Question about the Roman \'wedge formation\'

[Marcus Octavian]

Just my humble un-learned opinion...

The "center fall back, sides move up" is and has always been a favored tactic in a lot of armies of the time. If you watch/read of many of the "great battles", they have a lot of similarities. I'd say it is even almost a fair estimate to say 90% of those battles almost always had to do with either a right or left flank coming around and rolling up a line from the side.

The strat employed in this case could have also been a dumb luck victory. The center of the line could have been pushed back far enough that it allowed the sides to close in on the center. Hard to say really, because as someone mentioned earlier, victory stories are always written better and more glorious by the people that won. The old "You should have seen the other guy" thing. Even stories of loss, seldom was it written "we got our rears handed to us today". Its usually far more noble of a loss. Like in the opening lines of the movie Braveheart, "History was written by those that have hanged heroes".

I also just realized that I most likely shouldn't try to have an intelligent discussion before I have had morning coffee...

Edit: I stand corrected. The Saw Wedge wasn't what I first thought it was. I just found this "The saw was opposite tactic to the wedge. This was a detached unit, immediately behind the font line, capable of fast sideways movement down the length of the line to block any holes which might appear to develop a thrust where there might be a sign of weakness. In the case of two Roman armies fighting each other in a civil war, one might say that the 'saw' inevitably was the response to a 'wedge' by the other side."

That excerpt was taken from http://www.roman-empire.net/army/tactics.html

Edit 2: Ok..again I fail. lol Only saw the words "saw" and "wedge" in the first post, rather they were the only words that stuck in my head. Sorry for the waste of time. lol