alibegoa

I still object to the foul language used by MPC regarding Caesar, this forum can be used you know by minors and civilized adults, and permitting such kind of language while at the same time deleting my entirely civilized reply in defense does not work well in establishing a positive reputation of this forum, but quite the opposite, at the very least shows that anyone willing to justify Caesar has nothing to look for on this forum. Goodbye, and you can keep MPC and his extremely imaginative foul language.

But if it took place before what was Caesar hoping to accomplish? What was the point of this unortodox business with bizarre conclusion? If Caesar was involved in Catilinarian conspiracy and was setting up a warning against extreme interpretation of the Final Act, that still sounds to me he fully expected the plot to fail, and besides this powerfull warning with Rabirius convicted and all but about to be executed would go unnoticed since the later conspirators were executed. I say there is no way Cicero and other senators would act as they did having this powerful previous warning.

Did it take place before or after the execution of Catalinian conspirators most notably P. Cornelius Lentulus Sura?

What would the 20 non-combatants be doing? Keeping count of the casualties on the battlefield, in true Civil Service style? -- Nephele I believe it is accepted numerous non-combatants were attached to the legions, so I was asking if it was possible the same were in turn attached to the centuries and taking care of soldiers needs eg, repairs to the equipment, carrying supplies, foraging etc.

But isn't this reasoning circular? The only reason to believe that Sulla reformed the lex Villa is the assumption that Caesar was born in 100. Once this untenable assumption is dropped, there is no need to infer that Sulla reformed the lex Villa. Furthermore, Caesar's extradordinary ambition was nowhere in evidence in his early career. A late bloomer, he didn't even start the cursus honorum until he was 30 years old. Then again, is anything precisely known about when Caesar entered the Senate? Was it also not much earlier than normal? Why so then? It seems there are many alterations Sulla made now lost to us. In any case I was stating there the opinion of Arthur Keavenely in his Sulla The last republican, and while mentioning that particular alteration, there is no reference to Caesar whatsoever. Among Sulla's notable modifications amongst others was forcing men to proceed from office to office in fixed and determined order eg no preator before questor. Even if this tradition was from before it was Sulla putting it into law. Sulla also extended the principle of a minimum age for a curule office to the non curule magistracy of questorship. Again Sulla was giving legislative sanction to the custom developing spontaneously in the previous generation. From then on anyone reaching the age of 30 was eligible to this office, irrespective of performing any military service. Also even though it was Sulla making the tenure of questorship a prerequisite for curule office, in a further change he did not require a biennium to elapse between it and preatorship. So it is not like Sulla had not made any changes, and it appears reasonable for a man so proud of his class, to have given it some head-start in advancement.

Just be aware that this is historical fiction. Dando-Collins is often berated for being inaccurate apparently because his work is written in such a way that it seems authoritative. From what I understand he mixes the histories of Legio X Fretensis and X Gemina as if both are Caesar's famed 10th legion (For instance, X Gemina was not at Masada but X Fretensis was), but both are entirely separate legions. For the record X Gemina was Caesar's 10th. To be fair though, I haven't read it myself, but this is the rather common complaint that I'm aware of. Somehow it appears more logical to me that the Caesar's X legion was called Equestris, suffered heavy loses at Munda, was disbanded but the survivors later recruited again under Anthony or Augustus (even Lepidus) into Gemina. I mean why would Caesar's legion be called Gemina, twin to what? There is even the name Veneria floating about. I guess I'll have to buy the book in question, but if there is there no explanation of all these names, can it really be good?

But still one alteration (or concession) that Sulla seems to have made to the provisions of the lex Villia stipulating the minimum ages for the holding of curule offices, was to allow patricians to advance rather faster in their careers. This again puts the year 100 very probable given Caesars extraordinary ambition IMO.

Could it have been 80 combatants and 20 non-combatants?

8000 slaves (volones) formed 2 legions after Cannae disaster, being promise freedom and franchise on discharge. Livy 22.57. Another 6000 were raised from criminals awaiting punishment and debtors, who were promised amnesty. Livy 23.14

Julian was not killed in a Battle Maranga. The Roman Forces under Emperor Julian had destroyed every Persian attack, in fact the Persian with their light calvary chose to avoid direct battle with the Superior Roman forces. The Persians used a scorched earth policy and harassed the romans in the deserts with showers of darts. On Julian

or here much easier to read

Which accounts are those? I think most sources recognize Julian's ample military experience as Caesar in Gaul. I read the original sentence as he had no military experiance before proclamation as Caesar, which is certainly true since before his proclamation he had never held any public position or spent time with the army. Julian had spent his early years in comfortable imprisonment, engaging enthusiastically in academic study at Nicomedia and subsequently Athens, where he was heavily influenced by mystical Neoplatonism.

Adrian Goldsworthy concludes of Julian in his In the Name of Rome: In Gaul Julian had proved himself to be a reasonably competent commander in spite of his lack of any military experience before his appointment as Caesar. The sort of problems he faced were of the kind routinely dealt by the provincial governors of earlier periods. By the fourth century only an emperor wielded comparable authority and had the capacity to concentrate sufficient resources to defeat anything more than a few minor barbarian incursions. Julian did something to restore the security on the frontier along the Rhine, although in subsequent years this would prove impossible to maintain without a similarly active military presence in the area. He won a number of successes and suffered no serious defeats, but there is nothing in these campaigns to suggest exceptional talent on his part. Some of his decisions were questionable, and he certainly lacked Scipio's or Julius Caesar's talent for judging the mood of his men. In the Persian campaign the sheer scale of the operation and the problems inherent in operating deep into enemy territory rather than in a friendly province hugely magnified the consequences of his mistakes and failure to understand his soldiers. Exceptionally large Roman armies did not have a very good record - Cannae and Arausio being the two most famous and disastrous examples - and it seems that forces larger than 40,000 or so men were extremely difficult for a general to control effectively. By the fourth century, when unit sizes had shrunk and the army was geared primarily to warfare at a much lower level, an army of 83,000 men was extremely clumsy. No one, from Julian down, had any experience of handling and supplying such a force. This, combined with the same problems which had helped to prevent Trajan's and Severus' campaigns in the east from producing a permanent defeat of the Parthians, eventually resulted in a humiliating failure. Julian's career is interesting not because of his personal ability as a commander, but for providing a good indication of the circumstances in which Roman generals of the Late Empire performed their task. However Julian was not killed at the battle of Maranga, but some days later during a (night?) attack on his rearguard when he galloped to direct the fighting without even stopping to don his armor. During pursuit of the scattered enemy he was struck suddenly by a cavalry spear piercing his side and fixing itself in the bottom of his liver (Ammianus Marcellinus 25.3.6) No one quite knew who had thrown the spear, although Libanius records a rumor that the thrower was Roman, a christian soldier incensed by Julian's promotion of paganism.

Did the legions fight in quincunx formations or were the gaps closed just before contact with the enemy?

So it seems Hannibal had some of the 8000 captives executes and sold the rest into slavery. But I would like to hear from more knowledgeable people on Appian's reliability of descriptions of executions. I mean 'built a bride of bodies', 'fathers against sons' etc. But from Plutarch's The Life of Titus Flamininus 13, Flamininus found out as many as 1200 of them in Greece and purchased their freedom and returned them to Italy where they apparently have furnished his triumph with its most glorious feature. Once proud Romans thus being slaves for like 20 years.