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.
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