Dr Simon Elliott

I still want the pike phalanxers to win.

Okay.

All those great battles, I still want them to win.

But you know what, Dan?

They never do.

The Roman system is more flexible, full stop.

Much more flexible, full stop.

Which reflects the fact that Roman society is more flexible compared to a Hellenistic kingdom.

And going back to my earlier point as well, Dan, about the fact that the Hellenistic kingdoms really couldn't wrap their head around the way the Romans fought.

So one of the things that the Hellenistic pikemen would do if they'd lost is they'd lift their pike up and that will be their sign of surrender.

But the legionaries kept butchering them.

kept going and going and going.

So they just did not get this Roman grittiness, this inability to accept anything other than total victory on your own terms.

There are other things that are going to happen.

So you have towards the end of the second century, the Cimbrian Wars, when you get Germans from the far north of Germany, Jutland Peninsula, Frisia, places like that, who come down en masse and actually almost get themselves into the Republican centre.

And the Roman armies there lose multiple times before the great Marius comes along.

completely reforms the roman legions in a new form this is very important in a new form and then ultimately is victorious and here we can start talking about the emergence overtly of the two major political cultures within the roman senate you have the optimates and the pro-senate reactionaries and you have the popularis who are the radicals so marius is on a popular side later caesar's popular is sulla an extreme example of somebody who's an optimates

And actually, it's the grinding between those two political classes from the time of the Cimbrian Wars through to the end of the Republic in 27 BC that actually sets the scene for what's going to happen.

But the key thing with Marius is this.

He changes the nature of the Roman legions totally, and he increases the number of legionaries in the legion to 6,000.