PerfectimusPrime

Or the first citizen. I think the word 'prince' comes from it...

When Trajan launched his invasion of Parthia the Invasion was going rather well; the weakened Parthian army didn't stand a chance against the Professional legionaries and relatively good Roman cavalry. Three Roman armier swept agross the river Tigris and river Euphrates. But Trajan's invasion failed because of the fact that the frontiers of Mesopotamia was very hard to defend against the more mobile Parthian army. Also the Jewish rebellion in Judea, a province that Rome could not afford to lose meant that the Trajan's legions had to withdraw from the conquered parts of the Parthian Empire. But the Trajan's conquest permanently sealed the fate of the incompetent Parthain kings and they were soon replaced by the warmongering Sassanids. After the Failed invasion the Romans lauched an revenge attack that destroyed the Parthian capitol (or was it seleucia?). But it also brought a plague to Rome. If the Jewish rebellion would not have happened the Romans could have conquered the whole Persia.

Where's Caligula and Commodus? Anyway, I think Commodus was the worst...

Probably during the principate...

The byzantine army had the very good kataphratkoi or cataphracts that were copied from the Persians, they were fully armoured and the horse was often more heavily armoured than the rider. they were armed with a Lance (kontos), Sword (spathion), Recurved bow (Toxion) and with darts (marzobarbuloi). They were made to counter the horsee archers that the constantinople had to face in increasing numbers. Horse archers were usualy not armoured that's why they were very fast and they were very good skirmishers. They could avoid close combat with the legions and fire arrows all the time and to lure the heavy infantry and cavalry into traps. But instead of running after them the byzantine catapharcts used their bow to answer to the enemy horse archer's fire. They threw the darts before they charged like the legionaries did. Byzantine army became more ''eastern''-style, with curved slashing swords and the Roman style chain mails were replaced with lamellar armouring. And horse archers became more permament in the byz. army and they had very large mercernary troop selection. I don't know much about the infantry, but it became more eastern, more eastern in tactics.

Huns probably.

Well, i've heard about titles such as... Princeps, Imperator, Augustus, Ceasar, and Basil during the byzantine empire.

I remember reading somwhere that the baths were considered absolutely essential, and that almost every relativly large city had one. Later on when the old wooden camps of the legionaries started to become more stony, or permament, not that different from medieval castles. There was bath in almost every one of them, and a small (many times wooden) amphitheatre, althought they rearly saw any real gladiator matches they were used for other celebrations.

Not that I would know of... But of course they had something. Like someshort of boxing, or something Edit: I remember some greaco-roman wrestling, or something

Well we can thank Christianity and Islam for us being Romans. We live more like Romans than any other, we follow roman laws, and most importantly we carry many of their ideals like universalism. Of course we have idolized them told to many great things about them, but that, along with Christianity kept Europe hopeful during the dark ages. We were capable of ''crabbing'' many of the lost aspects of the Romans, like military tactics were copied, engineering, laws and other society aspects like senates, Latin, etc, I don't even remember them all. (Even ETC is a roman typing ) Many scientific discoveries we got from the Arabs, who had learned them from the Greeks and Romans. Much was lost yes, but without the Romans we would probably be 500-200 years behind in technological advancement, and much more in society standards. Most of the European languages are Romanized, English is 2/3 Latin, French, Spanish, Portuguese, are romance languages. There is considerably less Germanic or Celtic aspects in our lifestyle

1. hmm... I don't remember... 2. The oval shield was used by all of the three lines Hastati, principes, and triarii. 3. The hastati had a throwing spear (was it pilum or a dart back then?), oval shield, sword, bronze helmet, and somesort of armour. The principes was armed pretty much the same, if I remember correctly. They had better equipment because they were richer. The triarii had a long battle spear in stead of the throwing spear that the two earlier lines had. Helmets were all bronze, but you could buy whatever armour you wanted.

The one greatest advantages of discipline was that the legions could form complex formations fast, and act perfectly as a unit not as a individual warrior like in many ''barbarian'' armies. The legionaries probably knew every phase in the battle, because they were drilled so hard... ''It would be fair enough to call their drills bloodless battles and their battles bloody drills.'' - Josephus, a captured jewish leader who later gained a Roman citizenship. Discipline had other great advatages in battle like perfectly timed charges, relativly easy out-flankings... Also the stabbing style battle took alot of discipline to work well. The discipline was not just enforced by the centurions, but their second-in-command, optios.

Ceasar, no doubt about it... He was a perfect General, a role that he played to the perfection...

I know something about pontic army: Pontic army was combo of Greek, Persian, and their own... The core of their army was made of heavily armoured catapharct cavalries, which were supported by horse archers and horse javeliners, like in the many eastern army. Infantry was made of rather light persian-type infantry,and phalanx lines. They also had chariots, slingers, archers... I think it was something like this...

Some say that the Roman concrete was acuattly better than the modern concrete. Like the chinese bricks (used in the great wall of china) are better than many modern bricks.

Early Empire, under augutus and others, the Empire's armies were probably best...

The republic was not capable of effective governance when rome started to expand in gigiantic scale. So, I'd say that the Empire, or the Principate was more effective government early on and was somewhat better for the people to, but later on the Principate started to show cracks, mostly because of the lack of accepted dynasty and civil wars greated by the sort of un-official ruler position.

Under the republic many of the legions uniforms were not single colored. Imperial legions had dark red, but late empire had many times white, with little bit blue on it, if memory serves...

I say the Roman law, most of the western law systems are based upon it...

Well, Byzantine orthodox church was never really accpeted in the west, and controlling the newely ''formed'' nation-states proved to be difficult. But if islam would not have been born, the Rome would probably been ''reborn'' or ''rerisen''. Also, the army of that time wasn't (to my knowladge) really that great.

It is common misconseption that the emperors were worshiped as gods, no one acualy belived that the emperors were Gods. The Emperors were very rarely worshiped, and the 'worship' was nothing else that a political gesture and it did not include anything else than offering insasnce (sp?) to the emperor. just that you'd know...

They did, but they returned to the chain mail later on...

Well, Lorica segmentata was probably the best relatively expensive armour available and it was used by probably all of the legionaries when it was in use

Not exactly, you see the Romans did not call Greeks barbarians. The greeks called every other people barbarian...

Yeah, Yeah....