In The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, by Edward Luttwak, are a couple of throwaway paragraphs that appear to say that from the time of the Republic through late Western Empire, a legion on the march always created a fortified camp for each night. Okay, I can believe this. But there's fortified, and there's fortified.

What was the extent of a legion's night-camp fortification? How long would such fortification have taken to complete? Because I get the feeling that fortification might in might include perimeter ditch and sharpened stakes as well as graded, leveled campground, fortifying a legion's overnight camp would not be completed in a short time. . . which kind've brings me to wonder what distance would a legion travel per day?

So how much distance could a legion travel while maintaining its "regulations" level of overnight fortification - which were what?

These guys might be able to help:


http://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/index.php

Always got the impression the roman armies were more engineers than fighters. Seems far fetched. Only thing I can think of, fighting the Barbarians, who weren't nice guys and fought more of a guerilla campaign, they were forced to protect themselves at their most vulnerable time.

Grizz

You might check with Steven Saylor,our most predominant expert on Rome.I've heard him speak whenever he comes out with a new book. Google him,I'm sure he could answer any questions.

quote:

Originally posted by Wink:
These guys might be able to help:


http://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/index.php

Using this URL, my first key word search got the information I sought.

Many thanks.

I read on of their threads on this, which of course brought the numerous variables: roman roads, germanic forest paths, number of troops, etc. Seemed to me that the consensus was 20 miles per day, 25 miles when pushing it, on average. But of course, lots of variables come into play.