Kosmo

In regard of formation depth, I dont believe that the porpose of those behind was to replace those in front when killed because if the first lines were killed they probably fled. You dont have 50 % losses and still function as a unit. To give them depth to ease manovering it's hard to believe. In my opinon the best reenactors are today's riot police forces. If you watch the formations in which they deploy when armed with shields and sticks you can have a sense of how an ancient battle line looked like, but they never deploy in depth and they manouver quickly. Another problem I have is the famed gap in the roman line. Everybody says that no enemy can enter because it will be attacked from three sides, but I dont see how a formation attacked in front (those in the sides of the gap) can attack to a side. Eventually to both sides if it has another gap to the other side. The fact they had two centuria side by side in a manipuli it's an indication that oposing sides (left-right) had different comanders and could act independently. So, maybe a roman manipuli in battle line had three "front" lines something like the square formations of rifle infantry in XVIII century. Sorry about the confuse expressions, but I'm in a bit of hurry.

As I already said, they were already fighting on many fronts as they had a large teritory in Europe and were expanding in the islands. Recapturing Constantinopole was jus a stage in the expansion of the nicean emire in the area held before by Byzantium. Many areas held before 1204 were not recovered and some entities born after the crusade survived until the ottoman conquest (like Athens and Trapezunt). A very interesting foot note was the rise of Thessaloniki

It's a far guess that! Maybe they just exaust their power in vane attempts to reconquer Constantinopole. They succeded to extend in Thracia, Macedonia and Epir before the return to the capital, so in every way they had to fight many opponents on two continents. It's just amazing how rich and diverse was the political situation in the area between the fourth crusade and the ottoman advance! Several byzantine states, several crusader states, many selgiuk emirs, several serb entities, bulgarians, albanians, valachians (romanians) Venetia, Genoa, Pisa, Aragon, mercenaries, mongols, armenians etc. Everybody was there and this is how the renessance started in this melting pot of trade, war, culture and revolution that was brought under the stagnation of pax ottomanica.

I have to agree that you opened my eyes and now I doubt the a bending tip was used for pilum. How could it penetrate a shield if it bends when hiting the ground? Will be to much trouble for a kind of war that used mostly melee weapons. If in South Africa before Shaka the batlles were carried by throwing spears from one army to the other in ancient mediterranean world heavy infantry ruled the battlefield so to put to much interest in a throwing weapon is not justified. Pilum had an important role but pike and gladius did the job.

Very nice topic. I wonder if anyone can make it clear to me why the batlle formations were so deep. To have 12 lines in a macedonian phalanx and 10 in a roman legion does not make much sense to me as those behind cannot do much against the enemy. If in a roman unit it's possible that they changed lines there is no info about the greek and macedonian formations to allow as to think that thay also changed the lines. @Roman Wargamer: Most descriptions of a battle line describe it as a wall of shields and soldiers fighting shoulder to shoulder, sometimes so compact that they cannot drew their swords, so I wonder about the sources of the detailed description that you gave us. Maybe the fight was based on pushing the enemy like in a rugby melee using the weight of the formation to break the enemy line. Or maybe those behind are there to stop the first lines to run away. I think it's possible that many in a formation will never engage the enemy in close combat in shorter batlles.

For me only 1453 it's an option. This is the moment when a long lived political entity ended. Of course was a very different thing that when it started. I think that evolution it's the key word here. What you define as "the Roman Empire" and when this attributes stop to exist. When the british empire ended?

The latin pillage was quite orderly made. They put all loot in one place and divided it among themselves later. The fall of the city to ottomans was a devastating blow to his christian inhabitants, but for the city was not bad. The decading town came to new life and in some years became the greatest city of Europe, a capital that ruled an empire from Buda to Basorah and from Oran to Crimmea. It was a very cosmopolit place until the end of Ottoman Empire when most greeks and armenians were expelled and the westerners left. Today Istanbul is a huge city of 12 milion, spaning on two continents and with lots of monuments both roman and ottoman. I spent a week there and was not enough to see all major atractions. The night life is very intese, but judging from the safety measures taken, unsafe. Back on topic ottomans were always brutal with city inhabitants. For example when they city of Cetatea Alba in Moldova surrendered the sultan did not keep his promise and took away all the inhabitants and garisson.

Dacian king Burebista conquered, in the time of Caesar, all greek colonies between Olbia and Apollonia. Olbia, Histria and Messembria were destroyed while the others is possible just gave up. We don't know how they did it because our only sources are arhelogical finds showing large scale destruction and a decree for Acornion in Apollonia. Arheological finds point to destruction of the celtic hill fortifications in the same period. Decebal the last dacian king employed roman desertors and mercenaries to man his machines. The treatie that he made with Domitian allowed him to keep this experts but he was forced to surrender this romans and the machines after the first war with Trajan. He was the one who hid the treasure in the river during the second war. During roman occupation of Dacia the huge (40 hectars) legion castrum of Porolissum was overrun during the Marcomanic war and was rebuilt later in the war.

Hello professor, When do you think that the area between Lower Danube and the Balkan mountains was left out of the roman world? I see some different theories about that.

30 M Lawyer I don't care about media. I hardly follow the news because they make me sad. But I don't think that media makes violence. The reality of violence turns people away from it. I think that movies create violence by bluring reality and glorifing antisocial behaviour.

The decurions were the ones who put pressure to give extraordinary powers to Pompei. My problem was why it took so long to stop piracy when they had total control of the sea and they could use their allies in the East (Egypt, Rhodos) that had large navies nearby. The most eficient the romans were against the pirates that were cuting the grain supply line with Sicilly. The father of Marcus Antonius failed to make any imppresion on those from Creta and died during the campaign.

My limited knoledge is that they did not have the modern concept of 60 minutes an hour. The day was divided from morning to evening in an equal numer of hours, but of course, a day it's much longer in august then in december even in Rome, so an hour will be longer or shorter depending on season.

Laws were passed aginst the owners that set free the old or ill slaves because they did not want to take care of unproductive burdens. Ancient slavery was more varied that odern slavery. A slave could run his master fortune or be a high ranking imperial administrator while another could have a short life in a mine. A succesfull slave would became roman citizen if his owner was roman and be quite rich as those caracters in Satyricon (my favorite classical book) Romans had acces to very cheap slaves in the Late Republic and later when wars of conquest stopped and the morality evolved the number of slaves droped forcing a gradual change in the economic sistem. If once in Delos 10.000 slaves could be sold in a day, later there was no source for this kind of numbers. In most european areas of the empire slaves were never too much used. Off topic: I have a theory that romans did not crack on piracy because the slave capturing that pirates did was bringing profits for the senatorial elite in form of cheap slaves for the large estates and educated greeks for the villas. In other areas of the empire slaves were never too much used.

Building roads, aqueducts and fortifications. Training. Watching "over the top" at the barbarians. Bathing and watching munera. Capturing beasts for munera. Killing emperors. Tending unit farms. Taking care of their families that often lived near in the canabae. Policing the area where they do their job.

I don't believe that is possible. No matter what dose one can take it will never became a cobra.

Sarmatians had also heavy armored cavalry. They are depicted on the Tropeum Trajani monument.

After Marius Rome had no serious opposition, but I vote for training.

The first to develop complex siege tehnics were the greeks during hellenistic time. A famous city conqueror was Demetrios Poliocertes. He laid a long siege to Rhodos where he employed huge armored towers, stone throwers, rams, mines etc. In fact, from that time until the gunpowder era no major development of siegecraft took place. Romans bulit walls around the enemy from where they could atack the city defenders. This was not a new thing, but they used it much more then others. Romans did not invent siegecraft but after uniting the mediterranean they were the only one still having this abilities. As I said in another thread, dacians had, in the time of Burebista/Caesar, good siege abilities that they used agains greek pontic colonies and celtic hill fortresses in today Hungary and Slovacia.

Freedom is such an empty word when you're not allowed to voice your opinion about anything but movies, football and music. Why hate is a tabu? I hate communists and I will always do. Why is this a wrong thing to say? It's my attitude towrds a political ideology. I don't want muslim imigrants in my country. It's this biased against a religious group? Yes, it is, but in life we use categories and this is one. They define themselves as muslims, I define them as unwnated neighbours. I dont say "kill them". I just say "stop them to came here!" Why we have to worry to be politically correct while arabs and chinese can have goverment hate rallies? Selfcensorship reminds my so well of the times when Ceausescu was alive. But still then we called it dictatorship not democracy (politicians called it democracy as today politicians call it) Sissified and bound to extinction we are. Let's just dream a little bit more about the glory of Rome before we go. I'm to disapointed to be rational and censor myself. Sorry.

It looks like the topling of Saddam unleashed the kurds and Shia against century old sunni rule. The Shia are the main power and they have excelent links to Iran. It might turn out that the effect of american intervention in Irak is the establishment of a new Islamic state if what I've read about the forcing of Sharia in the British zone is true.

Indeed, life in rural areas was brutal for slaves at least until Hadrian and this is why some rebellions took place in late Republic and why sending a house slave to the farms was considered a punishment. A slave born in slavery had much better knowledge of roman ways and a better chance to escape, so to keep a good slave the owner had to pay him. Slaves were used for different purposes and some required specialized abilities and even a lot of trust because the personal safety and even the fortune of the owner was in their hands. Still the majority of slaves were field and mine workers with little skill and a tough life. For agriculture they needed no training because most of them were peasants before becaming slaves.

Before becaming an expansive sportsmen he hed to kill lots of other beginners. I think that the arena was a place of blood and death govered by strict rules.

To have a decently proven esstimate about the proportion of slaves in the population is a very difficult job, but to esstimate the way they became slaves it's impossible. If there was no death from exposure because of slavetraders why institutions like "columna lactaria" developed?

The law in several european countries makes denial of holocaust a crime. This is stupid. Everybody is forced to believe something that they might not believe. In even more european countries having fascist beliefs or using fascist (not only nazi) simbols is a crime. The same it's in my country, but communism, that made many more victims here, is nowhere in this world forbidden and we can see the proud red flag of class genocide waving around and carried by ministers and parliament members in many european goverments. On another theme, many men of Islam are trying to change the european way of life thru terror and pressure. Change your foreign policy or we will bomb your trains and buses! Chenge your constiutional principles about freedom of speach or we will attack your ambassies and help organisations! Change your social structure or we will burn your suburbs! Remember the two killings of liberal dutch by fantical marocan. Those were political assasinations made by misfits in an open society with the purpose of silencing liberals. The attitude of Europe towards this new era of conflict with Islam is too weak. Both within and outside. US and Britain are reacting blindly and with worse effects, but at least they (and us) are doing something else then cower.

About modern slavery we have lots of data and in most cases the slave population was not reproducing itself. Of course, it's a huge difference between classical slavery and the modern one, but it is possible that the situation was similar in reproduction. Why would someone put lots of money and care to raise a slavechild that might be really usefull in 20 years? This will be worthy only if you train the slave to be a highly trained specialist, because otherwise it will be cheaper to buy one from the market (I think). In fact, in most places and eras slaves were prohibited to have children despite the apparent profit of the owner. Somewhere in this forum is a link to a study of the purchase power of romans in the times of Vasile II Bulgarochton and a little about the times of Augustus and, if I remember well, it was stated that the use of slaves was very profitable because the price of the slave will be covered by his work in 4 years. If you can make a profit now why make an unsure investment for a distant future? I think that raising children from infancy was a rare thing and justified for special cases like eunuchs (better to be dead, if you ask me)