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Wed Jun 29 06:00:01 EDT 2022 ======================================== Slept from ten-thirty to six-thirty. Woke briefly around two-thirty. Partly cloudy with chance of showers and slight chance of thunderstorms until late afternoon, then partly cloudy with slight chance of showers early in the evening. Highs around 80. West winds 5 to 15 mph shifting to the northwest 5 to 10 mph early in the evening. Chance of precipitation 40 percent. Work ---------------------------------------- Cloud foundations call, all CIO call, work on analysis of alternatives template, etc. Home ---------------------------------------- * [x] laundry * [x] reply to Julie Melchert's "what's up" email Read more of The Secret of the Haunted Mirror. A pretty OK whiteboard app: https://excalidraw.com/ https://scholars-stage.org/pre-modern-battlefields-were-absolutely-terrifying/ "The Face of Roman Battle" Philip Sabin: https://www.jstor.org/stable/300198?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents > Roman heavy infantry engagements possessed several clear characteristics which must be accounted for by any model of the combat mechanics involved. If not decided at the first clash, the contests often dragged on for an hour or more before one side finally broke and fled. The losers could suffer appalling casualties in the battle itself or in the ensuing pursuit, but the victors rarely suffered more than 5 per cent fatalities even in drawn-out engagements. The fighting lines could shift back and forth over hundreds of yards as one side withdrew or was pushed back by its opponents. Finally, the Romans had a practical system for the passage of lines, and preferred to reinforce or replace tired units with fresh ones rather than maximizing the depth of the initial fighting line. > We know from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century engagements that bayonets caused only a tiny proportion of battle casualties, but bayonet charges do seem to have been decisive in triggering routs. The explanation for this apparent paradox seems to be that cold steel held a unique terror for troops, over and above that caused by the more random and impersonal perils of shot and shell. The morale of opposed infantry formations appears to have been closely interlinked, such that if one side could nerve itself to launch a bayonet charge in the conviction that the enemy would not stand, the enemy did indeed break before contact. Conversely, if mutual deterrence was maintained, then the combat could bog down into a bloody close-range firefight between the opposing lines, often lasting for hours…. > > There are striking parallels between the psychological role of bayonet charges in modern warfare and the way in which many ancient combats were decided at or before the first shock, with a charge by one side prompting its enemies to take flight at once. Hoplite engagements seem to have been particularly susceptible to such an early resolution, sometimes even producing ‘tearless battles’ when one side fled so soon that it outdistanced any pursuit. Goldsworthy claims that late Republican and early Imperial legionaries exploited their professionalism and esprit de corps by winning similar swift victories against less resolute opponents through a coordinated volley of pila followed by a fierce charge. This chimes exactly with Paddy Griffith’s argument that the disciplined British infantry of the Napoleonic Wars beat the French not through winning prolonged firefights but through a single devastating musket volley followed by a charge with the bayonet. > I suggest that the default state in protracted Roman infantry combats would have been similar to that between eighteenth- and nineteenth-century infantry, namely a small separation of the two lines so that they could exchange insults and missile fire but were not quite close enough for hand-to-hand dueling. If such a default state existed in Roman infantry clashes, this raises the question of the frequency and duration of actual sword fighting between the opposing lines. Could troops who had closed for such sword play disengage without routing, and re-establish the ‘safety distance’? How long a period of sword fighting was physically and psychologically sustainable before the tension had to be broken either by a reversion to the default stand-off or by the flight of one side? What proportion of the overall length of infantry clashes was spent in sword dueling, and what proportion in sporadic missile exchanges from a short distance away? > I believe that in most Roman battles the lines did sporadically come into contact, as one side or the other surged forward for a brief and localized flurry of hand-to-hand combat. The flurry of combat would end when one side got the worst of the exchange, and its troops would step back to re-impose the ‘safety distance’ while brandishing their weapons to deter immediate enemy pursuit…. > > The model of Roman infantry combat as a dynamic balance of mutual dread fits the overall characteristics of the phenomenon far better than do the alternative images of a protracted othismos [i.e. a group of massed infantry pressing each forward, hopolite style] or continuous sword dueling. It helps to explain why some clashes were decided at the first onset while others dragged on for hours. It accounts for the relatively low casualties suffered by the victorious army, since periods of close range stand-off would be far less bloody than the equivalent firefights in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, given the much lower numbers of missiles available and the fact that the great majority would be blocked by the large infantry shields (cf. Livy 28.2, 28.32-3; Caesar, BGI .26; Josephus, BJ 3. I I2-I4). The model also suggests how one side could gradually ‘push’ another back over distances of hundreds of yards, since if it was always the same side that gave way after the sporadic flurries of hand-to-hand dueling, the accumulation of such small withdrawals would have significant grand tactical impact over time. Servings: grains 5/6, fruit 2/4, vegetables 2/4, dairy 2/2, meat 3/3, nuts 0/0.5 Breakfast: banana Brunch: carrots, two hot dogs, coffee Afternoon snack: apple Dinner: linguine with chicken and artichoke

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