Roman army: From phalanx to legion - Essay Example

In terms of their military approach, the Romans did not fear giving up their traditional ways but they even had considered changing their system and had become accustomed to some new armed skills for advancement. According to Garry Forsythe (1994), the earliest Roman army was really distinctive to what the later imperial army had become. From the beginning, Romans were using the phalanx, a four-sided column army formation which by tradition, was totally made up of heavy infantry armed with long spears and pikes, swords, or other similar weapons, as the mode of their battle which was similar to the Greeks, Macedonians and Carthaginians.

It is the case that the early Roman soldiers appeared much similar to the Ancient Greek citizen-soldiers, the hoplites. In order for the Romans to re-assert the right to central Italy, the Roman army believed some reforms were needed including their consideration to some form of re-organization. Since they had just adopted the phalanx from the Greek whose soldiers were on even flat grounds, they knew that they had to modify their formation for it was difficult for them to move on a hilly terrain.

As they had evidenced that using the phalanx formation was not an efficient and also an unwieldy, slow-moving organization in their battles on the mountainous and cracked lands, the Roman army abandoned the Greek phalanx formation as their mode of battle and has transformed to a legion which had undergone modifications over the centuries. The Romans were able to demonstrate their remarkable skill for adaptability. For the historian Guisepi (1994), the legion was not really at first a particular military formation of that kind but had stemmed off from the selection of soldiers during the Roman’s yearly public assembly.

Legion’s early development was an organization with about 4000 to 6000 soldiers on foot or the infantry, with heavy weapons as backed up by the cavalry and infantry with light weapons. Unlike their earlier formation as influenced by the Greek, the legion was seen useful and strategic because of the formation’s flexibility and mobility. From the solid rectangular formation of military soldiers, the development was into maniples, a subdivision of Roman legion composed of about 120 men. As a replacement for the solid formation, the maniples were marching in column which enabled the Roman army to combat in an open, wide and adaptable battle formation.

The Roman armies were the male citizens whose age ranged from 17 years old to 46 years old who were called for duty every single year. However, it was a mandated requirement that all men of their ages whether young or old should join the military in situations of emergency. Units which were composed of a hundred men from each class were called centuries or hundreds. These units were headed by the centurions. However, this set up lasted only until the end of 2nd century (Guisepi, 1994). As expressed by Guisepi (1994) that just before the last part of the 2nd century BC, the organization of the