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People romantically (har) think walls were there to keep the enemy out. It's actually to do the opposite, keep them in. They're chokepoints - takes a long tim
by pp19dd 6y ago
People romantically (har) think walls were there to keep the enemy out. It's actually to do the opposite, keep them in. They're chokepoints - takes a long time for even an organized body of people to cross an obstruction. But an unorganized horde? It's a death trap.
Hence the Roman engineering solution to this problem, the Roman roads. They could put a large organized army anywhere within their borders in an insane amount of time, camps always built on the march in the same exact configuration, with predictable roads and ditches. Though restructured to a point historians call fragile, Rome was still a bastion of engineering and organization. There was nowhere to run to and a price to pay.
In those days battles were always a matter of frustrating chase and escape. And once an engagement was forced, the Roman fighting style was terrifying and as equally organized as their infrastructure, nothing like a Hollywood confrontation with copied and pasted CGI fighters.
Lanes of soldiers in a checkerboard pattern called quincunx, timed by a whistle. Enemy faced a human chainsaw, basically. Imagine being their enemy, standing at the forefront of a ragged well-fed line with consistent kits and gear, each man carrying two spears, a sword and a shield.
Whistle blows, and the front line guys sprint at you full speed. At forty yards out they throw their light spear with a barbed tip and it gets stuck in your shield. Guy is still sprinting full speed at you. At ten yards out he throws the heavier spear and it too gets stuck in your shield. He shield slams you, hacks at you a few times unsuccessfully. You survived.
Then the whistle blows again.
Your shield feels noticeably heavier with two spears stuck in it. Guy turns around and runs back and there's another guy sprinting at you, about to throw a spear. You've just now realized first-hand how the Roman Imperial army fights.
- WMCRUN 6y agoBest HN comment I’ve read in a long time.
- jaclaz 6y agoBesides they weren't "normal" spears, the Romans cleverly designed a particular weapon, the pilum, with a long soft iron stem and a hardened point, which was "one use only", i.e. upon hitting a shield (or when attempting to remove it from the shield) the point would bend so that it couldn't be thrown back.
- chewz 6y ago> Enemy faced a human chainsaw, basically. Enemies must have been crying in their sleep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman%E2%80%93Parthian_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman%E2%80%93Parthian_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman%E2%80%93Persian_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman%E2%80%93Persian_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates_VI_of_Pontus#Mithridatic_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates_VI_of_Pontus#Mithr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Punic_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Punic_War
- pp19dd 6y agoThere were plenty of other punctuated failures to add to your point, like the missing legions that got ambushed in Spain, England, and near home while in pursuit of enemy. Centuries apart. My point is that Rome was a system and its might was a deterrent, not that its citizen soldiers (then turned into professional soldiers) were invincible. Collapsing centuries of Roman history into a few broad sweeps, like we read about, is a naive depiction. The military structure certainly wasn't monolithic, there were series of reforms throughout the centuries, series of equipment changes, economic sweeps, but most importantly, redefining of what citizenship and conscription was like. For what it's worth, I didn't pull this infantry depiction out of a coloring book. Specialized in ancient military history for my degree. My intention was to make it human relatable to the time period in the article.
- chewz 6y agoFair enough. My point is that Roman legions as you have described were terryfying for primtive and not unified tribes like Germans, Brits or Gaulls even for Carthago. But more sophisticated enemy like in Asia Minor, Parthia or Persia were more then equal match for Roman military science. PS. Eastern Roman Empire had more sophisticated tactics and strategems in my opinion.