[split] Psychology of the Roman soldier

[Bryan]

And where i said they were same??? I said, they were of similar shape and weight.... average Pavise was 125mm x70mm, same or similar like Republican Scutum...

Do I have to spell it out for you? You go on about how they are nearly identical in size and shape and weight (which they were not, because your figures are wrong) and then you assume they were used the same way, even though 1,700 years separate them. 

Thats not Testudo. This was deployed in line,to face cavalry. Testudo was usually a column. 

Deployed in line? Like Napoleonic tactics? So now "Line" in the sense of Roman history means two ranks deep? Do you simply reinvent every bit of history you base video games on or is Rome just the exception? 

Testudo wasn't a line. Testudo wasn't a column. Testudo was a Roman century, in whatever frontage and depth it was already in, lifting their shields ups in a way that protected them from missile threats, similar to the shell of a tortoise.

Romans weren't 18-19th century Europeans. They didn't fight "In line" nor did they fight "In column". 

ill repeat part you ignored completely:

Facing a cavalry, its always better to have a solid line, without any space.. horse dont like to hit solid object.. if you make it run at it, it will look for a gap instead of running into it... so putting men closer together, presenting solid line of shields... thats pretty basic anticavalry defense... it quite surprise me you are questioning such a base thing....

Most cavalry of the period wasn't shock cavalry, they were missile bearing, usually javelins. Gauls, Macedonians, and Parthians were the only ones really who would deign to threaten the front of a Roman line. More likely they'd hit the flank of a Roman force, the formations you preach wouldn't protect the centuries under threat of a flanking attack at all. 

Did Romans know how to repel cavalry? Definitely.. Even Cataphracts didnt dare to charge Romans frontally... so your idea of them fighting individually, is pretty ridiculous.

Just to be clear, you just promoted in the very paragraph before this that Romans countered the front threat from charging horse by forming in a shield wall with no gaps. Now you are saying that they never would attack Romans frontally? You're wrong either way. I'll list one example: Magnesia, many historians believe that Seleucid heavy horse successfully charged through the Roman front line. 

Yours in italics.