Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Nathan Ross]

you have not read or not undeerstood the text... a refernce to 17 days actually refers to a 20 days carry weight, and putting a part of 17 days of it into granaries in forts.

I'm afraid we'll have to differ on this - the text states, I think, that the soldiers carried "seventeen days' provisions... when they marched forward on their expedition". This was apparently prepared using the grain alloted for twenty days' winter provisions. A portion of it was then allocated to the forts, which caused supply problems later.

Perhaps if somebody would like to look at the text in latin they could clear up this difference in interpretation?

[*ex annona decem dierum et septem, quam in expeditionem pergens vehebat cervicibus miles, portionem subtractam in isdem condidit castris - Amm Mar 17.9.2]

what you think that means is you can then spend 90 days with it on your back marching to Angelsey and fighting there for a week with it not on your back, and then  from Sept 3 to 16 Sept march to london at 198 and 56 miles in 13 days,  a total of 19.5 mpd.

Fourteen to seventeen days marching ration was apparently standard for the Roman army, carried by the troops themselves. Besides the quote from Ammianus, we also have the Historia Augusta:

"During his campaigns he [Alexander Sev] made such careful provision for the soldiers that they were furnished with supplies at each halting-place and were never compelled to carry food for the usual period of seventeen days, except in the enemy's country. And even then he lightened their burdens by using mules and camels..." (HA Alex Sev 2.47.1)

(Note that this implies carrying marching provisions on mules would not previously have been standard practice.)

And Cicero:

"how great the labor is of an army on its march... consider that they carry more than a fortnight’s provision, and whatever else they may want; that they carry the burden of the stakes, for as to shield, sword, or helmet, they look on them as no more encumbrance than their own limbs." (Tusc Disp II.17)

So our ancient sources tell us that troops could carry 14-17 days provisions on the march. You, however, using modern military statistics and calculations, claim that this would be impossible without exhausting and crippling the troops, and therefore Suetonius Paulinus could not have done it.

Either your calculations are wrong, or history is wrong. Which should we consider more likely?