"National Roman Legion"

[caiusbeerquitius]

@ Hibernicus:

All a soldier needs in a press is enough room for his gladius to slide through or over the shoulder of the man in from of him. He doesn't even need to stab hard or fast.

I am not so sure about that. Anyway, you took my sentence out of context. The meaning of it goes along with the scenes on the arch of Orange. One might also add the Adamklissi metopes, which show similar poses.

VIRTUS embodies not just strength or toughness, or bravery but also duty and soldierliness.. doing what is needed under the most adverse circumstances. Sometimes it can take all one's being to not rush out to attack, but to wait, even if you are one passus away from an enemy soldier or from reaching the top of the wall first.. waiting for the order to advance... arrows and sling stones and sticks and rocks and all manner of debris and horror pommeling your scutum... and the enemy's taunts burning your ears... discipline and duty

No, you are absolutely wrong here. In fact, these are two different hings for the Romans. virtus is a concept contarary to disciplina. You may want to read e.g. "Soldiers and Ghosts", as Caius said, especially chapters 8, 9 and 10.

one is told they are innacurate due to close quarters combat, and that the evidence is on monumental collumns. The next momment this evidence is being decried as artistic license, and we are having a debate that they indeed did fight in looser formations.

Well, that is something one has to learn very quickly in classical archaeology and in history: Critical method. Just because the columns are not valuable for idendifying the space a soldier had within a formation, it doesn´t mean we canot deduce any information from it. The testudo, e.g. is very well displayed, and can be used. The difficulty is to find by cross-referencing where the artistic conventions are applied, and how, and where they are not applied. Gets quite confusing sometimes... :roll: :wink: