Roman Army Supply Lines and Logistics (Overview)

Hey everyone, we got a lot of great feedback on our episode covering how Roman soldiers prepared dinner. So much so, that I figured we would do a quick overview of Roman supplies and logistics. But before we get started, I did want to give you a shout out for Ancient Warfare Magazine. Specifically, I wanted to refer you to their issue number 7, which deals with logistics and army trains of the late Roman Empire and Ancient Assyria, as well as other topics, as I'm sure you'll enjoy this. Anyways, back to our main topic. So during campaigns, one of the general's greatest concerns was the need to feed, and this was especially true of the Roman army, which relied on robust supplies to wage highly aggressive warfare at all times of year. I want to start by giving you a sense of the scales involved here. At the lowest levels would be the individual soldiers. These each carried much of their own gear, which is estimated to have weighed around 40kg. Additionally, each contubernium of 8 soldiers had a mule or two and a pair of military slaves to help them carry supplies. This meant that each legion was accompanied by around 600-1000 mules and 1200 slaves. The entire army's baggage train was therefore made up of thousands of pack animals and slaves, as well as hundreds of wagons, and even more multitudes of non-combatants. Such a large force had significant supply needs to sustain itself. Just for context, De Re Militari suggests that on a daily basis, a legion required 18,000 pounds of grain, 12,000 gallons of water, and 40,000 pounds of fodder for its animals. That is a lot of food and water and supplies. So now we can discuss the way that this was achieved by the Romans. How did they get all this? Well, I think it's best to break down the sources of supply into several different levels. The first level is going to be the supplies carried with the army, the second one is going to be supplies gathered by the army, and the third one is going to be supplies sent to the army. So let's start with the first one, supplies with the army. Well, at the lowest level, each soldier was expected to have some supplies on hand. This amounted to approximately one week's worth of food to allow for some flexibility whilst on campaign. In case of true emergencies, the soldiers could even eat hardtack or perhaps boil some of the leather on their shields or shoes to eat, but that was really stretching it. Next you'd have the army's baggage train, which had significantly more supplies. They carried a ton of goods along with herds of animals for consumption, and this overall might be enough to last a month or more, though it should be noted that things like water and fodder were actually impractical to carry in large quantities, and that these would be in constant need of resupply. So now let's move on to the next level, supplies gathered by the army whilst in the field. These were gathered in approximately three main ways, through foraging, requisition, and pillaging. Foraging involves essentially living off the land, and it was done relatively routinely, especially when searching out water, fodder, and firewood. The yield of such activities would depend on the season, so obviously when the crops are ripe and they're in the field and there's lots of fruits etc, you might get a high yield, whereas in the winter these activities would have a low yield. And then the amount of supplies that you can gather does very much depend on the size of your foraging expeditions and how far away you send them, so all of these would vary over time. The other major way that you could gather supplies would be through requisition, and this would involve the purchase or seizure of goods. And then the last way would be pillaging, which involved gathering supplies alongside the destruction of property. And typically these last two, requisition and pillaging, were associated with population centers. So using these three general principles of how an army gathered supplies, you can imagine sort of what those activities looked like as it advanced at a pace of around 20 miles a day. Yet the army could not always count on gathering all of its own supplies, and this is where this third level comes in, where the Roman army logistics systems get involved. So now let's talk about supplies to the army. The most important fundamental feature here is going to be the supply line. And this is the connection between the army and a supply source. And if you imagine this line, there's going to be a couple fixed points that are going to be important to talk about. And these are roughly broken up into different tiers, different types of bases. So these are going to be the strategic base of supply, the operational base, and then the tactical base. So the strategic base is kind of the most broad, and this is going to be your source. And it's not necessarily a single point, but a broad source of provisions from outside an area of operations. Generally we're talking about provinces, which were assigned specific armies or campaigns to support. And these supplies were gathered using various financial means, including forced and market purchases, contracting, taxation, and contributions from allies. So that's kind of like, you know, outside of the theater of operations across the empire or several provinces, you'd be gathering and collecting all this food. So that's your strategic base with reference to an army. Then these would be carried over and collected at the operational base. And the operational base is going to be essentially the supply lines anchor. And this is the base that was meant to supply the Roman army in its particular area of operation. Fundamentally, it linked the waterborne supply lines coming from those strategic bases and connected them to the land-based supply lines going to the next level, which is going to be your tactical base. So these operational bases, as I said, which are the anchors of the supply lines, were usually located at fortified ocean or river ports, though the location may be updated over the course of a campaign for strategic or tactical reasons. As for instance, you know, maybe an army was getting close and you had to move it because your operational base was threatened, or perhaps you took control of another port and you wanted to move your operational base closer to your army. So operational bases could move. These bases also traditionally contained infrastructure to hold enough food and equipment for the campaigning season, and in particular included sophisticated granaries, which were key in minimizing food spoilage. If this particular infrastructure wasn't necessarily there or didn't have the maximum amount needed for the campaign, the soldiers would probably get involved in building these prior to launch of the campaign. So that's your operational base, again, the supply line's anchor. Now the next level is going to be the tactical base. So the tactical base is essentially the other end point, the far end of the supply line. And this is where the supply collection point is closest to the Roman force. It would traditionally be a short distance behind the army or within its own marching camp. And this is where you would store supplies arriving from the operational base through that supply line. And it's also where you would gather the supplies that the Legion is, you know, getting locally from living off the land. So this all would be dumped into the tactical base. The tactical base might also contain some of the Roman army's slower moving elements, such as siege equipment. And as the army moved forward, again, about 20 miles a day, this tactical base would be picked up and moved alongside the army. So it would kind of trail it and advance with it or alongside it. Now in its wake, you know, as it moves along and redeploys, you're going to have a series of abandoned tactical bases. And these were traditionally converted into supply depots, which would go on to become the backbone of the supply line. And troops were generally left behind to garrison these. So when you're thinking of supply lines, it's not going to be a long line of wagons that goes continuously from one end to the other. No, it's going to be smaller convoys that are moving between these chains of depots that finally lead up to that tactical base. And this is going to be very, very key because it allows men and animals to get the necessary rest and fodder that they need along the way, instead of making a single long stretch that would be very vulnerable to attack, etc. And then another important thing is that between these different, you know, key hard points, these depots, etc., as these convoys are making their way, what the Roman army would do is build up roads, bridges, and canals to improve the efficiency of these supply routes. And this is why you always hear so much about roads and infrastructure in the Roman world, because a lot of the times these were built up for military purposes to make these supply lines going to the army that much more efficient and strong. So it's not only just the Roman soldiers moving, but also their equipment and supplies coming up after them. So yeah, that's it for the coverage. The overview, I should say, of Roman army supply lines and logistics. There's a ton more to this, but I just wanted to give you a pretty generic and cursory overview. But even at that, I think it's fundamental to your understanding of how the Roman army works. And expect to see more of this in the future. Oh, and also don't forget to check out Ancient Warfare magazine. They're awesome. So yeah, hope you guys enjoyed. Stay tuned for more, and I will see you in the next one. Bye-bye.