Roman army

“ But it was to Servius Tullius that Rome owed, traditionally, the complete classification of her citizen-soldiers. For the details of the Roman military system, see Roman Army. During the earlier period of Roman history the army was drawn entirely from the first classes of the population, who served without pay and provided their own arms and armour. The wealthiest men (equites) furnished the cavalry, the remainder the infantry, while the poorer classes either fought as light troops or escaped altogether the privilege and burden of military service. ”

“ I daily see with what intemperate courage this violent and hot-blooded people gives and receives death. I know the esteem expressed by Napoleon I. for the regiments he raised here. And we can say between ourselves that there were many of the subjects of the Pope in the revolutionary army which defended Rome against the French. I am persuaded, then, that the Holy Father has no need to go abroad to find men, and that a few years would serve to make these men good soldiers. What is much less evident to me is the real necessity for having a Roman army. ”

“ Finally, the legions became smaller units, and the other troops of the army, notably the cavalry, became the real fighting-line of Rome (see Legion) .
First Stage.—The history of the earliest Roman army is, as one might expect, both ill-recorded and contaminated with much legend and legal fiction. We read of a primitive force of 300 riders and 3000 foot soldiers, in which the horseman counted for almost everything. But the numbers are clearly artificial and invented, while the pre-eminence accorded to the cavalry has no sequel in later Roman history. ”

“ THE ROMAN ARMY THE LEGION While the Romans were conquering Italy, they were making many improvements in their army. All citizens between the ages of seventeen and forty-six were liable to active service. These men were mainly landowners—hardy, intelligent peasants—who knew how to fight and how to obey orders. An army in the field consisted of one or more legions. A legion included about three thousand heavy-armed footmen, twelve hundred light infantry, and three hundred horsemen. After the conquest of Italy the states allied with Rome had to furnish soldiers, chiefly archers and cavalry. ”

“ V. THE ARMY.—The Roman army was originally called Legio; and this name, which is coeval with the foundation of Rome, continued down to the latest times. The Legion was therefore not equivalent to what we call a regiment, inasmuch as it contained troops of all arms, infantry, cavalry, and, when military engines were extensively employed, artillery also. The number of soldiers who, at different periods, were contained in a legion, does not appear to have been absolutely fixed, but to have varied within moderate limits. Under Romulus the legion contained 3000 foot-soldiers. ”

“ ROMAN ARMY. In the long life of the ancient Roman army, the most effective and long-lived military institution known to history, we may distinguish four principal stages. (1) In the earliest age of Rome the army was a national or citizen levy such as we find in the beginnings of all states. (2) This grew into the Republican army of conquest, which gradually subdued Italy and the Mediterranean world. A citizen army of infantry, varying in size with the needs of each year, it eventually developed into a mercenary force with long service and professional organization. ”

“ Though the army became less and less Roman in blood, it always kept in character and spirit the best traditions of Rome. The long intervals of peace were not passed by the soldiers in idleness. They built the great highways that penetrated every region of the empire, spanned the streams with bridges, raised dikes and aqueducts, and taught the border races the arts of civilization. It was due, finally, to the labors of the legionaries, that the most exposed parts of the frontiers were provided with an extensive system of walls and ramparts. ”

“ The mainspring of the Roman army for centuries had been the patient strength and courage, capacity for enduring hardships, instinctive submission to military discipline of the population that lined the Apennines. ”

“ So in treaties, where military arrangements occur, an army is defined to be a number of soldiers capable of OPENLY invading a foreign, or an enemy's country. For historians everywhere make a distinction between the private incursions of robbers, and what is done by a lawful and regular army. What constitutes an army must be therefore judged of by the enemy's force. Cicero defines an army to consist of six legions and auxiliaries. Polybius says, that a Roman army in general amounted to sixteen thousand Romans, and twenty thousand auxiliaries. ”

“ It was then that the conflict became general; the Roman soldiers endeavoured, in vain, to penetrate the centre, where the Gauls and Spaniards fought; which Han'nibal observing, he ordered part of those troops to give way, and to permit the Romans to embosom themselves within a chosen body of his Africans, whom he had placed on their wings, so as to surround them; upon that a terrible slaughter of the Romans ensued, fatigued with repeated attacks of the Africans, who were fresh and vigorous. 29. At last the rout became general in every part of the Roman army ”

“ When a Roman army was composed of Roman citizens exclusively, the flanks of the infantry when drawn up in battle array were covered on the right and left by the cavalry; and hence Ala denoted the body of horse which was attached to and served along with the foot-soldiers of the legion.— (2) When, at a later date, the Roman armies were composed partly of Roman citizens and partly of Socii, either Latini or Italici, it became the practice to marshal the Roman troops in the centre of the battle line and the Socii upon the wings. ”

“ Orders, therefore, were issued, that no soldier should leave his ranks on pain of death. 17. With these injunctions, both armies were drawn out and ready, when Me'tius, the general of the enemy's cavalry, pushed forward from his lines, and challenged any knight in the Roman army to single combat. 18. For some time there was a general pause, no soldier daring to disobey his orders, till Ti'tus Man'lius, son of the consul Man'lius, burning with shame to see the whole body of the Romans intimidated, boldly advanced against his adversary. ”

“ A Roman army of ninety thousand men amply supplied was coming swiftly to meet him along the splendid roads, and he had only fifty thousand to cope with them, the greater number being Gauls, and not to be depended on. Of the original troops that he had brought from Spain, many were dead, but he was able to muster ten thousand cavalry, mostly consisting of the Numidian horse, and in this respect he was superior to the Romans. ”

“ Our notice of the Roman legion would be incomplete without some description of the camp in which the soldier virtually lived. A Roman army never halted for a single night without forming a regular intrenchment capable of holding all the fighting men, the beasts of burden, and the baggage. ”

“ Jerusalem was defended by a triple wall, and the most elaborate fortifications, and twenty-four thousand soldiers, beside the aid received from the citizens; and yet it fell in little more than four months before an army of eighty thousand under Titus. How great the science to reduce a place of such strength, in so short a time, without the aid of other artillery than the ancient catapult and battering-ram! Whether the military science of the Romans was superior or inferior to our own, no one can question that it was carried to utmost perfection before the invention of gunpowder. ”

“ Now the Romans, though many in number, were not all soldiers, but were for the most part a throng of men without defensive armour. For inasmuch as the general was elsewhere, many sailors and servants in the Roman camp, in their eagerness to have a share in the war, mingled with that part of the army. And although by their mere numbers they did fill the barbarians with consternation and turn them to flight, as has been said, yet by reason of their lack of order they lost the day for the Romans. ”

“ Others, as Virgil said, might give movement to marble and breath to bronze: the Art of the Roman was to rule the nations, to spare the subjected, and to debase the proud. ‘Fortia agere Romanum est.’
For the constitution of the Roman army we must consult the estimable Polybius, [855] its early historian, Livy, and the latest of the great authorities, Vegetius, in the days of Valentinian II. (a.d. 375–92) ; not forgetting Varro, [856] who treats of weapon changings.
Whilst the militia consisted of three bodies, the citizens, the allies, who were sworn, and the auxiliaries or mercenaries ”

“ The admission of foreigners into the Roman army, although it had proved disastrous to the republic, was continued by the emperors, and not only were the natives of the conquered countries enlisted but also mercenaries were employed. ”

“ The army consisted of two distinct classes—the regular troops, and the mercenaries. The regular troops were composed both of native subjects of the Roman Empire, raised by conscription, and of barbarians, who had been allowed to occupy lands within the emperor’s dominions and to retain their own usages on the [101] condition of furnishing a fixed number of recruits for the army. The Roman government still clung to the great law of the empire, that the portion of its subjects which paid the land tax could not be allowed to escape that burden by entering the army. ”

“ They raised an enormous army. It consisted of eight legions. The Roman legion was an army of itself. It contained ordinarily four thousand foot soldiers, and a troop of three hundred horsemen. It was very unusual to have more than two or three legions in the field at a time. The Romans, however, on this occasion, increased the number of the legions, and also augmented their size, so that they contained, each, five thousand infantry and four hundred cavalry. They were determined to make a great and last effort to defend their city, and save the commonwealth from ruin. ”

“ It must be observed that a regular consular army no longer consisted of Roman legions only, but, as Italy became gradually subjugated, the various states under the dominion of Rome were bound to furnish a contingent, and the number of allies usually exceeded that of the citizens. They were, however, kept perfectly distinct, both in the camp and in the battle-field.
The men belonging to each legion were separated into four divisions. 1. 1000 of the youngest and poorest were set apart to form the Velites, the light-armed troops or skirmishers of the legion. ”

“ The preparations of the Romans were made to suit either contingency, an engagement at sea or a disembarkation on the enemy’s soil. Accordingly they picked out the best hands from the land army and divided the whole force which they meant to take on board into four divisions. Each division had alternative titles; Roman forces. 330 ships, with average of 420 men (300 rowers + 120 marines) = 138,600 men.the first was called the “First Legion” or the “First Squadron,”—and so on with the others. The fourth had a third title besides. They were called “Triarii,” on the analogy of land armies. ”

“ But being overborne with numbers, and nobody daring to face about, stretching out his hands to heaven, he prayed to Jupiter to stop the army, and not to neglect but maintain the Roman cause, now in extreme danger. The prayer was no sooner made, than shame and respect for their king checked many; the fears of the fugitives changed suddenly into confidence. ”

“ The hardy physique and stern nature of the Romans, exercised and controlled by their organizing genius, evolved the Roman legion, which learned to resist the impetuous assaults of the elephants of the East, the phalanx of the Greeks, and the Teutonic barbarians. The indomitable courage of the Romans, trained under severest discipline and directed by means of an organization divided and subdivided and officered almost as perfectly as our modern corps and divisions and brigades and regiments and companies and squads, marched over and subdued the world. ”

“ The Romans were essentially military in all their tastes and habits. Luxurious senators and nobles showed the greatest courage and skill in the most difficult campaigns. Antony, Caesar, Pompey, and Lucullus were, at home, enervated and luxurious, but, at the head of the legions, were capable of any privation and fatigue. The Roman legion was a most perfect organization, a great mechanical force, and could sustain furious attacks after vigor, patriotism, and public spirit had fled. For three hundred years a vast empire was sustained by mechanism alone. ”

“ The king is quite aware that Rome does not employ any legionary soldiers or cavalry except Romans and those belonging to the Latin nation, but he has seen foreigners serving as light infantry in the Roman camp. ”

“ It is obvious that the greater part of such Commentaries must be necessarily occupied with the detail of warlike operations. The military genius of Rome breathes through the whole work, and it comprehends all the varieties which warfare offers to our interest, and perhaps, undue admiration—pitched battles, affairs of posts, encampments, retreats, marches in face of the foe through woods and over plains or mountains, passages of rivers, sieges, defence of forts, and those still more interesting accounts of the spirit and discipline of the enemies’ troops, and the talents of their generals. ”

“ He enlisted every subject of the Roman Empire whom patriotism, courage, or compulsion could collect beneath the standards; and round these troops, which assumed the once proud title of the legions of Rome he arrayed the large forces of barbaric auxiliaries, whom pay, persuasion, or the general hate and dread of the Huns brought to the camp of the last of the Roman generals. ”

“ The Roman armies consisted of vast bodies of men which, when not in actual service, were established in permanent encampments in various parts of the empire, wherever it was deemed necessary that troops should be stationed. These great bodies of troops were the celebrated Roman legions, and they were renowned throughout the world for their discipline, their admirable organization, the celerity of their movements, and for the indomitable courage and energy of the men. Each legion constituted, in fact, a separate and independent community. ”