This week, we\u2019re going to take a close look at arguably the most famous and recognizable Roman battle sequence in film: the iconic opening battle from Gladiator<\/em> (2000). Despite being a relatively short sequence (about ten minutes), there\u2019s actually enough to talk about here that we\u2019re going to split it over two weeks, talking about the setup \u2013 the battlefield, army composition, equipment and battle plan \u2013 this week and then the actual conduct of the battle next week.<\/p>\n The iconic opening battle, set in the Marcomannic Wars (166-180) during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (r. 161-180) dominates<\/em> the pop-cultural reference points for the Roman army in battle and you can see its heavy influence in things like how the Total War<\/em> series presents Roman armies (particularly in trailers and other promotional material). Students and enthusiasts alike will often cite this sequence as the thing which sparked their interest in the Roman army. It is hard to overstate how pervasive<\/em> its influence is in the public imagination of what the Roman army, particularly of the imperial period, was like, especially as its style is imitated by later pop culture works.<\/p>\n Which is why it is so unfortunate that it is such a deceptive historical mess<\/strong>. This sequence in particular<\/em> is a banner example of what I\u2019ve termed elsewhere the \u2018perils of historical verisimilitude<\/a>,\u2019 the habit of historically based popular-culture works including what we might think of as fake signifiers<\/em> of research, things that seem<\/em> historically grounded rather than being<\/em> historically grounded, as a way to cheaply cash in on the cachet that an actually grounded representation gets a work.<\/p>\n Gladiator<\/em> actually provides a perfect metaphor for this: its main character\u2019s name. Russell Crowe proudly informs us he is, \u201cMaximus Decimus Meridius,\u201d a name that certainly sounds<\/em> suitably Roman, picking up the three-part name with that standard second declension -us ending. It sounds<\/em> like it could be a real name \u2013 if you didn\u2019t know Latin you would probably assume<\/em> that it could be a real Roman name. But, as we\u2019ve noted<\/a>, it isn\u2019t a Roman name<\/strong> and in fact gets nearly all of the Roman naming conventions wrong<\/strong>: Roman names are ordered as praenomen, nomen and cognomen, with the nomen indicating one\u2019s gens<\/em> (\u2018clan\u2019 more or less) and the praenomen selected from just a couple dozen common personal names. Decimus is one of those two-dozen common praenomina (which also means it is never going to show up as the name of a gens<\/em>), so it ought to go first as it is actually his personal name. Meanwhile Maximus (\u2018the greatest\u2019) is very much not<\/em> one of those roughly two-dozen praenomina, instead being always cognomen (essentially a nickname). Finally Meridius isn\u2019t a Latin word at all (so it can\u2019t be a praenomen personal name nor a cognomen nickname), meaning it has to be the nomen (referencing a fictive gens Meridia<\/em>). Every part of his name is wrong<\/strong><\/em> and it should<\/em> read Decimus Meridius Maximus.<\/p>\n It sounds just right enough<\/em> to fool your average viewer, while being entirely wrong<\/em>. It is \u2018truthy\u2019 rather than true \u2013 verisimilitudinous (like<\/em> truth), rather than veristic (realistic, true).<\/p>\n In the case of Gladiator<\/em>\u2018s opening battle scene, the attention is on creating verisimilitude <\/strong>(without fidelity, as we\u2019ll see) in the visual<\/em> elements of the sequence and only <\/em>the visual elements<\/strong>. The visual<\/em> representation of a Roman army \u2013 the equipment in particular \u2013 is heavily based on the Column of Trajan (including replicating the Column\u2019s own deceptions) and since that is the one thing a viewer can easily check<\/em>, that verisimilitude leads a lot of viewers to conclude that the entire sequence is much more historically grounded than it is. They take their cues from the one thing they can judge \u2013 \u2018do these fellows wear that strange armor I saw on that picture of a Roman column?\u2019 \u2013 and assume everything is about as well researched, when in fact none of it is.<\/p>\n Instead, apart from the equipment \u2013 which has its own deep flaws \u2013 this is a sequence that bears almost no resemblance to the way Roman armies fought and expected to win their battles. The Roman army in this sequence has the wrong composition, is deployed incorrectly, uses the wrong tactics, has the wrong theory of victory and employs the wrong weapons and then employs them incorrectly. Perhaps most importantly the sequence suggests an oddly cavalry-and-archer focused Roman army which is simply not how the Romans in this period expected to win their battles.<\/p>\n Now I want to be clear here that this isn\u2019t a review<\/em> of the film Gladiator<\/em> (2000) or my opinion in general on the film. To be honest, unlike <\/a>the recent <\/a>sequel<\/a>, I enjoy Gladiator<\/em> even though it is historical gibberish. So I am not telling you that you aren\u2019t \u2018allowed\u2019 to like Gladiator<\/em>, but rather simply that, despite appearances, it is historical gibberish, particularly this opening scene, which I often find folks who are aware the rest<\/em> of the film is historical gibberish nevertheless assume this opening scene is at least somewhat grounded. It is not.<\/p>\n But first, if you want to help support this project you can do so on Patreon<\/a>! I don\u2019t promise to use your money to buy myself more arms and armor, but I also don\u2019t promise not<\/em> to do that. And if you want updates whenever a new post appears, you can click below for email updates or follow me on Twitter (@BretDevereaux) and Bluesky (@bretdevereaux.bsky.social) and (less frequently) Mastodon (@bretdevereaux@historians.social) for updates when posts go live and my general musings; I have largely shifted over to Bluesky (I maintain some de minimis<\/em> presence on Twitter), given that it has become a much better place for historical discussion than Twitter.<\/p>\n We pick up in an improbably mud-soaked <\/a>clearing with a title card informing us that we\u2019re in \u2018Germania,\u2019 which is correct in a very broad sense that this is the Second Marcomannic War and the enemies here are the Marcomanni and Quadi, who are Germani (Germanic-language speakers), but the army here isn\u2019t operating out of the Roman provinces<\/em> of Germania (superior<\/em> and inferior<\/em>) which are on the Rhine, but rather on the Danube, from the provinces of Noricum and Pannonia (Superior). But in the sense that we\u2019re in germania magna<\/em>, the greater zone of Germanic cultural influence, sure, fine.<\/p>\n In the process of Maximus riding up, the failure of negotiations and Maximus riding to join his cavalry, we get something of an overview of the Roman army and its position and both are wrong. Let\u2019s start with the soldiers: we see a very clear distinction between two kinds of soldiers, the mail-clad auxilia<\/em>, all archers, and the legionaries wearing the lorica segmentata<\/em> and there appear to be about the same number of both groups. And here is where we first see the clear influence of the Column of Trajan (and to an unfortunately lesser degree, the far more appropriate Column of Marcus Aurelius) on the depiction, because this use of armor to distinctly signal the Roman citizen legionaries and non-citizen auxilia<\/em> is straight from the Column of Trajan<\/a>, completed probably around 113 and commemorating Trajan\u2019s two Dacian Wars (101-102, 105-106).<\/p>\n What this sequence gets correct is that the Roman army was divided into those two groups, they were roughly equal in number (by this period, the auxilia<\/em> probably modestly outnumber the legions in total manpower) and Trajan\u2019s Column does use that visual signifier to distinguish them. This component is the crux of the verisimilitude that leads people to trust the rest of this sequence.<\/p>\n The problems start almost immediately from there. Roman auxilia<\/em> were far more varied than what we see here in terms of equipment and tactics and only very few of them were archers<\/strong>. So let\u2019s break down Roman auxiliary contingents. With all due caveats about the limits of our evidence, infantry auxilia<\/em> outnumber cavalry by about 2:1 in attested auxilia<\/em> units (auxilia<\/em> were grouped into cavalry alae<\/em> and infnatry cohortes<\/em>, generally of 480 men (sometimes around 800), but unlike for legionary citizen-infantry, these cohorts were not grouped into larger legions). So we ought to expect about a third of our auxilia<\/em> to be cavalry, which is important because the cavalry detachments of Roman legions were very small (and mostly for scouting and messenger duties). Auxilia<\/em> cavalry ranged in equipment and could include horse archers and even ultra-heavy cataphract cavalry, but most were mailed shock cavalry, equipped quite a lot like how Gallic or Germanic warrior-aristocrats or Roman legionary cavalry would be.<\/p>\n Of the remainder, the most common kind of infantry auxilia<\/em> by far seem to have been heavy infantry, fighting in fairly heavy armor. These fellows get depicted in Roman artwork generally in mail armor, with flat oval shields (as opposed to the curved, rectangular imperial-period Roman scutum<\/em>), spears and swords. These fellows, totally absent in this sequence are all over<\/em> the Column of Trajan, with their flat oval shields being frequently seen (although one must distinguish them from Dacians who carry the same shield; the auxilia<\/em> stick out for their mail and helmets). A bit less than 10% of auxilia<\/em> units are attested as cohortes<\/em> sagittariorum<\/em> (\u2018cohort of archers\u2019). We also know the Romans used slingers within the auxilia<\/em>, but as far as we can tell, not in specialized units; they may have been brigaded in with other auxilia<\/em> cohorts. In either case, they appear in fairly small numbers. Finally, we also see on things like the Column of Trajan<\/em> Roman allied or auxiliary units that are substantially lighter infantry: on the Column of Trajan, these are local troops shown wielding large clubs and stripped to the waist, presumably representing troops local to the Danube region, fighting in local (unarmored, with heavy two-handed weapons) style.<\/p>\n So whereas the army we see is a nearly even split between legionary heavy infantry and auxilia<\/em> archers (with a small amount of legionary cavalry waiting for Maximus to show up to lead them), in practice a typical Roman field army would have far fewer<\/em> archers, indeed around ten times<\/em> fewer: not almost 50% of the force, but in fact probably a bit less than 5%<\/em> of the force (since they\u2019re less than 10% of the auxilia<\/em> who would make up around half of a Roman field army). Meanwhile we\u2019re simply missing<\/em> the \u2013 by far \u2013 two most common sorts of auxilia<\/em> cohorts, those of heavy infantry or heavy cavalry<\/strong>. This mangling of the structure of a Roman army is going to have implications when we get to Maximus\u2019 overall plan for the battle as well.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the legionary infantry are also much too uniform<\/em><\/strong>, literally. This is easily the most pardonable error, because what has happened here is that director Ridley Scott has copied the Column of Trajan but far too uncritically. After all, the Column of Trajan is not a photograph<\/em> and thus has space for the artists producing it to take liberties, particularly in the name of imperial ideology and propaganda. In this case, showing large numbers of identically equipped soldiers, often moving in unified formation, serves the same rhetorical purpose in antiquity as it does today, suggesting an impressive, inhumanly uniformed and disciplined source. Moreover, the segmented Roman body armor, which we call the lorica segmentata<\/em> (we don\u2019t know what the Romans called it), was very distinctive to the legions, as it was the one armor that it seems like the auxilia<\/em> probably (the evidence here can be tricky) didn\u2019t share. And keeping the legions distinct from the auxilia<\/em> also matters, as the legionary soldiers are higher status citizens who thus get \u2018higher billing\u2019 in the imagery, as it were, than the auxilia<\/em>. So showing all<\/em> of the legions equipped neatly with this armor makes them seem distinct, impressive and uniform.<\/p>\n In short, it served Trajan\u2019s image<\/em> (and thus the artists aim) to suggest that all<\/em> of his legions wore this armor.<\/p>\n Archaeology tells us quite clearly it was not so. Indeed, the lorica segmentata<\/em>, so iconic because<\/em> of its use in this way on the Column of Trajan, was probably the least common <\/strong><\/em>of the three major types of Roman legionary body armor in this period<\/strong>. This most common<\/em> armor of the Roman legions was almost certainly still \u2013 as it had been in the Late Republic \u2013 mail<\/em>, exactly the same as we see the auxilia<\/em> wearing. We find fragments of Roman mail in legionary sites in all corners of the Empire and it remained common everywhere. To head off a standard question: no, it does not seem that the Romans ever got the idea to layer other defenses over mail, so when it was worn, it was the \u2018primary\u2019 armor (worn over a padded textile defense called a subarmalis<\/em>, but not under any other armor). We also see mail represented in Roman artwork, including on very high status soldiers, like senior centurions.<\/p>\n The next<\/em> most common armor was probably<\/strong> scale armor<\/strong>, which we find very frequently in the East (that is, on the frontier with the Parthians\/Sassanids) and often enough (if less frequently) in the West (that is, the Rhine\/Danube frontier). We also know that some auxilia<\/em> units wore this armor too and we see quite a bit of scale armor<\/strong> \u2013 wholly absent in this sequence \u2013 on the Column of<\/strong> \u2013 wait for it \u2013 Marcus Aurelius <\/strong>(completed c. 193). That\u2019s the column that commemorates this war<\/em>. Contemporary with this<\/em> fictional battle<\/strong>. But it is less famous and somewhat less well-preserved than 70-years-earlier Column of Trajan, which they pretty evidently used quite a bit more of.<\/p>\n The lorica segmentata<\/em> shows up the least often and \u2013 to my knowledge \u2013 effectively exclusively<\/em> in the west on the Rhine\/Danube frontier, where it is still probably not the most common (although it may have been more common than scale on that frontier). So what we ought<\/em> to see in this army are legionaries who are marked out by their large scuta<\/em> (the big Roman shield, by this period distinctly rectangular and also (as in the republic) curved), but in a range of mail, scale and lorica segmentata<\/em> (with mail and segmentata<\/em> being the most common, because we are on the Danube frontier, but scale hardly rare), along with auxilia<\/em> divided into specialist cohorts (480 man units) each with different sets of armor and weapons: a few missile cohorts (archers, slingers), a lot more heavy infantry cohorts with spears and long shields, some lighter troops, and so on. The auxilia<\/em> ought to be wearing basically every armor under the sun except for the lorica segmentata<\/em> (which to my knowledge we\u2019ve only ever found in sites associated with the legions).<\/p>\n Finally, these units are backed up by a whole load of catapults. We see two kinds, dual-arm arrow-throwing machines (which most folks would casually call ballistae) and single-armed pot-throwing machines (which most folks would casually call catapults), all of them in stationary mounts. Now on the one hand, \u2018the Romans use lots of torsion-based catapults as artillery\u2019 is a true statement about the Roman army of this period, but on the other hand once again beyond that basic idea, most of this is wrong. Once again there\u2019s an issue of verisimilitude here: the appearance of strange catapults and the true fact that the Romans used a lot of unusual catapults is likely to lead the viewer to assume some research has been done here and thus that these are the right catapults. For the most part, they are not.<\/p>\n We can start with the easy one, the larger single-armed pot-throwers. These are onagers, a late-Roman simplified single-arm torsion catapult, named for their fearsome \u2018kick\u2019 (like an ass, an onager<\/em>). These are popular favorites for Roman artillery, for instance showing up in both Rome: Total War<\/em> and Total War: Rome II<\/em> (both of which have main campaigns set during the Late Republic). There\u2019s only one problem, which is that Gladiator<\/em> (much less the even earlier Total War<\/em> games) is set substantially too early for an onager<\/em> to appear<\/strong>. Our first attestation of the onager<\/em> is in Ammianus Marcellinus, writing in the last two decades of the 300s AD about the events of 353-378 (his work was broader than this, but only the back end survives). Vegetius, writing roughly contemporary with Ammianus also mentions them. But before the late fourth century, we don\u2019t have any evidence for this design and it doesn\u2019t show up on the Columns of Trajan or Marcus. So this isn\u2019t just a little bit too early for these catapults but, given the evidence we have, around 150 years too early, the equivalent of having a line of M1 Abrams show up in a film about the Battle of Gettysburg.<\/p>\n What we do have are a number of twin-armed bolt or arrow-throwing machines and the Romans certainly had those, though what we see doesn\u2019t match up well with what the Romans used. What we see is a single size of fairly large arrow-throwing engines, aimed upward to fire in fairly high arcs and built with large metal cases containing the torsion springs (generally made of hair or sinew, tightly coiled up; it is the coiling of these springs which stores the energy of the machine).<\/p>\n These two-armed torsion catapults came in a wide range of sizes and could be designed to throw either arrows\/bolts or stones (the latter carved into spheres of rather precise caliber for specific machines). And we ought to see a pretty wide range of sizes here, from massive one-talent engines, which threw a 1 talent (26kg) stone and stood about three times the height of a man, to much smaller anti-personnel weapons (scorpiones<\/em>) that were more like a \u2018crew served\u2019 weapon than a large artillery piece. By Trajan\u2019s time, the Romans had even taken to mounting these smaller crew-served engines on mule-drawn carts (called carroballistae<\/em>) to allow them to be rapidly repositioned, something like early modern \u2018horse artillery\u2019 (they were not meant to fire on the move; when we see them on Trajan\u2019s Column, at least one of the operators is usually standing on the ground outside of the cart to winch the machine). These smaller machines, which would have made up the bulk of those deployed in a field battle, seem mostly absent in the sequence<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The result of all of this is that the Roman army presented in the opening moments of Gladiator<\/em> manages to strike a remarkably unhappy balance: having just enough of the appearance of accuracy to decisively influence two decades of subsequent depictions of the Roman army without actually being particularly correct about anything<\/em> beyond a very surface level. But subsequent pop-culture (again, I think Rome: Total War<\/em> played a significant role here) would codify this vision of the Roman army \u2013 fire-throwing onagers, lots of auxilia<\/em> archers, legionary rather than auxiliary cavalry, uniform use of the lorica segmentata<\/em> \u2013 as the dominant model for quite some time.<\/p>\n But the army isn\u2019t the only thing that\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n The army is also deployed wrong<\/strong>.<\/p>\n What we are shown is pretty clearly a prepared defense on a hillside, with a series of raised terraces, with a mix of abatis (sharpened wood obstacles, often crudely cut wood stakes set in an X pattern) and mantlets, with gaps in those defenses to allow units to move and a whole bunch of catapults positioned up on the hill. The terraces make for a layered, multi-stage fighting position at each level. On the one hand, the Romans were hardly averse to field fortifications and one wonders again if this set was a product of someone with an active imagination looking at the Column of Trajan, which features a lot of scenes of Roman soldiers cutting trees and building bridges, roads and forts.<\/p>\n The problem isn\u2019t that<\/em> there are field fortifications, it is everything else about them: the style of field fortification, their position, layout and use<\/strong>. As we\u2019ve noted before<\/a>, Roman armies on campaign built fortified marching camps nightly, so we would expect Maximus\u2019 army to have such a camp, but as we\u2019ve discussed even more so<\/a>, one of the classic<\/em>, famous<\/strong><\/em> features of Roman armies is that they build the same layout of camp<\/em> wherever they go, the famous Roman \u2018playing card\u2019 forts, generally built on flat, open ground (rather than hillsides). That defense would not look like this, instead consisting of a ditch (the fossa<\/em>) behind which would have been a earthwork rampart (the agger<\/em>) topped with a wooden palisade (the vallum<\/em>); thus rather than successive layers, you\u2019d have a single clear fighting position (the vallum<\/em>) on a mount with the ditch directly in front of it. And that would be a continuous<\/em> line, with just four gates (at the center of each side), rather than this kind of checkerboard pattern of fortifications, because of course the purpose of this defense was to prohibit entry. Moreover, the line of field fortifications we see are not part of, nor connected to, a marching camp: it is simply a line of fortifications on the side of the hill with nothing on the flanks, rather than the distinctive \u2018playing card shape.\u2019 We don\u2019t see the camp<\/em> sitting behind it either.<\/p>\n But the really immediate problem is that Maximus\u2019 army has formed up within his troops strung through the field fortifications, with legionary soldiers mostly in front of them (but some are behind them) and the archers in between the stakes and mantlets. This may seem like a sensible way to form up a defense, but it is not the Roman way<\/strong><\/em>. Maximus is very intentionally \u201coffering battle,\u201d \u2013 inviting his opponent into an open field engagement. The way a Roman army did this was invariably forming up on the flat, open, unfortified ground in front<\/em> of the camp, toward the enemy, signalling that they would fight in the open, outside of their walls (as Maximus does indeed intend to do).<\/p>\n So what we ought to see is Maximus\u2019 army formed up outside<\/em> in the open field, with the camp likely visible some distance behind them. That camp would be protected by very different fortifications: you\u2019d be able to make out its \u2018playing-card\u2019 shape, with watch-towers on the corners and the raised vallum<\/em> running the exterior and the relatively neat grid of tends in the interior.<\/p>\n Finally, before we get to the battle plan, I want to note one more oddity here, which is the battlefield itself. The battlefield is a muddy field, which it looks to have been recently clear-cut, otherwise surrounded by dense forest. Of course part of the reason is that this is Bourne Wood<\/a>, a coniferous tree plantation (and frequent filming location) in Surrey, England (which is why the trees are all the same species, so neatly spaced out) rather than the edge of an old-growth forest somewhere in southern Germany.<\/p>\n But the thing is, the Marcomanni, Quadi and other Germanic-language speaking peoples were an agrarian society, same as the Romans: their villages were surrounded by farm and pastureland. Of course a lot of the forest \u2013 old-growth forest, rather than tree-farms as here \u2013 remained, but if a Roman army wanted a flat, open space to offer battle in, they needn\u2019t have cleared it themselves (and indeed probably couldn\u2019t<\/em>, at least not in the time frame they\u2019d have to prepare for a pitched battle), but could simply march to the nearest village with its patches of farmland. Getting a Roman army to fight in dense, old-growth forest, after all, famously required clever ambushes<\/a>, as a Teutoberg Forest (modern Kalkriese) in 9 AD. And if the enemy didn\u2019t want to fight in the open, Roman armies were perfectly happy to burn villages and pillage crops as the standard way of attempting to force an enemy to accept an offer to battle or else vacate the area.<\/p>\n With all of that established, we can now get to Maximus\u2019 battle plan. The attentive reader may already have begun to notice the cracks forming here as we\u2019ve discussed how different<\/em> the composition of a Roman field army would have been from what we see here, but I am always struck by how this scene, which for so much of the public is the<\/em> paradigmatic Roman battle, is very un-Roman way to fight a battle<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Now some caveats here are necessary at the start. One of the oddities of studying the Roman army is that the gaps in our evidence shift between periods<\/strong>. So, for instance, the Roman army of the Middle Republic (that\u2019s c. 343 BC to c. 101) is quite poorly attested archaeologically \u2013 being always on the move in offensive operations will do that \u2013 but its structure, equipment and tactics are very clearly described by our literary sources, such that we have detailed narratives for quite a lot of large-scale pitched battles. For the first two centuries AD, this problem is in many ways reversed: the Roman army, now permanently stationed in frontier forts, suddenly becomes very<\/em> archaeologically and epigraphically visible, but our literary sources lose interest in the details of Roman military operations. They still report outcomes<\/em> \u2013 victory and defeat \u2013 since those matter for the reputations of emperors and their generals, but since those historical sources have shifted their focus from the politics of the Roman Republic, where common soldiers were also key voters, to the politics around the emperor, in which even a frontier general might be a relatively minor figures, their interest in the detailed conduct of battles trails off.<\/p>\n As a result, somewhat paradoxically, while overall<\/em> our information for the Roman army of the Early and High Empire is much better<\/em><\/strong> that that for the Middle or Late Republic, our understanding of its tactics<\/em> is actually a fair bit weaker<\/strong>. We do get a few, generally relatively brief, battle descriptions in authors like Tacitus and Josephus, but there\u2019s far less detail here than what we get for the Middle or Late Republic from authors like Polybius, Livy and Caesar. We also get some discussion of tactical dispositions in Vegetius and Arrian\u2019s Array against the Alans<\/em>, but we have a lot of reason to suspect that these are not typical formations but rather fancy, special use formations that may have been rarely, if ever, used.<\/p>\n All that said, we do have one significant advantage which is that our fictional battle in Gladiator<\/em> is taking place in 180 AD, at the end of two centuries of relative stasis in Roman organization, equipment and tactics. The Roman army will change substantially<\/em> between the end of the reign of Marcus Aurelius (in 180) and the end of the reign of Constantine (in 337) but it changes very little<\/em> between from the reign of Augustus (r. 31BC \u2013 14AD) all the way to Marcus. Indeed, from a tactical perspective, Marcus Aurelius\u2019 legions seem to have been little different in their approaches and capabilities to those of Julius Caesar two and a half centuries prior. And given that broad sweep of time, we get enough<\/em> battle narratives to track the development, or more correctly the lack of development, of large-scale Roman battle tactics.<\/p>\n Maximus\u2019 plan of battle in Gladiator<\/em>, however, fits the Roman way of battle so poorly<\/em> that the limits of our evidence mostly don\u2019t matter very much: even with what we know, this is not how the Romans win a battle<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Maximus\u2019 tactical plan comes in roughly three stages: first he plans to \u2018unleash hell\u2019 with massed archer and catapult \u2018fire\u2019 (which I can write here with no issue because they\u2019re all fire arrows and pots), a huge part of his plan to the point that he sets the forest ablaze<\/em>. He then advances his infantry to draw the enemy into the open ground and then finally he charges the enemy in the rear with his cavalry, having apparently galloped all the way around the enemy force.<\/p>\n Though Rome: Total War<\/em> wouldn\u2019t come out for another four years after this movie, this is pretty classic Total War<\/em> tactics<\/a>: archers, positioned safely behind heavy infantry, wear down enemy forces, which the infantry then pins and cavalry flanks in a \u2018hammer and anvil\u2019 attack. Functionally no ancient army regularly fought this way<\/strong>; it remains really striking to me that as fun as they are, Total War<\/em> games really struggle to reproduce<\/a> the actual tactics of the periods they are meant to describe. Historically, archers are more generally deployed interspersed with the infantry or on their flanks but only rarely tucked in as a distinct unit behind them, for the obvious reason that archers who can see and shoot directly at their targets are more effective<\/a>. Meanwhile when you read about Alexander or Hannibal flanking an army with cavalry, they are almost always punching through<\/em> and collapsing<\/em> an enemy flank and then \u2018rolling up\u2019 the army<\/a>, not galloping all the way around and behind an army, for the obvious reason that real armies are a lot bigger than Total War<\/em> armies<\/a> (and, as we\u2019ll see next week, a lot bigger than Maximus\u2019 Un-Roman Army<\/h2>\n
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I should also note there is no Legio III Felix. There was Legio III Gallica, III Italica and III Parthica. Indeed, there was no Legio Felix of any number, though there was a Legio IV Flavia Felix, \u201cFlavius [Vespasian]\u2019s lucky 4th legion.\u201d Maximus is later going to claim to be \u2018general of the Felix legions,\u2019 a claim which makes no sense from multiple directions (no such legions, but also no such office).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-3.png?resize=1024%2C590&ssl=1\")
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1280px-046_Conrad_Cichorius_Die_Reliefs_der_Traianssaule_Tafel_XLVI_Ausschnitt_01.jpg?resize=1024%2C705&ssl=1\")
Maximus\u2019 un-Roman Fortifications<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-6.png?resize=1024%2C438&ssl=1\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Masada_Roman_Ruins_by_David_Shankbone.webp?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1\")
A Very Un-Roman Battle<\/h2>\n