Roman Empire

A map of the Roman Empire at it's height, civilizing the fuck out of unwashed Barbarians

The Roman Empire (Imperium Romanum) was a civilization which was based out of the Italian City of Rome. It was notable for unifying the Mediterranean under their rule and being one of the most advanced civilizations of Classical Antiquity, with only the Chinese Han Dynasty, Indian Satavahana Empire, Mesoamerican Empires, and the Parthian Empire (With the Persian Empire succeeding it) surpassing/rivaling it....

Roman History 101

The Roman Empire from a larger view, here seen sitting next to its two older siblings while being surrounded by other minor Empires and States (Colored light brown). Although from a certain view angle, the awkward and humorous shape of the Han Dynasty makes it look like its about to 'touch' poor old Parthian Empire.

The Early days

According to the legends, Rome originated from a group of butthurt Trojans who escaped the Trojan Wars under the leadership of Prince Aeneas, we roughly know where Troy is so that means they had to sail all the way from Turkey, not too unlikely however given that the Greeks had Colony all over the Mediterranean. Aeneas' lineage would eventually give birth to Romulus and Remus who formally founded the city of Rome in 753 BCE... by enticing Sabine women to come to their little city, and while everyone was drunk, Romulus would then signal to rape (in this case steal) every Sabine in sight. After one of their descendants rapes a girl named Lucretia, Rome decides kings are bad, and reforms as a Republic.

The Punic Wars

Meanwhile, in what is now Tunisia there was another power on the rise, a city called Carthage. Eventually there began to be some friction between the two groups as Carthage moved into Sicily and Sardinia. This led to three wars called the Punic Wars where Rome and Carthage clashed.

The first Punic War (264 BCE to 241 BCE) involved the Romans fighting the Carthaginians over Sicily and Sardinia. The Romans begin to take to the sea for the first time. Rome got is ass handed to it at first, then reverse-engineered a Carthaginian ship and started pushing back. Instead of letting the war draw out, Carthage sued for peace, and gave Rome very generous terms. This lead to resentment in Carthage, and set the stage for part two.

Eventually shit happened involving a Greek colony and war sparks again. A guy named Hannibal, whose father commanded the Carthaginian forces last time, swears revenge on the Romans. He invades Spain, brings elephants over the Alps and into Italy (at heavy cost), and generally starts wrecking shit. The only thing holding him back is Fabius "The Delayer" Maximus, who used hit-and-run tactics to keep the army away from Rome. Meanwhile, Roman general Scipio Africanus leads his army to Carthage, Hannibal is called back to defend his home, and gets defeated. Carthage's lands are annexed by Rome, and the city itself razed a few years later.

The Height of the Roman Republic

With Carthage Dead, there was nothing left that could stop Rome from taking over the Mediterranean world. When Rome wanted to conquer an area they gave the local rulers two choices: Surrender and pay taxes to the Glory of Rome, or resist and be purged. Either way, Rome got more territory, more wealth, and more slaves, and expanded more or less uncontested until they got to Gaul. These uncivilized brutes continued to resist until the Romans got sick of their bullshit and sent in Julius Caesar with a few legions to deal with it. He did just that, and became very popular as a result. He uses this popularity to get dictatorship, his friend Brutus decides he isn't that cool any more...and you know the rest.

For next two hundred years the now-Empire is under the Pax Romana. It sees some good emperors, a few bad ones, and a lot of stability, wars of succession notwithstanding.

Fall from Greatness

Rome's fall can be attributed to any number of reasons, and any self-styled amateur historian would be more than happy to explain to you his opinions on the subject, but it's widely agreed that there were a number of contributing forces, including but not limited to: Increased logistical sluggishness of maintaining a sprawling empire, the army getting more political and less disciplined, economic and famine crises as Roman farmers were outpriced by foreign imports, Germanic barbarian hordes that wanted "in" to the empire, emperors trading places like it's fucking musical chairs, and lead poisoning from Roman sewage systems. The East splitting off didn't do the Western lands any favors either. Eventually, the barbarians got all the way to Rome, sacked it, and made one of their own Emperor. This is the part where most experts say the twitching corpse is well and truly dead.

Things were a bit better in the wealthier East after the split. The Byzantine Empire, as it's now called, drifted from Rome in culture and aesthetic, and more or less carried on without doing much of anything besides splitting off from the Catholic Church to form the Orthodox, and getting its teeth kicked in during the later Crusades. Eventually conquered by the Ottomans.

Legacy

Even after its fall, the Roman Empire left a mark on western civilization in terms of writing, language, architecture, legal systems and philosophy. Many major European cities like London or Milan started out as Roman Colonies. In certain fields (in praticular medicine, sanitation and plumbing) the Romans were more advanced than their European counterparts up until fairly recently. The end of the middle ages is generally known as "the Renaissance", the rebirth of western civilization which did involve some attempts by the upper class to recreate the better aspects of the Empire. For this reason various subsequent western cultures attempted to try to recreate some of Rome's Grandeur. The more obvious of these was the Holy Roman Empire. The Tsardom of Russia proclaimed itself as The Third Rome. Numerous other European monarchs as well as Ottoman Sultans declared themlseves as being Emperors or Kaisers/Tsars. Monarchs drew upon the idea of the authority and splendor of the Emperors, Republics drew on the roman concepts of rule of law, elected governments and civil rights.

Romans at War

Long story short, you don't get an Empire which reached from Iraq to Portugal without being good at fighting and the Romans were good at that. At first the Romans fought in basically the same way as the Greeks did, as spear wielding Hoplites, but latter became more and more swordsmen. At first it was the duty of every able bodied male adult roman citizen who was wealthy enough to afford weapons and armor to keep and to take up arms when called to fight. These Republican Armies were divided into five types of soldiers...

• Velites: The poorest people with light armor (if any) armed with slings and javelins who would pelt the enemy formations at a distance to kill a few guys and disrupt their ranks, then run away. Velites were not used in there own formations, but were attached to the Maniples of the Hastati, Principes and Triarii.
• Equites: Rich bastards (though not rich enough to be Patricians) who could afford horses. They used those horses to serve as light cavalry, scouting, skirmishing and running down enemy soldiers.
• Hastati: Common soldiers armed with swords and a bit of armor, new recruits and poor people, put at the front of the main roman formations.
• Principes: People who were better off than the Hastati and had seen some combat. If the Hastati failed to break the enemy lines, they fell back and the Principes come in.
• Triarii: The hardened veterans serving as the best equipped heavy infantry, they were as hard as nails. If the Principes failed, you brought in these guys. There was once a roman saying, "Going to the Triarii" when meant the same thing as "the last ditch" everything else has been tried.
• Rorarii: THE last line, historians are not sure what these guys were, but we know they were there. Some think that were used to fill the spots of fallen soldiers.

This is not including mercenaries units that they would use to pad out the ranks.

Another thing of note was at the time, Rome had a near endless supply of troops, the city alone had a population in the millions, combine with their allied cities, resulting in Rome being able to replace any losses quickly. Best explained by King Pyrrhus of Epirus, who who's very name now means "victory that cost so much it is rendered worthless", in the Punic wars Rome was able to absorb losses that would have crippled any other civilization.

Roman tactics would have each unit of divided into 120 man units called Maniples, and rather then array each Manciple as a straight line, they would use a check board pattern with the first row Hastati line having gaps big enough to move the Principes Manciple forward though. The principles themselves would have similar gaps for the Triarii. If the battle went poorly the General could retreat back to the Triarri line for either a ordered retreat or a counter attack. In front of the line were the Velite skirmishers.

The biggest downside of this system was that each soldier had to equip himself, which limits the recruitment pool to guys with a bit more cash than usual and heavier soldiers to relatively rich people, Rich people who need to stop fighting at some point to go home and make the money needed to supply themselves limiting how far and how long they can go and fight. This problem was solved by Gaius Marius, who reformed Roman army from basically militia to the army of professional soldiers, supplied and equipped by the state who's full time job was fighting for their 20 year terms of service. And thus the fabled Roman Legions was born. While roman legionnaires was recruited mostly from poor people, they where the toughest motherfuckers of their time, as each must first pass the boot camp of death and those weak and undisciplined were washed up. Each legionary was armed with:

• Steel armour, also known as Lorica Segmentata, designed to provide a nice balance of protection and mobility.
• Shortsword, also known as Gladius, his main weapon, optimized for fighting in tight sword-and-shield formation.
• Big shield, also known as Scutum, his second main weapon, used for bashing people to ensure they won't strike back while you're poking them to death with gladius.
• Javelin, also known as Pilum, used for breaking enemy formations by maiming their front ranks or destroying their shields.
• Two wooden stakes to kill vampires set up a portable fortress every night.
• A sling, used to kill those annoying lightly armored skirmishers and shoot retreating enemies in the back.
• A set of lead balls to throw them with aforementioned sling.
• A pack with a blanket, pot, shovel, wineskin and supply of grain so they could march all day long
• A set of hardened steel balls to Hold The Fucking Line.

The Legions also were Rome's odd job men. If they needed to police a province, set up a mine, build a road or similar, they had the Legionaries do it. Each Legion had 6,000 men when at full strength that was divided into sub-units of 80 called Centuries, each led by a especially badass and literate motherfucker called a Centurion and six centuries made a Cohort. Each centuria can fight as one huge unit, called a phalanx, which proved to be effective against barbarians, or split into ten smaller squads called maniples, which on their part was great against other phalanxes, due to their high mobility and flexibility, and because romans being swordsmen weren't as good at phalanxing as other nations, focused on mostly spearmen. Hilariously, both "phalanx" and "maniple" words means the same (finger), just the first one is Greek, and the second is Latin.

Roman legion was also the first army that used siege engines on the field, as they realized ballista bolts and stone "shrapnel" thrown by their Onager catapults could do horrible things to enemy infantry, especially heavy one, which tends to stick in very tight formations. Generally, each centuria had it's own ballista (small ones mind), and each cohort - it's own onager, and a legion also had a separate unit of combat engineers, who's job was to maintain legion's engines and build new ones if needed. Each Legion also had a small amount of light cavalry attached to it used for scouting and chaseing down fleeing enemies.

The Legions were backed up by Auxilia, non citizens recruited from the provinces to serve in the Roman Army. They served for 20 years like the Legionaries, but where the Legionary got a big sum of money at the end of his tour of duty, the Auxilery got full citizenship. Auxileries generally served in various specialized roles, such as archers, skirmishers and cavalry. To prevent Auxilia forces from rebelling they were usually stationed far away from their homelands, a fact which also diversified the individual provinces of the Empire. In short, think of them like being the Imperial Guard minus a fair load of Grimdark. This is something that is still done to this day, US military family's move an average of once every three years.

Later Legions made increasingly heavy use of Heavy Cavalry, largely due to conflicts with the Persians in the East. As things fell apart in the western Roman Empire, Rome could not afford to raise, train and support the legions. As such, they turned more and more to foreign mercenaries for military strength. This proved to be a really bad move as these Mercenaries were of dubious loyalty at best and garrisons of them eventually turned to taking over areas for themselves or betraying the Romans to invaders.

The Roman military first took to the sea during the First Punic Wars. The Romans were always more at home than on land while the Carthaginians had plenty of experience in naval combat, one story says they did not even know how to build ships and had to copy a Carthaginian one they found. As such, in addition to using the fairly conventional ramming prows, the Romans stationed a large number of troops aboard their ships and invented a device called a corvus, a pivot mounted ramp with a pair of spikes on the end that could be dropped onto enemy ships. This allowed the Romans an edge in boarding enemy ship. After they kicked Carthage's butt, they were mostly engaged in anti-piracy work. Contrary to what movies might have you think, the Romans did not use slaves to man their galley's oars. Instead they hired free people (mostly non citizens) to man them, as they made better rowers and they were not prone to rebellion in battle. Occasionally the navy would buy a few slaves if there was a real pressing need for naval manpower, but they would immediately free them before letting them near the oars.

Roman Empire Analogs in Fantasy

To save time, let's just say the Roman Empire is one of the most heavily copied Cultures in fiction.

• Imperium of Man - While the Imperium also draws inspirations from other political systems (many like the Nazis were also base on the Romans), it's aesthetics and government are strongly based around Roman designs.
  • Ultramar - Ultramar, Roboute Guilliman's home system, is heavily based around a Greek-Roman hybrid empire.
• Codex Alera - Romans end up in a fantasy world and learn how to train spirit Pokémon. That may sound odd but that's actually the literal origin of how the books were written in fact, the author Jim Butcher, was challenged to write a book using two "lame" ideas, the idea in question were "lost Rome legion" and "Pokémon"
  • Proving once and for all that with few exceptions a truly good author can turn even the lamest ideas into something awesome, seriously why is that we dont have a Dresden Files page at 1d4chan?