Velites

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Velites were a class of light infantry in the army of the Roman Republic.

Velites appear as a troop type throughout the Punic Wars of the third and second centuries BC. They disappear from history at the end of the second century BC when, as citizen soldiers, they would have served as more heavily-equipped legionaries. Their role on the battlefield would have been taken by non-citizen, foreign fighters from then on.

The velites (pronounced well-ih-tays) were skirmishers, armed with a short sword (gladius) or dagger and several small javelins. At this point in the Republic (up until the end of the second century BC), soldiers generally paid for their own equipment. Given that each veles tended to be from the poorer brackets of Roman citizenry, he would only have been able to afford light armour. This may have included greaves and limited body armour for some, but virtually all would have worn a bronze helmet and carried a basic round shield. Their armour and weaponry made them the most mobile of all the Roman infantry of the time.

Since they where easy prey for close combat units the velites did not form their own line; maniples of hastati and principes had a certain number of velites assigned to them, and they came under the command of the centurions of these units, the triarii however did not have them since they fought right at the back away from the front line. In this sense, despite not being part of the main formation, they were regular soldiers. During battle the velites would engage the enemy with their javelins before retiring behind the hastati and principes. They are recorded in the sources as wearing wolf-skins over their helmets, in order that their centurions would recognise their own men when calling them back behind the line.

The success of the Roman army is frequently attributed to its heavy infantry. However, as with irregular infantry with which velites had much in common (that is, fighting in loose formation), their effectiveness is often overlooked; the velites were highly effective in turning back war elephants, on account of discharging a hail of javelins at some range and not presenting a "block" which could be trampled on or otherwise smashed - unlike the close order infantry behind them. At the Battle of Zama in 202 BC they proved their usefulness, and were no doubt critical in helping to herd Hannibal's war elephants through the formation to be slaughtered.

The velites of the Roman Republican army at its height in the 2nd century BC were possibly soldiers who would have comprised the earlier rorarii and accensi classes, these being comprised of the supposedly unreliable and otherwise poor combatants of the original fifth class Phalanx. In Polybius's "Rise of the Roman Empire", he states that the velites were usually the youngest of the soldiers. Though they still owned land, the velites were usually the poorer of the Roman military accepted classes, until the time of Marius, when the property qualification was dropped for military service.

At this point, all fit and healthy citizens could serve in the legions, the poorer of which would have assistance in being equipped with weapons and armour. The wealth of the individual soldier and his position within the rank and file thus became increasingly irrelevant, and equipment and training became more standardised for service as a legionary. From this time, up until the establishment of the Roman Empire under Augustus and beyond, the Roman Army increasingly made use of foreign irregulars as skirmishers. The velites would slowly have been either disbanded or re-equipped as more heavily-armed legionaries from the time when Marius and other Roman generals reorganised the army in the late second and early first centuries BC. Their role would most likely have been taken by irregular auxiliary troops as the Republic expanded overseas.