List of Roman army unit types

Roman

A Roman or Romans is a thing or person of or from the city of Rome

Roman or Romans may also refer to:

History

Roman army

The Roman army (Latin: exercitus Romanus, literally: Roman Army; Ancient Greek: στρατός Ῥωμαίων, transcription: stratos Romaion) is a term encompassing the terrestrial armed forces deployed by the Roman Kingdom (to c. 500 BC), the Roman Republic (500–31 BC), the Roman Empire (31 BC – 395/476 AD) and its successor the East Roman or Byzantine Empire. It is thus a term that spans approximately 2,000 years, during which the Roman armed forces underwent numerous permutations in composition, organization, equipment and tactics, while conserving a core of lasting traditions.

Historical phases

The development of the Roman army was divided into eight phases.

Early Roman army (c. 500 B.C. to c. 300 B.C.)

The Early Roman army of the Roman kingdom and of the early republic (to c. 300 BC). During this period, when warfare chiefly consisted of small-scale plundering-raids, it has been suggested that the Roman army followed Etruscan or Greek models of organisation and equipment. The early Roman army was based on an annual levy.

Roman legion

A Roman legion (from Latin legio "military levy, conscription", from legere "to choose") normally indicates the basic ancient Roman army unit recruited specifically from Roman citizens.

In reference to the early Roman Kingdom (as opposed to the Roman Republic or Empire), "the legion" means the entire Roman army. The subsequent organization of legions varied greatly over time but they were typically composed of around five thousand soldiers, divided into three lines of ten maniples during the republic, and later into ten cohorts during the early empire. Legions also included a small cavalry unit. By the third century, the legion was a much smaller unit of about 1,000 to 1,500 men, and there were more of them. In the fourth century, East Roman border guard legions (limitanei) may have become even smaller.

For most of the Roman Imperial period, the legions formed the Roman army's elite heavy infantry, recruited exclusively from Roman citizens, while the remainder of the army consisted of auxiliaries, who provided additional infantry and the vast majority of the Roman army's cavalry. (Provincials who aspired to citizenship gained it when honorably discharged from the auxiliaries). The Roman army, for most of the Imperial period, consisted mostly of auxiliaries rather than legions.

Punic Wars

The Punic Wars were a series of three wars fought between Rome and Carthage from 264 BC to 146 BC. At the time, they were probably the largest wars that had ever taken place. The term Punic comes from the Latin word Punicus (or Poenicus), meaning "Carthaginian", with reference to the Carthaginians' Phoenician ancestry. The main cause of the Punic Wars was the conflicts of interest between the existing Carthaginian Empire and the expanding Roman Republic. The Romans were initially interested in expansion via Sicily (which at that time was a cultural melting pot), part of which lay under Carthaginian control. At the start of the first Punic War, Carthage was the dominant power of the Western Mediterranean, with an extensive maritime empire. Rome was a rapidly ascending power in Italy, but it lacked the naval power of Carthage. By the end of the third war, after more than a hundred years and the loss of many hundreds of thousands of soldiers from both sides, Rome had conquered Carthage's empire, completely destroyed the city, and become the most powerful state of the Western Mediterranean.