Greek and Roman

The historical period considered here is mostly represented by the Classical era of the Greek civilization. An era of great influence on human history as it enriched every aspect of human culture. The classical period is commonly accepted to be the 200 year period between the 5^th and the 4^th centuries BC.

The Roman contribution is mainly represented by the 500 years-long period of the Roman Empire, historically placed between 27BC to 476 AD. During this period the Roman Legions tripled their territories going from 2.7 million km², to an outstanding 6.5million km².

This success can be tracked back to two main revolutionary concepts; The first being the military war tactics, in which discipline and obedience are key factors to maintain the front lines unbroken, and the second, and more relevant to us, the superiority of their war equipment.

As we can see from the pictures, the roman legionaries, greatly resembles the Greek hoplites. This can be explained by understanding that the Greek classical period had a tremendous influence over the roman empire. Influencing every aspect of their culture, from architecture to religion, from politics to war tactics.

The typical roman legionary can be considered to have some defensive and some offensive equipment. In the defensive we can include an extensive armor that effectively covered its vulnerable points. This armor consisted of a shield, a helmet and a body armor, all of which were thicker and covered more body parts than those of their enemies, which were mostly dressed with nothing other than clothing and defended with shields. The improved thickness of their armor was decisive in the prolonged engagement that battles often implied. The defensive equipment was usually made out of bronze, iron  and later steel. The use of each of these new materials were major leaps forward in the military superiority of the soldiers since stronger materials protected them better, lighter materials allowed them to be faster and more agile, cheap materials allowed the armies to grow bigger and so on. Usually, the lowest ranges didn't have the means or the privileges to wear a armor, instead they were protected by leather which acted as a thicker and more resistant skin (specially against the thrusting of swords), and wooden shields, perhaps reinforced with natural fibers (taking advantage of the anisotropicity of these materials) or even metallic parts.

On the offensive side, the legions had swords and spears mainly, they also were provided with chariots and some forms of cavalry. The swords themselves were generally made out of bronze or copper; Bronze is rarely encounter naturally and its very likely to have been produced by smelting of naturally occurring ores. Spears played an important role in battle, being for example a decisive war instrument in the Macedonian troops. The long spears, or Sarissa,  when used together with the phalanx formation proved to be the winning strategy responsible for the undefeated campaigns of Alexander the Great. Although the materials were common among trained enemy troops, the techniques used by the Romans resulted in higher lethality in combat. An example of this is the military training focused on thrusting of the sword rather than the slash which was only possible due to the use of materials that could stay sharpen for longer periods of time.

The differences between a roman legion and a well trained enemy troop didn't always lie on the materials they used, but rather on the ways they used these materials, or the processing the materials undergo. In the case of savages, this difference might have been decisive since savages probably didn't have access to the forging facilities and specialized blacksmiths the Roman Empire had, putting them from the beginning in the losing side. Another example might be the use of exotic alloys that offered dramatic mechanical improvements at the cost of being toxic to the soldiers, like for example the use of arsenical bronzes.

We can conclude that military superiority during the classical period can be tracked back to the discovery of superior materials, superior forging techniques, and use of these products accordingly to the military task expected.