How was knee health for roman soldiers?

Question

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

Answer 1

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.