Who was tougher, Roman legionary or a modern spec ops soldier

I accept your challenge and argue against Roman Legionnaires thus:Roman Legionnaires were conscripted from every walk of life - from former slaves to convicted prisoners, including several different types of so called non - CIVI ROMANI, i.e. we now call them Barbarians. While it could be argued that people back then had a tougher life than we have now, to then make the extrapolation that the average Roman soldier would then necessarily have to be tougher as well is nonsense, especially when viewed against our current methodology of selecting our elite soldiers.Back in Roman times, the Legionnaires simply were selected from the existing pool of all comers. Granted that they had to survive hardships that we take for granted today, but let's be clear here: They were average people of their time. There was no selection process other than survival, and their training often encompassed nothing more than basic fighting skills and weapons, plus hundreds of hours of discipline training (marching, responding to orders, etc).Contrast this to today's elite special forces soldiers: Volunteers for SF represent less than 1% of soldiers in combat arms - historically that number has been staying at about that level since WWII. Furthermore, they are put through grueling selection courses just to get into the programs - according to various sources I found the average attrition rate is ~70%, meaning that only 30% make it into the training phase. After this, another 10% (from the same sources) fail to complete the training required to be full-fledged SF soldiers.Modern SF soldiers aren't just tough: They're also smart. They are taught over 500 individual skills plus foreign languages, communications, and survival methods. In most special forces, teams become specialized for particular missions or regional warfare - arctic or desert, for example - rather than be generalists that are taught just basic fighting skills. In many SWU's (Special Warfare Units), individual contribution, quick tactical thinking, and decision making are highly valued skills that are carefully honed over many years. This is one of the main reasons why SFO's (Special Forces Operators) are rarely involved in mass casualties - they don't die by the hundreds or thousands like Roman soldiers used to. Instead they operate in much smaller units, carry massive firepower and sophisticated communications systems, and perform surgical missions deep behind enemy lines and in regions that are often difficult to control.Contrast that to the Roman soldier: While they had an admirable history for most of their existence, they were known mostly for dying en masse during combat. In the latter stages of Roman history, it seems that every barbarian invader armed with a club and some pelt shield had their way with them simply by being more enraged and doped up than their Roman counterparts (the Bezerkers, for example). Their key strength wasn't the individual toughness - it was the fact that they acted as ONE COHESIVE UNIT using Roman manipular formations, a central command and control structure complete with battlefield communications, and standardized unit techniques like the testudo formation. All of these factors plus their ability to quickly engineer defensive fortifications, bridges, large ballistic weapons and siege machines all conspired to make them very successful in battle against enemies that often lacked cohesion, basic communications and control, not to mention any kind of concentrated military objectives. None of this speaks to the "toughness" of the average Roman soldier.Lastly - given the fact that modern soldiers are trained through scientific methods that have been honed through "trial by fire" over the past 150 years, it is patently clear that SWU have the upper hand - they are taught many hand-to-hand and knife-to-knife combat skills that the average Roman soldier simply never saw. The Roman soldier was primarily concerned with acting as a member of a cohesive unit, to act in the interest of the man next to him - thrust his speer into his buddy's opponent while his buddy protected himself with his large shield from that attack.There are numerous stories of special forces operators from WWII until today that simply defy belief, extreme cases of survival against all odds; Unfortunately no such equivalent survival stories exist for Roman soldiers to display their supposed toughness.