The outcomes of the Second Punic War would forever change the face of the Roman legions, at least until the reforms of Gaius Marius.
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What later followed would be a series of crushing defeats at the hands of Carthage’s greatest general, Hannibal Barca.
To which the Roman delegation replied withīut Roman influence over Iberia and Cisalpine Gaul had been largely eroded when news of Saguntum’s fall and destruction spread across the western Mediterranean. “Pick whichever you please, we do not care either way.” When offered a choice between war and peace, the Carthaginians declared: Each consul received his customary two with the praetor holding onto two reserve legions.
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The Senate decreed the levying of six full legions, two more than the customary four. The war had started out badly enough with the disastrous defeat at the siege of Saguntum and the loss of Roman authority over the Carthaginians. However, the Roman army was about to face another shock during the Second Punic Wars. The men of the early Republican army had to provide their own weapons and gear, meaning that only the richest men would find themselves attached to the Principes or Triarii. While the Hastati and Principes adopted the use of missile weapons before engaging in hand to hand combat with the legion’s signature pila, the Triarii kept the long stabbing spears and continued to fight as the spearmen. However, while the shields universally changed for the heavy infantry, the personal armaments changed more gradually. The hoplon shield of the early Roman army eventually evolved into a large oval shield called a scutum that resembled the Imperial cohort’s rectangular shield. The poorest of the citizens who could not even afford the simple armaments of the Hastati took the rank of Velites, or skirmishers. Instead of having the entire army as a single unit bum-rushing the enemy like the hoplites of Greece, the newly reformed Roman legion now separated itself into the distinctive three-tier system of heavy infantry: the Hastati, Principes, and Triarii.
While the maniples retained the class distinction of the Regal Roman legion, it did attempt to separate the different classes. The success enjoyed by the Samnites in their war efforts against Rome caused the Romans to abandon the densely packed hoplite centuries that were inflexible in rugged terrains and instead adopt the looser manipular formations that would become a staple of the Roman army. The Samnites employed a manipular order of battle against the Roman hoplites. The Second Samnite Wars of the fourth century BCE proved the hoplite-based legion’s obsolescence. This early legion had little flexibility on the battlefield and was plagued with a large bureaucratic structure that hindered effective control and cohesion on the battlefield. This effectively meant that a 5000 man legion would be made up of fifty centuries at the very least. Early legions were divided up purely into centuries of one hundred men rather than the later maniples.
However, despite the different classes, the early Roman legion looked and behaved very similarly to the Greek phalanxes, composing largely of rich hoplites as the backbone supported by the lower segments of society as supplementary forces. It wasn’t until Servius Tullius conducted the first Census that divided up Roman society into five distinct societal class that had specific roles in battle did the precursor to the Republican Legion arose. In fact, the first form of the Roman legion can be categorized as a rag-tag group of men who banded together to fight under the command of the Roman kings.
The men that made up of this fighting force were ordinary men who can succumb to the call of death rather than the immortal gods. However, the legion was not an invincible force, as Hollywood would lead us to believe. In fact, so feared were these men that the Christian Bible described the angels that would arrive to participate in the Battle of Armageddon as the Legions of God. Never had the world seen a military power so unrelenting and organized as the legions of Rome. They were made up of proud men who marched forth from the Seven Hills until their boots reached all corners of the western world, from the sandy shores of Africa to the forested glades of Spain from atop the mountains of Greece to the flowing waters of the Euphrates they marched through the thick forests of Gaul to even the wind-swept crags of Britain. But throughout these years, one single factor remained more or less constant: the legions. Rome’s history was a long and bloody one, replete with succession crises, political turmoil, and the seemingly endless wars, both external and internal, that had been waged across Europe for over a thousand years.