Talk:Marian reforms

message: How reliable is this as definite fact? While the position that their were no specific Marian reforms seems correct by wider histography, a huge amount of core positions in this page (e.g. poverty of legionnaires didn't exist and most legionaires were actually still 1st and 2nd class landowners) seem to derive explicitly from this book, despite the fact that much of the books content seems to be opinion rather than explicit histography. Many cases seems to take a position of "because this fact isn't 100% true in all cases, it must be 100% false in all cases).... 90.91.194.4 (talk) 09:29, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  L' armée imaginaire 

message: Sources would be well appreciated. Lucius Domitius 20:34, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources 

message: It is generally known as the Marius Reforms (at least in the UK). I cant say I've heard it with this variant before. After all he is known as Marius, not Marian. -- RND   talk  10:49, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Presumably 'Marian' is an adjective, so it's effectively the same as saying 'the reforms of Marius'. 80.47.203.38 11:17, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think its more likely that its an anglicised name of Marius. I much prefer Marius though. -- RND  T  C  17:34, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I've always read it as the "adjectival form" of the name Marius. - Vedexent 06:18, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Marian?? 

message: I added the External Links header to follow standard wiki layout. The link was almost lost with just [1] showing. -- RND   talk  11:03, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Added Header 

message: In the Cohort (military unit) page, the First Cohort states that while Marius's original plan for a legion was 10 cohorts of 480 soldiers, the concept of the First Cohort as a double strength unit of 800 was set in stone in the first century AD.  This page refers to the double strength First Cohort as being the first of the 10 in Marius's definition of a legion, rather than a post-Marian alteration.  Since the reforms regarding military structure are so clearly based around consistency (both in terms of unit size and capabilities) it seems more likely that the original plan was that a legion was 10 cohorts of 480 soldiers (and 120 support staff), making a legion of 4800 soldiers (with 1200 support).  However, just because I don't like the idea of a special First Cohort being almost twice as large as the rest doesn't mean Marius didn't - I have no idea which of these is correct, only that the articles are inconsistent.  If anyone out there knows their military history well enough to know what changes were made by Marius and which were adaptations to his original plan, could they please make the necessary alterations to the erroneous page?  Rashkavar (talk) 05:20, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  First Cohort size 

message: There is no mention here of Marius' invention of the silver eagle standards each legion carried and which became a superstitious symbol of Rome's power. This is the one aspect of the Marian reforms that would be familiar to anyone who has ever seen a Roman legion depicted in a movie. - J. Conti 108.20.137.173 (talk) 05:51, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Silver Eagles 

message: The idea that there were non-combatants regularly attached to each century is commonly found around the internet, but it is disputed theory at best. There is no ancient evidence to support the idea of non-combatants. This is a modern theory that attempts to reconcile the sometimes contradictory nature of the ancient evidence. Ancient descriptions of the Roman army in writers like Polybius, Vegetius, Caesar, and Pseudo-Hygenius never mention non-combatants as part of any military unit or as regular members of an army. The numbers provided by the ancient sources for the various units (centuries, cohorts, legions) are confused and often contradictory. For example, Pseudo-Hygenius specifically states that a century contains 80 men. But elsewhere states that there are 600 men in a cohort. This is an apparent contradiction. Some scholars have attempted to resolve this contradiction by supposing that there were extra non-combatants included among the 600 men in the cohort. This could explain the discrepancy, but nowhere does Pseudo-Hygenius or any other source state that there were non-combatants in a legion. It is merely speculation. There are also many times when various authors describe cohorts and legions in action; not only in combat but also on the march, building camps, and doing other manual labor. At no time does any source ever mention non-combatants being involved in the work of a legion.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.74.0.22 (talk) 13:03, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-combatants  

message: Marius' reforms were not a major break from past practice. The armies in the late republic were broadly similar with those of the middle republic: "the composition of the post-Marian armies... did not differ markedly from the past".
"The property qualification for army service had become nearly meaningless by 107" with exemptions from the property qualifications becoming commonplace and recurrent. Marius's recruitment reforms simply made plain what had been for some time commonplace, out of need for men or simply the expediency of calling up urban volunteers rather than conscripting farmers. There also is no evidence that Marius introduced the cohort.
Soldiers and veterans were not permanent clients of their generals. Defections were common. Having some oath of loyalty was symbolic more of a general's lack of security than actual loyalty. The Roman army was not professionalised, nor was there any break between military and civilian service. Ifly6 (talk) 15:46, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article is just wrong 

message: The number of men per legion here is 5 times what is cited in a different article on the Roman army that goes through the entire history of the Roman legions. Would you two authors please sync up on your sources and decide which ones are exaggerating? The numbers here look like what Gibbon has and my study of his work shows he didn't handle his facts properly.
100.15.127.199 (talk) 14:26, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  disconnect 

message: Cited six times throughout the article, and given a veneer of reliablity by being hosted on academia.edu, this seems like a very dubiously reliable source.  I can't find any evidence that it's been published by any sort of reliable source, and the author is described on his academia.edu profile as  Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 15:26, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd say remove it. Ifly6 (talk) 14:25, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

text: The main issue with this article I think is that nobody really believes in the Gaius-Marius-did-all-these-things-look-at-this-pilum-etc-etc reforms anymore. Professionalisation of the Roman legions was a prolonged process through the first century BC, not some revolutionary programme by the dastardly and insipid populares in their party manifesto. That was a joke; the populares qua political party did not exist. It feels like that should be reflected in a rewrite. Ifly6 (talk) 14:28, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Connor Reid, "The Marian Reforms"