There is quite a lot of info on the Web, about ancient Rome and its armies. I was always interested in the decline of the Roman Army-if you compare the two forces separated by some three centuries, you see some major differences:
-troops of the 1st Century were highly disciplined, and fought in compact groups
-1st century soldiers wore heavy armor (lorica segmentata), and used large shields (which covered most of the body)
-1st century organization was different, the legions were large (5800 men), and the forces were very mobile (20 mile/day marches were common).
By the 5th century, the army was much changed:
-the javelins were no longer used
-troops wore light armor-mostly chainmail shirts and light helmets
-many of the soldiers were merenaries (which is OK, as long as you can pay them)
-the shields were smaller, and lighter
-the army was structurally different (legion size was down to 1000 men).
Most historians attribute the changes as reflecting the shift from an offensive army to a mainly defensive force, and the rejection of the heavy 1st-century armor as an essential adaptation.
My question: if you paired off equal numbers of 1st and 5th century troops, who would most likely win?
Machiavelli would say 100AD hands down. Conscripted citizen soldiers are better in every way when compared to mercenaries.
Where are they fighting? Do the more lightly-armored troops have room to exploit their superior mobility? What is the condition of the ground? (Heavy armor and mud don’t mix - Agincourt is an extreme example, but it does illustrate the point.) Whose supply line is in better shape?
Offhand, my money would be on the Roman Army circa 100 AD - those guys won more often than they lost, against a wide variety of opponents (including other Romans), which can’t really be said of the army circa 400 AD. But there are just too many variables here to give a definitive answer.
Get the 400 AD guys to start yelling “I am Spartacus!”, confusing the 100 AD guys into letting down their defenses.
I think some of your assertions need… let’s be kind and say “clarification”.
First, chain is not light at all. It’s a very effective armor and quite heavy, maybe more protective than the Lorica Segmentata, and certainly not cheap. Helmet tecnology had also improved (if you’ve ever seen a circa-100-ad helmet, they’re a piece of crap: awkward and heavy for its protection. They were used principally because the soldiers expected heavy attacks to the head and because having helmets was a really good thing, particularly when compared to many enemies who had none.
You also conflate different armies. While the army of 100 ad was reasonably standard, the 400 ad Romans had two very different force types: local forces and national legions. The higher-tier soldiers were well-trained, equipped, and frequently mounted. Local forces wouldn’t have been bad, exactly (particularly when compared to the average German tribesman). But they weren’t as important to military power and not as respected or supported.
Sure, but by that count, Machiavelli would say 100AD would beat [del]Blackwater[/del] Xe hands down. Surely all factors must be considered?
Fifth century army has the range on the first century one, because they’ve got the spatha vs the gladius. They’ve also got heavier cavalry and are better able to use it, and generally have technologically superior armor and weapons.
400 AD; are they limitanei or comitatenses? Who are they being commanded by?
I have nothing substantial to add, I just have to say it’s conversations like this that still stun me on this board.
So the chainmail shirts were better than the plate armor of the 1st century?
I imagine that the tactics had changed greatly-since they no longer used the huge shileds of the 1st century.
Why did the size of the legions decline? Were smaller legions better adapted to the new conditions (of largely defensive warfare)?
The 100 AD army was an army designed to fight less civilised or militarily weaker cultures. The 400 AD army was one that spent most of its time fighting Persia. Apples and oranges.
I’ve always wondered something about Roman armor: during the Republic, legionaries wore mail. At some point during the early Empire, they shifted to Lorica Segmentata - and yet, a couple of centuries later, they changed back to mail. I’ve always just assumed that it was a symptom of the decline of the Roman Empire, but these has to be more to it than that. Any idea?
It was adopted I heard because it was cheaper to make (none of that riveting of thousands of links), it was lighter, and it gave better protection against certain types of weapons.
The reason I’ve heard was that the armour fell out of favour because its use was complex (it required all sorts of pins, hinges and/or hooks to hold it together) and it was difficult to maintain. Chain mail (allegedly) provided nearly as good protection against slashing-type weapons, without the same level of difficulty.
In my experience chain is harder to make than plate Roman armour. if this was true back then, I might be wrong, how would this be a symptom of decline?
I am not a Historian.
I was under the impression that the Roman army didn’t really ‘decline’ per se…but that their opponents were much tougher and wiser concerning how to fight Romans…True?
If it is then I imagine the AD400 army would clean the clock of the AD100 one…
Money. There were a lot more soldiers in the army towards the end of the empire and it cost a lot to equip all of them. The Legions of 100AD were built around a core of veteran, well trained troops commanded from Rome that could be shuttled around the empire as required.
The late empire saw too many threats on the borders for this system to still be viable. Instead of legions centrally controlled from Rome there were large bodies of men under local control, men that had to be armed and armoured from a diminshing pool of resources.
I wonder if fighting with mercs would be better for the homefront though. Homefront probably wasn’t the deal breaker back then as it is today (might have been though, not an expert on Roman civilian military relations).
The Lorica Segmentata is not really suited to the climate of Iraq which is where a lot of the fighting between 100 and 400 AD took place.
Not exactly, though it wasn’t totally trivial as a reason. Rome collapsed for three reasons:
First, they had terrible problems with corruption and the tax base. It may not have been even as bad as
Second, the Empire had a lot of trouble with the Germans and related peoples (Goths, etc.). They could beat the Germans in battle: but the tribal peoples simply could not be contained by pure military force. Even mustering all the money, diplomacy, political manipulation, and soldiers they could gather, it was almost impossible to stop roving bands of thousands upon thousands. They penetrated the frontier and settled all through to North Africa.
Let’s put it this way: there were enough Germans roaming far and wide that it completely changed the ethnic makeup of Europe as we know it. That’s a lot of German/germanic peoples. They weren’t loyal to Rome, and became increasingly difficult to weed out.
Three: the division of the Empire. This was a killer, because while the western end of the Empire had lots of resources, it was facing the invasions by itself. With the right and left hands not helping each other, the whole fell apart. Also note that the Byzantine side itself started falling apart almost immediately. It never really recovered, either. It was almost an eon before it finally collapsed too, but in that time it was a fairly undynamic society and was slowly failing due to internal rot.
Despite that, the Roman collapse wasn’t a sure thing. It was almost avoided. One of the big crisis points was that even when a reasonable succession was established, it was hard to keep. Nothing the state ever did could really keep powerful generals from deciding to turn around and attack Rome. It’s also interesting to look at the Chinese model, which used a quasi-priesthood of Confucian scholars to control the state, substituting endless slow declines for military treachery in most cases.
When would you say the Roman military machine, as a whole, was at its peak? Late Republic?