Rise Of Roman Army Essay

Ancient Rome was one of the greatest empires of the ancient world. Like previous empires, what enabled Rome to expand its borders successfully and become such a great empire was its military power.
Rome’s army was like no army the world had ever seen. However, Rome’s army wasn’t always that powerful. The Romans were originally a tribal group of three tribes. During the 7th century BC they would come to be dominated by the Etruscans, their more advanced northern neighbors. The Etruscan kings would rule Rome for 200 years as military dictators. Around 510 BC the Romans expelled the kings and set up a new republic government. They copied the Etruscans hoplite tactics, who had learned them from the Greeks and organized annual armies of citizen

Therefore something more flexible was needed to combat such foes than the unwieldy, slow-moving phalanx. The abandonment of the Greek phalanx brought an important change to the Roman army. Instead of fighting in phalanx formation as a single large mass like the Early Roman army did. The Romans where now drawn up in three lines which consisting of small units called maniples. These units or maniples consisted of 120 men. Skirmishers could then fall back through the gaps in the checker board formation. The first two rows of maniples would form a single line when confronting enemy heavy infantry. The Roman army was organized so that three of these battle lines could be formed to face the enemy. The front two maniple rows and the first battle line, were made up of new recruits called hastati, who would absorb charges and battle the enemy until exhausted. Then they could fall back through the gaps in the maniples behind them. The next two rows of maniples called the principes, would then face the enemy for the battle, these were the experienced warriors. They were expected to finish off their tired and battered opponents. However, if this line were for some reason to fail, then the final two rows of maniples called the Triarii would then form the final line of defense. These would be the

The weapons used by Rome’s army had also changed. Now they were arming the first Hastati and Principes with short thrusting swords and only the Triarii had spears. Legionaries were also given two javelins called pilas, which was another adaptation from the Samnites. Faced with a better Roman army and no military advantage, the lands of the Samnites where colonized. The Samnites lost their freedom and were forced under roman rule. Soon after securing victory the Romans consolidated their hold over Italy bringing them into conflict with Pyrrhus of Epirus and Macedonia who was a leading general in the Hellenistic world. The Pyrrhic War which lasted from 280–275 BC was a complex struggle for control of Italy, Sicily and the western Greek cities. The phalanx formation used by Pyrrhus was developed by Phillip of Macedonia and used by Alexander the Great to conquer the known world. Spear lengths had been doubled presenting an almost impenetrable wall of spear heads. Although their shields had been reduced in order to allow hoplites to use two hands to hold the longer spears, this formation had become dominate in the Hellenistic world. Pyrrhus also brought war elephants to Italy, something the Romans had never faced before. In several bloody battles Pyrrhus managed to score narrow victories against the roman legions but the heavy losses caused him to with draw from Italy. After one particular bloody battle Pyrrhus is