as the slaughter of the "unbeatable" Legions at the hands of the Germanic "hordes" in the Teutoburg Forest proves. Given a flat, open space and time to properly deploy, the Romans could well have destroyed the relatively disorganised Germans, yet the particular events of the battle reduced the famed Legionary, who so relied on the massed ranks of his comrades-in-arms, to so much tinned meat.
Massed ranks a la a Hellenistic phalangial formation don't work too well with the legionary. The problem at the Teutoberger Wald was actually that the legionaries needed to have more space between individual soldiers, otherwise they get cut about without room to use their swords. Legionaries needed about five feet of space between soldiers to fight effectively. True, they did have the ability to fight in close, especially since they concentrated on stabbing instead of swiping, but when you're packed together like sardines (forgive the overused simile) it's very hard to use your shield. That was sort of crucial. Another good example of this is Cannae: 70,000 ish Roman legionaries crammed together in a small space got trashed by Hannibal. Then there's the much closer to 9 AD event at the camp of Atuatuca during the Gallic War, when Legio VIII got annihilated by the Eburones in a small valley, as the Romans got jammed up too close to each other.
Romans actually functioned better on uneven ground than on flat, open space, compared to most armies of their time. Look at the Battle of Pydna, when the Macedonian phalanx initially cut apart the Roman formation, but as the Macedonians advanced onto broken ground, the phalanx developed holes and irregularities that the more flexible Roman legionaries exploited to great effect. There was a lot of open space between not only individual legionaries but also between maniples and cohorts, which could be adjusted as the situation warranted.
Flexibility was the order of the day in a Roman legion, but when you're trapped in an iron box you don't have the space to be flexible.
And of course what's often ignored is what happened
after the Teutoberger Wald incident. The Empire sent several different expeditions into Germania, mostly punitive. Germanicus, Caligula's daddy, was in charge of the most famous and most important of these; not only did he successfully deal with the same kind of ambush the Cherusci pulled on Quinctilius Varus, but he defeated them in two major engagements on Germanic soil, the most important at Idistoviso. He got two of the three eagles back, but was recalled by the emperor anyway. Rome had the
ability to conquer Germania. The problem was that it wasn't economically viable. Grabbing a huge tract of woods and swamps and Romanifying it costs money, and the money wasn't going to be made back out of Germania anytime soon. Hell, even Gaul was a stretch, but at least they had better pottery from being La Tene as opposed to Jastorf.
Oh, as for the "best troops in history"? My vote goes to the
Argyraspides, or Silver Shield pikemen. They were the elite of Alexander's phalangitai, and during the Wars of the Diadochi, despite the fact that they were 60-70 years old by then, they formed the core of Eumenes' army against Antigonos Monophthalamos. At the Battles of Paraitakena and Gabiene, Antigonos' cavalry defeated Eumenes' other forces, but both times Antigonos' pezhetairoi were defeated by the Argyraspides without the latter suffering a single casualty, and both times they marched off the field unvanquished. It was only when Antigonos captured their treasures, the riches of decades of plundering in the East, and ransomed them, that they switched sides and murdered Eumenes. Then, to break them up, Antigonos sent them off in small groups to fight and die in the Bactrian and Arachosian wilds so that they couldn't ever be a political or military force again.
)). But yeah, the hypaspistai were awesome. Only reason I picked the argyraspides over them was 'cause the argyraspides had a neato story to go along with them, whereas we don't know as much about their foot companion friends.
