True Size of a Roman Legion (3D) DOCUMENTARY 

It helps GREATLTY if you poke them WITH the sword and then exercise the logistics.

@@SuperChuckRaney Poke a lot of people real good with the sword THEN start adding the numbers up.

@@Joseph-ic8xd The Pointy End.

I wouldn’t agree about conquering world but yea , this is the best army in the world on those days

And then there's Russia who's army ran out of fuel a few days into the War even though Russia is a oil producing country and the war takes place right along its borders 😅

Can you imagine Operation Barbarossa when the Germans invaded Russia during WW2? Makes these ancient battles look tiny...

​@@jeffmacarthur9722not really. a battle involving over a hundred thousand men is still going to be massive.

The difference is the battle lines in WW2 are hundreds of km across. The battle of Cannae had about 130,000 people fighting in hand to hand combat in a very large field. The NFL stadium where I'm from holds about 70k people. That's 2 full stadiums of people. That would truly be something to behold. If there was a WW2 battle to see it'd say it would have to be Kursk. @@jeffmacarthur9722

yea huge but they didnt have to walk everywhere.....imagine if youre in ny and were going to invade cali and you had to march there lol.....one poor bastard crossed the alps with elephants i forget who wasnt romans maybe hannibal? @@jeffmacarthur9722

Well yeah, that's an entire campaign worth of men, most of whom won't fight each other. For the Romans, this is upwards of 50k+ men all fighting within an area of maybe 2 miles.

They make look big described this way, but modern armies utterly dwarf them in size. A legion as described here has 5240 fighting men. Thats only just more than the number of militia that banded together to fight the Americans at the Battle of Mogadishu in the early 1990s. Talking of America - they sent 43,250 shooters ashore in the Omaha Beach assault alone. Thats 8 legions. The whole invasion of Europe used 2 million troops - ie 190 legions. In total on the Western Front, the Allies had the equivilant of 1460 legions, while the Axis had 1530 legions.

@@Debbiebabe69 When Germany was marching through Belgium in WW1, the time it took the army to pass through wasn't measured in hours but days. The Battle of the Marne had about a million soldiers on each side. A nice point of comparison is that the number of soldiers in a legion is approximately equal to the number in a brigade. In the 20th century, the smallest unit considered capable of fully independent operation was the division which is 2-4 brigades depending on organization. More recently however the trend has been back towards the brigade level as the smallest independent tactical unit.

It's true, and yet Caesar tosses the word around as though referring to rugby teams in his Gallic Wars, "I sent three legions hence to counter the threat and withdrew two more from the North," etc., etc.

I once read if you were watching Napoleons army passing by on his march towards Russia, you had to be standing there for 3 day's and nights.......incredible !

Well, wait till you see the Chinese armies back in those days... their standard armies are ranged from 30k to 800k in size. Imagine the food and time they need to take to invade. If Europe is near to China, it will have been crashed. I think even the Chinese army splitting on the castles can flood them. Lol

I was a Classics major. We studied this exactly.

Let me guess, not even a whole legion fits

​@@franciscol3510 I doubt it could fit more than a few cohorts although it depends on the size of the park

Hahajahaha brooo me two

I just look at a big football stadium and think "yeah, this is about how many people Caesar commanded at Alesia."

@@Ishkur23 Totally wrong.

and in case of Caesar, artillery and walls, a lot of walls.

Yup the auxiliary will have added another 5000 men in there

@@sciencefliestothemoon2305 You mean axes. To build *WALLS*

@@justsam0511 Yes ~ usually rather than often.

And at the battle of cannae against Hannibal, the Roman army almost 90,000, 87,000 to be exact. Just imagine the sight and the area that this army would cover

And move it on the order of 20 miles a day and set up for battle at the end of that 20 miles!

The untrue size is incredible too !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Was someone watching Oversimplified?

The world at war : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Catalaunian_Plains

Thanks! This is indeed just one small step for the channel. We will continue to find ways to improve this series so all feedback is greatly appreciated. Some ideas so far are to start color coding the soldier bases, add more info graphics, and start to introduce animation

@@InvictaHistory love the visuals that you guys have started using, and a great new topic area to go into "size of the ancients" keep up the good work!

@@InvictaHistory the only thing i did not like was the pop in on the trees :D

@@InvictaHistory as a 3D artist myself, i would suggest fixing the trees' LODs that keep popping in the distance first. The environment shading looks good, you could maybe use some dither blending when you add megascans on top of it (to hide the seams on the ground) As for the soldiers models, It would be REALLY interesting to have actual static 3d models of Roman soldiers: with Unreal 5 and nanite you would actually be able to have this many without performance issues (assuming they're not moving). I know some crazy talented people that could help you model them, in case you don't have a character artist. Hope the feedback can be of use, peace!

@@InvictaHistory Truly magnificent Video. Enjoyed the info and visuals.

Thanks! We wanted to make something that maintained a visual connection to our typical style. I also like how it invokes miniature models

@@InvictaHistory Yes! The miniatures are great. Just like a board game. ☺

Ah this takes me back to the Total war documentary days

Why are they all white, where are the womxn and stunning and brave transsoldiers? I left Twitter recently after the elonazi took over but this non Twitter world is so confusing and triggering... Reeeee

@@dawnblade9126 I'm still playing Total War these days although I'm using the mod 'Europa Barbaroum'.Once you use that mod you can't go back to vanilla.

Glad to hear it! We will be doing a lot more on such army organizations and related topics like logistics, engineering, and tactics

Dude small fuckin' world, I'm working on something with a small group of my own friends, dividing the work of the world-building and lore creation amongst three of us (I got the Roman inspired part, go figure)

Just found a conversion calculator and 6’ Roman is 5’ 9” 59/64 English. The average Roman male height at that time was 5’ 5” English feet.

@@septimus7524 not small at all the amount of Rome inspired fantasy is massive

I'm doing something similar for the sci-fi military novel I'm working on, with a special forces unit roughly based on the legion structure, each "Contubernium" being a spec-ops team (on par with SPARTAN-II's or III's from Halo)

It was Arminius' fault. Damn traitor! Let's face again in open field!

scary to think that they lost all those men on an ambush.

@@antistiolabeo8950 teutons rise!

Considering that Legions were politicians and not military personnels it's easier to understand the defeats the Roman Legions suffered.

@@joegibson4946 Politicians had to be proficient in military tactics during those times. Of course, some were better than others, but they all knew at least the basics.

все хорошо, кроме первого копя, примус пилум не первое копё а первая шеренга 😑😑😑

And also, as another answer already acknowledged, actually an approximately analogous auxiliary army almost always accompanied any active assaults.

props to keeping up the facts and correcting yourself!

Video ruined

@@davidrogers8030 No way did this man create a sentence with all words beginning with the letter ‘a’

You can thank those scribes mentioned in the video probably. They're probably the ones that wrote all this down literally millennia ago. Or at least some of it. Then, over the years, it ended up getting into the hands of different historians.

@@masonjohnson4310 Yep then monks or scribes of Arab world copied it before the originals fell apart from age. Unfortunately most of it not copied or lost with Empires fall. .

Unlike the majority of Ancient Civilizations, the Romans were EXTREMELY good at keeping precise records in detail. Hence they are one of the most well known ancient civilizations. Not saying we know a lot about them, but we know more about them than most civilizations from ancient times.

@@masonjohnson4310 we have had this information for 2k years... but people get impressed by play things on a video... Reading something is too difficult for today's ignorant population (Roman populous was also ignorant )

@@guillermoelenes7252 Words can rarely do something justice when trying to portray something of this size or complexity. There is a reason videos like this are so popular, because people like being able to visualize the information we've had for 2k years. We should be embracing things like this, not jesting at someone for watching this instead of reading the primary source.

Imagine if they all had to pee at once :)

Especially with population density in those days. Seeing several thousand soldiers and equipment marching past would be eye opening.

Read second chapter of gaul war, written by Caesar

Mars!!!

@@Abebe345 Ive read that Paris at the time of the Viking Invasions, was 30,000 people. I would imagine that the rural areas have a lot of population compared to cities, as everyoine is farming.

The Legions did loose an awful lot of the time, it was just that there was always another legion, or consular army, to replace the losses. And look up the Parthians and how they faired against them.

@@savagesnayle301 they gained alot more than they lost for a long time

Middle Eastern armies often matched them, so did the Greeks.

@@ondras5241 You can't really describe the power of the Roman military by just using battles. Yes, many times Greeks and others were a match for them in a battle. But only Rome had a massive standing military machine. You can win against them in a battle, but they just keep coming. They never lay down their arms for a harvest or start getting angry because they've been away from home too long. With the exception of a small core of the Spartan army, Greek armies were made of citizens drafted for the purpose of fighting for a season, and the Parthians for example looked more like many medieval armies comprised of nobles and their serfs and a heavy addition of mercenaries. The power of the Roman military was in its ability to keep men in the field, keep them supplied, and their mobility. No other force in the world at that time was comparable.

@@Kelnx Your understanding on the matter is not very good. It is correct that Rome had a standing military, but Roman soldiers did lay down their arms, not for harvest, but for infrastructure projects, policing and administration. A legion would be spread out in the area, hard at work even in peace time. Furthermore, the idea that Roman soldiers "didn't get angry because they've been away from home too long" is, with all respect, laughable. We have tons of accounts of mutiny, often of whole legions. And while the ability of the Romans to raise another army in time of need is remarkable, those new raised armies were often of significantly lower quality and were basically the equivalent of a local levy. And if we look at Persians, they also had the ability to "bounce back" from lost battles/wars. Rome notably struggled with that, as the Persian powercore was located in the far East and even after the Romans captured Ctesiphon (Sassanid capital) five times, they weren't able to completely defeat the Persians, who managed to return to their previous strength and the Sassanids eventually outlasted the Roman empire. To wrap it up, while Roman empire was exceptional in many areas, a large part of it's today's prestige is because of good PR and not because of it's actual perfection and many societies at the time could match it in certain areas.

"Pain is just weakness leaving the body." - Roman soldier in Caesar III game.

@@jerseyjunior ‘ A man is never too weak to fight, if the cause is greater than his own life’ - Oenomaus, from Spartacus

@@liamcullen5105 It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience. - Julius Caesar

@@liamcullen5105 "All Rome will be amazed at such a victory! The day is *(voice cracks)* ours!" - The guy that shouts out when you win a battle in Rome Total War

@@alextowers3564 "A shamefur dispray!" -Shogun total war announcer

Usually I said they lost do to leadership incompetence.

A drop of water will destroy a mountain with enough time and repatriation.

Most if not all major Roman defeats were due to terrible decision making and utter leadership incompetence, and that can destroy any army in the world, even modern ones, just look at Ukraine.

While we can say Roman defeats were due to incompetence, lack of preparedness, etc, other flip side you can also say that Roman victories were due to the lack of preparedness, incompetence, poor leadership, disunity, etc of their enemies. Hannibal during the Punic Wars didn't even have the support of his country's leadership. Vercingetorix could barely hold together thr disunity Gallic tribes that had been fighting each other for centuries (many of whom still allied with Rome), and he wad convinced by his Chiefland to fight a pitched field battle instead of sticking to a winning strategy of avoiding big ptiched open field battles and relying on small skirmishes and hit and run.

@@Intranetusa What is simplier and easier, be organized and competent or the opposite? So we can say the victories of Rome were not due to the desorganization and incompetence of their enemies, but due to the organization and competence of the romans

A legion on its own wasn't an army. Even during the mid rebublic it took two legions to form a army

@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl either way, frightening stuff

Für Kaiser, Gott und Vaterland!

they lost full 3 Legions , if i remember correct... it was like Titanic sank when the news arrived in Rome...

Depending on which perspective you view it from, it could be seen as a heroic victory at Teutoburg Forest

@@MrJabbafett It was a great victory by the German tribes, united under Arminius. Unfortunately, following their victory, Arminius tried to become leader of all the tribes. The same spirit of freedom and independence that drove them to vanquish the Roman legions at Teutoberg, caused them to kill Arminius.

@@AudieHolland the Romans came back anyway, and they had no real interest in conquering the full germanic territories for political reasons. After the heavy defeat, the Romans reorganized to avenge Varus and the lost legions. The battle of Idistaviso is considered the revenge of the Roman Empire against the Germans, after the defeat suffered by Varo. In 16, the imperial legate Germanicus managed to beat Arminius in two great battles: the first in the plain of Idistaviso, the second in front of the Angrivarian wall, both between the right bank of the river Visurgi (current Weser), the surrounding hills, the great Germanic forest and marshes further north. The Rhine was consolidated as the definitive northeastern border of the Empire for the next 400 years.

@@MrJabbafett the Romans, on the other hand, were heroic, and after having burned and abandoned most of the carriages and all the unnecessary baggage, the Romans advanced anyway, arranged in more orderly deployments until they reached a location in the open field, not without further losses. From there they continued their march, still confident of being able to save themselves; knowing that on the journey they would have suffered numerous new losses and perhaps only a few would have been saved, the hope was to get as close as possible to the camp of Castra Vetera on the river Reno, where perhaps the legate Asprenate could have reached them and saved them. The army proceeded in wooded areas that seemed interminable, attacked mercilessly by Arminius' men, who knew the terrain well and who shouldn't allow the Romans to organize and take sides, since in the open field the legions would certainly have prevailed.

Remarkable, how this happened and a delight to watch

Ancient, yes. Medieval warfare... here you only get truly big battles if you go to the East or if you wait until the last centuries of the Middle Ages.

the scale of ancient warfare was actually bigger than the scale of medival warfare

Ah yes "Medical warfare in Europe was big

@@malipedduparthiv6147 were the armies of ancient Europe larger than medieval Europe? If so what civilisations were they?

@@thefuture1892 Ancient battles are mostly larger than medieval battles because, during those times it's civilizations vs civilizations kinds of battles as opposed to medieval battles that involve smaller countries. I mean just look at the size of the roman empire and it's contemporaries, and compare it to medieval states.

I hope you finish your book. It sounds like an interesting story

Flavia is feminine, you might want to change the name to Flavius Felix

@@timoverdijk3176most the time I might just refer to it as the Fourth Flavian Legion so the majority of readers understand.

@@davidbuckley2435 thank you I really want to finish it.

Sounds cool

Not seen in Europe yes, in China no. They have different ranks of leaders and officers since the spring and autumn war. Not to mention 9k army is just a small squad to them.

Late antique? Dwindled in size, lots of foreigners, just a few cohorts per legion.

The logistics of moving all this shit back than too would have been mind numbing

@@corylemons7242 exactly, I always think about logistics too, the total army sizes including camp followers and animals is crazy, literally a moving column of a city's population!

Rome also had a similar number of Auxillia that assisted the Legionaires. Also, Rome had other units, urban garrisons, frontier patrols, and a navy. All total Rome was estimated to have ~500,000 soldiers at its peak. Just like modern militaries there were multiple branches and lots of complexity. The Auxillia were formed out of locals throughout the empire. They were often used as spearmen to protect flanks, horsemen (many locals in the Roman Empire were better horse riders than Romans), camel riders, and other stuff like archers or slingers.

Roman hell march...

And this is leaving out their Auxiliary troops, so the scale becomes even crazier.

It must be really costly, several hundred millions per year?

Imagine the earth trembling when the legion approach

@@hazhoner5727 the terrifying might of the Roman Empire

The terrifying things were 3 - The quantity - all armed to the teeth - professional warriors all year long.

Just to be clear and obvious, this is the Roman legions under the Marian Reforms right?

I think "True Size Battles" would be the best thing! Covering the famous battle/sieges would be amazing now that we can get a glimpse of how big these battles or sieges could be. Imagine covering the battle at Gaugamela with the "True Size" element.

How did my old school text books, of the 1970's.....almost always come up with 6,000 Roman Legionaries per Legion? Some of my old school books even postulated that some legions had 7,000 men in them. ( As per Gibbon) Trevor Nevitt Dupuy and Ernest Dupuy could never come up with a reasonable number for an Imperial Legion. I don't think they ever tried. Adrian Goldsworthy's Books were the first I ever read that said the size of a Roman Legion fluctuated in size during the Centuries of the Roman Principate. Because of losses, replacements not arriving and desertion. The Imperial Army Beyond the Legions Complicating questions of the size of the Roman legion were the inclusion of men other than the fighters in the numbers given for the centuries. There were large numbers of enslaved and civilian non-combatants (lixae), some armed, others not. Another complication is the likelihood of a double-sized first cohort beginning during the Principate. In addition to the legionaries, there were also auxiliaries who were mainly non-citizens, and a navy.

What's the true size of the Mongol horde ?

@@Kaze_o Anything it wanted to be.😆😆

lol thats the channel name. it's actually produced and voiced by Mike Duncan

@@derrheat154 yep! Everything Mike puts out is amazingly detailed

Their infantry even carries 80 pounds of shit everywhere they go lol

The main thing we seemed to have figured out since then is the psychology of medium-sized units, a company of 150-200 men is far far easier to command than a cohort of nearly 500 with multiple junior officers.

You seem to forget that at Sanhurst and West Point they still study the Romans and therefore it is not a matter of the ancient Romans being similar to us, we, who they have never known, but it is entirely plausible that we are similar to them as we succeeded them, studied and copied them. There is absolutely nothing astounding about this except that you used reverse and therefore wrong logic.

Shovels and axes were in every soldier's kit for a reason. There wasn't a road when they started moving. There was one when they finished. As the legion moved, it cut the forest, dug and paved the road, and built the wall. That is why all roads lead to Rome. Because the army altered the terrain to fit them as they moved, and they connected the fortress they built to camp in one night, to the fortress they built to camp in the next night. Leaving a network of ready-to-inhabit towns behind them as they went.

Anywhere no. There were scouts who preceded the army, scouted the land and relayed information to army command about where it was thought bet to pitch camp. Drainage, water, survivability in case of attack and obtaining tactical situations all helped to indicate where best to pitch camp for the night.

@@williambarnes5023 That is almost entirely false, and blatantly so - they did not construct anything close to a regular Roman road while on a march, and they certainly did not construct a wall while moving in between camp sites. And the camps themselves would not be left behind as anything close to a “ready to inhabit town”. This channel has a good video on a typical 24h while on the march, please watch it and don’t present your imagination as facts without at least trying to gain some proper knowledge beforehand.

That would be good to Getafix of!:)

It was because Napoleon and the Revolution before him did what most nations in the world feared doing: he armed the people. Massive armies are a threat to most nations because they are inherently dangerous to pre-Nationstate polities. Building massive armies to wage vast conflicts is not something most kings would ever seriously consider because If he wasn't leading the army, then whoever was would gain massive political power. If he was leading the army, then he would be politically unstable back home. Professional regular armies simply were beyond most national economies until about the 17th century. Germany is perfect proof of this.

The legionary system and the corps system serve different functions. An army of legions march together. Corps march along different roads and only converge to fight battles. In the video it's estimated that for a legion of about 9000 men, on less than ideal road conditions, it takes 45 minutes for the legion to pass a single point. That means that in the morning after the first soldiers have started marching, the guys positioned at the rear of the coloumn would have to wait another 45 minutes before they can start marching. For a large Roman army of 6 legions (54 000 men) the guys at the rear would have to wait 4½ hours (6x45min) before they can start marching. For this reason a large army won't be able to march as long a distance in a day as a small army. Fast forward to the Napoleonic era and armies ballooned in size. It now becomes impossible to march an entire army in single colon. It has to be split up in different groups marching along parallell roads. Thus I'd say the corps system is not a stroke of genius, it's a necessity that happens when armies grow over a certain size.

@@greghall4836 legions of 9000 men?

As an Italian you would have done much better to learn Latin and read your own history from your own primary sources than listen to this make believe idealised Roman legion that never existed in real life.

The Latin that is taught at school and that is engraved on the marbles of the ancient Roman ruins (and written by the ancient Authors) is "classical" Latin: the language spoken by the upper most educated classes and used in the Senate of Rome. The language spoken by most people and throughout the empire was "vulgar" Latin. Although both forms were mutually intelligible, they were not the same. With the fall of the Western Empire (476 AD) there was no more any central authority to manage the language, and the only language left to be used was vulgar Latin. This language in turn started to change (every live language evolves over time), and the change was greater across geographic barriers (mountains, big rivers). By the VIII century classical Latin (used by the Church) was no more readily understood by normal (un educated) people. Additionally national languages (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Romanian) started to emerge and differentiate. Although all came from vulgar Latin, and still mutually intelligible to some extent, they were clearly different. In the Middle Age the Church too used vulgar Latin, further enriched with modern words that did not even exist centuries before. During the Renaissance period the national languages were formally codified and extended forcibly by law to the whole nation (for political reasons), so that the jump across a border became greater than before. For example the Occitan language spoken in the south of France was much more similar to Italian and Spanish than current day French (which was the romance language spoken in the area of Paris, much farther away). Romanian, being cut from contact and influence of other romance languages for centuries, had an autonomous evolution.

Well they succeeded not to improve in a host of things, especially technology since they had a surfeit of slave muscle. Navally we had to wait for the Arabs to teach us how to sail against the wind.

AH ha! I've always thought there must've been a leader for what was basically the Roman squad, but I've never been able to find out what he was called or how he was chosen. Thank you for clearing this up. Any chance you could give a link to a source, just for infomation?

@@FelixstoweFoamForge Though wikipedia does show it, i was more referencing a similar video by Historia Civilis here. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-YKBWAYZOXqA.html

@@Amarok410 Thank you for the link, appreciate it!

Yes I definitely want to do an episode on Roman Army medics

They were not fortifications but camps. Fortifications are far more permanent structures than a one to camp overnight. That said they equally needed to be engineered but since each legionary knew what he had to do, it was set up in double quick time with ditch and all.

I’m sure he will get right on that

@@rdrdrd7777not sure why you've said that but they're just suggestions I don't expect them all to be done.

@@thestanleys3657 I don’t think you realize the amount of work that goes into a video such as this, maybe one suggestion, but all of those? Also, I’m sure he’s already thought of that or they🙄

@@rdrdrd7777 that's a bit presumptive. Do I think that a vid like this can be knock out in a day no, it takes weeks at a minimum. Also I'm assuming that this true size series will be on going for years probably so a list of factions to do may help to narrow down what are people's interest

I'm really looking forwards to doing the "True Size of Cannae"

@@InvictaHistory ohh nice!

There are some things I can well imagine. The despair of the Legion is something I'd rather not.