This blog follows the Roman soldier Quintus in the year 202 BCE. He fights in the Battle of Zama between Carthage and Rome. This battle was the climax of the Second Punic War, arguably the most famous conflict Rome experienced during the Republican period.

The Roman Republic

From the expulsion of the kings in 509 BCE until the announcement of the principate in 27 BCE, Rome was a republic. Usually the period of the Roman republic is divided into the Early, Middle, and Late Roman republic. However, one shouldn't think of the 'republic' as a constant: according to scholar Jeremy Armstrong, this period can be better divided into as many as 13 parts.

The ideal of the republic formed the foundation for Roman identity; the Romans never called themselves an empire until the fall of the Western Empire. From the middle republic onwards, we see the emergence of a bureaucratic machine that was necessary to manage Rome's complexity. Prominent patrician families played the key role in this.

Roman Conquest Strategy in Italy

Rome had grown from a small city-state into an imperium controlling almost all of Italy in the early centuries of the republic. In some cases, this happened through bloody wars of conquest, such as against the Etruscan city of Veii in 396 BCE, which was only 16 km from Rome. But in most cases, this 'conquest' came with a cunning strategy of incorporating and merging warlords from other Italic cultures. Rome regularly chose allies to join them in attacking their enemies, and then incorporated both peoples into the republic. Finally, there were plenty of opportunities for the elite of these other peoples to join the elite of Roman society.

The beginning of the Roman republic was characterized, similar to the period of kings, by warlords, each with their own retinue of clients. They descended from the Latin peoples and were not Persian-Roman or attached to Rome. They lived the Indo-European tradition of undertaking annual cattle raids on hostile tribes. They returned with plunder they had 'heroically' won and were celebrated as heroes by the rest of the people. This group became the Patricians.

The major difference between the early Republic and the period before it is that these warlords occasionally united and began acting more in the name of the Roman republic. Other Latin warlords could join, and as long as they acted in the name of the Republic, they were a welcome addition.

This situation had several notable characteristics. First, it marked the open nature of the Romans toward 'outsiders'. After all, all neighboring peoples had the same Indo-European foundation and the same warrior tradition. For an ambitious warlord from another tribe, it was thus attractive to become 'Roman'. Around this time, we should think more of collectives of war bands than of the Greek type of Poleis.

From this tradition, we also see the Triumph processions and the claiming of spoils by the patricians who had conquered them 'in the name of Rome'. This tradition would persist and led to a very different image from how we often try to present Rome as a unified entity.

From this perspective, the gap widened between the 'haves' (patricians) and the 'have nots' (the plebeians), from which long-standing political friction arose with plebeians wanting a greater share in patrician rights. Although we often try to reflect much of our modern worldview onto the Roman Republic, it was different from our democratic system. Only male Roman citizens had voting rights and legal personality. Lower classes in society had almost no influence with their votes. They were dependent on their patron for political matters, maintaining a client-patron relationship. These relationships were based on cosmic reciprocity and came with obligations. The more clients a patron had, the more prestige and political influence he could exercise. At the same time, it was a disgrace for a patron to let his clients live in poverty. He protected them in the event of legal disputes and functioned as a bank. This client-patron relationship was non-binding and both parties could dissolve the partnership. Slaves and women had no political influence whatsoever, although freed slaves automatically became clients of their former master, which offered them startup capital.

The Punic Wars

During the fourth century BCE, the republic had absorbed other small city-states and regional rulers, but increasingly came into conflict with other imperia around the Mediterranean. Rome had a conflict with Syracuse between 264–241 BCE, which escalated into a war between Rome and Punic Carthage. Through this First Punic War, Rome developed a powerful fleet, directly copied from the Carthaginians. Peace between these powerful empires would not last long, and the conflicts that followed would be the most tragic and destructive wars of classical antiquity.

In 218 BCE, war broke out again between Carthage and Rome, this time in Iberia. The Carthaginian general Hannibal would bring the conflict to Rome itself and nearly destroy the mighty city-state. He traveled with Carthaginian troops, including his famous elephant cavalry, across the Alps into the Italian peninsula. There he gathered Celtic tribes and other peoples with grievances against Rome into an army (50,000 men strong) that was almost always outnumbered, but which he deployed with brilliant strategies.

In the battles at Ticinus, Trebia, and Lake Trasimene, he outmaneuvered the Romans behind their own lines and caused enormous casualties, killing several consuls. His greatest victory came at the Battle of Cannae (216 BCE), where he completely annihilated what remained of the larger Roman fighting force (roughly 80,000 soldiers) down to the triarii, resulting in 50,000 dead and 20,000 prisoners—an unprecedented number for this period of warfare. After this, he would terrorize the Italian peninsula for years to come.

However, he failed to besiege Rome. Hannibal's years-long campaign in hostile territory was extremely demanding, and he had to constantly outmaneuver the Romans to maintain his allies and keep his army supplied. Eventually, in 204 BCE, after 15 years on campaign (13 of them in Italy), he had to return to Carthage because he received no support from the Carthaginian senate and because there was barely any support for his campaign among the other Latin peoples of Italy. In Italy, he left nothing but total devastation, but it all proved to be for nothing: Rome had outlasted his campaign and immediately began preparing for a vengeful counterattack.

Despite the enormous losses the Romans had suffered over multiple generations, they quickly raised a new army led by dictator Publius Cornelius Scipio, a strategist on the level of Hannibal himself. In 202 BCE, the Romans and Carthaginians met again on the battlefield at Zama, an ancient city near Carthage. In this battle, the Roman army was outnumbered, and Scipio used Hannibal's own tactics against him (for example, by making alliances with the Nubians, paralleling Hannibal's use of the Celts). With this, the Romans achieved a decisive victory, and Carthage had to sign a humiliating peace, which forbade the city-state from maintaining a fleet and attacking Roman allies. With this battle, Rome became the dominant power in the Mediterranean.

In the coming century, a Third Punic 'War' followed between 149 and 146 BCE. This was, however, more of a brutal punitive expedition that Rome itself triggered out of fear to finally destroy Carthage. After the siege of Carthage, the Carthaginian army finally surrendered on the promise that the population would be spared. Rome broke this promise and razed the greatest Mediterranean city after Alexandria to the ground, resulting in the unprecedented slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians (estimates run as high as 750,000 victims). According to Livy, this action was so terrible that even the Roman commander who had ordered the destruction of the city and its population broke into tears, realizing that Rome itself could one day suffer the same fate.

The Army of the Middle Republic and Principes

It's no wonder that the hierarchy of Roman society was reflected in the army of the Republic. The armed force was divided into different ranks and groups, each with their own functions. The vanguard was led by velites, light infantry who harassed the enemy. They were often young men who, apart from a wolf skin and a small shield, wore no protection so they could move as quickly as possible across the battlefield. Heavy infantry was the most important element of the republican army. The formation of these soldiers was divided into three lines based on combat experience and property class.

At the front were the hastati: they were the least experienced and armored soldiers who led the attack in the first phase of a battle.

The middle line was formed by principes like Quintus. If the line of the hastati was broken during the first phase or if this part of the fighting took too long, they would move forward, equipped and ready to fight an exhausted opponent.

The Triarii, the veterans with the best equipment, formed the rear guard of the Roman army. If the formations of the hastati and principes were broken, they would come to the aid in the final phase of the battle. This rarely happened and was a sign that fighting would continue to the bitter end; the Romans even had an expression for it in everyday life, 'res ad triarios venit' or 'it comes down to the triarii'.

Besides this, there was cavalry on the flanks, made up from the class of the equites (knights), auxiliary cavalry consisting of wealthy Italians without citizenship rights, and other specialists.

Equipment of princeps Quintus

Clothing

Tunica (tunic)

In Roman society, the tunica of wool, linen (and in some cases cotton) was the most important garment for both men and women. During the republican period, it was very fashionable to make it long and flowing, to give the same appearance as the more formal toga worn by Roman citizens. However, this was not practical for soldiers, so they wore a short tunica, with or without short sleeves.

The tunica that Quintus wears is dyed blue. In modern depictions, Roman soldiers often wear red, because this color was a symbol of the god of war Mars. However, it is unclear what colors Roman soldiers wore, since the color was not uniform per legion and also per maniple. Soldiers maintained their own tunics during the republic, which they often had sent from home.

Belt

To have the mail shirt rest on the hips and to hang the sword, a simple leather belt was used during this period.

Caligae (sandals)

The sandals that Quintus wears are a practical military model used by legionaries. Military sandals were comfortable and light in design: this allowed soldiers to perform hard work, stand guard for long periods, and march great distances in a day without developing blisters. Soldiers themselves provided the sandals with nails to give grip on unpaved