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The Romans made seven attacks, yet they could not break the phalanx, and the battle hung in the air. At one point, the battle became so pitched that Pyrrhus—realizing that if he were to fall in combat, his soldiers would lose heart and run—switched armor with one of his bodyguards.
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 ...
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.
According to Polybius, [15] Hannibal's cavalry boldly rode up to the edge of the Roman encampment, causing havoc and thoroughly disrupting the supply of water to the Roman camp. [ 28 ] On the morning of the battle, as the forces drew up, a Carthaginian officer named Gisgo reportedly remarked to Hannibal that the size of the Roman army was ...
The Romans had already withdrawn to their winter quarters and were astonished by Hannibal's appearance. [21] The Romans went on the attack and the local Roman commander, the consul Publius Scipio, personally led a strong force of cavalry and light infantry against the Carthaginian cavalry at the Battle of Ticinus.
The phalanx was later changed to a 16-by-16 formation, and while the date for this change is still unknown, it occurred before 331 under Philip's rule. [2] Philip called the soldiers in the phalanx pezhetairoi, meaning 'foot-companions', bolstering the importance of the phalanx to the King. [3]
The Romans had placed the two legions in the middle, with the allied Latin, Italian, and Greek infantry on their flanks. The cavalry was placed on the wings, with the Roman right being supplemented by 22 elephants. The phalanx took up the center of the Macedonian line, with the elite 3,000-strong Guard formed to the left of the phalanx.
The First Macedonian War (started due to an alliance between Macedon and Carthage against the Romans during the Second Punic War in 215 BC) had ended in a stalemate; between the Roman alliance with Aetolia and the destruction of the Macedonian fleet early in the war, the Macedonians were unable to support Carthage and were forced into a defensive stance.