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In the Republic, legions had an ephemeral existence. Except for Legio I to IV, which were the consular armies (two per consul), other units were levied by campaign. Rome's Italian allies were required to provide approximately ten cohorts (auxilia were not organised into legions) to support each Roman Legion.
Roman military standards were emblems adopted by units of the Roman army. There were three main types of standard (Aquila, Vexillum, Signum). Several throughout its history include: Aquila, the emblem of the Roman legion whose adoption Pliny the Elder attributes to the general Gaius Marius. Each legion had an eagle, or aquila, carried by an ...
The Roman army (Latin: exercitus Romanus) was the armed forces deployed by the Romans throughout the duration of Ancient Rome, from the Roman Kingdom (753 BC–509 BC) to the Roman Republic (509 BC–27 BC) and the Roman Empire (27 BC–476 AD), and its medieval continuation, the Eastern Roman Empire.
From 338 BC to 88 BC Roman legions were invariably accompanied on campaign by an equal number of somewhat larger allied units called alae (literally: 'wings', as allied troops would always be posted on the flanks of the Roman battle line, with the Roman legions holding the centre). 75% of a normal consular army's cavalry was supplied by the ...
A diagram of a late 1st-century AD Roman legion. The dual-structure configuration of legions/auxilia established by Augustus remained essentially intact until the late 3rd century, with only minor modifications made during that long period. The senior officers of the army were, until the 3rd century, mainly from the Italian aristocracy.
The standard legion contained thirty maniples organized into three distinct lines, and consisted of about 4,200 infantrymen and 300 Roman citizen cavalrymen . The actual size of the legions, however, often depended on the particular situation, and sources mention that in times of need legions could number between 5,000 and 6,000 men. [10]
This is best illustrated by showing the dispositions of the Roman legions, the backbone of the Roman army. Because of these deployments, the Roman military kept a central strategic reserve after the Social War. Such reserves were only re-established during the late empire when the army was split into a border defense force and mobile response ...
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. Roman military engineering took both routine and extraordinary forms, the former a part of standard military procedure, and the latter of an ...