I am reading War Through the Ages AGAIN. It was the basic textbook on military history at West Point back when military history was considered relevant for cadets. Nowadays it probably would get in the way of today’s Relevant Reading about Human Relations and how to turn down a queer without hurting his feelings.
There is an explanation of the difference between the strategy of the Roman Empire compared the last comparable Empire, that of Alexander and his father Phillip. The Roman Legion did not, like those short-lived strategies of Phillip and Alexander, begin with a string of uninterrupted victories:
“The system went on, steadily keeping abreast of changing conditions, and each defeat they learned what they had done wrong that time.” The strategy of Alexander, the book points out, ended almost immediately upon his death, and Greeks went back to the old phalanx. It was created and disappeared in a period of half a century.
The Roman system lasted at least five hundred years.
A lot of people know about the short sword. The pilum is seldom recognized by laymen. We have a pilum, the Mantra. We throw that spear and disorganize the enemy ranks. It is vital, but it is not part of the complicated strategy that occurs next, when the Legions go in in their patented formation and gut the enemy individually with short swords.
I am sure those years of development of the Roman Legion saw endless numbers of people saying exactly what we hear on BUGS, “This shoulder to shoulder, same weapons crap is SLAVISH. I want to step out of formation, scream my battle cry, and take on the enemy the way my forefathers did.”
“You know, back when they were losing.”
The Legion was not really slavish. In fact slaves, punished the way Roman citizen-soldiers were, would have died.
No, those who slowly evolved the Legions were not slaves. In fact, the first time citizen-soldiers crossed Rome’s border to go on attack, the soldiers sat down and refused to move until the leaders told them what it was all about.
We can compare our Mantra to the pilum. As I have said, THEN we use the short sword, and we STAY IN FORMATION.
Citizen-soldiers who were ruled by two elected consuls, each ruling on alternative days, formed this “slavelike” strategy.
They were rigidly trained and consistent:
“The Romans are successful …for their exercises are battles without bloodshed and their battles bloody exercises.”