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The Battle of the Caudine Forks showed the clumsiness of the Roman phalanx against the Samnites. The Romans had originally employed the phalanx themselves [25] but gradually evolved more flexible tactics. The result was the three-line Roman legion of the middle period of the Roman Republic, the Manipular System. Romans used a phalanx for their ...
They served as heavy infantry in the early Roman army, and were used at the front of a very large phalanx formation. After a time, engagements with the Samnites and Gauls appear to have taught the Romans the importance of flexibility and the inadequacy of the phalanx on the rough, hilly ground of central Italy. [4] [5]
The rugged terrain of Samnium, where the war was fought, was not conducive to the phalanx formation which the Romans had inherited from the Etruscans and Ancient Greeks. The main battle troops of the Etruscans and Latins of this period comprised Greek-style hoplite phalanxes, inherited from the original Greek phalanx military unit.
Roman re-enactors demonstrate a variant of the Roman testudo formation. In the military of ancient Rome, heavy infantry made up most of the Roman army. The heavy infantry of the pre-Marian Roman Republic included the hastati, principes, and triarii (although depending how the hastati were armed and armored, they could also be considered light ...
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 Roman day starting at dawn survives today in the Spanish word siesta, literally the sixth hour of the day (sexta hora). [ 11 ] The daytime canonical hours of the Catholic Church take their names from the Roman clock: the prime , terce , sext and none occur during the first ( prīma ) = 6 am, third ( tertia ) = 9 am, sixth ( sexta ) = 12 pm ...
The consul Publius Decius Mus was the Roman commander, and while his able force was ultimately defeated, they almost managed to break the back of Pyrrhus' Epirot army, guaranteeing the security of Rome itself. In the end, the Romans lost 6,000 men and Pyrrhus 3,500 including many officers. [6]
Macedonian phalanx. The sarissa or sarisa [note 1] was a long spear or pike about 5 to 7 meters (16 to 23 ft) in length. It was introduced by Philip II of Macedon and was used in his Macedonian phalanxes as a replacement for the earlier dory, which was considerably shorter.