Amateurism and Command

As the Romans conquered the Italian peninsula and secured dominion over the entire Mediterranean, the men who led the legions were politicians, elected magistrates of the Roman people. Their time in command was short, officially a year, occasionally extended (prorogatio), providing limited time for on-the-job training before a replacement arrived. Most Roman generals were for all intents and purposes amateurs, often enjoying only a few months’ experience commanding their army before they led it into battle for the first time.

Professional generalship, in the modern technocratic sense, was absent from the ancient world at large. There was no ancient equivalent of the specialised education modern general officers receive at various points along their careers (e.g. West Point, the US Army War College), nor were there the technocratic career paths that see modern officers hold a series of alternating command and staff positions at various echelons, working their way up the ranks from second lieutenants in charge of platoons to the ranks of general officers commanding divisions, corps and armies. But many ancient military systems had the capacity to identify men with the aptitude for generalship, and to assign them either to long-term positions or to a series of high-profile commands. Take for example the Achaemenid general Mardonius, who reorganised the Ionian cities after 494 BC, then invaded Thrace and Macedonia in 492 BC, and finally died at Plataea leading Xerxes’ invasion force in 479 BC. Philip II of Macedon (359–336 BC) famously quipped that he envied the Athenians for electing ten generals a year, because he had only found one in his own lifetime: Parmenio.2 The Seleucid king Antiochus III identified Zeuxis as a successful field commander in 221 BC, and Zeuxis was still active, thirty years later, at the Battle of Magnesia in 190 BC.3 Social status underlay these royal appointments, for Mardonius, Parmenio and Zeuxis would not have been generals had they had not also firstly been well-connected courtiers. But not every courtier was entrusted with high profile or extended commands, and those that were had proven their capacity for generalship at some point along the way.