09-08-2010, 07:30 PM
I have noticed that almost any reenactment group pushes a modern "agenda" conciously or not. So does Hollywood, but they are very aware of the social and political messages they push. If reenacting is educational, then it really can't cater to modern sensibilities. Roman soldiers were just that, and given the already mentioned differences in physical conditioning, acted like Roman soldiers. It would not be out of place to mention to the crowd the differences in cultural values, and also when things are improvised for a show, like almost all drill comands. You do not really have to carry out things, like roughing up the local populace, but telling people how life was then would be better than giving people the impression it was like things are today. I also include religious issues along with social and political issues. I think we tend to default too much on modern military systems with an assumption like "thats the way we did it the Marine Corps, so that the way they must have done it." There is much more stratification in modern military systems, like the huge logistical tail that ancient systems never had, for one thing. Modern combat troops (in my time in service) were the young, skinny, dirty ones, and the "lifers" were the clean, overweight loudmouths that were never near anything close to a real combat role. I tend to think that when you are in for 25 years or so, and when your cohort was commited, everone went who was fit to do so. I think there was a much stronger horozontal cohesion than what I saw when I was in.
Ralph
Ralph
