frontage of a consular army

[Mark Hygate]

"The Roman legion cannot therefore be any wider - otherwise the tactics just won't work."

I have come to the same conclusion Mark and this is why I posted the question.

Then I only need to try and convince you that 500ft might well be the answer!

Whilst your paper on the possible varying manipular gap based upon the opposing forces likely frontages given the common view of accepting said 'gap' made perfect sense from that point of view; I just don't believe that view.

I believe that the concept of leaving 'gaps' in your line to be a very dangerous one and only to be used when setting some sort of trap - indeed exactly what I think was done at Zama; which only worked because those gaps were masked until the trap was sprung.

I've come to the likely idea that the frontage of the Roman Legion was 500ft circa 300BCE and survived entirely unchanged for at least 500 years (whenever a full legion deployed) - which has lead me to not only an entirely plausible understanding of the triplex-acies and the manipular tactic, but then also a resulting idea on how later cohort tactics worked.