09-27-2010, 01:13 PM
As I said before, Robert, we had to choose in several instances from lists of varying content, and sometimes the choices were arbitrary, sometimes we took into consideration that "more people use this than that", sometimes, we went with the one that had more references. It was no easy task, since no one has unearthed the wax tablet set that contains the "Basic Legionary Training Commands". The main idea was to find what was said by some source, and agree that we would all use the same ones. Imagine the advantages to everyone knowing the same list of commands, even across wide distances...even oceans.
We had a long battle over whether to use singular or plural imperatives, since both are used by the same military historians, often in the same context. My argument for plurals is that the last syllable (like --te ) can be an "execute the command" command. For example, "Ad scutam Clinaaah-TE" whereupon, all would move together. But since the Ancients didn't always do that, evidently, we didn't either. Our conclusion was that verbal commands could not have been the only way things were communicated to the troops. We're convinced that trumpet and signum were also used, but we were unable to find any descriptions, only vague references.
We had a long battle over whether to use singular or plural imperatives, since both are used by the same military historians, often in the same context. My argument for plurals is that the last syllable (like --te ) can be an "execute the command" command. For example, "Ad scutam Clinaaah-TE" whereupon, all would move together. But since the Ancients didn't always do that, evidently, we didn't either. Our conclusion was that verbal commands could not have been the only way things were communicated to the troops. We're convinced that trumpet and signum were also used, but we were unable to find any descriptions, only vague references.
M. Demetrius Abicio
(David Wills)
Saepe veritas est dura.
(David Wills)
Saepe veritas est dura.
