Roman Battle Tactics 390–110 BC

Osprey Elite #172

by Nic Fields, Gerry Embleton (Illustrator), Samuel Embleton (Illustrator)

By 390 BC, the organization of the Roman army was in need of change. Fighting in the Greek-style with a heavy infantry was proving increasingly outdated and inflexible, resulting in the Roman's defeat at the hands of the Gauls at the battle of Allia. Following on from this catastrophe and in the next fifty years of warfare against Gallic and Italian tribes, a military revolution was the legion. This was a new unit of organization made up of three flexible lines of maniples consisting of troops of both heavy and light infantry. However, at the end of the 3rd century BC, Rome's prestige was shattered once more by the genius of Hannibal of Carthage, causing Roman battle tactics to be revised again. The legendary general Scipio Africanus achieved this, finally destroying the Carthaginian army at the climactic victory of Zama. A wholly new kind of soldier had been invented, and the whole Mediterranean world was now at Rome's feet. This book reveals these two defining moments in Roman military history and the revolution in battle tactics that was the result, examining how the Roman army eventually became all-conquering and all-powerful.

Genres: History, Military History, Nonfiction, Ancient History, Military Fiction

64 pages, Paperback

First published November 17, 2009

About the author

Dr Nic Fields started his career as a biochemist before joining the Royal Marines. Having left the Navy, he went back to University and completed a BA and PhD in Ancient History at the University of Newcastle. He was Assistant Director at the British School of Archaeology, Athens, and is now a lecturer in Ancient History and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh.

Reviews

[Rindis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Osprey's battle tactics series continues to be well done overall. This one concentrates a bit more on background, but that doesn't really interfere with the main parts of the presentation. Despite the title, Fields takes a look at the situation on the Italian peninsula from Rome's founding ca. 750 BC, and discusses the likely organization (or lack thereof) of fighting in that period.

Unlike other titles in this series, there's not a lot of battle discussion. There is some, with seven diagrams of pertinent battles, but there's no sidebar discussion of them in particular, and the mentions in the main text are usually very brief. The worst part of the book is missed opportunities: There are sections titled 'Phalanx versus war band' and 'Legion versus phalanx', that could have been about how one organization was superior to/defeated the other, but instead lightly touches on the battles mentioned before. Worse, the first one shows a couple of Roman defeats by war bands, and doesn't go into the actual advantages brought to warfare by adopting such an organized formation.

The heart of the book is of course the manipular legion of the Republic, which is fairly well understood, and I've seen explained elsewhere, so this book isn't all that new for someone who's read a bit of Roman military history. However, it does nicely bring everything together into one place, and as always with Osprey, does a good job of showing the actual equipment of the period. It also includes a good page or so on the Roman practice of establishing a fortified camp each night on the march, and showing how that worked.

Of the various pre-modern Battle Tactic books, this is the one with information that is easiest to find elsewhere, but it is nicely gathered together, and well illustrated, making it one of the better single references on the subject I've seen.

[Burt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a 2010 edition of the older volume illustrated, and it is fantastic. Its very hard to find anything reliable on the early Republic period of the Roman Army up until the Punic wars, so this volume is very welcome. It's very readable and the maps and illustrations are absolutely first-rate.