07-09-2014, 10:17 PM
Quote:I am obviously not as knowledgeable as many posters here, but from what I know about Roman army (and hope is close to what is known in reality) they do seem to be a sort of archetypal army for today modern armies (at least some of "western" world).
I too consider we can draw a parallel betwen decuria, centuria, cohors and legions with modern teams/groups/sections, platoons, companies, regiments etc.
Then the discipline, order, training is again something to compare. Even most of the stuffs they train for, marches, using of individual or group weapons (balista, catapults), individual figthing, battle formations etc have a modern corespondent.
Using communication signals (sound or visual ones) to command the troops and training them to follow these. Having spies and scouts. Having a very good logistic, including soldiers carrying their food for few days, their individual weapons, armour etc on them, during marching, those can be see today too in modern armies.
Today artilery have the ancient corespondent in their balistae and catapults, they use too combined arms, with artilery opening fire first, from the distance, as barrage fire or for softening the enemy before the attack, with mobile troops maneuvering, cavalry working in cooperation with infantry and field artilery and archers or so.
They had medical staff with the army, treating the wounded ones right on the battlefield, and I think they had hospitals too in the empire, for those returning from the war.
Polishing your weapons and armour/equipment for inspection or triumphal marches, thats another thing coming from them I think. The eagle on top of modern flags is again a remembering of that of legions vexiliums.
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You bring up some very valid comparisons but you could remove Roman and substitute ancient Chinese for all of them and it would apply just as much. There are only so many ways to operate militarily, especially at a preelectronic, premodern era. In order to communicate, flags and musical instruments would be necessary. In order to shoot arrows and rocks a long way, torsion devices would need to be created. In order for soldiers to proficient or in shape and carry out combat operations, training and physical conditioning is necessary. Spies and scouts were not created by or even unique to the Roman, nor was the concept of training, professionalized militaries, separating large groups of warriors into cohesives subunits, or any of the other examples you provided. Maybe the medicos, but most of them would have been quacks anyway with little real knowledge (as compared to modern medics in western nations).
The militaries of the modern western world are all based on the military systems of England, France, America, Russia, and Germany of the 19th-20th centuries, who were pioneers of their day. Add in a touch of modern ideas that originated after WWII, such as equality and human rights. Before that, those militaries evolved from Age of Enlightenment armies and late Renaissance versions, like the Swiss, French and Spanish, who dominated militarily. Before that, during the Medieval era, there was a military system in western Europe based on concepts like feudalism. Before that, there were barbarian tribes. What I am trying to get at, is that the similarities we see between the modern military and the Romans isn't the result of evolutionary progress, its cosmetic. The Romans (at least the military systems of the Republic and Principate era) were specific to a narrow time frame and culture and ceased to exist even in the late Roman army. Those similarities exist because "efficient" militaries by nature have to act a specific way. We don't do things because the Romans did it that way, we do them because sometimes the reason for doing something is the same reason they would do something, so you end up with similar concepts and methods of dealing with problems. At a glance its always interesting to see the similarities. But look deeper and those similarities disappear, as the Romans were a very unique people, who did things completely different from their own contemporaries.
