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Updated: July 18, 2025
These velites carried on their left arm a buckler three feet in size, in their right hand javelins, which they threw from afar, at their girdle a Spanish sword; when it was necessary to engage in close contact, they transferred their javelins to the left hand, and drew their sword.
Grenadiers on foot and on horseback, riflemen on foot and on horseback, heavy and light artillery, dragoons and hussars, mamelukes and sailors, artificers and pontoneers, gendarmes, gendarmes d'Alite, Velites and veterans, with Italian grenadiers, riflemen, dragoons, etc., etc., compose all together a not inconsiderable army.
I. V. The House-father and His Household. 6. -Hufe-, hide, as much as can be properly tilled with one plough, called in Scotland a plough-gate. I. IV. Oldest Settlements In the Palatine and Suburan Regions I. V. Burdens of the Burgesses 10. -velites-, see v. Burdens of the Burgesses, note I. V. Rights of the Burgesses Max. iii. 3, 5; Colum. i, praef. 14; i. 3, ii; Plin.
This etymology, which associates the word with -arquites-, -milites-, -pedites-, -equites-, -velites- those respectively who go with the bow, in bodies of a thousand, on foot, on horseback, without armour in their mere over-garment may be incorrect, but it is bound up with the Roman conception of a burgess. With this view the -usus loquendi- coincides.
The Velites were light- armed troops, employed on outpost duty, and mingled with the horsemen.
The legions were thrown open to men of all grades; they were all armed and equipped alike; the lines were reduced to two, with a space between every two cohorts, of which there were five in each line; the young soldiers were placed in the rear; the distinction between Hastati, Principes, and Triarii ceased; the Velites disappeared, their work being done by the foreign mercenaries; the cavalry ceased to be part of the legion, and became a distinct body; and the military was completely severed from the rest of the State.
The elephants stopped; they rocked their heavy heads with their chargings of ostrich feathers, striking their shoulders the while with their trunks. Behind the intervals between them might be seen the cohorts of the velites, and further on the great helmets of the Clinabarians, with steel heads glancing in the sun, cuirasses, plumes, and waving standards.
I know!" said Spendius. "You ought to have made your ranks twice as deep, avoided exposing the velites against the phalanx, and given free passage to the elephants. Everything might have been recovered at the last moment; there was no necessity to fly."
The open spaces between the companies of those in the van he filled with velites, which then formed the Roman light-armed troops, with an injunction, that on the charge of the elephants they should either retire behind the files, which extended in a right line, or, running to the right and left and placing themselves by the side of those in the van, afford a passage by which the elephants might rush in between weapons on both sides.
A few, however, of the beasts which were driven against the enemy, and were not turned back through fear, made great havoc among the ranks of the velites, though not without receiving many wounds themselves; for when the velites, retiring to the companies, had made way for the elephants, that they might not be trampled down, they discharged their darts at them, exposed as they were to wounds on both sides, those in the van also keeping up a continual discharge of javelins; until, driven out of the Roman line by the weapons which fell upon them from all quarters, these elephants also put to flight even the cavalry of the Carthaginians posted in their right wing.
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