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.

Rome

Rome (/ˈroʊm/ ROHM; Italian: Roma [ˈroːma], Latin: Rōma) is a city and special comune (named Roma Capitale) in Italy. Rome is the capital of Italy and of the Lazio region. With 2.9 million residents in 1,285 km² (496.1 sq mi), it is also the country's largest and most populated comune and fourth-most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. The Metropolitan City of Rome has a population of 4.3 million residents. The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio (Latium), along the shores of Tiber river. The Vatican City is an independent country geographically located within the city boundaries of Rome, the only existing example of a country within a city: for this reason Rome has been often defined as capital of two states.

Rome's history spans more than two and a half thousand years. While Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at only around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe. The city's early population originated from a mix of Latins, Etruscans and Sabines. Eventually, the city successively became the capital of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and is regarded as one of the birthplaces of Western civilization and by some as the first ever metropolis. It is referred to as "Roma Aeterna" (The Eternal City) and "Caput Mundi" (Capital of the World), two central notions in ancient Roman culture.