Camillan Roman

[Andreas Johansson]

The discussion of Polybian Romans got me looking at the Camillan list, which has triarii and hastati as Elite foot, while the principes are lumped Latins and raw recruits as Heavy Foot. What did they principes do to be classed as worse than the hastati?

[MarkusB]

I'm struggling to find anything right now, but in the past I've read someone suggesting that in the oldest manipular legions, being an 'hastatus' was a prestige status, and that 'principi' were just the 'principal' (most numerous) type of troopers- however, their relative position at deployment seemed to be the same as later legions, which seem to conflict with this interpretation.

Let me add that I find very odd representing individual types of maniples as separate stands- at Triumph! scale one element should clearly represent at least 50% of a legion, and I mean 50% of its front, including all three 'layers' of the acies triplex. Having separate stands for Hastati, Principes and Triarii would only be useful if there was some sort of line relief mechanism in action- which can't (and probably shouldn't) be represented in battles between 12-16 elements a side.

In this respect, I much prefer the more ambiguous Polybian list, where elite and heavy infantry are generically described as "legions".

[David Kuijt]

The discussion of Polybian Romans got me looking at the Camillan list, which has triarii and hastati as Elite foot, while the principes are lumped Latins and raw recruits as Heavy Foot. What did they principes do to be classed as worse than the hastati?

Might be we transposed names or something. I'll take a look at it this weekend.

[David Kuijt]

Let me add that I find very odd representing individual types of maniples as separate stands- at Triumph! scale one element should clearly represent at least 50% of a legion, and I mean 50% of its front, including all three 'layers' of the acies triplex. Having separate stands for Hastati, Principes and Triarii would only be useful if there was some sort of line relief mechanism in action- which can't (and probably shouldn't) be represented in battles between 12-16 elements a side.

In this respect, I much prefer the more ambiguous Polybian list, where elite and heavy infantry are generically described as "legions".

S'a good point, although it wars with the intent to add flavor to the descriptions. And note that scale in Triumph! is quite flexible, to allow battles in eras where army size was pretty damn large (Big Al, for ex.) and also battles in eras where army size was really pretty small (Dark Ages Europe; many Medieval battles) with the same system.

But maybe removing the names would avoid the constant nagging from future players who want to support manipular relief activity at the tactical level for their Cami/Poly Romans, or some such.