The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History - Karatunov.net

The Roman A rmy 135
Ha n n i b a l ’s army, s i n ce the Ca rt h a ginians were born and bred for war and
trained continually from childhood. The Romans performed their personal exercises
on the Campus Martius outside the city, but there was no formal training
scheme or military college. Professionalism grew only with continued, corporately
organized practice, and the lack of it showed to Rome’s disadvantage.
During the war with Hannibal, the legions and the Alae Sociorum were kept under
arms for long periods and learned how to cooperate with each other from
sheer necessity. So a kind of surrogate training took place, but it was not centrally
organized or coordinated.
Theoretically, the Romans knew the importance of proper training, and the
com m a n ders who devo ted some time to a training program were ad m i red .
Probably several generals spent time training their men, and the input from the
tribunes and the centurions must not be discounted, but owing to the considerable
bias in Polybius’s account, his readers could be excused for imagining that
whenever the Roman army was trained it was only the Scipios who were doing
i t . Pu bl ius Corn el ius Scipio was wo u n ded in the early stages of the war wi t h
Hannibal at the skirmish near the river Ti c i nu s , and ra t h er than commit his
m en to battle aga i n , Po lybius says that he advoc a ted spending the wi n ter in
training the troops. Some decades later in Spain, Scipio Aemilianus resorted to
rigorous training sessions to bring the troops to a peak of fitness. Livy (26.51.4)
describes Scipio’s program of marching in full armor, maintaining and cleaning
weapons, and mock battles with wooden swords.
The gl ad i a torial training insti ga ted by Ruti l ius Rufus in 105 bc was mu ch
ad m i red by Ma riu s , who pre su m a bly con ti nu ed to em p l oy the arms dri ll , t h e
ro ute march e s , ru n n i n g, ju m p i n g, and swimming that became the standard
training regi m e . The most det a i l ed source for training and physical fitness is
Vegetius, who compiled his books in the late Empire at a time when much of
the old Roman discipline was failing, but he ad m i t ted that he had used the
works of earlier authors, so most modern scholars accept what he says as authentic.
According to Vegetius (Epitoma Rei Militaris 1.8), all recruits were made
to do basic training for a period of four months in order to weed out the unsuitable
men who had to be rejected. He mentions route marches of twenty Roman
miles in five hours in summer and twenty-four miles at quick pace. The Roman
mile was shorter than the modern measure, and the days were divided into an
equal number of hours, so that in summer the hours were longer. With this in
mind, Watson (1969) says that Vegetius’s marches are probably commensurate
with the three miles an hour of more recent armies.
In i tial we a pons training was carri ed out using wooden swords and wi cker
s h i elds that were the same size but mu ch heavi er than standard servi ce we a pon s .
Rec ruits practi ced their sword stro kes against a po s t , just as gl ad i a tors did, u n ti l
t h ey were prof i c i en t . Th en they were reg u l a rly paired of f with an oppon ent for
m ock battles. In order to stren g t h en their arm s , s o l d i ers used heavyp i l a in prac-