[split] Psychology of the Roman soldier

[MonsGraupius]

those last videos, especially that knifing, only issue there is, that victims are unarmed while attacker has a knife - in situation where both sides are armed, i guess the whole motivation for attack would be less profound and attacker would be not charging blindly against the defender. And if we add the formation factor into this, it would be a bit strange expecting anyone to throw himself to enemy shields with intend to hit somebody, just to be cut down by multiple people in that formation quite easily...  (similarly, protesters kinda dont expect Police force wanting them to kill them, so they actually have additional motivation for such behavior due to that knowledge.. i guess they would be behaving quite differently if policemen were there to kill them)

The key is that in all these violent conflict, individuals are just "going with the flow" (except the bystanders). Also much of the behaviour is highly ritualistic: a whole crowd standing very evenly spaced in almost identical poses "mouth off" or "hurling missiles" at police. Much of it looks as if the crowd are being choreographed, but it appears that people are just following the lead of others.

However, as I thought about the video of the multiple slashings of the individual - it occurred to me that they weren't trying to kill him so much as "cut him" - that is to say - each one had to have left a cut on him and the last vile creature failed many times before leaving.

Again we have a ritualised attack - which perversely appears intend on not killing the enemy - just injuring.

But that is very different from the Romans. Based on historical accounts of similar armies and their effect the type of battle that iron-age tribes usually engaged in would have been very much a "stand off". With two armies sizing each other up from across a field, groups of individuals occasionally pushing forward to throw spears or attack small groups on the opposition - and then at some point the two groups would meet and few would die - but most would return home with "battle wounds"  - to show the girls at home. It would all continue with waves of advance, skirmishing until one or other side would then think better of continuing the battle and move back. They'd then have a look around to see how the rest of their tribe were doing and depending on the overall battle would push forward to posture again or start going back and retreat.

But despite all the noise, movement, whilst they'd be a lot of wounding there would be relatively few deaths.

In contrast, a battle with the Romans would be very different. The none Roman side would start by posturing like before. Then eventually, rather than as a small band, the whole Roman front lines would engage. As in any normal iron-age battle, there would be a hell of a scrap - but instead of a few dead and many "battle wounds" and both lines retreating, the Roman killing machine would leave a huge number of the attackers dead or mortally wounded and only the non-Romans retreating.

And my guess is that the Romans would then dispatch (i.e. hack to death) any enemy wounded right there in view of the enemy after each charge.

This would be as much a shock, as if we saw a policeman in Britain pull out a gun and kill a car thief in cold blood.