The Literary Sources for the Pre-Marian Army

Abstract

The subject of the arms and organisation of the Roman army in and before the mid-second century B.C. is one of almost inextricable confusion. The amount of weight to be put on the various contradictory pieces of literary evidence is still to a great extent uncertain: which of them are antiquarian reconstructions rather than genuine tradition, and if they are reconstructions, how intelligent are they and on what sort of evidence are they based? Archaeology does not give us all the help we might expect; too often its dates are imprecise, too often also we remain unclear whether a representation relates to the natives of the place where it was found, or whether it is meant to be realistic or idealising, which tends to mean archaising or hellinising. Literature and archaeology agree to make us believe that at some time in the archaic period the phalanx style of hoplite warfare was introduced to Rome, possibly from Etruria; some time between the early fourth and the mid-third century the manipular army developed out of it, tactically more flexible, armed with pila as throwing weapons and with swords, and bearing long shields, scuta or θνρϵοί (as opposed to the hoplites who had of course carried thrusting spears and circular clipei or ἀσπίδϵς). Probably general agreement has not been reached on much more than that. Any exact history of developments is probably quite unattainable; there may have been far more changes than scholars have been accustomed to reckon with, and several different weapons may sometimes have been in use simultaneously. Names may have changed in meaning over the years. The present paper is only designed to take up again several of the literary sources, and to attempt to reach some sort of conclusion as to their nature and reliability—chiefly on internal grounds, though with archaeological aid where this is possible.