Principate Roman Auxilia

[Eques]

The list gives a choice of Heavy or Medium foot.

What do people think is most accurate?

Thanks

[dave_r]

If we knew that then the list would have them as that choice

Seriously - nobody knows. One school of thought is that the Auxilia were tactically no different to the legions, whilst others think they were more lightly armoured and fought in a consequent looser formation.

The choice is given so that if you care about the historical correctness you can read up on the period and make your own decision on what they should be. Not a definitive answer by any stretch of the imagination, but it's the best i can do I'm afraid.

[timmy1]

Much though I hate to argue withe dave_r (OK, that is not true...) if I were talking my own book I would agree with dave_r as I have MF Auxilia in my PRs. However there is, and has been for most of the past 20 years, fairly much a consensus among historians that they were mostly or all Heavy foot whose battlefield role was almost identical to that of the other heavy foot in the Legion. Adrian Goldsworthy probably has it most clearly articulated. I suspect that as most if not all of the Auxilia were not Roman Citizens (Civis romanus sum and all that) and therefore their contribution was not recorded in quite the same manner as that of Citizens but I could not state that as a 100% certainty.

[dave_r]

concensus amongst historians that

We all know how reliable those useless gits are. In six years time they'll find a book buried somewhere that shows they were all wrong!

If you show me definitive proof that doesn't involve words like "probably", "appears", "likely" and "assuming" I'm sure we'd have a 100% concensus.

[Eques]

Happy to go with the current consensus as that ties in with my pre-conceived notions.

I reckon perhaps if they did play a markedly different role to the legions this would have come up more in the sources.

I believe at Mon Graupius, for example, the legionaries did not actually come into play and the Auxilia did all the fighting, which would suggest they were used as frontline close combat specialists.

[grahambriggs]

I suspect the reality is that there were troops who could either form solid line of battle or scamper across terrain and our rules have incorrectly made two troop types out of them.

[timmy1]

Graham, could not agree more but within the limits of the rules we can only choose between what they define...

Now if we can open the multirole debate up a bit we would soon get on to a certain Greek chappie and some blokes who can be either / or (so to speak) as well as reigniting the Atilla The Hun / Mongol LH as Cav debate...

[philqw78]

I believe at Mon Graupius, for example, the legionaries did not actually come into play and the Auxilia did all the fighting, which would suggest they were used as frontline close combat specialists.

But surely this battle was fought in terrain that would have suited MF better.
or
They may have used the auxilia reasoning "Why let citzens (legio) die fighting for such an inhospitable, cold, wet, horrible and heathen piece of land"

[grahambriggs]

Graham, could not agree more but within the limits of the rules we can only choose between what they define...

Perhaps our thinking is no as far from history as we might think. e.g. if you are entering a competition where you think all the armies will be mounted but think you'll be able to get a fair bit of terrain down you might choose MF to dominate the bad going. If you think you'll spend all weekend trudging over the steppe, HF might be better. i.e horses for courses.

[ShrubMiK]

I'm of the opinion that there was was some perceived difference between Auxilia and Legiones. Otherwise why bother to make the distinction, and reatint hat distinctikonm so strongly for hundreds of years?

Whether it was a difference that would be significant in the terms of how they would be represented on the wargames table is another matter....

One theory is that it was purely logistical and administrative differences; one theory is that the auxilia were less heavily equipped; one theory is that it was about legal status (citizens vs. non-citizens); one theory is that it was about tactical usage and fighting style. There are probably a number of others I have forgotten! They migfht all be true, they might all be false. And all of those factors change over time as well, so you need to be clear on exactly when you are talking about.

I tend to deploy them as MF under FoG, but I don't think that's a very good representation. But that's part of a wider problem with FoG and MF generally.

BTW, my trust in Goldsworthy as an authority on these matters was diminished by his series of articles on representing Romans with troop type/ability changes under WAB

[nikgaukroger]

Heavy Foot.

[IanB3406]

I was kind of hoping the whole troop type would disappear in fog2..


..The extra maneuverability of MF in fog although reduced in v2 somewhat makes these troops nice to have. Certainly I used to use these with the lanciari to swarm flanks while the 2-3bg of legions refused and looking for a spot. It was a lot of fun to fight other heavy foot armies, however Not so fun for the heavy foot.

Ian