Roman legion

A Roman legion (from Latin legio "military levy, conscription", from legere "to choose") normally indicates the basic ancient Roman army unit recruited specifically from Roman citizens.

In reference to the early Roman Kingdom (as opposed to the Roman Republic or Empire), "the legion" means the entire Roman army. The subsequent organization of legions varied greatly over time but they were typically composed of around five thousand soldiers, divided into three lines of ten maniples during the republic, and later into ten cohorts during the early empire. Legions also included a small cavalry unit. By the third century, the legion was a much smaller unit of about 1,000 to 1,500 men, and there were more of them. In the fourth century, East Roman border guard legions (limitanei) may have become even smaller.

For most of the Roman Imperial period, the legions formed the Roman army's elite heavy infantry, recruited exclusively from Roman citizens, while the remainder of the army consisted of auxiliaries, who provided additional infantry and the vast majority of the Roman army's cavalry. (Provincials who aspired to citizenship gained it when honorably discharged from the auxiliaries). The Roman army, for most of the Imperial period, consisted mostly of auxiliaries rather than legions.

Roman Legion (1941–43)

The Roman Legion (1941-1943) or Vlach "Roman Legion" or Vlach Legion (as it is mentioned in some cases in later bibliography) is the name used by the political and paramilitary organization created by Alcibiades Diamandi, a Vlach origin agent of Italy and Romania from Samarina, in Thessaly and Macedonia in support of the Italian and German forces occupying Greece and aiming at the creation of an autonomous Vlach state, mentioned as "Principality of the Pindus" (the name which is mainly used for the failed 1917 attempt to request autonomy, in which Diamantis was one of the people involved). During its existence, the organization was called Roman Legion and helped the Italian forces in the collection of weapons that Greeks had hidden, after the surrender of the Greek Army. Diamantis called himself a leader and "Representative of the Lower Vlachs Balkans". Diamantis left Greece by the summer of 1942 for Romania and Nicholas Matousis, a Vlach lawyer, already active as second-in-command, replaced him in the organization. Another important figure in the Legion was the Aromanian Vasil Rapotika (Vassilis Rapotikas) who was leading the paramilitary units. After action from several resistance groups in 1942 and the dynamic response of ELAS against members of the Legion, and the withdrawal of Italian forces, the Legion ceased to exist in September 1943, while Matousis fled to Athens.