Companion_to_the_Roman_Army_(Blackw(BookFi.org)

CHAPTER ONEWarfare and the Armyin Early RomeJohn Rich1 IntroductionBy the mid-sixth century bc, Rome had become the largest city in western centralItaly and one of its leading powers, but the reach of Roman power remained for along time confined to the Tiber basin and its immediate environs. The Romans’ penetrationfurther afield began with their intervention in Campania in 343 bc and ledin some seventy years to the conquest of all Italy south of the Po Valley. However,this advance and the ensuing expansion overseas cannot be understood without someexamination of Roman warfare and military developments in the preceding centuries.This is the subject of the present chapter, and the following chapter considers someaspects in further detail.The evidence for early Roman history is notoriously problematic. Roman historiansdeveloped extensive narratives, preserved most fully for us in two histories writtenin the late first century bc, by Livy and by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (the latter inGreek, and fully extant only for the period down to 443 bc). However, Roman historicalwriting only began in the late third century bc, and it is clear that the earlyaccounts were greatly elaborated by later writers. For the period of the kings, mostof what we are told is legend or imaginative reconstruction. From the foundationof the republic (traditionally dated to 509 bc), the historians give an annual record.This incorporated a good deal of authentic data, transmitted either orally or fromdocumentary sources such as the record of events kept from quite early times by thePontifex Maximus. However, this material underwent extensive distortion and elaborationin the hands of successive historians writing up their accounts for literary effectand expanding the narrative with what they regarded as plausible reconstructions.As a result the identification of the hard core of authentic data in the survivinghistorical accounts is very problematic and its extent remains disputed. There isgeneral agreement that much of what we are told is literary confection, and this applies