Cataclysm 90 BC: The Forgotten War that Almost Destroyed Rome

by Philip Matyszak

The Romans discovered that chasing the highly mobile Numidians was fruitless with the army as it was currently constituted. So Roman flying columns developed the habit of loading onto individual soldiers much of the kit formerly carried on the baggage train. Now a Roman soldier went to war loaded down with some 60 pounds (27kg) of equipment, including rations, weapons and entrenching tools. While fighting in Africa and Spain, the Romans had found that small flexible handfuls of men made the best formations. However these ‘handfuls’ (‘maniples’ in Latin) were easily overwhelmed by a mass of barbarians. So the Roman legion adopted the cohort, a unit of 480 men. The cohort was not a total innovation – it certainly existed in the Roman army prior to 105 BC – but Marius may have been responsible for making this the standard tactical unit. There were six centuries in a cohort (despite the name, a ‘century’ contained around eighty fighting men) apart from the First Cohort, which was double-strength. The larger cohort allowed a legion to be more flexible than a phalanx, but the individual components now maintained their internal integrity better under pressure than had maniples. Also at about this time – though it is uncertain how