What Makes A Legion Too Strong?

[Guest kingtravel]

Post deleted.

[caldrail]

The Romans themselves answered those questions many times. Active campaigning tended to make better soldiers, idleness created the worst. There's a letter from Lucius to Fronto that describes Syrian legions as always wandering off their posts, always getting drunk, and basically making a poor show of military service, and for that matter, Nero ordered Corbulo to march to Armenia with Syrian legions that had never done any military duties at all.

That ought to point to a major possibility in legionary excellence - the presence of a commander who is capable of leadership, motivation, and training. Also note that Plutarch mentions in the Life of Marius that legionaries love commanders who share their food and labour - we can read how the airs and graces of senior men contributed to the mutinies in Pannonia. Josephus describes the legion, without meaning to be complimentary, by the famous phrase "Roman drills are bloodless battles; their battles are bloody drills". In other words, the installation of relentless training made better soldiers, though clearly this was dependent on the commander not being especially lazy himself.

Underlying all of this was the divorce that Marius gave the Legion. After him, they were no longer loyal to the state but effectively independent and loyal to their commanders whom they saw as responsible for their welfare. Thus later, legions became aware of their potential political clout and tended to use it - thus generals sometimes found themselves being urged by their men to march on Rome and take over by virtue of popularity. Bear in mind that almost half the major battles fought by Roman legions were against each other.

Roman legions were not regiments in a state army - don't be fooled by modern thinking - there was no army organisation above legion level. Each legion was a separate packet of military power assigned to politicians to further their interests in security (or as often happened, personal ambition)