An Analytical Viewpoint

Relief depicting Persian spearmen Metatron, for those who don’t know of him, has made many excellent videos on YouTube regarding historical events and peoples.  He specialises in Japanese and Ancient Roman history, but regularly answers questions on other historical periods. In one of his videos, he gives his view of why the Romans used swords instead of spears, as most warriors and soldiers did in antiquity. He proposed that the Romans chose swords instead of spears because of the equipment of the opponents that they fought.  Most of them, he said were barbarians rather than the armoured men of later eras.  He rightly stated that the Romans would have quickly adapted their army to an armoured threat if they had to face one.  He gave an example of the Roman legions quickly employing the manica (arm guard) in response to the Dacian falx. While he makes a good point about Roman adaptation to the threats they faced, the hypothesis that the Roman soldiers fa...

Roman army vs the Vikings If one were to take the Roman army at its height, it would decimate any early medieval army that would cross its path, according to a claim by Dan Carlin. To test his theory, let’s take a look at a hypothetical battle fought between the Vikings and the Romans.   It is easy to see how Carlin would come to such a conclusion.  At the height of the Roman empire in 117 AD, the army boasted hundreds of thousands of soldiers, all professional, all equipped and supplied well at the expense of the state. No such force existed in western European countries in the Viking age.  Armies were mostly levies with core body of professionals such as the Germanic huskarls or household guard. One could argue that this lack of professionalism was mitigated by a warrior culture.  This is erroneous, however.  Classical Greek and early Roman societies had a warrior culture that prized courage in battle.  Every citizen was also considered a so...