page_title: Imperial Roman army
section_title: Archers
hierarchical_section_title: Imperial Roman army / Regular military units / Auxilia / Auxiliary specialised units / Archers
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Ausfallgefecht (Szene CXV) English: A sally by the besieged (scene CXV)
context_page_description: The Imperial Roman army was the terrestrial armed forces deployed by the Roman Empire from about 30 BC to 476 AD, the final period in the long history of the Roman army. This period is sometimes split into the Principate and Dominate periods.
  Under Augustus, the army consisted of legions, eventually auxilia and also numeri.
  Legions were formations numbering about 5,000 heavy infantry recruited from the ranks of Roman citizens only, transformed from earlier mixed conscript and volunteer soldiers serving an average of 10 years, to all-volunteer units of long-term professionals serving a standard 25-year term.
  Auxilia were organised into regiments of about 500 strong under Augustus, a tenth the size of legions, recruited from the peregrini or non-citizen inhabitants of the empire who constituted approximately 90 percent of the Empire's population in the 1st century AD. The auxilia provided virtually all the army's cavalry, light infantry, archers and other specialists, in addition to heavy infantry equipped in a similar manner to legionaries.
  Numeri were allied native units from outside the Empire who fought alongside the regular forces on a mercenary basis.
context_section_description: A substantial number of auxiliary regiments (32, or about one in twelve in the 2nd century) were denoted sagittariorum, or archer-units (from sagittarii  lit. "arrow-men", from sagitta = "arrow": It. saetta, Rom. sageata). These 32 units (of which four were double-strength) had a total official strength of 17,600 men. All three types of auxiliary regiment (ala, cohors and cohors equitata) could be denoted sagittariorum. Although these units evidently specialised in archery, it is uncertain from the available evidence whether all sagittariorum personnel were archers, or simply a higher proportion than in ordinary units. At the same time, ordinary regiments probably also possessed some archers, otherwise their capacity for independent operations would have been unduly constrained. Bas-reliefs appear to show personnel in ordinary units employing bows.
  From about 218 BC onwards, the archers of the Roman army of the mid-Republic were virtually all mercenaries from the island of Crete, which boasted a long specialist tradition. During the late Republic (88-30 BC) and the Augustan period, Crete was gradually eclipsed by men from other, much more populous, regions with strong archery traditions, newly subjugated by the Romans. These included Thrace, Anatolia and above all, Syria. Of the thirty-two sagittarii units attested in the mid 2nd century, thirteen have Syrian names, seven Thracian, five from Anatolia, one from Crete and the remaining six of other or uncertain origin.
  Three distinct types of archers are shown on Trajan's Column: (a) with scalar cuirass, conical steel helmet and cloak; (b) without armour, with cloth conical cap and long tunic; or (c) equipped in the same way as general auxiliary foot-soldiers (apart from carrying bows instead of javelins). The first type were probably Syrian or Anatolian units; the third type probably Thracian. The standard bow used by Roman auxilia was the recurved composite bow, a sophisticated, compact and powerful weapon.
caption: Roman archers (top left) in action, positioned as normal in battle behind their own infantry, loosing arrows over their heads. Note conical helmets, indicating a Syrian unit, and recurved bows. Trajan's Column, Rome
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