The development of a middle-class of citizen farmers (depending on the Polis it would have been more of a middle-high-class, rarely any amount over 30% of the population) was one of the factors that lead to the appearance of Democracy on Athens, as well as other forms of government that weren’t necessarily monarchies all over Greece. The question remains however, how and why did this new «class» appear.
The de facto only system of government in the ancient world had been until then that of a central state of variable size, sometimes with a priestly class, and almost always run by a king. This one-man rule (or at best a few men rule) was the only form of government that proved stable enough to create functioning states. The amount of territory might vary (from small towns up to huge empires like that of Egypt) and the level of despotism of the ruler might also vary (some kings were completely in charge of their towns, other had to share at least a bit of power with the aristocracy and priests).
Was this the only existing form of government at the time? Well, not really, there were also nomadic tribes of herders and even pockets of hunter gatherers that could function at a family or tribe level, with no need for a monarch, or at least no permanent single ruler, as there were also tribes that had kings or chieftains. In the more complex urban organisations there were probably the same attempts at different was of government, but it is likely that the efficiency of a single ruler meant that those city states that tried more «alternative» approaches were absorbed (read conquered) by those cities that did have the advantage of a line of command of one.
This brings us to Mycenaean Greece and its collapse. The Mycenaeans were the inhabitants of Greece from 1600BC up to around 1100BC. Their civilisation was a loose confederation of relatively small states run by a monarch with a centralised economy (the king would store and divide the grain and would tell the farmers where and when to plant their crops), they were excellent pottery workers and had mastered the use of bronze. They were also shrewd traders and would barter and exchange their goods all the way up to Mesopotamia and Egypt. The ties between all the civilisations of the eastern Mediterranean was so tight in fact that dubbing them «globalised» would not be too far fetched: archaeologists nowadays sometimes find it difficult to determine if some artifacts are from the regions they’ve been found or copies from the other side of the Mediterranean simply because of the level of trade at the time meant there was greek pottery (as well as Egyptian jewelry and Mesopotamian goods) scattered all over the three regions.
Then around 1200BC there was a huge upheaval on the Mediterranean. Many theories have been put forth (foreign invasion, climate change, social uprising, a combination of some or all…), whatever the reason(s) the fact is that the Eastern Mediterranean was hit badly: Egypt went through a period of invasion, anarchy, and power struggles; Mesopotamia saw a regression from mid sized empires back to independent city-states; and Mycenaean Greece collapsed into semi-barbarism (what we call the «Greek dark ages»).
Many of the Citadels that had peppered the Greek mainland were abandoned, some temporarily, some permanently. Its inhabitants, suddenly deprived of the protection and cohesion of a working government, were left with no other choice than to abandon urban centres and try their luck in smaller groups as herders or farmers in the countryside. Artisans, civil servants, priests, traders and all other by-products of urban life were hit even harder, that what they had done to make a living became useless and they had to start over.
It is not until around 800BC when writing starts to reappear (at this point in the more modern greek alphabet, not linear B as during the Mycenaean times), as well as bigger towns and more centralised power.
However, unlike the centralised state-run plantations of the past, the most common type of farm became the independent Oikos (family farm): small farms run by one household, enough to maintain the family and have a healthy surplus to exchange for other goods (like tools for farming, or shields and helmets for waging war), but not enough to consider them rich or aristocratic by any means. The breakdown of centralised power and the population reduction made it possible for the survivors to claim for themselves small plots of land to sustain themselves and their families, this small farms would pass on from father to son generation after generation and sustain a new «middle class» during the dark ages.
These new class of reasonably well-off farmers became the backbone of the greek city-states army: The hoplites. Heavy hoplite infantry became so successful that only an economy that could maintain enough middle class farmers would survive; by 800BC all urban centres in Greece had a healthy distribution of land that would support such a class. There were still aristocrats that accumulated huge amounts of land, and that became the rulers (at least initially) of the states, there were still poor urbanites living on the brink of poverty, but there were always also enough hoplites in between to man the infantry.
As I explained in another article in this blog the appearance of this new class with enough money to fight as heavy infantry eventually made it possible for new forms of government to appear in ancient Greece for the first (and only) time. Read it here.
Facts in the past are fixed and unchanged, history isn’t. Depending on what point of view we select we will have different villains and heroes.
The first, most evident, disruption to historical interpretation is of course who gets to tell the story. We say with good reason that the winners write history, and hence wars have always, always, been won by the ‘good guys’. After all, it is the ‘good guys’ that are left alone standing after the war is over so; who is going to stop them from telling everyone how right they were from the beginning?
But the winners narrative is quite straight forward and self explanatory, the way the narrative warps itself with time is a more elusive and interesting notion: decades and centuries pass and suddenly the winners start looking less and less unequivocally good and the losers start looking less unequivocally evil. The best example is historical intepretation of the first world war: the further we go back in time the more partisan the narrative becomes. Writers in the 20’s and 30’s had no doubts about Germany’s complete guilt in starting the first world war. In the 40’s and 50’s things started to shift and nowadays Germany holds it’s fair share of guilt but so do all the other countries that took and active part in the series of overlapping alliances and treaties that made the start of WWI almost inevitable once any party involved made a move.
Perspective can help in reducing our emotional connection with a particular event and give us a more nuanced view. The opposite can also happen however; If the powers that be are interested in pushing a particular historical view we find ourselves re-writing history to fit into a particular agenda. Sometimes those agendas get so entrenched and become so important for the status quo that as time passes history gets even more warped, not less. Take for instance the nationalistic heroes of the 18th century: Arminius and Boadicea, or Hermann and Boudicca if we want to use their native names.
Arminius was the heir to the king of the Cherusci a germanic tribe in Magna Germania, the Roman occupied area east of the Rhine river in what today is western Germany. He was raised in Rome as a guest/hostage and served in the legions, so well that he was granted the Roman citizenship and was kept later as an important contact and advisor for the local governors from Rome in Germania. Arminius however had a hidden agenda, he was still the king of his people, and he decided he preferred to take his chances as an independent tribal power than to be subject to roman rule.
Statue of Arminius in modern day Lippe, close to the Teutoburger forest where three legions were defeated and wiped out, effectively ending roman occupation of Germany on the east side of the Rhein
Boudicca was the wife of the king of the Iceni, a british tribe in what today is East Anglia. His husband had struck a deal with the roman invaders by which the Iceni would formally be subject to roman rule but would retain some independency and their self government. Upon his death, with the intention of appeasing the romans and guaranteeing his wife’s and daughters’ safety, he bequeathed half of his kingdom to Rome and the other half to his wife. The Romans however, seeing the iron hot and explaining the convenient fact that Roman law didn’t allow women to inherit anything, much less kingship, proceeded to flog Boudicca and rape her daughters. Boudicca rose in revolt and came quite close to ending Roman occupation in Britain almost 400 years in advance.
Boadicea and her daughters. The statue stands in front of the house of Parliament in London.
Arminius would be more sucessfull in his movements against the Romans, wiping out three legions and ending Roman occupation in Greater Germany. He would end up betrayed and killed by his own countrymen in the wake of a roman punitive expedition a few years later. Boudicca would raze the two most important roman cities in Britain (Camulodonum and Londinium) but would lose the final battle against the legions and ended up dead soon after either from disease or, more likely, from poisoning.
These two kings/tribal leaders had no other allegiance than to themselves and their tribes, the Cherusci and Iceni. Other tribes in what we today call Britain and Germany probably felt slightly more kinship with Arminius and Boudicca than with the romans, but only so much: Some tribes had become allies of the romans and would remain allies after. The romans had been so successful in conquering land in fact by the «divide and conquer» principle, and speaking of the Gauls or The Britons as unified nations would be like considering the countries in south america as a unified body.
In the wake of the rise of nationalism in XVIII century Europe however, it became useful to have founding figures in the distant past, even if those figures wouldn’t have identified as German or British. Arminius was hailed as the liberator of the german people, an image that the nazi regime would co-opt in the 30’s. As everything else that Hitler touched, it became taboo as soon as the war finished, and Arminius went from being taught in school as the first german to become a semi-obscure historical figure only nowadays starting to resurface. Boudicca was turned into a british national heroine by queen Victoria who liked to relate her reign with that of the Iceni queen. She still stands proud in front of the house of Parliament in London riding her war chariot.
The funny thing is; both Arminius and Boudicca were forgotten in the middle ages by their countrymen (along with most history, science, mathematics… ) the moment the western roman empire collapsed. In fact Hermann isn’t even Arminius real name, but the germanised version of the latin name that got to us, no one really knows what his original germanic name was. Only during the renaissance and through the writings of roman historians we get any record of them. British and german culture, customs and society owe more to the romans than to the Cherusci or the Iceni, but during the rise of nation states in Europe it didn’t further the agenda of the politicians on power to speak about common forefathers. Back then racial theories were also in vogue, which meant people gave more credibility to the ‘german race’ than to ‘german culture’, hence the belief they would have more connections through blood with Arminius or Boudicca than through the latin alphabet to Ovid or Cicero.
Despite the the discredit that ‘Racial theory’ has suffered after the end of WWII we still have ‘national heroes’ that are presented as forefathers of cultures they had hardly any influence over. Arminius and Boudicca are just two examples, we could also mention Viriathus in Portugal, the Numantines in Spain or Vercingetorix in France as examples of romanticised historical figures that have very little to do with modern nations but are presented, in stark contrast with the roman ‘invaders’, as forerunners of national identity.
Back in the classical world, most nations or city-states ended up being ruled by a king or tribal leader. These rulers would usually be part of the local aristocracy, who would in time also keep checks upon the ruler himself. Sometimes a one man rule wouldn’t be called king (even if it had all the characteristics of a kingship), sometimes there would be two kings (like in Sparta), sometimes the kingship would be hereditary and would be passed on from father to son, sometimes it would be elective, more often than not anyone with enough power would out the older king and declare themselves monarch. All in all however, the rule of thumb was «one nation, one leader»
The uniformity of one man rule in the most powerful nations of the pre-Roman time was probably consequence of the efficiency of such a rule compared to other possibilities: Too extensive an aristocracy tended to backstab iteslf and be easy prey for foreign invaders, tribal leaders were fiercely independent and would stay fragmented in extremely small groups. The stable exception would have been the athenian democracy. In Athens, any citizen (land owning males) shared a bit of the government responsibilities and rights.
The exact nature of the original Athenian democracy is fuzzy at best, since most of the detailed descriptions we have are from later restorations after oligarchic coups; The system was also quite complex with many governing bodies. Within these, the main assembly of citizens (Ecclesia) was selected by lots from all the land owning citizens. The Ecclesia would vote to select candidates to the military magistracies. All other positions of government were chosen by lots from the volunteers. The Ecclesia could always vote to turn down any legislation or proposal by any magistrate, and magistrates would have to answer for their actions once their term of office was completed, but it still remains astounding that the athenians would have such confidence in the capabilities of their citizens that they wouldn’t mind «randomly» selecting their executive power. As checks on power, most positions couldn’t be assigned to the same person more than once; furthermore, the athenians devised a clever method to get rid of charismatic rabble rousers: Ostracism.
Every year the citizens would have the opportunity to write down the name of someone in the city they wanted banished. The most readily available medium for writing down stuff were broken pieces of pottery (Ostrakon). The votes would be counted and the ‘winner’ would be banished from Athens for 10 years.
How exactly did a system so different from the one mal rule appeared in Athens? and was it an accident that it was there or were there reasons that made it more likely?
Pre-democratic Athens
The homeric heroes fought wars riding their chariots to battle pulled by horses, assisted by an armour bearer, with gleaming bronze weapons and armour. Back in those times having armour, horses, a chariot and whatnot was a privilege of very, very, very few. The homeric heroes were really the 1% and since they were the only ones that had enough money to buy weapons no one could fight back to steal their riches or to have a say in how a city was run.
These heroes were the original aristocrats of Mycenaean Greece, they had a small share of power in their respective cities with other nobles, but more often than not there was a king Basileus who governed each state.
The collapse of the Mycenaean kingdoms gave way to the greek dark ages from 1200BC to 800BC. During these centuries civilisation as a whole was taken back to prehistory. This reshuffle of the deck however permitted the landless and the poor to take possession of land owned by the aristocracy and the king previously. The hoplite class was born.
Hoplite were land owning citizens that had enough money to equip themselves for service in the infantry so by no measurement were they poor. They didn’t have enough money to buy themselves a horse so by no measurement where the rich either. They comprised probably around 15-30% of the male population of a polis, which was a decent chunk. But as they saw their responsibility rise (going to war isn’t a stroll in the park) they did not see their rights rise in the same way. Furthermore, in the whole of Greece the slow re-accumulation of wealth into fewer and fewer hands was beginning to stir unrest not only in the ever shrinking middle class but also within the lower classes. Did they not fight for their polis like the rich oligarchs? Did they not deserve a say in war as well as peace?
The first step into new forms of governments was the outing of the old aristocrats, or the very least their political neutering. Throughout Greece tyrants took power (almost always with the help of the army, AKA. the hoplite class). These were despotic rulers but by no means would they be universally considered bad rulers. Depending on their disposition and skill as statesmen they would be considered illustrated rulers (like Peisistratos in Athens or Pheidon of Argos) or terrible despots (like Phalaris of Acragas).
By the end of the 6th century BC the citizens of Athens had had enough of Tyrants. Cleisthenes, a noble athenian, reformed the constitution after ousting Hippias who was at the time Tyrant of Athens. Cleisthenes dealt the final blow to the Areopagus, the elders council and last stronghold of power for the aristocracy, by taking away it’s powers as a jury and installing a popular jury instead. He acted also in self interest; Cleisthenes was from the powerful Alcmaeonid clan, who had been exiled from the city some years before by a rival family. He ultimately broke the rules of the game and gave the power of the oligarchy away to the people to guarantee the safe return of him and his clan to Athens.
Athens democracy was flawed in many ways: Only land owning men of Athenian descent from both parents were allowed to be part of any government body. Women, foreigners, and of course slaves were politically powerless. The athenian democracy is also famous for some very arbitrary trials: in 406BC some athenian generals were condemned to death for alleged failures in a battle against the Spartans, more famously, an athenian jury tried and condemned Socrates to death. The system did however breed the idea of citizen participation and responsibility in politics. Every man was expected to be able to speak their mind in the assembly, and to participate in the policy making. Furthermore, the very same men that made the decision if the state was going to war or not would be the ones actually having to go as either hoplite soldiers or rowers in the battleships. How about that for an idea to apply to our modern democracies?
From 201 BC until around the turn of the 4th to the 5th century AD the Roman legions were the best army in the western world. From Scotland to Egypt and from the Danube and Rhine rivers in the north to the Sahara desert in the south, Roman legions would be stationed in the frontiers to protect from foreign invasion.
The legions got beaten the occasional time but, in general, they would be able to shrug off defeat, learn from their mistakes and succeed where they had failed. Even when repeatedly bested the Romans were lucky enough to have a huge pool of soldiers in their city. After losing almost 200 thousand men in three battles against Hannibal the Romans were still able to resist, albeit in a defensive posture, during the second Punic war until their final victory at Zama in 201 BC.
But when we speak of the «legion» we tend to not make a distinction between the different phases that it underwent. A legionary from the 400BC would have had a hard time recognising a fellow legionary from 30AD, who himself would’ve probably had a hard time recognising the germanic soldiers from 300AD as being part of the legions. the word ‘Legion’ standing for ‘muster’ after all, any soldier recruited into the oficial Roman army would be a legionary (auxiliary forces not withstanding).
The western Roman army went through 3 main phases, plus what I would call a prologue phase and an epilogue phase. The eastern Roman army, on the other hand, would continue evolving for the better part of a thousand years after the west had fallen, well into the medieval and even early renaissance times.
Prologue: the barbarian rush
Despite its self concocted picturesque origin story, the founders of Rome were indeed probably refugees. Less likely it is that they were refugees from the Trojan war as the Romans would claim. That was a later embellishment to try to link them with the greeks they so much admired. Either way, the first inhabitants of Rome were the kind of people for whom «a fresh start» sounded appealing: convicts, ruined peasants, highwaymen, bandits and refugees of all kinds.
This disorganised rabble was seen by the inhabitants of the more respectable cities around them as little more than a group of thugs and, in my view, they probably were. Until the city developed itself and the famous third king of Rome Tullus Hostilius reorganised the army it is most likely that the Romans fought in the barbarian «all charge» style.
The army would charge, all men yelling and running towards the enemy without any effort to remain in formation. Men would keep on fighting until the enemy (or themselves) were exhausted or fled. Very much in the way movies nowadays depict every battle, there would be almost one on one duels simultaneously until one side ran away or both retreated.
Not the most elegant solution, but against the small towns around Rome it probably worked for a while. Against their more developed neighbours in the north bank of the river Tiber it most likely didn’t.
Phase 1: The Roman Phalanx
The northern neighbours were the Etruscans, an advanced culture of traders and farmers that had settled in the north of Italy a few centuries before, probably migrating from the Anatolian plateau in modern Turkey.
The Etruscan had walled cities, exquisite art and their own developed culture. Later Romans would downplay the influence that the Etruscan civilisation had in Rome, but we find many religious and social customs in the Roman Empire that were not greek, and therefore most probably an Etruscan creation (reading the omens in the entrails of animals, or in the flight of birds just to name two).
By all accounts the Etruscans, despite being a loose confederation of independent cities, had organised armies, probably citizen armies in the same style that most greek states had at the time. Their units also fought using the same tightly packed formation that the greeks used: The phalanx. Phalanxes were armed with spears and would march at a steady pace with their shields held up high maintaining cohesion at all times. Against disorganised mobs a Phalanx would be deadly, mowing down incoming warriors one by one.
Typical phalanx formation. Notice the lack of space between soldiers and the depth of ranks. Excellent for pushing and bracing, not so much for manoeuvring.
The Romans must’ve quickly adapted into the phalanx formation, probably just a few years after the foundation of the city. By the year 650BC the Roman would have had an army of citizens (land owning males) in which every person would have to bring their own equipment. Those rich enough to have an cuirass, spear, greaves, helmet and shield would fight as heavy infantry. The poorer the citizen the less equipment they would be able to provide for themselves, all the way down to the skirmishers who would just bring stones and slings. Soldiers were farmers that would join the army during their campaigning season and then go back to their farm when it was finished or in years of peace. The landless couldn’t join the army, as it was assumed that those that had no property to protect would more easily desert in the thick of the battle. A few of the richest citizens would have enough money to bring their own horse, they were the Celeres «the quick ones», later known as Equites which made reference to not just the military unit but the social class.
a Phalanx army formation: Skirmishers in front, cavalry on the sides and the main infantry on the centre.
The Phalanx was an extremely tough unit from the front, and leaps and bounds ahead of the initial tribal warfare that the Romans had started with. It did have it’s drawbacks though: A Phalanx required discipline and coordination, lots of it. Drilling was essential and it took quite some time for a Phalanx to be battle ready after a march, if a phalanx was attacked before it had completely formed it would rout with surprising ease. Phalanxes were also slow to move and turn, making them relatively weak against faster units that could flank them (Cavalry was usually kept on the wings of armies in order to stop possible flanking units in their tracks). Lastly, the lack of speed and mobility of the phalanx was exacerbated in rough terrain, making them prone to losing formation and opening gaps that could be exploited by the enemy.
But in reasonably flat terrain, with cavalry in your wings to protect you from flanking movements, there was no safer bet than to form your phalanxes and march forward. This formation and battle philosophy served Rome well for a few hundred years.
Sometimes though, you don’t have the luxury of flat terrain, or of an enemy army that actually wants to line up their army and fight you «fair and square». Enter the Samnites.
Phase 2: triplex acies, the manipular legion
In 343 BC the Romans and the Samnites began hostilities in what we call now the first Samnite war. The Samnites were mountain people from central Italy, in the Apennine mountains. The Romans managed to provoke them into war thinking that there would be much profit to be had. At least in the initial rounds they were quite wrong.
Samnium was a rough territory, with plenty of mountain passes, valleys, forests and dead ends. The Romans were repeatedly caught in a guerrilla warfare flat footed, some of their greatest defeats in the early stages of the Republic come from their wars against the Samnites. Not only that, but their Phalanxes had trouble forming and marching in the broken terrain of the mountains, making even pitched battles hard to win.
In a show of two-facedness, the Romans would complain about the Samnites not presenting battle while they themselves would lie through their teeth to avoid losing and army that had fallen into a trap.
It is unclear at what stage of the three wars agains the Samnites the Romans changed their old phalanx formation for their new maniples, but by the end of the war the Romans had completely reorganised their battle formation:
The infantry was divided into three melee groups: The hastati, the principes and the triarii. The hastati were the youngest and least equipped of them, but they were also eager to prove themselves. They carried a sword, shield and, if they had enough money, a helmet and cuirass. The principes were middle aged men, veterans that would be slightly better equipped, in the battle formation they would line up behind the hastati. Finally we have the triarii, older veterans, armed with spears instead of swords. They would be the third and final line of defence and the only unit that would still keep a phalanx type formation.
Manipular army formation (circa 300BC). Skirmishers in front, cavalry on the wings and the three lines of infantry in checkerboard formation
Each of the three types would be divided into 20 maniples of 120 men each (except the triarii who had only 60 men per maniple). During marches and before engaging the enemy in battle the maniples would march as separate groups. They would create a checkerboard formation while marching towards the enemy and only when they engaged would they close the ranks, forming a closed front. The Hastati would be the first ones to engage the enemy, while the other two groups would wait behind. If they weren’t able to break the enemy, they would slowly start to retreat through the gaps in the checkerboard formation from the Principes, who would in turn take the front to relief them. After a while the same process would be repeated with the principes slowly giving way while the rested Hastati would charge again. The triarii would be waiting in the back and would join the battle just if the hastati and principes started to retreat.
Animation of the triple acies (in red): The hastati (first line) engage the enemy and after a while are relieved by the principes (second line), the triarii (third line) wait. The relief process is restarted between the two first lines every few minutes.
Apart from changing the way units were deployed in respect to one another, the manipular system also changed the inner structure of the units. As stated above, only the triarii remained as a tightly packed spearmen unit. The hastati and principes would be armed with short swords instead of spears, their formation would also be much looser, leaving close to a metre of space between men, both to the sides and to the front and back. The formation would close up when encountering the enemy to have the same advantages of a phalanx, but the spacing between men would permit much more manoeuvrability when charging, as well as making rough terrain less difficult for the formations to negotiate while keeping their cohesion.
Spacing and position in a typical 120 men maniple. The loose formation would make cohesion through rough terrain less difficult and would make turning and flanking much easier. Once in combat the maniple would close the gaps and fight should to shoulder.
As well as being more nimble in the thick of battle maniples had the added value of being much more reactive. Each maniple would have a commanding officer that could order the soldier around where the enemy was pressing harder. This alone was a competitive advantage against other non-reactive units like phalanxes, where the conditions of formation made it almost impossible for the unit to react to new elements in the battlefield; Once a phalanx was committed, it would push forward until the enemy broke. A maniple could shift from one flank to another or be redeployed as needed.
The manipular legion conquered Italy for the Romans, then Carthage, Spain, Greece and the western end of modern Turkey (which the Romans called Asia). The flexibility and strength of the legions would allow them to outflank slower forces, resist in the battlefield longer than less disciplined enemies and adapt to any changes in battle.
Phase 3: Cohorts and landless mules
by 107BC the Roman army was victorious almost everywhere, but it was still a citizen army in the old style, with only landowners allowed to join. Throughout the centuries a ‘compensation’ for the soldiers that had to stay for longer than the usual campaigning season had been introduced but it was still too low and many of the soldiers would get back to their farms after serving their time and find them in ruins. Many a retired soldier had to sell their farm to rich landowners and as the land accumulated in the hands of fewer people more and more dispossessed ended up in Rome and other cities as beggars or even slaves.
Gaius Marius, the consul for that year, found himself in dire straits to get enough land owning men to levy his new army. He had to go north to fight the Cimbri and the Teutones, two marauding germanic tribes that had beaten already a consular army the year before. The Romans were dead scared of the barbarians from the north, still traumatised from the sacking of Rome in 390BC by the gallic warlord Brennus, they were more than happy to give Marius full powers to recruit his army in any way he saw fit.
Marius decided to completely discard the notion of having to be a landowner to join the army. He opened the door to anyone that wanted to join the army, he would equip them, train them, and give them a salary. Marius effectively created the first professional army. As a side note, only Roman citizens could join the legions but the auxilia, other units in the army like archers, light cavalry, or even different types of infantry, could join the army and would receive the Roman citizenship as a discharge bonus. Having a professional army meant that Rome didn’t have to levy and train an army every time an enemy appeared. Their battle hardened veterans would be ready and willing all year round.
The other huge change that Marius introduced to the army (state sponsored unified equipment) had a twofold goal in mind: Firstly, to make sure anyone regardless of income, could join the army. Secondly, and here lies the genius of Marius, he included all the necessary tools for a soldier to survive during campaign away from supplies. Soldiers would also have to carry their own armour and all equipment by themselves. This meant an army didn’t depend on a baggage train anymore, making them much more mobile, less dependant on supply lines and battle ready no matter how far away from friendly territory they were.
The amount of equipment a legionary had to carry (two javelins, armour, helmet, sword, two sets of sandals, clothes, a cooking pot, a knife, flint, shovel, pickaxe and food supplies for two weeks) earned them the friendly nickname Marius’ mules. Enemies most likely didn’t find the name as amusing as the Romans did.
Marius also got rid of the triple maniple distinction, all legionaries would be equipped equally now. That meant and army wouldn’t become unbalanced if too many soldiers of a particular unit were killed or deserted, any other unit could fill in for them. Furthermore, supplying an army became much simpler. On the other hand, the proven qualities of the previous manipular organisation were kept when possible: Soldiers still marched in a checkerboard formation to the front and kept loose spacing between themselves until encountering the enemy, they would also keep units nimble and reactive by having commanding officers that would have the authority to move a unit around the battle if the circumstances changed. The organisation of the units was slightly changed (bigger units but also more organised subdivisions up to the smallest 8 men contubernium) but the main structure remained.
A side effect of opening the doors to any Roman citizen was the shifting of the loyalty of the army from «Rome» as a common ideal and origin to generals. Roman citizens could come from any corner of the Mediterranean, most of Rome’s inhabitants were Roman citizens but that doesn’t mean that most Roman citizens were from Rome proper. Most of Latium (the area in Italy around Rome) had been given the Roman citizenship just a few years prior, and some cities around the conquered territories had been given citizenship as well. Citizens had the right to vote if they were in Rome (unlikely if you lived miles away) as well as some tax breaks and, of course, the right to join the legions. On top of that, the base yearly payment a soldier would receive has just about enough to make ends meet, the only way to make some extra cash was plundering. That meant soldiers would end up being more loyal to a charismatic and successful commander than to the politicians in Rome. Less than two decades after the marian reforms a Roman army marched against its mother city for the first time (by far not the last).
Epilogue: Cavalry and germanisation
The marian mules remained as the main infantry force until the fall of the western Roman empire five centuries later. However less and less Romans were willing to join the army after centuries of peace; there was a tendency to make use of the northern barbarians (germanic tribes mostly) as the main force in the empire. Both as cavalry (in the auxilia), as legionaries, and finally in their own units with their own tribal leaders. By the end of the empire the Roman army was more a mercenary group than anything else. Rebellions became more common, since every army was loyal to money and nothing else. The reasons for the decline are complex and and long, but by the fall of Rome the legions were long gone.
In the year 371BC the Spartan army was unexpectedly defeated by the Thebans in the battle of Leuctra. The Spartans had been beaten before, but never in a pitched battle against an enemy of similar numbers. Their hoplites (very heavy infantry) were rightfully considered the elite by everyone in Greece.
But, how did the Thebans manage to beat them against all odds? We will need to go a little deeper into hoplite tactics and equipment to explain that.
Ancient Greek hoplites were the heavy infantry of choice for everyone. Those with enough money would regularly hire them as mercenaries, and the only way to stop a hoplite unit was to outnumber them in order to attack them in the flanks and rear or to have your own hoplites to challenge them head-on. Everyone and their dog knew than matching a less armored unit against hoplites would be nothing more than throwing them to a meat grinder, so other soldiers were understandably reluctant to follow orders that would pit them against a unit of Greek mercenaries.
Two hoplites wearing greaves, helmet, hoplon (shield), cuirass and wielding the classical spear (dori) .
What made them so damn good at their job was their equipment, formation and discipline. They would fight shoulder to shoulder, wearing greaves, helmets, cuirasses and carrying their huge shields (Hoplons) and a spear about 2 meters long. In battle the hoplites would raise their shield and spears in a tight formation 8 to 12 men deep, only the first 3 or 4 lines would actually be able to reach the enemy with their weapons, however the men behind were important for bracing and pushing. The hoplite wall would start marching and charge the enemy, once engaged they would push forward while thrusting their spears. The sheer pressure of 200 odd men in heavy armor pushing a less heavy unit backwards would normally be enough to make the enemy infantry waver and start losing their cohesion. Once that happened the hoplite wall would be able to pick the fleeing enemies one by one or let the cavalry mow them down once they were broken.
Even against vastly superior numbers the only way through a hoplite wall was throwing a better hoplite wall against it. The 300 Spartans (and four thousand Thespians) famously bogged down an army that was probably 30 times bigger at Thermopylae. The Greeks knew better than to hope to beat hoplites with anything that wasn´t your own hoplites and within the Greek world everyone knew the Spartans were the very best. This was an accepted fact, saying there was any better infantry than hoplites and that the Spartiates weren’t the best ones was just wrong.
Hoplite forces had also a natural tendency to drift right when marching; soldiers would hold their shield with the left arm, covering the left part of their body and being covered on the right side by the shield of their companion to the right-hand. In such circumstances the natural reaction is to instinctively remain as close to the shield to your right, in order to avoid a gap between shields forming. If every person in a unit tends to push to the right in order to remain under cover the unit will quickly start charging diagonally. In battle this could lead to gaps opening between units, exposing the soft flanks of the formation for the enemy to exploit.
To avoid this Greek armies would usually present a front with their best and most seasoned units on the right flank: Being the most experienced they would be able to control the tendency to drift to the right better and prevent the whole army drifting since less experienced units would be “stopped” in their drift by the straight marching right flank. Again, this was the accepted battle tradition, and everyone expected everyone else to do it because “that’s the way things were”.
Typical Hoplite deployment. In red on the respective right flanks the most veteran troops.
Epaminondas, the Theban commander, counting on the Spartans to follow tradition (not a risky bet at all, the Spartans were notoriously conservative) decided to mass his best soldiers on the left flank instead, while placing his other units further back the more to the right they were, effectively creating a echelon formation and making sure the first forces that met were the main Spartan force against his own crack troops. He also massed his cavalry on the left flank and created a 50 man deep formation for his Hoplites on the left, instead of the common 8 to 12 deep formation.
Deployment by king Cleombrotus I of Sparta (top) and Epaminondas (bottom). Notice the deeper left flank and the gradual echelon of the middle and right flanksThe two fronts advance. The left flank from the Thebans encounter the right flank from the Spartans and start pushing them back. The allies of both haven’t reached each other yet thanks to the Theban deployment
The Spartans, completely oblivious, settled for a classic flat front with themselves as the elite troops on the right and their Peloponnesian allies on the left. As soon as the two fronts met the Theban’s 50 deep phalanx managed to break the thinner Spartan line and rout them. The Spartan allies, who still hadn’t engaged the Thebans thanks to Epaminondas echelon formation, turned back and left the battlefield without fighting as soon as they saw the main Spartan unit beaten.
The Spartan right flank is routed by the Thebans and flees. The Spartan allies, seeing the right flank broken, turn back without engaging the Theban allies who at this point have stopped marching
The defeat proved to be a turning point for the balance of power; No longer were the Spartans the undisputed masters of the Peloponnese and most of the cities in the north of the peninsula rose in revolt against Spartan dominance along with the Messenians, the inhabitants of the region immediately due west of Sparta.
Sparta would never again rise to be the hegemonic power in Greece, their predisposition to superstition and adherence to their ancient rules would prevent them from ever reinventing themselves. Their short lived empire after their defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian war was a one off experience and the Spartans decided to revert to their traditional isolationism.
The deeper formation that had soundly beaten the Spartans was further developed in the next decades by king Phillip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, who at the time was a hostage of sorts in the Theban Polis and probably had first hand experience of the training of the Theban army and of the battle itself. Phillip would give his hoplites a much longer spear, slightly lighter armour and smaller shield. His pikemen phalanxes would steamroll the whole of Greece and the Persian Empire in the hands of his son Alexander, who famously never lost a battle. The pikemen phalanx remained the most powerful infantry unit in the ancient world in the Greek successor kingdoms until the Romans beat them using the manipular system, but that is a story for another day.
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