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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.
Roman Empire Trajan 117A. The strategy of the Roman military contains its grand strategy (the arrangements made by the state to implement its political goals through a selection of military goals, a process of diplomacy backed by threat of military action, and a dedication to the military of part of its production and resources), operational strategy (the coordination and combination of the ...
The military of ancient Rome was one of largest pre-modern professional standing armies that ever existed. At its height, protecting over 7,000 kilometers of border and consisting of over 400,000 legionaries and auxiliaries, the army was the most important institution in the Roman world.
The Romans used three main siege techniques to seize enemy cities: by starvation (it took more time, but less loss of life on the part of the attackers), by creating all around the besieged city a series of fortifications (an inner [4] and sometimes an outer contravallation, [5] as in the case of Alesia) [6] that would prevent the enemy from obtaining supplies (of food and even water, by ...
De re militari is a treatise on Roman military affairs by Vegetius, a late 4th or early 5th-century writer, and contains considerable information on the late army, although its focus is on the army of the Republic and Principate. However, Vegetius (who wholly lacked military experience) is often unreliable.
The core of the campaign history of the Roman military is an aggregate of different accounts of the Roman military's land battles, from its initial defense against and subsequent conquest of the city's hilltop neighbors on the Italian peninsula, to the ultimate struggle of the Western Roman Empire for its existence against invading Huns ...
' a handful [of soldiers] ') was a tactical unit of the Roman Republican armies, adopted during the Samnite Wars (343–290 BC). It was also the name of the military insignia carried by such units. Maniple members, called commanipulares ( sg. : commanipularis ) were seen as each other's brothers-in-arms, but without the domestic closeness of ...
Instead, Phokas revised existing tactics by combining them with his own experience and observations. Many of the infantry tactics from Praecepta Militaria were likely based on those found in Syntaxis Armatorum Quadrata (ca. 950). Even more influential was the Sylloge Tacticorum (compiled ca. 950), which was a collection of tactics and strategems.