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

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The Roman A rmy
p u rsu i t . Caesar does not say wh et h er this was a wri t ten or an oral message .
Much of Caesar’s narrative concerns signals, but these are not usually fully described.
Signaling by various means was common in the Roman army, but it is a
su bj ect fra u ght with con troversy among sch o l a rs . The em phasis of m odern
studies has been on long-distance signaling along routes or frontier lines, using
f i res and torch e s , for wh i ch the evi den ce has been co ll ected by Woo ll i s c rof t
( 2 0 0 1 ) . Sm o ke signals could be given by day and fires could be lit at night to
give warning of an attack, or to recall foragers and troops working outside the
camp. During battle, signals were given by horn or trumpet. Presumably then,
there were a few combinations of notes that translated into specific maneuvers,
but if so, we do not know what they were. The literary sources detail instances of
these types of signal. The overeager tubicen who sounded the signal to join battle
without orders from Caesar has already been mentioned, and in another battle,
during the Gallic War, Caesar ordered the retreat to be sounded, but the legions
on the opposite side of the valley did not hear it (Gallic War 7.47). A more
complicated example of orders given during battle comes from the African War,
when Caesar was surrounded by Labienus’s troops and ordered every other cohort
to turn round so that the Caesarians could fight on two fronts (African War
1 2 ) . While it cannot be ru l ed out that this order was tra n s m i t ted by word of
mouth, it does imply that there was a standard signal for a standard maneuver,
very simply conveyed, especially in the circumstances that Caesar describes because
any confusion or hesitation would have been disastrous.
Com bi n ed Arms Opera ti on s
Roman legions and auxiliary forces united heavy- and light-armed troops, skirm
i s h ers , s co ut s , a rti ll ery, and cava l ry. The on ly other military force , s ep a ra te
f rom the army, was the nav y, whose history has been doc u m en ted by Starr
(1960, 1989). The Roman navy began life out of sheer necessity during the Republican
period, when Rome went to war, perhaps a little unwisely, against the
supreme naval power in the Mediterranean, Carthage. The Carthaginians had a
long tradition of seaborne operations, both for trading purposes and for war,
and at first the Romans were inexperienced in either of these spheres. After initial
disasters they learned quickly, drawing on the expertise and manpower of
t h eir coastal allies (so cii nava l e s) who provi ded ships. Po lybius (Hi s to ri e s
10.9–16) doc u m ents one of the early opera ti ons com bining naval and land
forces, when Scipio attacked Carthago Nova (modern Cartagena) by land and
sea, ordering Gaius Laelius to take command of the fleet to bombard the city
with different kinds of missiles, while he brought up 25,000 infantry and 2,500
c ava l ry to attack from the land. F i rst he defe a ted the Ca rt h a ginians sent out
from the city to charge his men, and then he ordered parties to assault and take