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\'soft\' eastern soldiers
#16
A similar topos is being applied to Greeks today with their current financial problems. This might apply to some Greeks but no more so than other people.
Author: Bronze Age Military Equipment, Pen & Sword Books
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#17
Quote: In Fronto’s history of the Parthian war under Lucius Verus, the soldiers in Syria live in decadence and refuse to train. It takes the manly Lucius Verus to whip them into shape.

Na, Avidius Cassius had to do that.

Quote:I think that much of this became a literary trope. When a Latin writer was describing Eastern soldiers, they were described as soft and lazy, whether it was true or not.

There's ample evidence for it. Cassius wasn't the first disciplinarian to have to straighten them out. Corbulo had to do it in the first century. And the problem persisted; the worst examples of eastern failure occurred in the 3rd century.
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#18
Quote:As demonstrated in 1996, the topos of the laxity of Syrian legions has no basis in fact. Syrian and eastern legions in general were as militarily efficient as those on other frontiers."

Repeatedly, european forces had to restore the situation in the East after the failure or inadequancy of local troops. This occurred in 163-66 CE (Cassius), in 232 (Severus), 243 (Timesitheus) 254 (Valerian) etc.
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#19
Quote:
Epictetus post=308664 Wrote:In Fronto’s history of the Parthian war under Lucius Verus, the soldiers in Syria live in decadence and refuse to train. It takes the manly Lucius Verus to whip them into shape.

Na, Avidius Cassius had to do that.


Yes, but Fronto was writing propoganda for Lucius, not writing the truth for posterity. ;-) There are letters in the Fronto collection where he is directed by Lucius to play up the Emperor's involvement, which Fronto accordingly did.
David J. Cord
www.davidcord.com
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#20
Quote:Yes, but Fronto was writing propoganda for Lucius, not writing the truth for posterity. ;-)

:???: I thought I read somewhere that Fronto praised Cassius for his military skill and the discipline he had imposed.
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#21
Yes, as far as I know, Fronto seems to have genuinely admired Cassius. You might be thinking of this:

Quote:…[Julius Maximus] never ceased till nightfall telling tale after tale of your expeditions and of the discipline which you had restored and maintained up to the ancient standard; then of your unremitting vigour on the march and unerring instinct for the right moment for battle…

Fronto to Avidius Cassius, Ad Amicos, i. 19, Loeb Fronto II p 193


Regarding the “soft” Eastern soldiers, I originally mentioned that this seemed to have been a literary trope. As a little anecdote I mentioned that Fronto’s literary - almost a panegyric - account of the Parthian War uses this. This account makes no claim to be a neutral historical account. Lucius Verus makes it plain what he wants from Fronto:

Quote:…you should dwell at length on the causes and early stages of the war, and especially our ill successes in my absence… I think it essential to make quite clear the great superiority of the Parthians before my arrival, that the magnitude of my achievements may be manifest… In short, my achievements, whatsoever their character, are no greater, of course, than they actually are, but they can be made to seem as great as you would have them seem.

Lucius Verus to Fronto, Ad Verum Imp. ii. 3, Loeb Fronto II p 195


So, vaguely, I had this idea:
1) The account of the Parthian War was partly propaganda.
2) The account included the traditional soft Eastern soldiers.
3) Since the idea of soft Easterners was common in literature, and was also included in Fronto’s Latin propaganda piece designed for Western consumption, this makes it possible the trope was not historically accurate.
David J. Cord
www.davidcord.com
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#22
Well, as others have mentioned already, there is the topos of the soft and spoiled east. A theme which starts in Greek literature concerning the Persians and continues throughout Roman history. It's a prejudice, although there might at least be some kind of truth to it.

We shouldn't forget the different infrastructure when we compare east and west. The big and rich hellenistic towns in the east did offer more "possibilities" than the everyday life in Germania Superior. More towns, bigger towns, more luxuries, more cultural activieties. So while not on campaign being on duty in Antioch or even Alexandria surely offered more possibilities than hanging around the small settlements along the limes or Hadrian's wall.

That doesn't mean the soldiers were necessarily "softer" but for anyone making a trip to the east, one can imagine that it might support the already existing prejudice...and btw it's quite hot there in the east...even modern troops show a certain lack of enthusiasm concerning exercises in hot areas Wink
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#23
Quote:Repeatedly, european forces had to restore the situation in the East after the failure or inadequancy of local troops. This occurred in 163-66 CE (Cassius), in 232 (Severus), 243 (Timesitheus) 254 (Valerian) etc.
I could strecht a point here, but Eastern troop are also seen in the West after troubles there. I would not like to suggest that the use of troops from one half of the Empire in the other half would 'therefore' mean that the troops from the region in need 'did not cut it'.
Robert Vermaat
MODERATOR
FECTIO Late Romans
THE CAUSE OF WAR MUST BE JUST
(Maurikios-Strategikon, book VIII.2: Maxim 12)
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#24
Something to keep in mind is that the East was considered to be more wealthy, as they had direct access to exotic materials and spices, enough so that Constantine decided (among other reasons) to move the capital to Byzantium (Constantinople).

We hear a lot more about great victories in the West (Alesia and Caesar's Gallic Wars, Watling Street, Mons Grapius), though they did have their share of embarrassing losses (Varian disaster, the 9th Legion, the Batavian Revolt), and we hear more about Eastern losses (Crassus and Antony's Parthian campaigns, Legio XII ambushed, Adrianople), than their great victories. There was a reason why so many legions had to be at the Rhine & Danube and why Hadrian and Antonius' Walls were built. At least for the Early Empire, most of the legions were stationed in the West, again for a reason.
Quintus Furius Collatinus

-Matt
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#25
There is no certain way to tell whether the soft easterner was such a recurrent theme throughout antiquity because it developed into a literary topos or because it was so often true. Both assumptions seem a priori to be rather based in modern preconceptions than in ancient reality.

Clearly, a protagonist of the later view was Mommsen how gives, or portrays, a lot of examples for oriental décadence (which includes the late Hellenistic armies and leaders). This may sound offensive to the modern mind strongly conditioned to PC irrespective of the evidence, but he has history on his side: the Hoplite did beat the easterly Persians, just as the legion beat the easterly Phalanx, so the inference that the stronger were also the tougher ones suggests itself in a way.

And there were more reasons why Western soldiers could have been easily objectively tougher: they were accustomed to more harsh climates (albeit less to hot and arid climate) and they preferred the hand-to-hand combat over the eastern propensity to archery, which is a braver way to fight.
Stefan (Literary references to the discussed topics are always appreciated.)
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#26
Quote:This may sound offensive to the modern mind strongly conditioned to PC irrespective of the evidence
Or more conditioned to evidence irrespective of prejudice, perhaps? Wink

Quote:the Hoplite did beat the easterly Persians, just as the legion beat the easterly Phalanx, so the inference that the stronger were also the tougher ones suggests itself in a way.
But by that logic would the continued survival of the Persian empire long after the fall of Rome in the west not suggest that they were the stronger? Not to mention the Turks, the Arab conquests, and so on.

Undoubtably the eastern parts of the empire were quite different to the west in many ways - society, culture, politics and climate. An army stationed there would develop differently to one on the Rhine frontier, for example. But as Matt says above, military strategy in the west was different anyway - the eastern frontier had far fewer legions and relied much more on allied client states as a buffer to the Parthians and Persians, who in turn presented a more coherent political threat than the network of tribal groups to the north. So the eastern army was necessarily a different sort of force, attuned to a different threat. And from a western Roman perspective, especially one conditioned to regard the east as the fountain of ennervating decadence, this army might come to appear rather alien after a while.
Nathan Ross
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#27
Quote:Clearly, a protagonist of the later view was Mommsen how gives, or portrays, a lot of examples for oriental décadence (which includes the late Hellenistic armies and leaders). This may sound offensive to the modern mind strongly conditioned to PC irrespective of the evidence, but he has history on his side: the Hoplite did beat the easterly Persians, just as the legion beat the easterly Phalanx, so the inference that the stronger were also the tougher ones suggests itself in a way.
And this shows the problem of the ancient (and modern) idea of east and west. The Greeks considered the Persians clever but effeminate, and the northerners manly but stupid, and the Romans happily adopted the same ideology but declared the Greeks part of the effeminate east and themselves as the only people both brave and clever! It doesn't make much sense to say that the Macedonians were western in 300 BCE and eastern in 200 BCE; what really changed is the perspective of our sources. "East" and "West" are basically meaningless words because each contains whoever the speaker wants them to contain.
Nullis in verba

I have not checked this forum frequently since 2013, but I hope that these old posts have some value. I now have a blog on books, swords, and the curious things humans do with them.
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#28
Quote:Or more conditioned to evidence irrespective of prejudice, perhaps? Wink

IMO the pendulum has long swung back into the opposite direction. We are now in the age of democratic prejudice which holds that everything and everyone has to be equal or else has to be made equal, history including. Where it was clearly not despite all attempts at levelling the evidence, the relativist prejudice, which has become just as strong, steps in as last resort and urges us to maintain that things are incommensurable and everything has to be judged on its terms (that is, effectively, on no terms at all). These are the prejudices of our days, not the Rudyard Kiplings.

Quote:But by that logic would the continued survival of the Persian empire long after the fall of Rome in the west not suggest that they were the stronger? Not to mention the Turks, the Arab conquests, and so on.

This logic does not apply: the Persian empire fell in 651 AD, the Eastern Roman empire in 1453. Obviously, we are depending on the survival of our ancient sources and these are richest from ca. 500 BC to 200 AD or so and in this time period the West mainly made history, while the East chiefly endured it. It stands to reason that the stronger political and military units also claimed for themselves to be the tougher ones.
Stefan (Literary references to the discussed topics are always appreciated.)
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#29
Quote: It doesn't make much sense to say that the Macedonians were western in 300 BCE and eastern in 200 BCE...

I think it makes every bit of sense: the Iranians were just as eastern to the Greeks, as the Greeks were to the Romans. History was then made from the west, in two consecutive waves, with each conquest movement starting from the Western periphery of the civilized world, until the center of the ancient world had moved from the Euphrates and Nile over the Aegean to the Tiber, the Far West. It is perfectly legitimate to analyse this change of power balances in east-west terms (as Herodot himself already does in his introduction), because world power flowed along these geopolitical lines with Western powers being the main driving forces in this period.
Stefan (Literary references to the discussed topics are always appreciated.)
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#30
Quote:I could strecht a point here, but Eastern troop are also seen in the West after troubles there. I would not like to suggest that the use of troops from one half of the Empire in the other half would 'therefore' mean that the troops from the region in need 'did not cut it'.

By eastern I meant Near eastern, Syrian or Levantine. The Danubian forces were fine, and soldiers from the eastern half did try to save the West in the fifth century.
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