Maniple (military unit)

Maniple (manipulus) was a tactical unit of the Roman Republican armies, adopted during the Samnite Wars (343–290 BC). It was also the name of the military insignia carried by such units. Maniple members, called commanipulares (singular: commanipularis) were seen as each other's brothers-in-arms, but without the domestic closeness of the eight-man contubernium. Cohorts replaced maniples as organisational units. The manipular system was adopted around 315 BC, during the Second Samnite War. The rugged terrain of Samnium, where the war was fought, was not conducive to the phalanx formation which the Romans had inherited from the Etruscans and Ancient Greeks. The main battle troops of the Etruscans and Latins of this period comprised Greek-style hoplite phalanxes, inherited from the original Greek phalanx military unit. After suffering a series of defeats, culminating in the surrender of the entire army without resistance at Caudine Forks, the Romans abandoned the phalanx altogether, adopting the more flexible manipular system, famously referred to as "a phalanx with joints". The manipular system was faded from ancient sources and was replaced by the cohort unit. Structural history of the Roman military#Manipular legion (315–107 BC) Polybius first described the maniple in the mid-2nd century BC. The manipular legion was organized into four lines, starting at the front: the velites; the hastati; the principes; and the triarii. These were divided by experience, with the younger soldiers at the front lines and the older soldiers near the back. One theory proposed by J. E. Lendon asserts that this order was adapted to the Roman culture of bravery, allowing an initial show of individual heroics among the younger soldiers. At the front of the legion organized into maniples, the velites formed a swarm of soldiers which engaged the enemy at the start of the battle. Their duties involved skirmishing, and they often worked closely with the cavalry. Next, the hastati were the youngest and least experienced soldiers, and therefore fought on the front-lines.