Virgil61

I would reserve Magnus for positive achievements of greatness. No question of his (ignoble) accomplishments, perhaps Adolf the Terrible might be a better name.

That's a lot of work. Nice list, my initial impression is I'd put Pomepy up into the second tier; his campaigns up until his first retirement are impressive. For the Romans I'd add Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa [and delete Augustus], Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo [under Claudius and Nero] and Vespasian [i may have missed them if they were listed] to the group. Tiberius Caesar Augustus might be worth a mention, it's often forgotten he was a fairly successful general in his own right when he was younger.

A centurian of the late Republic or early Empire who in retirement writes a history of his campaigns.

No, but we'll whip you if you don't use your new priviledge to its fullest!!! I assume "Citizens" are never banned [or crucified] here without a trial or an appeal to the Emperor?

Yeah. I remember a bizarre pre-exercise tasking where we developed posters pointing out how much the US Army spent in the Bamberg area and a POC # to report any property damage by US soldiers; had them printed up and then deployed from Ft Bragg to Germany for the actual exercise.

It just struck me that whether the story is true or not, this would make a great movie epic.

After reading these, if you're willing to delve into autobiography, I'd add Augustine of Hippo's Confessions or maybe The City of God. Both give tremendous insight into the psychology and daily life around the late 4th/early 5th century.

I haven't made any attempt to do either of the above, but my impression of Suetonius was that he was far more accurate than I had expected based on his reputation for gossip. I've always thought the recounting of past emperor's scandals based on biased perspectives and popular mythology is instructive in itself.

The first that come to mind are Churchill, Zhukov and possibly Ghandi for his influence. Other choices: Einstein for science, Freud for influence, maybe Bill Gates and Henry Ford as well. Yuri Gagarin and/or Neil Armstrong would be interesting choices.

Excellent, thank you. It always amazes me what an great resource wikipedia is.

There's an interesting reason for this. The US Army has spent, literally, hundreds of millions of dollars in the last fifty years doing this kind of reaching out to the communities in the parts of Germany units were stationed in. The reason is that countless German farms, fields and other propety were very often damaged by units manouvering during training, traffic disrupted, noise levels raised, etc., and millions were paid out as compensation to farmers and landowners. This gave Army units a very strong incentive to mitigate bad press by co-operating with locals, fostering good will and making nice by doing this kind of thing.

I'm guessing he had only so much time and/or space available for print so he probably made the choice between recounting Munda or outlining the consolidation of power in Rome by Caesar and the subsequent even more dramatic events which were to have such great influence on history. In spite of the (very) tough fighting in Munda one could argue the real heart and soul of the old Republican resistance was eliminated after the defeats and deaths of Pompey, Cato, et al. But I'm just guessing as to his intentions. My definition of a professional historian would be someone who is trained in the subject and makes his or her living on it. Mommsen was a professor of Ancient History so he pretty much fits it.

I just signed up with the nationstate thingy yesterday. Looks like fun and maybe a few people taking it a bit too seriously. I'm the 'Republic of Plastic Flatware' based on the first thing I glanced at while typing.

On at least one occasion it suited a Roman general to "science up" real quick. At Pydna (I think) a lunar eclipse happened the night before the battle with the Macedonians. Lucius Aemilus Paullus had enough knowledge of astronomy to explain the mechanism of eclipses to calm his troops. Didn't stop him from making sacrifices-- just in case.

The answer I think is simpler; he never was able to complete the full history of Rome that he originally intended-- the manuscripts for the remaining volumes were destroyed by a fire and the later half of his life was relatively busy with political and other interests. In case anyone doesn't realize it he won the Nobel Prize largely on the basis of the History of Rome. I just read a line on a website that he was chosen over Leo Tolstoy because of LT's radical views but I can't verify the truth to that. I believe he is the only professional historian to have ever won the prize.

I can point you to the works of Ann Hyland. She's done some extensive writing on the subject of horses in ancient and medieval history including how Roman and Byzantine cavalry were trained. Looks like interesting stuff.

They look like the same verse to me, just translated much differently. The one you supplied is the more literal-- closer to the original I would guess-- Legionairres I would imagine would be pretty raunchy. The one I linked to seems like a 19th century whitewash of the more lewd bits.

I don't know if these are marching songs, but Seutonius has two different lines that the legions sang about Julius Caesar [i think Plutarch has similar lines as well]: "All the Gauls did Caesar vanquish, Nicomedes vanquished him; Lo! now Caesar rides in triumph, victor over all the Gauls, Nicomedes does not triumph, who subdued the conqueror." And "Men of Rome, keep close your consorts, here's a bald adulterer. Gold in Gallia you spent in dalliance, which you borrowed here in Rome." I think the Penguin translation is a lot more modern but I don't have it nearby.

That has to be one of the coolest stories I've seen yet pertaining to Rome. Thanks for bringing that to our attention.

Outstanding post! Clearly demonstrates an understanding of TOTAL WAR! 14591[/snapback] It really brings to my mind the realization that JC had quite a grasp of PSYOP [psychological operations]. Interesting.

That's a particularly vivid scene from Caesar. I'd not remembered the names though, thanks for bringing that up. It may not be historically accurate, but it's nice to see Hollywood writers actually reading ancient histories.

A battle count isn't the sole measure of military greatness. METT-T [Mission, Enemy, Terrain, Troops and Time] factors as well as fielded weapons systems vary far too greatly to simply use a battle count as the determing factor.

I've started a new thread based on Viggen's watching the show on Roman engineering. This week is Rome week on the History Channel in the U.S. Last night was Roman Vice...very interesting. Both shows have been excellent and I was very surprised to see Peter Weller [yes, Robocop] an instructor on Rome and Roman art at Syracuse. Here's the link for those interested: http://tinyurl.com/8dub8

I'll have to agree, Michael Grant is the best introductory writer for Rome. He's sort of the Bruce Catton [American Civil War historian] of Roman history; in other words a real popularizer of the era with a readable narrative style.