Gary Brueggeman's The Roman Army

The Roman Camp

This entry was posted on May 5, 2021 by Gary Brueggeman.

As an introduction to the topic of the Roman camp, we could not do better than this description from Livy. He puts this speech in... Read more

The Infantry Fighting Model

This entry was posted on April 14, 2021 by Gary Brueggeman.

The challenge is to translate these new ideas about how the Romans fought into visual images of what it might have looked like. One faces... Read more

Elements of Roman Fighting

This entry was posted on April 6, 2021 by Gary Brueggeman.

Sword or Spear? The generally accepted view has been that the legionary was primarily a sword fighter and that his use of the pilum was... Read more

The Legion Formation

This entry was posted on October 30, 2020 by Gary Brueggeman.

Considering that the Roman army was arguably the greatest military force the world has known, that pretty good eyewitness descriptions have come down to us... Read more

Introduction to a New Model

This entry was posted on October 27, 2020 by Gary Brueggeman.

The new infantry model At about the same time that I first developed The Roman Army web page Adrain Goldsworthy's book, The Roman Army At... Read more

Attacking the marching column

This entry was posted on May 12, 2020 by Gary Brueggeman.

Introduction "Getting there is half the fun" would not describe the Roman army's experience. Army travel was brutally hard work. In the previous pages the... Read more

A day's march

This entry was posted on April 17, 2020 by Gary Brueggeman.

This page is an attempt to reconstruct a 'typical' day's march for the army. Before showing the marching column there are a few basic considerations... Read more

The order of march

This entry was posted on April 16, 2020 by Gary Brueggeman.

The order in which the various units moved is uncertain. Delbrück, who devoted over 600 pages of his 4-volume work on the History of Warfare... Read more

March: the whole army

This entry was posted on April 8, 2020 by Gary Brueggeman.

In the previous section the elements that would constitute a single legion were explored. When several legions were assembled into an army there would be... Read more

March: noncombatants and legion baggage

This entry was posted on April 7, 2020 by Gary Brueggeman.

Scribes In addition the legion would have scribes to keep its records and accounts. I have found no sources that give an estimate of the... Read more