Innholdsfortegnelse for AW XV.4 i Ancient Warfare Magazine

This is not to say that Polybius was the first to write a history of Rome’s wars. While narrative history seems to have been a relatively late development in the city, Rome had some form of record keeping that went back to, at least, the early fourth century BC and likely much earlier. By 200 BC, Roman elites had also begun to write narrative accounts of their city’s past, including warfare, initially in Greek and later in Latin. By the time Polybius put stylus to parchment, Roman history was a thriving genre. And yet, what Polybius did, especially with respect to the Roman army, was novel. While Polybius’ explicit focus was on the rise of Rome, he also worked to place events and developments within a Greek historical and historiographical…

Argos, Elis, and Orchomenos also had units of 300 chosen hoplites at various points in their history. Athens had one too, and its history is truly fascinating. The evidence of this elite Athenian unit is complicated by the fact that it too may have been called the hippeis, perhaps in emulation of Sparta. According to Herodotus (9.21), Athens had an apparently long-established unit of 300 picked men, commanded by Olympiodorus, son of Lampon, fighting in the preliminary engagements before the Battle of Plataea. This unit combined with a unit of archers and relieved the exposed position of the Megarians, who were being attacked by the Persian cavalry. The fighting was long and hard, and eventually the Athenian force was itself reinforced and forced the Persians back (Herodotus 9.23). Diodorus (11.30.4)…

Polybius’ Histories are full of incisive and valuable observations. One of these is the signalling system he describes (10.45.6-46.11-also explored in AW 3.6). This system, invented by Cleoxenus and Democleitus (who are otherwise unknown) was improved upon by Polybius himself in 168 BC. Using this system, the 24-letter alphabet (Greek or Latin) was divided into five groups of five letters: Using two groups of five torches, messages could be sent – the first group of torches indicted which group, the second set, which letter in the group. For example, two torches followed by five would indicate Greek kappa or Latin ka since it is the fifth letter in the second group. A word like beta “two” would thus be transmitted as 1/2 (Β), 1/5 (Ε), 4/4 (Τ), 1/1 (Α). This…

The soldiers of Rome’s amateur militia could easily fall into their SOP manipular array, which, while complex, was also familiar and legible: divided into three battle lines (triplex acies) by age class, and parsed into numbered maniples, each with its own well-defined command structure (centurions) and visual markers on the battlefield (signa). Most Roman commanders did not think of deviating much beyond this SOP: they more often than not fought by lining up the infantry in a triplex acies, with cavalry on the flanks and a screen of light infantry to the front. By and large, this battle plan worked quite well, providing even a mediocre general with a flexible array that could endure various shocks thanks to the built-in system of line relief and reinforcement and the final reserves…

The two annually elected consuls were the most important of these, each of whom normally received an army and a specific enemy to campaign against as soon as he entered office. The praetors were junior commanders who usually received smaller armies and less important commands, or one might be kept in the city during his year in office to defend the city or attend to other matters. There were two praetors during the First Punic War, but the creation of an additional pair in 227 BC brought the total to four during the Second Punic War. Dictators were extraordinary commanders that could be created to face emergencies or perform necessary duties, usually in place of absent consuls. Finally, when the Romans felt it appropriate or necessary to keep a consul…

A reform of Roman military practice, traditionally assigned to sometime in the fourth century BC, saw the adoption of both maniples (lit. “handfuls”) and the acies triplex or “triple line”. Although the adoption of these reforms in a single sweep is now rightfully challenged, it is true that by the end of the century they had been incorporated into the formations and tactics of the Roman army. Polybius, writing in the mid-second century BC, is the first historian to describe this system; we rely on his, and that of Livy for its (idealised) details (see also AW 14.2). The triple line saw light armed troops, velites deployed in front of three lines of heavy infantry (organized initially by wealth and later experience). The hastati, named after the hasta (“spear”), were…

King Masinissa of Numidia (238-148 BC) led the cavalry contingents of Carthaginian armies in Spain during the Second Punic War. His father was allied to Carthage (where Masinissa was raised) and so Masinissa fought for Carthage during the war until the aftermath of the battle of Ilipa, when he switched allegiances to Rome. He then united a federation of Berber tribes and founded the Kingdom of Numidia. Masinissa fought on Scipio’s side at the decisive battle of Zama in 202 BC. Thereafter he ruled for fifty-four years, dying at the age of ninety. He was a firm ally of Rome and may have met the historian Polybius during the Third Punic War (one he may have had a hand in provoking to ensure his own power in North Africa). His…

The list of immunes (soldiers who were excused mundane chores on account of a specialized skill; see AW XI.2) drawn up by the emperor Commodus’ Praetorian Prefect Taruttienus Paternus begins with mensores or ‘surveyors’ (Digest 50.6.7). The late writer Vegetius records that, while it was the mensores “who measure out the plots in camps in which the soldiers set up their tents”, it was actually men called metatores “who go ahead and choose the site for a camp” (Epitome of Military Science 2.7.7 and 9). However, he also claims that it was the responsibility of men called agrimensores “to calculate the measurements of the area in order to accommodate the size of the army” (Epitome 3.8.5). Thus, he seems to suggest that there were three different types of military surveyor.…