Roman military engineering

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Roman military engineering was of a scale and frequency far beyond that of its contemporaries. Indeed, military engineering was in many ways endemic in Roman military culture, as demonstrated by each Roman legionary having as part of his equipment a shovel, alongside his gladius (sword) and pila (spears).

Fabri were workers, craftsmen, or artisans in Roman society. Descriptions of early Roman army structure (initially by phalanx, later by legion) attributed to king Servius Tullius state that two centuriae of fabri served under an officer, the praefectus fabrum.

Roman military engineering took both routine and extraordinary forms, the former a part of standard military procedure, and the latter of an extraordinary or reactive nature.