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Roman ensigns, standards, trumpets etc. Roman military personal equipment was produced in large numbers to established patterns, and used in an established manner. These standard patterns and uses were called the res militaris or disciplina. Its regular practice during the Roman Republic and Roman Empire led to military excellence and victory.
e. Roman infantry tactics are the theoretical and historical deployment, formation, and manoeuvres of the Roman infantry from the start of the Roman Republic to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The focus below is primarily on Roman tactics: the "how" of their approach to battle, and how it stacked up against a variety of opponents over time.
Late Roman army. The West Roman army disintegrated AD 425–470, whilst the East Roman army continued until the Muslim conquests, after which the theme system was created. The Tetrarchs, a porphyry statue on Venice 's Basilica di San Marco, shows the emperor Diocletian and his three imperial colleagues.
Etruscan funerary urn crowned with the sculpture of a woman and a front-panel relief showing two warriors fighting, polychrome terracotta, c. 150 BC. The mainstay of the Roman republic's war machine was the manipular legion, a heavy infantry unit suitable for close-quarter engagements on more or less any terrain, which was probably adopted sometime during the Samnite Wars (343–290 BC). [2]
The early Roman armywas deployed by ancient Romeduring its Regal Eraand into the early Republicaround 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 ...
Roman military equipment (cf. Roman military personal equipment), particularly armor, was of better quality and far more ubiquitous, especially in the late Republican and Early Imperial era, than that of most of their opponents. Soldiers equipped with shields, helmets and highly effective body armor had a major advantage over warriors protected ...
Roman military engineering. Roman military engineering was of a scale and frequency far beyond that of its contemporaries. Indeed, military engineering was in many ways endemic in Roman military culture, as demonstrated by each Roman legionary having as part of his equipment a shovel, alongside his gladius (sword) and pila (spears). Fabri were ...
Pilum. The pilum (Latin: [ˈpiːɫʊ̃]; pl.: pila) was a javelin commonly used by the Roman army in ancient times. It was generally about 2 m (6 ft 7 in) long overall, consisting of an iron shank about 7 mm (0.28 in) in diameter and 600 mm (24 in) long with a pyramidal head, attached to a wooden shaft by either a socket or a flat tang.