triarians

Updated: May 16, 2025

A scanty supply of arms for them might even now be at hand, but we must secure better ones, for if we form an army of triarians, of the best human material which we have among our people, men over thirty years of age and fathers of families, then we must have for them also the best arms that can be secured.

- The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 10 : Prince Otto Von Bismarck, Count Helmuth Von Moltke, Ferdinand Lassalle

These two attacks were conducted with so much spirit and courage, that many of the triarians, transports, and third legion were driven on shore, and their defeat would probably have been decisive, had not the Roman first and second divisions, which had defeated and chased to a considerable distance the Carthaginians opposed to them, returned most opportunely from the chace, and supported them.

Robert Kerr - A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels - Volume 18 : Historical Sketch of the Progress of Discovery, Navigation, and : Commerce, from the Earliest Records to the Beginning of the Nineteenth : Century, By William Stevenson

While these things were going on between Hamilcar with the left wing of the Carthaginian fleet, and the first and second divisions of the Romans, Hanno, with his light vessels, which formed the right wing, attacked the triarians, and the ships which were drawn up near the shore, attacked the third legion and the transports.

Robert Kerr - A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels - Volume 18 : Historical Sketch of the Progress of Discovery, Navigation, and : Commerce, from the Earliest Records to the Beginning of the Nineteenth : Century, By William Stevenson

"Forward with the reserve, tribunes!" shouted Manlius. "The foreign legions must be sacrificed; let them be hewn down, and then on with the Triarians. Send against the Phrygian cavalry the German bands, who must hamstring the horses with their long swords. Let no one remain here. March forward with all your men. I alone can guard the Cæsar."

Mór Jókai - A Christian But a Roman

But we know, as will be seen further on in examples taken from Caesar, that the ancient cavalryman was powerless against formed infantry, even against the isolated infantryman possessing coolness. The Iberian and Gallic cavalry ought to have found behind the Roman army the reliable triarians penned in, armed, with pikes.

Charles Jean Jacques Joseph Ardant du Picq - Battle Studies

The fourth division had a different name; they were called triarians: the triarii who were on board this division, being old soldiers of approved valour, who, in land battles, formed the third line of the legion, and hence obtained their appellation.

Robert Kerr - A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels - Volume 18 : Historical Sketch of the Progress of Discovery, Navigation, and : Commerce, from the Earliest Records to the Beginning of the Nineteenth : Century, By William Stevenson