Roman warfare: everything you wanted to know

Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. Did the Roman legions actually wear red? How often was their famous tortoise formation really used? How did military leaders maintain control of an army spread across such a massive empire? And what was it exactly that made that army so formidable?

Speaking to Emily Briffitt, Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy answers your top questions on ancient Rome's attitude to warfare, as well as its tactics, strategy and logistics. And if you enjoy this episode and you want to find out more about Roman military history, then Adrian was our expert for series one of History's Greatest Battles, where he and Emily charted five epic clashes of the Roman Empire. A new bonus episode of that series has just been released, and you can find and subscribe to the feed by searching for History's Greatest Battles. Now we're going to be asking lots of listener questions all about Roman warfare.

And when I say a lot, we've had quite a few today. So let's start. We're obviously talking when we're talking about Rome and the Romans, we're talking about a really long period of time. And I'm sure there's going to be lots of caveats here that we're going to have to mention how things change. But let's start off, how ingrained was the concept of warfare in Roman society and how did it impact Roman culture?

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