The Roman tactics were unbelievable. I’ve been reading books from history profs in the UK (apparently That’s a big deal there) writing historical fiction where they take a set of known events and insert a fictional character. The Training of a legionary soldier makes boot camp look like a picnic. According to the historians, it was freakin brutal. The front line worked on a drill system where they would bash with the shield and thrust with the gladius for a few minutes then the centurion would blow a whistle and they’d all bash real hard with the shield and step back and the second line would step up in their place. They would continue to rotate the troops like that keeping fresh guys on the front line.
Then there was the speed of their maneuvers. Using flags and whistles, they could rapidly redeploy their formations to address changes on the battle field. Here’s a video of the Korean riot police using some of their tactics. Watch that and then imagine 40,000 or more guys synchronized like that but actually trying to kill their enemy with thrown volleys of pila and darts before closing in with the shields and gladius.
Looks like a training exercise but still pretty slick and shows how fast trained troops can move and react over decent ground.
The one thing I didn't like about the opening scene of "Gladiator" - despite the initial bombardment being pretty good - was how quickly it devolved into a melee. If things got that disorganized that quickly then something went really wrong. Those troops in the front ranks still had their pila, those would have been thrown when the enemy was 20-30 yards away to kill whoever they could or almost as good become lodged in the enemy shields to drag them down and/or allow the Romans to step on the protruding shanks and drag down the enemy shield.
An interesting tidbit of the the Roman Army's fighting technique was that the soldiers didn't stab the guy in front of them since you'd have to reach over or around your shield and break the integrity of the unit. They held off the person in front of them and then stabbed the guy being held off by the man just to their right. He had his shield engaged by the legionnaire to the right so was open for a flank strike. At least that's the way things were supposed to work. I'm sure if an arm or leg conveniently exposed itself they weren't averse to hacking at it. Kind of like the buzzsaw technique we were taught when fighting from fixed positions. Your fighting hole rampart was directly to the front so you were protected from frontal fire but you fired off to the left and right.
Gunnery, gunnery, gunnery. Hit the target, all else is twaddle!
