[HN Gopher] How to raise a Roman army: The dilectus
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How to raise a Roman army: The dilectus
Author : civilitty
Score : 76 points
Date : 2023-06-17 16:20 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (acoup.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (acoup.blog)
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > The affair of 214 suggests that even in a period where Roman
| armies were regularly being destroyed completely, the draft-
| dodger rate was something just below 1%.
|
| One of the things that made Rome successful was that they would
| absorb horrendous losses and still keep going. Their ability to
| mobilize contributed to their power.
|
| To give an example, at the Battle of Cannae, in a single
| afternoon, Rome lost an estimated 65,000 men killed. To put this
| in context, the US lost 58,000 soldiers killed in the entire
| Vietnam War.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| Casualty numbers that large are highly unusual, you generally
| only see them in legendary tales that are almost certainly
| exaggerated tenfold if they happened at all. Ancient armies
| were not particularly well organized and would usually dissolve
| rather than fighting to the last man. Also keep in mind that
| the non-US death toll of the Vietnam War was well in excess of
| 3 million.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Carthage was trying to conquer Rome. They had no choice but to
| keep fighting.
|
| ...But they didn't raise a full army again until the next
| generation of soldiers was raised and Carthage had returned to
| North Africa.
| jbandela1 wrote:
| > Carthage was trying to conquer Rome. They had no choice but
| to keep fighting.
|
| Not really. They could have reached a negotiated settlement.
| Both the first and second Punic wars ended in a negotiated
| settlement (of course very much in favor of Rome). Carthage
| would likely have been ok with Rome agreeing that all of
| Spain would be in Carthage's sphere of influence. Worst case,
| they would return Sicily which they gained in the first Punic
| war.
|
| Rome's decision to keep on fighting was not one necessitated
| by survival or maintaining independence.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I think it's less important what we think and more
| important how contemporary Roman leaders would have thought
| about it. Are there any writings on how they saw it?
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Besides
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est ?
| credit_guy wrote:
| "Carthago delenda est" was being said more than 50 years
| after the battle of Zama. Nobody alive at that point in
| Rome had any personal memory of a time when Carthage was
| a danger to Rome.
| btilly wrote:
| There are.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est
| describes the most famous position. And the somewhat less
| famous position of Cato the Elder's opponent, Publius
| Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum.
| simo7 wrote:
| The 65k figure is what ancient historians reported, in reality
| it's almost certainly order of magnitudes lower. Exaggerated
| figures are usually the case with ancient reports (especially
| about battles).
| hugh-avherald wrote:
| Are you suggesting that fewer than 1000 men died in this
| battle?
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Fewer than 10000
| simo7 wrote:
| Fewer than 10k wouldn't be surprising at all, yes.
| Archelaos wrote:
| * * *
| nerdponx wrote:
| I wonder if this partly reflects a reality where life sucks
| pretty bad for most people, so the possibility of a comfortable
| respectable life as a military veteran was worth the obvious
| risk and misery of being a legionnaire on campaign. That said,
| I'm sure the travel and/or combat and/or patriotic aspect was
| also exciting to some.
| duxup wrote:
| Certainly later on that was the case, but earlier Roman times
| it was the well off who served... a very different dynamic.
|
| I'm always a bit surprised by that but i suppose arming the
| poor is expensive and risky.
| btilly wrote:
| Definitely risky.
|
| The political stability of England seems to be why it was
| able to use the longbow, while other countries did not dare
| train their peasants to be as dangerous.
| duxup wrote:
| And bowmen are naturally fearful of those wealthy cavalry
| guys ;). Maintaining the social order a bit.
| gadders wrote:
| They weren't at Agincourt
| assbuttbuttass wrote:
| This isn't very different from the reasons people join the
| military today
| philipov wrote:
| I don't think so, because it wasn't until the reforms of
| Marius in the late republic that the military became a job
| for poor people. Before that, you were expected to be
| wealthy enough to purchase your own equipment, which made
| military service a privilege where the middle and upper
| classes could obtain honor, not a career where poor people
| could obtain food.
|
| The military career open to the poor would have been in the
| navy, as a galley rower, not the army.
| nerdponx wrote:
| The Wikipedia article for the Battle of Cannae states
| that recruiting was opened up to convicts and other lower
| strata of society to try to quickly replace two of the
| lost legions. obviously I shouldn't take everything I
| read on Wikipedia as unassailable fact, but that does
| seem somewhat at odds with the historical stereotype of
| an army composed of self-funding middle-class
| legionnaires.
| mplanchard wrote:
| > to try to quickly replace two of the lost legions
|
| Yes, it seems like this was part of the extraordinary
| measures taken after the defeat at Cannae. From the same
| wikipedia article you're talking about:
|
| > As news of this defeat reached Rome, the city was
| gripped in panic. Authorities resorted to extraordinary
| measures, which included consulting the Sibylline Books,
| dispatching a delegation led by Quintus Fabius Pictor to
| consult the Delphic oracle in Greece, and burying four
| people alive as a sacrifice to their gods. To raise two
| new legions, the authorities lowered the draft age and
| enlisted criminals, debtors and even slaves. Despite the
| extreme loss of men and equipment, and a second massive
| defeat later that same year at Silva Litana, the Romans
| refused to surrender to Hannibal. His offer to ransom
| survivors was brusquely refused. The Romans fought for 14
| more years until they achieved victory at the Battle of
| Zama.
|
| The person you're replying to was talking about the norm,
| while this would have been the exception (until the later
| reforms of Marius)
| ManuelKiessling wrote:
| And to put this number into perspective: it is estimated that
| in the year 200, the world's population was 190,000,000, versus
| 8,000,000,000 today.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| 190 million is the common estimate for 200 AD, the battle
| took place in 216 BC when the estimate was ~150 million.
|
| And on a related note, our sources for the death toll in the
| Battle of Cannae is poor. The main source is Livy, writing
| from a biased point of view nearly 200 years after the
| battle.
|
| The overall point that Rome came back from a tremendous loss
| in the Battle of Cannae is true, I wouldn't focus too hard on
| the numbers.
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