Im watching 300 and so I googled soldiers walked 20 miles a day, on top of other stuff like fighting. Did they have bad joints? (Not including injuries).
We can injures from running and need a few days/weeks to recover. Did they just take breaks from fighting?
EDIT: Thanks for all the great answers everyone. Interesting stuff y’all have brought up!
In: 16
so, theirs not a massive body of literature about roman legionnaires having bad knees, but thats absence of evidence, not evidence of absence.
its quite likely they suffered form knee problems at the same rate modern humans do, but it just was not recorded. A few factors might be in play here:
1) it just wasn’t worth commenting on. a solider with a knee injury is common and boring, why would I write about that?
2) they were not getting injured at a rate higher than the peasant farmers who spent their lives in back-breaking labour in the civilian world, so thier was nothing unusual about older legionnaires having knee problems.
3) like today, they presumably had a medical coalescence system that kept a soldier with a treatable wound on light duties until he was fit again. he might get to ride in a wagon, or stick the majority of his equipment in a wagon and march with less weight, or be assigned to a guard post where he didn’t need to march 20 miles a day. once he was fit enough he could re-join his unit (or he’d stay back on camp until the unit returned after the campaign.)
4) troops dont spend most of their time on campaign. the majority of the time, they’d be in barracks, and a soldier could hobble around and still be mostly effective.
theirs lots of possibilities, but theirs not much evidence to support it. the truth is likely a mix of all of those, plus some others i didnt think of.
Knee health of Roman soldiers was likely quite similar to the knee health of modern soldiers today. In other words, not always great.
The weight of the Roman soldier’s gear and equipment varied a little depending on what their specific role was, and also which time period you are talking about since their gear did evolve and change slightly over time.
But generally speaking, estimates range from about ~30-70lbs, or ~15-35kg. This is about the same weight as most modern soldiers are expected to be able to carry with them, although rangers, snipers and certain other more specialized roles are expected to be able to carry more than that.
Now, given how common back and knee injuries are in modern armies, even with all our modern knowledge and understanding of anatomy, modern marching boots and equipment, training and exercise programs etc. It’s probably safe to assume that the Romans had similar issues with back and knee injuries.
The Romans had to do a lot more marching and carried their gear for a lot longer periods. They didn’t have as good boots or shoes as we do today, and their exercise programs probably didn’t have health and sustainability as the highest priority.
Although, the life expectancy of people living back than was a lot shorter than it is today. So the effects of the knee and back injuries might not have been as prominent, since people generally died before the injuries became a real issue. Also, if an injury was really bad in the first place, you most likely would die fairly quickly anyway since you wouldn’t be able to take care of yourself.
It’s worth noting that the majority of the time, the Roman soldiers were not fighting. Most of the time they were marching or stationed somewhere, and battles were relatively rare. At the peak of the Roman Empire it was also huge and relations with most other factions were quite stable. So the average roman legionnaire probably didn’t see much fighting during their career.
I don’t know about the knees but can I make something clear.
The 300, and the unknown number of men they are re-enacting were not Roman.
They were Greek, Spartan to be precise, from the Greek city of Sparta.
Kanye got it wrong in Black Skinhead but you don’t have to.
As for the Romans army’s knees- they were probably fine- they moved relatively small distances each day due to the vastness of the convoy.
So I don’t know about Romans specifically, but there is evidence that knee problems and osteoarthritis are more prevalent in the modern world than in history.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/08/15/543402095/creaky-knees
We dont really know why, but it just doesn’t appear in very old skeletons as you would expect if the answer was just wear and tear. As you noted that’s all they did! Wear and tear! Yet less knee problems.
Current theories are multiple, nutrition is a big one, our diets are often worse than the romans. They were getting more vitamin d, they didnt play intense sports.
Sport is not like soldiering. So many knee injuries are from jumping and landing, or running. Roman soldiers just marched a long way.
Its not exactly the Romans, but I used to work at a museum with an old cottage attached to it from the 1850s. The cottage belonged to a retired British solider.
He apparently suffered pretty badly from varicose veins from his nearly 2 decades of service (and lost an eye but that’s unrelated) so I assume Roman veterans (who also had to serve 2 decades) also started to get affected by various leg and joint ailments after a certain time.
For starters do not confuse Roman soldiers with Spartan soldiers from different time periods.
First off there’s not a lot of information about this. There weren’t many ancient historians and even those who did exist focused on much different things than today’s historians. So we can’t know for sure what the incidence of such issues was.
However we do know some things. We do know that the equipment most ancient armies had was generally lighter than what soldiers have today. Very few armies had standardised and comprehensive equipment that was issued to everyone. We also know that people back then, especially soldiers, were generally more active than people today. They walked more, worked harder manual jobs, and were generally more fit. Their shoes didn’t constrict their feet or ruin their posture and it can be assumed that most soldiers were at least generally physically fit since they were either farmers or lower class laborers or professional soldiers who trained their entire lives to maintain physical fitness. We also know that marching was no easy feat. Moving massive armies across large distances was by no means easy, and exhaustion, disease, malnutrition and other issues plagued armies since antiquity. Mobilising a large force was not a decision made frivolously.
In short, while we can’t know for sure, we can safely assume that probably some people did have knee/joint problems. We know that some soldiers would not be able to make the march, even if their cause of death was rarely listed individually, unless there was an outbreak of disease or some other issue that would affect huge parts of the force. Injured soldiers were generally left behind, either to recuperate and make their way back themselves or some times even outright abandoned. The injured would only be returned if it was an option, but it often wasn’t.
Latest Answers