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The Imperial Roman Army was the military land force of the Roman Empire from 27 BC to 476 AD, [1] and the final incarnation in the long history of the Roman army. This period is sometimes split into the Principate (27 BC – 284 AD) and the Dominate (284–476) periods.
The history of military logistics goes back to Neolithic times. The most basic requirements of an army are food and water. Early armies were equipped with weapons used for hunting like spears, knives, axes and bows and arrows, and were small due to the practical difficulty of supplying a large number of soldiers.
[34] [25] After the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century there was the shift from a centrally organised army to a combination of military forces made up of local troops. [35] Feudalism was a distributed military logistics system where magnates of the households drew upon their own resources for men and equipment.
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.
The Marian reforms were putative changes to the composition and operation of the Roman army during the late Roman Republic usually attributed to Gaius Marius (a general who was consul in 107, 104–100, and 86 BC [2]). The most important of those putative changes concerned the altering of the socio-economic background of the soldiery.
The Roman army (Latin: exercitus Romanus) served ancient Rome and the Roman people, enduring through the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC), the Roman Republic (509–27 BC), and the Roman Empire (27 BC–AD 476/AD 1453), including the Western Roman Empire (collapsed AD 476/480) and the Eastern Roman Empire (collapsed AD 1453).
A Latin inscription from Vindobona pertaining to a praefectus castrorum. The praefectus castrorum ("camp prefect") was, in the Roman army of the early Empire, the third most senior staff officer of the Roman legion after the legate and the senior military tribune (tribunus laticlavius), both of whom were from the senatorial class. [1]
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.