Talk:Campaign history of the Roman military/Archive/1

message: Someone rewrote my section on the early army.  I have no problems with this, and I'd want to check my facts before debating anything they put forward in what I read.  However, their discussion of battle tactics and weapons in the Marian army was unfortunately lacking in accuracy.  No one, especially not battle-armored legionaries, could chuck a pilum 100 yards.  Further, artillery was only rarely used in the field, and automatic ballistas were more novelty toys than effective battlefield weapons.  I'd like to straighten this out when I get a chance.
Bonjour, bonjour. It was I. I did it. But, it is not as bad as you think. First of all, this is a big subject and there are a lot of questions in it. Please see my suggestion of breaking this up below. Second, I am trying to get some info from "The Roman Legions" by H. M. D. Parker in there. It is a very scholarly work. Third, I haven't even started on the reforms of Marius, so if that has changed it was not I. As for the 100 yards, that is a maximum throw downhill. I read that I forget where now. I believed it because Roman soldiers worked out every day 4 hours doing things like throwing pila. As for the machines of war, I believe you are wrong there. Caesar sometimes used them on the flanks. If you want I can get the passage from de Bello Gallico. Neither of us has even touched the subject of Roman machines of war, which is a big one. They were in fact very effective, especially in a seige. As another example, there were plenty of bowmen, but none of us has said a word about it. And lastly, I would say this. Parker has footnotes on every page citing primary and secondary references. We could get to that level but I suspect it would take up too much space. Nevertheless there ought to be some of it in there. Your opinion or my opinion ought to come only after checking the source detail. There are quite a few different opnions, you know, even among the ancients. So, although I appreciate your toleration, statements like "lacking in accuracy" do indeed need to be verified against the sources. Do you know what is accurate? If not, you need to have some basis for generalization. I have a certain amount of time to spend on it. I will be glad to check anything out or work anything out with you. Go ahead, rewrite! But, unless we get some more space, not too much more can be done. We can revert and that is about it. Please do consider my suggested reorganization below.Botteville 00:32, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: General Discussion

message: Could someone familiar with the area have a look at this new page?  I did wonder whether to redirect it here, but thought I'd leave it to the experts.  Thanks PubLife 12:04, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Plumbata (dart)|Plumbatae or Mattiobarbuli]]

message: Si valete valeo. I'm back after a decent interval to consider these matters. It looks as though we keep this article but reduce some sections to overviews referencing specific articles. The first step is to change the name. I propose to do this by moving the article to Military History of Ancient Rome. If there is no objection I will do this within a few days without additonal comment, unless someone does it first. Then I will outline some changes. Stop me if you disagree. Dave 02:59, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Ready?

message: The move worked. The huge list of double redirects indicates the popularity of the subject. I think there is over 500. Is there not some software to take care of this? We could put it back -  but - then you would have an inappropriately named article unable to be changed because of all the links on it. If we followed that policy, all the inappropriate names would result in an inappropriate encyclopedia. We can plug away on the double redirects. This is a good overall article and should not need another name change.
Now for the size. I propose to break out three articles (this is not a division of the original article): The Military establishment of the Roman kingdom, the Military establishment of the Roman republic and the Military establishment of the Roman empire. These are portrayals of the military in the society of the times and do not cover wars any more than is necessary, as those are in the main article. This will save us about half of the current 14 pages and permit further development of introductory paragraphs with links to specialized topics, and there are now quite a few of those. 
In place of the establishment material I would put a paragraph or possibly two introducing the topic and making the connection.
Desilite commilitones. If no one objects within a day or two I will implement the changes just outlined. Dave 13:58, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Moved. More Changes.

message: I haven't taken a look at this article in months, and now that I return, it hardly speaks about the military at all! It's reading like a brief history of Rome itself, which is definitely what the article is about. It is supposed to be about the military. I think it needs a major rewrite and/or breaking up. I am going to start this sometime tommorow, and if no one likes it, you can revert it, but this tells readers nothing of note about the Roman army.
--Masamax 09:56, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: What is this?

message: Why's there no mention at all about Republican manipular tactics? Fornadan (t) 20:44, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Where's the hastati?

message: I'm trying to use this for basic background on which to construct further reading. One major deficit for me is the lack of any information or links about the Roman soldier's job. What did he do exactly? How did his job change? If not included on this page, it would be great to have a separate page for it. vive miles! (fluoronaut 08:50, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: A. Reader

message: Still needs some cleaning up to remove redundancies. 
When acceptable, we can remove the Roman Army Organization article, ie. redirect it back to the (redirected) Roman Army Article. SimonATL 00:10, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Copied Roman Military Structure into Roman Army Article

message: Rome was not a militarized state. Military service was voluntary. There were no youth organizations goosestepping around the cities. There were no representatives of the army teaching in the schools or telling the local governments what they ccould or could not do. There was no military party taking over all the offices. There were abuses sometimes but they were considered abuses and not the norm. There was no predominant philosopher preaching an ideology of dictatorship or victory. Fascism was not an ideology even though this state originated the fasces. The troops mutinied often. The people rioted often. The government had less control over the economy than we do. In short there was a military and sometimes it committed abuses but there was no systematic totalitarian militarism such as we saw in the 20th century. So, I think I will change the intro after a decent interval.
:Miltary service was voluntary? Guess all my books writen by historians which describe that most of the legionaries were serving obligatory military service for 20 years ! are all wrong. I agree that ancient Rome was not a militarized state as we today understand it, unlike Sparta, but still... get your facts straight. Flamarande 19:59, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Military service was socially required and I am not sure, but I think for the right to vote either. Some inhabitants of Italy had the obligation of military service but no right to vote. After Marius Rome did not only have a volunteer army. Some were volunteered, especially in the occupied provinces for the dirty jobs on some borders like Mesopotamia and they usually did not survive their service term. The late Empire promised freedom to slaves if they joined the infantry. Wandalstouring 18:04, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The Militarized State

message: Can we keep the ongoing discussion of the edits out of inline HTML comments on the page, and on the discussion page please? If you want to strike some text, do so, and talk about it here - it can always be recovered from the edit history if it turns out it was accurate. -  11:17, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  THIS is the discussion page 

message: Struck out the following statement as inaccurate from the Assessment section:
"The few cases of serious reversal were brought about by foreign leaders who had lived in Rome and served in its military.."
Clearly inaccurate. Everyone can point to ex-legionaire Arminius and the Teoburger battle, but this is very limited analysis on which to make such a claim. Hannibal never lived in Rome or served it its military but he inflicted some of the most serious defeats the Romans ever suffered. Cannae for example, saw over 50,000 Romans dead in one day, a slaughter rivaling the one day body counts for the modern era's World War I. The British for example only lost about 11,000 dead on the first day of the Somme battle. Likewise another of the most crushing Roman defeats was inflicted under a general who neither lived in Rome nor served in its military, namely Surena, whose Parthians liquidated almost 20,000 Roman troops and captured another 10,000 at Carrhae...
Enriquecardova 04:14, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rome's few serious defeats caused by foreign leaders who served or lived in Rome?

message: In this part of the article there's this part:
" A G{| border=1 cellpadding=2 cellspacing=0 align=center I|+Roman military formations - linked to related articles N|- A!Name (and Latin original word if altered) No. of personnel No. of subordinate units
Modern day equivalent (roughly) |- |Legion (Latin legio)||~5000 + cavalry||10 Cohort||Brigade |- |Cohort (Latin cohors)||480 (1st Cohort 800)||6 Centurias (1st Cohort 5)||Battalion |- |Maniple (Latin maipulus)|| 160 ||2 centuriae|| Company |- |Century (Latin centuria) ||80 (1st Cohort 160)||10 contuberia||2 platoons |- |Contubernium||8||n/a||Squad |}"
I'am not sure what the person who put that in was trying to do but I know that needs to be fixed.  I don't know how to fix(I'am not that experiance with wikipedia editing) so can someone fix it?--Scott3 17:42, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I deleted it, it looked terrible.  --7segment 02:28, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can someone fix this 

message: I cleaned up the Imperial Army section just to make it basically readable, but I think the whole article could do with a lot more attention.  I changed  to . --7segment 02:28, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article is generally poor 

message: *Roman organization was more flexible than that of many opponents. Tribal peoples for example often attacked en-masse with little coordination, using standard tactics traditional to their culture that varied relatively little. There were exceptions, notably by leaders who had previously been extensively exposed to Roman military methods, but this was the general rule. By contrast, the legions, through their training and discipline could more quickly adopt a number of methods and formations depending on the situation- from the testudo during siege warfare, to a hollow square against cavalry atack, to mixed units of heavy foot, horse and light infantry against guerrillas in Spain, to the classic "triple line" of the early Republic. Against more sophiscated opponents the Romans also showed great flexibility at times, such as the brilliant adjustments Scipio made against Hannibal at Zama- leaving huge gaps in the ranks to trap the charging elephants, and the recall, reposition and consolidation of a single battle line that advanced to the final death struggle against the veterans of Cannae.
Sry, but It is very hard to correct it with slightly rephrasing. All Roman enemies used infantry tactics and nobody rushed en-masse with little coordination. This is a picture from ancient history books. The last source looks very much like this. At the beginning of our century there were prejudices, stating the historic supremacy of the all European warfare. Wandalstouring 17:49, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  that is wrong 

message: It is no good idea, better link to this article and keep it as short as possible here. Wandalstouring 18:09, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  merging with Roman miltary structure 

message: In Gallic society one third of the able male population took part in frequent wars. At the time Cesar invaded these tribes had seriously suffered from the Cimbri and Teutones frequent passages and were under presssure from an expanding Germanic federation (Ariovistus). A big difference to Roman warfare in units is the skill of single soldiers was highly valued.  Rome used very heavy infantry units. Their enemies social system and economy usually did not support so many heavily armored units, but they could provide greater numbers. With greater numbers an individual lack of equal protective equipment can be compensated (psychological). The only problem there is how to feed them and how to maintain the organization of sanitation (toilets not mix their content with drinking water!!!). Compare it to events like Woodstock or the Love Parade. The use of drugs (alcohol) is also reported (Battle of the Metaurus). Essential for warfare was the logistic and hygiene (don`t laugh) in bigger armies. In Alesia the reinforcement suffered heavy losses due to this fact. They had no experience with such big numbers. Rome had for the first time assembled an army of 80,000 infantry at Cannae and used two camps there. Before their troops were only up to 40,000 infantry. Wandalstouring 21:03, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Roman opponents 

message: Moved this write-up to tactics and training section since it covers equipment changes, tactics and some training, including introduction of chainmail, use of more foreigners, and tactics versus German barbarians and Parthian cavalrymen:
Excerpt
:The popular depiction of Roman equipment consisting of a Lorica segmentata and a Montefortino helmet was used for some time among the Italian infantry units and their successors, but not by all of them. About half of the Roman military consisted of foreign specialists (Auxiliaries) with their own national clothing and equipment. Around 5AD, the lorica hamata (chainmail) became less common as lorica segmentata was much cheaper and quicker to make - an important fact when there were so many men to arm. However, some African and Asian legions are thought to have kept it until it became standard issue again in 250 AD. The cavalry stayed with Roman standard equipment since the Second Punic War, the lorica hamata and Greek style helmets.
:Start signing your statements. See dicussion above, the whole article should be restructered. Wandalstouring 14:50, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: More on equipment and training

message: This source is not undisputed and we should also look up on other sources what we quote of this book.
I make a list of argumentations and interviews on the topic.
*Comment by H.A. Scott Trask, an American historian. He is working on a book on Northern opposition to President Lincoln during the War Between the States. 
His statement about the battle of Chalons (A.D. 451) contradicts the info on the wikipedia article.
*Review by the ARMA - Association for Renaissance Martial Arts
*Several reviews
*A British review article: "Carnage and Culture" is both military history and philosophical treatise
Some thesis out of about Culture and Carnage can be disputed, especially regarding the timeframe and the circumstances. Compare it to articles about Medieval society and the inquisition.
Wandalstouring 17:28, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This reference, "Carnage and Culture" should be removed from the article. Completely baised, the book seems to me to have been written very selectively, failing to note how the Western Roman Empire fell to migrating West Asian barbarian tribes among other issues. Needs to go. --Laserbeamcrossfire 19:23, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I do not approve it, but I must admit it does have some points. You have to read it carefully (officers writing military history often write biased). Besides the author has a scientific degree and the fact that two wikipedians don`t agree on his thesis is not enough to banish him. It still needs some hard evidence, but at least we can put it under doubt. More pressing is the work on the whole structure of this article. I wanted to start but still wait for an OK.Wandalstouring 19:35, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I wasn't necessarily bashing it. I think that the book must be a fascinating read, and I am sure that the author has a unique view at Western Europe, but unless there is a reference that counters his views, I am going to have to say that it would be somewhat inappropriate to include the reference. --Laserbeamcrossfire 19:37, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Unique view is a good one. I doubt it, from my knowledge about military history books he writes mainstream for a member of the armed forces history corps (Patton´s favorite job). Wandalstouring 19:56, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Agree with removal of in-text reference for Carnage and Culture.
 Added by Enriquecardova
That is no solution. If we use a disputed source we absolutely need the in-text reference. It is the last thing I want to be deleted. Wandalstouring 09:14, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

text: What is it that was used or was going to be used of of this book?--Dryzen 15:22, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Carnage and Culture disputed 

message: Proposed reconciliation of thematic versus chronological themes
Reasonable comments and ideas as to structure, but it could be argued that a major rewrite is not necessary. There is already a rough chronological/thematic division in the article. What needs to be fleshed out is the final part, (Events during the late Imperial period) - the last days of the Empire and its military- which as it stands now, is a mere paragraph of 8 lines. Development of this last part could cover both the thematic and chronological approaches, saving the need for a major overhaul and rewrite.
Another alternative is to pack the Events during the late Imperial period section with chronological detail, and then start a brand new section on the final demise of the Roman military which will be thematic in nature. There is plenty of scholarship around the decline of the Roman Army- (Gibbons, Delbruck, Luttwak etc, etc etc.) Entire book shelves groan with thematic arguments and counterarguments. The best way to keep it short and boil it all down is by a series of summary theme points. 
One or the other alternative can be done without a major rewrite or both can be done in one section. Just a thought as to how to reconcile the 2 approaches and cut workload at the same time. Added by Enriquecardova
: It is custom to sign comments in wikipedia. Sure the article does not fit the structure. I recently restructured it and the original article has shown its weaknesses. The consent on substructuring this article was to use a narrative form to tell things in context. I disagree about the creating summary theme points. The article can be condensed without much loss of information. You only have to refer to existing articles on wikipedia.
:I do not appreciate an academic discussion on the reasons for the decline of the Roman Empire in this article. Write an own article about it and list all sources there, we can link it. Wandalstouring 08:56, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Structuring the article