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How far could the legions travel in a day
#1
In “Conquest of Gaulâ€
Steve
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#2
About 35 miles.
AVETE OMNES
MARIVS TARQVINIVS VRSVS
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-Tom
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#3
i read that in training they were forced to march 20 miles in 5 hours then up to 25 miles in 5 hours. full camping gear included. it was in peter connally's The Legionaire
Tiberius Claudius Lupus

Chuck Russell
Keyser,WV, USA
[url:em57ti3w]http://home.armourarchive.org/members/flonzy/Roman/index.htm[/url]
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#4
Marching speed depends, of course, on the terrain covered, the baggage carried and the length of the march overall, but I believe it's often stated that the Roman legion was expected to cover 20 miles on a good day - Caesar's forced marches I think did 25. In reality, I would think 15-18 more likely for a standard legion with all its baggage during normal operations. The baggage train is the real marker for the speed of the legion as a whole, and Caesar often rushed his troops on ahead of the train (when he was marching on the Nervii, for example) to pick up the pace.

As for individual speeds, they could be very swift indeed - Suetonius (Caesar, 57) has Caesar travelling 100 miles in one day during a journey from Rome to western Gaul. Plutarch writes that the freedman Icelus carried the news of Nero's death from Rome to Galba in Spain in only seven days, which would have required a speed of around 10 miles an hour: certainly possible with regular relays of horses, and these were available for rapid carriage of important news (or people). Without the rush, journeys would be much longer - 20 miles a day on horseback is quite tiring enough!

This was in summer, of course - winter could make journeys infinitely protracted, or even impossible. Vitellius' legions took two months to march from the Rhine to northern Italy in the early spring of 69AD.

- Nathan
Nathan Ross
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#5
There used to be a very good website by Gary Brueggeman (I think) which analysed all aspects of Roman military organisation - one of the most interesting parts was a breakdown of the amount of time it would take a marching column to break camp, march to the next camp site and construct the new camp - as I recall (the site having sadly vanished), the distance between camps was probably regulated by the length of the column, as the new camp had to be marked out and partially fortified before the previous camp had been fully evacuated and destroyed. I don't know if anyone saved Mr Brueggeman's reconstructions, or remembers what the distances he specified might have been?

- Nathan
Nathan Ross
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#6
These are not simple questions. One basic condition that needs to be specified are road conditions. Travelling on a Roman road in good weather is a lot different from travelling on a Germanic foot-path in the rain. Roman forces moving in safe territory don't need to build nightly camps, which obviously took time when moving into enemy territory.

Second, the size of the force is critical. The larger the force, the slower it moves - since armies move like slinkies (do you know what I mean?) or caterpillars: the front starts moving, the middle only starts when the motion reaches it, and the back-end starts moving last of all. Any long column has this problem.

The total distance to be travelled matters also, since men can't perform forced marches forever. The longer the total distance, the slower the average daily rate is going to be.

Horsemen are a separate subject, since the biology of a horse is different from that of a man. A single man or a few men, with access to lots of horses (i.e. post riders) can move far indeed - I think up to 200 miles in a day. But, horses need time to graze and water, and unlike men they cannot do these things while marching. Furthermore, a horse can be physically broken down by prolonged stress, and will recover its physical condition far more slowly than a man will recover. The result is that over long distances, a force without huge number of spare horses (i.e. 10 horses per rider) may actually move more slowly than a purely infantry force.

That being said, for comparison purposes, I can cite one good example of a forced march off the top of my head: Austerlitz, 1805. Davout's III corps was placed about 70 miles from the rest of Napoleon's army, which caused his Austrian/Russian enemies to discount this corps in their battle-plan. These men marched that distance over 48 hours, and marched straight into battle in time to stop the Allied flanking attack and help win Napoleon a stunning victory.
Felix Wang
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#7
Additional factoid

The Pony Express operated at about 10 miles/hour, a new horse every 10-15 miles and a new rider every 75-100 miles. Of course, the road was poor in many parts, and not entirely safe; but that gives some idea of what could be sustained.

P.S. Over many armies and many centuries, 20 miles a day was generally considered a good rate of progress; in some periods 10 miles a day was normal.
Felix Wang
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#8
Ave omnes,

As Chuck Russel mentioned above, Peter Conolly 's 'Legionary' reports the minimum abilities to be accepted into a legion.

According to that, 24 Roman miles means covering 36 kilometers in five hours, carrying at least 30 kg. (I'll remember that next time, when I'm struggling to carry two coca cola crates from the shopping mall to my car :wink: )

I don't know, wether this 24-mile-marches were trained entirely on Roman roads around the camp or in a mix of roads and paths simulating a campaign in foreign countries.

Greeting from Germany

Heiko (Cornelius Quintus)
Greetings from germania incognita

Heiko (Cornelius Quintus)

Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
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#9
I think it's Vegetius who says that the standard march was up to 20 Roman miles in mid-summer--during the longest days of the year. So that's about 18 modern miles for the usual maximum. Doesn't mean an army moved that far every day, though. Forced marches could be 25 Roman miles. That certainly does depend on the roads and conditions!

A well-trained man can indeed out-march a horse! Starve and beat the man, and if he respects you he'll keep going. Starve and beat the horse, and it will die! (And then the infantry will eat it!) That's why the baggage was carried and pulled by oxen and mules: slower in the short haul, but with much better endurance. Note that even the Parthians--an entirely mounted army--were freaked out by the Romans' ability to march so fast. They typically were careful to camp far enough away so that they wouldn't get overrun by a sudden march, which meant they spent the next couple days trying to catch up with the Romans!

Valete,

Matthew
Matthew Amt (Quintus)
Legio XX, USA
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.larp.com/legioxx/">http://www.larp.com/legioxx/
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#10
In Conquest of Gaul, he stated that he and the legions had to travel 70 miles, and that they got there the day after next, which means they traveled 35 miles a day, unless they still traveled a little that day or since they didn’t have a any mile markers he was guessing and guessed wrong or he was over exaggerating for posterity.

How far is a Roman mile?
Steve
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#11
The distance between surviving roman milestones is about 5000 ft, so I am told; which makes the Roman mile a bit less than the US standard of 5280 feet. Seventy miles over two days is doable for very good soldiers; although it is certainly possible Caesar was guessing or stretching the distance a bit.
Felix Wang
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#12
Quote:although it is certainly possible Caesar was guessing or stretching the distance a bit.
I wonder if they had slaves whose sole purpose was to count their footsteps so distance could be judged on the march? Seriously. In a bizarre way it kind of makes sense.
TARBICvS/Jim Bowers
A A A DESEDO DESEDO!
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#13
Quote:I wonder if they had slaves whose sole purpose was to count their footsteps so distance could be judged on the march? Seriously. In a bizarre way it kind of makes sense.

That was the standard way of doing it. I wonder, though, whether they would have used slaves in the army. The skill to do this accurately was quite highly prized in the ancient world. I could see an agrimensor being proud of his ability.
Der Kessel ist voll Bärks!

Volker Bach
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#14
Tacitus (or was it Iosephus Flavius? - I'm far away from my books) wrote, that the "standard" distance for a legionaire was 20,000 steps/day, so maybe having a "counter" slave is not a bad idea.

The longest distance marched during a day I've read of was during Nero's reign, when a roman army was defeated in Armenia and the survivors "marched" some 60 miles whithin one day. But actually it was a long-term flight, because they were pursued by the enemy and so did the romans throw away most of their equipment (Tacitus).

Note:
In Szombathely/Savaria there is one part of the Amber road excavated and opened for the public. I tried to make a few steps on it but it was horrible. Whith the iron nails in my caliga it was something like moving on ice! I almost fell to my nose. Also Iosephus wrote that during the siege of Jerusalem the jews managed to kill a centurio because he slipped on the stony street.
So I get even more familiarized with the idea, that maybe the romans used the stone roads only for the carts and wagons of the army, while the soldiers marched on the soil next to the road which seems to me more comfortable. But of course this is just an idea.
Valete,

József Janák
Miles Gregarius
Legio I Adiutrix
Pannoniciani Seniores
Brigetio, Pannonia
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#15
na they used duct tape on there caligues. hey they would have used it if they had it Wink hahaha jkjk
Tiberius Claudius Lupus

Chuck Russell
Keyser,WV, USA
[url:em57ti3w]http://home.armourarchive.org/members/flonzy/Roman/index.htm[/url]
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