10-27-2013, 06:46 PM
Quote:I think Ammianus reports the Roman army "lost their substance" in the mid 4th century.
Ammianus was a Roman soldier himself but he was also great admirer of past days of glorious armies and commander he had read much about from the works of various ancient historians.There is no doubt that army of his day was significantly different in some things and not always for good but possible Ammianus lamentation is partially also due to the same behavior like if even today older people say :"It is not what it used to be,everything was better then when I was younger,men were real men,woman were...etc :wink:
Also,Andy you still insist on those definitive numbers but you are missing important fact that this is only paper strenght and real army numbers then(as well as now)almost never correspond to reality.
Well I don't have any actual example in my hand now but I could state for example case of some legion during Caesar's civil war.If we would look at it as you do it then typical legion during caesar had more then 4000 fighting personnel but this legion in reality had fewer then 1000 after undergone some hard campaigning before.We have plenty of other evidence both in ancient records as well as by archeology that real manpower useble for combat(from various reasons not only after undergone fighting) was often if not always quite two different things and from this reason you should not take such a paper strenght literally.
