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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.
Re-enactor as Roman cavalryman. Roman cavalry (Latin: equites Romani) refers to the horse-mounted forces of the Roman army throughout the regal, republican, and imperial eras. In the regal era, the Roman cavalry was a group of 300 soldiers called celeres, tasked with guarding the Kings of Rome. Later their numbers were doubled to 600, then ...
Roman soldiers of around 101 AD from a cast of Trajan's column, c. 113 AD (Victoria and Albert Museum, London) Through the final years of the 1st century AD, the legions remained the backbone of the Roman army, although the auxilia in fact outnumbered them by up to half as much again. [87]
The Roman army had not yet seen elephants in battle, [77] and their inexperience turned the tide in Pyrrhus' favour at the Battle of Heraclea in 280 BC, [74] [77] [79] and again at the Battle of Ausculum in 279 BC. [77] [79] [80] Despite these victories, Pyrrhus found his position in Italy untenable.
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 ...
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 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 1453), including the Western Roman Empire (collapsed AD 476/480) and the Eastern Roman Empire (collapsed AD 1453).
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 [5]). The most important of those putative changes concerned the altering of the socio-economic background of the soldiery.