Yesterday I watched Hannibal with a friend, praising the movie for many things and complaining about the lil mess they made with unit placement(totally irrelevant for a movie but fun to nagg about). In the end I had to explain the whole Pre marian Roman army. I had to avoid mentioning the 50% Auxillaries as I noticed that they don't quite fitt into the rest of the army^^.
The deployment of Hasthati, Princeps and Triarii is clear, Velites and Equites are explainable aswell but considering the Allies are not equiped in the same way(and proportions) It seems hard to press them into the tight grid. The light infantry could run around with the Velites and the cavalry could easily integrate aswell but what about Heavy/medium infantry like PedExes Milites and Hoplitai
So how were the Allies Deployed? Just "next to" the romans?
Allies were there, after all the battles before Cannae, Rome had to use the manpower available...
The formation was composed by 3 deep infantry lines, with the allies at the flanks...
With cavalry added to that...
Edit: the allies were the first to suffer the envelopment by the Africans...
QuintusSertorius
09-13-2011, 20:54
Traditionally, the extraordinarii were deployed wherever the general saw fit (often in reserve waiting to be sent to the thickest part of the fighting).
Otherwise, I'd expect the allies were equipped in an equivalent, if not identical way, and would be deployed in quincunx just the same as the Romans. Though they were on the flanks.
Just to quote a few sources so that Ca Putt can better understand the republican manipular legion.
The Roman Army, Osprey (2010), "Originally the term manipulus meant "a handful." Then, as in the early days a pole with a handful of hay twisted round it was used as a standard, manipulus came to signify this, and hence a unit of soldiers belonging to the same standard. The legion consisted of 1,200 hastati in ten maniples of 120, 1,200 principes organized in the same way, and 600 triarii also in ten maniples. According to Livy, the hastati were also men in the flower of youth, the principes in the prime of manhood and the triarii seasoned veterans.
It's critical to understand the building blocks so that we can start to talk about the maniples and how they formed a legion, including allied legions.
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"Polybius puts the nominal strength of a legion at 4,200 legionaries. However, in times of particular crisis when larger legion were raised, as was the case at Cannae, this might be increased to as many as 5,000. Polybius says that when this happened the number of triarii remained the same at 6,00 but the number of hastati, principes and velites, the less experienced legionaries, increased from the usual 1,200. As a result, the size of a maniple of hastati or principes could increase from 120 to 160 men when the legion was first formed and before any campaign losses had occurred."
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As well as citizens, Rome called on allied troops, at first from its Latin neighbours and then from Italy. Essentially, when they painfully struggled to obtain the mastery of the peninsula, the Romans had two ways of dealing with peoples who opposed them. If the enemy resisted them outright, so that the Romans had to take the city by storm, then the whole community might be enslaved and their city destroyed. But if they submitted to the commander of the besieging force in good time - normally before the first siege machines had been brought against their walls - then a different custom prevailed. They were expected to surrender unconditionally and, according to Roman law, once they had done so the enemy were said to have made a deditio. At this juncture the enemy were classed as dediticii, having, as it was said publicly, "sought the protection of the honor of the Roman people" (in fidem populi Romani se dedere). They then had to await the decision of the Senate on their fate.
These allies were expected to provide men in time of war, which they indeed did.
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The allies (socii) were divided into two broad groups: Latin and Italians. The socii nominis Latini (lit. "allies of the Latin name"), included a handful of old communities that had not been granted citizenship after Rome's defeat of its insurgent allies in 338 BC, as well as 30 Latin colonies, such as Placentia (Piacenza), Cremona and Brundisium, strategicially sited throughout Italy. Their main duty was to supply troops to Rome; according to Polybius (The Histories, 2.24), these communities were capable of producing 80,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry between them. The other allies were Italians of various nations - in the same passage Polybius mentions Sabini and Etruscans from central Italy, Umbri and Sarsinati from the Appenines ... and Vestini from the southern Appenines. Together these allies could provide a further 260,000 infantry and 34,000 cavalry. All allies were theoretically obliged to help Rome with their total manpower, but in the practice their obligations may have been defined by what was known as the formula tagatorum (lit. "list of adult males"), a kind of sliding scale requiring so many men for the number of citizen-soldiers raised in any year.
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An elite force of extraordinarii was selected from the best of the allied troops, one-third of the cavalry and one-fifth of the infantry, who camped near the consul's tent (praetorium) and were at his immediate disposal. Apart from these chosen troops, each allied unit was composed of men from one town, canton or nation, and would take the standard oath before setting out to join the assembled citizen forces under their own commander and paymaster.
Although Polybius assumes the infantry camped in manipuli, the cohors (cohort) was a standard unit for tactics well before the Romans employed it, and at least as early as the Second Punic War. It may originally have been a Samnite unit, so some allies may have used it before their incorporation into the Roman Army. Allied cohorts of 460, 500 and 600 men are recorded, and the variation in size probably reflects the differing size of each community's population. Maniples probably existed as sub units within the cohort, with ten cohorts drawn from different communities placed together to form an ala.
As already noted, the allied cavalry force was generally two or three times larger than that of the citizen cavalry force. These horsemen were organized in turmae of probably the same strength as the Romans, and were probably the same strength as the Romans, and were presumably also from the wealthiest strata of society.
Now that we can understand the legion, and how impossible it would be to represent the movements of the maniples giving justice using only a twenty-unit limit let's continue and find out the role of the allied legion.
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Polybius does not offer his readers an account of the legion in battle ... Despite this we can draw our own picture from the sources available to us. The legion would usually approach the enemy in its standard battle formation, the triplex acies, which was based as we have seen, around the triple line of hastati, principes and triarii, with the velites forming a light screen in front. Each of the three lines consisted of ten maniples. The maniples were not drawn up side by side, instead gaps were left equal in width to their own frontage (c.18m). The gaps in the line of the hastati were covered in the second line by the maniples of the more seasoned principes, and likewise the maniples of the veteran triarii covered the gaps in the line of the principes. Modern commentators conviently call this battle formation the quincunx, from the five dots on a dice-cube.
Battle would be opened by the velites, who attempted to disorganize and unsettle enemy formations with a hail of javelins. Having done this they retire through the gaps in the maniples of the hastati and made their way to the rear. The maniples of the hastati now reformed to close the gaps, either by each maniple extending its frontage, thus giving individuals more room in which to handle their weapons, or, if the maniple was drawn up two centuries deep, the centurio posterior would move his centuria to the left and forward, thus running out and forming up alongside the centuria of the centurio prior in the line itself.
Now, finally the role of the allied legions.
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In a consular army, the two Roman legions would form the centre with two allied alae deployed on their flanks - they were known as the "ala of the left" and the "ala of the right," a positioning reflecting the term ala (wing). In larger armies, however, legions and alae would probably alternate as they did at Cannae, where there were effectively four separate consular armies, each consisting of two legions and two alae, and each with its own commander. Although the extraordinarii had a special place in the line-of-march and in camp, they do not seem to have had a special role in battle and may have simple stood with the rest of the allies, that is, as part of their parent unit.
Polybius' silence on the subject suggests that the allies were organized and equipped along Roman lines, which would certainly have been desirable as it would have enabled them to interact smoothly with the legions. Presumably their traditional arms and tactics were gradually replaced by Roman methods and weaponry.
Roman velites were essentially skirmishers. They operated in a very loose order, with a fluid formation, allowing each man great freedom to advance and retire at will.
In ideal circumstances, skirmishers were supposed to drive back their opposite numbers and then begin to "soften up" the main body of the enemy, but such successes were exceptionally rare. Velites appear not to have had their own officers, instead they were commanded by the centurions stationed with the heavy infantry, yet they could be quite effective in battle. Livy describes them successfully skirmishing from a distance by throwing their javelins and then fighting at close quarters with their swords, using their shields to protect themselves. Polybius mentions how certain velites would wear wolf's skin over their helmets so that they would be visible to their centurions from a distance; such individuals, being keen to impress, could well have led by example.
So how do we represent this in total war? I'd like to argue my way by first showing a consular army with their numbers totaling 16,800.
https://i.imgur.com/jdZyP.png
A bit complicated, now before contact half of each hastati maniple would split off from their original unit and fill the gap to the right.
https://i.imgur.com/jnnLW.png
Represented like this, it's easier to see how to represent a consular army in Rome Total War. A unit of Hastati would represent 10 maniples in one legion. A principes behind them, and a triarii behind that, with each in a rectangular formation. The only unfortunate thing about doing it like this is that you won't be able to show maniples with gaps and such.
Anyways sorry for getting off-topic, just had to get this post off my chest and keep as a resource when I'm playing RTW. Hopefully it answered your question!
Impressive, thanks.
ah good ole osprey.
But to be perfectly frank, It does not fully answer my question :( I know all this "how the romans positioned" etc. and I'm not actually intending to realize this formation in RTW. So it all boils down to Polybius not actually telling us and modern Historians suggesting that they just fought in the same way as the romans?
That may be acceptable for tribes with very similar structure(youths, men, veterans) but I'm sure it gets complicated when integrateing tribes with different military tradition, for example would a greek city state sort their hoplites by age and position them like the romans?
Nope, and all the allies matter, especially the one referred to the 2nd Punic War, is centered in the italian peninsula...
Equipment and way of fighting was pretty similar among the Latini and Sabelli...
Towards the end of the 2nd century BC with the Res Publica engulfing the Mediterranean Sea, everything got "standardized"...
As for the hoplitai, the Greeks siding with the Romans were "allies" as in the english word, rather than Socii, they weren't incorporated in the republic yet...
Also during the 3rd and 4th macedonian Wars, hoplite warfare changed with bigger shields (thureos) or phalanxes in the macedonian style, but they would still be deployed on the flanks, or wherever the general saw fit...
Edit: To add in the hellenic world the trend was to put the best troops on the left and right, because those were the most dangerous zones for a phalanx, while for the centre the "oldest" ie the veterans of each lochos, took place at the front and last lines, to keep the inexperienced in the middle...
Impressive, thanks.
ah good ole osprey.
But to be perfectly frank, It does not fully answer my question :( I know all this "how the romans positioned" etc. and I'm not actually intending to realize this formation in RTW. So it all boils down to Polybius not actually telling us and modern Historians suggesting that they just fought in the same way as the romans?
That may be acceptable for tribes with very similar structure(youths, men, veterans) but I'm sure it gets complicated when integrateing tribes with different military tradition, for example would a greek city state sort their hoplites by age and position them like the romans?
Oh whoops! It's a quick answer they were placed in an allied legion and based on their equipment would be considered their own version of hastati, principes, or triarii. They'd fight in their native fashion but their order in an Ala Legio would depend on their equipment and training. Hoplites would be in the third line as if triarii, heavier Samnites with the principes, and lighter spear using Bruttanians (Camillian legions) with the hastati. So imagine if an allied legion had Gauls intermixed with roman allies, this Gaulish cohort would have wider ranks for room to swing their long swords and the differences would end there. They still had a centurion posted with them giving them orders and feeding them in as a reserve where the fighting is toughest.
Oh whoops! It's a quick answer they were placed in an allied legion and based on their equipment would be considered their own version of hastati, principes, or triarii. They'd fight in their native fashion but their order in an Ala Legio would depend on their equipment and training. Hoplites would be in the third line as if triarii, heavier Samnites with the principes, and lighter spear using Bruttanians (Camillian legions) with the hastati. So imagine if an allied legion had Gauls intermixed with roman allies, this Gaulish cohort would have wider ranks for room to swing their long swords and the differences would end there. They still had a centurion posted with them giving them orders and feeding them in as a reserve where the fighting is toughest. ah excellent, exacly what I wanted to know. so they were sorted by weapon types and were not nececarily grouped together with their brethen(thus the manipel behind a bruttian one could indeed be greek or samnite.
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