roman legion
The Eagle at Asculum: General Pyrrhus of Epirus
By Jeffrey A. EastonBy the middle of the 4th century bc, the Roman Empire had steadily expanded its reach into the southern half of Italy. Read more
roman legion
By the middle of the 4th century bc, the Roman Empire had steadily expanded its reach into the southern half of Italy. Read more
roman legion
The call of a nation on its civilian population either to create a military force or to augment a standing army is virtually as old as civilization itself. Read more
roman legion
Centuries before the Romans came to dominate the Mediterranean basin, they fought a series of wars against neighboring peoples to establish their hegemony over the Italian peninsula. Read more
roman legion
Its name has become synonymous with intrigue, conspiracy, betrayal, and assassination. It was responsible for the overthrow, abandonment, or murder of 15 out of the first 48 emperors who governed Rome between 27 bc and ad 305. Read more
roman legion
As part of tribal obligations to appease Rome, Segimer, the powerful Cherusci chief, surrendered his sons Arminius and Flavus to the Roman emperor Augustus. Read more
roman legion
In AD 451, Attila the Hun, by then known to terrified Western Christians as the “scourge of God,” crossed the Rhine River in command of a multi-ethnic army. Read more
roman legion
In 102 bc, a disturbing report circulated through Rome that the people they called Cimbri and Teutones had crossed the Alps. Read more
roman legion
The name Gaius Suetonius Paulinus doesn’t ring across the centuries from the annals of Roman military history like the names of Julius Caesar, Tiberius Nero, or Scipio Africanus. Read more
roman legion
In the spring of 73 bc, Thracian gladiator Spartacus decided that the time was right to attempt an escape. Read more
roman legion
On a sultry summer night in 9 BC, 29-year-old commander of Augustus Caesar ’s army in Germania bolted upright in his cot, dripping with sweat. Read more
roman legion
Jugurtha, king of the desert nation of Numidia, was a long-time antagonist of Republican Rome. Over more than a decade of war, he was a bold and cunning battlefield commander who used swiftness and determination to make fools of Roman consuls, even as the Romans were systematically conquering his country. Read more
roman legion
The snow-capped peaks of the Ceraunian Mountains stared down on the sturdy barks hunting for a suitable place to land on the coast of Epirus on January 5, 48 bc. Read more
roman legion
What began as a polite truce between armies that allowed each to draw water from the same river turned into the battle that would give Greece to Rome. Read more
roman legion
In 1932 a team of American and French archeologists working at the ruins of Dura-Europos, site of an ancient fortress on the Euphrates, made an amazing discovery. Read more
roman legion
Two Generals met in the Fall of 202 BC in a last-ditch attempt to secure a mutually agreeable peace between their respective nations. Read more
roman legion
The early years of Rome’s second war with Carthage were some of the darkest the Republic had ever known. Read more
roman legion
The basic unit of the Roman army of the late Republic was the legion, derived from the Latin word legio, meaning “military levy.” Read more
roman legion
The gray skies of winter still shrouded the town of Vesontio on the Dubis River. To the south, when not obscured by mist and rain, rose the Jura Mountains, and beyond that the lofty peaks of the Alps and the nearest Roman Province, Gallia Cisalpina. Read more
roman legion
The ancient city of Selinus, a major trading center in Cilicia, sat atop a steep outcropping of rock that rises abruptly from the edge of the Mediterranean on the southern coast of Asia Minor, now modern Turkey. Read more
roman legion
“Augustus found Rome brick and left it marble” is an expression pegged to the first of the Roman emperors. Read more