Romans at War

Soldiers, Citizens, and Society in the Roman Republic

Jeremy Armstrong, Michael P. Fronda

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351063487
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

This volume addresses the fundamental importance of the army, warfare, and military service to the development of both the Roman Republic and wider Italic society in the second half of the first millennium BC.

It brings together emerging and established scholars in the area of Roman military studies to engage with subjects such as the relationship between warfare and economic and demographic regimes; the interplay of war, aristocratic politics, and state formation; and the complex role the military played in the integration of Italy. The book demonstrates the centrality of war to Rome's internal and external relationships during the Republic, as well as to the Romans' sense of identity and history. It also illustrates the changing scholarly view of warfare as a social and cultural construct in antiquity, and how much work remains to be done in what is often thought of as a "traditional" area of research.

Romans at War will be of interest to students and scholars of the Roman army and ancient warfare, and of Roman society more broadly.

1 Writing about Romans at war^*

Jeremy Armstrong and Michael P. Fronda

The study of the Roman army is almost as old as the genre of Roman history itself. Polybius, writing in the middle of the second century, offered the first – and still one of the most important – studies of the Roman army of any period. Taking up 24 chapters (19–42) within Book 6 of his Histories, his description and analysis of the army of the Republic both set the stage for, and helped to shape the trajectory of, the field of Roman military studies which came after him. He is, arguably, the father of the discipline as it exists today.¹

The bulk of Polybius’ discussion focuses on military praxis, organization, and equipment. He offered detailed descriptions of recruitment, marching orders, camp construction, and tactical arrangements. These topics were expanded upon in other sections, including his famous comparison of the Roman legion and Macedonian phalanx (18.28–32). His “nuts and bolts” approach to the army reveals both his familiarity with the practical details of military systems – Polybius having served as a hipparchus for the Achaean league in 170/169 – and his appreciation for organization and command structures. Polybius offered an educated officer’s view of the Roman military system, which presented the army as a rational and practical tool of power – a set of systems and institutions designed to maximize the effectiveness of both the armed force and the power and influence of Rome’s military elite. Accordingly, his analysis has long resonated with later aristocrats and military officers-turned-authors, both from antiquity and modernity. His detailed and precise descriptions of Rome’s military order offered a paradigm for well-organized operations to which later generals could both compare and aspire. His description of the army did not include the sumptuous and dramatic individual moral exempla found in an author like Livy – although it did contain moral aspects – but represented a deeply practical and informed expression of military structures. Polybius’ work did not focus on the ideal heroic warrior, but rather on the ideal army.

* The authors thank Brahm Kleinman, whose suggestions improved this introduction. All dates are BC unless otherwise noted.

1 For an overview of Polybius as military historian more generally, see Marsden (1974, 295), who concluded, “…at the very least, he began the breakthrough into more advanced, even modern, military history.”

Polybius’ focus on military systems is important for many reasons, but particularly because it is indicative of an entirely different approach to the study of ancient warfare and military forces from that found in earlier texts. While earlier writers, such as Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, certainly discussed and described large group actions and battles, their focus typically remained on the actions and influence of (often heroic) individuals – albeit sometimes considered collectively. Classical Greek historians generally only discussed military systems through their examination of the Spartan ἀγωγή, thought to produce the best soldiers. But even here, the emphasis was often on individual citizens and the purpose was usually to draw explicit contrasts with communities like democratic Athens. Military systems were rarely explored, in their own right and from a historical perspective, before the Roman period – at least within our extant sources.

The caveat “within our extant sources” is, however, a required one. Although Polybius is one of our first surviving sources to approach an army and warfare in this systemic way, he was most certainly working from, and building upon, a foundation of Hellenistic precedents which are now lost. The fourth century witnessed an expansion and “complication” of warfare which featured, among other things, ever larger and increasingly mercenary armies, composed of myriad different unit types, fighting for longer, and further from home. In this environment, military systems – including generalship, military organization, and logistics – became important topics of study. This can be seen in the fourth century with the work of Aeneas Tacticus, who wrote a number of military treatises, including his only extant one “How to Survive under Siege.”² It also likely formed an important part of the now lost work of Hieronymus of Cardia, who was probably used by Polybius (although not mentioned by name) and certainly by Diodorus for organizational details, as well as many other Hellenistic writers.³ The genre of military writing was clearly evolving. But Polybius still stands as a vitally important contributor in this area. First, because his work does survive, while those of his Hellenistic predecessors, for the most part, do not. Thus, he provided the model that became the core of the later discipline, which favored this systemic approach. Second, because he translated this approach to Republican Rome – framing, seemingly for the first time, Rome’s army in these systemic terms.⁴

2 The exact identification and dates of Aeneas Tacticus are often debated but remain unknown. However, as an epitome of his work was made by Cineas, who worked in the court of Pyrrhus, he can be placed in the fourth century at least.

3 For the likely use of Hieronymus by Polybius, see Billows (2000, 286–306), with particular reference to Polyb. 8.10.11. See also Walbank (1967) ad loc. For use by Diodorus, see Diod. Sic. 2.1557f; see also Billows (2000, 300) for discussion; Hornblower (1981) for general discussion and later reception.

4 This is not to say that Polybius was solely concerned with systems. He knew that an army was only as good as the men who filled its ranks. Thus, he also implied that aspects of Roman military behavior (for example, discipline, encouragement of martial valor on and individual and corporate level, etc.) reflect a deeper Roman character, which, in turn, helps to explain the “success” of Rome and the superiority of their political system over others. No coincidence, then, that Book 6 ends with the brief account of “Horatius at the Bridge” and a description of the aristocratic funeral – both showing how martial valor was communicated to the people, inculcated among the young, and translated into political capital.

As part of this innovative focus on the wider military system, Polybius explicitly acknowledged the link between the Roman military and Roman politics. In this, as with his discussion of military praxis, he was likely working from precedents dating back to the fourth century as well – although here, thankfully, his antecedents are somewhat more secure, with clear allusions to the work of Plato and Aristotle. The discussions of both the Roman “military system” and the Roman “political system” are included in Book 6, suggesting the inseparability of war-making and politics.⁵ Indeed, Polybius “bookends” his discussion of the military system with politics – Chapters 11 through 18 describe the Roman constitution, and Chapters 43 through 56 compare the Roman system with others from around the ancient Mediterranean. This integrated and systemic approach is again likely a reflection of both his experience as an aristocratic, elected military leader, and the military context within which he operated: a Hellenistic world dominated by great kingdoms and empires, where armies acted as the military extension of a state’s will, even if that “state” was a single king. And, again, this focus helps explain Polybius’ enduring appeal. His experience and context resonated with many later authors, from both the late Republic and early Empire, as well as with those from more recent times. While modern readers may sometimes struggle to understand the individual motivations of Homer’s Achilles or Ajax, we can appreciate the ordered relationships which existed between Rome’s military, political, and social apparatus as described by Polybius. His model, based on systems, structures, and ideals common to large states, was able to transcend his specific context.

5 Polybius’ discussion of the military is also invoked implicitly to explain Roman imperial success (itself a reflection of the superiority of the overall Roman system). After all, Polybius famously set out to explain how the Romans came to conquer the whole world in 53 years, an achievement hitherto unprecedented (Polyb. 6.2.3). According to Polybius, it was the Roman military-political system that ultimately accounted for Roman success, and for the Romans doing what no other great power before (Persians, Athenians, Spartans, Macedonians, etc.) were able to do.

Thus Polybius, by focusing both on the practical aspects of the Roman military and war-making, as well as the cultural and imperial implications of these practices, paved the way for later writers to move beyond the individual, heroic ideals, and descriptions which seem to have dominated military literature of earlier periods, and move toward more systematic and relational approaches to ancient warfare. As a result, Polybius was seemingly the first historian (or at least the first whose work is extant) to explore what is now called “war and society” in antiquity – and almost certainly the first to do so in a Roman context. Returning to the point made above, although undoubtedly building upon an existing foundation of scholarship, Polybius was seminal in creating the framework for describing and defining the Roman army in its socio-political context which most subsequent writers have followed.

* * *

Like Polybius, the authors and editors of this work are explicitly building upon – and indeed are heavily indebted to – a much wider tradition of preexisting scholarship on the subject of ancient warfare. However, unlike Polybius, we are thankfully not required to translate and transport this work to an entirely new culture. While he was seemingly forced to blaze a new scholarly trail in describing the Roman military system in the second century, in the twenty-first century, we are able to walk a very well-worn and established route. Indeed, the faint path of Roman Republican military history pioneered by Polybius has been transformed over the past two millennia into a massive thoroughfare, with many branches, each featuring rich and vibrant subfields of study.

Despite the tremendous developments that have occurred in Roman military history, many of the central aspects of the modern discipline still owe much to Polybius’ work and aims, and indeed can be mapped onto the same major areas he focused on. As noted above, Polybius’ “nuts and bolts” approach to the Roman army, with its focus on praxis, organization, and equipment, has long appealed to army officers-turned-academics, as many of the timeless and universal details involved in organizing masses of men likely resonated with their own experience in armed forces.⁶ Recruitment procedures, ordered rows of tents, and strict marching orders would have been a common, shared experience for many who had served in armies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Indeed, some of this resonance may have been either conscious or circular, as Polybius was often mined for useful principles and strategies by modern generals seeking to improve efficiency, or at least seen through the practical lens of contemporary military practice and doctrine.⁷

6 For discussion of classical warfare earlier in the Enlightenment, see: Earle (1971, 3–25, 260–86); Garlan (1975, 15–21); Dawson (1996, 169–91).

7 For example, officer-military theorists Ardant du Picq (d. 1890) and Alfred von Schlieffen (d. 1913) both attempted to apply lessons from classical antiquity to modern warfare.

The most famous example of this for Roman Republican warfare is perhaps the work of Hans Delbrück, who not only wrote a hugely influential study of ancient warfare in the nineteenth century but also was a Prussian officer who saw service in the Franco-Prussian war. Delbrück consciously brought a deep and practical understanding of how modern armies functioned to his work on antiquity.⁸ Indeed, his technique of Sachkritik, which judged sources and accounts based on their “practicality” (filtered through his own firsthand experience), has been critiqued as having “often degenerated into rejecting descriptions in Herodotus or Caesar through wooden comparisons with the experience and practice of the contemporary German army.”⁹ While this approach is obviously problematic in many respects, particularly for modern scholars trained to acknowledge and account for their modern biases, it is noteworthy that Delbrück felt enough of a connection to his material to be able to do this at all. While he may have struggled to bridge the massive cultural divide between antiquity and his own day, it is clear that men like Delbrück empathized with the issues Roman generals faced in organizing a group of men into a functioning fighting force. He also saw, in the writings of men like Polybius, reasonable and indeed imitable solutions to these issues. Ancient military history was seen as relevant and applicable to his contemporary military context and approached as such. Although these types of studies are no longer quite as common today, likely because the overlap between scholars and those with military backgrounds has shrunk, they can still be found in the works of scholars like Richard Gabriel (Royal Military College of Canada) and Donald Boose (U.S. Army War College).

8 Hanson (2007, 7–8).

9 Hanson (2007, 7).

Although Polybius was also concerned with military equipment, developments in military technology ensured that this area did not have exactly the same type of resonance as more organizational matters in modern, and early modern, historiography. While both ancient and more modern armies needed to organize large groups of men to fight, the equipment they used to fight was, obviously, vastly different. Despite this, however, descriptions of military equipment continue to hold an important place in Roman military studies. One part of this likely relates to the practical and very concrete nature of ancient military equipment – many pieces of which have been on display in both museums and private collections since the time of the Grand Tour. These items created a physical, and perhaps experiential, link to the past, which has long attracted both collectors and re-enactors as well as fueled publication areas like the Osprey Military History Series. In more recent years, new archaeological discoveries have allowed for further developments – for instance, the refinement of the picture of the legionnaire’s kit described by Polybius and huge amounts of information on the panoplies of later periods.¹⁰ The appearance of the Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies (JRMES) in 1990– and its reappearance in 2016 after hiatus – along with the periodic iterations of the related Roman Military Equipment Conference (RoMEC) attest to the ongoing interest in Roman military equipment, with particular emphasis on material finds. Survey publications and more specialized studies of Roman arms, armament, and military materiel continue to appear regularly, and thus Polybius’ focus on praxis remains e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of maps
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Preface and acknowledgments
• Note on texts, translations, and abbreviation
• Maps
• 1 Writing about Romans at war
• 2 The institutionalization of warfare in early Rome
• 3 The price of expansion: agriculture, debt-dependency, and warfare during the rise of the Republic, c. 450–287
• 4 The dilectus-tributum system and the settlement of fourth century Italy
• 5 Organized chaos: manipuli, socii, and the Roman army c. 300
• 6 Poor man’s war – rich man’s fight: military integration in Republican Rome
• 7 “Take the sword away from that girl!” Combat, gender, and vengeance in the middle Republic
• 8 The middle Republican soldier and systems of social distinction
• 9 Uncovering a “Lost Generation” in the senate: demography and the Hannibalic War
• 10 Titus Quinctius Flamininus’ “Italian triumph”
• 11 Ager publicus: land as a spoil of war in the Roman Republic
• 12 The manipular army system and command decisions in the second century
• 13 Anecdotal history and the Social War
• 14 SPQR SNAFU: indiscipline and internal conflict in the late Republic
• 15 From slave to citizen: the lessons of Servius Tullius
• 16 The transformation of the Roman army in the last decades of the Republic
• 17 Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index