Thompsoncs
Legionary
posted 08 October 2011 06:39
EDT (US)
11 / 75
They were one of the few nations who had a professional army. Most "barbarians" had a more levy based army, with only a minor part real soldiers.
By this time, especially in the eastern empire, the romans had still decent infantry, but the main focus was on heavy cavalry. The romans had to defend their large borders, and contrary to earlier ideas about the barbarian migrations, they usually faced multiple smaller incursions. Heavy infantry loses it's purpose outside open full frontal battle fields. Light infantry, archers and cavalry are far more suited by that.
And of course we could include many kinds of AoR units, like Goths in de balkan, arabs in Palestina/syria, horse archers in armenia.