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The empire therefore maintained its highly sophisticated military system from antiquity, which relied on discipline, training, knowledge of tactics and a well-organized support system. A crucial element in the maintenance and spreading of this military knowledge, along with traditional histories, were the various treatises and military manuals.
After suffering a series of defeats, culminating in the surrender of the entire army without resistance at Caudine Forks, the Romans abandoned the phalanx altogether, adopting the more flexible manipular system, famously referred to as "a phalanx with joints". The manipular system was faded from ancient sources and was replaced by the cohort ...
Descriptions of early Roman army structure (initially by phalanx, later by legion) attributed to king Servius Tullius state that two centuriae of fabri served under an officer, the praefectus fabrum. [citation needed] Roman military engineering took both routine and extraordinary forms, the former a part of standard military procedure, and the ...
Roman military tactics evolved from the type of a small tribal host-seeking local hegemony to massive operations encompassing a world empire. This advance was affected by changing trends in Roman political, social, and economic life, and that of the larger Mediterranean world, but it was also under-girded by a distinctive "Roman way" of war.
They served as heavy infantry in the early Roman army, and were used at the front of a very large phalanx formation. After a time, engagements with the Samnites and Gauls appear to have taught the Romans the importance of flexibility and the inadequacy of the phalanx on the rough, hilly ground of central Italy. [4] [5]
The early Roman army was deployed by ancient Rome during its Regal Era and into the early Republic around 300 BC, when the so-called "Polybian" or manipular legion was introduced. Until c. 550 BC, there was probably no "national" Roman army, but a series of clan-based war-bands, which only coalesced into a united force in periods of serious ...
Legio I Italica ("First Italian Legion") was a legion of the Imperial Roman army founded by emperor Nero on September 22, 66 (the date is attested by an inscription). Originally named Legio Phalanx Alexandri Magni , it was stationed in Italy during the year of four emperors and gained the name Italica .
Comitatenses is the Latin nominative plural of comitatensis, an adjective derived from comitatus ('company, party, suite'; in this military context it came to the novel meaning of 'the field army'), itself derived from comes ('companion', but hence specific historical meanings, military and civilian).