Scene from the Movie Spartacus, back when epic movies were all the rage. Can’t imagine what a production on this scale would cost today. My understanding is that the extras were actual Spanish Infantry on loan from Spain for the movie, which would explain the precision. Imagine how hard it would be to have to train a bunch of civilians to move like that.

Anyway, the scene is enough to give anybody goosebumps. Imagine being one of the barbarian horde and seeing that monster coming at you. Quite impressive even by today’s standards. Feel free to post up with any you might like. But let’s keep the Martial theme going. I’m sure I’m not the only one that appreciates this stuff around here...

I’m more of 300 fan.

Love that movie. Post up a good scene. That’s what the thread is for...

Reading
Gates of Fire
Now.

From Ben Hur, the Roman predecessor to "I don't know but I've been told..."





The scene from the movie:

Fugging awesome scene. But what I find really amazing when you compare this with the scene I posted for the original Spartacus is that in the original, it was all real human beings performing those movements. There was no CGI employed. As a former soldier, I really appreciate the precision and coordination it took to get to that tight. It is incredibly impressive.

Another great one Jim. It reminds us that in reality army’s haven’t really changed all that much in many ways.

^^^^^this

But both worthy!

How is it?

When I first saw that, I remember thinking “I sure hope that’s not their drinking water down there.”

Army of one. POW!

A Roman police action in Old Palestine from “Risen” (2016) a ’frickin’ awesome movie.

Flipping through channels and stopped on “The Vikings” with Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis, it is pretty bad, they were much better in Spartacus.

The battle scenes in Braveheart were epic.

Hapkido Master, Bong soo han was the Martial artist that did that scene.

Been one of my favorite movie scenes since I was a kid. The Ancient Romans knew how to put the fear of God into barbarians, that's for sure.

Testudo means tortoise. It was also a defensive infantry tactic in the ancient Roman army for dealing with projectile attacks, such as archers. Each formation becomes like a tortoise.

There's a word for each one of those "squares" in the Roman formation. What is it?

Ben Hur is one of the very few cases of a movie being far better than the book. It was written by Lew Wallace, a Civil war officer who was a post war Major General when he wrote it. The story itself would have filled a pamphlet. The rest was totally boring, stuff like 2 page descriptions of the flowers on a hillside.

What a fantastic movie scene! As you said, they don't make 'em like that any more. Thanks for posting.

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.

Watch how the English get suckered in...

Billhilly,

That was a thing of beauty to watch. Thanks for posting that!! Too bad they weren’t playing for keeps...

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.

Here’s a pretty good little tutorial on some of the Roman’s training...

What I found really interesting is the fact that their training equipment was twice as heavy as their standard issue weapons, and the targets tiny compared to what they would actually be fighting.

Why don't they hold their ground after they drive the mob back?

The Germanic wars lasted about 400 years, including the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Rome never did conquer the Germans and Germania was never part of the Roman empire. One thing did come out of Aurellius' invasion of Germania, depicted in the movie. The Romans took home a plague that ultimately killed 7 to 8 million people.

Because it's a training scenario?

That was a training session. Pretty sure in real life there would be a lot of busted heads in that mob. Incredible respect to the S. Koreans training regimen. Can’t imagine an American unit lobbing real fire like that at the formation.

I wonder how many Portapotties were required to film that?

In 1961, the Koreans were having a big commie riot, at the entrance to K14 Air Base, one of the no more nukes riots . We were patrolling the DMZ, they pulled us down to help with security, The I corp commander was General Grey, a good old boy from Georgia, He lined up about 30 tanks, and in front of them was a line on G.I.s , with fixed Bayonets , then he put a line of all the Black Guys, in front of them with baseball bats as his first line of defense.

The slopes were throwing anything they could find at us, and every once in awhile they would rush our line, those Black guy's wore their asses out with their bats, there was hair, teeth, and eyeballs, all over the ground, just before dark the guy's in the rear with the gear, came up with duffel bags full of base ball grenades of C.M.D.M. and Tear gas, we stood on the Tanks and threw that Chitt into the crowd, the wind was behind us, and c.m.d.m. is real nasty stuff it makes your eye's slam shut, you mouth water, and you start puking and crapping your pants all at the same time, Didn't take but about 15 min. and the slopes cleared out, and they didn't come back for more. In the old day's we called that crowd control.


Rio7

What little riot training we got consisted of troops on line holding the bayonet equipped rifle at the guard position and then advancing one step at a time, never letting the back foot pass the front one, while thrusting with each step. Start this maneuver several feet or yards in front of the "peaceful protestors" so they are confronted with a moving line of reciprocating blades, the idea being to drive them back more than to impale them. Although impaling them was a logical next step if they did not disburse.

I did a training session with my MP unit at a base in Puerto Rico of all places. Can’t remember which one anymore. They hired local role players to act as the rioters for us. We used moving drill tactics with shields and riot batons and even though it was just training, things got pretty hot. Thought we were going to have a real riot on our hands there for a while. It was pretty good training though.

The total extent of my riot control training was in the national guard in '74. We were the backup to the state police for the Evel Knievel Snake River canyon jump fiasco. Our training consisted of marching around the NG armory with sticks for a half hour or so. We never saw any action, though.

Those barbarians in Risen needed some napalm or greek fire. A shield cover doesn't do much to stop boiling oil or fire. Hot oil burns a pretty dibilitating.
Just saying .

I could also think of small clay vessels of home made lye would be pretty nasty. Essentially chemical hand grenades.

Let’s bump it forward in time slightly to Gettysburg, the Battle of Little Round Top. I had to do a paper on this battle while at BNOC. 20th Maine was told to hold the hill at all costs to keep the north’s flank secure. They had already held off countless charges and were out of ammo. Col. Chamberlain did the only thing left for him to do. I don’t know how he managed to get down that hill dragging those brass balls behind him.

The orchestra seemed like it was a pretty big advantage.

The typical 300 Spartans legend is not historically
accurate.

Although King Leonidas dismissed most of
his army,.. he kept a rear guard of approx. 1500,
Comprising 300 Spartans, and out of state
forces of 700 Thespians, 400 Thebians ...
Leonidas also had a few hundred Helotes
(armed slaves).




I've read a few in depth scholarly books on the
Roman military (and still in the middle of other
such books) covering the Monarchy, Republic
and Empire... I don't recall mentions of whistles
being employed by them.

Archeologically, I don't know of whistles being
found at Roman fortresses or battle sites..
Whistles have [rarely] been found, (Regensburg)
but only in the area of the legionary fortress.

I also do not know of any surviving written evidence
for whistles being used by Roman soldiers.

I know right? How could you not win with that rousing score blaring in the background?

Them Alabama guys had forced march 25 miles since 3am that morning, and went into the attack with empty canteens. Logistics matter.

My people, the Celts of England and Wales, were a warrior culture 2,000 years ago. We controlled all of Great Britain. We loved to go to war and had shields, spears, and above all swords.
The damn Romans came across the Channel in about the year 43 AD and they just mopped us up. We had the courage and the weapons but the Romans had the organization. The Romans took all of England and only stopped at the Scottish border.

That's what always impressed me about the Romans - their organization and engineering skills. They built aqueducts that moved water over 50 miles just by gravity and roads that you can still find pieces of today, not to mention the military organization. Kind of funny to think about that then and how the Italians now are part of a joke about organization.

Heaven is where:
The police are British.
The cooks are French.
The mechanics are German.
The lovers are Italian and
It's all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is where:
The police are German
The cooks are British
The mechanics are French
The lovers are Swiss and
It's all organized by the Italians.

Apparently Spartacus and his army of slaves
roamed the land from south to north and north
to south defeating the Romans on a number
of occasions..( known as the Third Servile war)
Most of the fear was in Roman minds,
that he might actually enter Rome! .. with
the best veteran legions being stationed
in other parts of the empire.

IIRC, Spartacus even routed some veteran
Legions.

Why was Spartacus so successful?
Well its possible his previous military service
as a Thracian auxiliary fighting alongside
Roman Legions helped...

Spartacus was also an escaped gladiator,
so not your average slave... He organised
training schools/regimes as his slave army grew,..
teaching them skills-tactics including Roman ones.
and as he defeated the Romans along the way
he was also able to equip his men like Romans.

Never gets old, especially if you’ve been.

Romans under General Gnaeus Julius Agricola,
went all the way up into what was then termed
Caledonia (N.E. Scotland) defeating the Picts
at the battle of Mons Grapius, 83 AD.

208 AD, Roman emperor Septimius Severus went
into Caledonia, but the campaign was cut short
in 210, due to his illness and death.

I have a Septimius Severus silver coin that was minted for the very occasion I believe. Found it in 1996 while in Puerto Rico training with my MP unit in an old school desk in section of the base that had been in service since WWII. Only thing I can think of is that some GI must have stashed it there and it ended up getting stuck in a seam in the metal folds of table. I’ve had it ever since. It’s in relatively good shape compared to some of the others I’ve been able to find on the net.

Septimius Severus didn't have it easy when
he ventured into the highlands region, with
the Pict tribes having advantage with terrain
and their Guerilla warfare, [Romans excelling
in open ground set-piece battles].. but not to
be outdone;
He re-occupied the fortifications Agricola had
built in his campaign and set about controlling
what territory he could and systematically destroying
regions(people and property) which he couldn't...
this had the effect of bringing the tribes to the
negotiating table, putting the brakes on Pict raids
Into Roman Britannia.

A successful campaign.. 👍

His son then led a total search & destroy mission
in 210 AD - north of the Antonine Wall.
(genocidal kill everyone you see approach)
to be followed by Septimius Severus to fully
occupy Caledonia, but he fell ill, and his son
Caracalla called such plans off.

+1. Most of them walked from Chambersburg.

And despite all that they came within a whisker of taking that hill. A lot of good men lost their lives on both sides that sad day. . .

For those who enjoy scenes like that from Spartacus, you might want to download a free copy of Rome Total War. Excellent game. I bought it for my PC when it first came out in 2004, and still play it. For the past five or six years, I've been playing it on the free downloadable version, since my PC broke down, so can't use the PC version since I bought the Mac, but the free download is available for both Mac and PC, not to mention for tablets.