The Legions of First Man in Rome

The Legions
To intelligently discuss how historical armies translate into the campaign armies, we first need to understand the scale. DBA elements represent 250 men per figure on the base, so a 2-figure base is 500 men, a 3-figure base is 750 men, and a 4-figure base is 1,000 men. The artillery, elephants, and chariots are on a somewhat different scale, with one model representing ‘enough’ of the troop type to influence the battle, but typically no more than 100 elephants, chariots or light artillery pieces.

In the period we are playing the game, the Roman army was based on the later Polybian legion, but was transitioning to the organization we know as the ‘Marian’ legion. There were several factors in that transition.

The Polybian legion (Polybius was a Roman historian, not a general, and the name of the general who imposed the organization is lost to history) consisted of three main lines of battle and a force of skirmishers. The main lines of battle were the hastati or swift ones, and the principes or main line, and the triarii or third line. The century of 80 men was the basic building block for the first two lines, and these lines were organized into 10 maniples of 2 centuries each, or 1,600 men. The third line of triarii consisted of 10 detachments each of 1 century of triarii and 1 century of skirmishers, who were known as velites. The velites skirmished in front of the hastati and then fell back and rallied behind the triarii. One of the main distinctions between the classes of legionaries was how much property they owned. Velites, in particular, lacked the resources for the full chainmail, heavy shield, greaves and helmet expected of the triarii. Principes and hastati were usually in mail by this period, although the earlier pectoral defense may still have been in use. These two battle lines were equipped with pila, while the velites had lighter javelins, and the triarii traditionally had the 12-foot hasta or Greek thrusting spear. This force thus consisted of approximately 4,800 men, or 4-5 DBA elements.

Traditionally, a force of one legion was assisted by an ‘ala sociae’ or wing of allies. These troops had initially consisted of 4Ax types, but by the Carthaginian Wars they were being replaced by Latin and Italian legions. By our period, there was no difference in organization or equipment between the ‘Roman’ legion and the ‘Italian’ legion.

DBA Army lists give the ‘Polybian’ army 6 stands of blades (hastati and principes) and 2 stands of spears (triarii) plus 2 stands of psiloi (velites). The remaining two stands are cavalry. At 250 men per figure, this gives the DBA army a strength of two legions (6,000 blades, 2,000 spears, 1,000 psiloi).

The ‘Marian’ legion differed from the ‘Polybian’ legion primarily in that Marius got a law permitting the ‘Capite Censi’, or Head Count, citizens of Rome to serve in the legions, with the state providing the equipment. This had been done earlier by generals who temporarily used ‘accensi’ or ‘outside the count’ troops as extra spearmen, and by forming penal legions. The theory is that those accensi were baggage handlers, who normally were made up from men whose property status wouldn't extend even to velites.

Marius’ law was the first permanent recruitment status for the Head Count. While a necessary reform due to the manpower crises that were to face Rome, the absence of a formal retirement/mustering out system turned the Head Count legionaries into his general’s client. This switched the allegiance of the soldier from the state to the general, and also allowed the propertied class to avoid military service. Roman cavalry disappeared as businessmen discovered that furnishing Gallic or Spanish horse was much preferred to serving themselves. The status of triarii became a long-service rank, rather than an indication of propertied status, and the Roman velite disappeared within a generation of the law change.

The number of soldiers in the Marian legion was essentially the same as in the Polybian legion. Tactically, the legion now formed up permanently in 10 cohorts, each of which contained three maniples (theoretically, one each of hastati, principes, and triarii/velites). Marius made no pronouncement on the use of spears, and it’s doubtful he had strong opinions on the use of Roman velites. So in the time of Gaius Marius it’s probable that spear-armed triarii served alongside Head Count legionaries, according to the general’s preference. Certainly 50 years later his nephew, Julius Caesar, made use of troops armed with siege spears (triarii?) to stop Titus Labienus’ cavalry charge at Pharsalus. But by and large, the ease of training the legionaries in a single weapon led to the spear disappearing.

The Marian list produces the same infantry structure as the Polybian with the two spears changed to blades if the option to use two psiloi stands is taken. So we can confidently call a DBA army of either type ‘two legions’.

Auxiliaries and Cavalry
Outside the small cavalry contingent accompanying the Roman general, and allied Italian cavalry contingents, most of the ‘Roman’ cavalry of the period was mercenary. A two-legion army was normally supported by approximately 750-1,500 cavalry, mostly drawn from Italian states such as Campania. During the Polybian period about a quarter of this cavalry was Roman equites (members of the upper middle class - sons of businessmen who could afford a horse as well as the more expensive cavalry armor). Some of the senior equites families were awarded a Public Horse for the families’ previous service to the republic. Gnaeus Pompeius was one such. During this period, recruiting Italianicized Gauls from Picentia, Umbria and Cisalpine Gaul was popular as a substitute for Roman or Italian cavalry. In the campaign all these troop types, being either Romans, Italians or their clients, are treated as ‘Roman’.

Roman armies of Marius’ day preferred Spanish, Gallic and Numidian cavalry (Galatian Gauls in the east) but used Italian and Hellenistic mercenaries when available. The Hellenistic mercenary cavalry included a lot of Thracians, Scythians and Illyrians. With the exception of the Gauls, a small number of Spanish, and the Galatians, this was all light horse. A Roman army seldom had more than 10,000 cavalry (which would be 14 stands of 3Cv or 20 stands of 2LH), and then it had to be a pretty large army –hence the restriction on LH ratios per general. The 2x3Cv stands in each army list represent about all the mercenary heavy horse that was normally available. Those generals that had more usually recruited it while serving in provinces where it was plentiful.

The infantry auxiliaries varied greatly. Thracian and Galatian mercenaries turn up just about everywhere in the Mediterranean basin, as do Celtiberians. Traveling units of Greek/Macedonian thureophori or thorakitai (the linear ancestors of Augustus’ professional auxiliary force) could be found almost anywhere, frequently serving as civic guards/police. Smaller numbers of Lusitanians, western Gauls, Numidians, Illyrians, Ligurians, etc show up in Roman armies throughout the period. And of course, local recruitment could produce much larger numbers – Roman armies in the Spanish provinces frequently included large numbers of local troops, for example, as would Caesar’s army in Gaul 50 years later.

The difference between 4Ax and 3Ax in the campaign is artificial, to help in keeping track of ‘mercenary’ vs ‘local’ auxiliaries. In campaign terms the ‘irregular’ Thracians hired and shipped to Spain would cost more than ‘irregular’ Spanish hired locally. But both troop types would be 3Ax if we strictly followed DBA/DBM. However, keeping track separately of the expensive 3Ax isn’t worth the trouble.

A final troop type that I use 4Ax to represent is cohors ingenorum/cohors voluntariorum. These troops are not well defined and my personal theory is that they were raised from non-citizens (such as freedmen) in emergencies to augment manpower when the Romans were shorthanded. Certainly the permanent creation of some 30 cohorts of these troops in AD9-15 (corresponding to the Varian disaster in Germany and the Illyrian revolt) would tend to support this theory. They were probably armed and equipped like legionaries but their general inefficiency would make them less effective. Hence my classifying them as 4Ax rather than 4Bd. (In DBM, they might be Bd(I) or Ax(I) – both troop types are used to represent raw recruits in different Roman lists).

The 2Ps type represents the most common Roman auxiliary type of the Marian period. The Romans made a lot of use of Spanish caetrati, Celtic skirmishers, Hellenistic skirmishers, Thracians etc to support the legions. Specialists included Balearic slingers and Cretan archers, but these were by no means the only troops of either type used by the Romans. Syrian and Thracian archers became popular as Roman interests in the Eastern Mediterranean multiplied.

The ratio of the infantry to legionaries varied widely. Unlike the cavalry, where their were practical limits to their use, the only troops apparently in short supply were Cretans and Balearic slingers, and archers of any type in the Western Mediterranean.

A Marian DBM Army converted to DBA (1:4 ratio) shows the following

3Cv or 4Bd general
(4-9)x4Bd regular legionaries
(0-4)x4Bd or 4Ax raw recruit legionaries
up to:
2x3Cv Germans, Gauls, Spanish
2x2LH Numidians, Spanish, Thracians, Syrians
2x4Ax Hellenistic thureophoroi
3x3Ax Spanish, Thracians, Illyrians, Numidians, Ligurians, etc
5x2Ps Gauls, Spanish, Thracians, Cretans, Balearics, etc
2xART
additional potential in the East
2x3Bw
4x2LH

total: 32 elements (38 in the east)

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