Quote Originally Posted by satalexton View Post
During the early 21st century, what prompt the ignorant public to believe that LS being the only correct set of armour the romans ever wore?
As I wrote in another thread, it's probably due to the universal appearance of it in popular history. It's very recognizable and quintessentially Roman, so it's popular amongst illustrators. This has fixed the image of the LS-wearing legionary in the public mind. As a result, many people now assume that all legionairs wore LS (never having seen any other), even though little to no popular history states this is the case.

Quote Originally Posted by I Am Herenow View Post
I have a question about pre-Camillan Roman units. Namely, I believe that they were hoplites at that time, but were they identical in tactics and equipment to contemporary Greek hoplites, say? Or were they different in some way - and if so, how?

On a related note, were there any major shake-ups (like the Camillan or Marian reforms) before the Camillan reforms? Or did equipment and tactics remain largely unchanged from the time Rome really became a city and stopped being a collection of villages, to the time of Camillus?
Little is known about the Roman military preceding the Punic wars, and Romans themselves only became interested in history following the second Punic war. Hence most of Rome's early history has to be guessed from legends and stories. Adrian Goldsworthy speculates that in the early days Romes military consisted of "heroic" combat in Homerian style (essentially stone-and-stick throwing contests with a few armoured guys on chariots getting all the headlines). As the Roman middle-class grew stronger, this transformed into hoplite warfare, until defeats by the Gauls and/or Samnites forced the Romans to adopt the legionary style of warfare. I can't answer the detailed questions, though. I do know that the Camillian legion war preceded by the Servian army, who were IIRC hoplites but already had some sort of hastati-principes-triarii division (the word hastati means spearman, after all).