"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?