Project- Influences of Roman military on modern day riot control

[Bryan]

I have never been a Marine.  My background, as I have told you before, is British Army.

I now teach crowd management for a US based company that has been hired by the USMC to provide what they call 'non-lethal operations' for both MEUs and an MSOB.

So you are instructing young hard charging Marine Infantry NCOs, most of whom are combat veterans, that its their role to not lead their men? Yeah, I'm sure that's going over well. 

So I guess once again we prove that assumptions don't work out. You assumed because you taught riot training tactics to USMC that reflect your beliefs that leaders shouldn't lead from the front, but the reality, what I'm trying to explain to you, is during real combat operations, either in training or real life, leaders do lead from the front. 

You still haven't answered the question I asked numerous times. If the centurion led from the rear, which Roman position was responsible for leading from the front? Or are we to imagine the Romans fought completely opposite of every single other military force in the history of humanity?

[Densus]

Like I said, none of the Marines ever raised it as an issue. They just seemed happy to be getting taught tactics that actually worked and made sense, rather than what they had been taught before. I am not making assumptions, I am the one that has actually done this remember?

I have answered your question. I do not see the need for anyone to be leading from the front. We do not have any commanders in the front rank of shield units and I have never known it to be an issue on operations. The police in the UK do not have any commanders in the front rank, the police in Germany do not have any commanders in the front rank etc etc and I have never heard of them having any issues. In none of the eight countries I have trained people to do this in have I taught commanders to be in the front rank and not one of them has come back and said there have been any problems when they have deployed and done it for real.

I can give an example of the opposite though. In Armenia when we were teaching them one of their Battalion Commanders told us that they, in the one actual riot they had policed since independence, put all their commanders in the front of their units because that had been the Soviet doctrine they had been taught. 50% of Battalions officers became casualties in a very short period and, largely due to the fact that their NCOs were not normally allowed to make decisions without the approval of an officer, command and control completely broke down and a large chunk of their unit ran away. When we taught them how to command their units from the rear they took to it immediately, because they had seen the effect of not doing it in a real situation rather than a hypothetical one.

[Densus]

You appear to have added quite a lot to this post since I replied, so I will reply again.

If you weren't a US Marine, if you weren't an Infantry Marine, specifically an 0311 who served as rifleman to fire team leader, then maybe you are seriously outside your lane when discussing modern combat tactics with someone who was a Marine, who was an 0311, and served as a rifleman through TL. Who actually fought in combat as an infantry team leader and squad leader in the US Army. Who knows first hand that if you want anybody to do what you tell them to do it means close supervision, sharing danger and discomfort, and leading by example. 

I don't believe I am outside my lane when I am discussing something that the USMC hired me to teach them because they believed I understood a lot more about this subject than they did.  The Marines I have trained have at no stage said that we taught them doesn't work, quite the reverse in fact.  There have been several articles in Marine Corps publications where those that we trained gave their opinions on it.

There is close supervision and sharing the risk by team, platoon and company commanders in the system we teach.  They achieve that close supervision by being directly behind them where they can see what they are doing and what is happening to them, not in front of them where they can't see what they are doing.

So Push Right is the official command that also means Push Forward, But Also Slightly Right? Do you know an official command name for that maneuver already exists? 
Right/Left Oblique

So let's make believe you're going to march a formation of men at an angle, Right Oblique. 

In what universe is there no guidon, no standard, no unit pendent in the front showing which way the formation is supposed to move? THE UNIT STANDARD HAS TO BE IN THE FRONT SO THE SOLDIERS CAN SEE WHERE THEY NEED TO MOVE TO.  

In this universe.  I do not know of any crowd management unit in the world that uses guidons, standards or pendents to show shield units where to go.  If you know different please provide examples.

BTW, whose duty was it to guard the standard bearer and tell him where to go? Its the duty of the unit leader to provide protection and guidance to the unit's standard bearer. Who was the century's leader? The Centurion. Standard in front, centurion in front. Standard in rear, centurion in rear. Standard in rear, nobody is moving forward. 

When we look at Medieval and Napoleonic warfare, where we have actual manuals to confirm how they did things there does not appear to be any indication that they need a standard in front of them to provide guidance on where to go.  British Infantry colours, when they were being carried in battle, marked the centre of the line, the commanders location, prevented friendly fire incidents and acted as a rallying point if the unit became disorganised.  

Basically, if you're issuing drill commands from the rear, whether it play fighting or riot training, you're doing it wrong, so sayeth about 2,000 years of written drill methods. I can't really think of anyone who took the lowest small unit leader of their organization and made them serve in the rear, not any that had any success. However they are organized, formed, there has to be someone leading from the front, which is basically the whole concept and conflict of command and control since the dawn of time. Unit commanders must share dangers and lead from the front, which means increased casualties (even now leaders get hit more than non-rates), but they cant throw their lives away without sacrificing unit cohesiveness and command and control, so its a precarious balancing act of removing oneself from the front, but only as long as there are subordinates with true authority who can do it in your stead in the front. 

It is interesting that you have assumed that everyone else in the world, except you who has never done it, is doing it wrong.  Crowd management tactics vary widely across the world as each country has developed their own in response to the problems that they face in their country.  I have been doing this internationally for 8 years now.  I have yet to see a country where they had faced actual crowd violence where they had decided the best response was to put commanders in the front rank.  Again if you know different, please provide examples.

In the example I gave from Wolin earlier those guys actively wanted to be fighting in the front rank and fighting.  They realised they couldn't do that and impose any level of control on what was happening so the commanders had to drop behind the line to somewhere where they could actually see what was happening around them and where they could direct sub-units to deal with problems or exploit opportunities.

[Nathan Ross]

Where should I look for the relevant bits of Polybius and Vegetius?

The Polybius bit has already been quoted a few times already - it's the part where he calls the centurion 'hegemon' - which usually refers to a leader, somebody who goes in front, a front ranker, or a 'head'. It's an inference that this meant he was physically positioned at the front of the century, but quite a good one, I think.

The Vegetius bit has also been quoted, although perhaps not at sufficient length:

II.XIII:...the ensign was inscribed with letters indicating the century’s cohort and ordinal number within it. Seeing and reading this, the soldiers could not stray from their comrades, whatever the confusion of battle. [The ancients] also detailed centurions... wearing transverse crests on their helmets to make it easier for them to be recognised, to command the individual centuries. This was so no deviation should arise, since soldiers in groups of a hundred followed their own ensign and the centurion who had the sign on his helmet.

The last sentence is most important here: centeni milites sequerentur non solum uexillum suum sed etiam centurionem, qui signum habebat in galea

Vegetius is specifically talking about battle, not a march order or anything, and says that the signum and the centurion can be clearly seen by the men of the century (therefore were at the front), and that the troops follow (sequerentur) both of them.

This is, I think, undeniable and explicit evidence for the centurion's position in battle - at the front, with the standard.

If anyone can find evidence for centurions being positioned anywhere else, please do share it!

[Robert Vermaat]

You appear to have added quite a lot to this post since I replied, so I will reply again.

Why are we discussing modern crowd control and modern military training (yes, I think it's interesting) on this forum? Do you really believe that the mind of a Roman soldier worked in the same way? Do you really think that he expected to follow orders in the same way as a modern Marine would? 

I'll repeat myself here - personally I think it's useless to compare the two. I don't know how this would work on a crowd of say a thousand humans, but even there I would expect subtle differences. 
But a Roman miles in a contubernium, I'm fairly convinced, has to be lead in a very different way from a modern GI in a platoon. Discussing that is good but trying to reason back from a modern situation is useless. 

Examples aplenty. Not so long ago, say Napoleontic Wars or American Civil War, soldiers would stand in line, stoically receiving murderous enemy fire. No soldier today would do that. They would look for cover and return fire from there. A totallly different world.

[Bryan]

Densus
I don't believe I am outside my lane when I am discussing something that the USMC hired me to teach them because they believed I understood a lot more about this subject than they did.  The Marines I have trained have at no stage said that we taught them doesn't work, quite the reverse in fact.  There have been several articles in Marine Corps publications where those that we trained gave their opinions on it.

There is close supervision and sharing the risk by team, platoon and company commanders in the system we teach.  They achieve that close supervision by being directly behind them where they can see what they are doing and what is happening to them, not in front of them where they can't see what they are doing.

Platoon and company commanders can only command from the rear because there are other small unit leaders, gifted with official authority granted by their rank, who do lead from the front, namely squad leaders, but especially team leaders. Every single soldier in a company that isn't an NCO is being led by a junior NCO who leads from the front, allowing the Lieutenants and Captains to manage the squads and platoons from the rear, their role is mostly coordinating. 

Now let's look at the Roman organization. From top down there were Imperators, Legates, Prefects, and Tribunes, all of which had actual authority to move units around and lead a section of the battle line. All are well known to have either fought in the front ranks or supervised from behind the immediate front battle line. The smallest tactical unit the Romans possessed was the century. They had no squad leaders, no section leaders, no team leaders. So if the Centurion led from the rear there would be NO ONE leading from the front, which is something that every single other military organization in the history of mankind has emphasized, that regardless of threat of casualties, if leaders expect the troops to move forward and risk their lives they need to be led from the front. 

In this universe.  I do not know of any crowd management unit in the world that uses guidons, standards or pendents to show shield units where to go.  If you know different please provide examples.

I'm so glad you asked this question. Do you know who used standards in battle? ROMANS

So if your entire method of organizing anti-riot forces negates the need for standards then its nothing like the Romans. You're inventing entirely new crowd control tactics and trying to make believe that since in the 21st century you go them to work how you wanted (in conditions that I seriously doubt ever experienced lots of killing of humans), then they also would have been done by Vikings (whose chieftains fought in the front ranks) and Romans (whose centurions fought in the front ranks). 

When we look at Medieval and Napoleonic warfare, where we have actual manuals to confirm how they did things there does not appear to be any indication that they need a standard in front of them to provide guidance on where to go.  British Infantry colours, when they were being carried in battle, marked the centre of the line, the commanders location, prevented friendly fire incidents and acted as a rallying point if the unit became disorganised.  

And yet the bravest soldiers in every unit, British, French, Swiss, whatever, they were chosen to carry the colors/standards and they were protected by guards/ensigns, whose job description meant protecting the colors/standards in close combat. Sure, they didn't lead anything and were never in any danger...

It is interesting that you have assumed that everyone else in the world, except you who has never done it, is doing it wrong. Crowd management tactics vary widely across the world as each country has developed their own in response to the problems that they face in their country. I have been doing this internationally for 8 years now. I have yet to see a country where they had faced actual crowd violence where they had decided the best response was to put commanders in the front rank. Again if you know different, please provide examples.

You did crowd control for 8 years, I did combat infantryman for 11 years, including internationally, including in real life combat, where people in my company and platoon, people I knew for years, died or were seriously wounded in combat operations. And yet I don't try to make believe that what I experienced, because I was infantry, was the same as the Roman infantry 2,000 years ago. Because apples and oranges. But you think because you do crowd control and play fighting that the lessons learned you hold to meant no force in the history of the world needs to

BTW, I've done crowd control training as part of MEUSOC qualifications in the USMC. Nobody takes it seriously and nobody really expects to ever do it for real, because we have these things called rifles and machine guns and mortars and if the situation ever calls for taking "50% casualties among NCOs" during a protest (LOL, btw) nobody would be swinging a baton in formation, they'd be lighting up their adversaries with controlled bursts to center mass of their torsos. So no matter what you taught to them, you could have instructed them to do riot control buck naked standing on their heads and they wouldn't do that either in real life.

In the example I gave from Wolin earlier those guys actively wanted to be fighting in the front rank and fighting. They realised they couldn't do that and impose any level of control on what was happening so the commanders had to drop behind the line to somewhere where they could actually see what was happening around them and where they could direct sub-units to deal with problems or exploit opportunities.
​

Wolin isn't actually a battle, nor is it medieval. You realize that right? Its highly enthusiastic role players with blunted weapons, with no risk of death or significant injury, no actual campaign hardships, no discipline among groups, no real cohesion among groups, no authority for leaders, no repercussions for victory or loss besides a little bit of pride. If you want to showcase how a something might have looked by comparing and contrasting video footage or descriptions of a tactic you saw or used to something similar to Romans, that's awesome. But if you're trying to outright say that the Romans, nor anyone else, needed to fight with small unit leaders in the front ranks because you somehow found a way to do without (in a less than decisive environment) than that's something else entirely, and its why its very very dangerous to use modern day examples to prove ancient history. If you found a way to fight for short periods with no actual violence or casualties without needing leaders in the front, or standards to rally the men and allow them to know where to go, congrats. It means you invented a new way of leading troops (by not actually leading them). But it doesn't prove anything about the history of warfare, because we know as a fact that throughout military history that there were leaders to lead from the front.

Those Armenians you mentioned before, they were right to put their leaders in the front because its the legitimate military tradition for thousands of years. The peoples who taught them the doctrine learned in in battle themselves (Soviet Union company grade officer casualties in WWII were high for a reason, the men wouldn't move forward without being led forward). And they weren't the only ones who learned that leading comes with a heavy price. The red stripe on the side of the Dress blue trousers worn by US Marine NCOs and Officers, that's called the Blood Stripe, it celebrates the 90% casualties among unit leaders of the Marine Corps unit that participated in the Siege of Veracruz during the Mexican American War. Celebrates is an apt word, because the mindset of infantrymen is pride when retailing the amount of casualties taken, it meant victory in a hard fought battle and there no sweeter victory than one that is hard to attain. And its not just historical, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, by and large, American infantry leaders, be they Army or Marines, always take more casualties than the enlisted, based on percentage ratios. Why? Because we have to lead from the front, which puts us closer to the enemy. We are often standing while others are prone or kneeling, because we have to be the ones who kick people and scream at them in the heat of the fight to "Push ahead". We are waving our hands around to get people's attention, because combat is loud and tunnel vision is a very very real thing and to get someone's attention you often have to get inside their field of vision. We are wearing distinctive equipment, rank insignia, radio antennae, weapons, that make us distinctive targets. And we still do all those same things today, despite the risk of casualties, because that's what combat leadership is, that's what mission accomplishment requires, and that's what the troops deserve for leadership. Not someone who is going to hide behind them to preserve their own skin while telling the men in front to risk their own bodies and lives.

When it comes to the Armenians if they really suffered 50% casualties of their battalion among officers and what they consider NCOs then it means more than just faulty doctrine with placement of key leaders, it means they screwed up big time. Using them as an example is a terrible idea because to achieve that many casualties in a riot means, without firearms or explosives involved, when they had access to them, it means outright incompetency in pretty much every regard possible way. They failed planning in and execution. You're not giving the whole story at all by trying to use them as an example of why you don't put leaders in the front ranks.

We have 3,000 years of recorded military history in which people fought in close combat in lines to choose from, surely you can find one example of a historical context that specifically has zero small unit leaders in the front ranks. I'll be waiting to here about it.

---

You appear to have added quite a lot to this post since I replied, so I will reply again.

Why are we discussing modern crowd control and modern military training (yes, I think it's interesting) on this forum? Do you really believe that the mind of a Roman soldier worked in the same way? Do you really think that he expected to follow orders in the same way as a modern Marine would? 

I'll repeat myself here - personally I think it's useless to compare the two. I don't know how this would work on a crowd of say a thousand humans, but even there I would expect subtle differences. 
But a Roman miles in a contubernium, I'm fairly convinced, has to be lead in a very different way from a modern GI in a platoon. Discussing that is good but trying to reason back from a modern situation is useless. 

Examples aplenty. Not so long ago, say Napoleontic Wars or American Civil War, soldiers would stand in line, stoically receiving murderous enemy fire. No soldier today would do that. They would look for cover and return fire from there. A totallly different world.

Up until the modern era battles were dangerous but not dangerous enough to warrant taking cover. WWI really demonstrated this but it was coming around during the mid-19th century with the Open Battlefield Doctrine, where murderous fire would mean two sides opposing each other would be entrenched with a no-man's land in between. 

We know from casualty reports of ancient battles that although it wasn't a safe place at all, unless things really went bad 5-10% casualties, with few deaths, would be the result of fighting it out. Leaders nearly always suffered more, and the harder pressed the battle the more leaders died in it.  

Things we call can take from ancient warfare and modern warfare are basic psychological imperatives. Like the necessity of being supervised and led, the necessity for legitimate discipline, organization, logistics, training, planning, etc. Or we can contrast mindsets and find a lot of comparisons, like the definition of Virtus and Stoicism are something a modern American infantryman wouldn't typically find off the wall, likely it would describe their own mindset in a lot of ways. Those very real psychological mindsets are some of the big reasons why the pushback against gays (seen as effeminate and weak) and woman in the military and combat arms has been so great. And they are also the reason why the organizations were so successful in the past, weakness was never condoned or accepted, which led to a stronger, more aggressive, more adoptive force.

[Densus]

You know Bryan, I started writing a reply to your points above then I realised arguing with you about something you have never done for real is just the same as you arguing with JaM in the other thread. You don't want to get it and you just aren't going to get it. Think what you like. My 21 years experience in the Infantry as a private, JNCO and officer on training and on operations and the 8 years I have spent since travelling the world teaching this subject obviously count for nothing in the face of your vast experience of watching YouTube videos about it.

In fact I will add one more thing to show how little you understand about what rioting can actually be like, I was a Company Commander during this operation; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgWw0SkpM2w

[Bryan]

Its amazing that you are so blind in reading other people's post that you ignore most of the content from them because there is no way at all you've read and understood anything I've posted and come to the conclusion you just came to.  I've repeatedly said that I actually fought other human beings in real life combat. Not make believe role playing games, not riot training exercises where the clueless teach the clueless, not scuffles with protesters were the worst casualty was someone getting hit by a beer bottle. Actual full spectrum battle, with artillery, air strikes, tracers flying through the air, people getting shot and blown up, bloody ringing ears, and dogs eating dead bodies not being all that unusual to see.  

You made comments about how US Marines trained for combat and where Marine NCOs are positioned, stating outright where NCOs are positioned in combat. I served with the USMC 1997-2001, 0311 Infantry, Pfc-Cpl, to include as a fire team leader. Your experience is training a few Marines as a private contractor in tactics you created where you told them not to lead from the front (which probably had them laughing and saying all sorts of things about your theory behind your back). 

You mentioned riot training, as if you're the only one whose done it in humanity. I've done it too, not only as a Marine (where we really didn't take it seriously because most of the tactics are downright stupid), but also as a National Guardsman (which we also didn't really take it seriously because most of the tactics they teach are downright stupid), in the US Army National Guard, 2002-2005, serving as an 11B Infantry, in the ranks CPL-SGT, serving most of the time as an infantry squad leader.

You mention combat as if you've know what its about but I haven't. And yet I participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom 07-08, 09-10, with the US Army, from 2007-2010, as an 11B Infantry, with the ranks SGT-SSG, serving as a team leader, squad leader, weapons squad leader, sniper section leader, and battalion TOC Battle NCO, where I helped direct battalion combat operations. I earned my Combat Infantryman's Badge many times over. 

Of course my views on modern warfare might be biased, through decades of intensive reading on the subject (to include my office at home being wall to wall military history books), but mainly because I lived it, so it isn't surprising my view is based on real personal experiences. But they are also legitimate, contrary to what you believe, because I saw many of the things we're discussing with my two eyes, heard things with my own two ears, felt them with the nerve endings in my own body, and then analyzed them on the spot and then afterwards during lots of reflection using my own brain. Not from watching videos of other people in combat on the internet.

What blows me away between you an JaM is that you have people who've been heavily involved in Roman history, to include actual contemporary Roman historian/authors who are subject matter experts in this field telling both of you that you are wrong and neither of you will accept that maybe your theories are unsubstantiated or poorly explained or just outright wrong.

[Densus]

Bryan, please stop making things up.  I have not written one word about your operational experience.  I have not once said any of the experts or anyone quoting the sources was wrong about where Roman centurions were in battle, in fact I have said the opposite (posts 30 and 35 for example).

I joined in this thread because it started with a question that is directly relevant to my knowledge and experience.  I then responded to a direct question to me from MonsGrapius.  Since then all I have actually done is disagree with people (mainly you) who have repeatedly told me that things I have seen and done are impossible and won't work.  

I am well aware of what is taught by INIWIC and SOTG, almost every Marine I have trained had already done that course and their commanders (like you) decided what was contained on that course was worthless.  So they hired us, people who have done this for real, to teach them tactics that had been proven to work in real riots.  Please don't make the mistake of thinking your experience of the SOTG course is anything like the training we put those units through.  If you still think our training is 'the clueless teaching the clueless' I will gladly put you in touch with my boss, a former US Marine, who has not only seen what we teach but has been on the ground with me at real events in the US and abroad.  I personally don't believe any of the Marines we have trained were 'laughing behind my back', neither does my boss and neither to the people we trained who subsequently re-hired us to train their new units when they had been posted.

I know he was hardly going it say 'it sucked' in an interview with PA but this is also the sort of comment we have had from people face to face on conclusion of the training.  

" “The decision to use force and how much force to use is always a tough one,” said Cpl. William H. Anderson, a fire direction control man from Sonora, Calif. This training has definitely prepared Marines to make the right choice. “It’s by far the best non-lethal weapons training I have ever seen.”"

http://www.11thmeu.marines.mil/News/News...on-lethal/

Your understanding of what a real riot is like is still hugely off the mark if you really think it is "scuffles with protesters were the worst casualty was someone getting hit by a beer bottle".  

In the example I gave earlier from Armenia the end result was 8 people dead and 33 police officers in hospital.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7273497.stm

I recently completed a long term training programme in Tunisia which they needed because 14 of their officers and 5 soldiers died during the riots in the 2010/11 Revolution along with over 300 other people.  http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/enq...revolution They have used what we taught them since then and guess what?  It's working.

This is the environment where I learnt my trade (I posted this video earlier but you may have missed it) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgWw0SkpM2w  I was a Company Commander during that operation and there is a brief clip in there of where I was.  I can give you other examples if you wish.  Many police officers and soldiers, including friends and colleagues of mine, have died or received life changing injuries during riots over the last 40 years in Northern Ireland.  They were not caused by 'getting hit by a beer bottle'.

To summarise; I have not be-littled or ignored your experience and knowledge (although you are clearly attempting to do that to me) in any area except your experience and knowledge of crowd management and what being in a riot is like.  I have not said the sources are wrong, I have not said the experts on here are interpreting the sources wrongly.  All I have done is disagree with some of the statements on here about what is and is not physically possible, based on my experience.

We should now stop doing this on this forum or we will end up banned and I am sure you don't want that any more than I do.  If you want to continue this particular discussion we can do it by PM or even better sign up here https://www.arrse.co.uk/community/ where you can also get the point of view of hundreds of other people who have done riot control for real in Northern Ireland, Mainland UK, Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq.

[MonsGraupius]

I started responding to specific contributions but there are too many great contributions.

Having looks at many many riot videos, its been extremely useful both to get the view of someone involved as well as the critique. (Notably Densus and Bryan - but there were others). So thanks - extremely helpful.

However I must say I think some of the criticism are invalid. The Roman army fought it an entirely different way from any examples given above. This is because we have to go back before guns and then look for armies that fought in close quarters. There are very few examples of this form of army and as such I've concluded that the Modern police riots are in fact one of the closest examples of this form of battle we have.

However ... not all units were the same and e.g. the auxiliaries would have formed in different ways to the Legions (and possibly closer to above examples). And even the legions would almost certainly have changed tactics.

But even if we were to concentrate on a legion in one period - the tactics would change depending on the terrain and whether it was a defensive or offensive battle. So, rather than saying "they always fought this or that way" ... I am much more inclined to view all suggestions as possible at least some of the time in some forms of terrain. Indeed, the Romans would have experimented - so they probably tried everything that's been mentioned and far more. But no doubt they had some favoured tactics.

So, rather than dismissing ideas out of hand as "impossible" - I'd suggest a much more productive way is to put together the available evidence both modern and old and then try to work out the likelihood of each suggested formation or tactic.

But specifically on Centurions, my hunch is that a centurion would have led their troops into battle - but they would have been toward the back in a defensive battle - organising redirecting troops to where the battle was most fierce. Indeed, I suspect that having led the troops in a charge - they would then fall back to assess what was happening and decide the next move. However, again, it might depend on the experience of the troops. New soldiers might have to be led from the front. Seasoned troops may have been perfectly capable of fighting the frontline without any centurion - and so their role would be focussed on co-ordinating the whole body.

And there was a comment about ancient troops being more used to discipline. That's rubbish. Modern troops sit in regimented classes from an early age, they all have pretty much the same TV culture, they speak the same language, they learn from an early age to line up from teachers.

In contrast, even within Italy the culture would vary more from one town to another than it does across the whole of Britain today (where town centres have all the same shops and we all watch the same TV, play the same video games etc.). Likewise, many Romans probably did not attend formal classes, so, would never have lined up, never have sat in a formation. Modern kids are moulded from an early age to "fit in" ... ancient kids were almost wild in comparison.

[Bryan]

Discipline isnt sitting in class all day without flipping out. Its not doing what your superior orders you to do and receiving swift and severe punishment as a result. The Romans knew that. The Macedonians knew it (though they used fines primaroly, not physical pain). The 19th and most 20th century armies knew it. Most modern western nations think their forces are disciplined but arent really, because junior leaders are micromanaged by more senior officers who think court martials and nonjudicial punishment reflects badly on a units appearance, a total assinine concept brought about during peace time downsizing periods when commanders stopped conducting necessary punishment in order to maximize the stats of their unit to receive high marks on their officer evaluation reports during their 1.5-2 years commanding a unit (in which they didn't give a crap about how the unit performed before they arrived or after they left). So since official discipline is out it puts unofficial discipline on onus of the NCO corps, who lack the authority of actual company level and higher commanders and are prohibited by ever increasing strigent rules on what they are and arent allowed to do with subordinates. Touchy feely rules means we can't hit them. We yell at them, but cursing is frowned on. Half the time we cant make them do push-ups without worrying about getting hit with hazing charges. The children know their parents cant act, so they act how they want. That is the reality at least for the modern American military. 

But enough about discipline. ..

When were Legions seasoned? What even do you mean by seasoned? 

When did Romans have actual long standing professional armies that were trained in standardized methods?

When did officially mandated training come about for the Roman military?

The answers to these will reflect how they operated in combat, and its not what you think it was.

[MonsGraupius]

Discipline isnt sitting in class all day without flipping out.

What you are describing is the implementation of discipline. What I am suggesting is that whilst Romans could use far harsher punishment to enforce discipline, they started with a much much worse stock. It would be like "herding cats"

They came from a world where you inherently had to be far far more self-reliant. If you couldn't feed yourself you died and they would regularly see other children dying. Life was cheap (on average worth much less than even the worst gang areas of the US) Most children in poor households would be very used to going off into the wilds to gather food for themselves during the day. They would be like the worst feral children of today- many growing up with other children out the way of adults.

But as big a problem in the Roman world, is that the culture of recruits would be so varied, that many of the basic things we take for granted would be alien to them. For example, even simple body language may have been interpreted differently (we've all heard in some societies a shake of the head means yes).

Unless they lived near a soldier's barracks, some recruits would have never seen soldiers and have had no idea what was expected of them as soldiers. I bet the first night many of the recruits would just start walking out because it was totally beyond anything they had imagined given their previous experience.

With higher death rates in the family many recruits would have lost both sets of parents and would likely have lost siblings resulting in a range of developmental problems and "emotional scarring". Many would have been brought up by relatives - who couldn't afford to look after their own children, so they would be treated virtually as slaves and beaten very often.  But also many families could have been very idyllic loving caring families that had never lifted a hand to their darlings. So, there would be a huge range of responses to "discipline". Some would be very used to being beaten - and hardly respond to it at all. Some would be psychologically traumatised the first time it happened.

With more illnesses (i.e. no anti-biotics) and very few doctors in small rural villages, the recruits themselves would have various forms of physical scarring so many would have some form of handicap - where bones had not reset properly, where soft-tissue had not healed properly. Some would be tall and well developed, but others would have had a childhood of malnutrition and have undeveloped bodies and brains.

Then you would have the disparate range of religions - it would be like having a group from budist, muslim, orthodox Jewish, pagan, catholic, pentecostal

Of course - at the time of the Romans, this hardly mattered - because not only the Romans but everyone they were fighting started with a much inferior stock of men. Everyone started with a similar handicap. The problem is trying to translate from the behaviours we see in a crowd to that of a crowd at the time of the Romans.

[Nathan Ross]

They came from a world where you inherently had to be far far more self-reliant... Most children in poor households would be very used to going off into the wilds to gather food for themselves during the day.

Not particularly! They came from a world heavily reliant on slavery, where even relatively poor households would own slaves (as shown by Egyptian papyri). The urban poor in Rome had doles of grain, oil and even wine provided free, so no need to scavenge in the wild! Except in times of crisis, the Roman army was not drawing on the poorest of the poor.

Unless they lived near a soldier's barracks, some recruits would have never seen soldiers and have had no idea what was expected of them as soldiers.

Perhaps in the earlier centuries, but by the later 1st century a large percentage of military recruits are recorded as being born in castris, so were sons of army veterans; many others came from frontier areas with a heavy military presence - the Vindolanda tablets suggest that some local recruiting was apparently done via patronage and 'military connections'.

Take a look at Brunt's Italian Manpower for a good survey of recruitment patterns in the earlier centuries.

With higher death rates in the family many recruits would have lost both sets of parents and would likely have lost siblings resulting in a range of developmental problems and "emotional scarring".

Life expectancy statistics for the ancient world are heavily skewed by high levels of infant mortality - anyone surviving past the age of about ten had a good chance of living a healthy life into relatively old age. So no need to imagine that the army was full of poor orphans! The archive of letters from army recruit Apollinarius (2nd C AD) show that he maintained good relations with his parents and extended family back home in Egypt, and there's nothing to suggest that he was unusual in this respect.

Then you would have the disparate range of religions - it would be like having a group from budist, muslim, orthodox Jewish, pagan, catholic, pentecostal

Prior to the rise of Christianity, different 'religions' in the ancient world seem to have had little difficulty rubbing along together; they were mutually inclusive and tolerant, and accepted the sacrifices to the emperor etc required of them as soldiers. The exception was Judaism, which probably explains why there were few Jews in the Roman army!

The picture you're imagining here of the background of ancient recruits seems more fitting to the 18th or 19th centuries than the ancient world, I'd say. But even then, disipline was not affected - the thousands of young men from famine-stricken Ireland who joined the British army in the 19th century may have been 'traumatised' or whatever, but still made excellent soldiers, endured levels of discipline that we would consider sadistic torture, and marched in serried ranks against grapeshot and musket volleys...

[MonsGraupius]

The picture you're imagining here of the background of ancient recruits seems more fitting to the 18th or 19th centuries than the ancient world, I'd say. But even then, disipline was not affected - the thousands of young men from famine-stricken Ireland who joined the British army in the 19th century may have been 'traumatised' or whatever, but still made excellent soldiers, endured levels of discipline that we would consider sadistic torture, and marched in serried ranks against grapeshot and musket volleys...

What I originally said was that it was more difficult to have order and discipline in the ancient world than the modern one where children attend regimented classes and all have the same basic culture from watching the same TV, shopping in the same shops and playing the same electronic games.

Now, my knowledge of the 18th and 19th century may be flimsy, but I don't recall there being any "Game of thrones" types games around. Nor Walmart. I suspect they wouldn't have all watched the latest DVDs. It's therefore highly likely their local culture would have varied far more than it does today and before universal schooling, few would have experienced the mono-cultural indoctrination of politically correct syllabus through the regimented regime we get in schools.

[Nathan Ross]

I don't recall there being any "Game of thrones" types games around.

No need, for the Romans at least - they had the real thing: gladiatorial games and prisoners getting hacked to bits as lunchtime entertainment!

highly likely their local culture would have varied far more than it does today

I don't understand this point - what makes you think ancient societies (or even 19th century ones) were more diverse and multicultural than our own? And why do you believe that TV and computer games instill 'order and discipline'?