As far as evaluating the Roman military prowess, we must look at a few key factors. The bellicosity of the Romans and their willingness to undertake frequent wars of relatively large scales meant that despite the endemic nature of warfare across Italia, the citizen body as a whole was generally more battle-hardened and experienced than most of their enemies. On the other hand, Roman legionaries were far from professional soldiers in this period, but rather common militia men who at the end of campaign returned to their farm or homestead. Consequently, despite the almost yearly wars, their weapons proficiency and tactical maneuverabilty was limited. The manipular formation somehow accomodated these militia features.

The hoplites of the early republican army had been selected principally on wealth and property, but the manipular army came to be organized by age. According to Livy and Polybius, the younger troops like hastati undertook the intial work in battle but were stiffened by increasingly older and more experienced veterans.

Moreover, formal training or drills, though a feature of later Roman service, was not essential in this early republic army, that naturally placed the battle in to a fragmentation of battle-lines, small handfuls of men from the outset and made it a military virtue.

Resilience in the relatively amorphous swarms of men raining missles on their enemies was sustained through the use of soldier's oaths to one another and fear of punishment that the consul might inflict after battle. Maniples were commanded by their own officers, which increased control, but also allowed for local battlefield initiative which is just as important. We know from soldier's oaths that soldiers were permitted to go beyond the battle-lines in this period, and individual maniples would conduct indpendent operations during battle.

It is not clear when standards became an integral feature of the legions, but they would have acted as invaluable rallying points on a fluid, manipular battlefield, while the pilani (triarii) stationed in a dense mass behind the standards, ultimately gave the formation a backbone.

Finally, regardless of any shortfalls in the system, the Roman and allied manpower increasingly gave the Romans the edge over their neighbors and enemies, so that their armies were, by Italic standards, quite large. Even when confronted with a well drilled and tactically superior army like Pyrrhus, the Romans would recover from defeat and send yet another legion to recoup their losses.