Romans at Cannae

 

This is my second Forged in Battle 15mm Legion for the Third Punic War.  With their comrades in the first legion, they will form the centre of my Roman Army.

Once again, I’ve gone with plain shields reflecting the current scholarly consensus. It is entirely possible that the shields were not painted a uniform colour. Mine are for the purposes of table top unit recognition.

In this period Roman Legions were never bad troops.  There were though shades of good.

At Cannae many Romans were newly come to the war.  They were enthusiastic, greedy for slaves and loot and probably anxious about the enemy.  They were also inexperienced.

The veteran Roman legions had plenty of experience.  If they had been walloped by the Carthaginians, they also knew it was possible to fight their way through to safety.

They were deployed at double depth and reduced distance between maniples at Cannae.  It seems to me that this robbed them of two of their assets.  Line relief probably could not work properly. The initial pila volley was likely reduced by throwing at an unfamiliar distance and fear of hitting their own front rankers.

The advantage of the formation was its simplicity.  The new troops simply had to keep advancing and fighting.  All Romans could understand such orders.  Here is the first Legion again, I'm wondering about shield colours for the third and fourth.

I’m keen to try the Cannae deployment on the table top by way of experiment.

You all know the story of the battle so I needn’t recap it here.  I will revisit aspects of Cannae in a future Carthaginian post.  I’m interested in the Gallic/Spanish holding action and how those troops were deployed.