Roman Army during the Crisis of the Third Century DOCUMENTARY

[Music] centuries of peace and plenty assured by Emperor Augustus allowed Rome's legions to grow massive and strong becoming some of the most efficient troops in world history they would need the advantage as in the late 2nd and 3rd centuries with enemies on all sides the legionary system of Imperial Rome would be put under pressure which would bring its almost total collapse it would eventually adapt and bear the weight leading to the period of the late Empire welcome to our video on the Roman army of the middle Empire how it was organized and its progression and adaptation throughout the years of turmoil shout out to epic games and battle breakers for sponsoring this video battle breakers is available on PC on the epic game store and on ios and android in their stores it is a cartoon inspired hero collector RPG made by a small voice talented team at Epic Games use our link in the description to download battle breakers yourself battle breakers is available on PC ps4 and xboxone and in cross play between the platforms space monsters have trapped the planets greatest heroes that it's your job to assemble the ultimate team of super warriors and take back your planet your team will fight epic bosses in epic battles in more than 1,000 dungeons across forests volcanoes and glaciers you can recruit hundreds of unique heroes among them Knights ninjas robots and dinosaurs at this arsenal of powerful heroes will unleash massive attacks and special abilities to take down the bosses and their monstrous minions to save your world the game is powered by Unreal Engine 4 which gives it an attractive cartoon aesthetic supporters by clicking the link below to down battle breakers yourself and if you're buying games from the epic game store use our supporter creator code kings and Generals to support our channel during the late second century it was clear that the needs of Rome's military were rapidly beginning to change and a shifting strategic situation would soon make adaptation essential p180 had been a time of peace and plenty in the Roman Empire a golden age which Edward Gibbon describes as the happiest time in human history however upon the death of Emperor Commodus in 192 the Empire began a spiraling decline which would last almost an entire century helped along by increasing external threats along its eastern and northern borders rampant disease and internecine civil war the Roman army had to come to terms with these conditions and despite suffering greatly along the way managed to do just that and arguably became even stronger than before out of necessity when Marcus Aurelius and Lucas Ferrars assumed the Roman throne in 161 there were 29 legions in the army this figure was almost immediately reduced to 28 when one of the legions possibly Leggio nine hispana was destroyed in a war with the Parthian it was not until 165 that Marcus Aurelius created the new legions two and three Italica in order to face the mark Imani and their allies on the Rhine Danube frontier legionary recruitment had been drastically changed since the republic and early empire so let us delve into a bit of detail about how middle imperial legionary enrollment took place when men were brought into Imperial legions during this time it was done so primarily through conscription but a good number of troops still enrolled voluntarily with expectations of good pay and potential advancement to a rank which was both profitable and prestigious legions two and three perfect raised by septimus severus for example were recruited primarily by conscripted the defeated roman units of his civil war opponent / scania snooger in 94 this recruitment process as a whole was known as the des lectures or levy in our terms and Herodians description of Caracalla visit to Alexandria in 215 ad gives us some idea about how ada lectures might have been conducted an edict was issued by the Emperor stating that all of Alexandria's young men should assemble on an open area of ground probably in a similar landscape in spirit to the field of Mars or Campus Martius in Rome Caracalla wished to create a phalanx in honor of Alexander whom he was obsessed with the young would-be falen Giants were made to muster in ordered ranks so that the Emperor could examine each man judging if their stature age and condition measured up to the army standard or not it's worth noting that this occasion was not exactly a routine muster of Roman legionaries and so it could be an outlier however it is an example of how an experienced Roman commander and Emperor Caracalla was used to rallying troops for military purposes the army usually favored men from agricultural backgrounds rather than urbanites like the Alexandrians or those in Rome itself mainly because such recruits we're accustomed to hard work and tough conditions we can sense from some of the surviving sources and physical evidence that there seems to have been a sort of classism in Imperial Society about membership of different parts of the Roman army for example the gravestone of a Praetorian centurion proclaims that he had faithfully commanded a century in a Praetorian cohort not in a barbarian legion naturally this figure seems to have thought himself far too good for the mere rabble of brutish farmers the Barbarian legions made up of provincials at the last laugh however as septimus severus disbanded the Praetorians in 193 and reformed them purely from the ranks of ordinary legionaries the characteristics and bearing of the primarily rural increasingly provincial and culturally backwards legionaries often shocks be more sophisticated segments of Roman society such as the famous senator Cassie dear he was familiar with the relatively soft and cultured Praetorians reporting that the Pannonian soldiers who entered Rome with Severus in 193 were most savage in appearance most terrifying in speech and most boorish in conversation evidence from even more Roman gravestones suggests that most legionaries enlisted were between the ages of 17 to 23 though it wasn't uncommon for older or younger recruits to join up it's quite easy for us to picture a particularly large 15 year old from Egypt going down to the recruiting station thinking of adventure being big in those days isn't the same as how we think of it however forgetty estates that's the ideal height of a soldier was 5 feet and 9 inches 1.7 7 meters and the soldiers of the first cohort of a legion should be at least 5 feet and 7 inches 1.7 2 meters this first cohort was often the elite formation of the Legion so the increased height requirement can't have hurt in an age of melee combat with swords and other close quarters weapons after septimus severus came to power discharge became an annual occurrence among the Legionaries who henceforth served for a fixed period of 26 years however the third century crisis and it's intermittent civil wars messed all of that up from around 244 or there abouts a 40-year period of more or less constant foreign war and internal strife began which resulted in soldiers being kept in service far beyond their regular term much later in the reign of emperor alien from 272 to 75 we find a soldier named or alias Juliana's who had served in Leggio two paths occur for 33 years naturally some troops were more than happy to continue serving their empire but only if they were adequately compensated for doing so pay was is and will always be crucial for maintaining armies and during the turbulent period of Rome's middle Empire it became essential this mercenary attitude was personified by the soldier Emperor's Tamia Severus who advised his sons upon his deathbed to be harmonious enriched the soldiers and scorned all other men during his life this ruler had presided over the first pay increase for Roman legionaries for over a century 100 years before Domitian had increased military pay to an annual sum of three hundred silver denarii each paid in four separate installments low level officers were granted that pay and another half on top of it while senior officers receives double Severus increased the soldier's pay by around fifty percent making the basic wage four hundred and fifty denarii hay which was often supplemented by so-called donut if special gifts from the Emperor on celebratory occasions or when he felt like sharing booty after a campaign after Severus his death Caracalla doubled the pay again to nine hundred denarii but that was a step too far and it placed a massive strain on Imperial finances pay Rises turned out to be an even bigger problem and when his successors tried to return army wages to more reasonable levels it caused unrest and mutiny this restraint didn't last long when max aminos Thrax the big guy from Thrace as Professor Gregory L treta called him came to the throne in 235 he again doubled the soldier's pay to 1800 denarii it's worth noting that the third century saw massive inflation so increasing pay by such ridiculous degrees might not have been as indulgent as it seems the legionary Infantry's tactical command structure remained relatively unchanged throughout the turbulent third century with its cohorts centuries and contr burnheal units however there were a few differences in command and composition which were gradually starting to appear and that needs to be outlined legionary High Command gradually changed throughout the third century perhaps due to the barrack Emperor's and their distrust of the senatorial class in Rome until around 260 most legions were still commanded by a senatorial officer known legatus even early on though some legions such as Leggio - triana based near Alexandria in Egypt were commanded by a prefect Asur prefect a former legionary Primus pilus who had been promoted to the Equestrian Order the Emperor's might have looked at Egypt's undeniably protected status with senators being banned from going there and it's politics being almost totally restrained so at some point between 260 and 268 Emperor Gallienus finally issued an edict prohibiting senators from military commands entirely and by the 3rd century's end all legions were led by professional prefect next we must outline how the soldier Emperor's began to deal with the increasing levels of pressure on Roman borders by changing how Roman armies operated around the Empire on a fundamental level and how they were deployed from around the time of Marcus Aurelius the deployment of entire legions to specific battlefields was gradually turned down and by the mid 3rd century it was incredibly rare for a full Legion to leave its base and fight abroad for the entirety of lucia's varus's Parthian war the men of Leggio juan minerva Leggio - aduit ryx and legia v makedonia served in the east in their whole capacity however in the empire subsequent wars on its northern border from 168 to 180 many legions were not deployed as whole units but in sliced up detachments known as vex Alessio knees so-called because they would march under a banner call dave exilim or vex allah in the plural when referring to this type of unit Bek silletti Oh knees were not bound by any specific size like for example a cohort was and could designate a unit split from a larger legion of any size already in 170 ad Marcus Aurelius has recently established legions - and 3 italica were operating in Bek silletti oneis and this trend only increased in frequency as the years went on an inscription from the city of Solon in modern Croatia records how vex Allah tyrannies from Leggio Pia and Leggio three Concordia were combined and forced together to protect the city from barbarian invasions during the Marco manic wars from this point on the Legion as a unit began its transition from a mobile army in itself to a kind of static Reserve which was stationed at a particular location from that base it would detach vex alati oneís as needed for garrison duties or service in larger field armies the employment of this static default system would also allow completion of other duties without compromising its primary role of frontier defence and provincial law enforcement to roles which were becoming increasingly important as the Empire calcified and went on the defensive the advances of this system were practical in nature despite the initial appearance of weakening individual legions more mobile vex Alessio knees could be moved around the Empire far quicker than the larger legionary formations and could therefore more quickly respond to faraway threats moreover because of their smaller size they were more easily supplied during their long marches to where they were needed placing less of a strain on the Empire's logistics and population Don the Army's line of march when many of these smaller formations were massed together into a field army they were capable of destroying the larger military's Rome often faced such as the Persian armies fielded by the well-organized sassanid empire however when needed they could also be detached and dispersed to combat less numerous opponents in essence they were a strategically flexible tactical unit compared to the massive administrative unit which the Legion had been as a standard a combat vessel Aegean usually was comprised of one or two cohorts 600 to 1200 men who retained their century-old tactical organization and would fight in this manner in the field this meant that these units were essentially mini legions carrying the number and names of the parent Legion while the arrangement was usually intended to be temporary the ravages and turmoil of the third century made it virtually certain that some vex alati unease would essentially become estranged from their parents legions having been detached for so long equipment in the Roman army which had been so typically uniform for centuries began to diversify beginning in the mid 2nd century with such notable weapons as the Gladius no longer being seen as catch-all pieces of gear imperial infantry for the most part stops using short swords and instead adopted medium and long blades though it should be noted that some short swords remained in use some of the longest Roman swords from this time are so large as to resemble the heavy rapiers of the early modern period however this change in weaponry doesn't seem to have affected Roman swordsmanship doctrine too much and there is no evidence that primary weapon usage switched to slashing rather than thrusting veggetti estill advocates the use of a swords point in combat rather than its edge in his account of legionary training and imme annasmith colonist confirms the assertion when he states that legionaries used their swords to thrust at a battle much later indicating a continuity of practice in the Middle Empire many modern scholars have referred to the aforementioned longer blades as spatha but Amy Anna's refers to them as the Gladius which could be just a colloquial term at this point for a Roman sword whatever its design other weapons such as the pokeo dagger and the pelham seemed to have remained relatively standard in frontline soldiers it seems like the Romans also discovered that additional armor was in fact good during the Middle Empire and because of that began producing heavier defensive equipment ring mail shirts commonly began to consist of full-length sleeves down a soldier's arms and could even extend far down the thighs while scale peeresses were reinforced with chest plates use of the famous legionary lorica segmented armor consisting of iron plates and hoops was limited but it continued until at least the middle of the third century to supplement its relatively low level of limb protection articulated arm guards known as manic a were used in addition to Greaves and even thigh guards helmets also became heavier and more protective during these years with the imperial italic series of helmets ceasing production by the early third century all legionaries subsequently adopted heavier pieces of headgear of single ball construction reinforced by cross pieces and with very deep napes leaving only a small t-shaped opening for the face this type of helmet offered excellent protection for the vulnerable head and neck but the cheek pieces could obscure peripheral vision and the lack of ear holes would make listening difficult they remained dominant until the close of the third century when they were replaced with sassanid style Ridge helmets and swaggin Helms they were of a poorer quality when compared to earlier models but this kind of austerity measure was necessary after the disasters of the third century our series on the Roman armies will continue all the way to 1453 so make sure you are subscribed to our Channel and have pressed the bell button we would like to express our gratitude to our patreon supporters and channel members who make the creation of our videos possible now you can also support us by buying our merchandise by the link in the description this is the kings and Generals channel and we will catch you on the next one

Channel: Kings and Generals

Views: 480,108

Rating: 4.9314313 out of 5

Keywords: roman empire, ancient rome, roman legion, roman legions, full documentary, praetorian guard, roman army tactics, roman army documentary, roman tactics, kings and generals, history lesson, documentary film, military history, ancient history, decisive battles, historia civilis, animated historical documentary, roman republic, roman military, crisis of the third century, fall of the roman empire, king and generals, history documentary, history channel, late roman empire

Id: UtQCfQmhdNU

Length: 18min 29sec (1109 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 18 2019