Talk:Structural history of the Roman military/Archive 2

Servius Tullius

I'm working fairly intensively on that article and have read the hidden note regarding links to this one. The miraculous birth and sordid death aren't too bad now but military things are the further shores of my reading; would anyone who knows the subject care to contribute a more historically based and analytical approach to whatever sections might be relevant? It all seems to be Livy, really; but I'm sure there's plenty of meat to be added in a summary of reasonable proportions. Haploidavey (talk) 00:51, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

No

I quote:

"Additionally, the Emperor Gallienus took the revolutionary step of forming dedicated cavalry regiments, separating them from the mixed cavalry and infantry regiments of the past."

This is wrong. Earlier, in the army of the Principate, all-cavalry regiments called "alae" existed, as well as the semi-mounted cohortes equitatae regiments. Gallienus did innovate, but this was in setting up an entirely cavalry field army based in northern Italy at Milan. Urselius (talk) 09:28, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Its easy to make statements that such and such is wrong, but find a quote from a published work that refutes Southern and Dixon's assertion, and add that. We have to stick to rule of "no original research". It is not sufficient to state that you, personally, disagree with something -PocklingtonDan (talk) 07:25, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Almost every sentence of "Comitatenses and limitanei" is controversial.

I don't know how to respond. It is full of discredited or at least outdated claims, and sometimes contradictory claims, but adding new sources will only mean adding new contradictions. Also, the limitanei were the provincial troops, so I'm not sure what it means to say that "while the limitanei were supposed to deal with policing actions and low-intensity incursions, the duty of responding to more serious incidents fell upon the provincial troops." Ananiujitha (talk) 23:37, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Not at all. If you can find a published authority that disagrees with cited opinion on the page, it is easy to word it as "X and Y believe Z, but this is refuted by more recent authorities such as A and B" and then give refs. In a lot of areas, contradictory claims are all you get, thats part of looking back across 2000 years of history, and sometimes we just don't know who is right. The important thing is just to add refs for statements you want to add to the article, so we are sticking with the rule of "no original research" -PocklingtonDan (talk) 07:25, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

In that case, the claim seems to contradict itself. In other cases, comparing different views might make sense, but doing it everywhere could get to be a bit much. Ananiujitha (talk) 14:26, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Who is this referring to: "Created and expanded from the core troops of the Emperor's personal bodyguards, the central field armies by 295 AD seem to have been too large to be accounted for as simple bodyguard forces, but were still too small to be able to campaign independently of legionary or vexillation support." If it is referring to the bodyguards, such as the Praetorian Guard and the Scholae, they are not usually interpreted as "central field armies" although they can be part of these armies. If it is referring to the central/praesental field armies, they were not formed fro bodyguards, and they included their own legions and vexillationes. Ananiujitha (talk) 18:22, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

If this is referring to the military part of the sacer comitatus, that's another issue, which I'm not able to address. Ananiujitha (talk) 18:24, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

"the late Republic's hypothesized use of "provincial" and "emergency" legions."

This seems to refer to R.E. Smith's ideas in Service in the Post-Marian Roman Army. However, Smith was concerned with Roman recruiting, how long soldiers were supposed to remain with their units, and how long units were supposed to stay together. His ideas are unproven for that period, and are really quite unrelated to reserves in later periods. I have removed the short passage in "Comitatenses and Limitanei." Ananiujitha (talk) 14:32, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Ananiujitha, I have some concern over you removing cited information such as this from the article (although I will not begin an edit war by reverting it). We do not decide whether a given authors ideas are unfounded and remove them, we go by what sources say. If you can find a preponderance of sources that state the opposite, and establish that Smith's ideas are discredited by a majority of later authors, then that is fine, but that in itself needs cites and it would be more appropriate to update the article with the *correct* information, with cites, showing that preponderance. Just removing the cited statement because you believe his ideas are unproven, is not the correct form of action to take -PocklingtonDan (talk) 22:49, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

I am not an expert on the subject, but am inclined to agree with Smith's theories. There are three issues. The first, which should at least require caution with the references, is that it is speculative, and not entirely accepted. Keppie, for example, challenges Smith's theories, in p. 77 of The Making of the Roman Army. The second, which would require removal, is that the two are completely unrelated. Smith was talking about raising new armies for emergencies, not maintaining central field armies for such things. The third is that I did not remove referenced material. It was citation needed. I just had an inkling where the theory could have come from; I could have added a citation, and it would be improper synthesis instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Structural_history_of_the_Roman_military&diff=574744584&oldid=572111463 Ananiujitha (talk) 02:11, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

About the earliest Roman military

Gary Forsythe offers a hint about the structure of the Roman military at the beginning of the 5th century BC, around the time of the Battle of the Cremera. In Livy's account of this annihilation of the gens Fabia, he describes how the menfolk were seen off by a crowd consisting of the general public, & the kinsmen & companions of the Fabii (Latin: sequebatur turba propria alia cognatorum sodaliumque ... alia publica). Now Latin sodalites in Livy's time was the name for a kind of dining club or brotherhood that had a religious character, a fairly unwarlike institution. However, in 1977 an inscription was unearthed on the acropolis of Saricum which had been embedded in a temple known to have been built c. 500 BC, wherein an older form of the word sodalites appears. (ieisteterai Popiosio Valesiosio suodales Mamartei = "The companions of Publicus Valerius erected [this] to Mars.") Forsythe notes that even more exciting than the recovery of an archaic Latin inscription containing the name of a notable early Roman Republican was the meaning & significance of suodales: this form includes the element suod-, which is cognate with the English word "swear", thus suggesting that a suodales originally was a group of men bound by an oath to a common purpose. Anyone familiar with ancient Celtic or Germanic culture will immediately think of the "sworn companions" that made up the warbands of the kings of those societies, & thus wonder if the 5th century Romans fought their wars (& dealt with the endless predations of the Aequii & Hernicians that fill the earliest books of Livy's work) with similar warbands. (Forsythe, A Critical History of Early Rome [Berkeley: University of California, 2006], pp. 198-200)

As I said, this is only a hint, & based on a chance word Livy used. But this possible glimpse of how the Romans fought before they developed their characteristic maniples & cohorts is worth a mention in this article. -- llywrch (talk) 23:31, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Manipular army section

Seriously, I came to this page looking up whether the more commonly used term was "Camillan reforms" or "Camillan structure" and ended up finding no "camill*" anywhere on this page. How could this happen? The entire manipular legion is commonly attributed to the Camillan reform(s)! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.56.73.96 (talk) 23:19, 10 October 2018 (UTC)