Roman military terminology (was

[mg26]

only one thing to add:

CARTHAGO DELEN DA EST

and so I add

GORGON'S CROWN DELEN DA EST

said Michael Roele when his hand was severed.....
Ciao

Giovanni Garzelli

[Pieter A de Jong]

At 08:14 PM 5/7/98 -0400, Ryan B. Caveney wrote:

> The Roman service term (22, 25 or 28 years, depending on the time
>and circumstances) once they converted to a professional army was also
>long enough for every veteran mustered out to be a classed fighter in AD&D
>terms, probably about second or third level (at, oh, 200 kills each level,
>yes?).

Are you really sure they are going to be 2nd/3ed level at 200 kills/level?
Cause that says 1 Legion (5000 men) who lived to mustering out has between
them killed
300000 (5000 men * 3 level * 200 kills/level) men. I don't think the Romans
fought quite that much, as that is the entire population of a medium-large
city back then.

Pieter A de Jong
Graduate Mechanical Engineering Student
University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada

[Dan Siani]

mg26 wrote:
>
> only one thing to add:
>
> CARTHAGO DELEN DA EST
>
> and so I add
>
> GORGON'S CROWN DELEN DA EST
>
> said Michael Roele when his hand was severed.....
> Ciao
>
> Giovanni Garzelli

What the hell is this?????????

[mg26]

Bravo!

Giovanni Garzelli

P S I tought I spelled it wrongly , unfortunatly I missed
Latin in my study (in Italy is compulsary)


Ciao

[Kai Beste]

> > only one thing to add:
> >
> > CARTHAGO DELEN DA EST
> >
> > and so I add
> >
> > GORGON'S CROWN DELEN DA EST
> >
> > said Michael Roele when his hand was severed.....
>
> What the hell is this?????????

It's a quote from Scipio. He was a Roman senator who concluded every
one of his speeches with the words "CETERUM CENSEO CARTAGINEM ESSE
DELENDAM" which means "in addition I think Cartago
*must* be destroyed"

Kai

[Ryan B. Caveney]

On Fri, 8 May 1998, Pieter A de Jong wrote:

> At 08:14 PM 5/7/98 -0400, Ryan B. Caveney wrote:
>
> > The Roman service term (22, 25 or 28 years, depending on the time
> >and circumstances) once they converted to a professional army was also
> >long enough for every veteran mustered out to be a classed fighter in AD&D
> >terms, probably about second or third level (at, oh, 200 kills each level,
> >yes?).
>
> Are you really sure they are going to be 2nd/3ed level at 200 kills/level?
> Cause that says 1 Legion (5000 men) who lived to mustering out has between
> them killed
> 300000 (5000 men * 3 level * 200 kills/level) men. I don't think the Romans
> fought quite that much, as that is the entire population of a medium-large
> city back then.

Well, clearly not all of them will be 3rd level, yes. But the
Romans did a *tremendous* amount of killing. They frequently massacred
whole tribes, as they generally killed anyone who was stubborn enough to
tell them, "no." Look at Caesar's _De Bello Gallico_ (The Gallic War):
sure, ancient and medieval chroniclers loved to inflate numbers (see Hans
Delbrueck for a wonderful modern analysis of what the numbers might more
likely have been), but genocide was pretty much the order of the day
against people who had nothing interesting to tax. Indeed, it was
considered sufficiently common that in Roman law, anyone who fought
against them and was not killed had basically the same legal status as a
freed slave: the Romans had given them a gift (life, when unexpected)
beyond their power to repay, so they were morally obligated to do whatever
the Romans asked, even when they didn't really ask -- this is the true
meaning of a "patron-client relationship".
Tens of thousands of people died in a single afternoon at Cannae,
in an area the size of Central Park. For a Roman general to be awarded a
triumphal procession, his men had to kill at least 5,000 of the enemy.
And they almost *never* stopped fighting. The doors to the temple of
Janus were closed only when Rome was at peace with all its neighbors: they
were closed three times in the entire history of the Republic.
Furthermore, as Vegetius says, why were the Romans so successful?
They practiced, constantly. 'For them, practice was but a bloodless
battle, and battle but another practice.' In any combat-value calculation
system where training is an issue (like the D&D Companion Set's War
Machine), a Roman-style army should always have the maximum training
level. That is why their infantry was so much more successful than that
of medieval kingdoms: French peasants were not trained, and so were not
useful. Many Roman peasants were, so Rome's citizen army conquered the
ancient world.

- --Ryan