Rorarii and Accensi

[SigniferOne]

The comment of Connolly of livy's samnites army description:

"This description bears no relation to the artistic or archaeological evidence and has to be rejected entirely if one is to get any sort of picture of the samnite soldier"

Could you give a reference for this?

Thanks James, and in the two paragraphs you wrote, perhaps the more concise way to have said it was contained in your last two sentences:

How he knew things things I have no idea. I think that we've barely even scratched the surface of the transmission of knowledge in Italy at that time.

But the how doesn't disqualify the what. I was only pointing to the reality of Livy's overall correspondence to the archeological evidence, without endeavoring to explain how that happened and how he happened to know it.