Hadrians Wall (creative brainstorming)

[Onasander]

I want us her to experiment with the VARIOUS reasons for constructing Englands two northern walls beyond obvious military functions. Not saying any idea is solid fact or good theory.... it's okay to be critical.... but remember this is a creative exercise, meant to seek out a possible range and meanings that the romans could of had for it....

 

1) The Walls may of operated as a delineation of who was "Roman Enough" to be defended, and expected to pay taxes, and who was not. It's similar to Chinese economic zones. People had the freedom to be taxed and be Roman on one side, or live as shameful barbarians on the otherside. It could of been at times a nearly open border, in terms of immigration and trade.... but alowed the romans power of the taxable trade.... close to the Austrian Economics School.... and a very clever way on the romans part in taxing a unconquered barbarian population. At othertimes, they could of stemmed the flow one way or both to adjust population increases and decreases.

 

2) Pure Immigration Control... for whatever reason, England experienced the first large barbarian incursions.... and responded not by adopting the barbarians fuedally into the empire, but building a wall and said, to borrow a phrase from Farscape "My Side, Your Side". Only later would roman theorists come upon the idea of using such people as replacements to roman legions.

 

3) Keep a buffer to the north.

 

The similarity between the visigoth and viking ships, and their general raiding strategy has always struck me. The Northern British isles may always of been a target, and the Romans.... tired of trying to convert the backwards picts, felt they were a decent enough buffer and good distraction to raiders. If things got bad enough, the Romans could always march north and jointly repel them.... but then again, they could just sit back and relax as the barbarians killed one another.

 

4) The Walls were the first IT Blach Hole.

 

It's quite possible the grand clever plan of the walls as we now see it started off much more innocently, and just got distorted and expanded as the operation was being built from endless imput from too many clever people. In the end, instead of a few forts, or simple demarcation line... England inherited a marvelous, yet rather useless piece of fortification matching the needs of local burghersand nobles, keen ideas of local garrisons, and next to no common sense of the local governor.... leaving future emperors exasperated yet intrigued with the possibilities underlining the theory of the wall, but not quite knowing at any given time how to make rational, coherent sense of all it's time consuming aspects. Alot of loose ends, that would cost more and more money to develop. Eventually they said screw it, and just built another wall to simplify the process... and then in their triumph, realized they didn't actually need that wall either, and had been going all about the whole business all wrong to begin with.

 

5) Local Noble was drunk, and started building a wall.... standing over his slaves inebriated... and his property sorta paralleled another nobles north land, and he thought hey, great idea. This sounds silly and ahistorical.... but I've seen just sort of thing happen in Hawaii. Never underestimate alcohol, readily available building material, and readily available labor.

 

6) The wall funded the military or government.

 

Quite possible, a throwback to the economic zone idea, the wall was much less a defensive fortification, but rather a far and useful location to station otherwise troublesome military units, and get them to pay for themselves, preferably extra on top of that.

 

Just as in the Roman Republic, armies were not allowed in Rome, legions had to largely leave and go to the border, and sit there playing tic tac toe till the next regional conflict erupted.

 

7) A Imperial Apparatus to curtail the likelihood of rival emperors from popping up on the isles.

 

The whole of Great Britian would be rather easy to unify.... but would also require many more troops, and no matter how cleverly you sub divided it's administration, would always be a large, unified military bloc. Enough to do serious damage on the continent at will, with a secure rear and navy to project force along europes western front. England had a massive tactical advantage, able to invade pretty much anywhere. By making a akward wall, preserving a local opposition, it gave aspiring emperors less troops, an enemy in the rear, and more dependence on the mainland.

 

Likely many, many other possibilities, but it's all I can pul out at this moment.

Edited September 28, 2014 by Onasander

[caldrail]

Hadrians Wall was a security zone upgraded with a visible barrier. It functioned in the same way as the Berlin Wall, the West Bank Wall, or the Mexican Frontier, in that it was there to control traffic across the border rather than defend it, and the defenses of the wall are strictkly speaking on both sides - it isn't often recognised that the north of england was very much 'injun territory' even if most of them were 'on the reservation'.

 

[b]1) The Walls may of operated as a delineation of who was "Roman Enough" to be defended[/b]

Why would that be necessary? If you're outside the Roman provinces, you would naturally tend to assume that anyone the other side of the frontier would be either a Roman citizen or a Roman inhabitant. This is too abstract a concept. The Romans were normally more practical and direct about such matters.

 

2) Pure Immigration Control...

Partly. However it also provided for security and customs income.

 

3) Keep a buffer to the north.

Yes. It most certainly was, especially if you include the forts with connections to the Wall either side of it.

 

4) The Walls were the first IT Blach Hole.

A strange abstraction to use. Hardly the first Roman white elephant though.

 

5) Local Noble was drunk, and started building a wall

Hadrian ordered the wall to be built to reinforce the Stanegate Zone on the Caledonian frontier, to establish a monument to Roman presence, and to keep the troops busy.

 

6) The wall funded the military or government.

No, it didn't. The upkeep of such constructions and their troops was going to outweigh the income from taxes to a serious degree.

 

7) A Imperial Apparatus to curtail the likelihood of rival emperors from popping up on the isles.

How? By enforcing the furthest boundary from Rome? That's ridiculous. In any case it certainly didn't have that effect. Britain was noted as "being rich in usurpers".

[guy]

Question: On the course about Hadrian's Wall, the instructor keeps referring to the wall as "Rome's most heavily defended border." I'm a little skeptical.

 

I imagine that there were other sections of the border (perhaps in Germany or the border with the Sassanians) that were at least "more militarized" with less active trade and commerce. I know that Rome's official presence was almost three centuries at Hadrian's Wall so it's hard to generalize throughout its entire existence.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

guy also known as gaius

Edited September 30, 2014 by guy

[Bryaxis Hecatee]

Well no other front did present a continuous stone wall with such an heavy military presence. Simply look at the forces deployed on the wall vs the lenght of the defended border, and add to that the three supporting legion further south, and then compare it with the density of troops on the German border (which used waterways and a berm + wooden wall with observation towers and camps as defense), the Danubian border (water + towers and camps), the desert border (fortlets and bases) or the Algerian side (unguarded low wall to direct traffic + fortresses) : you do indeed have the most heavily guarded border. You may want to check David J. Breeze's book "the frontiers of imperial Rome" (Pen & Swords 2011), for example figures 17, 20 and 22 :

 

 

 

[caldrail]

Question: On the course about Hadrian's Wall, the instructor keeps referring to the wall as "Rome's most heavily defended border." I'm a little skeptical.

 

I imagine that there were other sections of the border (perhaps in Germany or the border with the Sassanians) that were at least "more militarized" with less active trade and commerce. I know that Rome's official presence was almost three centuries at Hadrian's Wall so it's hard to generalize throughout its entire existence.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

guy also known as gaius

There was a concentration of forces there that you wouldn't have seen in Europe. Not only was there a risk of tribal aggression from the north, the region south of the wall wasn't entirely peaceful either. However, to say the area was 'the most defended' is a bit misleading. Hadrians Wall was not a military defensive work - it had a gate every mile for crying out loud, and the walkway was barely wide enough to stand on in many places, never mind allowing troops to man the battlements. Indeed, military policy for the border was to respond in strength to incursions after they had occurred rather than stop the barbarians at the wall. The auxillaries manning the posts along the wall were there to delay such incursions, provide security and customs roles, and pass information back to the legionsary forts of potential trouble.

[Onasander]

Stanegate Zone on the Caledonian frontier

 

 

I applaud such knowledge, where did you learn about that?

 

See... I'm understanding it's a silly worthless defensive barrier, I take one look at it and can tell this. It's about as intimidating a obstacle as a chain link fence.... I could ditch over it fast, and getting Calvary or even chariots over it with the simplest of ramps would take mere minutes to set up.

 

I can't say how they manned it, but assume it's similar to how MPs patrol the inner chain link walls on military bases, they constantly patrol on 4 Wheel drive, looking for tracks. A defence in depth approach.

 

But then you keep whipping out the Harians every mile had a gate issue, and the obvious customs issue, and that a very different kind of troop, "Auxiliary" maintained it.

 

I'm guessing these auxiliary were neither coin paid mercenary, and only sometimes local aboriginals.... largely foreign ethnic warriors settled on the frontier, given land, given shared guard time with regular legionary details to ensure they are competent.

 

These datails have me scratching my head. I can't argue with much of your logic, but if they were not turning a coin on it, why insist on so many gates? If it wasn't profitable, why such a massive silly military expenditure?

 

Lastly, it's not silly to assume, given tge number of imperial upsurpers who came from England, a need to curtail the territory they had to draw troops from, it only reinforces such logic.

 

I can't say it was done as such (this thread was creative exploration, not how I feel about such things as good historical fact).... but seems none the less to of operated as such. Imagine the headaches had Scotland been subdued to any Emperor trying to maintain a stable government.

 

Only thing that seems to warrant such a heavy military expenditure is Tin, Taxes (how much, dunno), or that something made England a invasion magnet, and that the Anglo Saxon, Danish, and Norman invasions were not a post roman phenomena, but happened often enough to keep the Romans nervous.

[caldrail]

 

 

I applaud such knowledge, where did you learn about that?

From reading literature and listening to an esteemed member of our forum, who is closely
connected with researchers in the area. Sadly he doesn't post much around here these days but
 his lessons are not forgotten.

 

See... I'm understanding it's a silly worthless defensive barrier, I take one look at it and can
tell this. It's about as intimidating a obstacle as a chain link fence.... I could ditch over it fast, and
getting Calvary or even chariots over it with the simplest of ramps would take mere minutes to set
 up.

The vast majority of the Roman frontier throughout the empire was no more than a vague idea of
what was or wasn't Roman territory. In some cases, a frontier only existed because that was
where the Romans chose to enforce it.. Such open lines were regularly patrolled and do note that
 the Romans concentrated their forces during imperial times for the reaction against incursion, not
 preventing the incursion itself, allied to diplomatic/intelligence shenanigans designed to forewarn
or offset any such ideas among the neighbouring barbarians.

 

I can't say how they manned it, but assume it's similar to how MPs patrol the inner chain
link walls on military bases, they constantly patrol on 4 Wheel drive, looking for tracks. A defence
 in depth approach.

Yep. You got it. Only with hoses and foot patrols.

 

But then you keep whipping out the Harians every mile had a gate issue, and the obvious
customs issue, and that a very different kind of troop, "Auxiliary" maintained it.

I'm guessing these auxiliary were neither coin paid mercenary, and only sometimes local
aboriginals.... largely foreign ethnic warriors settled on the frontier, given land, given shared guard
time with regular legionary details to ensure they are competent.

Auxillaries were paid allied under Roman control wo would achieve Roman citizenshipby service
tothe empire. They were second class troops and used for secondary duties or as in Hadrians
Wall security roles.

 

These datails have me scratching my head. I can't argue with much of your logic, but if they
were not turning a coin on it, why insist on so many gates? If it wasn't profitable, why such a
massive silly military expenditure?

Hadrian insisted on a gate every mile, even when his advisors noted that the escarpment wuld be
on one side of them here and there. It was his choice. Remember that whilst the wall had practical
value, ir was alsoastatement of his rule, his glory, Roman power, and a means tokeeptroops busy
bty way of mundane duties and running repeairs.  There is eveidence that the Wall was originally
plastered and painted white. So stop stop griping legionary and get on with it....

 

Only thing that seems to warrant such a heavy military expenditure is Tin, Taxes (how
much, dunno), or that something made England a invasion magnet, and that the Anglo Saxon,
Danish, and Norman invasions were not a post roman phenomena, but happened often enough to
keep the Romans nervous.

Tin was available mostly in the south west of England - I don't know of any sources near Hadrians
Wall. The original Stanegate line was where the Romans chose to establish a frontier having been
stopped from completing the conquest of Caledonia by a paranoid Domitian. The later expansion
to the temporary Antonine Wall in the reign of Antinius Pius was for political kudos rather than any
 military gain and not retained., the Romans falling back to Hadrians Wall and re=-establishing
their border control there.

Britain ws an oddity in Roman terms and functioned in much the same way as the wild west did to
the Americans in th 19th century. Not only was the north Romano-British frontier a potential
powderkeg and would remain so beyond the Roman occupation, it was also a strategic reserve,
and potentially a stopping off point for further expansion (which we know never happened though
it was partialy undertaken in Caledonia and abandoned, and in the case of Hibernia, considered
but never started. Edited October 1, 2014 by caldrail

[Onasander]

Plastered?

 

Okay.... wow. Did they paint colorful themes on it too?

 

I sorta assumed the frontier wall building was a responsive mimicry of the wall building on either side of the Caucasus and the Black and Caspian Sea to keep the huns out. Seems to of worked well, they ended up striking west.

 

But this plastering.... I don't know now. That is remarkably short sighted and stupid. You could of had a few man detail from every outpost digging a canal, or paving yet another road, or building something.... somewhere. Rotate those guts out every week or two. Even making ships for sale, turning a imperial profit.... something better than plastering.

 

I can't even begin to imagine how utterly boring and demoralizing that was.

 

Could you imagine being the inspector charged with the task of inspecting the plaster walls? What exactly are you going to say when you look a supposed frontier soldier in the eye, and demand to know why his wall isn't properly plastered. That soldiers who don't plaster their defensive positions make poor soldiers indeed? I'm just trying to imagine a armored african soldier standing in the morning frost, holding a spear, helmet slightly crooked, trying to keep a straight face hearing this nonsense.

 

I'm guessing the rate of rape and theft by these auxiliary north of the line was quite high.

 

Honestly, if your a soldier, and your group of guys have the day/s off rotation, which side of the wall you think your bored wolf pack is heading out on? Harder to get in trouble if you screw around to the north, rather than Roman lands south where someone could conceivably complain about being tax payers and having to put up with auxiliary hijinks.

[caldrail]

 

 

Plastered?

Okay.... wow. Did they paint colorful themes on it too?

Whitewashed.

 

I sorta assumed the frontier wall building was a responsive mimicry of the wall building on
either side of the Caucasus and the Black and Caspian Sea to keep the huns out. Seems to of worked well, they ended up striking west.

No, but the principle was similar. Romans often built walls to impede nomadic travel across their
boundaries, not as line of impediment around the entire frontier, but across known travel routes. There are also walls in Africa for this purpose that survive.

 

But this plastering.... I don't know now. That is remarkably short sighted and stupid. You
could of had a few man detail from every outpost digging a canal, or paving yet another road, or
building something.... somewhere. Rotate those guts out every week or two. Even making ships
for sale, turning a imperial profit.... something better than plastering.

Two reasons. One - it looks far more impressive than dull weathered stone and soil. Secondly -
it's something that requires regular maintenance and gioves another duty for Centurions to inflict
on idle troops. There is nothing worse than troops with nothing to do and the Romans were well
aware of that.

 

I can't even begin to imagine how utterly boring and demoralizing that was.

No more so than building roads and acqueducts (most soldiers were nothing more than manual
labourers being told to move rocks from point A to point . That was why legionaries were so
keen to be listed as immunes and given a cushy jobback at the fort. It seems many of these
men conducted stockchecks - surviving records are full of them.

 

Could you imagine being the inspector charged with the task of inspecting the plaster
walls? What exactly are you going to say when you look a supposed frontier soldier in the eye,
and demand to know why his wall isn't properly plastered. That soldiers who don't plaster their
defensive positions make poor soldiers indeed? I'm just trying to imagine a armored african
soldier standing in the morning frost, holding a spear, helmet slightly crooked, trying to keep a
straight face hearing this nonsense.

Legate - Centurion!

Centurion - Legate!

Legate - Why is the Wall looking shabby a mile west of Vindolanda?

Centurion - Shabby sir?

Legate - Yes, centurion, shabby. Put some men on it and get it cleaned up. I want that wall looking like it was made yesterday when my brother comes here for the Saturnalia.

Centurion - Yes sir. At once.... Oi! You! Come here you lazy excuse of a legionary!

Legionary - Centurion...

Centurion - You, Marcus Astrippus, and Gaius Dubius, get doen to the stores, get some whitewash, and clean the wall a mile west of Vindolanda.

Legionary - Awww, centurion,

Centurion - I've given you an order!

Legionary - I was thinking of a contribution to your retirement fund....

Centurion - How much?

Legionary - Err... ten sestercii...

Centurion - Ten sestercii? Get yourself down to the stroes boy before I have you flogged. I'll be
down there later to look it later so you and the other two better have something to show it!

And so on. Does that sound familiar?

 

I'm guessing the rate of rape and theft by these auxiliary north of the line was quite high.

I would guess it was always high in proximty to the Roman military. Bear in mind however that
troops were traditionall required to swear not to steal from each other when on campaign.

 

Honestly, if your a soldier, and your group of guys have the day/s off rotation, which side of
the wall you think your bored wolf pack is heading out on? Harder to get in trouble if you screw
around to the north, rather than Roman lands south where someone could conceivably complain
about being tax payers and having to put up with auxiliary hijinks.

Records from Vindolanda suggest that up to half the legion might be ecused duty or on rest and
relaxtion at any given time. This would be when trouble was not expected of course. Soldiers
asked permission to visit people or places quite often, so I understand, sometimes involving
significant travel.

[Onasander]

It sounds remarkably similar to the US military. I was in the airborne infantry up in alaska, very proud of it, but spent half of it as a gimp due to bad doctors and very low deployment rosters, and CSMs who thought they could reduce their injured rosters by informing injured soldiers they were, indeed.... not injured. It sometimes worked, but made it a living hell for those who couldn't knit flesh merely by singing airborne ranger cadences.

 

When I first got to my unit (healthy) they was nearly half a platoon of guys in supply, doing nothing. If you needed a box of something, five guys would limp ocer and get it. Most got medically discharged. As time went, a few got randomly injured, and were sent to supple (just me, after several months of being reinjured by the same untreated injury) or commo, or office work.

 

I hated supply, because I just wanted to be healed and sent back to the line. I found I went from being admired for being damn fast to being loathed and hated.... because in the minds of many sick minded little twirps who hated running, they wished they were me sitting in a office, while I wished they were them, running.

 

After two years of this, most of the guys who remembered who you were left, and your nothing but a broken soldier who never wants to work, and has some fascination in keeping the good supplies to just himself, denying everyone else access to them.... because thats what supply does.

 

I remember many circumstances of guys, often new, approaching me in a panic, asking how they can get into a head quarters platoon.... so and so was broken on them, and no one believed them, they didn't want to go AWOL, or sing Cadences back to health. I had to figure out who their teamleader, squad,leader and platoon sargent was, decide if they were idiots or not, and if so, sneak them pass the Army Troop Medical Center immediately across the street from us, and get over to the airforce base to be seen by an actual doctor. I always told them it was a horrible thing to be in headquarters, and it was much better to just be fixed up or sent home without the years of manipulative mind games played against you.

 

I know we had some guys who had previous specialized MOS, like former coast guard radio guys, who kept their past a secret to their higher ups in fear of being taken off the line and be given a office and radio to carry around.

 

In the infantry, your just infantry. A group esprite de corps. You are that, and that you are, a pure killing machine. You are gratified being a good aspect of a good group of men. Individuality and self worth can be measured by medals and achievements (how the romans did this I don't know), but once you get hurt, panic, anxiety, and fear can grip you. Your suddenly different,and you either want fixed,or in a safe place to heal. Your psychology is still tied to the unit and the esprite.

 

But once this starts with a few, paracites pop up, and the population explodes. A Black Sheep Mentality can pop up. It can eat away at the heart of the larger unit.

 

 

Certain contraints, like the complication of the unit roster, difficulty in terms of number of steps for discharge, and some cursed thing called a MToe written in Swahili caused extreme inbalances in healthy to sick on the modern infantry rosters vs ancient ones. But I suspect there are massive psychological parallels, given the Romans had more disease, harder manpower replacement issues via far flung units, and that a hard to diagnose disease would sometimes linger for months and then go away without explanation.

 

This being said, troops were likely healthier and better fed, and even a gimp in the rear made a decent reserve or base camp guard over not having anyone. Many could gain unexpected auxiliary skillsets like myself that are useful but hardly expected for anyone to have.

 

I just severely doubt there was a massive rush to have non infantry jobs in a infantry unit. It's rather embarrassing, you want the pride of the front line guys. If your in long enough, and news guys come in, then even if put on a work detail, you get a much nicer aspect of it.

 

And trust me, it's far better to build a useful road than a worthless plaster job, you can a sense of pride and progress in a road or canal. Plastering a f'n frontier wall? That belongs in a Black Adder skit.

[caldrail]

Because we and the Romans are both organised socieities at war, you would expect some similarities in behaviour - we're the same species and

haven't changed much in two thousamnd years. On the other side of the coin, Rome was two thousand/fifteen hundred  years in the past, so our

outlook, strategies, and methods are bound to be different in many ways to theirs. I've written long about this dichotomy on this website and others.

 

Whilst it's true that a useful civil construct is better in many ways than a long whitewashed wall, that wasn't the point. Troops were stationed in one

area, patrolled the srrounding area, and had a lot of free time on their hands. The Romans knew full well how risky it was to have idle troops (so do

we in the modern day - that why barracks are always clean and tidy, tanks painted, daily rituals observed) but for them the risks were more apparent

because the modern patriotic loyalty and military affiliation was very unreliable back then, factionalised, subkect to politics, personal ambition, and

although the Roman legions are often described as disciplined, that discipline was maintained by strict punishment rather than any engagement of the

individual soldiers common sense and fraternalism that we regularly employ in modern times. So the sources, perhaps not unexpectantly, also

describe legions as potentially troublesome and prone to undesirable local initiative.

 

The manual work done by legions in civic projects was largely for convenience rather than any military occupation. The local governor wanted a new

road to solve problems and please the locals (and the Senate, incidentially), so where to get the labour? Workers cost money - but hey - Aren't we

already paying those troops down the road and aren't things peaceful right now? If they're not busy, he's got a road they can help build. So they get the

job, and troops jockey for cushy jobs away from the manual work.

[Onasander]

It just seems smarter to keep them employed in some useful construction vs useless. I buy your argument for idle troops, but not that they got dumped for decades plastering a wall, that retarded stuff had to of died off after Hadrian kicked the bucket.

 

Besides, your presumption their discipline was only related to punishment is incorrect. Sullust in the Jugunthine war mentioned rewards and punishments, as well as emulation of heroic actions. Romans at the time of Scipio Africanus (who wrote a now lost art of war, corollary assumed) knew this, and it was remembered till the end of the republic. I doubt just as the Roman Army became more professional they suddenly went cross eyed and forgot it.

 

I remember the other day I translated a word, I think it was Honoro or something close, and on wiktionary it listed one of the sub definitions "to be clothe on honor".

 

Romans practiced triumphs and parades, apparently (annoyingly to me) had a dress uniform....

 

They also practiced uniform dress of their troops, shared weapons practice.

 

I just don't know the range in full, or exact approaches they used. I'm guessing alot of factors came into play, alot of which is just forgotten.

 

But not your description of this useless as fuck plastering detail. We were made to do similar retarded stuff on occasion. Command usually attributed to discipline, but the roman legions diefied such things, so don't carry over such linguistic assumptions. But the underlining range of psychology of a group of guys performing what they know to be a silly pointless task under a larger hierarchy, I get in full. It's cause such psychology isn't merely introverted and abstract, or culturally that varied, as it's a primarily sociological phenomena where emotional highs and lows will be expressed verbally and by body language by the work detail.... and work details have to accommodate the pissed off views of a variety of personality types. Hence, though some variability, suck is still suck, and stupid is stupid in any era. It's very easy to grasp how they reacted.

 

Aspects elude, such as.... did they sing while working, or grumbled, have work details guarded, or just went out half naked not caring.... hung over or sober....

 

Likely a bit at different times, but hard to say how positive and disciplined they were within the spirit of their tasking.

 

I just doubt this was done for long. Most retarded thing I've heard of, besides human sacrifice and civil war, that Romes legions ever were involved in.

[caldrail]

 

 

It just seems smarter to keep them employed in some useful construction vs useless. I buy
your argument for idle troops, but not that they got dumped for decades plastering a wall, that
retarded stuff had to of died off after Hadrian kicked the bucket.

Not a vaild argument. Hadrian did not regularly inspect the Wall. The retarded stuff you allude to
was pretty standard Roman military practice. As to when the Wall became dilapadated I can't say,
 but it was an active frontier during the course of the Empire subsequent to its construction. There
 is probably a case for believing that the wall became less well tended toward the end, what with
troop withdrawals, financial restriction, and so on, but I don't have any chronological evidence.

 

Besides, your presumption their discipline was only related to punishment is incorrect.
Sullust in the Jugunthine war mentioned rewards and punishments, as well as emulation of heroic
actions. Romans at the time of Scipio Africanus (who wrote a now lost art of war, corollary
assumed) knew this, and it was remembered till the end of the republic. I doubt just as the Roman
Army became more professional they suddenly went cross eyed and forgot it.

The Roman system of reward was biased toward certain activity - meaning courage and
steadfastness in battle. We should include the benefits of completing a term of service of course.
 Howeverm, these inducements only encouraged recruitment and results on the field of battle. On
the other side of the coin, the rebellion described in detail by Tactius that took place in Pannonia
on the death of Augustus is very telling. Troops complain about the high tariffs published for
exemption from duty, about the long and extyended duration of service (troops weren't just
serving twenty years or so - they were being induced to remain on strength), and the harshness of
discipline. This was of course the occaision when a centurion nicknamed "Give Me Another" -
referring to the vine staffs he broke on peoples backs - was murdered. Tactius dryly tells us that
"There were no new reasons" for the rebellion, indicating that these complaints were fairly
commonplace. And for that matter, please note that as soon as the commander - Junius Blaesus
 - relaxed discipline for a few days, his troops went on a rampage ransacking local villages.

 

I just don't know the range in full, or exact approaches they used. I'm guessing alot of
factors came into play, alot of which is just forgotten.

Actually I agree with you on this point.

 

your description of this useless as fuck plastering detail. We were made to do similar
retarded stuff on occasion.

There is an element of repetitive work applied to modern units - that's military policy to induce the
desired behaviour from their men - but the Romans also turned it to a useful civic function as well.
They were very practical about warfare and extremely exploitative in governmnent.

 

elude, such as.... did they sing while working, or grumbled, have work details guarded, or
just went out half naked not caring.... hung over or sober....

Virgil refers to roops singing when the route begins. How long it took for the singing to subside
isn't recorded. A recent living history experiemtn with US servicemen in Roman gear showed that
 route marches were not an easy activity, and that's with well fed and fit modern soldiers.

 

t believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death. Francis Bacon

it depends on the mindset and imagination of the individual, as well as their age. Youngsters
simply don't consider risk as a rule.

[Onasander]

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Augustus*.html

 

 

He made many changes and innovations in the army, besides reviving some usages of former times. He exacted the strictest discipline. It was with great reluctance that he allowed even his generals to visit their wives, and then only in the winter season. He sold a Roman knight and his property at public auction, because he had cut off the thumbs of two young sons, to make them unfit for military service; but when he saw that some tax-gatherers p157were intent upon buying him, he knocked him down to a freedmanº of his own, with the understanding that he should be banished to the country districts, but allowed to live in freedom. 2 He dismissed the entire tenth legion in disgrace, because they were insubordinate, and others, too, that demanded their discharge in an insolent fashion, he disbanded without the rewards which would have been due for faithful service. If any cohorts gave way in battle, he decimated them,21 and fed the rest on barley.22 When centurions left their posts, he punished them with death, just as he did the rank and file; for faults of other kinds he imposed various ignominious penalties, such as ordering to stand all day long before the general's tent, sometimes in their tunics without their sword-belts, or again holding ten-foot poles or even a clod of earth.23

25 [Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 1 After the civil wars he never called any of the troops "comrades," either in the assembly or in an edict, but always "soldiers";24 and he would not allow them to be addressed otherwise, even by those of his sons or stepsons who held military commands, thinking the former term too flattering for the requirements of discipline, the peaceful state of the times, and his own dignity and that of his household. 2 Except as a fire-brigade in Rome, and when there was fear of riots in times of scarcity, he employed freedmen as soldiers only twice: once as a guard for the colonies in the vicinity of Illyricum, and again to defend the bank of the river Rhine; even these he levied, when they were slaves, from men and women of means, and at once gave them freedom; and he kept them under their original p159standard,25 not mingling them with the soldiers of free birth or arming them in the same fashion.

3 As military prizes he was somewhat more ready to give trappings26 or collars, valuable for their gold and silver, than crowns for scaling ramparts or walls, which conferred high honour; the latter he gave as sparingly as possible and without favouritism, often even to the common soldiers. He presented Marcus Agrippa with a blue banner in Sicily after his naval victory. Those who had celebrated triumphs were the only ones whom he thought ineligible for prizes, even though they had been the companions of his campaigns and shared in his victories, on the ground that they themselves had the privilege of bestowing such honours wherever they wished. 4 He thought nothing less becoming in a well-trained leader than haste and rashness, and, accordingly, favourite sayings of his were: "More haste, less speed"; "Better a safe commander than a bold"; and "That is done quickly enough which is done well enough." He used to say that a war or a battle should not be begun under any circumstances, unless the hope of gain was clearly greater than the fear of loss; for he likened such as grasped at slight gains with no slight risk to those who fished with a golden hook, the loss of which, if it were carried off, could not be made good by any catch.

[Onasander]

That post above was Seutonius, life of augustus.

 

Hard to say how much of that was systematically instituted. I'm sure we will eventually say it, just it's hard.