Phalanx warfare: Closing of the ranks

[Renatus]

Speeds for Roman marches are often based on Vegetius' description of conditioning marches:

"Recruits were to be hardened so as to be able to march twenty miles in half a summer's day at ordinary step and twenty-four miles at quick step. It was the ancient regulation that practice marches of this distance must be made three times a month."(DRM, Book 1)

This is not correct. Vegetius specifically states that recruits should be trained to march these distances in five hours in the summer. Taking there to be 16 hours of daylight by modern reckoning, this means that a Roman summer hour amounted to 80 minutes and that the recruits covered the distances in 400 minutes or 6 hours 40 minutes. This works out at 2.8 statute miles per hour at the military pace and 3.3 at the full pace. However, the Romans over-trained, so that campaigning conditions would appear easy by comparison. Accordingly, these distances should be seen as maxima and not necessarily those that would normally be expected to be covered on campaign.