barca
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Posts posted by barca
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One thing Iam very curious about-Conventional Wisdom says that the Romans often lost to the Huns because they failed to adapt to Hunnish tactics and they relied too much on heavy infantry rather than developing ways to counter the Huns' warfare.
What would you all say of this?
The Romans actually did adopt Hunnish tactics eventually, although perhaps not fast enough. If you look at the battles of Belsarius in the 6th Century, he relied very heavily on horse archers. The Roman horse archer was modeled more along the lines of the Hun than the Sassanid, i.e. the strategy was to deliver powerful accurate shots compared to the Sassanids who delivered a larger quantity of shots, but with less power and accuracy. This is explained in detail in the following book by Ian Hughes:
http://www.unrv.com/book-review/belisarius.php
It is also clear that Belisarius' heavy infantry was somewhat lacking in discipline compared to those of earlier periods.
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Has anyone read this book?
I recently saw it at the local bookstore. It is long, but sounds interesting. The author comments that George W Bush was no Marcus Aurelius whereas Bill Clinton read his Meditations frequently.
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Yeah at 450 there was no united German language, the "Althochdeutsch" the oldest german started to form around 600 AD what they would have spoken depending where they are from, is old frankish , or maybe gothic,
now gothic is very interesting as we have with the Wulfila Bilble the only extensive document in an ancient Eastern Germanic language,
http://www.wulfila.be/gothic/browse/ maybe (depending on your storyline) make your characters speak gothic, you could even use authentic words
cheers
viggen
As I recall, the Western Germanic Languages were broken down further into High German, or Hochdeutsch (including modern German and Yiddish) and Low German (Dutch, Frisian, Flemish, English). And there were also Northern Germanic Languages (Nordic: including modern Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian)
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Why are the Romans always made out to be the most superior army in every in the Classical Age including in weaponry,armor, and strategies and tactics?
In my opinion it boils down to 2 things. Simplicity and overwhelming success against the Greeks.
Prior to the Punic wars the Romans went toe to toe with perhaps the best that Greeks had to offer (Pyrrhus) The Romans lost 2 out of 3 battles, but Pyrrhus was so impressed by their tenacity that he decided to move on, allowing Carthage and Rome to fight over the Western Mediterranean. The Romans eventually defeated the Carthaginians, but it was very close. The wars could easily have gone either way. It was during these wars that the legions evolved into the nearly invincible killing machines that enabled them to conquer the rest of the Mediterranean. When they subsequently faced the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the East, they systematically annihilated their armies. It wasn't even close. Very impressive when you consider the legacy of the Greeks as described by Greek historians: relatively small armies standing up to massive Persian hordes; Alexander conquering all of Persia and more. Much of our knowledge of ancient history is based Greek and Roman sources, so Greeks like Polybius wrote at length about what they perceived as a superior Roman military system.
Simplicity: compare the Roman legion to the overly complex army of Antiochus III. It had cataphracts, chariots, elephants, phalangites, gauls, archers, slingers, horse archers, etc. If all of these unit could have been brought to bear in a coordinated effort, they could have caused a lot of damage to any army. The Roman army was much more homogeneous. The majority of the legion did pretty much the same thing, so it was much easier to keep organized from a command and control standpoint. At the battle of Magnesia, Antiochus' army became disrupted very early and wasn't able to mount the coordinated effort needed for success. The Romans maintained their cohesion, each man doing his job as the battle evolved into a total rout. Interesting when you consider that Antiochus had the title of "the great" for his previous victories. He considered himself another Alexander. Who knows what he could have accomplished if he had not run into the Roman buzzsaw.
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I will add that when I saw the movie years ago, I thought there was too much unnecesary emphasis on his sexual orientation at the expense of many other important attributes of Alexander. What made him a great strategist, tactitian, and leader of men? His Indian expedition received only cursory coverage. There was no mention of his defeat of the Scythians at Jaxartes, perhaps one of his most innovative battles, and I could go on about a lot of important areas that were totally left out
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Personally, I think any attempt to categorise Alexander in terms of modern sexual identity is grossly anachronistic, but am I not right that Alexander probably did have sex with at least one male as well as with at least two females?
...via Forbes[/i]
Having read much of Plutarch and Arrian, I found no overt descriptions of homosexual acts on the part of Alexander. There were certainly descriptions of his affection for his male friends, from which one can certainly infer a lot of things, and the entertainment world loves to exagerate.
He may have been homosexual, and he may not have been. We really don't know for sure. Who cares?
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I saw the movie recently.
I was amused by their use of the testudo to rescue their POW's. Not a good formation for open battle or skirmish. Testudos were useful in sieges and sometimes a modified version to hold off cavalry.
Then when the war chariots showed up, against which it may have been effective, he tells them to break formation and run, just what the chariots needed to be effective.
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The Latin language in the West survived better then Greek and Latin in the East.
Latin only survived in the church, Greek was spoken in much of asia minor untill 1920, and is still spoken in Greece and Cyprus.
It depends what one means by survival.
In the West the majority of countries that were in the Roman Empire speak the Romance languages: French, Spanish, Italian, etc. which are based on Latin.
In the East the only countries that speak a Greek-based language are Greece and Cyprus. The rest are slavic, arabic, hebrew, etc.
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Also, the long standing presence of a Confucian-Legalist bureaucracy in China may have promoted cultural stability in a manner that Rome's less developed bureaucracy did not.
From Rome and China. Walter Scheidel
Amazon sent me a recommendation for that book. Are you going to write a full review?
The Romans didn't have Confucianism, but they did have Stoicism, which in many ways served as the ruling philosophy for at least 200 years (longer if you include the republic). This was the case as long as the emperors were chosen from the Senatorial class (prior to Septimus Severus) and received a "gentleman's education" so to speak. Subsequent emperors generally came from the equestrian class, and I doubt that these individuals were as well versed in the finer points of culture and philosophy.
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Puritans had that name because they wanted to cleanse or purify the church of all Roman influence. That didn't stop this puritan from appearing in Roman Regalia:
http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/_/viewer.aspx?path=hut&name=aa346681.jpg
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Yes, Labienus did "slightly check" Caesar's offensive in Africa.
Labienus almost annihilated Caesar's whole bloody army. According to Caesar's henchmen, the only reason Caesar was let off the hook was that Labienus wanted to give Metellus Scipio the honors of finishing off the rascal.
What is the best source for the Battle of Ruspina?
Was it an orderly retreat in the face of overwhelming odds, or was it a major debacle?
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Secondly, the gauls in question were in their expansion period, moving across Europe into the Balkans and Asia Minor. The gauls of Caesars time were more settled, less warlike, and a lot lazier. They had lost the keen edge of the warriors who strode into Rome's senate and demanded tribute.
You suggest that if Rome had a better army at the time, perhaps history would be different? Yes, naturally, provided the army is properly equipped, motivated, and well led. But warfare in those times wasn't quite the same deal as that of the Empire. It was much smaller in scale, much more focused on singular columns of militia, and the concept of a professional soldier was two hundred years away.
Did these Gauls have any lessons of war for the Romans? Were they similar (in their warlike nature) to the Galatians who created havoc in Greece and Macedonia about 100 years later?
It is generally believed that the early Roman army formed up in a phalanx, similar to the Greek Hoplites. It is not clear to me when they actually switched from the Hoplon to the Scutum. Did the reforms of Camillus have anything to with that?
It is also not clear to me when they developed the manipular system with 3 lines. I suspect that it slowly evolved sometime between that Battle of Allia and the Samnite wars.
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The question is possibly more properly whether soldiers were actively trained to do so and the description by Livy is unclear on this point but to me somehow suggests more of an ad hoc reaction than a pre-planned manouver.
Good point.
Are there any similar recorded instances of the Greeks or Macedonians doing the same during a siege?
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Raising their battle-shout and locking their shields together over their heads, they advanced.
OK, locking shields over their heads does seem like a testudo. Can the Gauls be credited as the first to use this formation?
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Livy states that the Roman flanks were overwhelmed. Considering that the center of the line was generally considered the most important at this time in ancient warfare, these flanks were probably occupied by the weakest most ill-equipped Roman troops. An outflanked and surrounded army, no matter how supposedly superior the Roman center may have been, would've had little chance to recover in the midst of a pitched battle.
I came accross a Wikipedia article on the Battle of Allia that suggested that the Romans learned the testudo from the Celts:
...the Senones were part of the much larger culture of Celts (or Gauls) that had more advanced iron-working and close-quarter combat techniques. Specifically, the Celts/Gauls used heavier long swords and full body shields, which allowed them to interlock shields for greater defense (a tactic later named "tortoise" in the Roman histories).
Wikipedia usually gives a good overview, but we all know that their information can be suspect. It is generally accepted that the Gauls fought in open order so that they could swing their long slashing swords.
Here's the entire article:
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I know there are some scholarly works on the Celtiberians, but most are in Spanish.
"Rome's Enemies 4: Spanish Armies" is a good - albeit brief - source on the weapons and warfare of these tribes.
Tell me about the so-called Celtiberians. Were these celts who happened to be in Iberia, or were they a merging of two distinct cultures, i.e the Celts and the Iberians. If so who were the Iberians. What language did they speak. Was it Indo-European, or was it something else like the basque language?
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A weakness of the early Roman phalanx system I suppose.
What about the Galatians and their battles with the Hellenistic world? Some battles were won by the Celts, but at least as many were won by the Greeks.
There appears to be conflicting information on the development of the Roman Manipular System. Some authors say it was as a consequence of their defeat by the Gauls at Allia, and other that it was the Samnite wars. Any original sources on this issue? Are there any descriptions of the Battle of Allia other than Livy?
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Stilicho: The Vandal who saved Rome by Ian Hughes
Book Review by Philip Matyszak
Welcome to the dying days of the Roman empire, where in some cases the dying was very literal. This is the world of Flavius Stilicho, the general who struggled desperately to hold the disintegrating western empire together. Though he struggled against constant barbarian incursions, rebellions and usurpers, Stilicho's worst enemies were his fellow Romans in the Roman senate, and the courts of the eastern and western emperors...
...read the full review of Stilicho; The Vandal who saved Rome by Ian Hughes
I have not read the book yet, but I read the review. The following statement gets to the crux of the matter:
"The senate also objected vigorously to Stilicho's use of barbarian troops, especially the wholesale recruitment of barbarians whom he had recently defeated. In fact, by Hughes' argument, it was a backlash against Stilicho's use of barbarian troops which eventually brought about his downfall."
Wasn't that part of the problem? It was hard for Rome to recruit its own people. Perhaps the senators were right, and there should have been a greater push to recruit Romans or at least barbarians that were more romanized. It seems to me that Byzantium made its recovery when it decreased its reliance on barbarian mercenaries and recruited troops from within the Empire. Why wasn't the West able to do the same?
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The Romans themselves used to sneer and jibe the provincials for their attempts to emulate them - Tacitus is quite contemptuous of the Britons for that very reason - and unless you're born to that culture, emulation must have seemed laughable to those socially-concious Romans for whom society was second nature.
Weren't the Romans also proud of their ability to Romanize the people that they conquered?
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According to what I have read, Theodoric's successor to the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy was his grandson who was only child. His mother served as regent and tried to give him a Roman education, but many of the Ostrogoth "Nobles" resented him for becoming too Roman, and they pulled him away into drunkenness and debauchery.
What does this say of the theory that "Romanized" Goths could have provided better continuity of Roman Civilization if only the "wicked" Byzantines had left them alone.
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Both the roman flexible legion and parthian strategy (and cavalry) were answers to the hellenistic phalanx and not very good against each other.
The legions certainly were effective, but I'm not familiar with any battle details between the Parthians and the Seleucids, although I suspect the Parthians had the edge due to inferior commanders on the side of the declining Seleucid Empire. Previously, Alexander was able to defeat the Scythians who had essentially the same strategy as the Parthians.
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Dio tells us that Caracalla's desire to emulate Alexander was so great that he carried a sword and drank from vessels that had allegedly belonged to the conqueror. He also organized a huge unit - thirty-two cohorts strong - of legionaries equipped with the weapons and armor used by 4th Century BC phalangites, and he called this unit his "Phalanx Macedonica". This led to his warning the Parthian King that he had a force of infantry that was "invincible when fighting with spears".
I always wondered about that. The Phalanxes of the Hellenistic Kingdoms were easily beaten by the Romans, yet the Romans themselves never had as much success in the East as Alexander. What was he thinking? If you draw a rock/paper/scissors analogy, was a sarissa-style phalanx better suited for dealing with the cavalry of the East than the Roman Legion with pila and short swords? Did he ever have an opportunity to put his phalanx into action?
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This depiction of the weaker segments of society being attracted to the Jesus movement supports my belief about the underestimated size of the early Jesus movement.
I think the estimate that less than 10% of the Roman Empire was Christian at the time of Constantine's "conversion" is a gross underestimation of the number of people who, at least partially, embraced Christian theology.
First, we have little recorded history of the weak and powerless in Ancient society (most women, slaves, and the poor).
Very thought provoking. Those estimates of less than 10% are really guesswork. In truth, we really don't know how prevalent Christianity had become.
Their numbers must have been fairly significant as early as the 2nd century. Why else would Romans such as Celsus express concern about them: "Let no one educated, no one wise, no one sensible draw near. For these abilities are thought by us to be evils. But as for anyone ignorant, anyone stupid, anyone uneducated, anyone who is a child, let him come boldly. By the fact that they themselves admit that these people are worthy of their God, they show that they want and are able to convince only the foolish, dishonorable and stupid. and only slaves, women, and little children."
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In this age of historical revisionism some have questioned whether the dark ages ever existed, pointing out numerous developments in the Medieval World. It is clear to me that Western Europe suffered a significant setback with the fall of Rome, and there were a few isolated episodes of recovery, but Europe did not fully recover until the Renaissance.
So when did they begin?
Deposition of Romulus Augustus? Probably not since the Ostrogoths seemed to have retained much of the Roman establishment. There was also the brief reconquest by Justinian.
The invasion of Italy by the Lombards?
When did they end? Certainly not with Charlemagne. His brief "Renaissance" was followed by gloom and doom.
The Crusades? The Court of eleanor of Aquitaine? Thomas Aquinas? 1453? 1492?
Any thoughts are appreciated.
Where does the Byzantine Empire begin?
in Postilla Historia Romanorum
Posted
You just answered your own question, i.e. there was no turning point, but a continuation of the Roman Empire right up to 1453.