Campaign history of the Roman military

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Roman army

The Roman Army refers to the collection of soldiers and other military forces which served the Roman Republic, and the Roman Empire. It is a large part of why Rome controlled most of the land around the Mediterranean Sea, including parts of Britain and Asia Minor at the Empire's height. It started as a citizen army, but became the world's first professional one.

For the first few centuries, serving in the army was part of civic duty in Rome. Soldiers were expected to purchase their own equipment, thus, cavalry consisted only of the wealthy who could afford horses, and the front lines consisted of lighter, younger and poorer people, who took the majority of casualties until the battle came to the heavily armored richer troops. However, after the Marius reforms, the army became a professional one, where it's core consisted of Romans who fought in the legions until they retired with a large pension after 25 years, and auxiliary troops who were granted Roman citizenship for their service. For centuries, the size of the army at any one time was between 250,000 and 300,000 soldiers.

Roman navy

Roman navy ships were 148 feet long and had a troop capactiy of 600. It was crewed by 250 sailors and slaves.

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