(uptempo harpsichord music) (dramatic harpsichord music) - How do you do?

It's very good to be with you again.

Today we shall talk about the Roman army, one of the great germinal forces in Western, Romano, Hellenistic, and thus Western European and eventually Christian civilization.

Through its far-flung armies and lines and outposts helped to spread that civilization over a large part of the Western world of Europe and the Mediterranean.

A Greek named Polybius, an officer of the Achaean League, second century before Christ, when that army was defeated by the Romans, lived as a hostage in the home of Scipio Africanus, the conqueror of Hannibal.

And Polybius, an aristocratic young Greek officer, wrote the histories of the Roman army, which he came to admire profoundly.

What he said about the Roman army was that its success derived from the absolute inevitability of punishment and reward.

The absolute inevitability of punishment and reward.

And the punishments could be and were savage, including decimation, killing by lot every 10th man of a unit which broke in battle.

Including, of course, if a man broke in battle, the stoning to death by his own unit of that man and the exile from their city or town of his mother and father, his wife, and children were forced out on the road as beggars.

You did not break in the Roman army.

Now granted the Romans were impassioned with a sword and their history is a military history.

The Roman armies were to conquer all the way to Persia and up to Britain, their lines were to stretch out over the Mediterranean and most of Western Europe.

For example, by your second century after Christ, in 123 AD exactly, Hadrian threw his wall, the Emperor Hadrian, across the British Isles, a 60-mile wall right here, whose ruins still stand straight as a die over hill and down through valley and up on the other side.

A masonry wall originally about 16 to 20 feet high, counting its crenellations with a deep ditch, a V-shaped ditch 30 feet wide in front of it and a road behind it over which the cavalry and the legions marched, watching the Picts and the Scots, the wild raiders out of the Highlands and out of Northern Ireland pressing always on the northern edge of Roman Britain.

Very briefly, the Emperor Antoninus Pius, or Antoninus Pius if you wish, built a second wall, an earthenwork wall here to the north.

And very briefly again, just for a matter of a few decades, the Romans controlled a province north of Hadrian's Wall, but that was abandoned under the pressure of the tribes and they retreated back and held Roman Britain behind the wall, disciplined and garrisoned by the legions.

In Germany they pushed out to the Rhine for the Rhine River Patrol, a naval patrol on the river, and pushed out here along the Main River, the Mainus, and through a line, the Limes, between the Rhine and the Danube, and you can still walk the Limes with its forts, as in Hadrian's Wall and Britain behind it, the legionary camps, its way stations, the remnants of its guard towers, more easily seen on Hadrian's Wall where you have a masonry construction of course.

And the Roman Empire extended from the Rhine down across the Limes, from the Main River to the Danube, down along the line of the Danube, out to the Black Sea, and out here in Asia Minor, all the way through Armenia on the east and down to and including part of the provinces here where they faced upon your great Parthian cavalry empire, and later the Sasani Persians.

In Africa, where a man could walk in the shade of the olive trees, from Alexandria to the Pillars of Hercules to Gibraltar, across the north coast of Africa.

Olive oil being the working oil of the ancient world, and this was the great olive oil and grain area.

The Romans pushed their possessions down here into Southern Egypt, almost to the modern Sudan, along the coast about a hundred miles inland where their great reservoirs still can be seen.

And this all was Roman territory as well.

So was Syria and Palestine and the modern Lebanon, an empire which extended from the wall in Britain up way to the north, almost the Land of the Midnight Sun, including all of this area as you see it here.

One of the great empires in history and the Roman army controlled it.

The Roman army marched along its lines, watching the barbarian peoples ever pressing down against its fringes.

It is an empire truly under siege at all times.

With Central Asia and Northern Europe being a vortex of moving peoples who move into the fringes, become civilized, serve as Auxilia.

We'll talk about these shortly, as Auxilia, as auxiliary troops in the Roman army.

Learn if you wish modern warfare.

And in the long run, of course, the Roman army is to disappear on the battlefield of Adrianople in 378 AD.

But that is 400 years.

From the principate of Augustus until Adrianople is almost 400 years.

And for 400 years, for almost half a millennium, the legions held the lines and behind the lines developed Romano and later Romano-Christian civilization, guarded and garrisoned by the magnificent Roman army.

Now, it never included more than about 30 legions.

And each legion numbered at its peak in the days of the second century at the very height of the Roman army under the emperors Hadrian, Trajan, Marc Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius numbered 6,000 men.

6,000 men and 30 legions, 6,000 men to each perfected legion in the first and second centuries after Christ.

Now this was a regular army, a paid army of 20 years service, which a man could rise to comparatively high rank.

In the later empire even to the rank of emperor.

Like Napoleon said of his soldiers, "Each private soldier carried a marshal's baton at his nap sack."

Well, each Roman soldier potentially in the latter phases of the empire carried in his hand, if you wish, or in his scab of the sword of an emperor, it was possible.

Now in your first and second centuries after Christ, with a Roman regular army numbering between 150 and 180,000 men and an equal number approximately of the so-called Auxilia, the various troops raised cavalry light-armed troops, missile weapon troops, slingers and javeliners and archers raised among the peoples on the fringes of the empire so that you had a force of approximately 360,000 men watching the frontiers of this vast territorial area.

The Roman army was organized as follows.

Now this is the regular Roman army, first, second, third, and fourth centuries after Christ, at the very peak of that army under the empire.

The commander of a legion.

And the legion is an independent force with attached cavalry and missile weapon troops like a division, like a modern division, was the legatus, or general officer.

Now he usually came from the so-called equestrian rank.

He could be senatorial.

He was a professional soldier, though he later on could rise high in the imperial civil service and frequently did.

Under the aristocratic or upper middle class legatus came his second-in-command, the camp prefect.

Also of equestrian rank, also a gentleman, in the old-fashioned meaning of that word, also capable of taking over the legion of 6,000 infantry soldiers when that legatus was detached or possibly killed in action.

These are the two senior officers.

Now this is 6,000 men with about 6,000 Auxilia attached, 12,000 fighting men.

Or if you wish, as I say, the modern division.

Under the camp prefect came 10 tribunes who on paper commanded a thousand men each.

On paper.

Since there were not 10,000 men in the legion, obviously you didn't have a real command, but on paper they commanded a thousand men each.

They were young aristocrats having their military training under an experienced combat legatus and his camp prefect, but more than anything else, under the real officers of the legion, your centurions.

Now your centurions were up from the rank, hard-bitten, tough veterans, 10, 15 years of service, who really commanded in the field.

And they actually went from the rank of, equivalent rank in modern armies of, lieutenant colonel down to about a second lieutenant.

There are of course 6,000 men.

And 10 cohorts.

That's half of them there, that's five.

10 cohorts of 600 men each.

Each cohort was divided into three manipoles.

This is an on paper organization.

They didn't use the manipole in battle action.

Of 200 men each or six companies or centuries of 100 men, naturally, a century of course being 100.

And each century was commanded by a centurion.

Now this is cohort number one, shall we say.

That is the lead cohort of the legion with the most experienced troops.

It had its, of course, six centurions, but its centurion of the first century of the first cohort is known as the prior pilus or the primus pilus, centurion first javelin.

A pilum or pilus is a javelin.

He's centurion first javelin.

He is the senior centurion in the legion and is third in command of the legion with the rank approximately of major or lieutenant colonel.

Under him come his five experienced centurions, and the number one centurion of each one of these cohorts of 600 men formed a staff called the primi ordines, the first order, plus the six centurions here.

So you had 10 centurions acting as a staff under the camp prefect and the legatus.

Each century of 100 men was divided into a decury of 10 men, a squad under a decurion.

And this is how your legion was organized.

All infantry soldiers, at first all Italian.

As the empire became Western worldwide and your provinces were increasingly Romanized, your legions were raised all over the empire, and your personnel could be British or Gaelic or Spanish.

Some of the best legions came from Spain and Thrace, Gaul, German.

All the peoples of the empire, when given their citizenship, as they were, became soldiers.

They weren't Auxilia.

They were soldiers of the empire.

Centurions, legatus at times, Egyptians, and they served everywhere.

There were Egyptian cavalry units in Britain.

There were Gaelic cavalry units fighting against the Parthians in the East.

It was a cosmopolitanized worldwide army.

Now they also had the Auxilia and the Auxilia which numbered exactly the same as your regular army.

There were about 150 to 180,000 Auxilia were the regular auxiliary troops attached to the army.

Cavalry, the Romans never bred a good cavalry horse for reasons I don't quite understand, since the Italians do today.

But the Romans never bred a good cavalry horse and their cavalry came from the cavalry peoples of the empire, Gauls and Germans and Moors, peoples along the Parthian Frontier, Thracians.

The Thracian horse were famous.

Remember they had no stirrups until the fourth century after Christ when stirrups come into the Mediterranean.

So this is not a true shock cavalry in the 19th or 18th century sense of the word, riding with couch lance.

This is a scouting cavalry.

This is an harassing cavalry.

Riding usually lighter small horses, carrying lance, divided into ala, wings, or vexilla, the same with standards under a prefect of cavalry, usually a Roman citizen.

Now your Auxilia were divided into ala or vexilla, wings or standards, of about 500 men, later a thousand men each, under a prefective cavalry, a Roman citizen.

Your missile weapon troops, your Balearic slingers, your archers, your light javeliners, and the rest were divided into cohorts of approximately 500 to 1,000 men each.

And they served of course as your flank guards, your wing troops, your harassing and punishing troops, your troops that pursued a broken enemy.

This then was the organization of the Roman army and a legion marching into action with its own catapult field artillery, drawn by horses like field artillery used to be.

Its legionary soldiers marching behind their legatus and singing usually rather bawdy songs concerning his personal character, by the way.

They're like armies in any time.

A rather interesting army.

And along with them riding their auxiliary cavalry and marching their light-arm missile weapon troops, 12,000 men, this is a self-contained military unit, that held the frontiers in its own right for some 400 years.

Now what were the weapons and equipment of this army?

They were standardized in around the first century before Christ.

And the weapons and equipment of a Roman infantry army or a Roman cavalry auxiliary, an ala of shall we say Gauls, now became standardized like modern equipment.

Your Roman soldier, your Roman legionary, carried as his weapons the heavy 11 pound pilum or pilus, the javelin with its soft iron shank in its hard-wrought iron point, ashen staff, about six feet long.

The shaft was soft because they hurled it at an enemy at his shield whereupon the soft shaft bent when he tried to pull it out, the shield became useless, and the enemy threw away that shield and the Roman went in with his short 18-inch two-edge broad sword, the gladius, and the short two-edge dagger, the pugna, to finish the fighting.

Thus you have pilum, javelin, 11 pound, sometimes two of them.

You have gladius 18-inch sword worn on the right side.

And if you wish military archeology, one of the most interesting aspects of this sort of thing is that you can tell what sort of soldier it is from the place he carries his sword.

A Greek carries his sword, and a Baldrick, on the left.

A Parthian carries his sword over his right shoulder.

He's a cavalry soldier.

He carries it in a sling across his chest.

A Roman carries it on the right and draws from here.

Roman infantry does.

Roman cavalry carries it on the left, drawing across the horse.

They carry the spatha, the longer broad sword, a Spanish sword which the cavalry had developed in the first century before Christ, and adopted, of course, standardized for all of the Roman army.

So gladius, pilum, pugna, and the armor.

Very interesting flexible armor.

You have of course the loricated plate, the three bands or four bands of metal laced along the left side with five strips of metal over the shoulders and a metal plate here guarding the chest.

A heavy six or five row weighted iron bead sporran, like a Highland Scot's sporran, protected the groin and lower legs.

It was flexible and moved when you walked.

He wore a leather or a woolen shirt, short sleeved, short knee-length braccae, breeks made of leather or wool, and heavy marching hobnail sandals.

He carried a concave scutum shield, and he fought with his right foot advanced and the shield over his body thusly and fenced.

He used the point.

He did not use the edge.

He was trained to stab, not to cut, although he could.

It was a broad sword.

Thus you have an army which advancing into action and battle went in first, moving up in three lines, six men deep each line.

The first line would throw its javelin at point-blank range and go in with a sword.

The second line would move up, throw its javelin over the head of the first line and go in with a sword.

After 15 minutes of fighting, they would withdraw these troops and the next lines would go through and engage them because they had figured out minutely that 15 minutes was all that a soldier could fight at full-speed without tiring, without fatigue.

Thus, it is a very machine army, a terrible army.

Remember that Polybius also said that, "The Romans kill everything that moves, they kill even the cats and the dogs."

And to the civilized people of the Eastern Mediterranean when the Roman armies marched east, this was a shocking business.

The Roman poet Ennius said, "We make a desolation and call it peace."

And they did on too many rather grim occasions.

And yet you have to admire it as a magnificently trained and magnificently disciplined field army that held its integrity and held its organization for four long centuries.

Now again, you have of course the tactics, the moving in with the cavalry coming in on the flanks, the missile weapon troops to bunch the enemy so that the legions like coming in like machines, moving forward, walking at first, trotting up toward the last 50 yards then running.

Moving in at the dead run to throw the javelin on an attack with a sword, being withdrawn on the next line, moving in.

A Roman army totally machined to conquer the various barbarian or civilized peoples whom they met.

What about their religion?

What about their, shall we say, role as the movers of civilization?

Juvenal, one of our writers in the imperial period, said, "The sewers of the Orontes have poured into the Tiber."

The Orontes River of course is a Syrian river, meaning of course that civilization, religion, the vices of the East had come with Roman traders and Roman soldiers from the great occupying forces that moved around the fringes of your Mediterranean, along the Limes and up into Northern Britain.

And so your soldiers are to be part of this tremendous transmittal of culture, this tremendous cosmopolitanizing of the Mediterranean world to lay the foundations of what we call today, "Western civilization."

Remember that your soldiers had served away from Rome.

These are Italian, Spanish, Gaelic country boys.

There's an old song out of World War I, "How you gonna keep them down on the farm after they've seen Paris?"

Well, how are you going to keep them down on the farm in Gaul or Britain, Spain, Italy, South Germany, after they've seen Antioch and the great city of Alexandria and walked along the fringes of the Parthian country and seen the Parthian lancers maneuvering for the attack?

The only army that ever destroyed a Roman army was a Parthian army by mounted archers and lancers attacking it out an open desert plain.

The Romans never made that mistake again, putting themselves at such a disadvantage.

How are you going to keep these boys down on the farm after they have seen the great cities of the world when you couldn't?

And the soldiers returning back to Italy, back to Gaul, back to Britain, brought with them the religions of the East, the customs of the East, or they settled and married along the frontiers.

Now frankly, they were not permitted to marry while in legionary camp, but they formed liaisons with the local women and had children.

And when they were retired from the army after 20 years, these unions were legalized and those boys born of native women could enter the Roman army as Roman citizens.

And so this too is a germinal force.

The fact that the army moves along and civilizes, marries, becomes part of your locality.

When the German tribes, for example, called upon the people of Cologne, the people of Caron or Cologne, the great city there on the Rhine, to rise against their Roman masters, the people of the city said, "How can we rise against our fathers, our brothers, our sons?"

"We're married to these people," said the women.

"They are our sons-in-law," said the men.

"They are our fathers," said the children.

"We can't rise against the Romans.

We are part of the Roman Empire."

So the army moving all over the world was to be part of this tremendous germinal force, this moving on the great roads the Romans built, and they built a network of roads all over the empire so that a man by dispatch rider could ride from here on the eastern frontier all the way to your western provinces of Rome in a matter of two or three weeks by your post horses.

Riding fast and hard, carrying the messages of the empire, they had semaphore systems.

They had fire signals, smoke signals.

They could move messages across the empire faster, frankly, than they could be moved until the 18th and the 19th centuries.

This was a great and civilized empire behind a great and magnificently trained army.

We find various cults among the army.

For example, the cult of Mithras.

Mithras, the god of light.

Mithras, the soldier god, a very manly religion.

Mithras that demanded purity of life, a very male religion.

There were very few female members of the Mithras, of Mithraism, of the Mithras cult.

Though some did, I gather, sneak in, in some way.

The Mithraism, the worship of Mithras, who was of course an archangel, if you wish, out of Zoroastrianism, the Persian religion, but became in his own right the... The god, the founder god of a great ethical religion in the West.

This is very popular in the army.

You find temples to Mithras all the way up in Britain.

You find the Mithras symbols where the Roman legionary camps were placed.

So Mithraism is part of it.

Mithraism, they also, among the officers, were inclined to move toward the great ethical philosophy of stoicism.

Marcus Aurelius, one of the greatest of the fighting emperors, the four good emperors in the second century after Christ, was a stoic.

Every man has a spark of God.

All men are brothers.

All men must tread the dark path of life toward the eventual concept that there may be a God and a heaven.

All men must live a totally moral life.

And Marcus Aurelius is the man who described his job as emperor as, "A noble servitude."

Also, of course, Christianity.

And as Christianity becomes one of the religions of the empire, the army becomes one of the moving forces in making the third nation part of the Roman picture.

So the army of Rome is one of the most important germinal forces in the empire.

(uptempo harpsichord music) (dramatic harpsichord music)