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I'm not entirely sure how to understand this statement.

Certainly, the mid-Republican period in Roman history was one in which Roman society's competitive nature was held within the constrains of...

Depends on how one defines "professionalism" or "discipline".

Certainly, as my post said, pre-existing social cohesion was a key part of military organization in Antiquity. Successful armies were...

What motivates a person on the battlefield?

This is a question which disturbs and fascinates me.

Battle, in any period of history, has always been dangerous, loud, painful, and terrifying. It...

You were the one who cited discipline as the cause for the effectiveness of Caesar's legions from Gallia Cisalpina, so don't blame me for shifting goal posts here.

Yes the Romans had unusually...

A lot of good points have been raised already. I would just say in addition to what antaeus and Cyclops have already contributed:

Firstly, the aristocratic culture of the Roman patricians who...

What exactly do you think discipline is or does for a group of soldiers?

One of the actual military advantages of Marius's reforms is that it kept legions standing for long periods of time,...

Here's the basic point I wish to make: To implement any of the technical solutions to the tactical challenges of the siege of a fortified place, you need to have the necessary leadership capital to...

Tactics are important, to be sure. But how do you make tactics happen?

You need people to follow commands and instructions in order to execute any battle plan whatsoever, even a very simple one...

The name "Hannibal" is famous in the annals of military history. Hannibal Barca was one of the greatest commanders of Mediterranean Antiquity. His three crushing victories over the Romans at...

As a Roman aristocrat, Caesar would have learned how to ride a horse, and fight with weapons (And presumably bare-handed as well, although we have little direct evidence of this) at a fairly young...

Can you actually summarize my views and arguments, or are baseless accusations of plagiarism all you have? My assumption is that people come to a discussion like this in good faith with the intent to...

Firstly, providing quotes from authors and citing their works is not plagiarism. Plagiarism would be if I were to claim their works as my own. I do not. I am saying that Sabin et al's works on this...

It is rather surprising that I keep being accused of misquoting or misrepresenting the authors whom I am citing in support of my arguments, given that I wrote this essay and came up with this...

I feel that my arguments and positions are being misconstrued and misrepresented. I also feel that this argument is getting bogged down in minutiae and line by line dispute. I would like to instead...

Yes, riot police are not generally trying to kill any of the rioters. But they are trying to break them up and subdue them by intimidation and injury. The goal of the riot police is to rout the...

Let's talk about Pickett's Charge.

On the 3rd day of Gettysburg, 12,500 Confederate soldiers marched out towards the centre of the Union lines to try and break their way through. Did those 12,500...

Right, he says don't fence with the pikes, because he views that as ineffective. But he wouldn't state that you shouldn't do that if that wasn't a thing that was being done! And it apparently...

Literally in Polybius, it's been quoted before:

"The wooden shaft of the javelin measures about two cubits in length and is about a finger's breadth in thickness; its head is a span long ...

And yet the sources repeatedly indicate that missiles were exchanged throughout battle, and that the Romans took steps to prevent their missiles from being thrown back at them. All this indicates...

Yes, because Polybius, Caesar, Plutarch, Sallust, and Livy are obviously not historical sources at all. And, for that matter, neither are Goldsworthy, Sabin, Zhmodikov, Quesada-Sanz or the other...

There are videos of street riots which will demonstrate for you both the instinctive behaviours of untrained people in massed violence, and the modified behaviours of trained experts in massed...

Yes, this is why I based my essay primarily around Polybius and Caesar who were both military men. Polybius may not have commanded Roman armies like Caesar did, but he did accompany them on...

Roman period sources, from Polybius to Caesar and Livy, consistently describe the Roman soldier needing to spread out and get room in order to fight effectively. You certainly can thrust with a...

As exhaustively explained above: The ancient battlefield is full of potential missiles to be rethrown. Javelins and stones cast at you by the enemy can apparently easily be thrown again, as evidenced...

I don't see how the armour and shields of the legionaries would prevent them from retrieving spent missiles from the battlefield to get another weapon to throw. If anything, they likely made it...

Is it possible to throw your javelins high over a front rank of your comrades? Sure, it's possible.

However, facing enemies protected by shield and cuirass? Under battle stress? You need to throw...

Well, helpfully, the next poster after you offered an example of the model which I am arguing against:



I do, actually, agree that the best phrase for the legionary way of combat is shock...

I feel like this is mostly quibbling about technical details rather than disagreeing with the substance of my argument.

If you do disagree with the substance of my argument, I will ask you then:...

I personally am speaking about the Roman legions as they existed between about 219 BC, the start of the Second Punic War, and 27 BC, the end of the Roman civil wars and the cementing of Augustus as...

The Legionaries carried two pila.

You're alleging that this is not enough to sustain a ranged combat.

Dedicated skirmishing troops only carried a few more than two javelins. The exact numbers...

Taylor's article quotes Sabin, Zhmodikov, and Quesada-Sanz's work as representing the new academic consensus.

Sabin, Zhmodikov, and Quesada-Sanz all agree that the Roman legionary fought primarily...

As Imrix notes, these articles were written in 2000, twenty years ago, when this new model was a topic of controversy. Per Michael Taylor's paper from 2014, the Zhmodikov-Sabin model has become...

As opposed to dedicated skirmishing troops like peltasts and velites, who carried three javelins for their entire, and often, prolonged involvement in a battle?

Two pila per man is more than...

So in support of my view that the Roman legionary fought mostly at range with missiles and only occasionally closed in with the gladius as the final decisive part of the combat, I am going to cite...

You must first of all discard the notion, long drilled into us by our beloved Total War titles, of Roman legionaries all throwing their pila in unison. While I analogize the pila and gladius to the...

No, I don't support Grossman's more extreme or out there theorizing, such as the Sheepdog model or his fallacious beliefs about video games. Likewise, Marshall's ratio of fire has been thoroughly...

I think that Roman military success in the Republic and up until around the reign of Augustus was in many ways due to a tense and fraught compromise between the individualist aggression which virtus...

What I am saying, my thesis, is this: The Roman legionary was mostly an individual fighter in combat. In fact, I would say he was mostly a javelineer, a heavy skirmisher more than what you might call...

Part 3: Training

In the incident of the consuls’ command dispute before the Battle of the Trebia, Scipio the Elder is accounted as wishing to avoid battle so they could use the winter to drill...

At the time I am writing this post, I have other parts of this essay awaiting moderator approval to be posted which will give you further historical examples. However I would like to clear up a few...