ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Tactics of the Roman century in combat

Hi there! Do you want to know how the Roman soldiers fought in battles a long time ago? Let's imagine you are playing a game with your friends. The objective of the game is to protect your team's base and defeat the other team's base.

Now, let's pretend that each team has a group of soldiers and you are part of the Roman team. In the Roman army, soldiers were organized into groups called "centuries." Each century had around a hundred soldiers, which is a big number of people, right?

When the Roman soldiers went into battle, they would line up in a formation called "testudo" which means "tortoise" in Latin. To imagine this, picture everyone in your team huddling together really closely and holding their shields in front of them. This made it really hard for the other team to hurt them with their weapons.

When the Roman soldiers wanted to attack, they would charge forward while holding their long spears or swords. They also had a special weapon called a "pilum," which was a long spear with a heavy tip. They would throw the pilum at the other team before charging, and this would make it hard for the other team to defend themselves. The Roman soldiers were very good at fighting and had lots of training and experience.

So, to sum it up, the Roman century in combat involved organizing soldiers into groups and huddling together with shields for protection in a testudo. Then they would charge and attack with spears, swords, and special weapons called pilum. All of these tactics helped them be successful in battle and protect their team's base.