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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 ...
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 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.
The phalanx was divided into taxis based on geographical recruitment differences. [2] The phalanx used the "oblique line with reduced left" arrangement, designed to force enemies to engage with soldiers on the furthest right end, increasing the risk of opening a gap in their lines for the cavalry to break through. [3]
In the testudo formation, the men would align their shields to form a packed formation covered with shields on the front and top. [1] The first row of men, possibly excluding the men on the flanks, would hold their shields from about the height of their shins to their eyes, so as to cover the formation's front.
The Macedonian phalanx was considered practically invulnerable from the front. Another phalanx could perhaps wear a phalanx down in a long battle from exhaustion, but this was far from guaranteed. The best way to defeat one was generally by one of a loss of morale from killing the enemy commander, breaking its formation, or outflanking it.
The Romans were angry about this "but did not choose to take the field against Tarentum at once. However, they despatched envoys, in order not to appear to have passed over the affair in silence and in that way render them more arrogant." [5] The Tarentines did not accept the proposal of the envoys and insulted them. As a result, the Romans ...
Map of the Roman empire in AD 125, under emperor Hadrian, showing the Legio I Italica, stationed on the river Danube at Novae (near Svishtov, Bulgaria), in Moesia Inferior province, from AD 70 until the 5th century Denarius issued in 193 by Septimius Severus, to celebrate I Italica, which supported the commander of the Pannonian legions in his fight for the purple.