Why did the Roman maniple prove superior to the Macedonian phalanx?

So how come pike formations had multiple comebacks in history while the Maniple setup was a one shot deal?

>while the Maniple setup was a one shot deal?
It wasn't. Staggered formations that close upon contact and keep a high degree of formation flexibility would be the norm for warfare up until the 16th century or so.

this
look up the battle of cynoscephalae, the romans were able to crush the phalanx because they were able to quickly detach some maniples to attack the unformed flank of the phalanx and break the entire entire formation without putting themselves at risk.

also the acies triplex was the system how the frontline would regularly cycle maniples (and later cohorts after Marian reforms) so that the roman front line never lost endurance, and thus was never broken.

It really sounds cliche to say something as "more flexible and organised" but it really did count for something.

But they weren't armed with short swords and shields, weren't they?

No, but the Romans hung onto the checkerboard formation long after they dropped the iconic gladius and scutum arrangement. It wasn't a critical feature of the manipular system, and the elite troops, the Triarrii, didn't even arm themselves with that stuff anyway in the pre-Marian world.

Improved cavalry.

Romans wouldve been fucked by a charge of horn-saddled, stirruped, lance wielding heavy cavalry.

Romans weren't always armed with short swords either.

> Romans hung onto the checkerboard formation long after
For some reason, I thought checkerboard formation was hadn't been in use after the Punic Wars, the only source on it being Polybius IIRC.

Fuck off with your false meme, the successors had huge pools of cavalry and used artillery more then Alexander did.

Roman cavalry was quite good and often fought other cavalry to a standstill if not beating them.

The Romans also had a large pool of manpower that other nations could not compete with. There's a reason why most Macedonian successor states sue for peace after one defeat since losing too many soldiers would cripple the kingdom.

This is true for any rival state of the Romans and was the norm at the time.

Romans were able to win a great number of their wars simply because they could lose more battles than their opponents and still replenish their legions where as if anybody else loses their army, they're done.

How did they always have more manpower than any other state? Was the italian peninsula that densly populated?

our landz wuz fertile and shiet.

>Romans were able to win a great number of their wars simply because they could lose more battles than their opponents and still replenish their legions where as if anybody else loses their army, they're done.

Russia truly is the third Rome

The average Roman was a citizen-soldier-farmer. Unlike other states they could basically muster their entire male population for campaign seasons

Yeah that Citizen soldier farmer stuff went out the window pretty fucking quickly, aka marian reforms.

By that time they'd already progressed past the point of needing sheer numbers to win. They basically had sole control over the entire Med by Marius' day

Lots of fertile farmland coupled with a fairly dense urban population and eventually being able to pull from the provinces. The marian reforms made soldiering a viable career option and an avenue for citizenship for those ruled in the provinces or for the poor.

Guaranteed pay, food, and a cot with the potential for booty, in multiple ways.

Marian reforms were in 107BC, Rome had already won the Punic Wars and conquered a tonne of land by then

> The Romans also had a large pool of manpower that other nations could not compete with.
This is true, but the thread is about tactics, not the strategy. We still have to explain why the Romans had won every major battle against the kings, despite almost losing to Carthaginians before that, having a hard time in Spain at the same time, and suffering a defeat after defeat against German tribes afterward.
Two reasons. First, they demanded troops from the conquered peoples in Italy ("allies") as a tribute instead of money, so every roman army since the 3rd century BC was half Romans and half allies. Second, they were extremely open with citizen rights (up to granting citizenship to freed slaves and conquered peoples) and colonized the land they took from the conquered peoples extensively, thus resulting in relatively high citizenship population available to draft from.

Because the citizen farmer model was getting progressively BTFO throughout the centuries due to borderline land monopoly by the latifundia owned by the nobilitas class. More and more citizens found themselves impoverished and forced to move to the city to survive (and since they couldn't provide for themselves, they couldn't provide military equipment during the yearly comitia centuriata census anymore). Hence bulking up the ranks of the capite censi. It was a knock-on effect crisis for Rome. Less land-owning citizens meant poor citizens meant unarmed citizens.

That's why marian reforms happened in the first place. He noticed there was a huge pool of manpower forming and basically offered them military equipment paid by the state, and in exchange for their service, they would receive a plot of land at the end.

On paper it made perfect sense.

More flexible, less reliant on terrain and cavalry support.

It unfortunately had the side effect of creating the long standing tradition of soldiers loyal to the general that paid them rather than the state.

>Tfw the monopolization of farm land started as a result of the second punic war, with massive amounts of property opening up due to the casualities
>Lead to the necessity of the marian reforms
>Lead to decades of civil war
>Leads to the eventual fall of rome after centuries of in fighting left it too weak to hold off exterior threats
>Yfw Hannibal indirectly led to the fall of Rome

Playing the long game bruh

Actually, there's an alternative explanation, picrel analyses the data, makes some simulations, and concludes that the main reason for the large numbers of the capite censi by the end of the 2nd century BC was the unlimited population growth in Italy in the previous century, resulting in partitioning of the farms, and not the rise of latifundia, something that happened later.

>It unfortunately had the side effect of creating the long standing tradition of soldiers loyal to the general that paid them rather than the state.
Tbf it's hardly the reform's fault. After all it's the same today, a professional army in the service of the state. Why don't generals take over now then? Because today the state actually takes care of the soldiers better than a general could afford on his own. In the same way, if the senate had consented to regularly pay the troops and reassign conquered land, instead of making the general do it with his own war booty, there wouldn't have been as much of a problem.

>It unfortunately had the side effect of creating the long standing tradition of soldiers loyal to the general that paid them rather than the state.
I completely agree, but once again that was "started" by the senate itself who basically refuse to abide by Lex Licinia-Sextia of 367BC, which put limits on the max possible ownership of public land. Gracchus was the one who had to remind them of it nearly 250years later because the situation became so bad. It was the roman elites who ended up turning the plebs towards their generals as a desperate move.

It backfired horribly for the welfare of the republic that much is true, but it was hardly the only factor at play here. There were many issues that cumulated and led to the roman revolution.

TFW the senate killed the gracchi

In terms of much later on during the 3rd century crisis, I personally think it had much more to do with the fact that legions had become mostly stationary, posted to specific borders for decades and even centuries. As the Roman military recruited more and more from the provinces, especially from descendent of legionaries who had been granted land outside of Italy, it became filled with soldiers who had more interest defending their homelands rather than Rome, or the empire as a whole. As a result the surest way to ensure the best local defence possible was to acclaim an Emperor from among their own ranks who would take charge of that area (before inevitably getting stabbed to death within about 20 minutes).
The issue wasn't too much loyalty to generals. It was apathy regarding the rest of the Empire.

>by the senate itself who basically refuse to abide by Lex Licinia-Sextia of 367BC, which put limits on the max possible ownership of public land
In the senate's defense, they did abide the letter if not the spirit of the law. Most public land was after all rented for a pittance rather than sold, kek.

It was basically proto-feudalism by the time the Western empire fell.

>and not the rise of latifundia, something that happened later.
The use of the term latifundia did emerge later, that is true. But the rise of large plots of public land owned by the nobilitas, and mainly staffed by slaves, was already an emerging phenomenon by the late republic.

>was the unlimited population growth in Italy in the previous century, resulting in partitioning of the farms
That's interesting, I'll try to look into it. I always thought the explanation of the roman foreign expansion being hurtful to the citizen farmer was pretty sound. The larger the empire, the further and longer away the campaigns were, and the more likely it became for the veterans to return to dilapidated plots of lands and when faced with competition from the emerging latifundia, they basically ended up selling. Those who did not survive the wars also saw their families being forced to sell the land as well.

But I'll look into this book. It is true that there was a population boom occurring at the same time. Might be very well possible it's a combination of both phenomenons.

flanked fgt

this

>yfw the Roman military in the 4th century was superior to anything before or since throughout the entire history of Rome

Underrated

fucking nigger giving a mini heart attack for laughing so hard

I'll be taking this image for compensation

Basically, the author uses statistics and computer simulation to show it was possible for traditional families to survive without young men in their 20s being around for 10 years of the service and to survive an occasional death in battle. He also analyses the Roman marital patterns, with most men marrying in their early 30s after they had completed the required 10 years of service, and most women marrying in their late 10s-early 20s, thus resulting in high birth rates. It also means most of the men who was dying in battles wouldn't have been married yet.

Accelerated into actual feudalism by the WRE's fall

>Tiberius Gracchus could have saved Rome

Gas the patricians, class war now.

10/10
Put the foot companion pole vault tactic in the history books and the next TW game.

>Tiberius Gracchus could have saved Rome
By turning it into an Athenian-style radical democracy? The Roman oversea empire would've been over in 50 years. Or the Republic would have been turned into a full-blown tyranny after the first defeats by the Cimbri.

>resulting in partitioning of the farms
I assume the author means that said partitioning lead to everybody being a poorer in an economy based off largely off much land you held? If so that is an interesting explanation that I have not heard before. I did not think Roman population growth could be that high.

My professor in college supported this theory as well.

Imagine trying to turn a phalanx. Now imagine a Roman battle line with the same number of men as a phalanx flanking and enveloping the phalanx.

We actually have official census figures in Livy and they grow significantly in the 2nd century, but it's hard to factor out the growth from manumission and mass citizenship grants. The total population of Italy would better, but we don't know it.

Those are some pretty steady numbers until 69 BC

That's because in the 80s the most of the Italian allies were given citizenship rights as a result of the Social War. I'm more interested in how Augustus got his numbers, I guess he counted women and children too.

top kek

>and suffering a defeat after defeat against German tribes afterward

they mostly won in the Cimbrian wars you know, Arausio was a fluke due to internal bullshit

What do you mean "mostly won"? They had won the war in the end, but they'd lost all the major encounters before the last two. It's basically the same story as with the Second Punic war and the Vietnam they had in Spain - a series of major defeats, a couple of years to get their shit together, and then a decisive victory. My point being, for some reason the wars in the East were much easier for Rome, with them suffering no major defeats there.

Fifty

Three

BC

Polybius, and I believe a Macedonian writer wrote about this and the macdeonian writer said
>Sword slashing wounds are fucking terrifying and scared the crap out of the Macedonians, and most cultures that used the phalanx in general
Polybius said
>Why is it then that the Romans conquer? And what is it that brings disaster on those who employ the phalanx? Why, just because war is full of uncertainties both as to time and place; whereas there is but one time and one kind of ground in which a phalanx can fully work. If, then, there were anything to compel the enemy to accommodate himself to the time and place of the phalanx, when about to fight a general engagement, it would be but natural to expect that those who employed the phalanx would always carry off the victory. But if the enemy finds it possible, and even easy, to avoid its attack, what becomes of its formidable character? Again, no one denies that for its employment it is indispensable to have a country flat, bare, and without such impediments as ditches, cavities, depressions, steep banks, or beds of rivers: for all such obstacles are sufficient to hinder and dislocate this particular formation. And that it is, I may say, impossible, or at any rate exceedingly rare to find a piece of country of twenty stades, or sometimes of even greater extent, without any such obstacles, every one will also admit. However, let us suppose that such a district has been found. If the enemy decline to come down into it, but traverse the country sacking the towns and territories of the allies, what use will the phalanx be?

Well in this context by "the east" I mean the Hellenistic kingdoms, no the east East. After all, the thread is about the maniple vs the phalanx, not a dehydrated maniple in a desert vs a dozen of horse archers with a baggage train full of arrows.

The Macedonian phalangite was also trained to fight as a peltast, how else would the Seleucids have held on to their empire in the asian mountains?

Aemilius Paulus would also mention to friends and relatives after the battle of Pydna that he was terrified of seeing the phalanx at Pydna.

The phalanx itself rarely fails against the Romans, rather it's the cavalry or auxillaries that cause a defeat. At Pydna the warlike Thracians in Perseus employ escalated a skirmish into a full blown battle. Perseus gambled by sending his phalanx into battle without proper support, hoping to destroy the Romans in one charge.
At Magnesia the Seleucid chariots caused the destruction of the left flank while Antiochus routed the Romans on his right flank but failed to capitalize on the situation. The Phalanx at Magnesia was even able to march of the field in a huge square formation but Pergamese skirmishers caused the Seleucid elephants to rout and ruin the square formation.

That's hardly an argument when as stated the phalanx's dependency on support makes them specifically weak.

It's those weaknesses that can be exploited.

But the Phalanx wasn't weak, rather other elements failed. Your argument is similar to claiming the Romans being weak for relying on Auxilaries to provide skirmishers and cavalry.

if aux's failed romans could still kick ass, legionariies weren't useless on their own

googled it

>Your argument is similar to claiming the Romans being weak for relying on Auxilaries to provide skirmishers and cavalry.

thing is Romans didn't rely on Auxiliaries both foot and cavalry. During the Gallic wars and in Pharsalus, Caesar's legions repelled Cavalry just fine.

But the maniple system wasn't dependent on them and operated without aux. And even still they were part of the maniple system to begin with.

Where as the phalanx system utterly fails should it lose its cavalry and support. That reliance is a flaw on the part of the phalanx.

>trained roman veterans slaughter gallic peasants

Not valid, we simply need to look at Carrhae to see what happens to legions without proper support.

The maniple system was utterly reliant on auxilaries otherwise they would not have had enough skirmishers or cavalry. The Romans would have lost at Magnesia if the Pergamese had not been there.

The legions did have support at carrhae tho.

>gallic peasants

Gallic cavalry were the highest quality horsemen this side of Syria, and Gallic infantry was as well equipped as most legionaries.

Inconclusive. The phalanx is supposed to be supported by lighter troops and strong cavalry. Alexander actually used lighter hypaspists in the decisive infantry role, and the rest was done by the cavalry. The phalanx was never meant to be used the way it was later on.

Nah. Any half decent republican general would have wiped the floor with Constantine. Hell, Theodosius II would have wiped the floor with Constantine.

>Not valid, we simply need to look at Carrhae to see what happens to legions without proper support.
Except they did.

Except the Parthians lured their cavalry away.