Bret Devereaux wrote recently that, in the third and second centuries BC, the Roman Republic completed its conquest of peninsular Italy and then defeated its major rivals in the Mediterranean - Carthage, Macedon and the Seleucids, while winning smaller conflicts in Spain, the Balkans, Cisalpine Gaul and Transalpine Gaul - and that, that traditionally, this success was explained by Rome's large supply of manpower.
However, there are problems with the theory that Rome won because of an "uncomplaining horde" of manpower:Naturally the question of how Rome was able to effectively run the table, overturning the entire Mediterranean state system in just a century and a half or so, is an important one. Traditionally, scholars have pointed to some of the tremendous and outsized Roman mobilizations (especially in 216-214) and thus argued that ‘manpower’ was the Roman secret: Rome had, in the words of Nicholas Sekunda, “horde after uncomplaining horde of Italian peasant manpower” to throw at its enemies. Fireside Friday, October 28, 2022
He suggests that Rome's advantage was not only in its reserves of manpower, but in the quality of the equipment worn or wielded by its soldiers:It isn’t that the Romans just had more surplus manpower because [...] the nature of ancient agriculture meant that everyone had lots of surplus manpower, with small farms generating little surplus because they supported families that, as units of labor, were much too large for their tiny farms.[...] The question was never finding a lot of farmers with not a lot to do (they were the one thing you had a lot of), the question was turning those farmers into soldiers, which was in turn about prying resources, not people out of the countryside. Fireside Friday, October 28, 2022
While today's portrayals of which Roman soldiers wore which armour may not always be accurate (as JaM reported), I'm wondering about the implications of Devereux's findings, for campaigns and for mod users and modders. In campaigns, when you play as Rome, do you find that you're racing to get units with better equipment (and possibly wondering how to keep paying for this)? If you're competing with Rome, do you think about how to defeat Rome before they get the better equipment (I'm thinking about this now in a Massilia campaign, as I don't think my late game units can match Rome's for quality)? For mod users and modders, how well do you think Rome II mods represent the significance of manpower and mobilization?... the Romans were anything but expendable: they were the most expensive kitted fellows out there. The main quantitative comparative element ended up being worked metal (iron and bronze) because worked metal was so expensive compared to other materials,[...] the Romans wore a lot of it, 25% more than their nearest competitors, in fact. Indeed just about everyone else’s kit seemed to look for any opportunity to substitute metal equipment for something else (like textile for armor, as in the linothorax). Meanwhile the Romans went gangbusters with mail armor, a new defensive technology whose main drawback was that it was very expensive, being both made of lots of expensive iron but also demanding a very labor-intensive manufacturing process. Initially worn by wealthy Romans, by the end of the period this became the standard armor of the legions, which is just wild. Fireside Friday, October 28, 2022
(I started a parallel thread in Vestigia Vetustatis for people who'd like to discuss whether Devereux's argument is right.)