As many others have said, the
velite choice to represent the roman levies is an odd one.
Don't get me wrong : the model is really well designed, beautiful, historically accurate, and yes, it's really different from the roman legionnary. Also, the
velites achieved great success in the Punic Wars, especially against the elephants.
Still, it's not a good way to represent the roman levies for several reasons imho :
- it's a skirmisher, a mobile and auxiliary troop; as such, it's not what people have in mind when they think of a roman army, which is well known through history as a "heavy melee, compact, and not very mobile infantry" because that's what Rome did best indeed
-
velites have only been used from 211 to 107 bc. In a regular army levies, they were heavily outnumbered by the regular infantry troops. So much that the
velites commander was not a
velites, but actually a
hastati.
- the
hastati is a much more appropriate choice because it's without a doubt "the staple unit after Rome threw off Etruscan rule" as the wikipedia page about
hastati says
- if i'm not mistaken, all levies models for other cultures are all melee troops. It's really odd that only Rome, which is known for being melee-heavy, is represented by a skirmisher/missile troop.
- the
hastati remains a troop without a real armor and with minimum equipment. It shares the poverty of
velites. I'm confident a
hastati model couldn't be mistaken with the fully armored legionary of post-marius professional legions.
In conclusion, the
velites model is very nice and could be used for other things. But a
hastati model would make much more sense to represent the roman levies.
From left to right:
velites, hastati, and finally
legionnary (post Marius) :