08-05-2003, 04:44 PM
RE: value of Veteran status.<br>
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I believe that veteran status does make a big deal. While the majority of well trained units and soldiers will do well in their first encounters there are also problem children that won't show their true inabilities until combat. More importantly than how the troops perform is how the leaders perform. You can have a very well trained unit but with a lousy leader it could perform disastrously. And it does seem that there was an uneven quality to the leadership at Tribune level and above. Some green units might have green leaders as opposed to veteran leaders (And I'm talking at higher than Century level since even if a good unit is put into an unrecoverable situation, it's normally screwed).<br>
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Another important thing about veteran status is that the units that perform well get "stuck in" more often in the more dicey situations and come out with even more experience and prestige. (there is of course a corollary effect in that they can be ground down and destroyed faster too).<br>
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And while there may have been a very methodical approach to training legionaries, we don't have much info on how leaders (tribunes/legates, etc) were trained except OJT. Unless someone does? This would have been passed through word of mouth (from superiors ) and through "professional" reading (i.e. Homer, Polybius, Xenophon and other lost authors)<br>
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"1) So how would one explain the more frequent defeats of the later Roman Empire's armies at the hands of Goths, Huns, Visigoths, etc.?"<br>
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Certainly by this time much of the standardization evidenced in republican and early Imperial periods seems to have degraded. For instance vegitius' well known treatise on how Romans should train is an attempt to restore some of the old methods to an apparently lackadaisical army.<br>
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Here's an important thing to consider: A unit's combat efficiency/proficiency is a highly perishable thing. A veteran legion can just have finished the best campaign in history. But if it goes into garrison and lets lapse it's training routine, and experienced a wave of retirements of transfers, it will not be the same unit. You might get a new legate, who's priority is on road construction in the area, and then policing and then other engineering tasks, and he sets policy that takes time away from training and devotes them to other tasks. You might get an emperor that will let him get away with that, especially if it's a time of relative peace. Or other political intrigues. Regardless, once a critical mass of leadership (at all levels) and experience fades off you have basically a green unit all over again.<br>
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A good example is the "World-Famous" Tenth legion. (as Josephus puts it) Prior to the Roman-Judeo war it had been allowed to lapse into an incredibly sorry state and it took several years of reorganization, training and campaigning under it's new legate to get it back into an efficient state to allow it to take on the Jews during the revolt.<br>
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"2) What this a result of a degenerative factor in training or was it as a result of more advancements (training, technology, etc.)within the barbarian hordes?"<br>
<br>
Stated above, BUT, the very term "barbarian" ( applied by the Romans) is deceptive as it allows us to believe that Germans were somehow unintelligent or unable to adapt or whatever. It's a deceptive term. The decay of the Roman empire was more than likely accompanied by growing efficiency of Barbarian war fighting methods and operations, (even if individual soldiers remained more or less the same. Just an opinion.<br>
<br>
Los<br>
<br>
BTW didn't the Romans end up "outsourcing" a lot of their security to the visigoths anyway? They must not have been too shabby.<br>
<p></p><i></i>
<br>
I believe that veteran status does make a big deal. While the majority of well trained units and soldiers will do well in their first encounters there are also problem children that won't show their true inabilities until combat. More importantly than how the troops perform is how the leaders perform. You can have a very well trained unit but with a lousy leader it could perform disastrously. And it does seem that there was an uneven quality to the leadership at Tribune level and above. Some green units might have green leaders as opposed to veteran leaders (And I'm talking at higher than Century level since even if a good unit is put into an unrecoverable situation, it's normally screwed).<br>
<br>
Another important thing about veteran status is that the units that perform well get "stuck in" more often in the more dicey situations and come out with even more experience and prestige. (there is of course a corollary effect in that they can be ground down and destroyed faster too).<br>
<br>
And while there may have been a very methodical approach to training legionaries, we don't have much info on how leaders (tribunes/legates, etc) were trained except OJT. Unless someone does? This would have been passed through word of mouth (from superiors ) and through "professional" reading (i.e. Homer, Polybius, Xenophon and other lost authors)<br>
<br>
"1) So how would one explain the more frequent defeats of the later Roman Empire's armies at the hands of Goths, Huns, Visigoths, etc.?"<br>
<br>
Certainly by this time much of the standardization evidenced in republican and early Imperial periods seems to have degraded. For instance vegitius' well known treatise on how Romans should train is an attempt to restore some of the old methods to an apparently lackadaisical army.<br>
<br>
Here's an important thing to consider: A unit's combat efficiency/proficiency is a highly perishable thing. A veteran legion can just have finished the best campaign in history. But if it goes into garrison and lets lapse it's training routine, and experienced a wave of retirements of transfers, it will not be the same unit. You might get a new legate, who's priority is on road construction in the area, and then policing and then other engineering tasks, and he sets policy that takes time away from training and devotes them to other tasks. You might get an emperor that will let him get away with that, especially if it's a time of relative peace. Or other political intrigues. Regardless, once a critical mass of leadership (at all levels) and experience fades off you have basically a green unit all over again.<br>
<br>
<br>
A good example is the "World-Famous" Tenth legion. (as Josephus puts it) Prior to the Roman-Judeo war it had been allowed to lapse into an incredibly sorry state and it took several years of reorganization, training and campaigning under it's new legate to get it back into an efficient state to allow it to take on the Jews during the revolt.<br>
<br>
<br>
"2) What this a result of a degenerative factor in training or was it as a result of more advancements (training, technology, etc.)within the barbarian hordes?"<br>
<br>
Stated above, BUT, the very term "barbarian" ( applied by the Romans) is deceptive as it allows us to believe that Germans were somehow unintelligent or unable to adapt or whatever. It's a deceptive term. The decay of the Roman empire was more than likely accompanied by growing efficiency of Barbarian war fighting methods and operations, (even if individual soldiers remained more or less the same. Just an opinion.<br>
<br>
Los<br>
<br>
BTW didn't the Romans end up "outsourcing" a lot of their security to the visigoths anyway? They must not have been too shabby.<br>
<p></p><i></i>
Los
aka Carlos Lourenco
aka Carlos Lourenco
