Roman Legion
 

Thoughts on the Roman Legions being the best fighting organization of the ancient world, They trained for war without breaks. Their physical fitness was the best of all time - no fat soldiers - period.

How bout...
 

...no food soldiers...period......
...No I'm Spartacus...

Legions
 

The Romans were a fine unit until they ran afoul of the Picts that scared the crap out of them so they built a wall and hoped not to see them again.

Roman Legion
 

The Romans were not afraid of the Picks they just had no use for the northern part of England. The climate was too cold to grow wheat and grapes their cash crop. The wall built by Hadrian was to allow the Romans to kill the enemy with their ballistas and artillery . The Picts had no Ballistas to fight with and a small group of professional legionary could destroy large groups of warriors without suffering large losses in manpower. The PICTS were not the greatest at war anyway. The Celts were the real problem the Celts CAME over from Ireland and concurred the Picts . Scotland is a Celtic country by conquest . Rome never took Ireland into their empire they beat the Celts in Gaul but never could destroy all Celtic Civilization

locksly,

History is just that - its old news. We can learn many things in history but the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire shows how one nation can have so much and still loose it all.

It tells us that no matter how big you are you can still be taken out good soldier's or not. What killed them was greed and the Christians.

Too much skimming was be taken out by those who did not fight and then there was nothing.

But in there day they were the best and the most ruthless on earth. Now they are history as many before them have become. It's good you read history we should learn from their mistakes and hopefully not make them again.

Hadrian built the wall because he felt that the Empire was as big as it needed to be. He was the first Emporer to do this. The Christians did not kill the Romans. A Christian Empire survived in the East for centuries after the Western Empire fell. Rome's biggest problems were the Celts and the Jews who refused to bow to Roman rule. The other problem was the constent wave of barbarian incursions.

Many Ceasars tried to stop there expansion of the empire .Augustus Ceasar was the first to slow expansion after Varus his general in Germania was killed along with his 3 Roman legions. Augustus Ceasar had reduced the number of legions by half after he won the civil war .The loss of these 3 legions caused him to abandon the annexation of Germania short on cash Rome had a hard time stabilizing the frontier with Germania. If ROME had encorporated Germania into the empire at this time then the Germans would have been part of the empire and available to supply troops to the empire in its wars with PERSIA AND Islam.

The Germanians actually did later join in as soldiers but that became a problom.They kept warring with each other throughout the Roman armies.Some of the tribes had started coming into Roman territory in fear of the Monguls and joined as auxillery troops and later the tribes began warring internally.

ROMAN Armies had used German troops since the early days of the empire. These early troops were always recruited as individuals and served by no tribal group. The LATER ARMY made the mistake of letting large tribal groupes of Germans to join together under there kings. As long as the romans intergrated the new men into deferent units they had no trouble from the german recruits.

Locksly , ( as in Robin of?)
I may be wrong but I dinna think Varus lost 10 legions I believe it was the 9th and 10th legions at Tuetaborgerwald . ( I cannot spell tonight.)

Bill