"Imitation legionaries" and other questions

[Visitor13]

Vanilla RTW had "imitation legionaries" available for Numidia, the Seleucids, Armenia and Egypt, I think. Basically copies of Marian legionaries with lower stats. What is the historical basis for these units, if any such basis exists at all?

A related question - if not the "imitation legionaries", what would a Numidian kingdom use for assault troops (surely something else/more than Garamantines...) and what would its spearmen look like? How (in)accurate is the generic, wicker-shield-toting, veiled desert spearman in the context of Numidians, the Maure and other North African tribes of the EB era? The robes would be the most dodgy thing about them, I guess...

Note that this is not a veiled demand for any of these units to be included in a future EB version.

[Ludens]

The Seleucid SS legionaries were based on a description by Polybios of the Daphne parade: he mentioned 5000 argyraspides "armed in the Roman fashion". Off course, they wouldn't have worn lorica segmentata, since the Romans hadn't invented it yet at that point . The Numidian legionaries are similarly based on a literary source, stating that Roman officers trained the Numidians during/following the second Punic war. Why this translates into a legionary unit (at a time when Rome was still using the militia system) is beyond me.

he Armenian legionary is probably a mistake: during the first Roman civil war between Marius and Sulla, Mithradates of Pontus obtained Roman trainers from the Marian rebels led by Sertorius in Spain. Again, how far this training went is not known, but since EB includes a Pontic Thorakitai I am guessing this did result in legionary troops. The Pontic legionaries proved unable to fight off Lucullus and Pompey subsequent invasions, BTW. There may also have been Armenian imitation legionaries at the battle of Triganocerta, but whether these were Pontic defectors or EB's Armenian & Georgian swordsmen (Mardig Sooseramartik & Kartvelebi Dashna-Mebrdzolebi) I don't know. The EB description of the Pontic, Armenian and Georgian swordsmen all suggest that these units already existed before Roman came into contact with the area.

[Watchman]

The Numidian ones were actually probably the only true "imitation Legionaries" of the whole lot - picked troops trained by allied Roman officers and instructors. The others were by and large local developements of flexible close-combat infantry with "precursor" throwing-spears, eg. Thureophoroi. The Romans just had a bad habit of somewhat narcissistically assuming any "civilised" troops which fought in such a fashion were a copy of their own methods when they saw those - although at least a few of the Hellenistic types *did* apparently adopt Roman organisational patterns at some point.

[Ludens]

Thanks for the correction, Watchman. Is any information available on where they fought and how they were equipped? I have always been kind of puzzled why the Numidians, who had a cavalry/light infantry army, would start using heavy infantry. It just doesn't seem to fit in the way their army worked.

[Sarkiss]

Armenian infantry (and cavalry) served under Achemenids banner.
it was Mithridates Eupator and his officers who trained Tigran the Great infanty in roman fashion, however. we do not know to what extend it was appled by the time of battle of Tigranokert if at all, but it certainly was the case after it and battle of Artaxarta would perhaps be the best example of native Armenian infantry "converted" into legionaries.
Armenia had strong infantry tradition before the Roman expansion though and this is reflected in EB.

[Ibrahim]

it is in ibfd..

[Horst Nordfink]

ibfd?

[Ibrahim]

invasio barbarorum: flagellum dei. the have good infantry (not supurb, but good). and they look like the legionaries, which aren't in EB (the imitation legionaries)

[Olaf The Great]

Theres a Unit in EB for Armenia which is an "Imitation Legionaire" but its their own unit and of course "armed in the "Roman" fashion" like Pontus's, Seleucids, and Ptolies

The only real non-Roman Legions are Numidias.

[paullus]

the "imitation" bit is often assumed to be an issue of armament, when its more an issue of organization. that's an honest mistake, due directly to Polybius' own "armed in the Roman manner." it might be better to understand grk: kathoplizw as "kitted/organized/arrayed" rather than as strictly "armed/armored." The Ptolemies, Seleukids, and many other Hellenistic period states used thureophoroi and thorakitai that bore some similarity to a Roman legionary of the same time period, but they were organized in different units. Their equipment was also somewhat different, with generally smaller shields, different swords, javelins rather than pila, and greater use of spears compared to the preference for swords among the Romans. There's strong evidence that in the mid second century the Ptolemies and Seleucids re-organized those units on a Roman model, which mainly means that they began using centuries, which they had not used before. Their equipment didn't change as best we can tell: no source corroborates use of pila, only in Syria could they have developed swords reliable enough to supplant emphasis on spear-fighting, shields stayed about the same size (though there are some indications of variations between different units--the Argyraspides thorakitai likely used a larger shield than regular units), and armoring practices don't seem to have changed. For EB, we don't really show organizational changes like that the Successors instituted to follow Roman organization--the base unit remains around 1,000 in both cases.

[Foot]

If I were at home I would be better equipped to reply here, but I do remember evidence that after his major defeat to the Romans at Tigranocerta (which, following Chahin's proposition, I don't think was attacked by the romans, and instead they ransacked the great Temple of Anahit in - I cannot remember the name of the city), he took the advice of Mithradites and completely reformulated his army to instead focus on quick assaults and hit-and-run tactics with light infantry, rather than the pitched battles he had used before in his campaigns. This suggests that the imitation legionnaire is wrongly ascribed to the Armenians (I personally I hate the way people throw around this romano-centric phrase far too easily).

Foot

[eggthief]

Wasnt something about imitation legionaire written in the description of the elite assault infantry of carthage?

[General Appo]

Well, this is from the description of the Elite African Infantry:
The Elite African Infantry represent both an adaptation to Roman tactics, and a force of extremely well trained and motivated soldiers whose purpose is to fight as a tough and seasoned heavy infantry. They wield good Iberian short swords, carry Iberian Scuta, and wear Roman mail armor with greaves and bracers. They fight much like Roman legionaries, but with a level of élan and discipline rarely seen in any army. They´re made up of tough Liby-Phoenicians or poor Carthaginian citizens who made a career for themselves in the Army. They´re extremely loyal and simply vicious in attack or defense. They are also experts at ambushing enemy soldiers. These men are at the top of their class, and can be relied upon in any situation. If they have one weakness it is the same as the Roman soldiers they most often fight, heavy cavalry.

[abou]

My view is essentially what Paul said. Having read Sekunda's publication I find most of his argumentation weak - especially the military rank data and his extrapolation that the phalanx as a whole was dropped. We not only don't see the pilum, but we also don't see the division of hastati, principes, and triarii. It is also important to note that chain mail was in use in the Hellenistic world for quite some time and we see several examples from the Temple of Athena in Pergamon (and as an aside Roman equipment was also quite variable including linothorax); thus none of the equipment used was new.

The big thing is the writing of Asklepiodotos, which shows the checker formation that we are all familiar with except that the third line has full units rather than the half seen in the triarii. Can't say I blame the adoption of that as it's a flexible formation, but it wasn't used with some new form of infantry and the base unit was still 256 as far as I can tell. Unless a hekatontarch commanded half the unit and it split much in the same way that Warry shows for the Roman manipular system in his book.