Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Sumerian phalanx-like formation c. 2400 BC, from detail of the victory stele of King Eannatum of Lagash over Umma, called the Stele of the Vultures. The phalanx (pl.: phalanxes or phalanges) [1] was a rectangular mass military formation, usually composed entirely of heavy infantry armed with spears, pikes, sarissas, or similar polearms tightly packed together.
The original Roman army was made up of hoplites, whose main strategy was forming into a phalanx. By the early third century BCE, the Roman army would switch to the maniple system, which would divide the Roman army into three units, hastati , principes , and triarii .
The rugged terrain of Samnium, where the war was fought, was not conducive to the phalanx formation which the Romans had inherited from the Etruscans and Ancient Greeks. The main battle troops of the Etruscans and Latins of this period comprised Greek-style hoplite phalanxes, inherited from the original Greek phalanx military unit.
The Roman army (Latin: exercitus ... Instead of a single, large mass (the phalanx) as in the Early Roman army, the Romans now drew up in three lines consisting of ...
For set-piece battles, in contrast the single massed line of the Early Roman army phalanx, the heavy infantry were usually drawn up in three lines (triplex acies). However, the vast majority of the heavy infantry (2,400 out of 3,000) were stationed in the front two lines, the hastati and principes. Contained in these lines were the younger ...
The Macedonian phalanx model then spread throughout the Hellenistic world, where it became the standard battle formation for pitched battles. During the Macedonian Wars against the Roman Republic (214–148 BC), the phalanx appeared obsolete against the more manoeuvrable Roman legions.
They served as heavy infantry in the early Roman army, and were used at the front of a very large phalanx formation. After a time, engagements with the Samnites and Gauls appear to have taught the Romans the importance of flexibility and the inadequacy of the phalanx on the rough, hilly ground of central Italy. [4] [5]
The early Roman army was deployed by ancient Rome during its Regal Era and into the early Republic around 300 BC, when the so-called "Polybian" or manipular legion was introduced. Until c. 550 BC, there was probably no "national" Roman army, but a series of clan-based war-bands, which only coalesced into a united force in periods of serious ...