it was a GREAT movie.
But that first battle scene.
Romans weren’t great because of their individual prowess as soldiers but because of the strategies they used.
They likely wouldn’t have fought that way.
I think they were usually quite close together using a “turtle” type of formation.
The one time they couldn’t use those strategies they got massacred in the forests of...somewhere :)
Teutoburg.
Herman the German, “Give me back my Legions” ?
yes Great Movie but yeah that 1st battle scene
Why were the Romans laying siege to a forest?
The Germans could have just flanked them from the side and won
Rome's greatest military innovation was the flexible legionary formation and its associated tactics, training, weapons, and supply system. A Roman legion commonly started a battle with their infantry several feet apart and able to shelter behind large shields from arrows and sling stones and bullets. At decisive moments, the legion and its constituent centuries could change direction, form a solid line or tight formation, or change weapons from spear to short sword.
The initial battle scene in Gladiator was fairly accurate as to a fight against a more numerous but less organized adversary. Invading enemy territory, the Romans would let their adversary gather while improvising a strong line of defense, receive an attack, and then go on the offensive and rout their enemy. Like several other of Rome's worst military defeats, the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in Germany involved getting ambushed while strung out on the march and unable to form a strong defensive position.
You are thinking of the Teutoberg Forest. The Romans were ambushed on the march backs against a lake and badly handled.
The turtle formation is the “Testudo” essentially a defensive formation.
As to their fighting prowess the Roman soldier conquered the known world.
That turtle formation, isn’t that what the gladiators used in the first coliseum fight?
Testudo.