The Macedonian Wars Ascendency Of The Roman Military...

The Macedonian Wars: Ascendency of the Roman Military Machine over Greek Rivals William Kearns Sections 6-7 May 18, 2017 By 148 BC, Rome controlled the Mediterranean Sea and designated this body of water as â€Å"Mare Nostrum, or â€Å"our sea,† but in 214 BC, at the beginning of the Macedonian Wars, Rome faced several rivals in their seas. In the Western Mediterranean, Rome faced a powerful enemy in Carthage, which it defeated in the Punic Wars from 264 to 146 BC. The successors to Alexander the Great’s Empire dominated the Eastern Mediterranean. After the Macedonian Wars, which spanned four wars from 214 until 148 BC, however, Rome defeated these states and only the Polemic regime in Egypt remained free of Roman control. Roman tactics,†¦show more content†¦Consequently, Rome made Macedonian its first imperial province under the Roman Republic and the Third Macedonian War ended with Roman dominance of Greece secured. In the Fourth Macedonian War, the Romans defeated the Seleucid Empire in 148 and established dominance over Asia Minor and the Mediterranean coas tal areas of the Near East. Rome had replaced the Macedonian era with the Roman Era, which would dominate the Mediterranean Sea for the next 500 hundred years. Roman military tactics played an important role in these victories, especially the flexibility of the Roman legions compared the inflexible Phalanx used by the Macedonian armies. The Phalanx was the central tactic of Greek warfare, prior to and after the time of Alexander the Great. In a Phalanx. Greek hoplite infantry soldiers formed a tight rectangle to attack and pulse enemy advances. The Roman legions, however, organized along cohorts. The legion was arranged into 10 cohorts. The first cohort contained 150 men per century. A century was a section of the cohort. The other cohorts contained 80 men. The centurions stood at the bottom left corner of the century. There were 59 centurions in total. Roman legions could use several different tactics including forming a wall with their shields. Roman legions could also form sub groups called â€Å"maniples† which could act as strike forces against enemies. For example, in the Battle of Cynoscephalae in the Second