Study of ancient battles in ancient Rome

[Timotheus]

As I am reading about Julius Caesar and the Roman civil war the battle of pharsalus has always interested me.

Looking at the battle we see that Julius Caesar knew he was outmatched in cavalry and offset the problem by deploying a line of infantry behind his cavalry to stiffen their resolves and support them. When the battle begins Caesar's cavalry is defeated by Pompeys cavalry but then the line of infantry drive Pompeys cavalry off the field.

To me this seemed to be what the Romans should have done long before at the battle of Cannae against Hannibal. Of course Caesars battle came later so no learning from the future.

But what about the other way around? How was military science studied in ancient Rome. I'd Caesar likely to have read accurate reports of Cannae and thus had an opportunity to consider in advance and learn from Romes old mistake? Or were battles not studied like that back then?

[Matthew Amt]

Ave!

There was always a certain amount of that, but it didn't necessarily help much. Jon Lendon's book "Soldiers and Ghosts" is an excellent source on the topic. Part of the problem is that men who wanted to be great would read up on really famous examples like Alexander, but there's a difference between analyzing his tactics and just saying, "Oh, I can do that!" Lendon cites a later Roman general who was besieging a city and having trouble getting in. But he remembered that Alexander had led a dozen guys into a blind spot in a gateway, and gotten the gate open to let his army in. So this Roman general, against the frantic advice of his officers, grabs a dozen guys and charges up to the nearest gate--"If Alex could do it, so can I!" The problem was that this particular gate was NOT a blind spot, more like a barrel full of Roman fish... I believe the general got out alive, minus most of his picked men.

So yes, there was at least some study of ancient generalship! In the case of Pharsalus, I'm not sure how much Caesar knew of Cannae (likely quite a bit!), but it certainly wasn't the only cavalry action of the past that he could have learned from. Heck, his own experience was probably uppermost in his mind. And Pharsalus was a very different tactical situation from Cannae, anyway.

There was also a huge amount of literature back then that has not survived to today. Along with histories, there were military manuals and handbooks, written to teach new officers how to do it right. It was probably similar to learning surgery from the Internet... Hopefully when a fresh young tribune arrived at his new posting, his centurions would go through his library and make him chuck the worst of it!

Caveat Lector.

Matthew

[Sean Manning]

Upper-class men would also learn about war from their families, especially during the republic when military experience was so important to your later political career. So a young man would hear about his father's and grandfathers' experience in war, a version of how his great uncle won the battle of thus-and-so, legends about republican heroes and evil foreigners like Hannibal, and so on.

Before about 100 BCE, equites would probably start their time in the army as a cavalryman or centurion, so would get some practical experience before they were put in charge of anything big.

[Macedon]

Actually, Caesar's position would be more like Hannibal's sans the cavalry superiority than the Romans'. We are all used to look at Cannae as a battle where the Romans enjoyed vast superiority in infantry numbers but we tend to forget that their infantry was for a big part untrustworthy, hastily recruited legions, ex-convicts etc. They knew that they had less cavalry but cavalry battle tended to last quite long, sine it was normally done with squadrons galloping towards the enemy, discharging their javelins, retreating and back again. So, at Cannae, the Roman generals thought that their best chance was a swift infantry victory. They (rightly) thought that the equipment of the basic Roman legionary was superior but they feared that they would falter moralewise. This is why they (against their normal tactics), instead of using their normal three line formation, packed their phallanx in a single deep line. They hoped that this would boost morale and keep the men fighting. Actually they were right and their front line did well against the shallower but more reliable (compare with Caesar's line) Carthaginian line. Hannibal was an excellent commander and had to devise measures to counter the Roman plan. So, he did 2 things. First he arrayed his infantry in the renowned concave formation we all know about, so that the Romans would first have to partially fight and thus their speed of march would decrease in their effort to keep their formation AND he ordered his left wing cavalry to charge into the melee, something that Polybius describes as truly peculiar and thus a tactic he had not used formerly, his cavalry fighting in a normal "skirmishing" mode. This led to a swift victory of the Carthaginans on the left flank (again compare with the speed of battle on the right Carthaginian flank), which enabled the cavalry to also attack the Roman allies who fought against the Numidians and immediately after the Roman line (now in a normal manner of course), which being attacked from behind and not having a back line to counter them came to a stall and could not press forward any more.

So, Caesar was in the position to detract some of his infantry because he had absolute faith in his veterans' abilities to be able to check Pompey's attack (as Hannibal did) but the Romans at Cannae couldn't since they did not trust their lines and so strived to make it deeper in order to increase morale and press forward to a swift infantry victory.