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    For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.     Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!       ROMAN GLADIATORS The first gladiatorial contest at Rome took place in 264 BC as part of aristocratic funerary ritual, a munus or funeral gift for the dead. Decimus Junius Brutus put on a gladiatorial combat in honor of his deceased father with three pairs of slaves serving as gladiators in the Forum Boarium (a commercial area that was named after the Roman cattle...

    For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.     Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!       ANCIENT WARFARE Fall of the Roman Empire Reasons for the fall of the Roman EmpireAll left Rome open to outside invaders adapted from History Alive materialThere were many reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire. Each one intertwined with the next. Many even blame the introduction of Christianity for the decline. Christianity made many Roman citizens into pacifists, making it more difficult to...

    For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.     Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!     ANCIENT WARFARE ANCIENT ROMAN MILITARY(Conclusion) Julius Caesar   Image, Jean-Leon Gerome's "The Death of Caesar," 1867 ”…according to him, our problems are insoluble: ‘for if a man of Caesar’s genius could find no way out, who will find one now?" Cicero to Atticus, April 7, 44 BC  In the last five years of his life, Caesar prevailed in Civil Wars in Asia and Spain,...

    For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.     Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!     ANCIENT WARFARE ANCIENT ROMAN MILITARY(continuation) Julius Caesar   EXPEDITIONS TO BRITAIN 55-54 BC"But his expedition into Britain was the most famous testimony of his courage. For he was the first who brought a navy into the western ocean, or who sailed into the Atlantic with an army to make war; and by invading an island, the reported extent of which had made its existence...

    For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.     Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!     ANCIENT WARFARE ANCIENT ROMAN MILITARY(continuation) Julius Caesar   Winter Rebellion, 54-53 BC It can be argued that, after the apparent pacification of Gaul from 58-54, a second wave of rebellion began in the winter of 54-53 which would lead to the great campaigns of 52 BC by a united Gaul under Vercingetorix. The more thoroughly Caesar tried to eradicate the spirit of resistance, the...

    For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.     Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!     ANCIENT WARFARE ANCIENT ROMAN MILITARY(continuation)   Julius Caesar: The Gallic Wars "I am bound to suspect, Caesar, that your friendship is a sham and that your army here in Gaul is for no other purpose than to crush me. So if you do not get out of this area and take your army with you, I shall treat you not as a friend but...

    For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.     Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!     ANCIENT WARFARE ANCIENT ROMAN MILITARY(continuation)   PART II-D: Julius Caesar (100 - 44 B.C. )The Civil War "…they [Caesar and Pompey] were both reaching out after the supreme power and were influenced greatly by native ambition and greatly also by acquired rivalry, - since men can least endure to be outdone by their equals and intimates; hence they were not willing to make any...

    For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.     Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!     ANCIENT WARFARE ANCIENT ROMAN MILITARY(continuation)   PART II-D: Julius Caesar (100 - 44 B.C. )Gaul to the Rubicon "Vercingetorix Throws Down His Arms At the Feet of Caesar" L. Royer, 1888. By kind permission of Forum Romanum. "For himself he wanted a high command, an army, and a war in some field where his gifts could shine in all their brightness." Sallust, Conspiracy of...

    For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.     Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!     ANCIENT WARFARE ANCIENT ROMAN MILITARY(continuation)   PART II-D: Julius Caesar (100 - 44 B.C. )Youth to Consulate Descended from an impoverished patrician family which had long been attached to the senatorial clique, Caesar's immediate forbears had fallen from prominence in the decades before his birth and there had been no Consuls in his immediate family for generations. The office of Consul - one of...

ANCIENT WARFARE   ANCIENT ROMAN MILITARY(continuation) PART II-C: ROMAN TACTICSFrom Creasy's Battle of the Metaurus (http://www.standin.se/fifteen04a.htm ) The tactics of the Roman legions had not yet acquired that perfection which it received from the military genius of Marius, and which we read of in the first chapter of Gibbon. We possess, in that great work, an account of the Roman legions at the end of the commonwealth, and during the early ages of the empire, which those alone can adequately admire who have attempted a similar description. We have also, in the sixth and seventeenth books of Polybius, an...

    For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.     Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!     ANCIENT WARFARE   PART II-B: ANCIENT ROMAN MILITARY(continuation) 1st Century Roman Galleon as depicted on a Roman Coin Roman Navy The main function of the classis or fleet was to combat piracy and to support the operations of the other armed services. The imperial navy maintained two larger fleets based in the Mediterranean with smaller squadrons operating on the North Sea, Black Sea and...

    For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.     Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!     ANCIENT WARFARE   PART II: ANCIENT ROMAN MILITARY INTRODUCTION From early times right down to the 3rd century A.D, the Roman army was based on its legions. A legion varied in strength from 4,000 to 6,000 men, and was subdivided onto ten cohorts. Its leader used the title of legatus. His staff officers were called tribuni. Senior non-commissioned officers were called centurions, who varied...