09-27-2010, 10:46 PM
Cacaius,
Thank you for your observations on the Ludus Militis Tactica! I will attempt to answer your questions as best I can:
The Ludus Militis team considered this issue closely. There is strong evidence that the Latin words in the Stratekigon were linguistic "fossils" preserved by rote and tradition, with some minor shifts over time, rather than a recent innovation or revival by Maurice or other 6th cent. sources. An updated edition of the Tactica is in the works, with more extensive evidence on this issue. Some of the Strategikon command words were clearly in use as "military jargon" in the 1st centuries BC — AD. I've already found more evidence for forms of "Ordinem Servate," "Depone," "Signum Sequute," in Latin works and will be looking at the other commands.
It is clear that 'contus' was a multi-use word for spear or shafted weapon. It appears in several Latin sources from the Imperial period, as well as in contemporary accounts of the Roman army in Greek, where the equivalent word kontos is used. There is good evidence that all ranks of legionary century were not all armed uniformly with pila, but with some lighter shafted weapons for longer range throwing. A less used generic word for "spear" would be less confusing for a directional command.
Also, ad pila may have been an actual command to raise the pila or to prepare the heavy armed for close combat (look at how the phrase is used in Veg. I 20 and III 14). Using ad pila for directional commands as well as an arms command might have caused confusion in combat. We will likely use ad pila as an arms command in our combat tactics manual for this historically-based reason.
You are absolutely right, thanks for pointing this out! This was an error that crept in when we were strongly debating uses of plural and singular imperatives in the final drafts. Thank you for pointing this out, i will correct it and re-upload the document this week.
By the way, we also looked at conglobant agmen aut laxent in Vegetius but decided that he was referring to ranks that were too crowded together or spread out to loosely, not commands related to going from open interval to close interval.
Thank you for your observations on the Ludus Militis Tactica! I will attempt to answer your questions as best I can:
Quote:I am not very sure if staying so close to words used in Strategikon is what would be most probable for 1st c AD .
The Ludus Militis team considered this issue closely. There is strong evidence that the Latin words in the Stratekigon were linguistic "fossils" preserved by rote and tradition, with some minor shifts over time, rather than a recent innovation or revival by Maurice or other 6th cent. sources. An updated edition of the Tactica is in the works, with more extensive evidence on this issue. Some of the Strategikon command words were clearly in use as "military jargon" in the 1st centuries BC — AD. I've already found more evidence for forms of "Ordinem Servate," "Depone," "Signum Sequute," in Latin works and will be looking at the other commands.
Quote:In example .. this word 'contus'. I understand that you have found some sources ... but I think we can find 10 times more sources that word 'pilum' was more common in use. Why not : Ad pilum, clina ?
It is clear that 'contus' was a multi-use word for spear or shafted weapon. It appears in several Latin sources from the Imperial period, as well as in contemporary accounts of the Roman army in Greek, where the equivalent word kontos is used. There is good evidence that all ranks of legionary century were not all armed uniformly with pila, but with some lighter shafted weapons for longer range throwing. A less used generic word for "spear" would be less confusing for a directional command.
Also, ad pila may have been an actual command to raise the pila or to prepare the heavy armed for close combat (look at how the phrase is used in Veg. I 20 and III 14). Using ad pila for directional commands as well as an arms command might have caused confusion in combat. We will likely use ad pila as an arms command in our combat tactics manual for this historically-based reason.
Quote:By the way. Why do you use word 'DEPONETE' ? ... its 3rd declination ... it should be rather 'DEPONITE'.
You are absolutely right, thanks for pointing this out! This was an error that crept in when we were strongly debating uses of plural and singular imperatives in the final drafts. Thank you for pointing this out, i will correct it and re-upload the document this week.
By the way, we also looked at conglobant agmen aut laxent in Vegetius but decided that he was referring to ranks that were too crowded together or spread out to loosely, not commands related to going from open interval to close interval.
Still the purpose of the wedge what ever the size of the force is to push through the enemy formation rather than run over it or push it back making the narrower the point of the wedge the easier to push it through. The diagrams represent ideal formations which would seldom hold up very long in a real battle and the wedge would usually more resemble a bulge after a few minutes of contact with a point of more than one man. This is one area of tactics that would be well served by some experimentation with two large enough reenactment forces.
