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Roman warfare: everything you wanted to know
00:54:39
Adrian Goldsworthy explores why the ancient civilisation was so extraordinary when it came to waging war
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- [00:00]
Emily Briffitt
Love the History Extra podcast. Well download the History Extra app for ad free episodes, exclusive long read features and interactive courses led by experts in the History Extra Academy. Download now.
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Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy
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Alex von Tanzelman
Prepare for fantastic we will face together as a family.
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Unknown
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Ryan Reynolds
On WhatsApp. No one can see or hear your personal messages. Whether it's a voice call message or sending a password to WhatsApp, it's all just this. So whether you're sharing the streaming password in the family chat, we're trading those late night voice messages that could basically become a podcast. Your personal messages stay between you, your friend and your family. No one else, not even us. WhatsApp message privately with everyone.
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Unknown
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- [02:16]
Emily Briffitt
Welcome to the History Extra podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. Did the Roman legions actually wear red? How often was their famous tortoise formation really used? How did military leaders maintain control of an army spread across such a massive empire? And what was it exactly that made that army so formidable? Speaking to Emily Briffitt, Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy answers your top questions on on ancient Rome's attitude to warfare as well as its tactics, strategy and logistics. And if you enjoy this episode and you want to find out more about Roman military history, then Adrian was our expert for series one of history's greatest battles, where he and Emily charted five epic clashes of the Roman Empire. A new bonus episode of that series has just been released, and you can find and subscribe to the feedback by searching for history's greatest battles.
- [03:21]
Alex von Tanzelman
Now, we're going to be asking lots of listener questions all about Roman warfare. And when I say a lot, we've had quite a few today. So let's start. We're obviously talking. When we're talking about Rome and the Romans, we're talking about a really long period of time. And I'm sure there's going to be lots of caveats here that we're going to have to mention how things change. But let's start off. How ingrained was the concept of warfare in Roman society, and how did it impact Roman culture?
- [03:50]
Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy
It's a feature that's always there, you know, when you think we have emperors, that our word comes from imperator, which means victorious general. That's the root of it. The Romans do have a very clear sense of warfare and home life, peace and war. But like most ancient cultures, they accept that war is actually very common. You know, it comes back to the idea that Virgil will have Jupiter saying, it's the destiny of the Roman people to, you know, set good law and all this sort of thing, and to spare the conquered and overcome the proud in ware superbo. So you've already divided the outer world into people who treat you with respect and are suitably humble, or people who need to be duffed up until they treat you with respect and are suitably humble. Particular form, perhaps almost an extreme form of a fairly common ancient mentality. I mean, Greek philosophers don't go as far as saying that war is the normal relation between communities, but they come close, and they really don't expect peace to be that common. It's a sign of strength. You know, even Ovid, who's, you know, one of the least military of poets, will talk about how when he goes to the. He's talking about the altar of Augustan peace, the R. Apacus Augusta. You can see in Rome today that ideally everyone will come to love Rome, but if not, they'll fear us. That's a happy world. But that would be how we'd end war is because we are so strong that either everybody just loves us anyway or they're too frightened to do anything about it. Politically, there's always this connection. The people who lead you in peace are the ones who lead you in war. So it's one of the big one of my bugbears. Whenever you see on In a movie or tv, they'll have a character who's the general, and they'll say things like, I'm not a politician. I don't know about this. You're always both in Rome until very late in the later empire, where you start to try and divide politics on. But even then, the generals keep making bids to be made emperor. So intervenor. But the senatorial career for century after century is that you do a bit of things in Rome, then you go off and serve the army for a bit, and you go back to Rome. You might go out to a settled province, then you command a bigger province, bigger army, this sort of thing. So the whole society is based that way. So it's all about what's best for Rome, what's best for society. It's like Julius Caesar in Gaul. He's entirely pragmatic about being nice to someone or being very vindictive. So he'll order the massacre of a tribal council if he thinks that's the useful thing for Rome to do. Or he'll spare everybody and be really generous. And it doesn't seem to be almost a moral thing. It's just what works, what is good for Rome, what's the most advantage. So when all said and done, warfare is just a thread running through Roman history. And Augustus, the first emperor, revives this tradition of closing the gates of the Temple of Janus when Rome was at peace everywhere. And he manages to do it three times in 44 years. And it doesn't stay closed for very long. As the Empire's so big, there's nearly always something going on somewhere where you're fighting. So there are periods of lots of big wars and periods without that. But there's usually something small going on everywhere or somewhere all the time, rather.
- [06:50]
Alex von Tanzelman
You and I have spoken before about life in the Roman army, the more kind of on the ground side of this history. So there may be some questions that we won't cover today because we've already covered them before and people can go and listen to that episode. But I've got a question here from Hamish Ross on Facebook that I think we should answer. And that's when it comes to the Roman army. I'm sure many of our listeners will immediately picture this Roman Legion emblazoned in red. But we should break it down. Who could we expect to meet within the Roman Legion?
- [07:23]
Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy
It depends where you are and when you are the Roman Legion. Originally, the word just means levy, and originally it's those with weapons who could afford them. All the Roman citizens Called out to go and fight. It's very local. Then as you get bigger, you start to divide it up. So a legion becomes a force of sort of 5,000 or so. In the republic days in the conquest, these are citizens who are, as part of their duty to the state, go off to military service, then go home. From Augustus in particular, it's formalized. Then onwards, they're professionals. So they are Romans in terms of the legal status of being a Roman citizen who've enlisted in the army for a period of 25 years. And most of them are supposed to be volunteers, though there are some cases of conscription. What's quite interesting is that from our perspective, by say the end of the first century ad, there's not many Italians in there. So even though when they raise a new legion, they start it in Italy, so it begins. First generation are supposed to be. But these people are Roman citizens, but they are descendants of Roman citizens, often army veterans settled in Gaul or in North Africa or Beirutus. Modern day Beirut is a Roman army colony and lots of people in the legions of that area, that's where they've grown up. So you've got people who are sons, grandsons perhaps of soldiers enlisting in the army. So these are Roman citizens. But again, the status doesn't have anything ethnic, it's simply a legal status. Latin is the language of command in the army, it's the language of administration. Though in some areas in the eastern part of the empire, they will use Greek for some documents, but you know, basically the words of command, the words of order in Latin. And interestingly enough, in the end of the 6th century, early 7th century AD, there's a military manual written for the Eastern Roman army, written in Greek, but all the words of command are transliterated Latin. So you're still being told to, you know, attention. That sort of thing is in Latin, in a language nobody is speaking anymore, certainly at that level. But that's the way you're doing it. It's tradition. So it's a very Roman environment in one respect, but it's not ethnically Roman or even directly associated with Rome itself or even Italy by this time. So the pattern is from Augustus onwards, you're serving a long time, 25 years. So these are on average, fairly mature men. We often associate warfare with conscripts. 19, 18, 20, that sort of age. There are those people in the Roman army. But when you show the ideal soldier on say, Trajan's column, he's bearded. It's like you get Victorian images and photographs, Illustrated London News of these sort of quite mature, grizzled, very hairy veterans fighting in the Crimea or fighting in Africa, India or northwest frontier, whatever it might be, emphasis of strength, maturity, sort of dependable. These men are as tough as old boots, that sort of sense. There's that idea really about the Romans rather than the youth that we emphasise with soldiers and we tend to think of so often.
- [10:25]
Alex von Tanzelman
Were there any specific roles or functions or titles that people could hope to gain? What was status?
- [10:33]
Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy
How did that work, being a soldier? I mean, you get paid, but your pay is comparable to an agricultural labourer. The advantage is you get it every day of the year and you're not dependent. The army looks after you. The army has hospitals in its bases, it will care for you. So Tiberius the Emperor complains that in Italy, by his day, only vagrants and outcasts, criminals, this sort of thing, are joining the army because nobody else, everyone else, got a better opportunity. There are laws that specify that if you've been condemned to be fed to the wild beasts or exiled to an island, that you can't join the army. But given how severe those crimes were, it rather suggests that lots of people who've done less can get in. However, if you're educated, then you've got lots of opportunities. The army thrives on bureaucracy, copies of everything. There's paperwork, even if it's written on wood or papyrus, all this sort of thing. So they need lots of people to do that. We don't have much direct evidence for the army teaching people to read and write, though they may have done that. There's hints perhaps from Egypt of that. But if you come and you know how to do this, then there's a famous letter from a recruit in Egypt who's joined up, he's brought letters of recommendation and he's a made a clerk in the headquarters on day one. And he says, isn't it great? I can hear the people I came with out in the quarry breaking rocks and I'm doing this. So there's lots of different ranks. In some parts of the army, then you have things like you can be a duplicarius, which is a double payman, so it might be some sort of non commissioned officer status, but the key thing is that they're emphasizing you get twice as much money as the people elsewhere. You could become an immunist. That means you're exempt, immune from fatigues, from a lot of duties and you have a specialist skill. You're a carpenter, you're a metal worker, something that makes you worthwhile Being allowed to do other things. Potentially you've got promotion to higher ranks. There's the standard bearer, the signifer, the optio, the second in command of the centurion. You can get to be made centurion. You will read lots of times, and many people believe that most centurions were promoted from the ranks in the Roman army. I don't actually believe that. I think that the ones who tell us this, which is a minority of the ones recorded, do so because it was a great achievement. Because most centurions on the monuments they set up just say, I was a centurion, because they are coming from local aristocracies. But potentially you can make that step. Centurion isn't a rank, it's a grade of officer. So you can end up climbing through that to be the primus pilus, the first centurion of the legion. From that you get given automatically afterwards equestrian status, which is one step down from being a senator. If you're still young enough, active enough, you might go off to command a cohort of the troops stationed in Rome, maybe even the Praetorian Guard. You might even then get promoted to command a minor province. Rome has always been like that. There's always been a chance for somebody to come from humble origins and climb right to. Sometimes it takes a generation or two. But again, there are a lot fewer centurions and officers than there are people in the ranks. So, you know, it's not an easy path, but it's a possible one.
- [13:39]
Alex von Tanzelman
Fantastic. We so often think of the Roman army as being very infantry based. We think of those nice neat formations. Did it have a cavalry and if so, what was its function? What was its purpose?
- [13:53]
Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy
The answer is yes. I mean, one thing to say we ought to remember, in any period of Roman history, even in the fairly early days, usually at least half of any army isn't Roman. It's allied troops, it's non citizen, so they're a big deal. You have in the early days had cavalry who are Roman and the richest people who could afford a horse and afford the time to learn to ride. It's not just about having one. They formed the cavalry as they did in most Greek armies. It's the same thing. By the time you get to Caesar's day, let alone Augustus, your cavalry are predominantly, overwhelmingly provided by your non citizen troops. And you tend to go to areas that have more of a tradition of riding and raising horses and things, and the basis that they'll be a bit easier trained. But it's not. You can Just join. There are a few horsemen in every legion, but about a quarter of the entire army, perhaps more, is mounted, consists of mounted troops, mostly in the auxilia. And that's true even if you look at the garrisons on Hadrian's wall, by about 200, between a quarter and a third of them are cavalrymen. This means you're again, it's a reminder you're not planned to operate, fight from the wall, you go out. And of course cavalry are terribly useful in all sorts of non battle situations, in terms of escort duties, messengers, all this sort of thing. But they're very useful in battles, useful for fighting. And the Romans don't have stirrups until nearly A.D. 600, that sort of time. And when they do arrive, they don't really mention them at all. It doesn't seem to be that big a deal. They do, however, have a special saddle, one that's developed perhaps in Gaul, perhaps earlier on the steppes. Pinion divides on that. But this has a horn on each of the corners, it's a four horn saddle and you can lean on it. So basically when you sit on it, the saddle pushes down and the horns grip around your thighs so that you can lean down, pull back up, you can twist to throw something, you can twist to thrust, you can't jump, you can't stand in your stirrups to jump because obviously you haven't got stirrups. It doesn't give you that, but it does nearly everything else that modern riders get from a modern saddle and stirrups, it's just the saddle is doing more of the work. So these can be shock cavalry, these can charge home and do things. They can also harass, throw things at you or shoot things at you and wear you down. So they're important in battles and they're usually on the flanks, but they are vital. And if you don't have enough, it can be dicey. They however, have a particularly useful role when you've won the battle, when your main line has broken the enemy, when you've won the battle, you want to make sure you don't have to fight that same enemy in a few weeks time or a few months time. So the pursuit afterwards, where you kill these men who are fleeing and who are largely defenseless, that's where that turns the tactical victory into a strategic one. It wins the war for you. So cavalry have a vital role to play. Even we find in sieges, for instance, there's a case in Britain, there's a case in Judea, where obviously again, cavalrymen can't go and attack a wall on horseback, so you dismount them and they still have to fight in several cases. In one of these sieges in Judea, cavalrymen are the first men across the ramp onto the wall. For some reason this unit seems to have had more armor than was normal. So that's perhaps why they're there. So cavalry have great prestige and in the imperial system the Emperor Claudius tries to change this, but it doesn't work for an equestrian. This people one step down from a senator. Your military career was first you commanded auxiliary infantry, then you went to a legion and were a staff officer there. And only then were you entrusted with one of these precious cavalry regiments. And if you were really, really lucky, you got to command beyond that your fourth stage, a double strength cavalry regiment. There was only ever one of these in a province at any one time. Because the thing is you don't trust someone. It's a bit like you think to Napoleonic era, the British army could let somebody buy a commission and basically go off and command as a junior officer. The navy doesn't do that because you can't give someone something as expensive as a big three masted sailing ship if they don't have a clue what they're doing because it can do far more damage. In the same way you can't trust somebody to look after 500 horses and keep them in good condition because things can go very badly wrong. That's just in the day to day, let alone leading them on campaign. So cavalry have quite a prestige from early on and they are very, very important. And the idea they become more important later on is it's actually the change is much slighter. They've always been really important.
- [18:25]
Alex von Tanzelman
And of course the other really important aspect you have just hinted at very nicely there is when it comes to talking about warfare, we are not just talking about the army. How was the Roman navy structured? Did Rome command the seas as much as it took over vast swathes of land?
- [18:42]
Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy
It does. It's one of the things the big naval battles occur much earlier. You have things like Actium where a Roman fleet fights a Roman fleet. But you've had the first Punic War in the middle of the third century bc. You have fleets of hundreds of quinqueremes, fives, these warships with each team of rowers consisted of five men, have a crew if it's fully manned of about 300. So when you get battles with 200, even 300 of these facing each other, the number of people involved probably makes them some of the largest naval battles in history in terms of sheer manpower, because basically all your motive power is coming from these blokes rowing. So you need lots of them and you cram them into a small hull. You don't have any enemy that's got those sorts of fleets later on. Now, you could argue there isn't really one Roman army. There are Roman armies that are established in different areas, but that's, you know, getting to semantics. But there isn't really a separate navy. So the navy is part of the armed forces in a sense, and it's a similar career pattern to the people who command auxiliary units. Interestingly enough, the navy is the only branch of the armed forces that former slaves are allowed to join. So if you've got your freedom, you can join. If you do that and you try and enlist in the legions, then you'll be executed for that. But you can join the fleet, but you've got, you know, there's the Classis Britannica, the British squadron, that's based mostly in Boulogne in that area. And there's a. Underneath Bonoin Castle, if anybody's in the town today. There's some quite nice inscriptions and pictures of these ships and things of this fleet from that period. Mostly it supports the army, but you do want to control piracy, that sort of thing. That's a big part of the Roman peace. So it's doing that sort of thing. It's for communications, it's controlling and protecting trade, famously as well. In the early 80s AD, the Roman navy sends ships around the north of Scotland and circumnavigates Britain. And that's when they finally confirmed that it is an island and not another continent, because they thought it was, but they weren't quite sure. And this is part of Agricola's campaign. We only know about this because his son in law, Tacitus wrote this biography. The one thing you have to remember about ancient warships is they are not like HMS Victory or ships from Nelson's day. They can't go off to sea for months on end because they're powered by these men. Rowing. It means that most of the space is filled with people and the rowers actually act as the ballast for one of these vessels. So they can't move around much, but there isn't space to store food. So essentially they're a bit more like aircraft. They can go so far, but they've got to come back or land somewhere for people to rest, for people to drink water, take on food, all this sort of thing. Three days is about the longest journey you'll do in a military vessel and even that's pushing it a bit. You need to be absolutely sure there's somewhere safe where you can land. So again, it's a sort of. It links it to the army, even at that level. So it's there, it's important and it's there right the way through. There's a nice comment in a source from around about 400 AD where the chap called Vegetius tells us that the ships of the British squadron and the uniforms of the men were sort of sea grey colour. And it's the first evidence you've got for people trying to blend ships into the sea to make them harder to appear. It seems to be the Romans doing this. I mean, how often, how effective it was, who knows? But that's a nice little touch of something that's going on here at that period in the last days of Britain.
- [22:19]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [22:54]
Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy
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- [23:38]
Alex von Tanzelman
See mintmobile.com so we've got our Navy here that can go out and communicate with distant lands. We've got our cavalry who can send our messages. But the Romans command such a large swathe of land as I've said before, how did the Romans manage to supply and control their armies across such vast distances?
- [23:59]
Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy
It's one of those things where we see traces of how this was done. In the same way you can see the traces of bureaucracy. All legionary bases, all those big forts are on a river. Because it's much easier to bring in large quantities of grain by water. It's simply easier. Auxiliary forts tend to be scattered around, but they're always on roads and roads link them up and often the road system, even before the formal roads are built, the army sort of develops it and it's about communication. So there's information going back and forth. You can see from Vindolanda, there are some of the texts are daily reports, you know, where the optiones and curatores, the second in command of the centurion, the decurion make this statement every day that everybody on the strength is here and all the equipment is where it should be. You get glimpses of this, you get unit reports. There's one from a cohort that's stationed at Vindolanda, where most of its men are actually elsewhere doing something. Probably a lot of them are Cornbridge, which is not that far away. So everybody is traced. And because you've got to pay them, you've got to feed them, you've got to be very careful about their promotion because again, the emperor is always a bit concerned the army might turn against him and support somebody else's arrival. So you don't want to let anybody go around promoting loads of centurions or tribunes or things like this and making them loyal to him. And there are some people, there's one centurion list service in, I think it's 13 different legions and they are from somewhere in Syria, some are in Britain. Germany basically goes. Now that's assuming he actually travels to these units rather than he's seconded somewhere else doing something. And this is a step in promotion. But clearly someone at the center is regulating all of this. For much of the, well, the first and then much of the second century, you serve for 25 years as a Roman auxiliary, a non citizen soldier, and you are made a Roman citizen at the end of your service. And we have these diplomas, we call them, these little bronze plaques that list the units that are being discharged. The man himself, they get a bit canny. They basically allow citizenship for you and just one wife. So you can't just keep on going, marrying people and turn everybody into Roman citizens and the children from that union. But this is a copy of a document that's at Rome, because at Rome, the census is still being kept of every single Roman citizen. So it's done. The details of all of it are hard to trace. We don't quite know how it all happens, but it is very clearly regulated. There's a series of ostraca from North Africa where a soldier on a detached duties keeps giving to camel drivers this little sort of chip, based on a broken bit of pottery, as to how much grain they are carrying to his commander at the fort some distance away. And this is the thing you take in, so even that you can see it being done. So food is drawn from large sources. It's very expensive to feed and pay all these people, but it's done. But also you need the horses, you need the mules, you need all of these things to make the army work. And then they need to eat. So there's only so much the army can generate on its own, and most of it has to be supplied. But again, you've got that bucket, bronze bucket, in the Chester Museum at Chester's Fort, now from Hadrian's Wall, that claims to hold a certain quantity of grain and seems to be part of the taxation, that farmers were obliged to bring this, but actually when they filled it, there's room for more in there. So either they didn't quite fill it up to the brim, or somebody's on the fiddle and is taking an extra bid every time. Again, you know, these sort of details there. And there are complaints that people are asked to deliver their tax, their tribute to somewhere that's, you know, miles and miles away instead of the nearest point, because the man doing it's just looking for a bribe to sort of change things around. So, system isn't perfect, but it does generally work.
- [27:35]
Alex von Tanzelman
We've had a question from Instagram and this listener has asked, how did the Roman military differ from other societies of the time? And also, I guess we could link this to another question you've had from David H. Simmons, also on Instagram, who asked about what differentiated the Roman approach to warfare and made them stand out. Essentially, it's a couple of things.
- [27:58]
Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy
I mean, you're dealing with a very large professional army that Roman soldiers join. Not necessarily the officers serving so long, but the soldiers are there for 25 years or until they're dead, desert or medically discharged, and soldiering is their job. Now, the army is also called upon to act as a police force to help build things, so they might get distracted from their not 25 years purely training for war and nothing else. Let alone fighting wars for 25 years. But the difference is that other societies can't afford this. You can't afford to have 300, 350,000 people that only fight. That's what they're for, that's their profession and that other people pay for. They pay their salary, they make sure they're fed, they're equipped, all this sort of thing. If you looked at say an Iron Age society in Britain, in Germany, there will be a small number of semi professional warriors, people who specialize in this living, usually in the household of a chieftain, and he supports them and they feast with him and they're obliged to fight with him. When in the 4th century we come across a king of some of the Alemanni, he manages to have 300 men in his following. So you know, that's smaller than a cohort of the Roman army. And these are the people that will get the best equipment and can practice. Because again, fighting is a trade. There are things to learn. It's not just about having the great kit, but it's also knowing how to use it. So you have small numbers of professionals. And even the Parthian, the Persian Empire to the east, can't afford as many full time soldiers as the Romans. It tends to. Some of its forces come almost on a feudal basis. They're the retainers of noblemen and they're people who are wealthy enough to afford to train and oblige to serve. But they're not. This is not the only thing they do. But with the Romans it is. And not only are they specialists, if you think of the equipment of your average Roman, not just a legionary, but an auxiliary infantryman. He's got body armor, he's got a helmet, he's got a shield, he's got a good sword on his hip and probably a spear, javelin as well, pilum, depending on who he is and what time. That's the equipment of a chieftain in British society, Germanic society, Gallic society before, and those few specialized warriors in the household, whereas nearly everybody else is everyone who's obliged to turn up. Because you'll get thrown out of your croft if you don't or you're keen enough, you want to fight for your tribe, those sorts of ideas, bringing along whatever weapons they've got. You know, the Romans again and again talk about fighting naked opponents. They don't mean necessarily naked in terms of no clothes, but unarmored, unprotected. So your Roman, your average Roman, your basic private, is equipped in the same way as the best man in the Other armies, and you've got basically, it's industrialised warfare. It's on that sort of scale. There's lots of people out there, so that makes them really different at that individual level. Beyond that, because there's lots of them, because they've got this organization, because they are not fighting, because they're doing it for their personal honor, to defend the chieftain's honour, this sort of thing, whatever it might be. They are fighting because they're being motivated by being part of a unit and all this sort of thing. But they're organized in bigger groups, fighting for different reasons. They train not just as individuals, but as groups. So when you fight the Romans, you are fighting a well coordinated team at every level. Other people just can't do this. You're also fighting a team that has organized logistics and supplies. So when it goes to war, it can fight if it really wants to at any time of the year. Even in winter, when it's hard to forage, it can go on campaign for months on end. Most people just can't do that. So there's a case in Julius Caesar's campaigns. He's confronted by an army of belgic tribes. They're on the ridge, the other side of a valley, they're on the high ground, that side. His army's on this. And nobody wants to march through the marsh that's in between and fight at a disadvantage uphill. So Caesar simply waits for them to run out of food, at which point they all start bimbling off home and he attacks them and chases them with his cavalry and kills them, because they simply can't. If you don't go, you starve. They are much more serious about it, and they are also very adaptable. So they learn from mistakes and they adapt. So all of these give them a huge advantage. They are a team that's coordinated, they've got a command structure, and then individually, they're pretty good as well, and their equipment is as good, if not better, than you. And if they can't beat you in a pitched battle, which sometimes they decide they don't do well, they'll attack you by surprise, or they'll go and attack your strongholds. And they can besiege those because they've got that engineering skill as well, and they've got the time, they can afford to choose when they do it. So it is very hard to beat them when they're organised, when they've got enough people on the spot, because all the advantages are on their side.
- [32:45]
Alex von Tanzelman
I have so many questions for you from that. But let's start with this one. Tell us about their weaponry, their protection. What did a standard Roman soldier have?
- [32:57]
Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy
Again, as I say, the details will vary, but basically, whether you're an auxiliary infantryman or a legionary. And let's talk about infantry for the moment. You've got body armor. Now, it might be mail, not chainmail. They're made of individual rings that are linked together. It might be scale, where you've got scales sewn on. You've also got the famous segmented armour. We call it Lorica segmentata, but that's a modern name. We don't know what the Romans called it. There isn't good evidence for this ever being used by auxiliaries. It seems to have been a legionary thing, but it doesn't seem to have equipped all legionaries. And that, because it's forms of plates, is more flexible, it's a bit less cumbersome and lighter. But on the other hand, it has to be tailored for you. It's a bit like the difference in the medieval period. You know, earlier on, a knight's wearing a male hauberk. You can wear one of those. As long as it's not too small, you can adjust it to fit. Once you get to plate armour, it becomes that much more expensive because it has to be made for you, otherwise it either doesn't fit at all or is deeply uncomfortable. So lorika seg is a bit like that. It also bits fall off it all the time. It's why it's so visible archaeologically, because the little buckles and fittings and things tend to drop off and they're quite distinctive. Whereas you break some mail, you just repair it and you reuse it and it's very easy to recycle. You've got a helmet. Key things about a Roman helmet you think of the Greek hoplite often had this enclosed Corinthian helmet with just eye holes, bit for the mouth. Think of a lot of medieval knights. Again, an enclosed helmet. A Roman helmet gives you good protection to the top of the head, good protection to the neck, but apart from the cavalry, but slightly different ears are always uncovered. You've got cheek pieces, but your face is uncovered. This is a helmet for someone who is there to receive orders, to be told what to do. He's got to be able to hear and he's also got to be very aware of what's going on. It's not about, I'm just big and tough and I'm going to steam through whatever's in front of me. But I'm not worried at all about what's happening because I can't see it. So again, it brings back this idea of discipline, command, control. They're there to fight in an organized way as a team. You've also got your shield type will vary. It can be the semi cylindrical one, for legionaries, it can be flat, but it's a big body shield that gives you lots of protection, but also has a dome like boss which you're gripping with one hand, which you use to punch. If you think a modern fencer has their sword arm towards their opponent, it's the other way around. For the Romans, it's your left side, your shield side is towards them because that gives the protection. So that's actually the thing you can punch with your body weight behind and then you're following up with a sword to stabilize and cut this idea. The Romans just thrust and didn't ever use cuts or slashes. They're taught to fence. So there are all sorts of different strokes delivered, but thrusting is often the safer and if you can get a good one in, more deadly. So you're unbalancing your opponent by smashing them with this heavy shield with your weight behind it, and then you're trying to see a weakness, see a gap thrust round past their shield. Before that you will have thrown something at them. A javelin maybe for an auxiliary, the pilum. This heavier javelin with all the weight concentrated by a little pyramid shaped point. That's then on a long iron shank, 18 inches or so, joining it to the forefoot or so of wooden haft. So the idea is with this, you throw it and again there's the old idea. It goes in a shield and it bends and all this sort of thing. That's myth. And that was a different type of javelin. What it does is it hits the shield. You've got this tiny point with all the weight concentrated behind it. So punch through the wooden shield and then because you've got 18 inches of slim shank, the idea is it goes through into the person behind and might again. It's designed to punch through armour if necessary. You've got to throw it really close, so you've got to have the nerve and the discipline to wait. The instinct is you see some enemies coming towards them, you want to do something to make them go away, make scare them off. So you can look in 18th, early 19th century accounts, unless they were well disciplined troops had a tendency to start blazing away with their muskets when they were at very long range, sometimes even just Pointing them up in the air. It's make noise, make smoke, make the enemy vanish, basically, and frighten them before we get to the nasty stuff up close. This is something where it's only the Romans really use them because they've got the training to wait until you're 15 yards away and then throw it. And then it's bringing down men, it's weakening them, it's crippling them. If it does get stuck in your shield, your shield would be too heavy and you'll probably have to drop it. But that's, you know, that's a sort of secondary thing. It's more about wounding, if possible, killing, and then you follow up with the charge, sword in hand. So you've got a lot of expensive equipment.
- [37:35]
Alex von Tanzelman
Thank you. That answered a lot of questions that we've had from listeners. Some from Facebook, Instagram had one from Maxhf Quigley, one from Sylvia Rose. While we're talking about this kind of close proximity combat, we need to talk about some of these Roman formations. They're known for this kind of determination, this zeal, this discipline. Andy Mackey on Facebook has asked, how often were these iconic phalanx and tortoise formations actually used?
- [38:06]
Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy
The tortoise, the testudo, is really for sieges, it tends to come up in battles and things on screen and all this sort of thing. But basically it's to cover you as you get close to a wall and then you start to sort of use crowbars and things to try and pull stones out and undermine it. There was a display in the circus where people would climb up and they'd use it to climb a wall by standing on them. But that rarely seems to be used in actual combat. But you don't tend to use it in the open. There is test judo formation where if you're under lots of a barrage of, say, arrows or something like that, so you're fighting the Parthians, then you might well do it then. And there's a case where in Mark Anthony's campaign, his legionaries begin to form test judo. So they're moving around, things are shuffling. The Parthians think this is a sign of panic because they've never seen it before. And these horse archers charge in to realise at the last moment, the legionaries are actually still pretty determined and they suffer badly. There was even a cavalry test judo where you would line the horses up close and you would try and put as much of your shield forward to cover your body, but also the horse's neck. And that was done as Part of the display, so they're there. Phalanx is just a very vague word for. It's become a big deal for people looking at Greek hoplites and classical Greek warfare of a particular type of formation, but it basically just means a block of people. So when it's used, you shouldn't see it too technically. The Romans vary their formations because obviously it depends on the situation of what you're doing and who you're fighting. You've also got another consideration is that if your legionaries armed with pyloom, this heavy throwing javelin, you can't throw that too far. So you can't go really, really deep with lots of ranks. Otherwise the people at the back, when they throw them, are going to part the hair of the people in front, or they can't use them at all. So although people have come up with ideas, or maybe they're handing them forward and people are just throwing them, that's fine as long as you're very well drilled. But for less experienced troops, and there is generally a pattern, the less experienced you are, the deeper you form, because it's easier to maneuver you and the more encouraged you feel. You have people, the optiones tesserari and people like that at the back of the formation, with sort of ornamental staff to try and like the sergeants with their halberds in the 18th, early 19th century, that could force men to stay in the ranks, could dress the line, just push them forward. So you've got people to lead you from the front, people to hold you there from the back. You get formations of three ranks deep, you get them of four, you get six. It varies. It depends on the situation. Sometimes eight, I suspect shallower was more normal, because, again, that makes more use of your missiles that you've got. And bear in mind, until quite late on, until you're getting to the fourth century, a legion's a big group of 5,000 people, 10 cohorts, as you get from Caesar and his triplex aquaes. You don't form in one line, you form in two or three is most common, but sometimes two, sometimes four. So you fight as waves in a sense, rather than pile everybody in, as a Greek phalanx might, because there isn't the command structure to commit reserves, A Roman army normally begins with at least two thirds of its troops in reserve, waiting to be committed into the fighting line. So you're not so worried about, let's pack everybody in really deep and slog it away till one side breaks. It's more about successive attacks, reinforcing the fighting line with fresh troops to try and get the moment if it's bogged down, get the momentum going forward again. Basically the main things there is the cuneus, which we sometimes translate as wedge that seems to be. Or pig's head can also be called. That's probably, you know, narrower at the front. And the idea with this is you charge. It's a narrower formation so you can move more quickly without getting into disorder. But also you've got to think about the psychological effect of the people in front of it because they're thinking, well, maybe if I shuffled a bit, that way he can hit him rather than me. Which is the. Ideally it means they start to waver and they break before you get there. So you slam in. The countermeasure to it is to sort of pack in, to be like almost sort of grabbing it like pincers that the Romans are supposed to practice as well, or appears in Vegetius anyway. So there's a range of formations it's best not to think of. This is how they always fight. They're a smart enough army to think, what's the tactical situation? What are our forces? What's the best for this location, this situation. And go deep, go wide as it might be, be in two lines, be in three lines, whatever it might, whatever might seem to work best.
- [42:21]
Alex von Tanzelman
Very important to clarify that while we're talking about these formations, we should probably talk about other kit as well. What were the key innovations in Roman military engineering? What kind of big pieces of kit are we talking about?
- [42:36]
Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy
In some respects there's nothing. Too many advances we can see from say, the first century bc, Caesar's Day before that. The Romans aren't good at sieges, but they start to learn by this time and as the army becomes professional, it's able to pass on the experience of one generation to the next. It can train Rome so you get bigger artillery, you've got. They become more common later on. The familiar, the sort of single armed catapult becomes the mangonel in the Middle Ages. They're known about early on. They're known about by the Greek Hellenistic authors. They seem to become more common, particularly by the 4th century. They're a bit simpler to make, they're a bit cruder, they're harder to aim because you've got to shift the whole thing. But they're effective, they do a good job. There's a famous comment from a Roman commander who served under Claudius and Nero called Corbulo, who claimed that wars are won with the Dalabra the pickaxe. And there's an element where nearly all your soldiers are trained as engineers as well. So it's like a sort of combat engineer corps, that's the entire army. So you can build these big siege works incredibly quickly. And if you look at one of these dullabrae, one of the metal head of it, it's exactly the same. The dimensions are almost identical to a British army pickaxe today because it's a very functional tool. That's what it does, it works. So you have those earlier on, they tend to use turf and timber to build things. They build more in stone later. But one interesting thing is that by the late period, we don't see so many examples of the Romans being quite so good at attacking walled cities as they had been earlier. But that might just be a fluke of the accounts that we simply get there. So a lot of the basic things are battering ram, siege towers, artillery and then digging to undermine all this sort of thing. They've pretty much known how to do this. And there isn't really any great technological advance in the defense's capability to make it worth thinking of something new. So it's less so in that respect. There's not much innovation that we can see anyway, in detail and bringing things.
- [44:34]
Alex von Tanzelman
Back to the sort of individual Roman soldier. When it comes to thinking of Roman soldiers, there is this perception of red. Everyone's got red on them, everyone is wearing red. Did all Romans wear red?
- [44:50]
Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy
No. There's a little bit of evidence that sometimes some people in the army did wear red. There's one theory even that made it that might be what a centurion wears to mark him out. The best evidence, and it's not, it's not 100%. We know, we're guessing a lot, is that your standard uniform for a Roman soldier was a fairly good quality white tunic. It's a little bit like the red coat for the 18th, early 19th century. You're trying to convince some village lad to join up. And that's why the British army of the time, that the last volunteer army has the brightest coloured uniform to basically tell him, you know, you're going to look a thousand pounds in this, you're going to impress all the girls, this is what you want to be. And a lot of the shininess of Roman army equipment is exactly the same. The idea is that again, you have a bright white tunic shows that you're somebody of you can afford this. So that's probably. It's more white. But again, do you have several Orders of, you know, several tunics for different types of duties. When you're on fatigues, if you've got something crude, you don't mind getting dirty, all of this sort of thing. Anybody who got along to the Legion exhibition at the British Museum a few months back, they had the only surviving legionary shield with paint on it, the Dura Europa Scutum. That is basically red in the field. So there may have been red base for at least some shields, but some of the other shields from Jura are different colours. It's something that it looks great, you know, in the same way, the British army stuck with red because it looked impressive, at least when it was new. And there is also an idea which, again, mirrors that in the British army of that time, the quality of the material was a little bit better for a sergeant, so a sergeant had a slightly brighter red jacket and an officer brighter still. There's some sense that in the Roman army, the whiteness of your tunic reflected how senior you were, because, again, it's better quality and of course, you can probably afford more of them and this sort of thing and keeping it better. So I'm afraid not. That's one of those things. It looks good and it's how a lot of depictions do. On the other hand, having said all of that, we are dealing with meager evidence, because so often you have monuments like Trajan's Column there in Rome, depictions of hundreds and hundreds of Roman soldiers. That was originally painted, but none of the paint survives. So as with most of these tombstones, these monuments elsewhere, there was loads of colour. You have to think, well, would some units want to be dressed in a different colour to another, in this legion, to that legion, to stand out? We know they have different insignia, but also, how did you tell apart the cohorts of one legion? Or did you. Were they all the same? Who knows? There is a case where, in a Civil War battle, two soldiers take shields from dead enemies, infiltrate the other army and take out the crew of a large catapult and slight it. They basically cut the cables and this sort of thing and then are killed. So they've never known who it was, but they clearly could pass in every other respect with this shield that would say, you belong to this unit, rather, so it clearly could be identified. But just how it all worked. There's a little bit we hear of cavalry with yellow crests in one source, but again, is that everybody is all the time, is that particular to this occasion, this unit, all this sort of thing. So lots of things like that we just don't know when, all said and done. So that's best guess on the evidence we've got.
- [48:12]
Alex von Tanzelman
Talking about all these colours, it gives us such a vivid picture of what Roman warfare, Roman battles, sieges, whatever they might be, may look like. Roman battles in particular, particularly those of the Empire, are something we've covered together, talking in the series of history's greatest battles. But as a final question for you in this episode, what's one thing that you think military units today can learn from the Romans?
- [48:40]
Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy
The Roman army existed for a very long time and it did get things wrong, but it did learn most of the period, so there's that flexibility. A lot of the Roman success shows you fairly standard principles that if you're better organized than the enemy and better led, you're probably going to win. But it also reminds us, you can look at sites like the forts on Hadrian's Wall, you can look at Caelian, these big bases that supported the army. There's a big infrastructure behind the army up until the 3rd century AD. From then on, you start to get billeted in cities over the winter. And this sort of thing, if you build a fort, it's much, much smaller than it had been before. You don't have the barrack blocks, you don't have the stable blocks, you don't have the granaries, you don't have the training areas. And it's probably not a coincidence that the Romans seem to be in more trouble militarily, although they're still big and strong in that later period. There's an element where you think about, and this is even more true today, that the only person who counts in an army is a man at the cutting edge actually fighting, you know, literally in a Roman sense. But to get him there well enough trained and fed to do it, lots of other people have to do stuff. In a modern army that's even more critical. You feel this with some, you know, some late Roman decrees that alone. Modern studies of the late Roman army, they're telling, oh, yeah, they're just doing, you know, they've got less, but they're doing more with it. They're using it more flexibly. And it sounds like many a political decree of, oh, yeah, we're going to spend less, budget will be smaller, but it'll all be better because we've cut out waste, we've cut out this or the other. There are some things, if you want to do them, you've got to pay for and you've got to have the people you've got to have the resources and it's not cheap and it's an army. It's not going to make a profit. So there are lessons of how the Romans adapt to different situations. And also, if you think in recent years, until the war in Ukraine kicked off and this sort of thing, NATO in particular was thinking of counterinsurgency, of mobile warfare, of not expecting to fight a similar army to itself in a big battle, in a big war. And then suddenly it's a reminder. Well, actually, what you get in real life isn't what you plan for or expect, but what somebody else has decided they're going to do. The Romans learn the hard way, but they do have to compromise and be able to do things at different levels. The Roman army of 2nd century AD in some places at times gets tailored to frontier security or internal security, but then it might find itself having to fight a big war. And then you have to relearn all the lessons you learned the hard way originally, do the things properly and then you'll win that. So the Romans remind us that you can never just say, right, we spent this money, we've recruited these people, we've trained them, we now have an army. And it's always going to stay an army and it's always going to be great. It stays that way because it keeps on doing things and it keeps on practicing and it keeps on learning and innovating and it will still make mistakes, but then it has to learn from those mistakes and go back to it. Because after all, the Romans are successful for a very long time. So, you know, they're getting something right.
- [51:40]
Emily Briffitt
That was Dr. Adrian Go Goldsworthy speaking to Emily Briffet. Adrian is a historian, historical consultant, and the author of numerous books on ancient Roman history. As I mentioned earlier, he was also the expert for season one of our new podcast series, History's Greatest Battles, where he charted five epic clashes of the Roman Empire, from naval showdowns and brutal sieges to disastrous defeats and tales of trail. A new bonus episode of that has just been released, so be sure to search for history's greatest battles wherever you listen to podcasts to check it out now. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Lewis Dobbs. This is history's heroes.
- [52:29]
Alex von Tanzelman
People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War.
- [52:40]
Ryan Reynolds
You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us. When I'M done with you.
- [52:47]
Alex von Tanzelman
Join me, Alex von Tanzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.