If Romans and Vikings ever fought how fucked would Romans be?

Rome had defeated Germanic and Goth tribals before. What exactly is the advantage or impetus for Vikings?

Are we assuming an ambush? If so that's pretty fucking stupid.

In a standard battle on level ground with equal forces, Rome would tear Vikings apart.

Remember almost every battle vikings participated in? Yeah exactly. Not so tough when not against women and kids.

vikings were taller, fitter and stronger. romans were something like 155-160cm tall and ate nothing but white bread. you can take some friends and go and try wrestling a full grown gorilla, that would give you some comparison what would happen to roman unit when they face a crazed berserker at his peak of strength.

You mean an incompetent general/governor who got jumped and ambushed in a heavily wooded area while Arminius' forces surrounded the Roman baggage trains and caravans that were trailing the army with the soldiers families? A place that Arminius spent weeks scouting, preparing, and prepping on with his people?

And the same Arminius who spent most of his adult life prior in the Roman army learning how to be a soldier and how the Roman legion operates? How is that applicable to Vikings?

>Marian era Romans with Lorica Segmenta

Remember the Marcomannic wars?

Then how come niggers didn't take over the world. Why hasn't the NBA conquered America.

What Roman army are you talking about, OP?

Camillan early Republic armies?
Polybian maniple armies?
Marian reform armies?
Augustine segmentata armies?
Late WRE/ERE armies?
Byzantine armies?

So were the Germanic tribes but Augustus, Tiberius, and other Roman Emperors and generals were able to keep the Germanics from raiding into Roman territories for centuries. What's your point you moron?

Vikings were savage when it came to battle. If out of formation the Legion would be torn to pieces no doubt.

Better metallurgy and ships? They could have succesfully raided Rome, and it's not like Rome could come after them.

Fighting women and kids is frankly the smart move. I mean, do you want to get stabbed?

I was mainly thinking of weapons. I'm not sure if a Dane axe is superior in this situation to a glad it's or vice versa. Then there also forging techniques and the materials available.

>Better ships?
That's it.

Why would the Legion be out of formation. Why would an army not use tactics? Is military strategy just "ok go fight in this field"?

We know the results. The Cimbri, Tuetones and Ambrones were all but genocided.

Yes.

An axe is a superior weapon pretty much never.
The only decent use for axeblades is being affixed on top of polearms, but that's not something you'd use in a viking shieldwall.

>Vikings were savage
So are all Germanic barbarians in general. Big whoop.
>Out of formation Legion
Why would the Legion be out of formation in the first place, Hans?

If the Romans were so successful why didn't they move theirs borders across the Danube?

Literally because Commodus is a faggot.

Because every major empire needs to have limits on its expansions and boarders otherwise it becomes overburdened with strain and the constant shifting of manpower of the legions.

That's common sense 101.

>romans were something like 155-160cm tall and ate nothing but white bread
It amazes me that people actually believe this. Vegetius literally wrote that the minimum height requirement for a legionary is 5'6.

Because despite Germans being barbarians, they were genetically superior to Italians and stopped any attempt

That's cause Legions like fought pussies is behind their giant red shields. Vikings rarely used those and had the honor to have never used ranged weaponry like those javelin and arrows. 1v1 Mano a Mano they were the superior fighters.

Average height for a late Republican Roman soldier was a mandatory 5'6 to 5'7. Stop this meme bullshit. Also Germanics towered over everyone but this didn't stop them from being held in check at the Rhine for nearly 500 years by the "manlet" Romans.

t. Sven

Yeah I highly fucking doubt that.

>snowniggers actually believe this
>muh blue-eyed nordic race!!1!

>He bit the meme that Romans fought like Robots all the time.

Josephus in his account of the battles in Judaea jewing the Jewish Revolt, accounts that officers have lost control of their legionnaires and the battle inside Jerusalem was a series of independent shitfights between groups of rebels and legionaries scattered throughout the city.

Battles are disorderly things. Shit happens.

>white bread
did that even exist in the modern sense at that point?

You highly fucking doubt Vegetius? Fine with me. It's not like I care if you prefer your beliefs to history.

And you have so much proof to validate your doubt.

Pullo, BACK IN FORMATION!

>vikings rarely used shields
Jesus fucking Christ on a cross.

>He bit into the meme of a single occurence equal causation belief
I don't care what Jospehus thinks. Roman East by the time of the Jewish Revolt was strained by incompetence and hands off approach by Roman officials and army officers.

But 99% of the time Romans are a highly drilled, professional, disciplined army.

>Josephus
And so? Sounds like a singluar inconsistency, not really that surprising given how relations between the Romans and Jews were in the first place. Its not going to contradict the fact that most of the time the Roman soldiers at their peak were usually following orders to the letter.

>Tacticus
>Dio
>Cassius
>Plutarch

>Vikings were savage when it came to battle.
Vikings fought by shieldwall. A fight against the romans would be a shield clash until one side breaks the line, and when that happens slaughter and routing ensue.

They did (sorta)

With the end of the Empire many northern barbar are viking ancestors (prolly)

Also Romans in full outfit with their more focused armies of earlier history would win against barbars they are specialized in killing.

The literal Penalty for stepping out of formation was 20 lashes.

Yes I doubt an unrealistic claim from a single writer. I must be crazy
any anthropological findings on height from that era honestly

>unrealistic claim
How is it unrealistic? Studies on roman skeletons put their average height at 170cm.
Just because your inferiority complex needs to think of the romans as literal dwarves for your dick not to shrivel, doesn't mean they actually were.

Vikings were the ultimate warriors. His must be brain dead siding with the Romans.

It pleases me that someone other than me also uses this expression. Kudos to you, sir

So you think it's a good policy to exclude everyone from the military who isn't 5'7.5 height, when half the population is the average height of 5'7 or below? I'm sure that trivial height difference was a good trade-off for not being able to use half of the entire population

>Singular inconsistency.
Lelno

There was also some civil war during the Empire which a battle between two legionary armies got spread out in some forest and when night fell, units were trying to find their units by yelling at each other. This isn't Josephus. trying to remember what battle that was.

And Josephus' shit was talking of a battle ALSO at the peak of Roman Imperial mastery. Not to mention was praising Roman discipline in his work.

But like what I said: battlers are chaotic things to be in. All sorts of shit happens.

Because there was literally nothing but fucking forest for them to conquer and wasnt worth the effort. Also what this guy said. Read about Hadrian, pleb

Romans slaughtered their barbarian ancestors.
The only way Vikings could win against the Roman Empire is by mass immigration. like their ancestors.

They did.

I honestly only use it on the net, because I need an english language blasphemy to convey my emotions.
For all the wealth of expressions you have, you're remarkably tame in that department.

Not really dude. Your using general outliers to try and claim the opposite of how typically Roman armies operate.

Romans fought superior trained armies that utilized the same concepts. Like phalangite and hoplite centric armies of the Hellenistic peoples. That isn't going to help.

>Marian era Romans with Lorica Segmenta
XD

Considering that peak roman army only consisted of 0.5% of the population, I'd say it's hardly a problem.
The romans weren't above waiving requirements when absolutely necessary anyway, they'd enlist peregrines and slaves in emergency situations, so they surely broke the height rule if required too.

Vikings had more advanced weapons and tactics, and had mobility through sailing that Rome could never deal with. They could have just landed right in Rome and taken the city. By the time a legion came running back the city would be stripped barren. And meanwhile you'll have whatever enemy Rome was using the legions for come and invade.

Tactics? Nigga what, fucking shieldwalls are you fucking kidding me?

You're just theorycrafting now and we both know making half the population unavailable to service would be a retarded pointless policy. Just stfu and admit you're wrong.

>being held in check at the Rhine for nearly 500 years by the "manlet" Romans.

You meant by other Germanic tribes, like the Franks, who worked for the Romans?

Do you actually think that a shieldwall is something harder to break that a fucking phalanx?

muh pagan barbarians!!!! they 2 stupid 4 tactics!!

*I* am theorycrafting? You're the actual moron that has yet to post a single proof for his assertions.
Aren't you ashamed of your posts?

Vikings didn't have tactics like the Romans. They had the shield wall and knew to flank.

It's not a question of being stupid. Tactics require a high level of organization AND troop compostions that the vikings just didn't have.

What do I have to prove? We both agree on the average height of 5'7. You're just defending one guy's claim that the height requirement was 5'7.5, which would exclude more than half the population, which would be FUCKING RETARDED

Use your brain

>the Franks
>500 years
Sure thing buddy.

>5'7.5
5'6 you mongrel. Don't start lying just because you don't have any argument.

Wish people didn't blindly believe the first thing they are told

In reality, Vegetius probably describes an ideal rather than the reality. The army of the early Empire was a formidable fighting force, but it probably was not in its entirety quite as good as Vegetius describes. In particular, the five-foot, ten-inch minimum height limit identified by Vegetius would have excluded the majority of the men in Roman times (the Roman foot was less than the English foot, at 11.65 inches; hence, 5'10" Roman is 5' 7.5" in modern terms, which is just above average height of Roman (Italian) men of the time from skeletal evidence from Herculaneum in 79 AD).

>You meant by other Germanic tribes
Oh yeah buddy, tell me how germanic were Marius's legions and his italic auxiliaries. Or Tiberius's italic legions and gaulic/eastern auxiliaries, etc.

I think you misunderstood my post completely and utterly there. I'm saying a shield wall isn't anything special, unique, or particularly foreign to Roman armies that they haven't fought and beaten before.

>In reality, Vegetius probably describes an ideal than the reality.
Prove it.

Don't change the argument. I literally just copy pasted that.
>In particular, the five-foot, ten-inch minimum height limit identified by Vegetius would have excluded the majority of the men in Roman times (the Roman foot was less than the English foot, at 11.65 inches; hence, 5'10" Roman is 5' 7.5" in modern terms, which is just above average height of Roman (Italian) men of the time from skeletal evidence from Herculaneum in 79 AD).
>(the Roman foot was less than the English foot, at 11.65 inches; hence, 5'10" Roman is 5' 7.5" in modern terms

So just admit you are wrong. You are being stupid. You're either trolling at this point or just too stubborn to admit defeat.

Even during the Napoleonic Wars, the average English soldier was 5'6 - 5'8, so I'm not really seeing how this contradicts Vegetius assertions here at all. Especially given how many Italics rather than Latins were in the Roman Army and they are described to be taller on average then their Latin brothers.

I think you are retarded if you think I'm the same user who was arguing with your prior.

>I think you misunderstood my post completely and utterly there. I'm saying a shield wall isn't anything special, unique, or particularly foreign to Roman armies that they haven't fought and beaten before.
Actually I think you're the one who misunderstood me. Reading back it seems like you believe I was making a case against the romans. I wasn't.
I was just saying that the vikings weren't fucking berserkers, they fought orderly (more or less) in shieldwalls just like any other german tribe that didn't get slaughtered by the time metalworking reached Germany.

>An axe is a superior weapon pretty much never.
Axe is superior against heavy armour. It's also cheap.

Well in this case the only English soldier would only be 5'8 or above. 5'6 and 5'7 would be too short. Sounds like a reasonable, realistic policy that definitely existed doesn't it?

>In this case the only English soldier would only be 5'7 or shorter.

In that case I really don't care enough to explain why you shouldn't take one source as undeniable fact

So you are retarded? Good to know.

>Axe is superior against heavy armour.
Only when you put it up a long pole. You won't find one handed axes to be used against armor.

>The major samples from Herculaneum and Pompeii reveal the stature of the ancient adult body. The average height for females was calculated from the data to have been 155 cm in Herculaneum and 154 cm in Pompeii: that for males was 169 cm in Herculaneum and 166 cm in Pompeii. This is somewhat higher than the average height of modern Neapolitans in the 1960s and about 10 cm shorter than the WHO recommendations for modern world populations.
>Source: Laurence, Ray. "Health and the Life Course at Herculaneum and Pompeii." Health in Antiquity. Ed. Helen King. London: Routledge, 2005.

>Imperial regulations, though not entirely unambiguous, suggest that the minimum height for new recruits was five Roman feet, seven inches (165 cm., 5'5") ... for the army as a whole a reasonable estimate of a soldier's average height is around 170 cm (5'7").
>Source: Roth, Jonathan, and Jonathan P. Roth. The Logistics of the Roman Army at War: 264 BC-AD 235. Columbia studies in the classical tradition, Vol. 23. Brill, 1999.

Either way we can put an axe on this whole "Romans were manlets" bullshit.

(You)

5'10 in roman feet is 166.5cm, which is 65.5 inches. Does lying make you happy?

Well yes its (you) when your replying to one singular post. What a twist huh?

You don't have to keep replying you know

Neither do you have to keep shitting up the thread.

>one handed axes to be used against armor.
Actually you do. Cavalry might carry light axes to beat off other cavalry. Also, irrelevant, one handed axe is better than a one handed sword against armour regardless of what was used.

(You)

>Imperial regulations, though not entirely unambiguous, suggest that the minimum height for new recruits was five Roman feet, seven inches (165 cm., 5'5") ... for the army as a whole a reasonable estimate of a soldier's average height is around 170 cm (5'7").
5'5???? But that's not what one random writer from the year 450 claimed!

Why are viking threads always such ridiculous trainwrecks?

>5'5 to 5'7 is the average height
>Romans were not manlets in ancient times
>only people that are taller are Germanics
>and even then its not by a huge margin
Also I just gave sources and data for 168-170cm being the average here.

Vikingfags are a cancer is why.