Regarding "ala"

[Guest Scanderbeg]

I was wondering guys. How did the ala look? Were they like the legionaries just from outside cities or actually different units all together?

[Primus Pilus]

It really depends on time period as well as whether it was attached legionary ala or auxilia units and where that auxilia came from.

[Guest Scanderbeg]

Im wondering about Italian ones. During the Punic Wars era.

[Jimbow]

Check out these Osprey books:

 

Republican Roman Army 200

[Hamilcar Barca]

Goldsworthy indicates in his The Complete Roman Army that the Italian ala (wings) of the Punic war era were armed and armoured in the same sense as the Roman legionary. He goes on to note that an ala consisted roughly of the same number of men as a legion (4,200 men at this time), however they usually had three times the number of cavalry so this would be about 900 horse. The ala legion was then sub-divided into cohorts, however it is unclear to what extent that these were tactical units, how many there were to each ala and whether they were of a fixed size. It is likely that this was just a vague term meaning contigent which referred to all the troops provided by a single Latin colony, this seemed to have been around 400-600 men. In a consular army of the Punic war era, there were two ala, right and left, which flanked the legions in the centre. Each ala was commanded by three prefects Praefecti sociorum who were invariably Roman citizens.