08-25-2009, 10:36 PM
Another thing that might be worth mentioning on the subject. Soldiers, past or present, often have an advantage (if you can call it that) in a battle situation that no untrained civilian in a normal situation would have and that is the powerful trio of fear, adrenalin and motivation. Any or all can make a soldier do extrordinary things if required. As an ex modern soldier (British, so I have a lot of experience of moving about on my feet as we don't get too much transport, certainly not those funny whirrly-bladed things you see up in the sky) I agree with our Texas cav friend that soldiers (again Roman or modern) seldom 'sprint' anywhere on a battlefield. For modern soldiers, as well as the points he and Currahee Chris have already brought out, the longer you are up running (or sprinting) along, the more you turn yourself into a bullet magnet; for the Romans, who largely fought as part of a formation, sprinting flat out in formation would make it very difficult to maintain cohesion. As a Roman soldier, although you would have trained to be able to run in kit, normally it would have been more in the form of a short controlled charge at the enemy when required. I suspect the only time you would be sprinting was when the battleplan had all gone horibbly 'pear-shaped' and you were fleeing the battlefield with a horde of hairy barbarians snapping at your ass - and that of couse is where fear, adrenalin and motivation would come into play.
Oly Martin
