CrazyCrab said:
Hi everyone,
After hours and hours of designing and planning Ive finally came up with a story for my game.
While I did have advanced history and school and I was always a huge mythology nerd I could really use some help - while my game won't be 100% historically correct (unless hydras and minotaurs actually existed) I would still rather keep some level of competence.
So, some simple questions to revise my somewhat limited knowledge:
1. After conquering Greece did Rome include any of the Greek Units in its army or were they all changed into legionaries?
2. The stereotypical ancient Rome / Greece shows all people wearing togas... that wasn't actually the case, right? Id guess that leather clothing was just as popular as in the middle ages.
3. It seems like the Greek military was based mainly on the phalanx formation and didn't rely too much on the other types of weaponry like axes and maces - were those that unpopular before the middle ages?
Other than that Im looking for as much information on the ancient Greece as possible - anything form an awesome yet unpopular myth or some crazy create will be really helpful.
Thanks in advance!
1. Kind of. They used archers and probably peltast style troops as auxiliaries. There aren't many records of them using greek style heavy infantry though - by all accounts the legionaries were far more effective anyway. I think there was one guy in like the 3rd century AD who raised a legion-sized unit of phalanx troos, but it might well have been post-Crisis, so isn't really typical of classical Roman behaviour.
2. No, Togas were ridiculously formal - think of a cross between parliamentary robes and black tie/ceremonial dress or something. They'd generally have worn more typical tunics and cloaks - as an aside, Roman prostitutes typically wore really short tunics in order to denote their profession. Some things don't change!
3. The greeks used phalanxes a lot, but it wasn't their only formation. And it was subdivided:
You had the classical phalanx, which was very closely packed, used heavy hoplite equipment, and relied heavily on push of pike and close combat. The elite infantry on the right flank typically decided a battle.
Then you had the Macedonian phalanx, which was lightly armoured[footnote]Compared to hoplites[/footnote], used massive sarissa pikes, and emphasised manoeuvre and drill. It was faster, fought in looser formation, by some accounts could charge, but was designed to pin the enemy in place. It wasn't really designed to kill the enemy in close quarters. The battle was decided by charges of heavy cavalry, Companion or Thessalian.
Then, you had other units. Peltasts, swordsmen, and macedonian hypaspists tend to get neglected, but they were vitally important.
Peltasts weren't really the equivalent of roman velites - pure skirmishing troops. They instead varied a lot over the period - sometimes not much heavier than skirmishers, sometimes as medium infantry.
They could (and did) fight in the battle line.
The hypaspists, who were functionally similar (though with longer spears, bigger shields, but less armour if memory serves), were arguably more elite than the phalangites. They relied less on mass drill, fought in close combat, and were often the first to scale the wall in sieges.
Swordsmen were indeed less common (swords or long daggers typically being the backup weapon), but probably fought in a similar manner to the heaviest peltasts.
Axes and maces would have been used, but probably more by militia troops and celts - repurposed farming implements or 'home made' weapons. Professional troops would have been fairly consistently armed, and would have been able to afford specialised weapons. Mind you, if you want to include them you can justify it by having them as thracian or illyrian or something.
Maces, bills, and poleaxes were generally developed to allow militia or levied troops to deal with heavily armoured knights when they outnumbered them - they wouldn't have had much utility against greeks or romans fighting in close, drilled, formation (or against the later return to pike formations in the early modern era).
One thing I would point out - if you are going for a mythical setting you might want to consider looking more into Mycenaean greece [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenaean_Greece] rather than the alexandrian or Roman expansion era. There are huge differences - and most of the military stuff above won't apply - heroic single combat and mass disorganised skirmishes was probably more of a thing rather than massed infantry formations. Also chariots.
...And the Minoans of Crete even used axes, so you can get them in!
