Soon after the Caudine Forks fiasco, where Roman citizens had suffered
the humiliation of being forced to pass under the yoke, an act
symbolising their loss of warrior status, the tactical formation adopted
by the Roman army underwent a radical change. Introduced as part of the
Servian reforms, the legion had originally operated as a Greek-style
phalanx, a densely packed block of citizens wealthy enough to outfit
themselves with the full panoply of an armoured spearman or hoplite. The
function of a hoplite had been the privilege only of those who owned a
certain amount of property, poorer citizens serving either as
auxiliaries or as servants. Now, however, the Romans adopted the
manipular system, whereby the legion was split into distinct battle
lines, each consisting of tactical subunits, the maniples. In contrast
to the one solid block of the phalanx, the legion was now divided into
several small blocks, with spaces between them. The Romans, in other
words, gave the phalanx 'joints' in order to secure flexibility, and
what is more, each soldier, or legionary, had twice as much elbow room
for individual action, which now involved swordplay instead of spear
work.
Even though still a citizen militia recruited from property owners
supplying their own war gear, it was the manipular legion that faced
Pyrrhus and his elephants, the Gauls and their long swords, Hannibal and
his tactical genius, the Macedonians and their pikes, to name but a few
of its formidable opponents. This book, therefore, will look at the
recruitment (now based on age and experience as well as on wealth and
status), training (now the responsibility of the state as opposed to the
individual), weapons (new types being introduced, both native and
foreign), equipment (ditto) and experiences (which included submission
to a draconian regime of military discipline) of the legionary at the
epoch of the middle Republic. The middle Republican era opens with the
last great war with the Samnites (Third Samnite War, 298-290 BC) and
closes with the Republic at the height of its imperial glory after the
victory in North Africa (Iugurthine War 112-105 BC). The provisional
legion in which the legionary served now exhibited many of the
institutions and customs of the later professional legions, perhaps best
reflected in one of its most notable practices, the construction of a
temporary camp at the end of each day's march. Lest we forget, however,
for our legionary, military service was not a career, but an obligation
he owed to the state, and it was this militia army that conquered the
peninsula of Italy, defeated the magnificent Hellenistic kingdoms and
the mercantile empire of Carthage. All of the Mediterranean basin was
now within the imperium of Rome, some of it organized into provinces
governed by Roman magistrates, the rest reduced to client status. Romans
were acquiring a sense that they possessed a world empire.