Flexibility of the Legion

[sonic]

So many points to answer...

But even a bad general needs to know where the enemy is (whether he wants to fight the enemy or avoid them!), and that means scouting.

My whole point is that you are talking from the viewpoint of a decent general; many generals did not use scouts as "these were pointless, since once my legions get stuck in the enemy are defeated". Scouting is now taken for granted, but this was not always the case and Roman generals could be guilty of not using them. :evil:

Moreover, wasn't Cynoscephelae an 'encounter' battle, with the two sides meeting at the crest of a ridge and being unable to deploy fully before the battle began? Hardly an excellent use of scouts!!

I may be misremembering, but I thought the two armies were camped on opposite sides of the ridge, and neither knew the other was there. The first forces that met were actually foraging parties, each of which called for reinforcements, and the battle grew from there.

If they were within foraging distance, shouldn't they also have been within scouting distance? :?

Although it must be acknowledged that the Roman system of Consulships in the Republican era resulted in some excellent generals coming to the fore, we should also remember that there were many 'not-so-good' generals who either didn't bother to use scouts, or refused when scouts were recommended by more experienced senior officers under their command.

There were probably plenty of others who used their scouts very well but were still crappy generals! Plus, I don't think the system of appointing generals in the Empire was much better--you mostly had to be a trusted friend of the Emperor.

I agree with your point about poor generals using scouts, but then surely we are talking strategy v. tactics, with the point of strategy being to outmanoeuvre the enemy prior to the day of battle and the point of tactics being to defeat him (or her!!) on the battlefield? A poor tactician could lose a battle due to his lack of tactical skills but have been a good enough strategist to have outmanoeuvred the enemy before the battle and so have been in a superior position prior to the fighting.

Furthermore, I wasn't suggesting that the system under the the Empire was better, but there could still be outstanding generals such as Corbulo alongside bad ones such as .....?

I believe that the concept of the Roman army as a professional force run in an exceptionally professional way along modern lines does need to be tempered with the realisation that in many cases forces were ad hoc groupings of troops with no experience of working together under leaders whose arrogant belief in the superiority of their troops led to complacency and error. Thankfully (for them) their senior officers and troops often managed to pull the general's fat out of the fire!

True enough, to a certain extent. But that's how any large force was back then, and everyone was used to it. Since warfare essentially consisted of getting your army to the battlefield and then lining them up facing the right direction, training together wasn't that big a deal. Tell the archers to fire first, make sure the infantry holds firm and the cavalry doesn't charge too soon, etc. The whole system could work fine if the basics were covered and the troops were good--as the Romans usually were! Any good generalship beyond that was gravy.
Besides that, many modern forces are very thrown-together! There are all kinds of horror stories from recent campaigns of units not even knowing how to communicate with each other. It was all easier in ancient times!

I think your concept of 'lining up facing the enemy' may be a little simplistic. Even in ancient times it seems to have been recognised that training troops to fight together was useful, for example Scipio Africanus in Spain and Belisarius in his early Persian campaigns. It was also an accepted fact that generals who trained their troops well were likely to succeed. The advantage of the Roman system was not just the flexibility of the legion, as is often stated, but also the knowledge of the basic combat ability of a legion. Therefore, Roman legions who had not fought together before could be placed alongside each other with a certain level of confidence, since their approximate abilities would be known and a certain level of capability expected. Yet there would always be a degree of wariness if you were unsure of the fighting capability of the legion fighting at your side.

This may have been why in the majority of battles the legions did tend to be used in roughly the same fashion. It was only the outstanding generals who did things differently, usually with troops that they knew, that they had fought alongside before, and who were veterans of combat.

Finally, are you sure that it would have been much easier in ancient times? Would there have been no chance of confusion between the Roman army that fought in the East and their Commagene allies?

Also remember that during the early Empire, legions were based in pairs or in threes, with regular units of auxiliaries nearby that they operated with frequently, so armies weren't necessarily completely ad hoc.

Are you sure about this? I thought that legions were used on campaigns but would then be be dispersed and based separately? I didn't think that the practice of using legions in pairs came in until after the reign of Constantine? Can I ask where you got this from, since it's new to me! :? lol:
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Ian (Sonic) Hughes