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Roman Army
By Mike
One of the most powerful forces of ancient times was
the Roman Army. This army allowed Rome to conquer the
whole Mediterranean Sea. Without this massive Roman
army, many modern armies probably would never have
become professional fighters. The brave soldiers of
Ancient Rome changed the ancient world as well as ours.
This report is about how the Roman army did all these
things and how they lived. The Roman army is a great
example of a fighting force that was unstoppable.
The Romans became in need of an army when their
neighbors, the Etruscans, attacked and took over the city of
Rome. The Etruscans used iron weapons and armor, which
the Romans did not own. The Romans were forced to
follow the orders of the Etruscan King; he angered the
Romans greatly, and the Romans rebelled using the
Etruscan’s technologies. The Romans won when they
fought a battle at the Tiber River. A brave Roman hero,
Horatio, held off the Etruscans long enough to allow the
others to destroy the bridge. When the bridge was finally
destroyed, Horatio swam across the river and returned to
Rome.
Rome grew steadily, and its leaders desired the rest of
the Italian Peninsula; this started the Punic Wars. Three
Punic Wars were fought—one for new territories, one
entirely to save the city of Rome, and one to eradicate the
Carthaginian menace. The Carthaginian General Hannibal
was one of the greatest generals known. He led an attack
against Rome that lasted many days. Rome was indeed in
peril, and they knew there was little chance to survive. Yet,
they still led an attack on Carthage, using ships that they
had duplicated that looked like a stranded Carthage
warship. When Hannibal received news of this event, he
returned to Carthage. Once again, Rome proved to be a
powerful force that could not be stopped.
The life of the Roman soldier was quite rough; he was
to assist in building forts, aqueducts, and other construction
projects. War was much different. For battle, he soldiers
would be in groups of eight, called a contubernium. There
were ten contuberniums in a century, six centuries in a
cohort, and ten cohorts in a legion. The first cohort has 800
men instead of 480. That is a whopping total of 6,000 men
in a legion. The Romans came up with a genius strategy of
scaring away their enemies with their infantry, then
rounding the enemies up with a cavalry. The Roman
legionary was armed with a short sword, a tower shield,
special javelins, and scale mail. These soldiers were the
most powerful force in ancient Europe.
When Rome became an empire, the army could make
an emperor or destroy one. Many emperors wouldn’t have
been able to become in charge if they hadn’t used the army,
and many emperors would have lived if the army hadn’t
destroyed them. One emperor, Caligula, believed he was a
god. He tried to elect his horse as consul, then commanded
the army to attack the sea because he was angry with
Neptune. He was believed to be insane. It was also not
uncommon for the Praetorian Guard, the emperor’s
personal bodyguards, to kill the emperor. This is the fate
that befell the Emperor Caligula and many other hated
emperors.
The fall of the Roman army began when the Germanic
barbarians and the Sassanian Persians attacked the borders
of the Roman Empire. Though the emperors had made the
army greater in size, their army was unable to defeat the
attacking armies. Attila the Hun led armies of barbarian
tribes to defeat Rome. Even though he succeeded in
controlling all of the western empire, Attila was killed.
Rome did live on as Constantinople, and so did the Roman
army. Nowadays, many armies use tactics developed by
the Roman Army to defeat their foes, and it is likely that
armies will continue to do so in the future.
Bibliography
Chandler, Fiona et al eds. The Usborne Internet-linked
Encyclopedia of the Roman World. New York : Scholastic,
2003.
Foot Soldier: The Romans. Videotape. A & E Video, 2001.
50 minutes.
Guen, Erich. “Ancient Rome”. World Book. Vol. 16. 1991.