Tactics Against the Gauls
The Romans are thought to have shown uncommon
note
skill in this battle; the Tribunes instructing
the troops how they were to conduct themselves both collectively and individually. They
had learned from former engagements that Gallic tribes
were always most formidable at the first onslaught, before their
courage was at all damped by a check; and that the swords
with which they were furnished, as I have mentioned before, could only give one downward cut with any effect,
but that after this the edges got so turned and the blade
so bent, that unless they had time to straighten them with
their foot against the ground, they could not deliver a second
blow. The Tribunes accordingly gave out the spears of the
Triarii, who are the last of the three ranks, to the first ranks,
or Hastati: and ordering the men to use their swords only,
after their spears were done with, they charged the Celts
full in front. When the Celts had rendered their swords useless
by the first blows delivered on the spears, the Romans close
with them, and rendered them quite helpless, by preventing them
from raising their hands to strike with their swords, which is
their peculiar and only stroke, because their blade has no point.
The Romans, on the contrary, having excellent points to their
swords, used them not to cut but to thrust: and by thus
repeatedly hitting the breasts and faces of the enemy, they
eventually killed the greater number of them. And this was due
to the foresight of the Tribunes: for the Consul Flaminius is
thought to have made a strategic mistake in his arrangements
for this battle. By drawing up his men along the very brink
of the river, he rendered impossible a manœuvre characteristic
of Roman tactics, because he left the lines no room for their
deliberate retrograde movements; for if, in the course of the
battle, the men had been forced ever so little from their ground,
they would have been obliged by this blunder of their leader to
throw themselves into the river. However, the valour of the
soldiers secured them a brilliant victory, as I have said, and
they returned to Rome with abundance of booty of every kind,
and of trophies stripped from the enemy.
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