The Life And Times Of The Typical Roman Legionaire Essays

The Life and Times of the Typical Roman Legionaire The Life and Times of the Typical Roman Legionaire The life of a typical Roman Legionaire was a hard one. The combination of brutal training, discipline and organization, and long forced marches with many pounds of equipment all contributed to this, but because of these, the Roman Legions were a force to be reckoned with in the ancient world. The purpose of this website is to demonstrate that though the life of a Legionaire was a tough one, it is because of this that the Roman Empire was so succesful. This website will describe the hardships of training, discipline and organization, and the marches that contributed to the hard life of a legionaire. The brutal training of the Roman Legionaire was tough, but very neccesary in order to make the lethal war machine of the Empire function properly. First of all, to even become eligible for the army, you had to be a 5'8" Roman citizen, you could be another nationality but you would be classified as an auxilliary, and you had to be in good health. You would then be rigorously trained by the Centurions whom you would fear worse than the enemy, for they would be swift and brutal with punishments. Forced marches while in precise formation and carrying all your equipment and armour would all be part of a normal day. You would be expected to be able to swim with and without your armour on, and be able to march for 20 miles with 60-80 lbs of equipment without breaking formation. The soldiers were trained relentlessly in fighting in formation with different types of weapons, and also single combat. The standard drill involved using a sword against a post embedded in the ground, or against a real opponent, over and over again so a soldier could learn where to hit, and to hit that point accurately. The Armatura, or Gladiatorial drill, was also used to allow to equally, or otherwise, matched opponents to spar against each other. All this training lead to the final orginization of the legion. The training, coupled with the orginization and discipline of the legionaires made them the premiere fighting force of the ancient world. The Roman army was divided up into ranks, much like a modern military is today, which allowed a great amount of control to be used in a tough battle situation. A new soldier accepted into the army was given the rank of hastati and was assigned to a contubernium, the smallest unit in the Roman army, which was comprised of 8 men, a tent and an ass. The hastati were the front lines in battle, so high death rates were to be expected, but these were much less than that of the other armies the legions fought, due to the training the hastati got before battle. The next rank, principe, was given to the soldier who had survived 2 or more battles, and was deemed worthy by his Centurion, and these soldiers comprised the second rank. The job of the principe was to make sure that the formation stayed together, and to deal swift punishment by means of death if any hastati broke ranks and began to run away. The final rank given to a mile (ordinary soldiers) was that of triarii, or the most vetran soldier of the unit. This rank was obtained through sheer determination and skill displayed on the battlefield, and was often the highest rank awarded to a soldier not of noble blood. The job of the triarii was the same as the principe, but was also to keep the principes from running and to help fend off flanking and rear attacks. Because they were the most battle hardened troops, triarii could enforce punishments given by the centurion of the unit, and to punish anyone who did not follow orders. The rank given to soldiers of noble blood, or to triarii who had proven themselves, was the rank of Centurion. The Centurion was the commander of a unit, similar to a Battalion Commander in modern day militaries. They had the job of not only fighting alongside his men, but also dealing punishments, such as decimation, where one soldier out of ten was selected for the wrongdoings of another, and the other nine soldiers would stone the luckless soldier to death. If a Centurion was found worthy, he might even be promoted to general, but the common Centurion had no hope of this. The Centurion was also in charge of making sure that all his mens' equipment and