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Concept

Roman army

Roman army
Ssolbergj · CC BY 3.0 · source

Overview

The Roman Army (Latin: Exercitus Romanus) served ancient Rome and the Roman people enduring through the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC), the Roman Republic (509–27 BC), and the Roman Empire (27 BC – AD 476/1453), including the Western Roman Empire (collapsed AD 476/480) and the Eastern Roman Empire (collapsed AD 1453). It is thus a term that broadly spans approximately 2,205 years, during which the force underwent numerous permutations in size, composition, organization, equipment and tactics, while conserving a core of lasting traditions.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.

  1. Many different causes contributed to relax the discipline of the Roman armies. Its extreme severity was, perhaps, one of those causes.

    Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

    Close in meaning to Roman army; the term itself is not named.

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  2. Instead of arming the people in their own defence, the emperors recalled all the distant legions, in whom alone they could repose confidence; and collected the whole military force for the defence of the capital and centre of the empire. The necessity of self-preservation had superseded the ambition of power; and the ancient point of honor, never to contract the limits of the empire, could no longer be attended to…

    David Hume, The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol. I., Part A.

    Close in meaning to Roman army; the term itself is not named.

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  3. There are several reasons given for this determination, but the most apparent is this; that the praetorian soldiers, as they are called, who serve as guards, not relishing the military discipline which they now had begun a little more to experience, and longing for their amusements and unwarlike life among the shows of Rome, would not be commanded, but were eager for a battle, imagining that upon the first onset…

    Plutarch, Plutarch

    States what Roman army is.

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Philosophers who discussed Roman army

Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Neostoicism.

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