Take a piano as an example, starting with the keys and ending again. Pen Fun Pavilion www.biquge.info you know that the piano only has 88 keys, and any piano is no different. They are not unlimited. You are infinite, and the music you make on the keys is infinite. I like it, I'm used to it.

- Giusebe Tornatore (upstart director of the Italian genre of realistic cinema)

In addition to fighting the Macedonian phalanx, we can also see from the many accounts of the time that the Romans were still inseparable from traditional spear units, such as at the famous Battle of Falsarus, Caesar placed reserve infantry behind his cavalry, which were required to carry javelins for stabbing battles, rather than throwing heavy javelins like other troops.

After the famous Marius reforms, the Romans abolished the spears of the reservists and replaced them with heavy javelins in order to unify the equipment of the troops, which made the Roman legions, which lacked pikemen, have to rely on various allies and vassal forces to provide spear troops in battle.

After the establishment of the Roman Empire, Augustus implemented the imperial military reform, recruiting a large number of auxiliary legions using spears, and these troops were deployed in front of the legions using swords and shields in the battle of Britain to resist the frenzied charges of the local natives.

So, why did such uneasy weapons and equipment still make the Roman legions so successful?

That's because the tactical superiority of the Roman legions covered up their shortcomings in weapons and equipment, and compared with the improvement and optimization of weapons and equipment, the advanced tactics of the Romans were the greatest advantage that the Roman legions had when engaging the enemy!

In the military progress of the Romans, the equipment factor has always been only a secondary factor, and the creative tactical progress of the Romans is the key to maintaining the superiority of the Roman legions over the surrounding opponents, and it is also the key to the victory of the Roman legions again and again.

In order to smoothly carry out the replacement and dispatch of the third-line troops, the Romans abandoned the Greek phalanx that had been adopted before, and set the basic establishment of the troops as a hundred-man team, and the two hundred-man teams together formed a complete combat unit.

Compared with the Greek Macedonian formation, which often required hundreds, or even more, to form a battle formation, such a deployment was flexible and convenient, and the junior officers in charge of commanding the detachment were also given the power to adapt to changes on the battlefield.

In the Second Punic War, the famous general Scipio asked the troops deployed in the back row to directly carry out a large number of maneuvering and outflanking tactics, so that the entire Roman three-line tactics were activated at once, and the actual combat effectiveness far exceeded the rigid phalanx of the enemy.

When opponents who still used the phalanx encountered the Roman third line, they were often attacked by the Romans' rapid breakthrough within their weak points, and once the solid phalanx was disrupted, the entire battle was quickly lost.

And if the Roman legions were in a reverse position after the battle began, the reserves of the second and third rows could also be deployed to the two flanks in time to cover the flanks of the whole army, or to fill in the gaps in the front troops in time to avoid the collapse of the entire army's front.

In these cases, the Romans' heavy javelins, daggers, and shields became more convenient equipment for combat, and they were more flexible and easy to fight than the traditional Greek spears and shields.

After the famous Marius reforms, the Romans merged the original detachments in pairs into larger tactical units, the brigades, which gave the Roman army a flexible choice of tactical units on the battlefield that were larger than the original detachments and smaller than the larger legions.

As a result, the Roman army that entered the hinterland of Asia and Gaul exerted greater combat effectiveness than before, expanding Rome's territory to the Atlantic coast and the two rivers at once, and successfully eliminating a large number of once formidable opponents.

When the powerful opponents were defeated one after another, all this made the Roman legions have few strong opponents in a short period of time, and the shortcomings of the equipment were naturally ignored, or in other words, the disadvantages of the Roman legions at this time were not taken seriously.

After all, the Roman Empire had a large number of professional auxiliaries with spears and bows in addition to the main legions that used heavy javelins and swords and shields, and the main legions and auxiliary legions worked together to defend the mighty Roman Empire.

However, with a series of failures and declines that began in the 3rd century AD, the Romans once again began to make extensive repairs to their military system, and cavalry became more and more the main striking force in the Roman army, and its weight increased.

The hoplites, on the other hand, abandoned the javelin and dagger in favor of spears and longer swords, which some saw as a sign of the ruin of the Roman army, which would have been difficult for Roman legions to win on the battlefield again.

In fact, this was largely due to the fact that the Romans' resources for army building began to shift towards cavalry and certain important legions, and that it was only in the vast expanse of the empire that there were too many enemies and potential enemies to destroy the Roman Empire.

Excluding the external objective factors of the fall of the Roman Empire, and only from the military point of view of the Roman Empire, the Roman legions, the mainstay of the Roman Empire, were a seriously flawed army from the beginning to the end.

The lack of cavalry and the over-reliance on foreign assistance were the direct causes of the fall of the Roman Empire, and in the final analysis, these reasons were due to the Roman legions rather than the overpower of external forces.

If the Roman legions already had strong cavalry troops and phalanx troops, then the Roman legions, which had no major defects, could completely get rid of their dependence on the barbarian auxiliary army and rely on their own strength to consolidate the rule of the Roman Empire.

Perhaps, it is impossible for any powerful empire to avoid the fate of eventual destruction, but military strength can at least continue the existence of this empire, and the Roman legions should have their own phalanx troops and cavalry troops.

The reason why Bai Feng made every effort to form two phalanx legions was to follow the way the Roman army dealt with the Gallic barbarian army, and use the phalanx pikemen to deal with the crazy charge of the barbarian warriors, so as to reduce the cost of casualties of his own army.

On the other hand, it was also to make up for the shortcomings of the Roman army itself, relying only on the systematic types of troops that could be recruited in the city of Rome, before Marius's reform, the army of Rome would be the same as the Roman legions in history, with weak cavalry and almost no phalanx troops.

The only elite Roman troops that can be regarded as pikemen are just ordinary short spears that they use, and they can't form a phalanx to meet the enemy like real pikemen, so Bai Feng must form a phalanx legion in Rome City.

After Marius's reforms, the city of Rome was still weak in terms of phalanx troops, and even the only unit that was barely considered pikemen, the elite Roman infantry, could be eliminated, and at that time, pikemen would completely disappear from the battle sequence of the city of Rome.

Why did Bai Feng just think that it might be canceled? That's because the current Roman city system is no longer the same concept as the Roman all-out war game, and Bai Feng himself is not sure whether the troops that could be recruited before the reform will be abolished after the reform of Marius.