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This isn't really a Rome specific question, but hearing about the practice over and over in Roman history has got me wondering a weird, pretty morbid thing... When an enemy gets executed, and his head gets mounted on the city gate or whatever, how does anyone know who that unfortunately fellow was? I mean, in its simplest form... if your city is being attacked, then the attackers are defeated, then the enemy leader's gross bloated head pops up on a pike, it's a no brainer. And everybody would be talking about it, obviously. But I'm talking more like situations like this: I was just reading about a couple of (almost certainly not world-famous) rebel Goth brothers who got killed in Gaul/Hispania and their heads were sent down to be displayed at a couple prominent Italian cities. THEN the noggins were shipped down to North Africa to serve as an anti-rebellion object lesson. If I'm some average North African joe, what is my take-away from that? "Yikes, the Romans posted another couple of... important guys' heads? Guess I... shouldn't gently caress with them...? Okay cool, I'm just gonna go keep farming my grain now." Or would the Romans have told a few people and expect that information about the heads would quickly spread through rumor? Or would they have told some kind town crier to spread the official message? Or would the Roman melon-messengers have written up a little plaque to affix a little lower down on the pike? Skywriters? I don't know why I'm so curious about this, but it seems like head displaying abroad could sent an extremely broad range of messages to people, depending on how the head was delivered/displayed.
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Sep 25, 2013 18:48
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Strategic Tea posted:This probably isn't the quote but I came across it in what I'm reading and it gives an idea of how terrified they were: Yes, that's the quote. Weird what time does to stuff in your memory that you read a few years ago.
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Sep 25, 2013 18:54
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Jazerus posted:One thing I never quite understood - why worry particularly about these three legions if you're Augustus, to the point of forever lamenting having three less? I never got the sense that they were particularly elite units or anything, and Rome was quite capable of raising three new legions in no time at this point. I can understand being totally pissed at Varus over losing them to a bunch of "barbarians", but it can't have been that serious of a setback in the grand scheme of things. It's not just the legions, but the battle standards, which were held in American-flag-like reverence. They didn't even lose the standards in some of their worst military defeats (though obviously many of the biggest defeats happened in Italy, where recovery was more likely), so it was a pretty big deal when they were lost, and a big deal when they were recovered later (as they were with Teutoberg).
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Sep 25, 2013 19:25
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The bigger problem was it emboldened the Germanic resistance. Rome was well on its way to winning the war and annexing the land when the disaster hit.
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Sep 25, 2013 19:31
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Also, having three legions completely wiped out is a huge loss to the Empire's manpower at any time in its existence. It would be like losing an entire division of the U.S. Army today.
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Sep 25, 2013 19:53
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the_rhino posted:While I'm not a dendrophiliac like you guys, I do find the conversation interesting. I just wanted to add that the lost legionary standards from Varus' defeat were recovered by Germanicus, under Tiberius, and Publius Gabinus, under Claudius, well before Aurelian.
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Sep 25, 2013 20:28
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bobthedinosaur posted:Did the Romans know to rotate crops? Vincent Van Goatse posted:Also, having three legions completely wiped out is a huge loss to the Empire's manpower at any time in its existence. It would be like losing an entire division of the U.S. Army today. It's really surprising that any aquila was recovered ever. It's just sculpted gold. Germans or Gauls keeping it as a trophy instead of reinvesting that into their economy is some serious potlaching poo poo.
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Sep 25, 2013 21:22
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I'm sure the incontrovertible proof that they destroyed 3 Roman legions was worth infinitely more than mere gold to the Germans.
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Sep 25, 2013 21:30
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And the plundered wealth in equipment off the bodies likely would have been worth far more than the melted down gold anyway.
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Sep 25, 2013 22:36
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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How useful was it to salvage a dead guy's armor after battle? Was it possible to just twack it a few times with a hammer or something to repair it, or was it just useful as a bunch of already processed iron?
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Sep 25, 2013 22:40
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Not sure. I'd expect quite a bit of the valuable armor would be in chain mail, which probably wouldn't need too much repair work; even if you didn't repair it at all, it'll still be fairly valuable. And beyond just the armor, there'd be umpteen swords, belt sets, shovels, picks, cups, plates, cutlery, etc. You'd have all the gear the legionnaires carried, in addition to just their battle wear. And that stuff is all valuable, either to just use it, or as status symbols to be distributed amongst the tribe.
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Sep 25, 2013 22:55
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Cingulate posted:So did the Germanic tribes keep the standards as some important trophy? And what did the Romans do with recovered standards? The Germans probably kept them as invaluable war trophies, which could be lorded over the Romans anytime communications were attempted. Losing the standards was a big deal, the legionary numbers were never used again after the battle. The Romans actually held a triumph in Rome for the return of the standards. After that, I really don't know what happened to the standards, I assume they would be kept in the Imperial palaces or treasury for safe keeping.
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Sep 25, 2013 23:26
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the_rhino posted:The Germans probably kept them as invaluable war trophies, which could be lorded over the Romans anytime communications were attempted. Losing the standards was a big deal, the legionary numbers were never used again after the battle. The Romans actually held a triumph in Rome for the return of the standards. After that, I really don't know what happened to the standards, I assume they would be kept in the Imperial palaces or treasury for safe keeping. What happened to the standards in general? Like, there aren't any in museums (that I know of), were they just melted down when the empire collapsed? Thrown in the bin when they converted to Christianity? Is there any record at all? Captain Postal fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Sep 26, 2013 |
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Sep 25, 2013 23:53
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Captain Postal posted:What happened to the standards in general? Like, there aren't any in museums (that I know of), were they just melted down when the empire collapsed? Thrown in the bin when they converted to Christianity? Is there any record at all? I honestly don't know, perhaps someone else will know, what the Romans did with them after they were retrieved. I've heard that in the later years of the Empire, a lot of the gold and silver was melted down. For instance, (I think it was Trajan) who melted down all the statues of Domitian made is gold and silver to increase Imperial revenue (obviously, this is during the golden years of the empire). It stands to reason that a similar fate found the aquilias. There is also a belief that the church destroyed extant ones to stamp out paganism. Supposedly a couple Eagles have been found, one in Romania in a field, and one by a beachcomber in England (I think it was England), but I think those were unverified.
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Sep 26, 2013 00:25
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homullus posted:It's not just the legions, but the battle standards, which were held in American-flag-like reverence. They didn't even lose the standards in some of their worst military defeats (though obviously many of the biggest defeats happened in Italy, where recovery was more likely), so it was a pretty big deal when they were lost, and a big deal when they were recovered later (as they were with Teutoberg). Oh yeah, I know all about the crazy lengths to which the Romans would go for their eagles (and their opponents did too - that's why they kept them, to drive them crazy and lord it over them). It just struck me that compared to the losses in the civil wars, etc. which were still well in living memory, it's kind of a pinprick in terms of actual damage to the Roman state. Then again, the loss of an army division in the US would theoretically be a pinprick, but in reality would be a major debacle, so I suppose it makes sense through that lens. Captain Postal posted:What happened to the standards in general? Like, there aren't any in museums (that I know of), were they just melted down when the empire collapsed? Thrown in the bin when they converted to Christianity? Is there any record at all? Just about anything valuable from the Roman era that wasn't held by the Church was melted down eventually, yeah. I mean, even Roman ruins were used for building stones until well into the Renaissance, big piles of gold weren't about to be left alone.
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Sep 26, 2013 02:43
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Jazerus posted:Oh yeah, I know all about the crazy lengths to which the Romans would go for their eagles (and their opponents did too - that's why they kept them, to drive them crazy and lord it over them). It just struck me that compared to the losses in the civil wars, etc. which were still well in living memory, it's kind of a pinprick in terms of actual damage to the Roman state. Then again, the loss of an army division in the US would theoretically be a pinprick, but in reality would be a major debacle, so I suppose it makes sense through that lens. I believe the loss was estimated to be approximately 10% of the empire's possible strength at the time. Sure, some people may have scoffed at a loss like that following the epic carnage between Caesar and Pompey, but it was a massive loss by any scale and exacerbated by Augustus' expansionary push. You also want to take it in the context of someone not Roman beating the piss out of a whole fuckload of Roman soldiers in a time when Rome was basically king of the hill in a major way. To say it rattled people was probably a slight understatement but yeah it wasn't like half the military force or anything so it was probably more of an honor thing then an oh god the barbarians thing.
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Sep 26, 2013 03:36
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the_rhino posted:I honestly don't know, perhaps someone else will know, what the Romans did with them after they were retrieved. I've heard that in the later years of the Empire, a lot of the gold and silver was melted down. For instance, (I think it was Trajan) who melted down all the statues of Domitian made is gold and silver to increase Imperial revenue (obviously, this is during the golden years of the empire). It stands to reason that a similar fate found the aquilias. There is also a belief that the church destroyed extant ones to stamp out paganism. I know I'm projecting a bit here, but an eagle is not the same as a statue. One is pretty and worth money and has no meaning to anyone left alive, the other is pretty, worth some but less money and worshiped as an icon by thousands of soldiers who are a) armed to the teeth and b) necessary to keep happy for an emperor to keep his throne/head. It just seems odd that they would be destroyed whilst the legions still existed, unless it was to be replaced by Christian iconography
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Sep 26, 2013 11:04
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Captain Postal posted:I know I'm projecting a bit here, but an eagle is not the same as a statue. One is pretty and worth money and has no meaning to anyone left alive, the other is pretty, worth some but less money and worshiped as an icon by thousands of soldiers who are a) armed to the teeth and b) necessary to keep happy for an emperor to keep his throne/head. The role of the army changed, as did the symbolism. If the standards were just stored in some dusty warehouse, what you've got is basically some guy sees this big chunk of gold, a big chunk of gold that he may well recognise as a military symbol from like 200 years ago, and he absolutely doesn't give a gently caress about that, cos he's gonna nick it and get rich. The standards were only significant in context, and in time that context faded out. What happened to your country 200 years ago means a lot less than what happened 50 years ago, no?
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Sep 26, 2013 12:23
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The Entire Universe posted:To say it rattled people was probably a slight understatement but yeah it wasn't like half the military force or anything so it was probably more of an honor thing then an oh god the barbarians thing. Ras Het posted:What happened to your country 200 years ago means a lot less than what happened 50 years ago, no? Counterpoint: people in the U.S. still talk an awful lot about the Founding Fathers, way more than they do Calvin Coolidge. The Roman psyche was troubled by barbarians from 390 B.C. onward.
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Sep 26, 2013 14:24
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Well, eventually the imperial system in the west was gone and the eagles were just big lumps of gold. In the east I think they lost their significance. I actually would blame Christianity for this, the legionary standards had a almost (or possibly straight up) religious significance. Remember the Romans believed in spirits permeating the world, and I believe the eagles were sort of the spirit of the legion, so losing that was a Big loving Deal. But after Christianity, you lose any metaphysical value for them.
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Sep 26, 2013 14:26
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Ras Het posted:The role of the army changed, as did the symbolism. If the standards were just stored in some dusty warehouse, what you've got is basically some guy sees this big chunk of gold, a big chunk of gold that he may well recognise as a military symbol from like 200 years ago, and he absolutely doesn't give a gently caress about that, cos he's gonna nick it and get rich. Take, as an example, the colors of the 28th Virginia Infantry, which was captured by the 1st Minnesota at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. The colors are held by the Minnesota Historical Society to this day and, when a group of Virginians threatened to sue to get them back in 1999, the Minnesota Attorney General issued a statement that was the legal equivalent of "gently caress off, the colors are ours". This was 136 years after the capture and some Virginians cared enough to make the threat and the Minnesota AG cared enough to respond to it. While roles and symbolism changed, I would have thought that the eagle would have been a little more persistent.
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Sep 26, 2013 15:41
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I'd say it's statistically probable at least one Aquila survives, somewhere. There weren't just 25-30 of these things. Some legions might come and go in a few years or a generation, others persisted for centuries. Essentially, every legion post-Marius sported one of these, so that's a lot of eagles. A lot of bronze eagles coated with gold paint, and bronze is very corrosion resistant once it gets oxidized. Obviously, if one were ever found today it would immediately be considered one of the most priceless Western artifacts in existence.
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Sep 26, 2013 16:20
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Were the Aquila actually made of gold though? I imagine they'd still be melted down either way, but wikipedia says they were all silver or bronze.
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Sep 26, 2013 18:26
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The Entire Universe posted:I believe the loss was estimated to be approximately 10% of the empire's possible strength at the time. I.e. equivalent to the death of 150,000 US Army personnel in a single battle; about three times as many as died in the entire Vietnam war. Kind of a big deal!
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Sep 26, 2013 19:02
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PittTheElder posted:Were the Aquila actually made of gold though? I imagine they'd still be melted down either way, but wikipedia says they were all silver or bronze. A hefty chunk of silver was still quite valuable, and bronze would often be recycled for utilitarian purposes if you had a bunch of it around.
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Sep 26, 2013 19:59
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Oh I'm sure people would definitely melt it, it just seemed odd that everyone was talking about them being gold, when wiki says they weren't.
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Sep 26, 2013 20:00
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Honestly, I could see someone in the immediate post-Roman world thinking one was made of gold and melting it down (to disappointment, of course).
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Sep 26, 2013 20:02
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feedmegin posted:I.e. equivalent to the death of 150,000 US Army personnel in a single battle; about three times as many as died in the entire Vietnam war. Kind of a big deal! It's absolutely a big deal in terms of military strategy and personal loss, but when someone pipes up and points out you've still got over a million soldiers willing to fight it gets diminished a bit. It is telling that Rome really never tried holding territory beyond the Rhine again. There's debate over whether it just got accepted as a natural border as opposed to, say, the Alps, but the fact is that Rome expanded significantly elsewhere just not over the Rhine. Who knows if they went into full "HERE BE DRAGONS" mode despite still making raids over the river, but they definitely didn't try annexing anything significant.
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Sep 26, 2013 20:35
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The Entire Universe posted:There's debate over whether it just got accepted as a natural border as opposed to, say, the Alps, but the fact is that Rome expanded significantly elsewhere just not over the Rhine. Eh barely. Britain, and Dacia mainly(which was abandoned after a century or so once the gold was gone) and a little bit in the east. The empire was already approaching full size by Teutoburg.
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Sep 26, 2013 20:50
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PittTheElder posted:Were the Aquila actually made of gold though? I imagine they'd still be melted down either way, but wikipedia says they were all silver or bronze. That'd be heavy as gently caress, particularly at the end of a big stick.
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Sep 26, 2013 20:51
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Jazerus posted:Just about anything valuable from the Roman era that wasn't held by the Church was melted down eventually, yeah. I mean, even Roman ruins were used for building stones until well into the Renaissance, big piles of gold weren't about to be left alone.
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Sep 26, 2013 22:03
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Godholio posted:That'd be heavy as gently caress, particularly at the end of a big stick. That's why it's someone's dedicated job to hold it.
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Sep 26, 2013 22:15
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What did Old Testament-era combat look like? Was King David's host armed with chariots or hoplites or cavalry or what?
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Sep 26, 2013 22:18
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Wolfgang Pauli posted:The Vandals spent twelve days systematically looting Rome. Like climbing onto the roof of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus and prying away every one of the gold (probably just gilded) roof tiles. With regards to Aquila, surely these weren't kept in Rome, they were kept in the middle of a legion camp and would only have been moved when the legion moved (well, they certainly wouldn't have been left behind). So the sack of Rome shouldn't have caused the loss of any, unless every single legion was defeated outright on the Vandals' march to Rome. Right? But I guess I can see them losing their value as other cultures sprang up over Europe. An old eagle wouldn't have meant as much to the Franks who inherited Gaul than it would to the Romans who have the history or the Germans/Parthians who had to capture it and suffer deprivations at Roman hands. But I still can't comprehend a scenario for how the Aquila got to be left behind. I guess I'm approaching this from a modern position where a units old colors are stored in the officers mess and honored just as much as the new colors are for the soldiers who fought under them.
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Sep 26, 2013 22:59
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Grand Fromage posted:Well, eventually the imperial system in the west was gone and the eagles were just big lumps of gold. In the east I think they lost their significance. I actually would blame Christianity for this, the legionary standards had a almost (or possibly straight up) religious significance. Remember the Romans believed in spirits permeating the world, and I believe the eagles were sort of the spirit of the legion, so losing that was a Big loving Deal. But after Christianity, you lose any metaphysical value for them. Pretty sure the eagles were replaced with draco windsocks by the 4th century, and the Franks did adopt those. I don't think they were restricted to the cavalry in the late empire, sorry but I don't have any sources.  A frankish illustration showing draco banners Arch of Galerius, 311 AD supposedly showing infantry holding the dracos. I dunno, I can't really make it out. 
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Sep 26, 2013 23:27
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The Entire Universe posted:It's absolutely a big deal in terms of military strategy and personal loss, but when someone pipes up and points out you've still got over a million soldiers willing to fight it gets diminished a bit. It's still a giant deal, it's not like those soldiers were otherwise sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Suddenly the empire has to stretch its other forces on other fronts to deal with other threats, you have to raise and arm new forces from the economically productive peasantry. Suddenly a whole number of strategic options are closed off from the Romans.
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Sep 27, 2013 00:13
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Phobophilia posted:It's still a giant deal, it's not like those soldiers were otherwise sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Suddenly the empire has to stretch its other forces on other fronts to deal with other threats, you have to raise and arm new forces from the economically productive peasantry. Suddenly a whole number of strategic options are closed off from the Romans. The thing is that outside of border operations the empire had a decent sort of peace going on for a very long time after Varus' terrible horrible no good very bad walk in the woods. Had the Pax Romana been the fault of Varus new legions would have been trained at some point within the roughly 2 centuries between Augustus and Commodus and war would have began anew with some new baddie. Except it didn't, because generally the borders were fairly defensible and every other major power able to bring force against Rome had been erased or enfolded. Three legions is a debilitating loss if you're at war with someone like Carthage or Greece, but Rome wasn't up against Carthage or Greece, they were up against generally disorganized tribes who more often than not were not enjoying the benefit of a Roman-educated tactician or Roman-trained defectors. Yes, resources needed to shift and plans had to be changed but it wasn't like suddenly the Palatine hill was in danger of being trod into dust under Germanic heels.
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Sep 27, 2013 01:45
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The Entire Universe posted:Yes, resources needed to shift and plans had to be changed but it wasn't like suddenly the Palatine hill was in danger of being trod into dust under Germanic heels. I think this may be one of the main reasons they didn't try again, actually. If you suffer a loss like that when Hannibal is outside the gates, you raise more men and try again, because what choice do you have? But when you suffer that loss in Germania, a territory Augustus only wants because he likes the way the Elbe looks on the map better than the Rhine, I think there might be more of a reason to just go "ugh, gently caress it, let's just drop a boundary stone here and call it a day."
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Sep 27, 2013 01:52
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The Germans were certainly no threat to the empire at that time. In the long run it probably would've been a good idea to push it and conquer Germania, but obviously there was no way to know that at the time.
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Sep 27, 2013 02:20
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I've always heard that Augustus wanted the northern border of the empire to be the Elbe River because it was a better defensive line compared to the Rhine. How was it better? Were there any important natural resources between the Rhine and the Elbe that were worth snatching up?
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Sep 27, 2013 03:20
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