Arrian's Array Against the Alans

At the van of the entire army should be mounted scouts deployed in two contingents with their own commander. Behind them the Petrean horse archers, these also in two divisions: the decurions should lead them. At their rear should be deployed those from the wing of the Auriani. Those from the Fourth regiment of Rhaetians should be stationed with them, led by Daphne the Corinthian. Behind them those from the wing named Colonists. Stationed alongside them should be the Ituraeans and Cyrenaecans and those from the First Rhaetian. Demetrius should command all of these combined. Behind them the German cavalrymen, these too in two divisions, and a centurion should command them, the one in charge of the camp.

The vanguard

The mounted scouts would be exploratores drawn from the ranks of both the legionary and auxiliary cavalry. The speculatores of the legion, who had once been used as spies, were by this date no longer used for reconnaissance duties, but rather as executioners and bodyguards of senior commanders. The Greek term Keltos was confusingly used to designate a German, the Celts themselves being called Galatoi. The ethnic designations of the auxiliary troops generally do not reflect the actual origins of their soldiers. Though auxiliary regiments were ethnically rather homogenous at the time of their original formation, the Roman army did not take any trouble to continue recruitment of replacements from the same background. The hekatontarchès epi tou stratopedou may be a reference to a legionary praefectus castrorum, although it may be construed as legionary centurion. This last interpretation appears less likely though, as Arrianus prefers the term phalanx to stratopedon as the Greek translation for the Latin legio, though this is parallelled in Josephus.

Behind these the infantrymen should be deployed, their standards carried before them, the Italians and those present of the Cyrenaecans. Pulcher, who is in charge of the Italians, should command them all. Behind them should be the Bosporan foot soldiers, commanded by their leader Lamprocles, and at their rear the Numidians under their commander Verus. The formation should be four soldiers wide. The attached archers should be at the front of their own units. The cavalrymen organic to the units should guard both flanks of the formation. Behind them should come the guard cavalrymen, and behind them the legionary horsemen, then the catapults, then the standard of the Fifteenth Legion, and with it the commander of the Fifteenth Legion, Valens, and the subordinate commander, and the tribunes and the centurions of the first cohort. In front of the standard the infantry javelineers should be deployed. These foot soldiers should be drawn up in fours. Behind the Fifteenth Legion the standard of the Twelfth should be deployed and the tribunes and centurions around it. This legion should also be drawn up in fours.

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Behind the heavy troops the allied force should be formed up, the heavy armed from Little Armenia, and Trabzon and the Colchian and Rhizian javelinmen. Behind them the Apulian infantrymen should be deployed. Secundinus, who is in command of the Apulians, should lead the allied force as a whole. Behind them should be the baggage train. The wing of the Dacians and their wing commander should act as rearguard.

The allied troops

The Roman army commonly used irregular troops drawn from allied states as a supplement to its regular forces. The term of numeri for these irregular auxiliary troops current in modern literature is inaccurate. Units of all types could be termed a numerus and it carried no special meaning as force of irregulars. The place of the allied forces is similar to that described in Josephus with regular auxiliaries deployed as a rear guard.

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Centurions who are selected for this particular task should keep the flanks of the infantry in order. The Galatian wing should ride along both flanks in a single file as a guard, and the horsemen from the Italians as well. Their wing commander should ride along the flanks. The flank guards

The use of centurions to keep the marching infantry in order is matched in the writings of Flavius Josephus. The formulation in this passage is intriguing. If centurions were specially selected for the task it apears to imply that not all centurions were involved. As mentioned above the primi ordines were evidently not selected, but there might also be others. The importance of the mounted flank guards is emphasized by the fact that the praefectus is accompanying his men rather than marching separately from his command.

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The overall army commander, Xenophoon, should lead most of the time in front of the infantry standards, should ride along the entire marching formation, and he should see to it that they march in formation, and place those in disorder back into the formation, and he should commend those that are in proper order.

The commander-in-chief

Arrianus had a great admiration for Xenophoon, the fourth century BC military commander and historian. Their primary interests coincided and both combined the functions as practising military men, historians and writers of tactical treatises. Many of Arrianus literary works share the same types of subject, the Technè taktikè for instance mirroring Xenophoon’s Hipparchikos. The use of his predecessor’s name instead of his own might seem a little bit eccentric to the modern reader, but also features in other writings of the author, including private correspondence. The army’s commander takes up a similar position as in the marching orders described by Flavius Josephus, though the rounds made by the commander-in-chief are lacking in the Bellum Judaicum. Arrianus exemplifies here an important function of the Roman commander, closely supervising his subordinates and keeping an eye on their individual performance.

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This should be the marching order. On arrival at the planned spot, the entire cavalry should circle around to form a square, scouts must be sent to overwatch positions to look for the enemies. Next they should arm themselves, and after kitting out take up position in the battle formation. The battle array should be the following. Each wing of the infantry should hold high ground, as the full deployment must be in this order. On the right flank should be deployed the Armenians with Vasakes and Arbelos, holding the highest part of the flank, because they are archers all. Positioned in front of them must be the infantrymen of the Italian regiment. In command of all these should be Pulcher, who is in charge of the Italian regiment. Both Vasakes and Arbelos with their cavalry and infantry should be arranged in support of him.

The auxiliary battle line

Archers were generally used in the Roman army for fire support overshooting ranks of heavy infantry. Arrangements like this can also be found in Tacitus and Flavius Jospehus. Their purpose was mainly to shower an area with missiles than to engage point targets. As with suppressive fire by squad machine guns in modern day combat only a fraction of the ammunition expended would hit an enemy. The archery would serve to harass opponents and generally cause wounds rather than fatalities. The lack of a significant kill ratio does not mean that this was an unimportant or senseless manner of engaging the enemy. It was generally through collapse of morale rather than butchery pure and simple that battles were decided and the effect of archery on enemy morale ensured its place in the fighting methods of the imperial army. The Roman army had a large number of archers incorporated in its structure, both as specilalist units of sagittarii as well as soldiers trained as bowmen in other formations. Even the legions of the imperial period had archers among its complement as attested by epigraphy. The depiction of auxiliary infantry as light skirmishers current in modern literature of the Roman army is a distortion of their role in the source material. The auxiliary foot soldiers were mainly heavy infantrymen that were equipped and trained to fight in manner comparable, if not identical, to that of the bulk of the legionary infantry. This is borne out by battle descriptions and by their designation as hoplitai, heavy infantrymen, in both Josephus and Arrianus. Heavy infantrymen of the auxilia are deployed here as an extension of the legionary heavy infantry line, similarly protecting the ranks of archers arrayed at their rear.

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On the left flank the Allies from Lesser Armenia an the light armed from Trapezus and the Rhizian javelinmen should be arrayed holding the highest part of the flank. Deployed to their front must be the two hundred Apulians and a hundred of the Cyrenaicans, in order that the heavy armed are a bulwark for the javelineers, they can hurl their javelins overhead from the high ground. The Fifteenth Legion’s infantry should hold the entire right center above the middle of the whole area, because they are by far the most numerous: the infantrymen of the Twelfth Legion should hold the remaining space on the left filling it up to the point of the left flank. They should deploy in eight ranks and their deployment should be close ordered. And the front four ranks of the formation must be of spearmen, whose spearpoints end in thin iron shanks. And the foremost of them should hold them at the ready, in order that when the enemies near them, they can thrust the ironpoints of the spears at the breast of the horses in particular. Those standing in second, third an fourth rank of the formation must hold their spears ready for thrusting if possible, wounding the horses and killing the horsemen and put the rider out of action with the spear stuck in their heavy body armour and the iron point bent because of the softness. The following ranks should be of the javelineers. The ninth rank behind them should be the foot archers, those of the Numidians, Cyrenaicans, Bosporans and Ityraeans. Artillery pieces must be deployed on each flank to fire at the advancing enemies at maximum range, and behind the whole battle formation.

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The entire cavalry arrayed together in eight wings and squadrons must stand next to the infantrymen on both flanks, having the heavy armed and archers as a screen, two companies and in the middle of the formation six companies [ Gap in text ] the horse archers among them must form close to the battle line in order to shoot over it. The javelineers, spearmen, swordsmen and axe-men must guard both flanks and await the signal. The picked cavalrymen should bewith Xenophoon himself, and two hundred infantrymen from the legion, the bodyguards, and the centurions attached to the picked cavalrymen and the commanders of the bodyguards and the decurions of the elite soldiers. There should be with him [ gap in text ] a hundred light javelineers in order that while riding down the entire formation he can note and amend things if something is lacking. In charge of the entire right flank along with the cavalry must be Valens, who is commander of the Fifteenth Legion. The tribunes of the Twelfth should do so on the left.

Cavalrymen and elite troopers

Differently armed horsemen are deployed at the flanks of the infantry formation and may represent specialist troops of the individual cavalry regiments rather than each representing an entire ala with specialised weapons skills. Roman auxiliary cavalry regiments had some of their men trained in specialist fighting techniques as horse archers or shock cavalry lancers, though a number of specialist regiments were also included in its order of battle. It is unclear whether the small legionary cavalry units may have had such variation. The Notitia Dignitatum lists a unit of equites promoti clibanarii. While equites promoti are generally considered to be either legionary or praetorian horsemen in origin, achieving heavy cavalryman status was a type of promotion for auxiliary cavalrymen as well. This adds some uncertainty to the identification of the branch of service that these particular equites promoti originated from. In addition to the specialists using peculiar combat skills Roman cavalrymen were armed and trained both for missile fighting and close combat, and as is made clear at a later point in the text Arrian expected his troopers to engage their opponents first with javelins and then to close with swords and axes.

The hekatontarchai or centuriones attached to the picked cavalrymen, probably the equites singulares and possibly also the equites legionis, are likely to have been centuriones exercitatores and/or centuriones stratorum, which available evidence indicates to have been legionary officers rather than men drawn from the auxilia. The use of legionary personel in these positions is evidence of the elite nature of the imperial legionary cavalry and a reminder that though provincials of Celtic, Germanic or Thracian stock may have provided the bulk of the Roman cavalry and influenced its fighting methods, the effectiveness of these horsemen was improved by Roman training methods and discipline. The high quality of the cavalry training of the imperial army is aptly demonstrated in the Technè Taktikè or Ars Tactica, one of Arrian’s other writings.

M. Pavkovicz, 'Singulares legati legionis: guards of a legionary legate or a provincial governor?' in: ZPE 103 (1994), 223-228. M.P. Speidel, Guards of the Roman army (Bonn 1978), . M.P. Speidel, ‘Horsemen in the Pannonian alae’in Roman army studies II (Stuttgart 1992), 62-66. M.P. Speidel, ‘Legionary horsemen on campaign’in: Saalburg Jahrbuch 47 (1994), 36-39.

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Once thus arrayed there should be silence until the enemies come within missile range; when in range the loudest and most intimidating war cry must be raised by the whole lot, and bolts and stones must be fired from the artillery pieces and arrows from the bows, and javelins by both light armed and shield bearing javelinmen. Stones must also be thrown at the enemies by the allied force on the overwatch position, and the whole missile rain must be coming from all sides to make it concentrated enough to panick the horses and destroy the enemies. And the expectation is that the Scythians will not get close to the infantry battle formation because of the tremendous weight of missiles. If they do close in though, the first three ranks should lock their shields and press their shoulders and receive the charge as strongly as possible in the most closely ordered formation bound together in the strongest manner. The fourth rank will throw their javelins overhead and the first rank will stab at them and their horses with their spears without pause. After repulsing the enemy if there’s a clear rout, the infantry units must clear lanes and the horsemen should advance, not all squadrons, but only half of them. Those to the fore must be the first to advance. The other half should follow those that advance, in perfect formation and not in hot pursuit in order that they may continue the initial pursuit with fresh horses in case there is a complete rout, and in case they turn about to attack, they may assist those in pursuit. At the same time the Armenian archers must advance shooting their bows in order to prevent those in flight from turning about, and the light armed javelineers should advance at the run. The infantry formation should not hold its ground, but should advance at faster than the normal step in order to be a base of defence for the cavalrymen if there is stronger resistance by the enemies. Silence and warcries

The Roman army of the empire placed great emphasis on the silence maintained by its troops both on the march and in battle deployment. Warriors of all ages have tried to alleviate their own stress by making as much noise as possible

(incidentally this is also done by chimpansee primates when engaging in warlike behaviour). The republican Roman army, which was closer to a militia than a professional army, also advanced into battle making a lot of noise, raising war cries and banging their javelins against their shields. The silence maintained by the Spartan and Roman armies was proof of their superior discipline and must have had a most unnerving effect on their opponents who had to face an enemy that apparently gave no sign of this instinctive human behaviour. The raising of the warcry only just before actual contact was also maintained by the late Roman army. Whether the Roman war cry was already resembling the Germanic barritus is unknown. Roman cavalry had apparently already adopted war cries of Germanic origin at this date, belying the usual assertion that the raising of the barritus by the late Roman army was a result of barbarisation of the fourth century army. National war cries had been raised by the various contingents of the Roman republican army and perhaps each of the constituent parts of the imperial army would use a yell of their own as well rather than a common one, adding to the cacaphony.

Flavius Arrianus, Technè Taktikè, 44.1. A.K. Goldsworthy, The Roman army at war 100 BC – AD 200 (Oxford 1996), 50; 192-197; 229.

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These things should happen if the are put to flight after the first charge. If they about-face and circle around the flanks, the flanking bodies of lightly armed archers should extend formation to the high ground. I do not think that seeing that the flanks become weaker through extension in this manner they will break through them and cut up the infantry. Should they overcome one or either of the flanks the horses would necessarily expose their flanks, their spears at a right angle. In that case the cavalrymen must attack not with a missile shower but with swords and and axes. The Scythians being lightly armed and having unprotected horses [text breaks off ]Precautions against flank attack

Flanking attacks are countered by withdrawing vulnerable archers to higher ground to lessen the danger of their being overrun. The use of battle-axes by Roman cavalry as close combat weapons is a peculiarity of the writing s of Arrianus. They may have been a special weapon employed by Roman cavalry regiments facing heavily armoured enemies like the cataphracti used by Eastern armies. No examples of such battle-axes have been found. It is remarkable that Arrianus here seems to imply that the Scythians or Alans are unprotected after he has given a description of heavy armour before.