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Aristotle’s Theory of the Unity of Science University of Toronto Press Malcolm Wilson Rok: 2000 Język: english Plik: PDF, 21.45 MB Twoje tagi: 0 / 0

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The King in the North: The Pictish Realms of Fortriu and Ce Birlinn Ltd. Gordon Noble, Nicholas Evans Rok: 2019 Język: english Plik: EPUB, 22.57 MB Twoje tagi: 0 / 0

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by

Pen & Sword Military

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

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Copyright © Paul Chrystal, 2015

ISBN: 978 1 47382 357 0

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For the late Eric Wright Chrystal





Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Plates

List of Diagrams

List of Maps

Timeline

Introduction

Part One: The Republic

Chapter 1 Rome’s Peninsular Wars

Chapter 2 The Roman War Machine

Chapter 3 The Sources

Chapter 4 The Fourth Century: the Gallic Invasion and the Samnite Wars

Chapter 5 The Third Century: t; he Wars with Pyrrhus, the Punic Wars and the Gallic Invasion

Chapter 6 The Second Century: the Spanish Wars, Viriathus and the Invasion of the Northmen

Chapter 7 The First Century: the Social War, Spartacus, Mithridates, Crassus, the Parthians and the Gauls

Chapter 8 ‘Doom Monster’ – Cleopatra VII

Part Two: The Empire

Chapter 9 The Early Empire: Clades Lolliana 16 BC, the Teutoburg Forest AD 9

Chapter 10 Boudica’s Revolt AD 60

Chapter 11 Beth-Horon AD 66 and the Jewish War AD 68

Chapter 12 Carnuntum AD 170; the Crisis of the Third Century – Abritus AD 251, Edessa AD 260

Chapter 13 The Theban Legion Massacre AD 286

Chapter 14 Adrianople AD 378

Chapter 15 Alaric’s Sack of Rome AD 410

Epilogue

Appendix 1: Typical Cursus Honorum in the Second Century BC

Appendix 2: Roman Assemblies

Appendix 3: The Seven Kings of Rome

Appendix 4: Some Carthaginian Generals

Appendix 5: Greek and Roman Authors

Appendix 6: Glossary of Greek and Latin Terms

Notes

Bibliography





Acknowledgements

Thanks to my teachers at school and university, firstly for inspiring me in things classical and then for having the patience and skill to nurture that inspiration. They are: John Hogg, of Hartlepool Grammar School, who started it all with Path to Latin I and Civis Romanus; Dick Jenkinson, Stan Ireland and Tim Ryder at Hull University, who kept it going with Virgil’s Epische Technik, Roman Britain and purple patches in Cary’s A History of Rome; their colleagues, the late Frank Norman for Thucydides, Chris Strachan for Thales and Plato, and the late Jeff Hilton for Aeschylus’ Frogs and Plautus; finally, David Rankin at Southampton University, my MPhil tutor, who gave sound advice on Roman love poets and their women, and some very enjoyable lunches.

I must also thank the following for supplying images: Theresa Calver, Colchester & Ipswich Museum Service, for the magnificent Temple of Claudius artwork on the front cover; Geoff Cook at Cardiff City Hall, for the photograph of the Boudica statue; Professor Tod Bolen at Bibleplaces.com, Santa Clarita, California, for the photos of Jerusalem; Markus Krueger at Digital Park in Lage, Germany, for the Hermann photo; euskadiz.com for the Teutoburg swamp; and The Schiller Inc, Washington, DC, for the Thomas Cole ‘Destruction’ image: www.theathenaeum.org/art/list.php?m=a&s=du&aid=375





Plates


List of Plates

1. Brennus and His Share of the Spoils (1837) by Paul Jamin

2. Figurehead from the French battleship Brennus

3. Hannibal looting slaughtered Romans after Cannae

4. Manuscript miniature showing Eleazar killing an elephant

5. Persian scythe-wheeled chariots at Carrhae

6. Statue of the Parthian general Surena

7. Statue of the rebel slave Eunus

8. Statue of Lusitanian guerrilla fighter Viriathus

9. The Crucified Slaves (1878) by Fyodor Andreyevich Bronnikov

10. The Death of Spartacus (1882) by Herman Vogel

11. Statue of Boudica and her daughters

12. Relief showing Roman soldiers casting lots for Christ’s robes

13. Reconstruction of a Roman siege tower, as used at Masada

14. The rampart walk on the East Wall, Jerusalem

15. Frieze fragment showing Roman soldiers in their armour

16. Germanic Warriors Storm the Field in the Varusschlact (1909) by Otto Albert Koch

17. Hermannsdenkmal (1875), a huge copper monument to Arminius

18. Das Siegreich Vordringende Hermann by Peter Janssen (1844–1908)

19. Alaric’s river-bed burial after his reluctant sack of Rome

20. The end of the Roman Empire, as depicted by Thomas Cole





Diagrams


List of Diagrams

1. A Roman marching camp, as described by Polybius

2. The Battle of Carrhae, Phase I

3. The Battle of Carrhae, Phase II

4. The Battle of Carrhae, Phase III

5. The Battle of Carrhae, Phase IV





Maps


List of Maps

1. Northern Italy

2. Southern Italy

3. North Africa

4. Sicily

5. Spain

6. Greece

7. The Near East at the Time of the First Romano-Parthian War



Map 1: Northern Italy



Map 2: Southern Italy



Map 3: North Africa



Map 4: Sicily



Map 5: Spain



Map 6: Greece



Map 7: The Near East at the Time of the First Romano-Parthian War





Timeline


BC

753 Traditional date for the founding of Rome by Romulus, as given by M. Terentius Varro.

578–535 Traditional dates for Servius Tullius, reputed to have introduced hoplite warfare to Rome (Servian Reform); built Servian Walls around Rome.

535–510 King Tarquinius Superbus – Rome’s last king. Rome has control over all Latium.

496 Establishment of the Roman Republic.

496 Romans defeat the Latin League at Battle of Lake Regillus; Treaty of Cassius, foedus Cassianum.

494 First secessio plebis.

450 Romans defeat the Sabines.

430 Romans defeat the Volsci and Aequi.

400–396 Ten-year siege of Veii; Romans defeat the Etruscans.

390 Gauls sack Rome.

376 Consulship and military commands thrown open to plebeians.

370 Servian Walls rebuilt.

358 Second Treaty of Cassius.

343–341 First Samnite War.

341–338 Great Latin War; Antium taken.

326–304 Second Samnite War; Rome is victorious.

312 Work on Via Appia starts.

298–290 Third Samnite War; Rome wins.

295 Rome defeats the Gauls at Sentinum.

280–275 Pyrrhic War; Pyrrhic victories; Pyrrhus hired by the Tarentines to fight Rome.

264–241 First Punic War.

236 Gates of the Temple of Janus closed for a change; Birth of Scipio Africanus.

229–228 First Illyrian War; Rome wins.

224 Rome massacres Gauls at Battle of Telamon.

220–219 Second Illyrian War; Rome successful.

218–202 Second Punic War.

216 Disaster at Cannae.

215–205 First Macedonian War; Rome defeats Philip V.

213–211 Marcellus takes Syracuse; murder of Archimedes.

198 Second Macedonian War.

197 Philip V beaten at Cynoscephalae.

195 Rome defeats Sparta in Roman–Spartan War.

191–188 Rome defeats Antiochus III and the Aetolian League in Roman–Syrian War.

184 Death of Scipio Africanus.

181–179 First Celtiberian War.

171–168 Macedonian War.

155–139 Romans defeat Lusitanians under Viriathus.

154–151 First Numantine War.

150–146 Fourth Macedonian War.

149–146 Third Punic War; Carthage destroyed.

146–145 Achaean League defeated and Corinth razed in Achaean War.

143–133 Second Numantine War; Numantia destroyed.

135–132 First Servile War.

125–121 Rome victorious in Ligurian War.

121–120 Rome defeats Allobroges and Averni.

113–101 Rome defeats Cimbri and Teutones.

112–106 Jugurthine War.

104 Birth of Pompey.

104–103 Second Servile War; military reforms of Marius.

100 Birth of Julius Caesar.

91–88 Social War.

88–85 First Mithridatic War against Mithridates VI of Pontus.

83–82 First Roman civil war, between Sulla and the popular faction; Second Mithridatic War.

82 Sulla returns to Rome as dictator.

74–66 Third Mithridatic War, won by Pompey.

73–71 Servile War led by Spartacus.

67 Pompey drives out the pirates.

63 Fall of Jerusalem; consulship of Cicero; Catiline conspiracy.

60–54 First Triumvirate formed by Gaius Julius Caesar, Pompey and Marcus Licinius Crassus.

58–50 Caesar fights the Gallic Wars.

54–53 Crassus defeated by the Parthians and killed.

49 Caesar crosses the Rubicon and triggers the Second Roman Civil War against the Optimates, led by Pompey.

44 Caesar assassinated.

44–42 Third Roman Civil War, between the assassins of Caesar, led by Cassius and Brutus, and Octavian and Mark Antony.

43 Octavian, Antony and Lepidus form the Second Triumvirate.

31 Battle of Actium: Octavian defeats Antony and Cleopatra.

30 Antony and Cleopatra commit suicide; Egypt is now a Roman province.

27 End of the Republic, start of the Roman Empire; Octavian is now Augustus Caesar, the sole ruler of Rome.


AD

6 Judaea becomes a Roman province.

9 Three Roman legions are destroyed by the Germans in the battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

14 Death of Augustus; Tiberius emperor.

43 Claudius invades Britain.

60–61 Boudica, queen of the Iceni, leads a rebellion in Britain.

71–84 Pacification of Britain; conquest of modern Wales and Scotland.

238 Goths sack Roman Histria.

258 Goths invade Asia Minor.

260 Valerian taken captive by the Persians.

284 Diocletian splits the empire into two and appoints Maximian emperor of the West and Diocletian the East.

286 The Theban Legion massacre.

303 Diocletian presides over the persecution of Christians.

376 Greuthungi and Tervingi mass on the banks of the Danube seeking refuge within the Roman empire.

378 Battle of Adrianople; death of Valens.

395 Theodosius dies, leaving the Western Empire to his son Honorius and the Eastern Empire to his other son Arcadius.

397 Treaty between Alaric and Eutropius; Alaric is Roman commander in Illyricum.

405 Treaty between Alaric and Stilicho.

410 Alaric sacks Rome.

411 Alaric dies, succeeded by Athaulf.

412 Honorius informs British provincials that Rome can no longer support them.





Introduction

The natural tendency amongst historians and writers generally when analyzing world superpowers, and the reasons for their superpower status, is to focus on the successes achieved by those superpowers, politically, socially and militarily. After all, these are what made these powerful nations or civilizations superpowers in the first place. However, paradoxically perhaps, reverses and disasters that may have been suffered on the way to superpower status are equally pivotal and significant. The experience of ancient Rome is no different. This book is the first to examine the role military disasters played in the success of Rome – one of the world’s greatest superpowers – as a Republic and as an Empire.

The Oxford Concise Dictionary defines ‘disaster’ as a ‘great or sudden misfortune, a complete failure, a person or enterprise ending in failure’. Synonyms include failure, fiasco, catastrophe, calamity, mess, debacle. This book covers disasters in a military and a Roman context. It tells how and why the disasters occurred and how the Romans dealt with the consequences and aftermath of each calamity. It reveals how – apart from the final cataclysm that was the sack of Rome – they were able to rebound to achieve further military and political success. It is commonly believed that the Chinese ideogram for a crisis is the same as the character for opportunity. This has been exposed as a myth, but were it true, then the Romans would have recognized the connection: they frequently made an opportunity out of a military crisis.

History tells us that there are many causes for a military disaster – or put in other words, a devastating defeat or a battle of annihilation. They include blunders by generals (most famously described in Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade); inadequate planning and preparation (as at the Somme); poor intelligence (as at Arnhem); confusion (Teutoburg Forest); mutiny (the Indian Mutiny); underestimation of the enemy (Adrianople); misjudgement (as at Cannae); arrogance or sloppy leadership on the part of the commander (as at Carrhae); complacency (Allia River); plain bad luck or, quite simply, a superior foe tactically or in terms of strength (Lake Trasimene). All of Rome’s military disasters came as a result of one or other of these.

The ability to learn from military disasters and adapt accordingly is key to subsequent success and hegemony. The Romans, over some 1,200 years, were adept at learning the lessons of failure and adapting to new ways and methods, and it was this facility for flexibility and versatility which kept them in control of the Mediterranean and European worlds for much of that period. Arrian puts it well:

[the Romans] are happy to pick out useful things all around and adapt them to their own use … they have taken certain weapons from others and now call them Roman … they also took military exercises from other peoples.1



Roman Military Disasters covers sixty or so decisive and significant defeats; it examines and analyzes the history, politics or strategies which led to each conflict, how and why the Romans were defeated, the tactics deployed, the generals and the casualties. However, the unique and crucial element of the book is its focus on the aftermath and consequences of defeat, and how the lessons learnt enabled the Romans, usually, to bounce back and win subsequent battles and wars. The Roman way of forming alliances and extending reliance on Rome had the absolutely crucial benefit of providing a fathomless source of new recruits; this enabled the Romans to replenish their armies even after crushing defeats like Cannae and Teutoburg Forest, the like of which brought other nations to their knees.

The Roman socio-political system also protected Rome against total annihilation. The dominance of the aristocracy, the senatorial and equestrian elite, provided a ready and self-perpetuating supply of generals and dictators, while the desire for military glory, triumphs and celebrity, and the increasing venality which accompanied the acquisition of more and more booty, kept the Roman war machine ticking over and, usually, in good order. Economics too played its part: as Roman territory expanded, so did the need to acquire more land on which to cultivate the crops needed to feed the growing number of citizens and inhabitants. The early insistence on a land qualification for the military, which, in turn, enabled the farmer or landowner-cum-soldier to pay for his essential weapons and armour, was central to the growth and development of the Roman army. Later, veterans had to be found somewhere to settle. Security too was an ever-present concern: as Rome’s borders expanded, so did the need to secure and defend her borders to ensure the safety of the inhabitants, expanding trade and natural resources within. This manifested itself in further expansionism and the recruitment of more troops to man the borders or to invade beyond. Sometimes this caused a military disaster: when it did, it was all the more important to rebound with a vengeance.

The book also provides some useful context, with chapters on the military experience of early Rome and the evolving war machine. Primary sources are, of course, fundamental to any study of this kind: who and what they are and what they tell us, reliably or otherwise, is covered in a separate chapter. There are also helpful sections on various aspects of the Roman military experience, including war elephants, the chariot as an instrument of war, war rape and siegecraft.

Roman Military Disasters covers battles, sackings and sieges between 387 BC and AD 410, from the first real black-day disaster at the River Allia to the equally black sack of Rome by Alaric. Cleopatra was an ongoing disaster for the Romans militarily, politically and socially – for that reason, her intimate involvement with Rome and the fact that she was instrumental militarily in shaping Rome’s future after Actium, ensures her inclusion.





Part One: The Republic





Chapter 1

Rome’s Peninsular Wars

Before they suffered their first disaster in 387 BC at the Battle of Allia, the Romans had enjoyed some 366 years of sustained and consistent military success, dating from the traditional founding of Rome in 753 BC.

Early reverses were suffered at Pometia in 502 BC and at Antium in 482 BC, but these were of little significance compared to what was to follow at the River Allia. The Romans’ early record of success is a remarkable achievement in itself, particularly when we consider that war was a virtual constant, an inescapable way of life in the monarchy and the early Roman Republic. Of the 250 or so significant battles fought between 500 BC and 100 BC, 200 could be counted as victories. The doors of the Temple of Janus – that all too visible and tangible indicator of Rome’s at-war status – stood open for the whole period. There were just three exceptions, when peace broke out for a significant amount of time: Numa Pompilius (Rome’s second king after Romulus, 715–673 BC) founded the temple and established the tradition of the doors, and it was he who was first able to close those doors, for the duration of his reign1; after the First Punic War, during the consulship of Titus Manlius Torquatus, in 235 BC; and then after Augustus’ victory at the battle of Actium.

The serial warmongering is well recorded. First, Josephus, writing in the first century AD, tells us that the Roman people were delivered from the womb bearing weapons. Centuries later, F.E. Adcock echoed these words in a roundabout way when he said, ‘A Roman was half a soldier from the start, and he would endure a discipline which soon produced the other half.’2

So what was the reason for – and the nature of – this constant warring? What was the cause and outcome of these three centuries of near continuous conflict?

The first Romans were an agricultural, pastoral community, living on defendable hilltops and grazing their sheep on the pastures in the valleys and plains below, around the River Tiber. Rome was the product of synoikism with other Latin settlements in the valley of the Tiber, a process that began in the seventh century BC. She was the largest of these settlements. Her first conflicts would have been little more than isolated cattle-stealing skirmishes involving hundreds of men at most; defence of the king and the livestock were the main causes of attrition. By the end of the monarchy, in roughly 509 BC, Roman territory would have comprised a small walled city within about 500 square miles of land. Defence was rudimentary, with alarms announcing the proximity of an Etruscan raiding party communicated to compatriots by hoisting a flag on the Janiculum. The army comprised no more than 8,000 men. Strategically, alliances were crucial, and it is with alliances involving one town or another that Rome fought most of her battles against enemy coalitions; from 486 the Hernici were the ally of choice for the Romans. Apart from battles at the Fucine Lake in 406 and against the Volsinii in 392, all of Rome’s early wars were fought in the immediate vicinity of the city and on the Latin plain. Rome, then, was but one of many cities embroiled in fighting each other around the River Tiber. Many of her conflicts at this time were fought against the southern Etruscans, especially the Veii; also the Aequi, hill folk from the Aniene valley above Praeneste and Tibur; and the Volsci, who were originally from the Liri valley but had spilled onto the Latin plain to threaten Roman territory. As is often the case with mountain folk, the Volsci and the Aequi were covetous of lower lying, more yielding lands and were anxious to alleviate overcrowding back home and to banish famine and a dearth of cultivatable land. They were to cause Rome much irritation with their raids and incursions in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. By now, though, Rome herself needed more land, and more fertile land at that; expansion and annexations continued apace to achieve this.

In the twenty-four years between 440 and 416, there were only ten years in which the Roman army was not fighting; in the next twenty-four years between 415 and 391, Rome was at peace only in 412 and 411. Warfare virtually every year was, therefore, a fact of Roman life which continued through to the end of the First Punic War, when overseas expansion began in earnest, and, inevitably, more war. Even when there was no critical reason for conflict – defending against attack, attacking to expand territory, for example – the consuls could always find a pretext for military action, if Livy’s account of the year 303 BC is anything to go by.3 This was a year in which no war was recorded, until, that is, the consuls mounted raids into Umbria, ostensibly to curtail the plundering activities of armed men there, ne prorsus imbellem agerent annum – ‘lest they [the Romans] should have a war-free year.’ Moreover, it was essential to keep the socii – the allies – on side, and one important way of cementing their alliances was to insist on their obligation to military support; interrupt or remove this and you remove one of the foundation stones of the alliance. Allies were acquired by enfranchisement: conquered enemies were subsumed into Rome and became de facto citizens, often enjoying many of the rights, privileges and obligations citizenship brought – paying taxes to Rome and fighting in her army, intermarriage and legal and political rights.

An invasion by Gauls in 390 BC wrecked the triple alliance between Rome, the Latins and the Hernici. For the next forty years, Rome was busy fighting former allies who then took advantage of her preoccupation with the Gallic marauders. It was not to be Rome’s Italian neighbours who inflicted the first military disaster, but marauding Gauls at the battle of Allia around 387 BC.

The Romans, and others, had learnt much from the Etruscans, immigrants in the tenth and eighth centuries BC from Asia Minor. These newcomers brought with them sophisticated, urbanized skills in city building, metalworking and pottery. Much of what they made had, in turn, been influenced by contact with Phoenicia, Egypt and early Greece. The Etruscans capitalized on their skills by establishing Etruscan cities extending from the Po valley to Rome and trading with the Greek cities of Italy, opening up vital trade routes around Rome with strategic crossings over the Tiber at Fidenae and Lucus Feroniae. The Etruscans viewed Rome as a strategically important city because it was the last place before the sea where the Tiber could be crossed; the Tiber estuary was a major source of salt, a commodity much traded by Romans and Etruscans alike. Inevitably, the more cosmopolitan Etruscans, by now a loose confederation of twelve or so cities, overwhelmed the more agrarian Rome, introducing new ideas in architecture, town planning, commerce, science and medicine, and the arts. The Etruscans gave the Romans the Latin alphabet, the fasces (symbols of magisterial power), temple design and elements of their religion.4

So, by the end of the monarchy in 509 BC, Rome was developing from a settlement populated by former agricultural hill-dwellers to a more sophisticated, vibrant city, complete with a dedicated religion and a history. Rome had acquired a legendary past – with heroes like Aeneas, Romulus and Remus – a viable socio-political system, a thriving culture and a citizen army. The traditional heroes, of course, were warriors: Aeneas had to battle his way to the founding of Rome, while for Romulus the future involved slaying Remus, his brother – a victory for one, a disaster for the other. The latter-day hill people had come down from their hills and built a central market close to the Tiber, the forum, the crux of Roman life. Their kings wielded imperium – absolute power. They were also empowered to consult the gods (auspicium) on all manner of things, including declarations of war and most other military activity. The site of Rome was defensible, being backed by the Appenines and located at a crossing of the Tiber. It was also on the Italian trade routes, including the Via Salaria, by which commercially vital salt deposits were brought from the coast.

Between 700 and 500 BC, then, the Romans and the Etruscans were at odds with each other over land disputes in central Italy. The early conflicts have come down to us as legend, described by Livy in the opening books of his Ab Urbe Condita, and by Virgil in the second half of The Aeneid – both written some 700 years after the alleged events. In 509 BC, the monarchy, under Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, was replaced by a republic. Tarquinius, however, did not take this lying down and enlisted the support of the similarly disaffected cities of Veii and Tarquinii; they were all defeated by the Romans at the decisive Battle of Silva Arsia. The victorious consul, Publius Valerius Poplicola, returned to Rome weighed down with Etruscan booty; he celebrated a triumph from a four-horse chariot, thus providing a template and precedent for subsequent Roman triumphs.5

The Sabines were just as troublesome to the early Romans as the Etruscans. The first episode was the ‘rape’ – or abduction – of the Sabine women in 750 BC.6 This essentially was an act of nation building; the Romans needed women to prolong their race, so they took what they found, married them and produced their offspring.

Later, Titus Tatius (d. 748 BC), the Sabine king of Cures, attacked Rome and captured the Capitol, helped by the duplicitous Tarpeia. The Sabine women, now Roman wives and mothers, bravely rallied to persuade Tatius and Romulus to bury their respective hatchets and cease hostilities; the outcome was joint rule by the Romans and Sabines.7

Later, during the reign of Rome’s third king, Tullus Hostilius (r. 673–642 BC), the Sabines took a number of Roman merchants prisoner at a market near the Temple of Feronia. Tullus invaded and met the Sabines at the forest of Malitiosa. The Roman force was superior because the cavalry had been strengthened with ten new turmae of equites recruited from the Albans, now themselves citizens of Rome. The Romans won the battle with a successful cavalry charge, inflicting heavy losses on the Sabines.

The Fasti Triumphales record a triumph for a victory over the Sabines and the Veientes by Rome’s fourth king, Ancus Marcius (r. 642–617 BC). Ancus it was who famously defeated the Latins before the Latin League had come to accept the leadership of Rome during the reign of Tarquinius Superbus (535–509 BC). The League was a confederation of about thirty or so towns and tribes in Latium who coalesced in the seventh century BC for mutual defence and protection. Rome made a treaty with Carthage, that other emerging Mediterranean power, in 507 BC, in which Rome arrogantly assumed Latin lands surrounding Rome to be Roman territory, an issue that would become a festering sore in Roman and Latin relations down the years.8 The Latins had naively thought that Ancus was a man of peace like his grandfather, Numa Pompilius, and so invaded Roman territory. When a Roman embassy sought reparations for war damage and received nothing more than an insult from the Latins, Ancus declared war. This is significant because it was the first time that the Romans had declared war through the rites of the fetiales. Ancus Marcius took the Latin town of Politorium and displaced its inhabitants to the Aventine Hill, where they were subsumed and granted Roman citizenship. The ghost town that Politorium now became was later occupied by other Latins; Ancus simply responded by taking the town again, sacked it and razed it. Much booty and many Latins were sent back to Rome, these new citizens being settled at the foot of the Aventine. Ancus fortified the city, annexing the Janiculum, strengthening it with a wall and connecting it with the city by the Pons Sublicis, with its crucial implications for trade. He built the Fossa Quiritium, a ditch fortification, and opened Rome’s first prison, the Mamertine. He also developed lucrative salt mines at the mouth of the Tiber and snatched the Silva Maesia, a coastal forest north of the Tiber, from the Veientes.9

In 585 BC, during the reign of Rome’s fifth king, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus (r. 616–579 BC), the Sabines resumed hostilities and attacked Rome. Tarquinius was busy strengthening Rome’s defences with a stone wall around the city. The initial engagement led to heavy loss of life on both sides, but it was inconclusive. In the second battle, the Romans shipped rafts of burning logs down the River Anio in order to burn down the bridge over the river. The Roman cavalry outflanked the Sabine infantry, routed them, and blocked their flight from the battlefield, helped by the destruction of the bridge. Many Sabines drowned, their weapons drifting downstream into the Tiber, floating through Rome to give the citizens a palpable, very visible sign of victory. Tarquinius made a pyre and burnt the spoils in sacrifices to Vulcan, sending prisoners and booty back to Rome. He then invaded Sabine territory and destroyed their newly-formed army; the Sabines sued for peace. Tarquinius returned to Rome to celebrate a triumph on 13 September 585 BC.10

After he was deposed in 510, a disgruntled Lucius Tarquinius Superbus defected and persuaded the Sabines to help him restore the monarchy at Rome. After an initial defeat, Tarquinius, strengthened by the support of Fidenae and Cameria, was again defeated in 505 BC. The Sabines attacked again the following year, facing the two experienced Roman consuls, Publius Valerius Poplicola and Titus Lucretius Tricipitinus at the River Anio.

The Bloodless War followed in 501 BC, the result of a fracas which broke out with Sabine youths when they assaulted some prostitutes during games in Rome. The Sabine ambassadors sued for peace, but were rejected by the Romans who demanded that the Sabines pay Rome for the costs of a war. The Sabines refused, and war was declared, but it all evaporated and there was no battle. The war was significant because it marked the first appearance of a dictator. Dictators were appointed to deal specifically with the crisis in hand, to get the job done, rei gerundae causa, in place of the consuls. Their use died out in the Second Punic War, when Scipio Africanus and his successors assumed sole control of Roman armies, although it was revived by Sulla, who was appointed dictator legibus faciendis et rei publicae constituendae causa – ‘dictator for the enacting of laws and for the setting of the constitution.’11

The One-day War of 495 BC was inconclusive too. A Sabine army invaded Roman territory as far as the river Anio, and devastated the land. Aulus Postumius Albus Regillensis and Publius Servilius Priscus Structus rounded up the Sabines. In 494 BC, the Volsci, Sabines and Aequi revolted. Manius Valerius Maximus was appointed dictator and an unprecedented ten legions were raised; four were assigned to Valerius to enable him to deal with the Sabines, who were duly routed.

The sixth century had ended badly for Rome. When in 502 BC the Latin colony of Pometia renounced its allegiance to Rome and sided with the Auruncians, an outraged Rome invaded and destroyed the Auruncians. At Pometia there was no quarter: over 300 hostages were slaughtered. The following year, the Romans laid siege to Pometia, but they badly underestimated the resolve and fury of the Pometians, who surged out of the town armed with firebrands. They inflicted serious casualties on the Romans, who were forced to withdraw.12 The battle was a rare reverse and marked a first for the Romans, a baptism by fire in which they encountered men and women brandishing torches as their only weapons.

Nevertheless, the fifth century BC started well for the Romans. The victorious Battle of Lake Regillus in 496 BC became a cherished Roman memory, even embellished with divinity. According to legend, the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, gave assistance to the Romans during the battle; afterwards, they came back to Rome and watered their horses at the Fountain of Juturna in the Forum, announcing the victory to the nervously waiting inhabitants of the city. A temple was built in 484 BC, part of which can still be seen today.13 The Roman commander was Aulus Postumius Albus Regillensis, the dictator appointed to quell the Latin threat. When he defiantly hurled a Roman standard into the midst of the enemy, in order for it to be retrieved by his fired-up soldiers, he set an important precedent which was repeated time and again over the years as a tactic to snatch victory out of likely defeat. The Latins fled with the loss of 30,000 men.

Raiding tribes from the Appenines intent on annexing more hospitable, more productive land continued to be a constant problem for Latin League towns. The Latins had to avoid hostilities on two fronts, so in around 493 BC, they signed the foedus Cassianum with the Romans to keep them on side. This is an early example of Roman ‘divide and rule’. The treaty, according to Cicero, was inscribed on a bronze pillar and was on show in the Forum for 400 or so years.14 The treaty was weighted heavily in favour of the Romans; its main points were the assurance of peace and mutual aid between the two signatories, providing a defence army with equal numbers of troops from both sides, a ban on free passage of or assistance to enemies and equal shares in any booty. This was Rome’s first significant treaty, named after the consul Spurius Cassius Viscellinus, who was chief negotiator. Livy and Dionysius record that he would have preferred to have had the Latin cities destroyed.15 The treaty effectively put Rome on an equal footing with the entire League and had the added benefit of removing a long-standing enemy. It also bolstered the Roman army, enabling it to pursue further its regional expansion. The treaty was renewed in 358 BC, but when the Romans reneged soon after, it led to the Second Latin War from 340 to 338 BC.

In 495 BC, the Romans soundly defeated the Aurunci at Aricia, after the Aurunci had given Rome an ultimatum to withdraw from Volscian territory.16 The city then became a Roman municipium and an important town on the Via Appia. Duplicity and psychological warfare were evident in equal measure on both sides in the two battles of Antium (modern Anzio) fought by Rome against the Volsci in 482 and 468. They were important conflicts in the long-running war between Rome and the Volsci, the tribe to whom the exiled rebel Roman Caius Lucius Coriolanus defected. In 482 BC, the consul Lucius Aemilius went to Antium to deal with the Volsci. The ensuing battle was inconclusive, the Volsci cleverly feigning a retreat, which fooled the Romans into thinking that they were victorious. The Romans dropped their guard and plundered the Volsci dead, exposing themselves to attack. The Romans fled, suffering heavy casualties.17 Although the Volsci were defeated at Longula later that year, the real revenge came for the Romans fourteen years later. The consul Titus Quinctius Capitolinus Barbatus was making heavy weather of a battle with the Volscians. He resorted to misinformation, telling one wing of his army that the other wing was winning; the balance was restored and the Romans triumphed. The Volsci launched a night attack soon after in which Quinctius posted a contingent of trumpeters on horseback outside the Volsci camp to create a mighty din. This had the obvious effect of keeping the Volsci awake. In the morning, the Romans, fresh from a good night’s sleep, attacked, forcing the Volsci to retreat. Antium was taken despite heavy Roman casualties.18

In 480, the Roman army was riven by dissent and division. On one occasion some Roman soldiers had even gone so far as to walk off the battlefield. The Veians and their Etruscan allies saw their chance. Rome’s two consuls, Marcus Fabius and Gnaeus Manlius, faced their enemy with considerable anxiety, more afraid of what their own troops might do – or not do – than of any threat posed by the enemy. The Veians foolishly mocked the Romans, but the only effect was to incite them to frenzied action, swearing either to win or to die in the attempt. By the end of a long and bloody battle, Manlius and Quintus Fabius, a former consul, were both dead. Notwithstanding this blow, the Romans won through and the Veians withdrew.19 The significance of the battle lies in its demonstration of how the Roman commanders reacted to potential mutiny in the ranks, and how the Roman soldiery reacted to derision from the enemy with an almost suicidal effort to win.

In the 470s, the Romans won modest victories against the Etruscans at the battles of the Temple of Hope on the Janiculum Hill and at the Colline Gate nearby. A raid by the Etruscans on the camp of Servilius, the consul, nearly ended in disaster for the Romans when Servilius foolishly attacked the Etruscans even though they commanded higher ground up on the Janiculum; the day was only saved when Servilius was reinforced by Verginius, his colleague, and the Etruscans were defeated. In 475, the Romans delivered a coup when they defeated the joint forces of the Sabines and the Veians at Veii, some 10 miles north of Rome; the inhabitants were massacred.

Mons Algidus, about 14 miles south-east of Rome, was the setting for a successful three-year campaign against the troublesome Aequi in 465. In 458 BC, a further conflict started with the Aequi when they broke a truce with Rome, which had been made only a year previously, and now threatened the city. The Aequi encamped on Mons Algidus. The Roman commander, Minucius, was indecisive and paid for his procrastination when the enemy walled him up in his own camp. Rome and the Romans panicked: they asked Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus to come out of retirement and, as dictator, save them. Cincinnatus was commonly perceived as embodying the epitome of Roman virtus.

Typical of the man, Cincinnatus led from the front, while Lucius Tarquitius, his magister equitum, launched a cavalry attack, resulting in the death of many of the Aequi. Their surviving commanders begged Cincinnatus to spare them. Cincinnatus showed mercy, allowing them to live if they brought their leader, Gracchus Cloelius, and his officers to him bound in chains. The traditional yoke was set up, under which the humiliated Aequi passed, sub iugum missi. Warde Fowler aptly called this ritual ‘a kind of dramatised form of degradation’. Job done, Cincinnatus, as a good dictator should, immediately disbanded his army, resigned his office promptly and returned to his farm – a mere sixteen days after assuming the dictatorship. Characteristically, he refused any share of the spoils. To Livy, Cincinnatus was the true Roman, homo vere Romanus, acting always with valour and dignity, displaying pietas for Rome.20 The Aequi persisted, however, and in 455 BC attacked Tusculum, some 12 miles south-east of Rome, and a safe Roman ally. The resulting battle saw the Aequi lose 7,000 men, according to Livy. A further Roman victory at Mons Algidus followed in 449 BC.

In 431 BC, again at Mons Algidus, the Romans confronted the Volsci and the Aequi. They were spurred on when the consul, Vettius Messius, emulating Aulus Postumius Albus Regillensis, hurled his standard into the midst of the enemy for his troops to retrieve; the Romans won the day and sold the Volsci and Aequi survivors into slavery.21 Two final battles on the mountain took place in 418 BC, against the Aequi and their new allies, the Labici. In the first, the Romans were forced to flee in disarray, but in the second they captured the enemy camp and sacked the city of Labici.

In 437 BC, the Romans at Fidenae were victorious under the dictator Mamercus Aemilius Mamercinus when the Fidenates, led by Lars Tolumnius, defected to Veii and murdered four Roman envoys, Tullus Cloelius, Gaius Fulcinius, Spurius Antius and Lucius Roscius; these unfortunates had been sent to Veii to demand the return of Fidenae. The feeble explanation for the outrage was that when Tolumnius’ aides came and asked if they should execute the Roman ambassadors, Tolumnius, in the middle of history’s most untimely game of dice, cried out ‘Great stuff!’, thus inadvertently ordering the execution of the Roman delegation. When the Romans duly sought revenge, Tolumnius died in close combat at the hands of the tribunus militum Aulus Cornelius Cossus, one of only three Roman generals to be awarded the spolia opima, a rare decoration bestowed on Romans for killing an enemy leader in single combat. After taking the cuirass from Tolumnius’ body, Cossus hacked off his head and stuck it on a lance, parading it in front of the horrified Veians and Fidenates. Cossus donated Tolumnius’ armour, shield and sword to the Temple of Jupiter Feretrius on the Capitoline, where it could still be seen during the reign of Augustus. The other two generals to win the spolia opima were Romulus when he slew King Acro, and Marcus Claudius Marcellus who killed King Viridomarus, an Insubrian chieftain at the Battle of Clastidium in 222 BC.

Two years after Cossus’s heroics, Rome was nearly brought to its knees by a more insidious enemy: plague. Fidenae took advantage of this and sided with the Veians at Nomentum. The dictator Quintus Servilius raised an army to pursue them to Nomentum and then Fidenae, which Servilius captured. At Fidenae, in 426, the Fidenates and Veientes colluded again against the Romans, who were now led by Mamercus Aemilius Mamercinus in his second dictatorship. The Romans were terrified at the sight of the enemy column blazing with flaming torches, but, after recovering from their initial surprise and rallied by Mamercus, they seized the torches and attacked the enemy with their own brands; the Veians were then surrounded and the Fidenae forced back to their city where they surrendered.22

The Veian threat was finally extirpated in 396 BC. Rome had besieged Veii for a decade or so; it finally fell to the Roman dictator Marcus Furius Camillus. His victory was attended by startling prodigies, which included the rising of the level of the Alban Lake despite an absence of rain and the defection of the Veian goddess to the Romans. The Romans had no option but to consult the Delphic oracle. In his time, Camillus was awarded four triumphs, was dictator five times and lauded as the Second Founder of Rome.23 Veii had been backed by Tarquinii, Capena and Falerii.

Camillus was far from the complete hero, though. He set a shocking precedent when he refused the Veians terms of surrender and resorted to looting on a grand scale and wrecking the city, butchering the men and enslaving the women and children, and no doubt raping the women. He committed iconoclasm when he stole the statue of Juno and established it in a temple on the Aventine; back in Rome his triumph went on for four long days as he paraded on a quadriga, a chariot pulled by four white horses, the like of which had never been seen before or after in a triumph. Polybius tells us that the Romans thought all of this somewhat arrogant and hubristic: the white horses and the quadriga were sacred, the preserve of Jupiter.

Policy was to repopulate Veii, with half of the new inhabitants made up of impoverished Romans, something Camillus and the patricians opposed. He made himself even more unpopular in both heaven and on earth when he broke his promise to donate a tenth of the booty to Apollo. Soothsayers muttered the gods’ displeasure. In 395 BC, Camillus besieged Falerii, where a school teacher had given up local children as hostages to the Romans, thus forcing the Falerians to make peace with Rome. The Aequi, Volsci and Capena all followed suite, and Rome’s territory increased by 70 per cent at a stroke. Camillus was later convicted of embezzling booty and was sent into exile near Ardea.24 Rome was now the most powerful state in central Italy. Cary highlights the momentous significance of Rome’s victory over Veii when he describes the success as ‘the first definite step in Rome’s career of world conquest … a turning point in the military history of the city.’25

The key levers in Rome’s endless belligerence and in her military and political success were by now very much in place and the machinery of war was well oiled and established: a shrewd network of alliances and the deployment of the military resources which accrued from them; the requirement to annex more and more land to feed land distribution and other economic and social needs; the sheer expectation of continuous warfare back at home; the pursuit of glory and kudos amongst individual commanders; the contagious cupidity for more and yet more booty; a need for legions of slaves and prisoners of war as cheap labour to work the expanding ager Italicus and to navvy on the public works programmes and civic buildings that were springing up in Rome as she became increasingly powerful; and an obligation to finance these public works.

Moreover, although the Romans had yet to suffer a military disaster of any magnitude, by the beginning of the third century BC they knew all too well what it meant to be on the wrong end of a battlefield calamity. After all, they had enjoyed the spoils and glory of enough victories and, by the same token, had handed out more than enough defeats or disasters to their Italian neighbours. One army’s victory was the other army’s disaster. When Rome was victorious, she celebrated in style, sometimes with a triumph with all its pomp, proudly and haughtily processing through an exultant Rome.

The triumph gave the Roman people what the Roman people wanted: a virtual re-run of the battlefield victory, an enactment of the superiority and efficiency of the Roman war engine before their eyes, humiliation for the impertinent vanquished. If it shamed a defeated enemy leader, who was paraded ignominiously before the jubilant crowds of Romans, then so much the better. On a more personal level, a triumph delivered slaves and copious amounts of often exotic booty. The Fasti Triumphales formally and dryly list these extravaganza. Stone tablets originally erected in the Forum around 12 BC during the reign of Augustus, they give the commander’s name, the names of his father and grandfather, the place where the triumph was awarded and the date of the triumphal procession. They record over 200 triumphs, starting with the three mythical events celebrated by Romulus and ending with that awarded to Lucius Cornelius Balbus in 19 BC.26 In the empire, the imperial family assumed a monopoly on military victory.

A defeated enemy was either murdered or enslaved, their women raped or enslaved or both, their children often orphaned, estranged and enslaved; their homes were ransacked and their cities sometimes razed to the ground. The Romans had little reason not to assume that a similar awful fate awaited Roman men, women and children should the unthinkable happen and Rome be heavily defeated. If the Roman soldier ever needed an incentive to keep on winning, then this was it; and this was another reason for Rome’s series of successes, until, that is, the coming of the Gauls. Victory in battle suggested that the very gods were on the victors’ side; defeat, the converse. To the Roman, defeat was literally for losers; the Roman way was to win and to win again – the Roman did not easily countenance defeat. Nevertheless, it is likely that there always was that natural, nagging feeling gnawing away in the background: enjoy it while you can, memento mori – a Roman version of ‘there but for the grace of God go I.’ Moreover, it is axiomatic that the point of most, if not all, wars is to visit disaster on the enemy. Why would the Romans be any different? Defeat meant loss of possessions, national identity, family and leadership – all things that Romans prized and that they would fight to the death to preserve.

The very number of triumphs awarded, and the images on triumphal arches and on the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius provide evidence of this and of the dogged seriousness with which the Roman military took their wars, battles and imperialism. Only three of Rome’s thirty-six triumphal arches survive – those built for Titus, Septimius Severus and Constantine – but we can assume that all of them were replete with images portraying aspects of Roman military prowess and supremacy. All of this is, of course, was propaganda for the people, providing an injection, a fix of celebrity for the emperor-commander. But it also clearly demonstrates how the victorious Roman perceived his downtrodden, defeated enemy, his own single-minded prosecution of his war and the absolute necessity that was success on all battlefields, in all arenas.

Trajan’s Column graphically depicts Romans torching Dacian huts, stealing livestock and making off with booty. The deforestation of Dacian lands shown thereon is the ultimate in devastation and a vivid demonstration of Roman might. The Arch of Titus has that truly iconic image of Romans symbolically wiping out the religion of the Jews when they carry off the sacred menorah from the temple of Jerusalem. These monuments may not just reflect triumphalism on the part of the Romans; rather, they indelibly underscore the humiliation of the enemy. The confiscation or destruction of absolutely everything that meant anything to that enemy is executed with pragmatic solemnity, emphasizing the seriousness with which the Romans took their victories and how they themselves cooly accepted the inevitability of looting and destruction. All the certainties of life are erased; everything is destabilized. Next time it might be them on the receiving end.27 The shame implicit in defeat can be seen on the column of Marcus Aurelius: the Romans methodically decapitate the captured enemy soldiers while they trample underfoot, abuse and rape their utterly distraught women – to the Roman, just so much inevitable collateral damage, just as odious as the murder of barbarian children which the column also displays. The defeated men were rendered impotent; they could do nothing to stop the extermination of their family, tribe or race – to the Romans, just manifestations of feebleness and failure that was anathema to them. On the other hand, Trajan’s Column also clearly depicts the barbarity of Dacian women: they are shown torturing Roman prisoners of war. From the Roman point of view then, they deserve everything they get. A convenient attitude adopted by rampaging armies throughout history. As significantly, though, the scenes on the column paradoxically allow the Romans, officially at least, to illustrate the levels to which barbarians stoop; Roman victory with or without its attendant atrocities, not only saved Roman women and children from rape, enslavement and murder, it also obviated the need for their women to indulge in such unmatronly, un-Roman, barbaric atrocities. The column of Marcus Aurelius shows a German woman fleeing her home in panic; she is a symbol of barbarian disorder, displacement and mayhem – of physical and psychological trauma. Her clothes are ruffled, her hair is dishevelled – all in graphic contrast to the neatness of the victorious, tidy Romans. Defeated women were frequently dragged away by their hair, just as their nations were dragged into the civilization of Rome.28

War was viewed as an inevitable fact of life and has been called the ultimate man-made disaster. For the Romans, it is probably true to say that defeat or disaster in war was the ultimate man-made disaster, to be avoided at all costs because they, as inveterate victors, knew and feared the consequences of defeat only too well.29 Dio Chrysostom describes the paradox of military disaster:

Again, whenever there comes a pestilence or an earthquake, we blame the gods, in the belief that they cause misery for mankind, and we claim they are not righteous or benevolent, not even if they are punishing us justly for most grievous sins; so great is our hatred of those evils which occur through chance. Yet war, which is no less destructive than an earthquake, we choose of our own volition; and we do not blame at all the human beings who are responsible for these evils, as we blame the gods for earthquake or pestilence, but we even think them patriotic and we listen to them with delight when they speak, we follow their advice, and in payment for the evils they occasion we give them every kind of – I won’t say return, for return would mean evil for evil – but rather thanks and honours and words of praise; and so they would be very witless indeed if they spared those who are even grateful for their evils.30



We can now move on to examine how the Roman war machine worked.





Chapter 2

The Roman War Machine

At the end of the fifth century BC, Rome was still, like the towns around her, emerging from an agricultural society driven by an agrarian economy. Rome was different because she became increasingly larger than her enemies and she was extraordinarily receptive to outside influences – melding the best facets and successful practices from friend and foe alike. Militarily, Rome had a facility for adapting tactically and developing weaponry and armour based on extensive combat experience. Every battle fought, even those she lost, was a lesson in military science for the Romans.

In early summer each year, the army was summoned and trooped out to the latest theatre of war. Every autumn, the army, or what was left of it, was discharged until the call to arms the following year. The armies were usually led by two consuls, or by consular tribunes, or by dictators in times of tumultus, times of dire crisis. These consuls usually operated in concert with each other, not always harmoniously. They often brought no experience in leading an army or prosecuting a campaign. Time spent in the army or navy was simply another rung on the ladder of the cursus honorum, the political career path of the elite Roman. The army, and war, came with the career, and the successful execution of the military element went some way to contributing to longterm glory and success. This, in turn, fostered a belligerent attitude amongst Roman politicians-cum-commanders. Victory in war meant success in politics; success in politics was often dependent on victory on the battlefield.

The lower ranks of the army, the heavily armed infantrymen known as classis, were self-financing and recruited from farmers. Below the classis was the infra classem, skirmishers with less and lighter armour which required a smaller financial outlay. Above the classes were the equites, patricians with some wealth who made up the majority of the cavalry, officers and staff. Their money often came from land ownership. Soldiers were unpaid in the early days, providing their own rations, arms and armour.1

War was not kind to the classes. It usually meant that they were away from their lands, forced to neglect their very livelihood for increasingly long stretches of military service. Moreover, they suffered virtual ruin when their farms were depradated by enemy action. The longer they served, the greater the chance of being killed or badly wounded and disabled, rendering them unfit to work on their lands. A ready supply of slaves to work on the lands of the wealthy was fuelled by prisoners of war, reducing the Roman or Italian agricultural worker’s value in the job market to little better than slaves themselves. Military duty plunged some classes into debt and led to virtual bondage to patricians – an ignominious semi-servile arrangement, nexum, which forced a farmer or farm worker to provide labour on the security of his person. Defaulting led to enslavement. Richer landowners could bear losses better as they were the beneficiaries of this bond-debt process, which allowed them to procure yet more land and cheap labour at the expense of the classes and infra classes.2 In short, the rich just got richer, a process helped also by their favourable share of increasing amounts of booty. Once Rome had conquered the Italian peninsula, the poorer workers could not even be helped out by land distribution; after 170 BC, land distribution stopped altogether. This, of course, led to resentment, which was only assuaged by personal allocations from tribunes and generals. Land allocations overseas were not considered an option until the time of Julius Caesar.

Oakley has tabulated the number of prisoners of war captured and subsequently enslaved by Rome in the nineteen battles between 297 and 293 BC, and recorded in Livy: approximately 70,000. Even allowing for some exaggeration, this clearly illustrates the impact conquest had on the careers and employment prospects of many agricultural workers. It did not stop there, of course: when Agrigentum was captured in 262 BC, no less than 25,000 prisoners were reportedly taken, all swelling the already competitive job market.3

Roman warfare was then inseparable from Roman politics and from Roman economics; land questions and the Conflict of the Orders provided a constant soundtrack to the early wars. The soldier depended on the value of and income from his land for financial clout, the ability to qualify for service and pay for his armour and weapons. The Conflict of the Orders ran from 494 BC to 287 BC and was a 200-year battle fought by the plebeians to win political equality. The secessio plebis was the powerful bargaining tool with which the plebeians effectively brought Rome grinding to a halt and left the patricians and aristocrats to get on with running the city and the economy themselves – the Roman equivalent to a general strike. The first secessio, in 494 BC, saw the plebeians down weapons and withdraw military support during the wars with the Aequi, Sabines and Volsci.4 That year marked the first real breakthrough between the people and the patricians, when some plebeian debts were cancelled. The patricians yielded more power when the office of Tribune of the Plebeians was created. This was the first government position to be held by the plebeians, and plebeian tribunes were sacrosanct during their time in office.

Servius Tullius, Rome’s sixth king, may have gone some way to militarizing Rome when he divided the population into wealth groups – their rank in the army determined by what weapons and armour they could afford to buy, with the wealthiest serving in the cavalry due in part to the cost of horses. Servius was certainly responsible for changes in the organization of the Roman army: he shifted the emphasis from cavalry to infantry and with it the inevitable modification in battlefield tactics. Before Servius, the army comprised 600 or so horse reinforced by heavily-armed infantry and lightly-armed skirmishers; it was little more than a militia of landowning infantry wielding pilum, shield and sword (gladius), operating like Greek hoplites in phalanx formation. The rest were composed of eighteen centuries of equites and thirty-two centuries of slingers. (A century was made up of ten conturbenia, amounting to eighty or so men.) The Etruscans, and then the Romans, absorbed Greek influences when they adopted full body armour, the hoplite shield and a thrusting spear – essential for phalanx-style close combat warfare.

Men without property, assessed by headcount, capite censi, were not welcome in the army, in much the same way that debtors, convicted criminals, women and slaves were excluded. However, slaves were recruited in exceptional circumstances, notably after the calamitous battle of Cannae and the manpower shortage it caused. Servius also reorganized the army into centuries and formed the parallel political assemblies, reinforcing the inextricable connection between Roman politics and Roman military. His ground-breaking census established who was fit – physically and financially – to serve in the Roman army.5 Recruitment extended from between age 17 and 46 (iuniores), and between 47 and 60 (seniores), the more elderly constituting a kind of home guard. The lower classes were not required to report with full body armour; this led to the use of the long body shield, the scutum, for protection, instead of the circular hoplite shield.

Sixty centuries made up a legion, known as a legio – literally a ‘levying’. The original legio was split in two in the early Republic, each the responsibility of one of the two consuls for the year. Often this worked; sometimes it led to divisiveness, with predictable consequences. By 311 BC, there were four legions, reinforced by troops recruited from Rome’s Italian allies and by mercenaries with special skills, such as archery. By the mid-Republic, the legions were generally divided into cavalry, light infantry and heavy infantry, the latter, in turn, subdivided into three further groups: the hastati – raw recruits; the principes – troops at their peak, in their twenties and thirties; and the triarii – veterans deployed in crises or in support of the hastati and principes. The triarii carried the long spear, the hasta, rather than the pilum and gladius. Each of these three units was subdivided into ten units or maniples, comprising two centuries and led by the senior of the two centurions. Each century of hastati and principes was made up of sixty men, while a century of triarii comprised thirty men. These 3,000 troops (twenty maniples of 120 men, and ten maniples of sixty men), along with 1,200 velites and 300 cavalry, formed a legion, which was about 4,500 men strong when at full strength.

Infantry soldiers signed on for six consecutive campaigns and were to be available for up to sixteen years; cavalrymen had to be on standby for ten years. When Marius dispensed with the property qualification in 107 BC, it was a one-off arrangement, and armies continued to be raised on an ad hoc basis, with the press gang becoming all the more influential. The legionary army, as we have seen, was reinforced by the auxilia – infantry and cavalry suppplied by the allies. These could offer local knowledge and intelligence, and provide special forces such as archers, slingers and ‘marines’ for amphibious assaults.



Diagram 1: A Roman marching camp, as described by Polybius. (Courtesy of Cambridge University Press; originally published in J.P. Roth, Roman Warfare, 2009.)

A Roman army marched encumbered by its baggage train, comprising merchants, prostitutes and soothsayers – all essential hangers-on. Some generals, for example Scipio Aemilianus, Metellus and Marius, saw the baggage train as the impediment it no doubt was and either banished it or restricted its numbers. Tacitus tells us that they were more unruly even than slaves and that they could be more rapacious than the soldiery, citing the second sack of Cremona as an example. Occasionally, the camp servants assumed a military role, either posing as soldiers to inflate the size of the army and making it appear bigger than it actually was, or riding on donkeys at a distance from the main force to give the impression that reinforcements were on the way. In 209 BC, these motley forces, while under fire in Spain, were called upon to hurl stones at the Carthaginians. At the Battle of Aquae Sextiae in 102 BC, Marius ordered the hangers-on to join the fighting against the Germans. Later, they helped Julius Caesar win against the Nervi. Following a Roman army was not without its hazards: those who attached themselves to the army of Quintus Cicero were killed in an attack by German cavalry; merchants and families with the armies of Varus were slaughtered in the Teutoburg Forest disaster along with three legions.6

Brunt estimates that, by the latter third of the third century BC, nearly a third of the Italian inhabitants living south of the River Po were Roman citizens. Many of the rest were allies who had obligations to military service in the Roman army. By the second half of the second century BC, there were between 380,000 and 480,000 men in arms – three-quarters of whom were valuable iuniores. Livy records that in 295 BC, there were six legions in active service, which translates into twenty-five per cent or so of the male population in arms. The Second Punic War saw the army at its greatest strength, with twenty-two legions available, comprising on average 4,200 infantry and 200 cavalry. Hopkins has estimated that by 225 BC seventeen per cent of all adult male Romans were in the legions, rising to twenty-nine per cent in 213, during the Punic Wars.7

Naturally, war took its toll on the Roman population – on men and women – especially when it took the form of a disaster. Men became casualties: some of those who survived would often live on with permanent physical and psychological disabilities. Women and girls may have had to suffer the stigma and shame of war rape, along with the pregnancies and disease that often attend this. Women were often left with the responsibility of running the farm and raising the family during the absence of their husband or sons. Casualties and disabilities amongst soldiers would often render a family fatherless, with no one to work the land. Women would have to care full- or part-time for disabled veterans. As in any war, bereavement caused by the death of husbands, fathers, sons and siblings was a heavy price for many women to pay.

Overseas expansion meant longer postings abroad in armies of occupation. One example would be after the Roman conquests in Sicily and Sardinia in 241 and 238 BC, following the First Punic War. The opening years of the Second Punic War racked up some 50,000 Roman casualties: seventeen per cent of all adult Roman males and five per cent of the total population. These figures are all the more horrible when compared with the casualty figures for the First World War: in the period 1914–1918, the seven nations fighting at the beginning of the conflict lost two per cent of their combined populations. As we have seen, the Second Punic War saw the Romans deploying more legions than ever before. In contravention of the standard cursus honorum, the Romans were forced to fill vacancies for commanders with praetors, deferring the retirement of magistrates beyond their term of office or appointing private citizens to commands – privati cum imperio. In the next century, wars in Spain, northern Italy and against Philip V, Antiochus III and Persius led to yet more overseas campaigns and the usual ramifications for the Romans.

It was not all bad news, however. For the Roman citizen, despite the serious problems it may cause with running the farm and cultivating the land, military service clearly demonstrated his patriotism, pietas, dutifulness and a visible discharge of responsibility. It also brought prestige, affording the soldier and his family opportunities for glory reflected in dona militaria (military decorations), citations, prizes and – the highlight of them all – a triumph processing through the streets of Rome. Military service showed that this Roman was a patriotic Roman, that he was brave and possessed pietas, virtus and Romanitas.

Triumphs were most frequent between 312 and 293 BC, for which the triumphal Fasti record no less than eighteen, with a further twenty-two between 282 and 264 BC. These apogees of pomp and ceremony not only reflect the continual military success of Roman consuls, they also galvanized warmongering amongst the elite; win a battle and you might win a triumph – the pinnacle of success.

Military service and combat were, as noted, indicative of Romanitas, which translates as ‘Roman-ness’ – the essence of being a Roman and of how, as a Roman, you conducted yourself in the increasingly Roman world. The Roman demonstrated ‘virtue’ and ‘bravery’ – both enshrined in the same word, virtus, which has its root in vir, meaning ‘man’. Although it was possible for a woman to exhibit virtus, it was essentially a badge of masculinity. Indeed, virtus often denoted courage in war: Caesar, Sallust and Horace all use it in this context.8

Meanwhile, the enemies of Rome were viewed and described as weak, lazy and effeminate, deficient in virtus; both Greeks and Carthaginians suffer the worst of Roman verbal xenophobia.9 Sexually, the Carthaginians were out of control, they were cowards and they ate dogs. Greeks, according to Tacitus, were all cowards; Lucan, through the voice Julius Caesar, believed that they were soft, lazy and frightened – even by their own shouting.10 Conversely, Romans were masters of war: Rome’s victories proved that. All the more disastrous, then, when Rome did lose a battle or when a Roman army was annihilated. Defeat sat uncomfortably in the Roman psyche and had dreadful ramifications, politically and socially.

Military glory and its attendant celebrity and kudos were, as we have seen, signified by the complex system of decorations – dona militaria – and rewards that reflected military success. The spolia opima was, of course, a highly prestigious and rare award,11 but, as with the triumph, it was restricted to commanders. Discipline and loyalty too were nurtured by in-service benefits, which included promotion to the rank of centurion. After Marius, the pay for centurions was twice that of the common soldier and the share of booty bigger. Gratuities, pay rises, better rations and promotion all helped, in theory at least, to make the soldier a happier, prouder soldier. So did the prospect of social mobility for the common soldier and political success and recognition for a member of Rome’s political elite as he progressed along the cursus honorum. That said, the average pay for the average soldier or sailor was still niggardly, as measured in ‘asses’ – the monetary currency of the time. He could earn three times more doing manual labour in the fields at twelve asses per day; it took until Julius Caesar’s time for a soldier’s remuneration to be raised to ten asses per day, in 49 BC. Pay (stipendium) probably came around 406 BC as a daily cash allowance after the wars with the Veii. It was never a living wage, more of a contribution to the cost of food, equipment and clothing. The introduction of pay probably came as a concession by the senate to the plebeians, and was usually payment in kind, as the minting of coinage only came on stream 100 years later. Increasingly, booty was the answer to financial hardship.

The devotio was the ultimate route to everlasting military glory, but with the disadvantage that you had to die to win one. The Mus family were the true champions of this extreme, suicidal dedication, with Decius Mus, his grandfather and father all ‘devoting’ themselves. The devotio involved a one-way charge into the enemy’s midst after devoting oneself to the gods of the underworld. The effect on morale (for those around) must have been considerable.

Bellicosity is reflected in the increasing war statuary erected in Rome from the end of the third century BC. Victoria was predictably the most popular: she features in the prodigies of 296 BC, as described by Dio, in the vow of Fabius Rullianus for a temple of Jupiter Victor at Sentinum in 294, and in a temple of Victoria dedicated in the same year.12

If the Roman war machine was inseperable from Roman politics, so it also was from religion and the religious calendar. Important rituals accompanied the beginning and end of the Roman campaigning season. The Roman religious calendar was peppered with sacred preparations for warfare: in February and March, in races at the feast of Equirria, the Salii performed their sacred dances, banging their holy shields, purifying the equipment and horses; trumpets were blessed on the day of the tubilustrium, weapons on the armilustrium in the autumn; on 15 October, a race horse – the ‘October horse’ – was killed as a sacrifice to Mars, marking the end of the campaigning season. Before an army left for war, it was lustrated; the commander shook the Salian shields and held aloft the lance of Mars. The doors of the Temple of Janus were opened. During a campaign, omens were read at every critical juncture, sacrifices were made and auspices were taken.

It was necessary to perform a three-stage procedure before a war could be considered just: in the first place, the war had to be declared (denuntio); a formal warning to the potential enemy had to delivered (indictio); and reparations had to be sought (rerum repetitio) by a delegation of four fetiales, or oratores, who were responsible for formal declarations of war. They established the fas, the rightness of any conflict, and were Rome’s ambassadors and diplomats in negotiations. The fetiales applied the fetial law (ius fetiale), ensuring that fides, treaties, foedera and oaths had been properly observed. Iuppiter Lapis was their deity. Three fetiales and the chief fetial (pater patratus) were despatched as envoys to the perpetrator of the crime committed against Rome; this might involve anything from cattle stealing to a full-scale incursion. Their job was to secure restitution (ad res repetundas); failure of the enemy to comply after thirty days would lead to action (denuntiatio or rerum repetitio): the fetiales returned to Rome and invoked the gods to witness that the Romans’ case was legitimate (fas), the testatio deorum. The chief fetial could then declare war within thirty-three days. After ratification by the Senate and the people, the two adversaries would then officially be at war, all sanctioned by the gods. A sacred spear was then hurled into the enemy’s territory, indictio belli. As Rome’s reach extended further away from the city, some of these rituals became impractical: the fetiales often needed more than thirty days, and occasionally it was difficult to find a suitable place in which to hurl the spear. In 270 BC, a special location near the Temple of Bellona was given over to spear hurling. By the Second Punic War, the whole procedure was secularized when the fetiales were replaced with senatorial legati (envoys). The traditional three journeys were condensed into one, without recourse to Rome.

Once it had been set in motion, it was critical that the Roman war engine be constantly maintained with new recruits – in itself something of a vicious circle. As noted already, by the end of the third century BC, about one third of Italians around and south of Rome had been vanquished and were Roman citizens.13 They were, therefore, already eligible for military service, bolstered by auxiliary troops supplied by allies. The allies, while they remained allies, were already on the books, so to speak. Casualties, fatal and otherwise, sustained in war after bloody war often meant that Rome had to go on conquering more tribes and towns if it was to fuel recruitment and maintain the strength of its forces.

There was another factor at play which helped to keep the Romans on the battlefield, widening its circle of power. The more conservative amongst the Romans felt that to stop fighting encouraged laxity and fostered moral decay amongst the men of Rome. As champion of the traditional mos maiorum and fervent hater of things Greek, Cato the Elder (234–149 BC) criticized what he saw around him as moral decline and the erosion of the rigorous principles on which Rome had been built. The defeat of Hannibal at Zama in 202 BC, the victory over the Macedonians at Pydna in 168 and the final erasing of the Carthaginian threat in 146 BC all allowed Rome to relax more and caused an unprecedented influx of Greek and eastern customs and luxuries into an increasingly porous Rome. The waging of war was an effective antidote to all of this and was seen as the panacea for Rome’s growing feebleness.14

However that may be, military service as a pre-requisite and a pre-condition for political progress was on the decline. At the end of the first century BC, the requirement for ten campaigns to be endured before the start of public office was no longer enforced. Flair in oratory and conspicuous success at the bar were replacing the battlefield as entry points to a successful political career. Augustus encouraged senators to be expers castrorum – experienced in camp life – but even the statutory year as a military tribune was often dispensed with.15

It was not until the reforms of Augustus that the Roman army as a citizen militia was replaced by a professional standing army with troops mainly concentrated at the borders of the empire. By then the average length of service was twenty-five years; the provision of land in lieu of cash payments ended, to be replaced with salaries funded at first by Augustus himself and then by taxation. Augustus also introduced the law prohibiting soldiers from marrying in service, although we know that ad hoc unions were common and that families were raised with local women.16 One of the fascinating Vindolanda Tablets from around AD 100 shows that wives of officers clearly did accompany their husbands abroad: Claudia Severa sends her sister Lepidina an invitation to her birthday on 11 September, asking her to make her day by attending. The body of the letter is written by a scribe, but the postscript is written by Claudia and is the oldest example in existence of a woman’s handwriting in Latin.17 The restriction officially lasted until the reign of Septimius Severus, when the ban was relaxed in AD 197. In AD 21, Aulus Caecina Severus had adopted an extreme view on wives and military service, exaggerated in his unsuccessful speech and reported by Tacitus; it nevertheless contains within it arguments which shaped the regulations relating to accompanied postings. Severus gets on with his wife – they have had six children together. However, he has left her at home for the forty years he has been away in the provinces. Why? Because women encourage extravagance in peace time and weakness during war; they are feeble and tire easily; left unrestrained, they get irascible, they scheme and boss the commanders about. He cites instances of women running patrols and exercises, of how they attract spivs and embrace extortion.

Tiberius took a similarly dim view, moaning that women were taking over the army and that his generals were now more or less redundant. On the other hand, Livia, wife of Augustus and mother of Tiberius, was praised on her death for her rejection of camp life; Livia obviously ‘did not do camping.’ Augustus, it seems, was never keen on women joining their men and made it his business to approve requests for visits on a case-by-case basis.

It was fully expected of Augustus that he continue the centuries of expansion and extend the empire. Initially, this is what he did, with successful campaigns in northern Iberia and the Alps, pushing his borders up to the Danube in the east and to the Elbe in Germany. However, the disaster which took place in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9, when Varus lost three precious legions, stopped all that. Claudius went on to conquer Britannia – a campaign not without its own military disaster in the shape of Boudica – and Trajan subdued Dacia, but by and large, aggressive and compulsive expansionism was consigned to the past. The pax Romana (Roman peace) took over. Augustus was more or less happy to pursue a diplomatic foreign policy of containment. In any event, in terms of mineral resources or opportunity for booty, there was now little out there beyond the existing borders that the Romans considered worth the expense or the bother of conquering.

The Romans were generally ruthless and thorough in their pursuit of victory, and by the same token, their avoidance of defeat. Calgacus speaks for many in his declamatio at Mons Graupius (in modern Scotland) in AD 83 when he exhorts his army before the decisive conflict with Agricola’s legions. The Romans, he asserts, are rapists on a global scale, raptores orbis; to plunder, butchery and rape they give the misnomer ‘government’; they call the desolation they create ‘peace’.18 Earlier in the British campaign, Boudica’s daughters had been raped and she had been flogged by the rapacious and venal Romans.

That rape was a characteristic of Roman conquest – and a particularly repellent postscript to many battles and sieges – seems inarguable. After all, it was an accepted, if repugnant, characteristic of warfare well before the Romans and has been a consequence of defeat in many a conflict ever since. The only way it is ever averted, it seems, is by the tightest control exerted by commanders over their troops. The odious notion that victorious soldiers win the right to rape, or even should rape to exact revenge or exert total dominance over a defeated foe and his women and children, only made and continues to make that control more difficult and unlikely. Despite the silence of the historians, who is to say that the many women subjugated by the Romans did not suffer rape, gang rape and its consequences – physical and psychological trauma, abortion, sexually transmitted infections, conjugal rejection, social rejection and ostracization – on a scale relative to, say, the two million or so German women and girls raped by the Red Army in 1944 and 1945 on the way to Berlin?

There is infrequent mention of war rape in by all of the historians of the period, particularly Livy, who describes rape in legend but infrequently in history. An illustration of the general ubiquity of Roman rape perhaps comes in Livy’s description of the sack of Victumulae by Hannibal in 218 BC, when all manner of atrocity was visited upon the hapless inhabitants, including rape:

Every form of debauchery, cruelty and inhuman arrogance was inflicted on the wretched.19



Because he considers it inevitable that rape will be inflicted, the Capuan Vibius Virrius defects to Hannibal in 216 BC during the Second Punic War. Virrius wants to see the rape of Capuan women, girls and boys no more than he does his own execution or the sacking of his city:

I am not going to watch my city being wrecked and torched, or Campanian women, young girls and freeborn young men raped.20



In 204 BC, the Locrians complain about the behaviour of Roman soldiers garrisoned in their town: rape and plunder are rife and relentless:

They all rob, plunder, thrash, wound, murder. They rape women, young girls and free-born boys, dragged from the embrace of their parents. Every day our city is captured, every day it is plundered. Day and night every part of it re-echoes with the wailing of women and children who are being seized and carried off.21



There were, however, glimmers of humanity. Livy also reports the episode in which a beautiful Spanish girl is brought to Scipio Africanus during the siege of Carthago Nova, presumably to pleasure the commander. Scipio sends her away, knowing that she was betrothed to a local man. This civilized behaviour led to obvious gratitude from the girl’s family, which in itself resulted in a welcome conscription of 1,400 local men to the Roman cause.22

Cicero, in his In Verrem of 70 BC, tells of the unbridled lust of Verres in Sicily:

To how many noble virgins, to how many matrons do you think he offered violence in that foul and obscene lieutenancy? In what town did he set his foot that he did not leave more traces of his rapes and atrocities than he did of his arrival?23



The observation is undoubtedly supported by Verres’ lubricious but unsuccessful attempt to rape the virgin daughter of Philodamus in Lampsacus:

His daughter, who was living with her father because she had not yet got a husband, was a woman of extraordinary beauty, but was also considered exceedingly modest and virtuous. [Verres], when he heard this, was so inflamed with desire … that he said he should like to go to Philodamus immediately.24



This behaviour was by no means out of character: Verres’ rape of Syracuse was consistent with his soldiers’ rape of the women there.

I won’t mention the violence offered to the nobility or the rape of matrons, atrocities which then, when the city was taken, were just not done, either through hatred of enemies, through military licence, or through the customs of war or the rights of victory.25



There are examples of violent behaviour by the Roman military in the early Principate. Some of these may be untypical, belying a greater level of discipline than is actually recorded. However, Roman soldiers were free to sieze a captured woman and effectively enslave her at their own personal pleasure for life – the equivalent of the mass abduction of the Sabine women on a personal, individual level. We hear from Tacitus regarding the indiscriminate rape, violence, sacrilege and pillage inflicted on Italy by Vitellius’ troops in AD 69:

Italy was beset by something much worse and atrocious than war: dispersed through towns and colonies Vitellius’ troops plundered, raped and polluted the land with their violence and lechery; greed and corruption made them go for the sacred and the profane, the good and the bad.26



Tacitus also describes the unrivalled, un-Roman, savage licentiousness and rapine of Vitellius’ armies later in the year:

Then Vitellius and his army exploded into savagery, rape and lust that knew no equal – the behaviour of foreigners.



He describes Vitellius’ hugely corrupt recruitment campaign amongst the aggrieved Batavians, involving the systematic rape of adolescent boys. And the ferocious sack of Cremona by Antonius, in which women and the elderly were raped and butchered on a prodigious scale:

Forty thousand soldiers burst into Cremona, with even more army suppliers and camp followers, who were even more corrupted by lust and savagery. Age and dignity provided no protection as they exchanged rape with slaughter and slaughter with rape. Old men and aging women – useless as booty – were dragged into the ‘fun’; any grown up girl or fine-looking man who came along was torn apart at the violent hands of the rapists.



Public opinion viewed this particular episode as repellent; it turned the Roman public against the armies of Antonius. Slaves taken at Cremona remained unsold on the slave markets. Survivors were surreptitiously ransomed by their relatives.27 The revulsion may have been exacerbated because the victims were Italians caught up in a civil war, rather than foreigners or barbarians.

Sieges, particularly their aftermath, seem to have generated some of the worst atrocities perpetrated by the Romans – and they also created exceptions to the general iures belli and rules of fair play. Retribution, reprisals and exacting reparations for the time, trouble and lives expended on a siege were judged good enough reasons to reject the rule book. Frontinus tells how Sulla broke the siege at Preaeneste in 82 BC by sticking the heads of the enemy generals on spears and displaying them to the remaining inhabitants to shatter their morale and break their resolve.28

Domitius Corbulo was especially brutal while besieging Tigranocerta in AD 60. Corbulo executed the noble Vadandus, whom he had captured, and shot his head from a balista into the enemy camp. This well-aimed human projectile landed in the middle of a meeting that the enemy was holding. The meeting ended immeditely, persuading the Tigranocertans to seek terms for surrender.29 Scenes 24, 72 and 57 of Trajan’s Column depict Dacian heads on poles. Scene 147 shows the head of Decebalus, king of the Dacians.

Of course, such atrocities were not exlusive to the Romans; in the same piece, Frontinus tells how, in AD 9, the Germans under Arminiuson fixed the heads of the Roman dead on spears and had them brought up to the Roman camp.30

It seems that cities which elected to surrender rather than be taken by storm received a relative degree of clemency. Livy describes two such cases: Pometia in 502 BC and Phocaea in 190 BC.31 At Cartagena, in 209 BC, Scipio stopped the wholesale slaughter (which included slicing dogs and other animals in half) once Mago had surrendered.32 The clear message from the Romans was that resistance was just not worth the vicious reprisals that would inevitably follow; holding out in a siege was just as unacceptable as any other form of anti-Roman hostility. In 216 BC, savage retribution followed in Capua when the inhabitants locked up a number of Roman citizens in the steaming, airless bath house; they died a terrible suffocating death according to Livy.33 Images of the Black Hole of Calcutta spring to mind. At Uxellodunum, in 51 BC, Julius Caesar had the hands of the enemy cut off as a terrible and tangible warning to anyone else contemplating resistance.34 In AD 78, Agricola started as he meant to go on when he massacred the Ordovices. They had the temerity to attack one of his cavalry squadrons. He then took the island of Anglesey.35

The Roman army was always the senior service. Until the wars against Carthage, sea power was always something of an afterthought. Carthage, on the other hand, maintained a fleet because their extensive overseas trade demanded they do so. Egypt, Athens and Rhodes, at one time or another, all kept a standing navy for reasons of both trade and warfare. By comparison, early Rome’s attitude towards overseas trade was decidedly casual, so their naval capability was similarly limited. Overseas expansion, the conquest of Sicily, and the inescapable, worrying fact that the Carthaginians had a viable and formidable fleet, a navy, dockyards and harbours, forced the Romans into naval warfare, paving the way for the eventual defeat of Carthage and Octavian’s victory at Actium. But the Roman way was always to raise a navy on demand and as required.

The tributum was a war tax levied on all those eligible for military service, regardless of whether they were called up or not. Apart from a few years, such as 347 BC, when there was no war, the tax was paid every year until 167, when booty paid the defence budget.36





Chapter 3

The Sources

There was, of course, no shortage of advice to be had on strategy and tactics and the right and proper way to run a war, break a siege, lay an ambush or win a battle.1 Polybius wrote his textbook on camps (c. 200 BC – c. 118 BC); Julius Caesar (100–44 BC) expatiated on the conflict in Gaul and the Civil Wars; Onasander (first century AD) wrote the Strategikos; Frontinus (c. AD 40–103) wrote the Strategemata; more camp building came from Pseudo-Hyginus in the third century with De Munitionibus Castrorum; Vegetius wrote the De Re Militari in the late fourth century; and Zosimus’ Historia Nova, written sometime between 490 and 510, was a fertile source of military information.2

Taking siege warfare as an example, Onasander sensibly recommends restraint when it comes to looting and plunder, and not to threaten massacre. Both, he argues, just make for a more defiant and intractable enemy, while prisoners of war should be spared for the same reasons. Indeed, all prisoners should routinely be herded into the besieged city to exacerbate food shortages and hasten starvation. However, Onasander is not averse to brutality when it is necessary.3 Zosimus records how Lydius, at the siege of Cremona in AD 278, evicted all the prisoners, young and old. The Romans sent them back to Lydius, only for Lydius to hurl them to their deaths down a ravine.4 Frontinus advocated terrorising the besieged. Terror tactics generally were not lost on Agricola in his first year in command of Britannia.5

Some of this military education was based on personal combat experience. We know that Polybius, Julius Caesar, Josephus and Frontinus all saw military action. By the end of the Roman Empire, there was more than enough instruction to be had in the prosecution of war for those who cared to take it. Depending on when they lived, our principle historiographical sources would have had access to much of this. We might assume that other war manuals existed which have not survived.

For the first 500 years or so of Rome’s history, there was little or no historiography. The Fasti, the official reports of the magistracies and triumphs, are the only extant factual records we have for the early years. The lost Annales Maximi would have been another vital primary source. It was only with Quintus Fabius Pictor, writing in Greek around 200 BC, and the Latin Origines of Marcus Porcius Cato, the Censor, some forty years later, that the Romans started recording historical events. The detailed work only really began with Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus at the end of the Republic. In the absence of actual verifiable facts, then, much of the early history of Rome consisted of ideology and stereotypes exemplified by well-known legends and fables, much of which may have been handed down through oral traditions. Moreover, some of these legends smack of hagiography; they will have been refashioned and re-interpreted to fit a particular historian’s agenda, or span to reinforce the messages about the present or the past he or his patron wanted to promulgate.

For the disasters which took place in the Republic, Livy is our principle source. He is guilty of a number of sins at various points – exaggeration, misinterpretation or confusion with his sources, bias and poor analysis. A good example of confusion is the description of the two battles of Toletum in 193 and 192, in which Marcus Fulvius routed the Vettones – on both occasions. Surely, these are one and the same conflict. To make matters worse, there is the vexed issue of transcription of manuscripts and the endless problems this brings.

Livy was a patriot, so it is to be expected that elements of his work are biased towards the Romans. Julius Caesar’s works were partly political manifestos and freighted with personal propaganda. Livy was writing some 200 years after the events he described, so he no doubt struggled with the vagaries imposed by the passage of time – and with the credibility and accuracy of his own primary sources. Despite his shortcomings though, Livy’s achievement is both admirable and outstanding. We have always to remember that he was researching and writing with few if any of the reference tools and indexes which we take for granted today.6 He had no access, of course, to witnesses to any of the events.

Livy would nevertheless have been able to use many more primary sources than have survived today. Some of these may, however, have been of questionable reliability. Apart from the official Fasti, he would have been familiar with the pontifical annals, which were published in eighty books as the Annales Maximi by Pontifex Maximus Publius Mucius Scaevola. These books were a compilation of the daily pronouncements written up on a board publicly, announcing the latest news – a kind of extended newspaper headline board, or a rolling newscast, as seen today looping along brightly on public or office buildings. They would have featured the latest earthquakes, eclipses, famines and other natural events and disasters. The beginnings and ends of wars, and forthcoming triumphs would have been up there for all to see – meat and drink for the keen contemporary historian.

As we have noted, real history, and Livy’s earliest written history primary source, began with Fabius Pictor and his contemporary Lucius Cincius Alimentus – a veteran of the wars against Hannibal who was taken prisoner and allegedly met and spoke with the Carthaginian leader. Cato was the first to write Roman history in Latin. Not long after, Lucius Coelius Antipater delivered the first historical monograph (on the Second Punic War) around 120 BC. The extensive works of Claudius Quadrigarius and Valerias Antias would have been valuable sources for Livy. Hannibal too provided some information from his inscription in Punic and Greek, set up at Cape Lacinium, listing his achievements.7

Unfortunately, though, that is all we have from the Carthaginian point of view. Livy, of course, was on the winning side and his accounts of the wars with Carthage are freighted with Roman propaganda, hostile and embroidered. The Romans, in victory, destroyed all the Carthaginian records, destroyed, in effect, their history and heritage in a kind of national damnatio memoriae, leaving us with an exclusively Roman view of events. Hannibal’s qualities as a general were acknowledged because by ‘bigging him up’, Rome’s eventual victory looked notably more impressive. That apart, Hannibal is portrayed by a xenophobic Livy as unscrupulous: godless, cruel, duplicitous, mendacious, without integrity. Carthaginians generally were derided and ridiculed: they wore earrings, they wore underclothes, they ate salt fish and chewed garlic.

The historian was expected to parade his skill at presenting certain topoi and rhetorical devices. He needed to entertain his audience and to keep them listening, so the exciting bits – the sieges and battles, for example – would naturally take precedence over the minutiae regarding weaponry, armour, uneventful patrols and the like. The need to entertain will have been at the expense of the full facts, or even the facts themselves.

Polybius was a key source for Livy. The Histories provide us with a unique point of comparison with much of Livy’s version of events between 264 and 146 BC. His account is generally balanced and fair, it seems, to both Rome and to her enemies. He was uniquely qualified to write his history – as a former soldier and hostage of Rome, a member of Scipio Africanus’ coterie and a witness to the siege of Carthage in 147 BC. He describes Roman equipment, organization and their camps, providing invaluable information for Livy and subsequent historians of the period. Appian and Plutarch complement some of this with details that have been usefully mined from other historians whose works have not survived.

For the disasters of the early Empire, Tacitus is our chief source; Josephus provides us with a contemporary account of the conflicts involving the Jews. Later writers include Ammianus Marcellinus – another first-hand witness with an eye for detail. In addition to the manual writers mentioned above, there are theoretical works by Arrian, Battle Order Against the Alans and Ars Tactica, and On the Construction of a Camp by Pseudo-Hyginus.

Archaeology, of course, provides ongoing evidence to support (or dispute) the literary evidence; digging at the site of the Teutoburg Forest disaster is a case in point. Papyri and writing tablets are similarly useful; although they may not specifically shed light on the military disasters described in this book, they adumbrate aspects of the Roman war machine, which helps us to understand better the causes and effects of some of these disasters. Epigraphy too is helpful with inscriptions that mark the completion of building work, or detailed dedications by a legion to a god or goddess, listing names and ranks. Art and sculpture are a very visible, tangible source of evidence, particularly statuary. Coins and the depictions on, for example, Trajan’s Column and the Tropaeum Traiani at Adamklissi provide crucial images of the Roman armies and its commanders and soldiers. Tombstones too give us invaluable information about a soldier’s lot – albeit often idealized and sterotyped – and his equipment and career progression.

Numbers, particularly casualty figures, present a particular problem. Bias can easily contort these, inflating, as propaganda, enemy losses and minimizing Roman deaths and injuries. The size of an army was regularly estimated in multiples of 5,000 even though we know – and Livy, Appian and Polybius surely knew too – that the strength of the legions was notoriously inconsistent. If bias or rounding down or up did not bedevil the number, then the copyist may well have done – that inadvertent missing zero could change the complexion and interpretation of many a battle.

Dates add to the confusion, with scholars inconsistent in their interpretation of the Fasti – our one reliable dateable source. The invasion of the Gauls – with which we begin our study – is a case in point: some, after Varro, say it happened in 390 BC, while others prefer 387. The canonical date for the foundation of Rome is largely agreed to be 753 BC, but even that has been open to some doubt down the years. So, extreme caution is required at every juncture to ensure a reasonably accurate and historical interpretation of the disasters discussed.





Chapter 4

The Fourth Century: the Gallic Invasion and the Samnite Wars


River Allia and the Sack of Rome c. 387 BC

The battle on 18 July was a disaster of some magnitude for the Romans; 18 July, dies Alliensis, was labelled a black day, dies ater, which darkened the memories of Romans for many years to come. The enemy was foreign, the first time Rome had been in conflict with non-Italians. The Gauls had a very different fighting style and they had very different objectives from the Italians. They were frightening: clamorous, colourful, they wielded strange weapons and wore unfamiliar armour. Alarmingly for the Romans, some of them even fought naked – to avoid their clothing snagging on hedgerows. The battle, and the run up to it, exposed complacency and arrogance on the part of the Romans: centuries of military success were to come to an abrupt and shocking end, which compromised the security of the very city of Rome and all the military achievements won so far.

Who were these Gauls and where did they come from? The Gauls in question were the Senones, a tribe which had crossed the Apennines in search of t