We need to begin with the obvious: pitched battles are exceptional occurrences in war. Soldiers spent most of their time on the march, in their camps, on garrison duties, and in training. Soldiers, in presence of the enemy, were not, in general, fighting pitched battles, but engaged in skirmishes, fighting unexpected raiding incursions, or involved in counter-raiding expeditions; they engaged in tactical maneuvers that often did not end with direct confrontations, either because they failed to achieve their tactical intentions or because the enemy succeeded and avoided entrapment, or because the success of the maneuver forced the enemy to surrender without fighting. Roman soldiers were spending much more time in siege warfare than in facing the enemy on a battlefield. It is a common saying that the Romans won their wars with spades rather than swords. Any person reading Caesar’s war commentaries knows the fundamental importance of siege warfare during the Gallic and the Civil War: Caesar’s legionaries spent most of their campaigns besieging cities and camps, or trying to immobilize enemies by entrenching them.
As for the actual battles, it is an illusion to believe in a single model, in the existence of sets of rules that could be applied uniformly to a so-called “Roman art of war.” How could it be otherwise? Topographic and climatic factors are never predictable, the respective sizes of the armies on the field, the fighting skills of the soldiers on both sides, and the different tactics used by the adversaries, all these factors, and the list is far from being exhaustive, render illusory the belief in a “model” systematically followed by Roman generals. In the period under consideration, the Roman army fought guerilla wars, slave insurrections, pirates, and, of course, civil wars. Wars against foreign enemies were never comparable and forced the Romans to face challenges, to respond to different enemy fighting skills. The strategies and tactics used by Rome’s enemies were always different: Jugurtha in Numidia, Mithridates or Tigranes in the East, the Parthians across the Euphrates, the Celtic tribes in Gaul, the Germans both in Germany and during their migration across the Rhine, the Britons, the Spaniards, to name but few, were different peoples, different societies, using different ways of fighting.
This is not to say that Roman generals and Roman soldiers were not fighting according to general principles of engagement. We have discussed their combat formations (the cohortal system), their weapons, and their training. In ideal conditions, they expected to fight as follows: the legionaries would face the enemy by standing in three lines (although, as we have seen, two lines or even a single line may be used depending on numerical and topographical considerations), their flanks protected either by cavalry, natural obstacles, or man-made fortifications. The general would address the soldiers before the signal was given for the assault. Then the legionaries would start marching slowly and silently toward the enemy’s lines until reaching a distance from which they could effectively throw their javelins. It was only at that point that they would run, discharge a volley of pita, and shout the war cry. If the enemy had not disbanded, they would draw their swords for hand-to-hand combat. In most cases, such disciplined and determined charges would break the enemy’s will and both cavalry and infantry would slaughter the routed enemy. But if the enemy had not been defeated and firmly stood their ground, the battle would be decided by the fighting skill and the courage of the legionaries, the leadership of the centurions, and the general’s skill in shifting cohorts where needed or in using reserves at the appropriate moment.
This is generally how modern Roman historians describe a battle and this scenario can be found in some ancient accounts. The main problem came when a battle was not decided speedily, namely in those few minutes when an infantryman could physically fight. This was the key question addressed by P. Sabin20 and explained by his concept of “sporadic close combat,” describing Roman infantry clashes “as a natural stand-off punctuated by periodic and localized charges into contact.” Sabin’s interpretation is probably the best explanation of what happened on the battlefield when battles were fought for hours. And yet, Sabin’s “model” applies only to prolonged infantry battles and, ultimately, remains a “model.” It is logical and it may have worked, but it is still an explanation founded on the need for historians to impose, in the words of A. K. Goldsworthy, “a neat order on chaos,” the chaos of the battlefield.
In conclusion, I would like to insist on the fact that there were no “models” in battles fought by the Romans. In the first six books of Caesar’s De Bello Gallico (from 58 to 52 bc), we find the descriptions of seven pitched battles: (1) against the Helvetii in 58 bc (1.24-26); (2) against Ariovistus in 58 bc (1.51-52); (3) against the Belgae in 57 bc (2.8-11); (4) against the Nervii and their allies in 57 bc (2.19-28); (5) against the German tribes of the Tencteri and Usipetes in 56 bc (4.7-15); (6) two battles under the command of Labienus against the Treveri in 53 (6.7-8); and (7) against the Parisii in 52 bc (7.57-62). None of these battles followed a common pattern, but all depended upon circumstances and these circumstances were always specific. Circumstances could also be created by the generals themselves who wanted to avoid an enemy able to predict their strategy and tactics: as Appian quotes Caesar: “the most potent thing in war is unexpectedness” (B. Civ. 2.53). This conclusion is valid for all the wars fought by the Romans and, we may add, for all wars in world history.
It is with Julius Caesar that this chapter concludes. The army recruited, organized, and trained by Julius Caesar in Gaul marks a turning point in Roman military history - the birth of a highly efficient professional army and the model of the imperial army. And yet, Caesar did not create a new army and did nothing new in terms of tactics and strategy. In its structure, the Roman army that Caesar commanded was not much different from those under the commands of Marius, Sulla, Lucullus, or Pompey. What was different was Caesar’s soldiers’ image of themselves, as soldiers. The concept of the Roman soldier fighting for Rome “as a duty, a responsibility and a privilege” was dead. Soldiers were now highly trained and highly efficient professionals. They fought because they lived for fighting. There was no “revolution” in the nature of the Roman army in the middle of the second century bc, only a progressive evolution of what soldiers came to be. We may say of Caesar what we said of Marius: he did not change the army, but made the best possible use of the armed forces as they existed, and he had the genius of making his soldiers “realize” who they “really” were - potentially the best soldiers in Western history. And, on this model, the Roman army made it possible for the Roman Empire to achieve peace and security for more than two centuries.
World History
