Roman Empire

[Palaiologos]

Aleksandar i indeed planed to have diplomat units to bribe barbarians! I got hold of the idea a few days ago but without any access to a computer was unable to post it here.

Wait for some cool pictures in a few hours(6-7).
Fairline i unfortunately did not get your e-mail. My e-mail account space was full for a long time and lost many mails. Please send it again if it is not too much trouble.

[Palaiologos]

The field army system's drawback IMHO was that it allowed no space for failure. The soldiers lost in Adrianople were irreplacable. All it took was one tactical failure and the whole defence strategy colapsed.

But perhaps i am too strict. After all any other Empire that faced faced similar threats would have colapsed long before Rome.

[Palaiologos]

Eastern frontier.

Legionaries of Legio II Parthica repel a Sassanian attack. Messopotamia, 260AD.

[Palaiologos]

Hadrianopolis, 378AD.

Last stand at Hadrianopolis. The veterans of the scolae prepare to sell their lives dearly. Thrace, Battle of Hadrianopolis, 378AD.

The Draco standard is visible.

[Palaiologos]

Campaign, 150AD

Legionary and Cavalryman on campaign, 150AD.

[Palaiologos]

Saxon Shore, c.340AD.

Onager and crew, defending the shores of Britain, circa 340AD.

[Palaiologos]

Dacia, 105AD.

Although it is out of the chronology that my scenario focuses on, i thought it was cool so i posted anyway.

Auxiliary skirmish during the second Dacian War, 105AD.


The fallen Legionary belongs to the Legio I Adiutrix originaly raised from naval personel.

[Palaiologos]

Roman Empire.

This is ONE of the maps that i was talking about. It shows the aproximate stations of the Legions around 80AD. I have the exact names of the Legions from P.Connoly's "Greece and Rome at War". In the same book there are also the locations of the field armies according to the Notia Dignitatum. However something just doesn't fit. There is a field army in Strassburg, one at Pasau, at Regensburg!!!, at Concordia, at Aquileia!!!, at Rome, Split, Adrianople, Constantinople, Antioch, Cyrene and Dionysias.

Question 1: Why were some field armies positioned so close(the ones at Passau and Regensburg, and the ones at Aquileia and Concordia) ?. Where the Romans campaigning during that time in those areas?

Question 2: Why two field armies in Western Africa? I thought there was only one, cavalry only. The other was located in Tangiers, i think. Can somebody shed some light here?

[Palaiologos]

Byzantine Armies, 9th century.

Byzantine troops.

[Palaiologos]

What do you know of the Sassanid military?
Did they use War elephants in battle?(i personally doubt it).

My impression is that their army composed of ultra-heavy cavalry(cataphracts) and horse archers. They also used sophisticated siege technics.

What about their infantry? Where they only irregulars and skirmishers or they also fielded heavy infantry?.


Any info on dates, numbers, locations etc. would be much appreciated, thanks.

[Valuk]

Their cavalry was not as heavily armed as the byzantine kataphraktoi, as there are reports of the 52-year old emperor Heraclius riding down three persian champions in a row at the battle of Nineveh in 627 A.D. and surviving only because of his heavy battle gear.
Try fanaticus.org

[Valuk]

Ok, got the link right this time.

[Alexandr]

Originally posted by Palaiologos
What do you know of the Sassanid military?
Did they use War elephants in battle?(i personally doubt it).

My impression is that their army composed of ultra-heavy cavalry(cataphracts) and horse archers. They also used sophisticated siege technics.

What about their infantry? Where they only irregulars and skirmishers or they also fielded heavy infantry?.

Yes, they used elephants (may be this type of forces wasn’t very widespread...) In «Epitoma rei militaris» by Flavius Vegetius Renatus (IV - V c. AD) there are some fragments about methods of fighting against Persian elephants. Another example - «History of persian kings» by Tha'alibi: 589 AD, persian battle elephants in the battle against turks (who also had elephants in their army). By the way, in that battle persians used oil-flametrowers («lions») against turkutes’ elephants.

The main force of Persian army - perfect horse archers and heavy-armoured cavalry (which were trained to use bows, too). Persian infantry (irregulars, skirmishers, middle infantry), on the contrary, had very low battle qualities. The siege technics were well developed, of course.

[Stefan Härtel]

Yes, the Persians used elephants in battle. Ammianus Marcellinus mentions them in the battle between Iulianus Apostata and Shapur II in AD 363.
I've made some graphics for Sasanian units. I posted some of them in the graphics showcase thread, and I attached them here.
They're based on descriptions of Roman historians and what little I could make out from carvings and bas-reliefs, so they're quite accurate.

[Civfan]

question 1
around 80 AD the Romans were fighting the hill tribes and the tribes I believe from Dacia. There was a king of the Dacians who if I remember right was causing much trouble to the Romans. It wasn't until Trajan crushed and created serveral provinces out of his kingdom around 105 AD or something like that, and this is when the legions were restationed. I have some books that depict this and theres much information about this I think at the site roman-empire.net.

I'm not 100% right now on this but I believe this is close to an answer that you were looking for. Got to double check on this one!

This is great what your doing. Good luck to you on it.

Civfan..

ps. Actually I found your answer:

http://roman-empire.net/emperors/domitian.html