Talk:Military of ancient Rome

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Military history: National / Roman & Byzantine / Classical

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Incorrect figures?[edit]

There appears to be an error with the figure in "the Roman army "most probably formed a standing force of 375,0000" men at the Empire's territorial peak" it is either a typographical error and should be 375,000 , or it is incorectly seperated and should be 3,750,000 Adam 23:47, 17 October 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.38.216.121 (talk)

Editorial opinion in the introduction[edit]

I'm changing this paragraph:

"The Roman military was intertwined with the Roman state much more closely than in a modern European nation. ... and the Romans were for long periods prepared to engage in almost continuous warfare, absorbing massive losses. For a large part of Rome's history, the Roman state existed as an entity almost solely to support and finance the Roman military."

These are the sort of unsupported generalizations WP has been trying to avoid. They represent editorial opinion. They introduce an undefined theoretical concept, "modern European nation", oppose it to another called "Roman state", and try to presume a political difference of "intertwining" without any development or support. The rest is sheer prejudicial opinion. Is there a difference between the Romans and the Roman state? What if I were to say the Romans often disagreed with the operations of the Roman state? Moreover, if you do define them, on what basis do you say they were "prepared" to endure all these things, as though they had choices and could choose to endure or not endure war? What do you mean, "absorb massive losses?" Why are those losses any more massive than all the others? What would it mean not to absorb them? Is there some kind of great sponge similar to the one the soldiers used in the latrine, so that you could use the sponge for absorption or not? What's this about the state existing to finance the military? Minime. Certainly not. So, I'm doing some rewriting. We have to use the opinions of others. No Wikipedia generalship, please. Leave it to the generals. Got any references for those statements? I think we can skip the reference requests here. There aren't going to be any.Botteville (talk) 07:44, 10 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Book repetitions in the footnotes[edit]

I perceive that someone (possibly me?) set up the footnotes for the Harvard ref system, which avoids the necessity to keep repeating book titles. However, subsequent editors - I guess unfamiliar with the system - instead of using the templates for footnoting imitated the format by hand, repeating the titles. I think I will just fix those, checking the refs. This will have to be done gradually.Botteville (talk) 13:39, 10 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Metals[edit]

I'm still on the article. I'm doing some research on the population base and the numbers. Meanwhile I notice another generalization not really true. Naturally today's metallurgists control the amount of Carbon in steel and also trace amounts of other elements: Tungsten, Chromium, etc. The techniques have become more refined of controling this alloying. The properties of the alloys are well known. At first thought, you might think, well, carburization is a developing process, so carbon steel must be. In theory cast iron and soft iron must be the original products. Not so. The original iron consisted of nuggets of ore lying around on the surface to be scooped up in the Caucasus region. This ore was not soft iron. Soft, or pure iron, is not a natural substance. It has to be produced by purification. Believe it or not (you should believe) the earliest ore was already fine steel. The first iron-workers learned to select steel with the most appropriate properties, which depended on the amounts of impurities. Carbon is an impurity. And so the major sword industry was practiced by the Chalybes, a people preceding the Phrygians in Armenia. In other words, the steel available to iron-age man was the very finest right from the start. The main developments were in working it into swords. Besides the Chalybes, the Celts of central Spain were known for their fine swords. This skill went on into the middle ages especially around Toledo. Meanwhile the Roman adopted the gladius, a Celtic short-sword. This was a very fine weapon, inferior in any way to none. The steel was excellent. They both cut and thrust with it, although their military science taught that the most efficient way was a two-inch thrust. Something parallel was going on in the Far East. The swords of the Samurai were just as finely made, if not more so. Their swords were designed for cutting, a form parallel to the western sabre. A good swordsman could cut anything whatsoever. This paragraph is off the top of the head. I will refine this in future session.Botteville (talk) 19:32, 15 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Equipment[edit]

Seems like a lot could be added to the Equipment section, types of armor, the plumbatae, sandals, engineering equipment each soldier carried, uniform articles like cloak, sundries equipment. Seems lacking to me. 74.218.197.66 (talk) 19:21, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]