Bryaxis Hecatee

The spanish situation in the republic after 214 is that of a permanent force present but the soldiers in the force rotated and often rotated too slowly for they did so every 6 to 10 years ( ten years being the maximal duration of a consecutive stay under arms for a roman soldier ) and this is what made those soldiers ( and their brothers in Macedonia ) so poor while regular troops were kept under arms for only 1 to 5 years max.

Hum about roman soldiers few of them got the booty and a place to go latter, don't forget that in the second century B.C 3/4th of the men who served in the army did so in Spain and Macedonia, suffering high casualty rate and frequent small scale battle for almost no reward and came back to find their farm ruined and their life shattered. About the aristocracy's view on the subject some saw the problem ( i.e Gracchi ) but also thought for ideological reasons that soldiers should not get land for it would mean that the ideology of the roman landlord soldier raising to defend his farm could not be defended anymore. Until the first century BC not war was taken with an overt imperialist cause, the idea of the "good war" ( that had to be done to defend Rome from her ennemies ) was still in full force ( even if they were real imperialistic tendencies and aristorcratic egoism at play )

First a correction to our good friend Asclepiades : I'm a man and should thus be called "lord BH" rather than "Lady BH" should you r

To answer once more too quickly ( I really need 40h long days ) about ancient Greece and especially Athens we know that there are at least one permanent unit during the classical period, a 500 men archer corps ( on horse if I remember well ) used for internal police. Then the fleet trained regularly and had a permanent administration ( needed to run the shipyards and boats sheds ). Later on, in the mid-4th century B.C Athens had a permanent border force made of the youngest citizens undergoing military training and garrisoning the Attic fortresses. We must also remember that the Athenian cavalry was always kept serviceable with yearly inspection of the horses and horsemen and regular training and this at least at the time of Xenophon but probably earlier, a practice kept when Aristotle wrote his own books. Another example of a permanent force under democratic regime is the elite Sacred Band of Thebes in the mid-4th century. Those are the main examples that comes to mind at the present time.

What is interesting to see in Corvisier's table is that the winning force could ( and often was ) smaller than the defeated force. Sybota is probably one of the best example of that and it must be noted that this battle united the fleets of Corcyra and a force from Athens against a crack attack force from Corinth which had better ships and which had trained especially hard to fight the second largest fleet of the time ( Corcyra ) but in the end was still defeated by the rushed out corcyrean and a small athenian TF sent around the whole Peloponnese ( thus having spent more time at sea ). It must also be said that Corvisier's table is not truly complete and that I don't always agree with him, but as I said I lacked time and this was a short quick and dirty post on the subject. I'll try to to post more later.

Some notes about greek naval warfare of the classical era, and mostly the peloponesian war warfare : Athens had a fleet which trained itself hard through constant operations and training around Attica and in the Egean sea, while Sparta's fleet had almost desapeared in the first half of the 5th century BC. Yet the Athenians suffered two disasters of a major impact : the first was the Sicilian expedition where some 20 to 30 000 experienced sailors were lost. Why ? Because the athenian navy was built to use special tactics that exploited a vulnerability of the time and superior seamanship and tactical mobility on the field where other fleets simply made a line and rushed the enemy. When they came to Sicily they won all the early engagements but then were trapped in a series of inshore battles ( the most famous being the one in the great harbor ) in confined places where they could not use their seamanship superiority and their tactics and against ships that had been especially modified to nullify the Athenian's superiority. Also the athenian ships themselves are by then in bad condition. Then Athens would loose a second battle after which it will have to build a new fleet from scratch but the events which follows ( Alcibiade's campaign and the Arginusae - the battle of Notion is not included because losses were due to incompetent leadership that negated Athens tactical superiority ) shows that Athens keeps a superior fleet even if crews are much less trained. Sparta on the other hands begins with a fleet that will use mainly foreigners for it's ships ( Corinthian for example but also Sicilian and others coming from Asia Minor ) and has a better ship producing capacity due to a larger gold income and the fact it pay foreign labor forces to build the ships, thus keeping it's forces fully available for battle ( while Athens must both man it's shipyards and it's ships with the same pool of peoples and do it with less gold income than what the Persian give the Spartans ) Thus a fleet is not so easily built from scratch and it is only through numbers that the Athenian lost the war. Here are some numbers for the period between 433 and 411 from Neil Morpeth's "Thucydides

From what I gather the area was greener at the time than it is now, but desert always existed. Yet it seems that more could be done by horse at the time and areas like Morocco and Algeria had more fertile lands with more woods and more steppes and savannas better suited for grazing animals. Same is true of Tunisia for example and it lasted at least until the 3rd century A.D. But we see that the situation had taken a turn for the worse by the time the Arabs came because they met harsher conditions, which would only get worse with time up to the present days situation. Cities like those the roman built in those areas did exist and survive because the land was richer, more water was available and we can see that today the local populations don't have so rich a city anymore.

Good question. I think it was, at least up to the Sicilian disaster and despite other catastrophic losses like the Egyption expedition. Pericles shows in his discourses there was a lot of training and all evidences points in my eye to a trained group of ship officers with a lot of expedition and a course inside the ranks for the ships officers even if the captain of the ship was not a professional ( since he was the man who paid for the warship but does not seem to have been the man who directed it in naval operations ). Still one has to note that a good part of the rowers were mercenaries and the boarding party was often made of civic levies. The Athenian fleet would not achieve such a level of professionalism again until the age of Demosthene and would then dissolve to only keep a small core of ships for local patrols. The rhodian fleet of the 3rd and second centuries could also have achieved professional status.

And what about the Carthaginian army during the Punic Wars? Yes, professional, but not necessarily in the same sense as the Romans. Carthage's army were not levies but recruited and paid troops who were assigned to specific regions and tasks, though that assignment was temporary. They are often identified as mercenary, but the bulk of these "mercenaries" were recruited from within Carthaginian controlled regions. They were perhaps more akin to later Roman auxilia than mercenaries. However, allow me to clarify what I mean by the garrison concept in establishing the legions as a professional army. While many ancient armies would be professional in the sense that they were trained paid soldiers with uniform military structure, Rome was among the first to truly develop a permanent standing army with static points of assignment. Perhaps surprisingly, I'm suggesting a much later period than what we might be thinking. It's not until after the civil wars and the reforms of Augustus and the evolution of the Caesarian/Antonian legions that my criteria really takes hold. It's at this point where legions were permanent forces and not temporary levies (even if earlier armies were clearly professional by training, discipline, standardization. Think Scipio, Marius, etc.). I'm focused on when the legions themselves became permanent entities (ie Legio II Augusta, Legio III Gallica, Legio IV Macedonica, etc.) that continued to exist with a continuing and defined task/assignment while replenishing existing units with new recruits when veterans retired, rather than retiring an entire legion and levying an entirely new army for a different task. Perhaps my concept doesn't quite conform to the traditional sense of what a professional army was, but I hope that clarifies my thought process. Of course, I'm open to opposing points of view. I agree with you, and I would add something into your reflexion, that is the organized and formal transfer of knowledge inside the army. Everytime an army mustered before the time of Augustus it had to start from scratch and even if some men had the army as only professional occupation the army herself was not professional because it did not keep a permanent structure. In fact I usually try to divide armies between five categories : - tribal : the army is simply the levy of the men of age for making war with one's neighbours or make a raid - cast tribal : the soldiers are a separate group inside the society and are seen as such by insiders and outsiders. Gauls are a good example - Civic : the army is the organized levy of the men of age but there is no permanent standing force ( with the possible exception of a youth training unit as the Athenian ephebes ). The Greeks of the 5th century are a good example of this type. - Mercenary : the army is raised as needed from men who have made war their buisness and fight for a pay. They might be individuals or group mercenaries, under leadership of their own officers but under the supreme command of a man sent by their employer. Carthage's army is a good example, as is Sicily's army in the 4th B.C. - Professional : a permanent structure where the men are trained regularly and where the knowledge is passed in an organized way through the ranks, with a command corp also made of men who do that on an exclusive basis. Sparta and the Imperial Legion are two examples.

Here I must beg you to differ for armies after Marius were still disbanded after they had served their purpose, the roman state could not afford to keep armies on permanent basis until the time of Augustus. The only unit of that period I might consider as professional ( that is, in my view, constituted of men whose bisness all year long is war and only war ) is that famous unit called the Valerians made of soldiers raised during the civil war who then served under Lucullus and later under Pompeius Magnus. But even those had periods during which they were not under arms or command, discharged by the state. Earlier we also see professional or near professional units ( like that centurion of the first half of the second century BC whose story is told by Livius ). But the professional army will only come when Augustus raise Caesar's soldiers and use them and deploy them in the provinces.

As he was waiting for an answer to his letter to the Emperor Macer was working hard to build a small but elite force able to repulse less trained forces with minimal casualties. He divided them in two categories : the armored heavy force and the velite. For the first he had decided not to adopt the usual equipment of a roman soldier, instead using only loricae segmentatae for all his men, a kind of armour most forces in the empire did not have yet, and had them equipped with longer metallic sleeves to protect the arms. He also had some parts added to protect the upper legs of the soldiers, better armoring them than any other man on earth. He had also raised a force of cavalry with excellent horses, two for each man, and also wearing more armor than was usual. He even had some armor parts designed for the horses to cover the most vulnerable parts of the animal's body. It slowed his men in combat and they could get tired more easily but losses were fewer. He had also decided to revert in part to the old division into princeps and triarii so that the first line could retreat and rest behind a line of heavy spearsmen. He also had his velite force. Equiped on the greek light infantry model they were training to shot precise volleys of light spears but could also use swords and light shields if need be. They ran very fast too. This composite force was made of one cohort of velites, two of princeps and one of triarii, the cavalry making up a full ala. With this force he could take control of Gaul from the usurpers and hold it against reinforcements coming from Spain. He hoped that he had nothing to fear from Italy because he lacked the men to hold it...

In fact the word Imperator was only a military title of "supreme commander victorious in battle" given by the men to their leader, from the republic to the time of Augustus when it began to be given almost automatically to all the men we know as Imperor. Since it was, like Caesar, present in all imperial inscriptions it was taken as the formal title of the leader of the roman empire. Both Caesar and Imperator became in later languages the word used to design the supreme leader of an empire ( Czar - Empereur ) as equal one to the other one. But in fact the post of supreme leader of the roman empire was titled Princeps and nothing else, this is "first among equals" ( with some more equals than others, as is always the case ), a word derived from previous republican senate's practice. Now since all this is going into more details than most people do when they learn about the roman empire and deeper than the where the classics teachers are willing to go for a class on Suetonius or Caesar's De Bello then the mistake of making Caesar who calls himself Imperator in many passages of the De Bello the first emperor goes from generation to generation.

As Augustus came back in his office he found there a man garbed in a simple garb yet the fabric showed he was not without means. He was standing in front of the office's door under the surveillance of two praetorian. On his hand a ring whose stone he kept hidden from sight. When the Emperor came close he knelled and raised his hand toward the Emperor, showing the stone at last that marked him as an envoy of P. Laelius Macer for the ring had been given to Macer by Augustus himself. Understanding the need for secrecy Augustus ordered the man to follow him inside the office and had the doors sealed. There, in the middle of the big room the two men talked in a low voice, the mysterious messenger doing most of the speaking in so low a voice that no one could overhear them : - Emperor I bring you news from P. Laelius Macer. He sent me from his estate in Gaul on his fastest horse to bring you the news quickly : your governor in Narbonensis is no more loyal to you for he has fallen into the hands of an ancient evil come back to torment you. The province is now in the hands of an incapable of the name Sextius Flaccus, a corrupt wretch that was given all he owns by Romanus Darkus. Already my master has begun to take action to undermine this upstart and build a small army around a core of loyal men of the legions recently disbanded after the victory upon the Gauls. Macer has gold, thanks to your gifts to him for his victory, but it will not last very long and will only raise around four cohorts of men. Thus he intends to act swiftly and remove the false governor and prepare the province for war, waiting for you to appoint a new governor in the area. He does this as a privatus sine imperium and hopes not to incur your wrath for such actions taken with the welfare of the Empire in mind. He also asks you to provide him with orders should you judge it necessary to give him any post of responsibility.

hum the french review "dossiers d'arch

If I had to answer the question in the title I'd either say Rome, Tyr, Byblos or Saida, three cities that kept an important role in the world during millenia

I just met my colleagues coming back from a campaign in Alba Fucens and the results of this year's excavations ( the first one for this new belgian team ) are astounding ! They had chosen a spot at the juncture between the Forum and the Saepta area and under some 2 meters of sediments found a well kept sewer system ( digging a 10m long segment which gave numerous ceramics from all periods, marble columns, parts of buildings and statues, ... ), the first part of a huge building richly decorated ( painted walls, marble facing, mosaics, ... ), and various other elements. Two other teams were working in Alba Fucens this year, both Italians. One had a disappointing campaign on the other side of the forum, only finding some parts of the Forum's stones ( but it must be said that they were working in an area previously surveyed in the 50's/60's ) while the second team found private houses, the point were the Via del Miliarii cross the street of San Pietro hill, a lararium, statues, and other good finds. More informations may follow.

They all come from a single monastery, have been kept in a private French collection until the death of the owner when the collection came to the Louvre which gave the scientific work to Alain Delattre, a Belgian scientist of the Universit

Not really going to the dark side : in fact I do mix two competence in a diplomaed way in order to help introduce the technology in the science. I already helped a friend with a PhD in Coptic with his database of documentary inscriptions ( doing all the web related work ) and I'll work on two new projects from now on : the first one will be another coptic project, the publication of some 500 papyri coming from a single egyptian monastery and the second a project around a massive database on Harpocrate, the graco-egyptian god ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpocrates ). I could also work on a third project on greek epigraphy and papyrology but it is not certain yet.

As of yesterday I'm officially the owner of a MA diploma in History, Classical period Now I begin my MA course in Sciences and Technologies of Information and Communication

Macer was standing in front of two centuries of soldiers, looking proudly over his men : "Soldiers of the Empire, You have done your duty well, and did all that the Emperor asked from you. Whenever a task was to be found you rushed there to do it, never having any doubt nor hesitation and being willing to put your life at risk for the greater good of the Empire. You were wounded during the course of your duty, a clear proof of your courage and your dedication to our Emperor. For that he wishes to thank you and gave each of you a plot of good land to settle or to sell and where you can lead the life of proud free romans !" A cheer welcomed the news, the soldiers banging their spears on their shields to show their pleasure. "Soldiers now you have recovered from your wounds, and are all able to travel. Thus now comes the time to dismiss you from the army that shall always be remembered as one of the best Rome ever fielded, as good as Scipios' or Caesar's troops. I personally wish the best future possible and only ask of you to remember my name fondly and to be ready to answer the call of the Emperor should he ever feel the need to do so. In two weeks the last of your comrades will also be dismissed and I'll retire to my estates but I'll be ready to answer the Emperor whenever he should call and I'll raise my children with this sense of duty : please do so too !" With these last words Macer dismissed his soldiers, sending them back to civilian life.

After retiring from the Emperor's tent Macer went to his own quarters inside the city where he had taken a domus near the forum during the siege. Before he answered the Emperor he wanted to make sure he'd done his duty fully and that all his injured men were well cared for. After spending an hour doing paperwork he went outside to the town's forum under the porticoes of which had a field hospital been set up. There he walked for two hours between the injured men, calling most of them by their name and speaking some words with each. Then he went back to his desk and wrote a letter to the Emperor : "To Augustus Caesar Imperator from P. Laelius Macer, Salve I thank you for your gratitude toward my men and myself. Fighting hard they did but training harder they had done, as is our way in Rome. Serving the Empire and yourself was what we had set out to do and is what we did. Yet while my men's work is now done mine isn't yet for they are still many who are wounded, men to whom my duty as general is not finished yet. So while I do gratefully accept your gifts I beg you to allow me to keep command of a century of able bodied men and of the wounded so that I may make sure they are treated well as good servants of the Empire and get proper medical treatment. Once this is done I'll disband those last five or six hundred men and go in retirement in southern Gaul, the land I know best, ready to answer any summon and spending time writing my memoirs and reading the great authors of the past. Vale P. Laelius Macer"

The best wine ever for the roman was the Falerian of the consulate L. (?) Oppimius, still drunk up to Nero's time if I remember well, an information given by many authors including Pliny

Macer was still on his new horse, looking around and what he saw pleased him. Slowly his men reduced the two big pockets of Gauls, those being either put into the traps or onto the swords of the legionaries deployed around them. Archers from the city walls were picking targets at a distance and ballistae and scorpios did a very good job of dissolving any group trying to form an organized defense or preparing a breakthrough. Seeing he could do no more with his cavalry in such a congested place he ordered it to return inside the city and to prepare the medical parties that would carry the injured and the death to the city's forum for the former and to a nearby hill for the later, to be either cared for or cremated. He himself went on top of a tower to get a better view of the field.

At the head of his cavalry Macer charge outside of the doors which he has had opened for his men had seen the attack from the top of their towers. Behind the cavalry came a full legion, the other one being kept as reserve inside the walls while the trained civilian militia was on top of the walls. The objective was to strike from one direction and then when the barbarian would all look in one single direction to open the two lateral gates and attack with half a legion on each side, cutting the retreat of the Gauls that would be taken between the walls, Ralla's armies and the two half legions of Macer. Cavalry would open the way for the legion to deploy a bit past the dangerous defenses that littered the ground in front of the walls and would then keep the way to the gate open so that the legion could retreat if needed. Once more the formidable organization of the Roman army showed itself in the way the units deployed themselves in a most orderly way, falling on the back of the barbarian. A signal was then sent to the town and the two lateral doors of the city opened, ranks after ranks of soldiers getting out. The first barbarians are beginning to loose confidence but still they keep their ground, but not for long. From a tower flag signals tells Macer that the enemies rank are thinning somewhere to the right of his position. Taking half his cavalry and a century of foot soldiers with him he plunges into the action, sword drawn, in order to cut the enemies in two pockets and link with Ralla's men. As he press the enemy a powerful warrior targets him. His horse is downed by a powerful blow on the front left leg and Macer falls on the ground. He has almost not enough time to get back on his feet before the warrior tries to strike him. From his look, long hairs and mustache and golden torks around his neck and arms as well as his chain mail armor and his helmet the man is clearly a leader of the band. Holding a large and broad sword he attempt to land a killing blow on Macer's helmet but another combatant falls upon him at this time, disturbing his aim. Getting his sword back in hand Macer face his assailant, seeing that the man is a powerful warrior of some 40 years, in very good condition and with experience if his scars on the right cheek is any indication. Macer knows that with his shorter blade he has to get closer to the giant Gaul. They both own no shield, they only have their armors and swords. After a faint Macer goes straight to his enemy's neck, trying to slice him where he is unprotected. Unable to use his sword to defend himself at such a close range the barbarian moves to his left, a bad move for the point of Macer's sword catch him in the middle of the throat, killing him. Looking around Macer then gets the shield of a fallen legionary and rallies his men to press the attack on. Then he sees other legionaries with another shield design, Ralla's men : the Gauls are now separated in two pockets. Ordering his men to hold this link between the two armies Macer then gets back to the rest of his cavalry where he is given a fresh mount and orders reinforcements for the men he just left. Signals from the tower tells him that the men on the flanks of the town are now in place and that the battle is going according to the plan... ( sorry for the delay I had to prepare my graduation and then I had to feast my diploma for I am now officially a diplomaed historian of the ancient world )

@DecimusCaesar : indeed it is the Berkasova helmet. The second complete helmet is from the same place too. @Klingan : yes it was a copy, as were the giant Constantius head and arm/hand from Maxentius' basilica. In fact they were quite some copies among the statues, but they were also originals