Curiosities of ancient Rome (Army)

Pretorian Guardians next to the Emperor Claudius. Contrary to what mass culture tells us in movies, pretorians did not actually wear armor when they served in the city of Rome and the imperial palace (except for special occasions like the triumphal march), especially not for the first time two centuries of its existence.

In the Roman army, attention was paid to the state of armament and its quality. As claimed by Vegetius (IV / V century CE) in “De Re Militari” (II, 378): “Can that man be reckoned a good soldier who through negligence suffers his arms to deteriorate by dirt and rust?”.

The triumphal parades of Roman legions have always played an important role in Rome’s history. One of such marches was seen and was described later by a fourteen-year-old Tacitus. It gives us a great insight into how this triumphal march looked like.

Sambuca was a war invention used for the first time by the Romans, commanded by Marcus Claudius Marcellus, during the siege of Syracuse in 213 BCE. The inventor of the siege bridge was a certain Heracleides of Tarentum.