[I’m busy finishing off a fascinating book on Roman & Greek warfare written by a top notch historian.

I find it very fascinating reading up on what the Europeans were up to 2,000 years ago, and comparing it to Africa. As I see it, Europeans of over 2,000 years ago were actually much more advanced than black Africans of even 100 years ago. Their economies, politics, science and warfare was actually more advanced than the blacks ever achieved by themselves. (Of course Colonialism caused the blacks to advance, some 2,000(43)+ years overnight).

Even allowing for the fact that Europeans were fighting with spears and swords, their weaponry, their tactics and strategies were still very advanced. They engaged for example in siege warfare, which was pretty advanced. I don’t know of a single instance where blacks engaged in siege warfare – mainly because they had no cities!

Naval warfare is another area where I know of no instance where blacks engaged in true naval warfare. Carthage was a major power in Africa, but I am sure Carthaginians were not black Africans. They were surely Arabs.

Anyhow, let me not dwell on that. What I wanted to mention were very interesting tactics used by the various groups.

For example, in southern Africa, much of black warfare prior to Shaka becoming the King of the Zulus was about armies lining up and chucking spears at each other. And they would throw their spears back and forth at each other. They hardly ever closed for hand to hand combat. Shaka, who as far as I’m concerned was the greatest military mind that black Africa ever knew, came up with the idea of letting the enemy throw their spears, which his troops then gathered up, but did not throw back. So effectively, the enemy disarmed themselves, and then his troops could close with them and kill them with their short stabbing spears. It was a very neat idea.

The Romans solved the same problem, but in a different way. The Romans had a type of spear (pilium I think it was called), but it was carefully built so that it could only be used once. The spear was thrown, but it was made of a soft metal which would bend. So you could throw your spear at your enemy, but they could not throw it back because it was now bent. The spear was of course not the main Roman weapon. It was used merely for an opening skirmish.

I had always heard of the Greek Phalanx, but never truly appreciated what an awesome thing it was, until I read more detailed accounts of it. The Greeks were the real intellectuals of the ancient world, whereas the Romans were rather a more practical people. The Phalanx was a very deep formation, and the soldiers had long pikes up to 20ft long. The depth of the formation could be as deep as even 30 or 50 men. Effectively, it was a type of “hedgehog”. The front of the formation was this awesome prickly beast of spines. An advancing Phalanx could be composed of thousands of men packed together, and it was almost an ancient type of “tank”. Nothing could penetrate this fearsome mass of spears.

You would have thought that that Phalanx was invincible, but it was not. Its weakness was that it could be attacked from the side or rear, and when attacked from that direction it was completely vulnerable and virtually useless.

There is one instance where a Greek Phalanx fought the Romans, and there were as many as 10 Greek spears pressing against the shield of each Roman, and the Romans were being pushed back to certain defeat, when their commander noticed that as the Greeks were advancing over uneven ground, little gaps appeared between their troops… so he ordered his soldiers to act in small groups to penetrate the gaps and to then get up close and personal with the Greeks. The Greeks were forced to drop their pikes and fight at a disadvantage. The Romans proceeded to slaughter the Greeks.

I would like to make some general comments about the Romans though.

The Romans were a funny lot. They were never as intellectual as the Greeks. The Greeks were thinkers and strategists. But the Romans were just plain fighters. They fought in simple ways, but they fought well. The Romans also lost lots of battles. The Romans had some hideous losses – at times entire armies were wiped out. But what set the Romans apart from everyone that they faced, was their ability to pick up the pieces and to never quit. The Romans just NEVER QUIT… not even in the face of the most terrible defeats which would have caused others to just surrender.

And the Romans were innovative. They were prepared to learn from those who defeated them.

The Carthaginians were excellent sailors and they ruled the seas. The Romans had no conception of naval warfare. But one day they found a Carthaginian ship which ran aground. They used it as the blueprint for a navy. So they built a whole fleet of such ships in secret. They also made a few changes and innovations to the ships. The Romans went on to slaughter the Carthaginians at sea.

While on the subject of the Romans – in the hundreds of years of their domination, they also only produced two generals of good quality. The one was Julius Caesar, and other, far better one, Scipio Africanus. Other than that, the Romans actually had pretty bad commanders! Their strategy… SUCKED… The Romans were just plain good as fighters. Some of their arrangements were ridiculous, and almost “modernistic”. For example, before the battle of Cannae, the Roman army was commanded by two commanders, and each one commanded for one day at a time! This led to complete disaster. The one commander was cautious and the other impulsive. Thus, the largest Roman army raised, until that point in time, was slaughtered at Cannae in the biggest disaster the Romans were to ever know.

But what should be mentioned about Cannae is that not too long BEFORE Cannae, the Romans had suffered another enormous disaster. This disaster (at Lake Trebia I think it was), was already shocking for them, and they felt they could not withstand another such disaster. And then, despite all their preparations and raising of a newer and bigger army, they went on to experience an even worse defeat at Cannae. So the Romans thus had TWO enormously disastrous battles, which shocked them to their roots. Any other nation would have given up, but not the Romans. They pulled themselves together and fought on.

The Romans did not have good generals. The Roman soldiers were small. But they were extremely disciplined, and they fought a simple type of warfare very well. Their discipline and their ability to never quit, no matter the disasters which befell them, is what separates the Romans from everyone else. They defeated the more intellectual Greeks. They faced Barbarian armies who used trickery and cunning deception, and sometimes they lost horribly. But the Romans never let defeat get them down. Jan]