uh obviously you're not immune from arrow fire but also it's not just what you get right and consider always that when we see for example some enemies that fight some troops in general that fight including the Romans as it was habitual so for most of the middle ages for that matter with I don't know heavily armored rider and the horse does not have armor you would think well why you know if the the first thought is the horse gets hit and you the horse is very resilient in terms of of of power, strength, dosage, and over the distances, whatever, but it's notoriously incredibly vulnerable. If you know it, it gets crippled. It's useless, right?
And war horses costs a lot. But we tend to forget always the most important aspect, collective training in tactics.
Meaning if you know how to carry out a cavalry charge at speed like as heavies, there is no light element that stops you. Right? The myth also that everything can be beaten with missile warfare that car would have allegedly showed this terrible tactics that the westerners were at lost with. It's absolute BS. Actually, the Romans were stronger than the Partans. alo especially from a tactical point of view given that the partians had to recur to that hit turn run tactics to successfully wear out the Romans. This goes on forever and also again during the crusades you have the more heavily armored westerners that um advance and the Turks can't quite stop because they don't have enough heavies for doing that even though the partians have catifacts and obviously there's always a combined armed tactics. In fact, the systems are pretty balanced but it's not because of this type of weapon and this type of armor. All right.
Intentionally again there are also this differences between actual overall quality of the army or not. We had by the way all kind of arms and armor uh in ways that I'm surely going to cover in different videos because when it gets to circled military units as you know I'm quite pedantic also about the various range of weapons that could be employed.
We have things like row height sort of leather.
Um we have indeed like these were used in certain context and it really depended on the availability on it. It was not a standard choice for a del for a unit in particular could be in a moment right in a for a specific action a specific task but not quite. You have male again pre likely being the the prevalent type of armor across the across the period. You have scale gaining traction in the later Roman period even though this likely had to do also with the fact that we're increasingly looking at an Eastern Roman Empire. All right. And so one that by the way during the migration era received an avalanche of peoples against them from from the steps from areas that normally made more use of scale particularly because we think again that being there more archery in the east this type of armor was essentially more functional stop in it. If you're interested in this topics, by the way, made lots of videos about especially steps warfare from antiquity to the throughout so the the the millennia basically. And so you can see how even particular designs of scale armor changed at a point. Also made an entire video on scale armor per se. So you'll find likely this in the topics. Comment down below as usual.
Shields, we were discussing them before.
progress from oval to squared of oval then rectangular the standard name was scutum just like gladius was was the sword uh as we've seen before the the terminology the romans were pretty dry in terms of terminology they had actually beautiful language and deep semantics we've made lots of videos about Indo-uropean um theology through linguistics right and there's always in fact a metaphysical concept behind these names that we also have buried unfortunately as modern fire we're trying to bring back to further and um actually like these types of shield were let's say the this the rectangular ones so to say in particular were also the squared of oval sort of there is an increase actually in the type of convexness of the the shields because as the legionnaire got heavier. The sense is that they could get also more into Malay paradoxically on their own. So also defying a bit the notion that they would be merely uh just like this short range like especially the the swords would have been shorter for that. it did have a point and again we don't know how to reconcilate 100% this um ergonomic um anatomic functionality so so to say which the arms and armor were tailored. However, the notorious like the more convex the shield is actually the more suited for individual combat or relatively isolated combat still within a formation for sure was um and given that you can't really for example overlap this the shields in any functional sense. uh they're not flat enough unlike the the original the earlier scooter as a matter of fact as it's true also among other peoples for that matter. So being very careful because remember the thing I said about the Roman nightly ethas like people tend to modernize and secularize the image of Rome for many different political reasons. It can be uh I don't know it can be the the left the right they all have their social racial reasons and the truth is that in this sense a Roman legion again stereotypically with this shingle type of shield a heavily armored was more akin to a knight of sort at the time of traan than the average rank and file sort of central European tribal warrior was with a shield that we we understand were tentially flatter and sort of better suited for some kind of um more levy kind of mentality and and and background and therefore are for overlapping and so on. It's not to say that sort of great warriors could not fight with flatter shields but tendentially right the the the anthropological and opological dimension there overlap in quite um self-evident terms in in a military context.
the idea, for example, that the semi-ylindrical shape of the more developed Roman uh shield would be more suited for the so-called tudo formations is fairly inconsistent, right? Uh first of all, the tudo is just an emergency nature. It's not a standard formation or even less a way of combat, etc. It's basically like something you perform when you are in a terrible situation where under fire but with no cover, right? But we have gold back in the day putting again shields on on their heads.
The Romans were bombarding them at the point at the end of a battle um as they had in fact surrounding them.
So every if if you have a shield, if you have a unit like when you're under fire out there in the open, you will carry out a quote unquote tudo. The Latin term that Romans used to describe those goals as well. So there is nothing unique about this as far as Rome goes. The Romans would have been on average like their legionarers better drilled than the the average rank and file uh sort of fighter out there uh in the world. what I've always thought and if you especially entered the the spiritual and theological understanding of Romanity and the empire towards the early Roman period, you understand how the legionnaire towered over this body of subjected auxiliaries. So you realize how these changes are actually more functional to not necessarily an individual combat per se, but a greater durability in in hand-to-hand combat as a single individual that is capable that doesn't necessarily have to overly rely over close order to be effective. In fact, the Romans never lose that sense of um being partially individualistic and partially disciplined. This is a legacy that comes straight out of again that italic warrior that is brutalized to the point of being rigidly disciplined but unleashing his individual fury in times of battle. The Romans were obsessed with the capitations with with single combat and other feats. It's rather in the later in late antiquity where the entire world is exhausting itself that you see in fact a much greater reliance on things like shield walls. There are also not really a formation. They're just how you normally protect yourself in in the front. In fact, it's not like the Romans would not use that also with semic-ylindrical uh shields in the front. They would often maintain a close order. Just we don't know as were explaining before on which regularity would have no way to measure that in practice. Um and so oval round especially round shields in later times would um would appear. The round shields were used either by the lighter troops. Think about the belly test in the early days. Um, so it's at that point like the shield is designed more or less to protect your torso and so more or less uniform way. Um, and the smaller the shield is sort of technically it doesn't make sense to for it to be asymmetrical. All right? because it's more like having this little thing, this sort of smaller surface to protect yourself in a generic sense. And so with with no geometric difference or um you have larger round shields that in this sense do not cover your thighs like the oval shield that was again more or less the standard as we've seen pretty much everywhere all across Europe. The Kels, the Barians, every everybody really had that. uh that were also that was in part imported by the sort of in Helas in Helenistic warfare in the 3rd century BC by both Celtic and Italic um soldiers is um is again a proof of how homogeneous really especially western European warfare was in that region. There were different size of also tour also in novel forms. Actually the Greece always had oval shields for skirmishes just you don't get that sponsor more than much but in later antic if anything the round shield is fitting as there is more body armor for the pick troops such as the committed tenses in certain case even though they had themselves their own arms and armor segmentation based on the internal structure of the units that we unfortunately have no clear also understanding of because there is no evidence at least we can as always presume that the better equipped were in the front that held the the line that were followed by the the in the file by the the others by the degree so these are pretty much universal things if you just read you have a pretty good idea of how a unit works normally still there are people who think that units changed front by turning soldiers 180 degrees they're completely useless like because the guys in the bottom line cannot suddenly become the the the file openers, right? It's just like a completely um asininely revealing, you know, declaration of of complete absence of military historical literacies if you point that out. Um and so you understand that the more you try to square the circle uh here between all these shapes etc like it doesn't sort of doesn't succeed it's not a thing we get the Roman legion are much better described documented immortalized depicted we would have probably been impressed by the relative relative theogenity of the Roman army army, right? But also its similarity to other armies that were still somehow homogeneous in terms of expandable individual soldier types, right? Uh again, probably these people all looked very similar.
The Romans themselves were not particularly different even from some mediumistic infantries or again their their central European neighbors.
Regardless, in fact, of these changes in equipment, the soldiers of the Legionas remained tough, well-trained, and highly effective fighting men till the very end of the Western Roman Empire. We even know famously enough that say Marian gold there were still some Roman uh military communities that basically were the guys who had been settled there as proper soldiers as military colonists and that survived into uh into throughout the period revered for their military quality serving in the Marenian armies uh like with the Roman armies before and only gradually blending with the rest of the population partially forgetting this this military traditions, right? It's not like the Italic say the Roman background was very different in terms of war bands from what you see in the the migration era speaking of their archic times, right?
Armies, by the way, also in the tribal world vote pretty much in a similar way the way the imperial Roman army, the permanent professional force really did, right? The Romans were just overall better. And in fact there is no proof like up to the very end of the western Roman Empire. I made a video about the fifth century Roman army in the west that the Roman military was fundamentally bad. It was mostly a matter of politics who supplied this this army like up to the the 60s of the fifth century.
Mayoranos showed that Italian manpower was able to rec reconquer Spain, you know, hadn't the bands stood in between and even to be ready to the sense to to deport the the defeated Visigos at some other parts of the empire even after generations of settlement, right?
And the suggestion to the contrary that the Roman army at some point was just sort of weaker than their opponent. It doesn't doesn't show like this is just not a thing that normally happens anywhere. It's not like the Romans involved themselves while peoples outside were sort of superior than them.
That's not how it worked. the same barbarian invasions largely witnessed to already adequately romanized peoples including from a military standpoint to basically partially substitute the same uh Roman army because they were more motivated were more worldlike and they they entered these places negotiated with Roman authorities and they constituted the army and they in matter of couple of generations they basically merged with the rest the the wider uh Roman majority Uh so this had already been the case with lots of auxiliaries already again employed as we remember before but Roman army over the centuries had been part of what it had meant to be a Roman at a point. I made a video explaining how the imperial cult was the precondition of the same Romanoic identity for how it develops in late antiquity and in the early middle ages.
The heavy infantry described here required naturally supplementation by lighter troops who could engage at greater distances to shield the legions from harassment by similar enemy forces or move rapidly over challenging terrain, woods, bogs or steep hillsides that would slow and disorder their heavier comrades. All right. Uh a very beautiful example of this is the battle of Mons Grapius that it that actually existed where the Bavian auxiliaries alone were basically able to destroy the Calonian army single-handedly. So it's of course the the legionnaires were just behind them. But this also tells you how good these forces really were. In fact, how there wasn't even this radical difference between them and and the Roman legioners. just the latter were part of of a broader establishment that had already conquered these peoples and was given them the chance to rise also to the same Roman level through citizenship acquired military service largely especially in these earlier days and these guys were also largely still fighting with their own weapons. Right before Julius Caesar such at least lighter infantry not necessarily light infantry only at all actually the majority of auxiliaries were there wasn't such a force like like just lighter troops unless they were specialized archers lingers or something like that but say skirmishers were normally integral part of other heavier troops per se and And therefore this lighter infantry were uh actually pretty numerous right they had also this missile compliments with bows of slings themselves not just javelins for that matter but some of them would be or less specialized right say the famous cretan archers or rodian lingers balaric lingers etc these were tendentionally troops that it's not like they they knew how just to fight particularly better because again as communities of shepherds then the defending their islands etc were they were very much adequate for this sharp shooting of sort there's a lot of debate of what was actually stronger in in antiquity whether slings or or bows right I made some some video about that the point is that the Romans would partially invest in them giving them better equipment at some point uh on top of sort of their general basic quality to enhance their performance in many ways. It's just like I don't know in Caesar's times like the Germans are given better horses by the Romans. They weren't better cavalrymen in general, but they could be in fact spent in le of the Roman cavalry men against the Kels just be being given sort of better mouths compared to the German ones in fact were fairly scarce and their combativeness beats gicy as well.
just for telling you also how similar they technically were paradoxically between one another if that was the measure of the difference.
The auxiliaries therefore were the reinforcements of the legions uh at least in the complement of the legions.
They were very numerous equipped with light dualpurpose spears for throwing and thrusting along with lighter javelins.
So the typical uh soldier that we were describing before this happened throughout Roman history. There wasn't a single moment in which the Romans used exclusively citizenry uh forces and throughout most of documentable history like the Romans actually used at least as many auxiliaries as citizens.
This can easily be the case for the earlier days because in any case Rome arose within probably a Latin um system of leagues. So you couldn't really separate like a guy was Roman from somebody who was not a Roman. They were also all pretty similar. The same goes throughout the Palibian era with the Italics that were of the same so to say national stock. So when we arrive in the later empire we say oh look there were so many barbarians in the army.
Had it really been different before?
Look at the auxiliaries that they had been half of the Roman army throughout all the period. So no, like there is if anything a moral shift. there is a political crisis and that's what gradually brings to anosmosis a synis rather than a substitution or a like a collapse as we've seen of of Roman military standards that are also greatly inherited by the same barbarian governments that take over especially the the west right that remains also a strongly civilized area in fact people tend to I made lots of famous videos at this point on this subject U you know Latin Germanic Europe was say as Latin Germanic you can debate the the Germanic only one in Northern Europe that yes but say post Roman Europe in the west was not less civilized than actually was more civilized than say the Balkan interland by the time the Slavs and the the hours were were swarming in right we're not talking about the Natalian interland there is no absolutely no doubt about this overall right goal in Italy alone led a competitive um access compared to the Eastern Roman empires of war. So I covered these topics in great in great extent and these auxiliaries are very interesting and not given adequate attention in my opinion. By the early first century AD they were organized into auxiliary coortas infantry units of nominally 480 or 800 men quanaria or milaria respectively and drilled to the same high standards in the legions. These non-scitizen troops often recruited from provinces like Gaul, Spain or Trace that had historically been quite warlike in fact put up an important resistance to the Romans provided specialized skills and received citizenship upon honorable discharge with units sometimes expanded to military size. So around 800 infantry modeled on the first court of legions. We'll talk about this because there are some approximations here making things simple but as you know I take great uh care of everything in dedicated videos. Um in fact it's been suggested essentially many cases the aforementioned uh millaryized auxiliary units featured five double strength centuries and occupied double the camp space.
Similar units continued to end to the end of the empire with many achieving elite status on a power with the best legions. As a matter of fact, um we really discussed this in many videos.
If you look at the notia the natum, you will find plenty of the I think about the auxilia palatin. These were crack forces. As a matter of fact, they saved even the the legionary lines as we've seen in the battle of Genturatum for example.
These troops again could be employed in many different ways. They could be equipped in many different ways for which I don't really see a tendency towards for example like abandonment of of body armor. It's true that in the late uh antique period in general ma material availability starts being really much want right and it is true that the rank and file trooper likely is debatably at least lighter than at least if we are betrayed to to the notion that the average rank and file Roman legion had been heavily armored right but probably there wasn't this huge difference. The greater difference is that arms and armor tend to be concentrated just in some picked units uh as opposed to before was more emly spread.
The regular auxiliary cohortis and later auxilias however they were called later were occasionally strengthened by irregular units that fought in traditional but we're talking infantry only here now we'll pass to cavalry in traditional barbarian style though these two tended to become regularized over time in fact you don't find practically at any time in Roman history like units that are serving in the Roman army and do not become in some way part of the empire many also were discharged they came back into the barbarum and kept living there was not really much of an issue because as we explained actually the control of Rome stretched even in late antiquity like far beyond the frontiers and we tend probably to misunderstand this aspect that the barbarians would do would go really great lengths to satisfy the Romans for in order to be co-opted to gain land etc and it's only when sort of the Romans waiver and give um give way that that the barbarians push and still to basically remain connected with prom. I've seen it in many different videos and as we were saying before in some periods actually throughout all throughout the the same the legions themselves included detachments of lighting infantry for closer support than auxiliaries could could provide.
During the later empire, both legions and the auxilium appeared to have included some of their own men trained as archers to augment the specialist archer units that still existed.
In part this had happened in the legions because as we explained before many Romans that were not the the subject so that had become Roman as being part of subject peoples and just having impoverished themselves during during the temper of the time were now to be armed uh as just archers at some point.
And so it's not much this uh exceptional dynamic. It's really rarely understandable if you look at the social fabric behind the military. Uh at this point would be interesting to compare this with other um peoples also other factors. I mean the idea is that during the migration era there were more horse archers around to begin with. So the idea of having more foot archers for example than before seemed more relevant. But if you had looked at the earlier period, not just there were lots of auxiliary archers, but probably also within the legions, there were archers on a regular basis.
Cavalry support proved equally necessary since infantry skirmishers could not safely saliffort, for example, against distant horse archers without risking being ridden down in in a charge. And again, the idea that the party horsemen when he performed his famous backward shot would be unreachable is a myth. Not just because there were other party and soldiers in the Roman ranks, but because also allegedly can conceptually heavier cavalry can actually reach lighter caval. It's not the the best option, but we know it pretty well. This happening also in other parts of the world and it has to do with combativeness as well with experience. It seems that the heavier Celtarian horsemen um that were hired by the various Numidian kings at some point did chase and pursue reach and slaughter the same nimble uh sort of light uh barber skirmishers, right? The Yakulaurus. And so this is really an interesting perspective that gets often misunderstood also because the bigger the battle actually the more difficult to get the hell out of the way it is as a broader formation and even if that happens it's in fact not a good thing.
You have to come back at some point that you have to realign it. It's it's a mess like that by that point your center your heavies may have in fact been surrounded and worn out and taken enough losses. So these things happen all the time. You need you immediately see how needed all kind of troops really are in this picture. So the Romans could have not been otherwise nor their enemies.
Although the legion uh did maintain a small cavalry element of its own as we were talking about before the majority of mounted troops always came from elsewhere throughout this period. This is true tendentially starting from 150 BC until but especially also in late antiquity this was fundamentally true perhaps we have I also made a video about late Roman light cavalry obviously you could find them really everywhere but for them to be really good especially as soldiers well there was so much step um troops around that it would have been silly not to to get those also because if you really need just the skirmishers those are cheap uh they're not so dangerous at all in any meaningful strategic sense even to to hire to settle somewhere and they will mostly also maintain a life side in the frontier that say on the Danube close to the steps that will secure this was normal set playing these barbarians um in also this barely inhabited places where they could have lived themselves only these are not the Germans that will want some sort of more sanitary boat with some infrastructure whatever if you settle some hunts, you know, it's going to look very differently.
Um, but in this sense, they can in fact act as a buffer against similar enemies.
And this had in fact historically happened also with the Germans, etc. In Julius Caesar's time, cavalry was almost entirely regular. We have this this understanding that really throughout the 2nd century BC the Roman citizen and allied cavalry had radically shrank also because it cost a lot but there were some social reasons behind that where the Romans also integrated and eventually extended citizenship to the to the same to the Italians including actually the sispine goals in the north that remained however were somehow more militarized.
In fact, Julius Caesar's legionaires were largely coming from there as a mix essentially of Italic colonists and sort of local sizzelpine weavingman back in the day.
So you have lots of cavalry from elsewhere. And this again shows you the confidence of the Romans. It's not just the number of auxiliaries, mostly the footmen, but also the the type like cavalry was more technical, more sort of specific as a as a type of unit and that Romans entrust to their auxiliaries because they're so sure that they're simply going to to obey. This was the case for GS, Germans, Spaniards. I also made a video about the the German knights, right? The the imperial bodyguards together with the Ptorians for telling you also how greatly very important they were. We made a video about the Marcommani and we've seen how Marabod and Armenians were have been raised in in Rome themselves. They had this habitual connection with Roman copation means And so their their units too fought uh with greater military insight. We were talking about the Marcomandi were much more of a drilled host. They had more cavalry than the average German for for different reasons also other people's influences but mostly also because they had resources and this had been formed like partially invested probably to to imitate the Roman army which is absolutely unsurprising that was the military standard.
Augustus formalized um these cavalry units into the auxiliary ally cavalry wings. Queen Ganari of about 480 512 men or milary of 720 768 divided into Turmmy of 30 32 horsemen each under the Koreans. Right? The Turma as we said before was basically the because the the Romans in the legions did not have ally per se. They had this tour of mine a few hundred men in total.
So they were smaller than the ally or normally. Then surely there may have been an overlap at some point but in general this was the course the that supportive cavalry was just mostly for some minimal sort of antenna screening scouting but most of it was done functionally as in the Roman army by the auxiliaries.
This cavalary units were in fact mainly armed with light spears and javelins protected by male helmets and shields.
They had also sort of bulkier spears obviously for heavier hand-to-hand combat. These troops were sometimes still supplemented by regulars such as Moish Javelin, aatic horse archers or other unarmored skirmishers of sort.
Right? These were the wildest but sort of the best at that kind of job. they were cheaper and they would recur historically the the Numidians later the the Mauians.
Uh the later empire saw a major expansion of cavalry incorporating regular light skirmishers as well as catifact lancers with both horse and rider heavily armored.
This again because of the exposure towards the east. So there is this combined armed tactics the Romans end up especially to to to acquire because of fights with the Sarmatians with the Persians. This is completely normal. War is a hybrid also those peoples are learning a lot from the Romans fighting themselves part in the Roman army.
Albeit we should say that the Roman experiments with catifacts were always ruinous. they don't seem to have particularly performed even though the fact that they had them and they fought also in the west obviously shows not just that they were a universal troop type of troop uh but that in any case they they serve some purpose just in the major battles for example they for mentioned one of Arjunatum they they underperformed they were not as good as the the feudal and step cultures that normally produced them in the eastern part of of the empire in fact that's mostly where these troops would be end up being concentrated just out of sheer use. And towards the end of the period, large amounts of barbarians uh barbarian regulars were once again hired. Uh the use of bow spread rapidly among cavalry.
There is a lot of this uh explained in the strategic in the video about how underrated Roman cavalry is. I actually talked about this gradual development.
But again, it was completely normal. you have a normal synchrosis, right? War is the greater hybridizer, let's say, of cultures as well as its potential destroyer. So the Romans knew something about this as well, considering like the fact that they wipe out large amounts of of opponents, but also got help from many of them as well.
So this this is the purest development of military culture you can see sort of in historical times under great deal of point of view especially considering that resources were constantly balanced that wasn't as we were saying before an infinite way to simply fund the military and build the army that you wanted. This explains to you how armies in fact largely develop by themselves adapting to the circumstances and there was some subtle involvement definitely from a doctrinal to use an anacronistic ter point of view but more than else like it all followed a gradual development not a natural development. It's sort of dangerous to use biological metaphors for armies but still something of the kind.
Finally, um, artillery provided further support through stone throwing and bolt shooting engines. Think about ballista, the the onagri, the scorpions.
Actually, there was just like this different ballista included different type of of weapons. We tend to sort of separate them from the scorpions for example. This is not so important. I made some videos already on this.
artillery was mostly confined to siege warfare. All right, they were used in open field. We have different instances of this. It was completely normal. But their primary purpose was siege warfare.
Like hadn't that existed sort of in a impossible world. Uh they would have invested in other types of troops in catapults. All right, this is at least sort of the broader insight.
uh in fact primarily intended for sieures. These weapons were often taken into the field during the first half of the period at least in um in the sources we get this. But telling the truth for later times you even have the carob ballistry for example that are literally ballistas mounted on chariots.
You have some technological stimulus in the later period.
I'm preparing some videos about early medieval sort of Byzantine artillery for example. The material poverty is is really striking compared to antiquity in that specific period at least. But in fact had we seen this in in the ancient years as well probably would have seen like smaller artillery brought together with the army and regularly employed also in open field. not differently from what happened also in the middle ages also the more advanced middle ages artillery formed an integral part of the legion by the way until the 4th century apparently probably also later and uh it's just like from that point onwards there are just smaller pieces around uh compared to before they retained it status when later grouped into larger formations however so there is probably a reorganization refction ization because indeed at that point it's better to concentrate to allocate to rationalize the usage properly of this or that artillery it becomes ever more expensive made a bit about the onagri of the later Roman army and you understand how everything was costing more you have uh small numbers of elephants occasionally proposed as late as the first century AD you had very interesting uh sort of henistic era kind of idea of legacy shows um especially in the imperial part. They rarely appeared in practice in any meaningful way because the Romans were essentially imitating some units of antiquity including at some point they they created some Spartan units keeping them with pikes interestingly enough because the Spartans actually had had pikes in the later period. Few people know that the Spartans were the only Atlantic uh sort of Polishbased armed military that successfully managed towards the end of the period of literally replicating a Macedonian fall on their own which is utterly insane. Like the Athenians would never done this. No other people out there in Atlantic Pol did that anymore. And this was one of my earliest videos on fire punct. But of course at this point they were just like this happened at the time of Nero. It was just like a devisol. But at the beginning of the period when you look at Numidian allies fighting also in Spain this had happened also during the Macedonian wars. The Romans did employ elephants as a matter of fact and for also from different parts of the world Asia, Africa etc. were as you know also probably different types of elephants different breeds. Camels were employed mainly for their advantages in desert patrolling rather than to scare horses as it's sometimes pointed out because the horses may have been unnerved by their smell. Interestingly enough, the reason why the barbers became so proficient at camel warf is that the Romans imported camels there in North Africa and eventually like also at the end of the period. If you look at battles like the one of Mus for example, you see the the Moors having a pretty advanced sophisticated use of camels as even some living um barricade like in times of uh sorry moments of defense so to say.
Uh it didn't help them in that battle because the Byzantines crushed them.
Groups of about dozen camels were attached to selected infantry or cavalry garrison units in arid regions could help for the sake of logistics. Canel camels can store fat to an important degree surviving for for a long road without too much in fact supplies to be needed to sustain them other than border. In fact, we understand that no specialized engineer units existed. However, each legion contained craftsmen capable of constructing turf or stone forts, barracks, roads, and bridges, wet or dry, using its own resources. The legionnaires themselves were routinely trained to, as you know, create to erect their own camp every night in enemy territory list. It was an exercise that were that they deeply identified with.
They built roads themselves for which they had also the precedence like today the military has uh on them because they had built them and this was truly understood in a metaphysical sense because these roads were sacred as well and they connected the universe that God had given to to Romans to mold it in their own image.
You have um however also some elite units like the the the equitus singularis that actually were hyper specializ in engineering. They had a great deal of background in that field as already veterans on their own but they went through this further education and uh especially like as you understand here bridge buildings, fortification etc. And as you know they uh stayed together with with the emperor and they were the finest troops um in Rome but they were however an elite unit and uh the best of the best something unbelievable unspeakable. I made a video on them. Uh and um and all these aspects mix because again they mix with the ptorians in this case or the German bodyguards of the emperor. you have this sharing of military culture that happened also for other peoples within the Roman army.
This is in part I think an underrated aspect of the wall and uh one word in fact looking much better at in in dedicated videos. So I think this is more or less a half of what I pronounced to be Colbert.
I think that uh this is fairly good and uh we will continue uh not tomorrow because usually repetitions do not end well in some ways but uh there is surely we can't keep this in store and just cover it at some point. So you understand there are definitely for each point so many different things to say.
There is never like an end point because we're talking so such big of a topic really that every single statement can be profitably debated but we had never never done it in several years of farun and so I believe that what we're doing here is uh is good is profitable. I've seen that actually we're having lots of new subscribers and uh I don't know why the algorithm woke up or something like that but it's um it's really on you to uh to share to really give this channel the dimension it deserves because obviously I I have my limits but in general we are here to surpass everything and so we're both working for it.
The Roman army is one of those topics that you can never actually claim to have fully or sort of comprehensively covered. I here, let's check how many videos I made about it.
Over 100, right? It feels too few considering the 2,800. How how many videos I made? It feels too few. It feels too uh scarcely homogeneous.
And I think we can't really do better in so many different ways. I am trying sort of my best in general to be up to date to make as many videos as I can sort of funneling in all the topics that deserve to be considered. But as you know we need to cover so much on a regular basis that here we have incoming other videos coming on the Byzantines the also the earlier Roman army but it may happen for a while we don't hear of much of that um anymore here I'm seeing we have some aspect of Roman Republican history is a civilian largely I have um this is a big spoiler for those of you who have arrived till the end. So I'm looking at doesn't not too much actually. I think I prepared recently but here what it is. Ah yes Roman campaigns I produ I prepared this in uh yeah from Antonine times to yeah more or less to the to the ocean era that's very interesting because sometimes the chronology is also counterintuitive we have to perhaps ourselves to see s the Roman military in also across this broader period and with timelines that are not exactly what we uh we're more habituated to think so so to say.
However, uh for today I stop it here. I just hope that you enjoyed this video.
If you did, please share it. Otherwise, leave a like or subscribe to my channel if you're interested in my upcoming content. As always, I thank you heartly for listening to me. I wish you a nice time and see you next time. Bye.
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