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In parallel and for obvious reasons, the evolution of society always translated into an evolution of the Roman army. Sometimes, it was even mutations within the army that stimulated changes in society. Finally, there are the majority of cases in which it is difficult to determine which is the chicken and which is the egg, but, whatever the case, all this leads us to an inevitable conclusion, which is that the study of the Roman military machinery cannot be removed from the study of Rome as a whole.M For this reason, when we talk about the Roman army we are immediately forced to specify the era to which we are referring because, despite the traditionalism that the Roman military displayed, a legion of the Middle Republic has little to do with another of the Under Empire. The analysis of each period requires a specific analysis and, consequently, in Desperta Ferro we have addressed the periods separately, with a specific publication for each one. To the right of him, a mounted soldier who covers his head with a Boeotian-type helmet. On the left we see several animals that are going to be sacrificed to the gods in a suovetaurilia (word formed by the names of the animals, pig, sheep and bull).
We know little about the Roman legion in times of the monarchy or very early republic , but we sense that it must have been reduced to armed bands that owed allegiance to a specific aristocrat or patrician family, rather than to the institutions of the State. We know an anecdote that tells how at the beginning of the th century BC. C. a specific family, the Fabian gens , started a war with the Etruscans by their own decision and B2B Email List behind the back of the Roman Senate, which gives a good account of the weakness of the institutions of Rome at that time and the existence of “private” armies. ” (or, more properly, clientelist) at the service of aristocratic families. As the State strengthened its institutions, this type of behavior became a thing of the past and it was then that a very common army model developed in the Mediterranean, that of the citizen militia, characteristic of city-states. Detail of the relief of the Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbo, erected in Rome at the end of the nd century BC. C. The theme of the altar is the representation of a census of the population (not visible here), which had a strong military character since the list of citizens coincided with that of men suitable for military service. That is why in the scene we see several legionaries supervising the scene, two legionaries armed with large oval shields, chain mail and Attic-type helmets.
According to this model, possession of Roman citizenship entailed the obligation of military service, although this was usually reduced to short periods (particularly during the summer) or to specific emergencies. The underlying idea was to conceive a close link between participation in war and the possession of political rights, such as voting in the various popular assemblies ( comitia ). Therefore, they were not professional soldiers but rather the civic body as a whole (male and of an able age, yes) that formed these armies. Peasants, merchants, shepherds, fought side by side and thus reinforced the feeling of political unity. Each of these citizen-soldiers had to provide their own weapons and, except in rare cases, received nothing in return except a proportional participation in the distribution of war loot. The success of Roman weapons multiplied this loot which, in the long run, made war an enormously lucrative business, to the point that, as some specialists have pointed out, the Roman economy fundamentally revolved around war and Your profits. That is, a truly predatory economy. And it is precisely this rapacity that fuels the great expansion of Rome during the th to nd centuries BC.
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