04-01-2004, 06:35 AM
Stickers makes a good point, lingustics is key here especially considering that many of our sources are not from military backgrounds. This is part of the reason I have always imagined the Roman cuneus as more of a large echeloned formation of rectangular lines of centuries(something Vegetius discusses) rather than a smaller wedged shaped mass. In addition to the tactical problems with such a wedge, which Velite and myself have already discussed, there's also the matter of Tacitus's discussion of the German cuneus in the Germania. Even though Tacitus was of course not a "military man", the fact that he makes a point of mentioning the German boar's head wedge as a distinctly German formation, and makes no attempt to compare it to the Roman one, tells me that either the Roman wedge was not as often used as other formations and/or it was quite a different formation from the German one. <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub45.ezboard.com/bromanarmytalk.showUserPublicProfile?gid=rufuscaius>RufusCaius</A> at: 4/1/04 8:40 am<br></i>
