Rome (the TV series)

[Rotondom1]

According to Adrian Goldsworthy, a Roman scholar who has written many books on the Roman military, fights are seldom as we would think they are. Clearly they weren't the individual one on one melees seen in Hollywood, but I think everyone here knows that According to Goldsworthy, fights were not constant affairs. 2 armies of 20,000 soldiers or more might take 5 hours for the battle to reach a conclusion, and certainly you didn't have soldiers fighting for 5 hours straight! Although I don't think it is entirely accurate to compare it to boxing. It certainly wasn't no walk in the park!

There were frequent lulls in the battleline, when two armies were suitably exhausted that they backed away from each other, sometimes no more than 5 meters. Here they would catch their breath, throw missiles, taunt the enemy, or try to goose themselves up for another charge. These lulls were actually quite frequent, as Goldsworthy notes that few actual casualties occured during the Melee, and that most of the slaughtering done was when one of the armies routed. This is why generals were picky about their battles almost to the point of excessiveness. What the position of the sun was, if there was an incline on the battlefield, if his soldiers had eaten a good breakfast, etc. Some times two armies would form up in their battle formations, stand there for a few hours and be called back to the camp without fighting! The little things added up and the importance of morale was key; what separated a great general from a bad one was knowing how and when to pick your battles. Incidently, that's why the Romans lost the battle of Adrianople; Emperor Valens had marched his Romans nearly 10 miles without water and led the charge right in the heat of the day against Gothic warriors who had been resting in their camp all morning.

Any way, in light of this observation, I think it is wholly plausible that during the lulls in the battle, Centurions would call for their soldiers to rotate. However, I also believe that only the most disciplined armies were probably capable of such a feat in the heat of the melee (they wouldn't have needed Optios in the back goading on stragglers with a vine cane if they didn't!), especially in the din battle where the screaming, clattering of metal, the enemy in front of them, and the ungodly stench of the slaughter would have been overwhelming the soldier. However, if there was one Roman Army in its history who would have been disciplined enough to pull off such a manuever, it would have been Caesar's legions, who had spent 8 long years fighting Gauls and by then were hardened veterans.

Anyway, I loved HBO's Rome. You'll never see a more historically accurate portrayal of Rome, character liberties notwithstanding. Gods, they were merciless on Mark Anthony!