Further Reflections on the Roman Military Studies Panel

For the next post on the Roman military studies panel/sessions at the Montreal CCC 2017, I'm going to give, effectively, a list of interesting points/comments/suggestions I jotted down.  There are fewer for the last couple of panels (I was getting tired - more of the material covered ground I was familiar with).  Here are some highlights (and apologies for overlapping with the first Montreal post).

Fred Drogula, "the Legalization of War".
Evidently early Roman warfare reads a bit like mob warfare, with wealthy clans engaging in raids led by patricians in charge of private war bands.  Ultimately they were looking for plunder.  Drogula asked how did military command become a legally sanctioned activity of the state given these beginnings  - and I wonder how and why it regressed (if you want to call it that) back to this state at the end of antiquity.  Additionally, the gradual expansion of the state led to a change in the nature of war.  Along the way, some intriguing parallels were drawn between early Roman warfare and early modern Italian warfare (think Medici, etc).

Jeremy, Armstrong, "On the Eve of Empire..."
The late fourth/early third century (BC) was a period of significant change, and this included a number of different facets of the Roman state such as:  weapons and armour, allies, citizenship, territory, naval power, military infrastructure, coinage, command, tactics.  Despite all these changes, much had been set in motion earlier.  The manipular legion was a big part of all this change.  Evidently, too, the legion wasn't very phalanx-like, and fighting with a phalanx goes against all we know about warfare in early Italy (it wasn't conducive to this - surprised to hear all this, because I'd assumed the phalanx was the early method, later changed. Goes to show what I know).  Indeed, he argues that the Romans were always manipular in a way because of the gentes, warbands, and tribes of early Rome, which when organized together tended to be divided into the sort of divisions that matched a maniple well.  Ultimately, take Polybius' legion versus phalanx discussion with a grain of salt.

Peter Vanderpuy, "Debt Structures, Warfare, and the rise"
He too noted the gentilicial, clan-based, warfare which characterized early Rome, which was in contrast to the more state-based approach of later times.  V provided an intriguing list of agrarian statues from the 12 tables (some of which had a very modern feel).  He got into the formation of all these new farms that is often associated with mid-republican Rome.  It got into issues of environmental history (more or less).  One interesting point (or series of points) he raised pertained to the costs associated with these new farms:  the suggestion was farming wasn't ingrained, for some would have had a much more successful go of things on this front than others.  Finally, following Berry-Wendell (to some degree), he said the primary cultural output at Rome was its warfare.

John Serrati, "Religion and Roman Warfare..."
His paper touched on gender, and a key figure was Bellona.  Bellona was present at the opening and the close of hostilities in Roman combat.  For him, it was surprising that a female deity had such a prominent place in such a male part of a patriarchal society.  That said, Athena had a big role in Athens too (this me), and it could hardly be praised for its gender equity.  Evidently, there's much we don't know about Bellona (I'd known almost nothing) - though much of early Rome IS murky.  Was Bellona Italian in origin?  Roman?  Who knows.  She served as a war god in Rome up until Sulla (and if this is true maybe we should consider this another strike against him?).  Should note some comparisons were drawn between her and Mars (who wasn't unloved at Rome).

Kathryn Milne, "The Middle Republican Soldier..."
The soldiery were vilified:  there was nothing inherently noble in serving.  So how did the state manage to ennoble the soldier, which it seems to have done at some point or other?  As they served farther and farther from home, his faraway actions were quite different from what he did when he was at home (and this parallels nicely with more recently materials, which she discusses in her thesis, and which I have a copy of).  One possible means of ennobling was the parade (triumph).  Others include decorations, the volume of spoils, and their exotic prizes.  She put a lot of stress on awards, which had a bonding effect, and which made soldiers feel good about themselves (and all this would be relevant to my research on the sixth century).  It was important that the awards be accepted by the community at large for them to have any meaning.  Some comments were made afterwards about the bodies (what did they do with them at the end of battles) and war's universality.

There are more comments from additional papers, but I'm typing this outside (it's 9:17pm at the moment) and it's getting dark, so I'll stop for the moment.  Cheers

England, Hadrian's Wall, and the Romans Part 1 (text)

I’m currently in the tail end of my whirlwind tour of British libraries and military sites.  After making the trek, by car, from Winnipeg to Brantford with the dog, I flew off to London to head to the Institute for Classical Studies library.  Had four productive days, then, after a brief layover just outside of Worcester, it was off to Wales – with another family layover at the start, this time in Cardiff.  I spend two nights taking photos of the area around Caerleon, site of some well-preserved legionary ruins.  Next I charged off for two nights in Aberystwyth, for a lecture on cohesion and combat motivation.  Went down well, and got some excellent feedback.

A brief sojourn to Devon (Sidmouth and family) was followed by a trip to Oxford for some more library work – and some typing.  I also squeezed in two nights in Birmingham to catch up with some friends and colleagues, including my former PhD supervisor.  Then a night back in Oxford (family) and a night in Devon (Sidmouth, family again).  This week, however, I’ve been in the north, along Hadrian’s Wall.  The purpose of this portion of the trip has been to visit as many Roman military sites along the wall as is feasible and to take as many photos as possible.  These photos, or the best of them, will appear in an introduction to the Roman military, in the works.  I think in a follow-up post I’ll attach a couple of the pictures.  Perhaps, too, I’ll consider joining Instagram.  Although I’ll be posting this written entry from Newcastle, I’m writing it on the train from Carlisle, a train trip I’ve done twice before. 

Anyway, there’s probably any number of things I could say at this point, from how I’m feeling about the news about Gord Downie (hits close to home in a number of ways) to the remarkable beauty of this landscape, but I should say a thing or two about military stuff, since I’ve devoted this blog to work matters.

What I’d like to draw attention to here is how well-sited most of the bases are along the wall.  The wall, one of the most glorious archaeological sites in the world, in my humble opinion, runs for about 73 miles (British? – never understood the difference, if there is one, between US and UK miles) from coast to coast, or sea to sea.  That’s from just west of Carlisle to Newcastle.  Now, at many points the isle of Britain tends to be much wider, so that they’ve chosen one of narrowest points, though not necessarily the easiest in terms of landscape, to build the wall reflects, I think, Roman practicality.  Sure, their geographical knowledge differs from ours, but after brief consideration it’s a remarkable coincidence that they built it at this point.  I’m sure there were geographical and tribal considerations in part, but practicality and cost must have been a major consideration.

The other matter, or the principal matter, that I wanted to touch on was also how well-placed the sites are.  In nearly all those sites that survive that I saw – and the forts and fortlets in particular – you are afforded excellent views of the surrounding countryside.  This, too, could be chance:  it’s not the case that the landscape has changed enough that my modern perspective is defective, as you can see when you notice how the wall hugs the landscape.  No, some thinking went into choosing the locations, and again, in an albeit small sample size, and without making any mathematical calculations using, say, Google Earth, it’s clear they wanted their forts in spots where they could observe approaching visitors with comparable ease.  In some cases too they went to such remarkable lengths to do this that certain forts were built into the side of hills.  Housesteads, for instance, is one the side of the hill, and the slope is not inconsiderable.  I don’t doubt that there might have been some levelling in the past, but the surviving foundations suggest that this was limited.

 Now, there are obviously lower points – the wall goes in as straight a line as possible, but the landscape is anything but flat and straightforward.  This means it snakes its way up and down up and over hills and then down into valleys.  That also means that certain spots would have been easy to get across for a determined group.  Even there, however, it should be stressed that there were towers or forts or something every mile (or is it Roman mile? – can’t remember off the top of my head).  And given you could see that sort of distance fairly easily, unless the conditions were dreadful, I don’t think they need have been too concerned, and they probably weren’t. 

All in all, as I’m sure commentators have noted time and again, even when they have disagreed over the precise function of the wall, it’s clear that a great deal of care, consideration, and planning when into its construction.  This was no mean feat for any number of reasons, and it is a testament to Roman ingenuity and practicality – and in some instances their efficiency.  Plus, while I don’t doubt that the wall had all sorts of functions ranging from the control of peoples to the movement of goods, when you’re here and you see it on the ground it’s hard to get past its defensive function too.

From the train south of the wall, until next time.

The Roman Military Revolution

One of the projects that I have on the go at the moment is a textbook/survey of Roman military history that will be arranged thematically, and run from the late republic (let's say the Gracchi) to the late empire, at least in the west (let's say Theodosius II, even though he's an eastern emperor).  Today I've been working on the two main background chapters:  the first is the historical overview, which will present a fleeting survey of Roman history over the course of the period in question, with an emphasis on those events that have special bearing on the subject matter (Roman military); the second surveys the sources, and the historiography and varied approaches to Roman military history.  The first chapter is well under way - I have some material from past courses that I'm going to use for this, with some new material tacked on.  As it happens, I have a good chunk for the late republic through the high empire, and less for late antiquity.  Given that in some ways I feel far more comfortable about late antiquity, this is good news.

The second chapter is well underway too.  The first half will present the myriad of sources at the disposal of students of Roman military history, and my plan in the chapter and the book is to incorporate as much of it as possible into my discussions.  Thus, it won't be a history of the military based on the literary sources, or the archaeological evidence, or the papyri, or the epigraphy, but all of this and more (legal evidence, visual evidence, etc.).  Sprinkled in amongst those overviews of the various sources will be some detailed discussions of select pieces of evidence that the problems they create and the questions that arise.  So, for example, I'll take a brief look at Caesar's take on the rivalry between Titus and Pullo, Ammianus' description of his harrowing escape from Amida, Hadrian's speech to his troops in Africa (which survives in an inscription), our evidence for the soldier-poets from North Africa, the famous birthday party invitation from Vindolanda, and so forth.  There'll be a few - and I'll likely have to cut down my working list to keep the discussion readable and workable.

The second half of the chapter provides an overview of the scholarship on the military (not in any way complete) and various approaches that have been adopted, and it will range from the impact of Keegan's "Face of Battle" to notions of western way of war, under which Rome would fall, and cultural readings of military history, those which look at the relationship between how war should be fought (in Rome's eyes) and how it actually was.  In this discussion I'll raise the issue of military revolutions, and this, at long last, brings me to the subject of this little post. 

Rome's military is famous, perhaps justly so.  Its impact continued well after the end of Rome into the middle ages, and resurfaced again in late medieval/renaissance/early modern Europe, thanks in part to the influence of Vegetius (somewhat surprisingly) and the fall of the Byzantine Empire and the concomitant flood of things Roman, and Greek, to the west, amongst other things.  What surprises me, however, is that no major revolutionary advance has been attributed to the Roman military.  Indeed, most change in the Roman military was gradual, and this is true for nearly every aspect, from their equipment to their tactical preferences.  In other words, ostensibly, there doesn't seem to have been any one thing that revolutionized Rome's military and which we could say led to its impressive string of successes, like the advent of iron weaponry, or the gunpowder.  Rather, the Romans were good at a whole host of things, few if any of which could be attributed to them specifically. 

The only possible exceptions - at least to my mind at this point in the writing process - might be the professionalization of the military under Augustus, admittedly a process that seems to have been under way for decades before that.  When I say professional what I mean is:  men were paid to fight on a permanent basis, the military became a career for a large number of people, and the state even regulated their supplies, housing, equipment, training, payment, and so forth.  One issue is whether this really should be deemed a military revolution - or, like with so much else in the military sphere, whether it should be considered a specifically Roman development.  It does seem to have been an important thing, and perhaps played no small part in Rome's longevity, but they gained their empire without such a thing.  Could they have started with a professional military, and if they had, would they have been so successful in accruing an empire?  But then, as I say, what really constitutes a professional army?  Is it misleading in Rome's case because it seems to resemble modern militaries?  What about the Macedonian army?  Or the assorted Assyrian armies?  Or the Egyptian ones?  Because they organized, supplied, and supported their armies in slightly different ways does that make them any less professional? 

Of course, even if we cannot attribute any particular military revolution to Rome, it's probably worth asking whether any state, kingdom, nation, or empire that could be associated with any such development actually enjoyed the level of success that the Romans did.  In other words, does it matter?  It seems to worked to their benefit to be good at a large number of things, revolutionary in none, and perhaps excellent in but a few.

Perhaps one important issue that I will have to consider in the book is why I think they were so successful in the first place.  The Roman military succeeded because of X, Y, and Z.  Another post, perhaps.  Intriguingly, some answers might be sought in the armies and warfare that immediately followed Rome in the Byzantine east and early medieval west.  To follow what I said above, it is perhaps significant that some military historians see "Roman military organization, training, strategic and tactical principles, and patterns of campaigning as pervasive throughout the early medieval world" (Morillo and Pavkovic 2013:  96-97).  In other words, it's this sort of collection of things that are seen as representative of Roman military prowess, not any one thing.

Tracking Roman Combat Fatalities, or How to Use the Evidence

I've been reading some of Ian Morris' wide-ranging work, including his new book on war.  It's got me thinking about a lot of things; one in particular is death in combat.  If we wanted to know if Rome was doing better or worse at war, one ostensibly, simple way to do this would be to take a look at death rates among soldiers (let alone civilians) in combat over the course of Rome's documented history.  So, if we're talking about using reliable accounts, that would mean, most likely, using everyone from Polybius to Theophylact (my cutoff for Rome being in the mid seventh century - and really my choice is just as arbitrary as anyone else's).  Sure, there are narrative accounts for earlier periods, but given the questions pre-Polybius, not to mention issues with Dionysius and Diodorus.  Best leave those out.  Although that doesn't provide a complete list, it does give us some solid thick descriptions (here I'm borrowing terminology from Levithan's Roman Siege Warfare) of battle over the course of a considerable amount of time.

Ideally we'd like to use official records, but short of the occasional document like Hunt's Pridianum, or select Vindolanda tablets, we don't have what could be called official records of fatalities.  And, that's not to say that those aforementioned documents are official themselves.  And we're assuming that they had them to begin with.  Given the general, and occasionally detailed, image we have of Roman military organization it seems unlikely to me that they didn't have some sort of record.  Heck, even the list of names from the monument in Romania (not the Adamklissi one - name escapes me and this IS a blog post so I'm not going to check) points in that direction.  But, as I say, we got nothing.

Archaeological data from sites of battle would be useful too, but we have almost nothing in this regard.  The penchant for collecting and burying the dead, not to mention the pillaging of lost weapons by Romans and their foes alike has meant that we haven't found much of this, besides problems with tracking down the specific sites of individual battles.  They did eventually find the site of Varus' last stand, and some remarkable stuff was recovered, but outside, say, the remains of Dura (and we're talking a siege here - and I have blurred the line so far), we haven't much to go on.  In fact, even less of this than we have of the official record sort.  What remains, then, are the accounts in the aforementioned historians themselves.

If we wanted some sort of control on our data, we might only consider those historians who fall within the classical or classicizing tradition, and so describe history - and for us war and battle - in a conscribed sort of way (speeches, digressions, etc.).  This would mean using writers like Josephus (Jewish War), Herodian, and Ammianus, but not those like Josephus (Jewish Antiquities), Eusebius, and Count Marcellinus.  We'd probably have to include Caesar too, even if he doesn't quite fit the mould, though he is similar.  There are, unsurprisingly, problems with using a sample like this.  Indeed, there are significant gaps during the period in question, not covered by these sorts of historians.  Plus, even those that do survive describe battle in varying ways and in varying quantities. Their credentials too vary quite a lot.

Of course, it's clear that this attempt at control starts to falter quite soon too.  There are too many gaps, many of which are filled by other historians working within different traditions.  This does likely mean that they approach evidence and shape their narratives (if a narrative it is) in quite different ways - and hold different events and details of different worth than the classical and classicizing ones, though by the end of antiquity the lines had really started to blur.  Still, it would probably be in our best interests to use as many different historians as possible, despite the glaring lack of consistency, and as along as we're sensitive to the vagaries of the various authors we should be ok...should be.

Now that we've established that we would use the various ancient historians (and anything literary that might be of value) and we feel "extremely" (read sarcastically) confident about that, we have to take a look at what sorts of figures they use.  Some give precise figures ("612", some give vague figures ("no less than 1000", some use general phrases ("many died"), and some give widely fanciful ones ("70,000", or it could be read in some cases of "70 myriads" - which to me is less a real number than it is a vague generalization) - and some times the historians use all manner of figure.  Of course, sometimes they give nothing, or only give it for one side only, and not the Roman side.  If we look at chronicle (or chronograph - however you want to call them) accounts, sometimes we have little more than figures, and no sense of context.  In fact, the closer you look the less ideal this evidence appears. None of this is really new, but to my mind it's still worth stressing.

So, what do we do?  Do we discard this too?  That would mean we're left with nothing - and there is no way to look at changing death rates amongst soldiers over the course of Rome's history.  Sure, I could have mentioned inscriptions, but those are really only useful for a couple of centuries, and even then of the many dead soldiers recorded, few (so far as I know off the top of my head) come from combat itself.  Rather, the epitaph was usually erected later in life.  Even if it proved useful for at least some areas of the empire, it's no good to us for the republican period, or the late roman period.  Ultimately, still nothing.

Maybe, however, this is the point.  We don't have the sorts of data that we like, and the last thing we should try to do is to make it fit into any preconceived plans or theories.  If we don't have the evidence, we don't have evidence, and we should leave it at that.  Problem is, we do have some evidence, and as wretched as it might at a sweeping glance seem, I think it behoves us to use it.  As long as we're all aware of what we're doing and what we're using, and as long as we don't make attempts to apply whatever results we have too widely, and we are careful and methodical as much as we can be when using it, then it is worth using.  For, though it might not tell us give us the exact evidence we want, it's possible it might give us some sense of the rate of fatalities amongst Roman soldiers in combat over time.  Then, if we used that in conjunction with other evidence (wins, losses, territorial gains, losses, etc.), we might go some way towards getting a better idea just how well the Roman military actually fared over time, particularly in late antiquity.

Return of the Blog

Many moons ago, while I was a graduate student at Warwick, I had a wee blog. What posts I had were usually about late antique things, with Procopius, Justinian, and sixth century warfare the subject of the bulk of those posts.  There were occasional posts about non-academic things.  Here, I plan on doing the same. On the academic side of things probable topics include the Classical World, Late Antiquity, Byzantium, Rome, historiography (classical, late antique, and byzantine), ancient and medieval warfare, frontiers, barbarians, and teaching.  Those of a less academic sort are likely to include Winnipeg, hockey, and, well, whatever else comes to mind.