Why Didn't Anyone Copy the Roman Army? - The Imitation Legions DOCUMENTARY

the Roman army is remembered today as one of the most effective fighting forces in history in its own time the legions prove their strength on the battlefield time after time against all who opposed them this raises the question if the Roman army was so powerful why didn't anyone simply just copy it to answer this question we will first dissect the specimen of the Roman legions this will allow us to understand what are the key features worth copying we will then be able to discuss what would be required to achieve these same features and to what

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admit that it's actually quite hard to find a representative specimen for the Roman army since it evolved over the course of almost a thousand years but with this understanding we can still make some pretty valid general observations for our video let's start from the low level analysis of the soldier and slowly zoom out to the unit analysis and finally the overall army analysis you can use these video timestamps if you want to jump ahead at the lowest level of the soldier we can look at things like personal equipment skill and discipline in terms of equipment

for instance we're talking about providing gear for a primarily heavy infantry base force again it's specific incarnation might vary but for much of the Roman Army's history that meant equipping soldiers with a short stabbing sword a throwing javelin a large oval or rectangular shield chainmail armor and a helmet in terms of personal skill members of the legion were initially just former soldiers called to action as a levy at first they had a fairly low skill level and it would be the responsibility of the general to prepare the troops for war at the start of a

campaign however there was often just a brief window for such activities and most training was done on the job the more fighting an army did the more skilled its troops became thus periods of prolonged high intensity campaigning could transform even the greenest of troops into battle hardened veterans such that they might even be considered semi professionals however attrition and the inevitable disbanding of forces in times of peace meant that the army skills could also quickly dull when not wetted by war this changed by the end of the Republican period and into the empire when Roman

legionaries became professional soldiers here they would be enlisted to serve careers of around 25 years that involve physical fitness weapons training tactical drills and more activities to ensure they kept their edge the historian Josephus noted that it would not be wrong to call their drills bloodless battles and their battles bloody drills as a result the overall skill of the Roman army was raised to even higher levels and could be counted on to remain so over the generations another benefit of this fact was that the army could now also begin to specialize in all sorts of

skills like engineering siege works logistics and more in terms of discipline the Roman army did not mess around even early on they employed a wide range of carrots and sticks to instill a high level of order and control for instance there were rules against lying very unmanly acts and dereliction of duty minor offenses might be met with lashings or a fine while major offenses could result in execution sometimes administered by one's own peers as would occur with the decimation on the other hand soldiers could also expect to be rewarded for acts of exceptional bravery this

involved special military decorations financial payments and promotion thus discipline was quite high among the rank-and-file Roman soldiers especially as the army became highly professionalized in its later years now that we've covered the individual level of the Roman legion let's zoom out to talk about the unit specifically its organization and leadership in terms of organization the Romans at first followed the Greek manner by arranging their forces into a rigid fellings before later adopting the more flexible manipular system in response to increased fighting in the rough terrain of Samian here soldiers were grouped together into units of

60 man centuries pairs of which formed a mana pole 10 mana poles then formed a battle line of which there were now three the main advantage here was that each maniple could function independently giving the army as a whole much more flexibility this had huge benefits when it came to advancing fighting reinforcing exploiting opportunities in combat and overall just widening the range of tactics available to the legions when the Roman army professionalized it would maintain this concept by joining together six centuries into a cohort of around 480 men ten of which formed a legion in

this way the smaller elements of a legion could still operate independently while boasting more manpower than the previous mana poles which gave the army greater tactical and strategic flexibility the Roman leadership structure was closely linked to the system of flexible modular units basically the way this worked is that each century had a commanding officer known as a Centurion as centuries were grouped together their Centurions would be ranked into a hierarchical chain of command out ranking them would be Tribune's and above them the general the higher levels of an army were typically members of the upper

class who joined over the worse of their political careers the centurions on the other hand were often military professionals who might spend decades in the army their embedment at all levels ensured that no matter who was in charge at the very top the army as a whole always had the institutional knowledge necessary to operate effectively their presence on the frontlines also helped with discipline and morale it also meant that the flexible roman units were empowered to make their own decisions on the fly which could ultimately turn the tide of battle their opponents on the other

hand were basically forced to face the chaos of war wearing a tactical straightjacket now we can finally zoom out to the overall army level here I'd like to talk about matters of resources and logistics in terms of resources this has to do with Rome's ability to devote massive amounts of manpower and money towards its military efforts such was the level of effort expended that they could often just overwhelm or outlast an opponent who might otherwise beat them in the short term we see this really first take place during Rome's clashes with Pyrrhus of Epirus Paris

won multiple battles but emerged each time bloodier and bloodier leading him to declare another victory like that and I am done for and eventually withdrawing completely the same phenomenon occurred during the Punic Wars when huge armies and fleets were raised time and again by Rome in the face of repeated devastating losses this ability to deploy such resources can be traced to a variety of factors including Rome's large pool of citizens its strong network of allies its stable political system and it's hard to quantify cultural bullheadedness as Republic turned to Empire Rome gained even more manpower

and wealth to pour into its military efforts which made it yet more formidable the leveraging of resources goes hand in hand with our next topic of logistics at first Rome was quite an experienced but gradually built up its skills over the course of its foreign expeditions eventually the legions were able to operate with the whole supply chain behind them making sure they had adequate supplies of food and equipment this not only allowed the army to operate at peak capacity but also gave it the strategic capability to campaign for longer amounts of time and over greater

distances than its enemies we have a whole series of videos on this subject if you want to learn more suffice to say Rome's massive resources coupled with an incredibly efficient logistical system provided a huge force multiplier to an army that was already incredibly powerful honestly there's a ton more to be said about all the intricacies of the Roman army but for now that should do it whoo okay so that was a lot of content to get through but it's definitely an important foundation to lay now we can consider why others didn't just copy the Roman

army we will do so by going through each element in the same order as before so as a would-be copycat you'd probably start by trying to replicate the individual Roman soldier in terms of equipment this should actually be fairly easy the type of gear the legions carried wasn't that exceptional most of their kit could be found in the other major armies of the Mediterranean who also fielded heavy infantry in fact the Romans are believed to have actually been the ones who copied from others for instance the famed Gladius sword came from the Iberian 's and

their large rounded scutum shield came from other Italian tribes over time however Roman manufacturing developed to the point where its forces were able to turn out large quantities of high-quality gear this allowed a greater proportion of the Roman army to be suitably equipped as compared to other forces it also allowed for the development of sophisticated novel armor sets like delorca segments ara this would be quite hard for others to copy without significant investment but failure to produce such items shouldn't necessarily be counted against would-be copycats after all the Lorca segment ara fell into disuse by

the Romans themselves dude it's high production and maintenance costs and even if it hadn't minor differences in equipment during this age wasn't a huge differentiator in the outcome of battles okay so your soldiers have acquired or already own equipment comparable to the legions now what about matching them and skill well again this shouldn't have been that difficult as we stated during the Republican period Roman troops were just levy soldiers with relatively little training as such their individual skills could be easily matched by soldiers from other warrior societies across the Mediterranean often the question of who

was better which has come down to simply who had more combat experience in these matters Rome didn't necessarily have the edge as they were not a uniquely martial power many of their peers in the Hellenistic Gallic Punic and Persian world's for instance frequently engage in warfare that produced hardened veterans who could go toe-to-toe with the Romans admittedly this equation began to change as the Roman army professionalized and raised the overall skill of its soldiers so why didn't our armies do the same well in many ways they already had professional soldiers were nothing new and many

other nations had their own full-time soldiers like the Persian immortals for instance even so-called barbarian armies had elite troops who made up the retinue of powerful chieftains oftentimes however these made up just a small part of the overall army thus to match the Romans you'd have to greatly increase the amount of professionals in your army this took a lot of money and power but it could be done philip ii of macedon for example famously leveraged the vast mineral wealth of the balkans and his own political position to reform the Macedonian army into a full-time professional

force it was this army that then marched to victory after victory under his son Alexander the great yet opportunities for such sweeping reforms were relatively rare this was especially true as Rome's rise to power often came at the expense of its rivals which meant that they were less and less able to pour in the financial and political capital necessary to keep up now let's talk about copying the Roman units organization and leadership this is arguably more important since as we said most of the time the quality of the rank-and-file troops was pretty comparable across different

armies in terms of organization we were left to ask why didn't anyone else break up the rigid failings into something more flexible like the Roman mana bowl again the answer is that well they did militaries of antiquity always faced evolutionary pressures from or and had long identified the potential weaknesses in the Phalanx style of fighting it's for this reason that the Phalanx was often accompanied by light troops and cavalry to cover up for its deficiencies during the Wars of the diadochi for instance changes to unit organization were seen with the increasing deployment of a new

type of medium infantry to fit between the heavy Pikeville and heights and the light skirmishers these units known as 304 oi filled a similar role to the man poles and that they could be used in a far more flexible manner on the battlefield but unlike the mana poles they were never really deployed on a large scale and remained as more of a support role but why not well part of the answer is that the fouling still worked and could prove devastating when properly supported another reason is that switching your whole army over to the manipular

system would also require a switch to your command and control system this now brings us to the question of copying the roman leadership all armies have a hierarchy of command but the depth to which they extend into an army vary greatly in time sometimes the lowest level officer controlled hundreds of men while other times that might just control dozens for instance during the Peloponnesian War we see that the athenian system was not as robust as the spartan one which extended down to the enema tacos in charge of around 40 men a group smaller than even

the roman century this helped give the spartans their edge when it came to tactical flexibility and discipline in battle thus we see that other armies were capable of having officers with similar command scopes to the Roman centurions the difference however was that the Roman centurions had the freedom to independently move their units about thus you see how both leadership and organization are interlinked and it would require quite the overhaul for someone to copy the roman unit system standing in the way would not only be the technical knowledge or resources but also the institutional barriers of

the current army model oftentimes this was a reflection of the society it came from with special roles and privileges for the nobility which would generally not want to have their boat rocked now we can finally turn to the idea of copying the Roman Army's resources and logistics at this point it's a pretty tall order to try and copy something on such a macro level getting more resources in terms of manpower and money for example is far easier said than done with only the major empires of history being able to contend with Rome in these matters

as for logistics that's also closely tied to the economy and infrastructure of a particular society many of Rome's contemporaries already had a logistical system in place with some being rather sophisticated and robust but ultimately they had no hope of competing with Rome without controlling an equivalently large amount of territory from which to draw supplies and without control of the same mediterranean sea lanes with which to efficiently link these to an army so where does that leave us well basically the Roman army had a lot going for it with much on the unit and army level

that was hard to replicate but that didn't stop some from trying the longtime enemy of Rome Mithridates of Pontus for instance apparently reorganized his forces after initial confrontation with the legions according to Plutarch quote he had swords forged in the Roman fashion and heavy shields welded and 120,000 footmen drilled in the Roman formation this was all done under the instruction of turncoat legionaries and Centurions recruited by the general in this way it appears that Mithradates had created an imitation Legion with the equipment organization and leadership to match unfortunately we have few records of this incident

and little with which to judge its performance ultimately however Mithridates did lose to Rome so it seems that the experiment was a failure and therein lies the problem this was an experiment at best the Roman military system was successful as a package deal all of its elements worked together such that its whole was greater than the sum of its parts therefore just copying bits and pieces wouldn't get you the same results yeah your imitation legions might look and even feel like the real thing on the training field but it won't hold up in the rigors

of war I hope you've enjoyed this video topic there's a ton more I wasn't able to cover so definitely let me know what you think made the Roman army so special in the comments below thanks for watching and see you in the next one