[gothic-l] Armalist

[Bertil Häggman]

Manuel,

My contriution on the Armalist was half jokingly.
Of course the early Roman empire shows fine
examples of military discipline. Caesar won many
a battle agains the Gauls showing superb leader-
ship. For centuries the Romans successfully
fought off the Germanic and other peoples
threatening the empire.

The great mistake was to employ Germanic
soldiers as legionaries. And the of course
Tacitus was right when he wrote _Germania_.
He obviously wrote it in part to show the
welfare fed Romans that it was important to
live a clean and healthy life. And this was
already in the first century AD.

But the Goths could defeat the Romans also
in big battle like Adrianople, so the strength
of the Germanic armies (mainly the Gothic)
was not only in guerrilla warfare.

But basically you are right. The Roman empire could
not have grown without a tough army and I think
Marius, who defeated the first wave of the Germanics
(Cimbrians, Teutons an dAmbrons from Danish Jutland)
was the true father of the Roman legion.

Gothically

Bertil
> Well, I always remember some things about Germanic-Roman wars:
> - The extermination of Teutons in Aquila Sextiae (Aix) I century
> B.C. by Mario ?
> - How Caesar convinced his soldiers when they were afraid of the
> height and fierceness of Germani. He just told them to fight
> as always they'd done: grouped and structured.
>
> Romans were far superior to Germanic people. But entropia is
> entropia, sooner or later the pool of entropia, that East Europe
> was, broke the order of the Roman Empire.
>
> When Germanic people learned how to fight, like Danes in the IX
> century, in real armies, they were able to conquer Britain.
>
> Don't compare Romans of the V century A.D. with Romans of II B.C. .




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