Melvadius

Here is a bit more of a hint to the general area:

Welcome Raunman, I am sure that you find lots to interest you on the various fora. As you are interested in an aspect of the Roman military you may wish to also post this question on the Gloria Exercitus - 'Glory of the Army' forum here in case anyone doesnt' read this thread.

Your still thinking of the wrong century

As I am going away for a few days shortly here is another hint - rather than a formal east-west split you need to be thinking more about those who were senior or junior.

I would actually agree and disagree with what Byraxis has posted because it really does depend which period in Rome's history you are talking about how large and/or effective Rome's naval forces were whether maritime or riverine. At some points Rome had massive and highly effective fleet(s) sometimes raided for additional troops (e.g. I & II Auditrix established by Nero) while at others the majority of ships had been left to rot so when they were needed again there was a real scrabble to pull together enough effective units for the current campaign. Although I have a few issues with the book by Michael Pitassi on The Navies of Rome it does give a good overview of the fluctuating support by Rome for her maritime and riverine forces the size and nature of their opposition and consequently the fortunes of the respective forces. One point which may not have been made clear in the book read by Byraxis due to the period it covers is that Roman writers were fairly loose in the terminology they used to refer to naval ships. As an example both liburnums and triremes were terms used through much of Rome's naval history but seem to have meant different things at different times. There also are issues with naval bases being established for particular campaigns while others were run down and Pitassi does provide some good arguments that many of Rome's successful campaigns actually required the active support of the naval forces to support the movement of supplies and/or the landing of military forces behind enemy lines e.g. the conquest of Wales.

Way too far east, the previous south-west guess was much closer [Edit - but a bit too far clockwise ].

Personally I always prefer to get my hands on a copy for a quick browse before I make a choice like this but even though both books are a few years old now several of the listed contributors/ editors have good pedigrees so you may not go far wrong choosing either. The caveat of course is whether you are feeling generous and think that your partner would like something different from the list instead

Update - the BBC now has some pages with images of the books here

This is one of those stories currently being carried by the BBC where there is no easy 'precise' classification as to period or an easy answer to how it will finally end. In my view the jury is currently still out on precisely how old these artefacts are and where they may have been found. There does seem several arguments for an early Christian origin but with Jewish and other groups present in the presumed discovery area and Jewish artefacts possibly found in close proximity to them I wouldn't like to take any bets on who was actually responsible or a precise date for the 'books' manufacture.

I have just come across several mentions of the Torlonai Relief found at Portus which may be of interest for this project.

Some good points made here but we are dealing with several centuries of Roman history and I am uncertain that a 'possible' Roman preference for 'containment' necessarily would have always translated into avoiding fighting 'guerilla' units except by attempting pitched battles. My impression of the Roman army drawn from the writings of Frontinus and other modern interpretations is one which could and did react to opponents who fought in a number of different ways. Consequently for most of their 'Imperial' history if not before the Romans must have developed the means of bringing their enemies either to battle or by other means ensuring that they ceased to be a viable opposition. As has been pointed out above the Roman's had a number of different units which could be called on to fight in combination or singly against a range of opponents. Equally the very fact hat they had the occasion to fight in combination with other units argues for some, at least reasonably efficient, 'forma' means of passing supplementary orders on the battlefield to multiple units whether by signal flags, trumpets, drums or some other means. On this basis I can't agree with the argument that they never found some means of successfully fighting 'guerilla' forces.

Welcome to the site Noricum - our Austrian members may be able to confirm if my guess about the site your cousin mentioned is correct. I wonder if it may have been Flavia Solva that he was thinking about which is relatively close to the modern cities of Wagna and Leibnitz and apparently the only Roman city in modern Styria.

Mediterranean rim correct but not south-west

Hope you enjoy today

How about here?

You will have to 'think' harder than that

I suspect I should have provided a hint so: One of two.

I get the feeling I need to get out and do more personal site visits - Burgh Castle?

This seems an appropriate point to close this topic in line with the guidance Ursus has so kindly pointed out. Mea culpa too

As Ghost has identified you have to realise that battles can be won or lost on silly details which can wipe out technological or numerical differences. To go slighlty off topic Iasandlwana is a case in point where there are three arguments for the cause of the defeat. The strongest seems to be a suspicion that the 'British' forces probably tried to defend too large a perimeter and got overrun in small sections while there may also have been a few problems (as per the film Zulu Dawn) with ammunition contained in sealed boxes requiring a specific tool to open carried by only a few quartermasters (QMs). The argument against the second suggestion is that men on the firing line still had plenty of ammunition when overrun and normal practice would have been to open boxes as soon as warning was given of an attack. I believe that the third suggestion that the QMs only issued ammo to their own units is entirely spurious. Whatever the cause the net result was to put the 'British' forces on a more or less even playing field with the Zulu's. BTW Ghost may have accidently switched the casulty lists - the actual result seems to have been British forces losses of around 1300 men against about 1000 Zulu's killed plus an unknown number of Zulu wounded.

The BBC have a good article on this topic here

What I found interesting was how quickly the original premis 'that Roman soldiers from the time of Trajan could have defeated a similar sized unit from the US Civil War' was junked in favour of: '...Armies had a for more manpower in the Civil war. Hannibal crossed the alps with 50,000 troops against 38,000 roman troops. Antiedam had armies of 85,000 vs. 45,000 (Union, Confederacy). Gettysburg had 95,000 vs. 72,000. So, A Civil War army would be large, have much longer range weapons, guns would most likely penetrate the Roman Armor and further range and more artillery.....' As may have been obvious from the start it was interesting seeing the extent of and at the same time some glaring gaps in the knowledge of the posters. I didn't read all of the postings in detail but there didn't seem to be anyone who had watched some of the filmed research, which has been shown on UK TV, of how different weapons functioned - particularly armour in conjunction with any form of padding. From documentary evidence we know the Romans used something generally called by reenactors a subarmalis even if we don't have any identified physical remains. The posters also don't seem to know that although the Roman's didn't use stirrups the 'horns' on their saddles did provide some of the same functionality and advantages of stirrups. The relative experience of both sets of troops and how the American Civil War troops were armed as well as how quickly they came into close contact was an other area skirted over. Finally there was a tendency to consider only the best available units and equipment with rapid rates of fire and high damage causing ability of cannons and 'gatling' guns but functionality and availability of weaponary changed dramatically throughout the ACW period on both sides of the divide. The obvious caveats are that any outcome would be heavily dependent on several of the factors mentioned above as well as Esprit de Corp which was basically ignored in the discussion. On the whole I suspect that the outcome of this theoretical battle may be a lot closer than some of the posters realised. Without a lot more details of the parapmeters involved I don't think the outcome is certain enough to justify anything but an 'each-way' bet.

I still feel that it is somewhere quite a bit further east with all that low lying ground beyond the walls and Richborough seems a possibility.

While accepting that he has good acadeimic credentials as an arcaheologist I must admit that it is the sort of statement and contra Imperial Rome opinion that I tend to now expect from Dr Faulkner. Having just checked Wikipedia there may be an explanation for some of his views by the 'claimed' description of himself by Faulkner as 'a Marxist, a revolutionary socialist, an anti-capitalist political activist'

I would suggest having a look at Frontinus: The Strategemata for an indication of how Roman's were taught to deal with such questions by the late 1st century AD. This version of the Bennet Loeb text is on Bill Thayer's excellent Lacus Curtius site. One caveat to the above is that this seems to be an 'almost complete' extract/ retyping of the Loeb Classic version but seems to be without the introduction which IIRC states the view that Book IV is basically a recompilation or reworking of entries elsewhere so may not have formed part of the original work.