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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 Romans would then try to use their superior coordination to repulse the enemy attack. Skirmishers would be placed in front of the Roman line in order to inflict casualties on the enemy and reduce the amount of comitatenses killed in battle. After Attila's invasion of the Roman Empire, the Romans started to use mounted archers. [8]
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 entire Roman army was destroyed at the Battle of the Allia in a crushing defeat that prompted reforms by Marcus Furius Camillus. [4] Under the new system , men were sorted into classes based on wealth; the hastati were the third poorest, with the rorarii being slightly poorer and the principes slightly wealthier. [ 5 ]
The scutum (Classical Latin: [ˈskuːt̪ʊ̃]; pl.:scuta) was a type of shield used among Italic peoples in antiquity, most notably by the army of ancient Rome starting about the fourth century BC. [1] The Romans adopted it when they switched from the military formation of the hoplite phalanx of the Greeks to the formation with maniples (Latin ...
The Romans would later be able to use this weakness against the phalanx as their more mobile maniples could withstand the pressure of the phalanx longer than more traditional formations, thus earning valuable time for their wings to outflank it, as at Cynoscephalae and Magnesia, or for the phalanx to lose its cohesion due to prolonged movement ...
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.