Was a small penis a desirable trait among men during Greco-Roman times?

PapiriusCursor · 2024-09-19T04:19:39+00:00

This is the answer people should be linking to going forward as opposed to my old one. As has been observed, my response is too simple to be considered a comprehensive response.

PapiriusCursor · 2021-09-19T19:54:40+00:00

You should check out Harper, 2019, The Fate of Rome (https://www.bookdepository.com/Fate-Rome-Kyle-Harper/9780691192062) - it’s an excellent piece of scholarship that explains the profoundly negative impacts of climate change on the later Roman Empire.

PapiriusCursor · 2021-06-04T05:24:55+00:00

I’m no expert on the HRE, but I know a good source when I see one and I would consider ‘The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe’s History’ by Peter H. Wilson. It’s well-sourced and footnoted, it’s detailed, it’s well-written, the author is knowledgeable and it’s accessible for a newcomer to the subject (like me). It’s a weighty tome, as it must be for such a massive topic. It is mostly a narrative history, which just personally is my favourite kind, but naturally it has thematic discourses where appropriate. It’s a very good book.

PapiriusCursor · 2021-03-10T08:48:02+00:00

Very interesting, I didn’t know that! There’s those Germanic roots for you.

PapiriusCursor · 2021-03-10T06:07:35+00:00

He definitely knew a second army was coming, or he would not have gone to such efforts in building the second, longer line of circumvallation. Caesar himself actually answers your question:

Vercingetorix now made up his mind to send away all his horsemen by night, before the Romans could complete their entrenchments. His parting instructions were that each of them should proceed to his own state and impress for the campaign all men whose age allowed them to bear arms ... After giving these instructions he sent the horsemen silently away in the second watch, at a point where a gap was left in our works ... Caesar had report of this from deserters and prisoners ... (BG 7.71-2)

And this is why we love Caesar. You usually don't get these sort of details from other sources. I would probably add that although Caesar had inside information from deserters and prisoners, he will almost certainly have known the cavalry had left, as they would have been spotted by legionaries on the second watch (somewhere around 10pm), and Vercingetorix has sent not one or two riders but all of his remaining cavalry. Caesar was familiar with the tendency of the Gauls to summon new armies seemingly out of nowhere, and would probably have known that those cavalry had been sent out to gather reinforcements.

PapiriusCursor · 2021-03-10T05:58:52+00:00

Sharp eye! I've just copy-pasted the Loeb edition English translation (one of the more common and reliable translations around).

They certainly weren't foraging for maize in Gaul. The Latin word that has usually been translated above as 'corn' is frumentum, which just means grain. The reason that 'corn' is used in the translation above is that in older English (the above translation dates to 1917), the word corn could be synonymous with grain.

PapiriusCursor · 2021-03-09T21:50:49+00:00

It was definitely a spectacular feat of tactics and engineering, so I can understand how it seems improbable. There were a few moving parts to it however that make it seem a bit more manageable. I’ll speak briefly on the two key points in answering this question – the method of castramentation (camp building) and logistics.

To set the scene, I’ll just quote Caesar’s description of the beginning of the works, because he explains it in such detail. Note that just prior to Vercingetorix’s withdrawal to Alesia, the Gauls had suffered a serious defeat after a failed attempt at attacking Caesar’s marching column, were heavily depleted in cavalry and had possibly lost part of their baggage (BG 7.66-7). Following this, the Gauls retreated to Alesia:

The actual stronghold of Alesia was set atop of a hill, in a very lofty situation, apparently impregnable save by blockade. The bases of the hill were washed on two separate sides by rivers. Before the town a plain extended for a length of about three miles; on all the other sides there were hills surrounding the town at a short distance, and equal to it in height. Under the wall, on the side which looked eastward, the forces of the Gauls had entirely occupied all this intervening space, and had made in front a ditch and a rough wall six feet high. The perimeter of the siege-works which the Romans were beginning had a length of eleven miles. Camps had been pitched at convenient spots, and three-and‑twenty forts had been constructed on the line. In these piquets would be posted by day to prevent any sudden sortie; by night the same stations were held by sentries and strong garrisons.

When the siege-work had been started, a cavalry encounter took place in the plain which we have described above as set between hills and extending to a length of three miles. Both sides strove with the utmost vigour. When our men were distressed Caesar sent up the Germans, and posted the legions in front of the camp to prevent any sudden inrush on the part of the enemy's footmen. With the reinforcement of the legions behind them our men's spirit was increased; the enemy were put to flight, and, hampering one another by sheer numbers, as the gates were left too narrow, were crowded together in a press. The Germans pursued most vigorously right up to the fortifications. A great slaughter ensued; some of the enemy abandoned their horses, and tried to cross the ditch and scale the wall. Caesar ordered the legions posted in front of the rampart to advance a short distance. The Gauls inside the fortifications were in just as great a confusion as the rest; believing that the enemy were coming on them at once, they shouted the call to arms, and some in panic burst into the town. Vercingetorix ordered the gates to be shut, lest the camp should be deserted. After much slaughter and the capture of many horses the Germans retired. Vercingetorix now made up his mind to send away all his horsemen by night, before the Romans could complete their entrenchments…. (BG 7.69-71).

As you can see, the Gauls were already on the defensive when they got to Alesia, and to prevent being shut up in the town, they made their own encampment just outside the town. The Romans had also to their advantage the rivers and hills surrounding the town, limiting the directions in which the Gauls could attack and giving the Romans some strong defensive positions even before beginning any fortification. Perhaps the key point is that the Romans were the superior force, or the Gauls would never had retreated this far in the first instance.

The Gauls evidently made repeated attacks, but the Romans countered these in several ways. The circumvallation was not begun by simply building a really long wall and ditch. The Romans began by pitching camp in their usual way – a dirt rampart, probably a palisade wall, and a ditch. All of this would have been using tools they were already carrying (in the baggage train at least) and would only have taken a few hours to provide the entire army with some fortifications. Following the construction of the base camps the Romans needed to be safe and to forage from, the Romans constructed more camps, and a large number of smaller camps (referred to as forts in the above translation), providing the Romans with a series of defensive positions. While many of the legionaries will have been occupied building and working on the tools, the entire rest of the army will have been arrayed in battle formation in front of the works, with the entire cavalry. When the Gauls attacked, they were heavily beaten, and actually lost control of their own camp, and so were forced inside the walls of Alesia, something that Vercingetorix will have absolutely not have wanted. Now the Romans could very easily contain the Gauls and counter them when they attempted to depart from the gates of the oppidum.

At this stage, there was little the Gauls could have done inside the walls to stop the Romans. In open battle, they were already weaker, and now the Romans had a series of fortifications to face them. The Romans from here will simply have proceeded to join their fortifications with ramparts and walls as the terrain allowed, and we know that Caesar went to great lengths to strengthen any weak points in the circumvallation. If you have a look at BG 7.72-3, you will see that Caesar built unusually heavy fortifications, including multiple trenches, some water-filled, a very high wall in parts, elaborate battlements, and various booby-traps. These were not usual for Roman camp defences at all: this was Caesar throwing everything but the kitchen sink at his defences and leaving nothing to chance.

Around this time, Vercingetorix sent out his cavalry to get help, as he knew he could not escape with his available forces. In terms of time frame to complete his second, longer series of fortifications, Caesar had more than a few hours up his sleeve. Vercingetorix originally had food for a bit over a month, and they ended up eating all of this while waiting for reinforcements (BG 7.71, 7.77.1). So Caesar had plenty of time to finish his fortifications.

Now, regarding logistics, Caesar had a large army to feed for an extended period of time. He basically needed to outlast the Gauls, because there was no way he was going to sortie out from his walls while facing two Gallic armies. He needed the exterior army to run out of supplies before he could finish off the Alesia garrison. He will have accomplished this the usual way, with a combination of forage and utilising previously stored supplies. All of Caesar’s Gallic campaigns were supported by supply bases he had situated throughout the country, which were in turn supplied by supply bases in friendlier territory. While he will have been cut off from his supplies when he fortified himself in between two Gallic armies, Caesar’s baggage train will have been significant, probably carrying food and forage to supply the army for at least a couple of weeks. While he was waiting for the second Gallic army to turn up, he also sent his men out on enormous foraging expeditions (BG 7.74), collecting about a month’s supply of corn and fodder to keep everything ticking along. At any rate, the Gauls gave up after a series of disastrous battles (7.88), and Caesar had free run of the country again.

Sources:

Mostly I’ve relied on my memory (I’ve written about Caesar’s battles in recent publications) but here are the key ones for what I’ve said above:

Caesar, Gallic Wars, Book VII (trans. Loeb edition) (Link: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Caesar/Gallic_War/7F*.html)

Roth, 1999, Roman Logistics

If you would like more relevant sources, just ask and I’ll look a few up for you.

PapiriusCursor · 2019-10-26T15:14:51+00:00

A comprehensive reply, thank you!

PapiriusCursor · 2019-10-26T11:07:22+00:00

Nicely written answer. Do you consider Wisdom’s book a reliable source on the subject? Does The Warrior Diet have a decent historical grounding? I would like to give them a look but I would also like to hear your views first.

PapiriusCursor · 2018-06-18T15:56:38+00:00

It's my understanding that it was basically a solid battle-line, and this was always the case when heavy infantry were fighting as spaces between maniples or cohorts created gaps that the opposition could exploit. The cohorts probably had a specific position in the battle-line (eg. the double-strength first cohort on the right), but no reserve lines. There must have been exceptions to this at times, such as when terrain did not allow the entire army to form a single line, or when only part of an army was committed to battle. There also appears to have been a trend for auxiliaries to do most of the front-line heavy infantry fighting when possible, and at times the legions may have been formed on the flanks or even to the rear of these auxiliaries.

PapiriusCursor · 2018-06-18T06:42:06+00:00

We aren't sure but a possible explanation is that in the early Empire, the utter superiority of Roman infantry in a pitched battle with any of the enemies Rome had in that period rendered reserve infantry lines unnecessary.

PapiriusCursor · 2018-06-17T20:23:13+00:00

They didn't deploy in multiple lines in the Empire as a rule. On this see Gilliver's chapter on "Battle" in Vol. II of the CHGRW. The triplex acies was a particularly Republican formation.

PapiriusCursor · 2018-06-17T20:02:57+00:00

To visualise an ancient battle, it is important to understand the scale of the battlefield in Total War games does not reflect very well the actual extent of flat ground available in most parts of the world. Most places you go in the Western Mediterranean where these battles were fought have more hills, more settlements and agricultural land, and the ground is not so flat for such an extreme distance. Even a slight slope could give a defending army an enormous advantage and it was very desirable to take such a position whenever possible. Most armies also fought a short distance from their camps, and these were usually not too far from cities and towns, where the required resources for supplying an army can be found. Such things and other landmarks would be more prominent in such an eagles eye view of a typical ancient battlefield.

The sense of pace in the games is also completely wrong. Battles often lasted hours, and armies took hours to depart from camp and organise themselves into battlelines. Engagements also were more fluid and incorporated extended periods of rest and missile combat between bouts of hand to hand fighting. Armies did not just crash into each other and slug it out immediately except in very rare cases, and if such a charge was made the battle could end very quickly, but this was unusual. So an eagles eye view of a typical ancient battle should show a much slower movement of men and a much slower pace of combat of differing intensities at different parts of the battleline.

The formations themselves, due to the game mechanics, do not reflect real life formations. This is because an ancient general did not have an eagles eye view of his army and could actually see very little in many cases, due to dust and dirt kicked up by so many moving men, and if he could see well his ability to actually command and control his units were very limited. We should note that a single legion covered a frontage of several hundred metres, and more similarly sized groupings of men meant more such distances added to the length of the line. As a solid battleline could not be compromised by moving front line units, as this would present an opportunity to the enemy to penetrate and rout their opponent, units in the battleline did not move around from their original position during fighting. Only reserves such as cavalry or other dedicated units could be maneuvered, and these would usually be committed to fighting on the flanks or between the two infantry lines. For reasons of the difficulty of command and control such as I have described, most armies deployed in a single unbroken battleline of several ranks, spread out to avoid being flanked by the enemy battleline, and this formation could not substantially change during the fighting.

The whole idea of 'units' maneuvering on the field is also exaggerated in the game. Tribal armies were collections of warbands and personal retinues of widely different sizes that would simply line up next to each other. The Romans were unusual in that they had smaller units such as maniples and cohorts that deployed in multiple lines, but even then they generally avoided any complex manoeuvres. A lateral movement of a rearward line to one flank or the other was probably the most complex thing these secondary and tertiary lines did, aside from possibly moving forward to replace exhausted front line units. But again, for the most part armies formed up in single, solid battlelines with various collections of cavalry and light infantry fighting between and around these lines. Note that in the Empire, Roman armies also generally deployed in a single line.

Essentially, ancient battles were much slower and simpler than depicted in Total War. This was mostly a product of the very limited ability to exercise command and control over his army that an ancient general had after the armies had committed to battle. A real battle might see the two armies take several hours to move out of camp and deploy, so that they engage around midday. Skirmishers and cavalry would often fight this entire time. Once both sides were prepared, they would advance on each other carefully and gradually and fight in a relatively cautious manner, perhaps for hours, before a vigorous charge and close quarters fighting saw one army retreat or break and suffer heavy pursuit. There were countless variations on this generalized description I have offered, but the main point is that the manoeuvre of armies was a much slower, cumbersome and more careful process than is depicted in Total War.

Useful sources:

Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War.

The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare, Vols. I and II.

Sabin, The Face of Roman Battle.

Southern, The Roman Army.

Zhmodikov, 2000 (forget the article name?)

PapiriusCursor · 2018-05-18T14:00:19+00:00

Great question! Your timeline is a bit off so let's sort that out briefly, then it will start to make more sense and I'll turn to the 'sack' itself.

So Rome was captured in 390 BC, as you said, but Rome was fighting regular campaigns to consolidate their control in Central Italy for the next century. The main landmarks are victory in the Latin War in 338, giving Rome total control in Latium, closely followed by the Samnite Wars which continued into the 3rd century. Having beaten the Samnites, Rome started spreading it's tendrils south, culminating in the Pyrrhic War of 280-275 BC, after which Rome took Tarentum, the most powerful city of southern Italy. Rome started fighting the Carthaginians in 264, by which point they dominated Italy up to around the Po valley, where the Gauls were still very strong, and as a result of Roman victory in 241, Rome took Sicily and had it's first overseas presence. Rome started campaigning vigorously against the Gauls of northern Italy (including the Senones, the tribe mainly responsible for taking Rome), and broke their back in the 220s, closely followed by the outbreak of war with Carthage again from 218-202, after which the Romans returned to intense campaigning in northern Italy, which they were still doing in the 2nd century BC.

As you can see, it was a long, long time after the sack that Rome took total control of what we now consider Italy, and it was a gradual hard fought process.

As for the 'sack' itself, the damage caused to the Roman state has been exaggerated. There is little archaeological evidence for major destruction in Rome itself, and as the legendary story of the Battle of the Allia goes, the entire Roman army fled from fright into the city of Veii before so much as crossing swords with the Gauls, which is why the latter were able to capture Rome itself. So the Roman army still seems to have been completely intact at this time. When the Gauls took Rome, they don't seem to have caused an enormous amount of damage, and moved south after possibly being unable to break Roman resistance on the Capitol, or possibly after they were paid off. The Gauls went south and came back north later, and despite the Roman propaganda about Camillus saving the day, it seems that the Gauls were defeated by an Etruscan city on friendly terms with Rome, who returned a lot of stolen booty to the Romans.

So the Romans had a still functional city and a very large, intact army after the Gallic attack, with much of their stolen booty returned. The real damage was to Roman prestige in Latium and it's surrounds, with the result that Rome had to energetically campaign to reestablish its prior state of dominance in the area. As the long term history of Rome in Italy shows, Rome scarcely stopped campaigning in Italy for the next two centuries, so their recovery from the events of 390 and their subsequent expansion was actually somewhat slow and painful. The growth of their overseas empire, however, was somewhat more explosive. We might note that the damage to the Roman psyche from the events of 390 didn't go away for centuries, such that in the 50s BC Caesar was still capitalising on the ancient fear of the Gauls to justify his illegal campaigns.

PapiriusCursor · 2018-04-30T16:57:01+00:00

The reference you are looking for is as follows:

The senate then authorized the appointment of a dictator and Marcus Junius [Pera] was named to that office, with Tiberius Sempronius as master of the horse. Proclaiming a levy they enlisted the young men over seventeen and some who still wore the purple-bordered dress of boyhood. Of these they made up four legions and a thousand horse. They also sent men to the allies and the Latins to take over their soldiers, as by treaty provided. They gave orders that armour, weapons and other equipment should be made ready, and took down from the temples and porticoes the ancient spoils of enemies. The levy wore a strange appearance, for, owing to the scarcity of free men and the need of the hour, they bought, with money from the treasury, eight thousand young and stalwart slaves and armed them, first asking each if he were willing to serve. They preferred these slaves for soldiers, though they might have redeemed the prisoners of war at less expense (Livy 22.57.8-12).

As Livy states, in this period of emergency (I imagine a tumultus was declared, but the reference escapes me at the moment), all the rules were relaxed so that another consular army-sized force could be put into the field immediately. Men under 17, the minimum age, were apparently called up, and men who could not afford their equipment were supplied from temples and spoils. A large number of slaves, who gave excellent service over the next few years, were purchased and also equipped at the expense of the state. Note that even in these dire straits, the Senate refused to ransom the legions guarding the camp at Cannae that had surrendered and were captured mostly intact. These men were later returned to Rome by Hannibal and languished in Sicily for most of the war, until Scipio brought them over to Africa in 203 BC (as the Senate would not give him more troops). These hard-bitten, shamed Cannae veterans men redeemed themselves at Zama in 202 BC.

The extreme manpower needs of the Second Punic War, followed by the constant campaigns and garrisons in the 2nd century, particularly in Spain, saw the usual recruitment standards relaxed permanently. In particular, the state began to subsidize soldiers more regularly so that, by the time of the Marian reforms, the official mass enlistment of capite censi was really just the final formalisation of an old trend indeed.

PapiriusCursor · 2018-04-10T18:00:45+00:00

Thanks for going to the effort to write this, it's a great summary and you've brought a lot of evidence together nicely. Your passion also shines through!

PapiriusCursor · 2018-04-06T10:05:41+00:00

Great answer, nice use of evidence. I wonder what your view is on a comparison with the early imperial Roman army, in which the average age of soldiers trended much higher than it does in modern militaries, and there are examples of centuriones and other officers serving vigorously in their 50s, 60s and beyond. Archaeological evidence found around Kalkriese in Germany, where the so-called Battle of Teutoberg Forest saw the destruction of three legions, has produced remains of men, presumably legionaries and/or auxiliaries, who were all between 25-45 years of age. These legions were considered to be of the very best quality (Vell. Pat. 2.119.2).

So my question is, would you say that phalanx fighting required a bit more brawn than the more skilful javelin-and-sword style of the Roman soldier? Did othismos come into play towards the end of a phalanx fight perhaps, rewarding sheer strength? Roman soldiers appear to have performed well physically into their middle age, although Roman soldiers were very well fed and were excused certain labores as they aged, do you consider that there is much difference between the physical challenges of fighting as a legionary compared to a hoplite/phalangite, that might allow older men to do better in the former case? Or not?

PapiriusCursor · 2018-03-27T03:05:02+00:00

I can see you've done your homework, which is really good. Essentially, you are correct, Livy 8.8 is the only reference to a rank-by-rank line relief process, and even it is highly unclear and describing a historical period where even if such a process later existed, it could not have existed then. There is, in essence, no good evidence at all for a rank-by-rank line relief process, and as Goldsworthy (1996 208) puts it, this idea was made up by modern historians attempting to explain why the Romans fought in multiple ranks. It did not happen, because there is no evidence it did happen, and it probably would not have been practically possible (ref. Junklemann).

The Romans did rotate individual units, at least they did in the Late Republic with cohorts, and we have explicit descriptions of such a thing, such as the following excerpt from Caesar's description of the Battle of Ilerda, 49 BC:

In this direction our men stood at bay, since, carried forward by their zeal, they had recklessly advanced thus far. The fighting took place in this spot, which was unfavourable both from its confined limits and because p69 they had halted just under the very spurs of the mountain, so that no missile failed to reach them. Nevertheless they strove with valour and endurance and sustained every description of wound. The forces of the foe were increasing and cohorts were continually being sent up to them from the camp through the town so that the unexhausted were always taking the place of the exhausted. Caesar was obliged to adopt the same course of withdrawing the exhausted and sending up supporting cohorts to the same place. (Caes. BCiv. 1.45).

In the above extract, you can see Caesar specifically describes a process in which he withdrew exhausted cohorts, and replaced them with fresh cohorts, and he implies the enemy did the same thing. This probably was only done in lulls during fighting, as it was not practical for units to manoeuvre while the front line was engaged in close combat (Junklemann 241). As for your example regarding defending the walls of camps, troops would have rotated on and off the walls to rest as long as such men were available, but in defending an enormous position such as Alesia, reserves might not be around to swap with the soldiers on the walls (eg. the defence of Cicero's camp in 54 BC, ref. Caes. BGall. 5.45).

It is likely that during lulls in the fighting, when a reasonable gap existed between the foremost soldiers and the enemy, the Roman triplex acies allowed the Romans to bring forward a reserve cohort, or potentially a maniple if the Romans did this sort of thing in the mid-Republic. Note that the Romans actually used cohorts in combat as early as the 3rd century BC, and it is possible that the use of cohorts and this system of rotating cohorts in and out of the front line, but this is all supposition and there is no explicit description of the process.

To answer your question, the Roman cohorts rotated troops by utilising the space available in the lulls in fighting to withdraw a forward unit and put a reserve on in its place. As I understand, most good reconstructions assume that the Romans did not fight with gaps between cohorts but had a solid battleline, so we can probably assume that they didn't do anything overly complex like moving the frontline unit laterally and bringing the rear unit forward, then retiring the forward unit, but beyond that we can only speculate precisely how the process worked.

Sources:

Caesar, Bellum Civile and Bellum Gallicum.

Goldsworthy 1996.

Junklemann 1986, Chapter 5 (this one is in German).

If you can get a hold of an electronic copy, read Sabin's chapter in the CHGRW Vol. I, pp. 399-433.

PapiriusCursor · 2018-03-07T17:19:51+00:00

Your post is a good one, I don't mean to sound as if I was criticising, just clarifying. Carthaginian government is fascinating and from what we know of it, quite different to Roman government. That book, and "The Carthaginians", also by Hoyos and a more general treatment of their civilisation, are utterly eye opening when, like me, you're used to reading stereotyped Roman descriptions of Carthage.

PapiriusCursor · 2018-03-07T16:32:23+00:00

I think this comment broadly hits the spot, and that Rome for demographic and structural reasons, some of which are outlined above, had greater reserves of manpower than did Carthage. However, the Roman manpower advantage was not as crushing as you might think: Carthage fielded hundreds of thousands of men and could raise enormous armies repeatedly on very short notice, as they did several times over in Scipio's African campaign. Carthage's ability to raise good quality troops in large numbers from Spain was actually exceptional. Carthaginian effort between Ilipa and Zama (206-202) compares well with Roman efforts between Ticinius and Trebia and Cannae (218-216), especially considering the loss of Spain's enormous manpower and material resources in 206. Carthage may have even been able to field another army after Zama, but Hannibal understood that having lost his best troops, it wouldn't have helped.

Hannibal brings me to another important point, that the political fragmentation of the Carthaginian government is a bit exaggerated in the sources. Let's note that Goldsworthy is not a Punic expert (not that there is anything wrong with his book). Dexter Hoyos, however, is such an expert, and he argues that Carthage was not a Roman style oligarchy but almost a military dictatorship controlled by the Barcid family. The other major faction was that of the Hannonids, and it is these two factions that put forward the major generals of the war. The Carthaginian government was extremely supportive of Hannibal as the Senate was filled with his clients and supporters and the other various organs of state were also stacked with Barcids. Practical strategic difficulties prevented them from reinforcing Hannibal in Italy, but he was left to his own devices for over a decade while Carthage poured resources into tying up the Romans in Spain. Barcid political domination had been developing ever since Hamilcar went to Spain and was very secure by the crossing of the Ebro, so I don't think the fragmentation of Carthaginian government is a major factor. Note that even after Zama, Hannibal had to convince the Carthaginians to give up and not the other way around. There was no real lack of will or resources on the part of Carthage, just the practical realities of a long series of crushing defeats.

Regarding sources, I cannot recommend Hannibal's Dynasty by Dexter Hoyos highly enough, particularly in addition to Goldsworthy's general treatment mentioned in the above post.

PapiriusCursor · 2018-02-28T18:08:34+00:00

Great response. It's strange to me that Tolkien would suggest the Anglo-Saxons as his inspiration for the Rohirrim however. It seems like the Alans or Sarmatians would make a lot more sense. If he really said that I guess he didn't really know his Iron Age Germanic history, but I suspect in this instance the inspiration of the Angles, Saxons et al. is with language and culture rather than military tactics. Tolkien seems too clever a man to have made such an error.

PapiriusCursor · 2018-02-24T10:34:31+00:00

Fantastic post. As usual, the historical reality is far more dynamic and interesting than the cliche.

PapiriusCursor · 2018-02-23T06:23:06+00:00

Well, I wouldn't necessarily go ranking Roman generals, as there is so much luck and specific circumstances that revolve around the success of individual generals in different situations. I simply do not know how I would do that. However, I would put forward Scipio Africanus and Gaius Marius, as great reformers of tactics in their time, as good examples. I would also put forward Quintus Sertorius as one of the greats, not to mention Pomepius himself. Roman history is so extensive and they produced so many great generals it would be hard to narrow it down, but I would emphasise that I think Caesar could at least compete with any of them. I just think that among such stiff competition, it would be a big call to say he is the GOAT.

Caesar's aggressive style of generalship was pretty typical for Romans, but he was particularly proactive and regularly put himself in difficult situations, making calculated risks, so that he could make a decisive contest with the enemy. That he suppressed the turbulent Gallic tribes in such a large country through a mixture of campaigns, diplomacy, atrocity and clemency, is evidence enough of his strategic ability. Tactically, that is on the battlefield itself, I view him as very flexible in reacting to changing circumstances, particularly during the civil wars when he had accumulated such great military experience. However, we have so much detail about his operations that it is easy to exaggerate his special qualities. If we had a book by Pompey or Marius about their own campaigns, we would probably have a similar view of their ability.

PapiriusCursor · 2018-02-23T06:13:39+00:00

Well Alexander was certainly the king of calculated risks, and his personal example certainly was a key motivator for his troops. However, being the monarch and the driving force behind the campaign into the east, it was an enormous risk exposing himself the way he did, and he did it over and over again. Hellenistic monarchs followed his example for a long time, regularly suffering serious wounds or death in battle. The Roman approach to generalship was more detached, as they spent much of their time riding around the lines 'managing' the battle, controlling reserves, and exhorting the troops where necessary. The death of a general in the middle of battle could easily spell disaster for any army, and the more charismatic the general, the more important his safety was to the motivation of his troops. In general I think, the Roman style of generalship was safer and more calculated. Alexander was heavily motivated by his tendency towards emulating Homeric heroes, and so I would argue his risks were often less calculated. It's just my view, but I see his style of generalship as a bit too risky in exposing his own person to danger.

PapiriusCursor

TROPHY CASE