Then my next question is this one:

If spearmen had so many advantage and can easily switch to short sword(although you still have to give spearmen a lot of training with the sword) then why did the romans decid to arm most of their troops, and in the end all legionnaires, with sword with the exception of auxilia, instead of giving them spear

Does it have anything to do with their looser formations ? Was it mean on purpose to cover more frontage with less troops than their enemies as to exhaust them quicker ?

Here a quote from the website I talked in my first post. I put the link again so
you are able to read yourself and look at the sources if they are worth it. And because this author seems to have a opinion a little different then a lot of people here, I want to hear different opinions about this quote please.


The spine of the Roman army was its heavy infantry formations. Unlike infantry formations of the past, the Roman maniples and, later, the heavier cohorts, were more maneuverable than any infantry formations that the world had seen. They also surpassed the killing power of earlier infantry formations to an almost exponential degree. The tactical proficiency and lethality of the Roman legion were not surpassed by another army for almost fifteen hundred years. The secret of the Roman killing machine was that the Roman soldier was the first to fight within a combat formation while at the same time remaining somewhat independent of its movement as a unit. He was also the first soldier to rely primarily upon the sword, the dreaded gladius, instead of the spear. The Roman gladius was responsible for more deaths on the battlefield than any other weapon until the invention of the firearm!
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/...z/gabr000c.htm

Anyone with comments or answers for me, I want them !