There 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 pursui

There 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.