[split] Psychology of the Roman soldier

[Bryan]

I too have questioned the very low rates of casualties given for the victors as opposed to the vanquished, the 5% total seems about right in this respect. But, you have to figure in the fact that perhaps these figures were fiddled with by the historian who wants to put over to his audience the fact that his societies brave soldiers were much better at fighting, and hence surviving than the enemy they fought who were slaughtered in droves. But even if the casualties quoted were accurate, we have no idea how many injured men were unable to fight after being wounded and who either ended up being invalided out of the army or who recovered and fought in later conflicts. I'm guessing that figure is much higher than the death casualty rate, say as high as 15% of the army total. So for a Late Roman army of 25,000 men a 5% death rate would be 1250 killed, and a potential 3750 wounded/out of action. This seems about right to me, and 20% total dead/incapacitated would explain why after a major battle it took time for another campaign to be conducted.

I think we also overestimate how effective swords, spears, javelins etc were at penetrating armour and shields, especially when ranks were closed and you could not fully extend the arm to use those weapons. And not made any easier by your opponent not wanting to just stand there and take the blow!

I think the easiest ways to explain the low casualty rates is to look at the number of total combatants present and compare them to the number of combatants serving in the front ranks of the battle line. Unless the enemy is extremely capable with missiles, ranks three and after will face little actual danger in the clash. I did the math earlier in another thread, JaM ignored it (as he does when the evidence counters his opinions). 

Sumer to Rome doesn't say 5% casualties for everyone before a rout, they say 5% for winners. Losers suffer typically suffered higher casualties, much more so if they routed instead of conducting an organized disengagement.  

Let's say that there are 300 Hoplites. They are formed up in a "typical" eight ranks deep formation, which means they have 37 full files, and one half file somewhere. So we'll just call it 38 for argument's sake. It means out of 300 hoplites there are 38 front rankers, 38 second rankers. That is 76 men in the "danger area." So the winning side of 300 hoplites suffers 5% casualties, which comes out to 15 hoplites. Likely, they'd come from those first two ranks, not ranks three through eight. Out of 76 men in the front two ranks that means they wouldn't actually suffer 20% casualties, so in man in five is dead or severely wounded. 

I included a picture below to illustrate this. Direction of travel is downward.  Ranks 1 and 2 suffer 1 in 6 casualties, 20% of those being death. Rank three suffers three casualties. All told the unit suffers its 5% casualties but you can see that the front ranks suffer pretty greatly. If the 300 hoplites actually fought a tough battle and suffered 10 percent casualties, an even higher number of the front ranks would be colored red, going up to 40% of all the front two ranks. 

For a Roman force, it would look a bit different, with the triplex acies being a typical Republican formation, with the addition of skirmishers, cavalry, and the quincunx gaps. But the same applies with them as well, out of all the infantry maniples in the battle, only a small percentage of them will actually be fighting in the front ranks, and they will likely be the ones who suffer the highest percentage of casualties, while most of the rest of the force will be relatively safe unless somehow they end up in the front line, or else the unit breaks and routs.