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The steady, regular marching step was a marked feature of Roman legions. Vegetius, the author of the only surviving treatise on the Roman Empire's military, De Re Militari, recognized the importance of: constant practice of marching quick and together.
The Roman legion (Latin: legiō, Latin: [ˈɫɛɡioː]), the largest military unit of the Roman army, was composed of Roman citizens serving as legionaries.During the Roman Republic the manipular legion comprised 4,200 infantry and 300 cavalry.
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 ( javelins ).
Portraits of Sulla (right) and Pompeius Rufus (left), the two consuls who led the march, on a denarius minted by their grandson in 54 BC. [1]The March on Rome of 88 BC was a coup d'état by the consul of the Roman Republic Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who seized power against his enemies Marius and Sulpicius, after they had ousted him from Rome.
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 sarcina was the marching pack carried by Roman legionaries, the heavy infantry of the Roman legions. Most of a legionary's equipment other than his arms and armour would, in early times, have been consigned to a baggage train and borne by mules and carts.
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 ...
Six tribunes were still posted to a legion, but their duties and responsibilities had changed, becoming more a political position than a military rank. The second-in-command to the legate was the tribunus laticlavius or 'broad-stripe' tribune (named after the width of the stripe used to demarcate him on his tunic and toga), [ 6 ] usually a ...