Military Tactics of Imperial Rome

Paper Summary:

There is a clear sense that Roman Imperialism was made possible to a large degree by the attainment of a high level of military knowledge and structure. Rome in the Imperial Period, roughly between 27 BC to 395 AD, was marked by a substantially large and well organized standing army. The Roman City State had developed and established sets of colonies, some of which created through collaboration and others through conquest, but delineated a sense of strategic protection and superiority regionally. According to this paper, it is the organization of the army which marks both Rome's success and its ability to utilize novel military tactics to defeat its enemy and gain imperial territory, which at its peak stretched through most of Europe, the Persian Gulf and North Africa.

From the Paper:

"The ebb and flow of military tactics was to a large degree dependent upon the character, flexibility and acceptance of the emperor, who was more often than not the traveling and demonstrative leader of the empire or the future leader of the empire. Additionally, most successful imperial leaders of Rome beginning with Augustus, demonstrated a keen sense of the need to alter tactics to the size of the available troops, the known tactics of the enemy and the environment of the region, an issue that became paramount in very distant campaigns such as that of Britain, and especially North Britain. (Shotter 53) Roman military tactics are clearly marked as a standard for modern warfare of the time including issues such as defined logistics, military intelligence gathering and preliminary constructions of fortifications, both permanent and temporary as well as road building, which to a large degree was the lasting mark of Roman military success. (Goldsworthy 43-78) The building of Hadrian's wall in fact is argued to be the delineation of the length to which Rome was willing to go in its occupation of Britain, based on political but mostly environmental reasons. The organization of the northern occupied regions was markedly less and the infrastructure was much sparser, for the most part because few Roman citizens saw the wisdom in living in such an unfavorable and un-Roman region, with very limited regional gains to be had. (Shotter 9)"

Sample of Sources Used:

• Boatwright, Mary T., Daniel J. Gargola, and Richard J. A. Talbert. The Romans: From Village to Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Goldsworthy, Adrian. The Punic Wars, New York: Cassell, 2001.
• Heichelheim, Fritz M., and Cedric A. Yeo. A History of the Roman People. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962.
• Munro, Dana Carleton. A Source Book of Roman History. Boston: D. C. Heath, 1904.
• Shotter, David. Roman Britain. New York: Routledge, 2004.

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