Roman Battle Tactics (Jack's Social Studies Project)

A friend came across this claymation video created by 11-year-old Jack, explaining Roman infantry tactics for his sixth grade Social Studies class. The video itself is fun (mainly when claymation non-Roman soldiers are killed); educational (he does explain infantry tactics used by Roman soldiers); and it's neat to see what you can do with some clay, tin-foil (for shields, of course), and toothpicks!

But where stuff gets odd is in the YouTube comments. There appears to be a semi-serious discussion of Roman battle tactics going on, in some cases critiquing the incompleteness of what is clearly a six-grade Social Studies project. For example:

it's funny because he said? the romans outwitted the average group of barbarians even though the germans defeated them and they were barbarians - austing12

@austing12 This was only due to a weakened empire. The empire's troops were disloyal and depended upon Germanic mercenaries to fill in the holes where there weren't enough Romans to do it. The Empire became corrupt and? was unable to effectively rule over the provinces due to corruption in the Senate and slow communications. Much like the USA today. :P - SonicTheBluHedgehog

Lol you put much work to it, but the video is kind of, well, not so good. First of all, you only showed infantry tactics. Infantry was the romans bigest strengh, yes, but the were often supported by cavalary and missile troops. Second, one thing that's special with the roman infantry is that right befor they attacked the enemy,? they would often throw spears at them, and then charging while the enemy was weakend. There are lots of things that i could pick on, but you got the basics, the vid is ok - something8989112

You actually missed? one very important fact... the romans didn't just rush in all their army at once, they kept the 2nd line and back for reinforcements just in case the first line dies or they retreted (in which 5% of the time they did run away). But great vid! - xboxlivegtsubzeroaz

Um. All right, then. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, enjoy:

For more on Roman Battle Tactics, see Roman Army Tactics (part of roman-empire.net), Roman infantry tactics from Wikipedia, and in video form: Roman Battle Tactics & Manoeuvres.