Roman Horses could carry only less than 1000 pounds

[caldrail]

Rank is a serious issue where I'm coming from. I get very fed up with people trying to describe the legion in modern terms - there's a lot of difference in the way things were organised and putting toga's on the modern world is not history.

 

No, not a squad - because they were never organised as such. The phrase meant "close friends" and that was a very literal term, as most Roman labels were. As for inherent rank, here we have a problem. There is no record of a rank system for legionaries - none at all - and only Vegetius mentions "men rising through the ranks" which is itself odd, because why would everyone get promoted? What it appears to me is that ordinbary soldiers got status by virtue of service, and were rotated among the centuries with each annual increase, or something similar. Other titles such as Chosen Man, Standard Bearer, Musician, were jobs within the legion that had status - funerary inscriptions record that men served temporarily in these posts in no particular order. Men sometimes found roles within the legion according to their talent
and trade - there's one tomb inscription of a man who was employed by the legion as a mule driver besides being a soldier. This is typical of a legionary - there's more accent on time served, role, and trade, and very little hint of actual rank.

 

I do think it's wrong to see the legion as a dry pyramidical military unit in the modern sense - it was more like a military community, a sort of military villa run by an assigned noble with soldiers indtead of slaves, something that would have been very intuitive in Roman culture. Given that each legion was a fundamentally seperate entity, not linked by senior administration (or at least until the late empire anway, but by then they were becoming more medieval in style), we can hardly claim that it was all the same as today.

 

The arrangements for travel varied. If wagons and animals were present, and time permitted, they were used. If they needed to get somewhere quickly, other decisions were made. Men marched without helmets worn on route marches, and there's one mention of weapons being carried in a convenient cart. We know from Plutarch that it was common practice for camp followers to maintain the troops with such activities as preparing food. In fact, Josephus, in his account of the Jewish War, describes a marching legion without animals, and civilian merchants supplied the soldiers at the siege of Masada.

 

No modern labels - you understand? - We're dealing with the Roman Legions, not the US Marines.

[Melvadius]

If you really have to to make a 'modern' equivalent you would be better off considering a contubernium as organised in a similar way to a Napoleonic period navy mess as a group of eight men (not ten as stated earlier on) who would sleep and eat together and formed part of a larger unit (ie a contuberniuim formed part of a century).  Obviously the comparison is incomplete since one would primarily operate on water and the other on land but I agree with Caldrail that trying to fit modern military units into Roman equivalents and vice versa is all too often illogical or is too period specific .

 

I particularly remember one of the translations of the Gallic wars which was written just after the second world war and since he was an ex-military man the translator went too far and talks about regiments, captains, majors and colonels rather than the correct Roman terminology.   Read fifty years after WW2 when military service is only something a small number of people have on their resume it had lost all relevance to both the modern and historic periods.

[Virgil61]

I particularly remember one of the translations of the Gallic wars which was written just after the second world war and since he was an ex-military man the translator went too far and talks about regiments, captains, majors and colonels rather than the correct Roman terminology.   Read fifty years after WW2 when military service is only something a small number of people have on their resume it had lost all relevance to both the modern and historic periods.

Interesting take. I think you're right, if you look at 19th and early 20th century military historians they're a lot more liberal in the use of modern military terminology like squad, company, etc.

 

As someone who's got more experience than most here in the military I have a different take; "squad" doesn't irritate me much. If I only had one stint after being an 11B (infantry) in the 82nd maybe it would but having experienced that a "squad" ended up being anything from a section of sergeants at a school, administrative clerks in a finance detachment, etc., it's strict definition as a tactical maneuver unit erodes away.

[caldrail]

The trouble with the Roman Empire (as Time Team's Helen Geake stressed), is that people casually spot the familiarities of their civilisation with our own and like to draw on these paralels, even to the point of assuming a commanlity between us. What that ignores in the vast differences we have - the strange rituals, the complex politics, the tolerance of violence, class distinctions, slavery, the cut-throat economics, the vivacious nature of urban life and it's hidden dangers of poor health, broken dreams, and dark alleyways with open sewers, the chauvanism and arrogance of the Romans, even the mysteries of an unknown world beyond the frontier.

 

In many ways the Roman world has more in common with third world nations than the modern west. I would have to stress myself that our current military format descends from the use of gunpowder, something the Romans had no inkling of. Whilst I agree that the Romans were an organised people, their organisation only resembles ours in passing and merely because that human psychology hasn't changed much in two millenia, thus by experience they found certain ways of doing things worked better - we've made the same progress by a different path since warfare adapted to firearms, bringing armies out of the middle ages. Note however that the modern world organises it's armies in a much more formal pyramidical manner - we've gone further than the Romans did in organisation, because we have to. They had a more fuedal and primal view of things.

[Onasander]

I hear your arguments, still unequivocally squad. Squad ain't a rank. 

 

What you described is absolutely a squad. It's one of those duh things if you ever been in a squad. The restrictions you placed upon it doesn't keep it from being Basques either.

 

Squads are put together for esprite de corps, they share equipment, the command policy in many units are you can only have friends from your squad (preferably your team) and your "battle buddy/buddies", the guy you hang out with after work comes from it.

 

 

In many kinds of infantry units, like Arctic Light Infantry, supplies are distributed via a Ahkio basis VERY similar to what you described for the eight men.

 

I agree, it gets very annoying to see the ranks higher up all loopy. However, it's a point of stupidity to carry it too far to a extreme..... it's a squad. 

 

I am not claiming it is capable of independent battle operations from 7-8..... that would be retarded. They didn't fight that way. I said in my very first post, not everything is parallel. But a squad is a squad. This is a squad. If I must slap a hugh essay at the end of a translation of a Roman military manual explaining in brutal detail why a squad is a squad, I will. It's very silly to argue against this..... only exposes ignorance of having ever been near any military whatsoever. 

 

Bring this up with some British soldiers, preferably infantry. They will explain it to you, and will walk you through it.

 

If I traveled back in time, and gave ahkio and ten man tents to Romans in winter alps..... what entities within those units would receiver them? Come on now..... say the name...... who would be sleeping in these ten man tents? What Latin term?

 

Second..... best of luck with this anarchist commune approach of a community of equals. I don't even know how to orient the feedback loops for establishing guard rotations and latrine duty in such a scenario, much less more complex operations of camp and in the field. 

 

You gotta breathing this one.... even the Anarchists of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain used a rank structure in order to get stuff done..... all Anarchist Volunteers.

 

Did puff the magic Dragon organize the camp, troop movements and battle arrangements? Notice I'm not declaring a rank structure parallel to the US Marine Corps (I don't know it myself) but I clearly, obviously know the default of a Roman legion demands a pecking order to get ANYTHING done. Furthermore, thanks to my namesake, I know there was a conceptual difference between ranks. 

 

I never was a guy who gave much a hoot for ranks or metals or shiny boots in the first place. You confuse me with a flag saluting stereotype if you think that..... it's just cotton flapping in the air to me. I'm more interested in the crux of operations and their results as per a living organism. 

[caldrail]

All you're doing is describing a modern military unit that you're familiar with. That's not history, and until you've derived something from historical or crchaeological sources in context, it does not describe functions of an army that lived in a different culture two thousand years ago.

 

Looking for similarities teaches us nothing. It's the differences that matter.