Maniple military unit: Encyclopedia II - Maniple military unit - Historical origin

Maniple military unit - Historical origin

In 390 B.C., the Gauls sacked Rome after defeating the Roman Republican army at Allia River. One of the weaknesses of the Roman army that the Gauls had exposed was the inflexibility of their Hellenic style phalanx formation that they inherited from the Etruscans. To overcome this sort of limitation, the army was split up into subsets called Maniples (it translates roughly to English as 'handfuls') that could perform actions with more independence from one another.

During the Roman Republic, the army was organized into three lines, the hastati, the principes, and the triarii. Each of these lines was divided into maniples of 120, 120 and 60 men, respectively. Thus, the legion proper consisted of about 3,000 men. The three lines of infantry were divided by experience and fighting ability, with the youngest soldiers in the hastati making the first engagement. Where resistance was strong this rank would dissolve back through the Roman line and allow the more experienced soldiers in the principes to fight. In turn, the principes could yield to the hardened triarii if necessary.

There were also very light troops called velites. Unarmored and armed with stones or slings, they stood in front of the line to launch missiles first and screen the army's formation and size from the eyes of the enemy, but then they moved off when the battle began. The velites were not separated into maniples.

After the Marian reforms of the legion, the maniple existed, but as sub-unit within the cohort structure, with the cohort being the primary tatical unit, although cohorts could be broken down into maniples should the terrain or tactical situation call for smaller, more flexible units.

Before his time the maniple had been the tactical unit. Now it was the cohort. A legion consisted of ten cohorts, each cohort containing three maniples, and each maniple two centuries. - The Gracchi, Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History by A.H. Beesley

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Historical origin", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki