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09-18-2002, 07:53 PM

Salve! 
 
So is there a source that I can read (english) that talks about whether one way or another the legionaires issued a battle cry/scream just before they engaged the enemy? 
 
I have heard this kicked around in the past, and was curious if anyone had any new information. 
 
Also, I have been trying to research the upturned hand standard that the legions employed, and besides a graduate thesis from a student at a university in Hawaii, I haven't located much on the topic....I was curious what the significance was? Was this significant to Mithralism (I have heard that the open hand was a sign of Mithra...don't know if that's true)? Or was this representative of the salute of the roman soldier? The Roman soldier's bond to one another, perhaps? 
 
Just curious, that standard has always fascinated me for some reason. 
 
Gratis tibi ago! 
 
Britannicus

09-18-2002, 08:25 PM

I'm sure this probably won't be much help, but it seems that I read a thread on this site that was a discussion about this same subject. I'm not sure if it was on this bb. or www.cavazzi.com/roman-emp...board.html 
 
The concensus was that the Legions didn't have an official salute as we think of it today in the military. As you mentioned, the right arm raised palm forward seemed to be more of a spontaneous gesture by the troops during morale rallies than anything else. I'm sure someone can better cross the 't's and dot the 'i's.

09-19-2002, 01:49 AM

Apparently the hand with the raised middle finger was considered to be "too rude and smug", even for romans, so they went with an open hand. 
 
ba-da-bing! "Only Trajan could go to Dacia." 
 
Magnus/Matt 
Optio 
Legio XXX "Ulpia Victrix"

09-19-2002, 04:01 AM

The raised hand standard dates back to a practical use with the Manipular legions at the time of the Punic Wars, for instance. 
 
Each maniple would be made of 2 centuries, one behind the other. The prior century, the one in front, would have a signium topped with a hand, and the posterior century would have their signium topped by a spearhead. I'm sure there is something I'm missing, but some of the pther fellas will correct anything I have missed. 
 
As for the salute, as it has been said there is no evidence that supports a modern type of salute, though a raised hand was used by troops hailing a conquering general as Imperator. I think Tactus speaks of this?

09-19-2002, 07:23 AM

Hi, 
 
Caesar mentions clearly that before or while attacking the troops would make as much noise as possible to intimidate their enemy (civil war). 
A special "battle cry"....if there was he would have mentioned I think. 
But there are probably other sources shedding more light on this (Sander?). 
 
regards

09-19-2002, 08:26 AM

The German originating Barritus was used by troops in the later empire, and IIRC there is a reference to it being used about the time of Hadrian.

09-19-2002, 11:52 AM

During the empire, the legions would advance under complete silence, until they got withing close range of the enemy, upon which they would yell their battle cries and charge. "Only Trajan could go to Dacia." 
 
Magnus/Matt 
Optio 
Legio XXX "Ulpia Victrix"

09-21-2002, 11:02 PM

IIRC, the 'hand' standard was a reference to the maniple, known as a 'handful' of legionaries. Perhaps someone more knowledgable than I could verify/correct this? 
 
I'm reading Goldsworthy's Roman Warfare at the moment, and he mentions the legionaries of the later Empire abandoning the whole 'silent, then yelling battle-cry when charging the enemy' approach. Instead, they gradually built up the volume of their battle-chant, culminating in a loud warcry (I presume). Apparently, it was designed to aid the soldiers in 'building up' their courage and blood-lust for the coming fight. This may be similar to the German barritus that Nik mentioned. 
 
Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub45.ezboard.com/uauxilia.showPublicProfile?language=EN>Auxilia</A> at: 9/22/02 1:04:14 am

09-23-2002, 09:33 AM

Salve, 
 
One should note that the idea that the hand signifies the prior century is a conjecture and not based on a direct source reference. It is derived from the fact that hand ( manus) and maniple ( manipulus) are related. Though the theory is attractive, it is not a hard fact. The significance of the hand and a couple of the other decorations is not fully understood. 
 
Arrianus describes in his Tactica that Roman cavalrymen used their native warcries and specifies among others Keltoi as doing that (NB authors from antiquity regularly used Keltoi for Germanics, and Galatai for Kelts). This attests the use of Germanic warcries in the Roman army long before the supposed barbarisation of the late empire. The warcry of the late Roman army is referred to as the barritus (Ammianus 16.12.43, 21.13.15, 26.7.17, 31.7.11; Vegetius, Epitoma 3.18). The distinction that Goldsworthy makes between the early and late empire is not fully correct. The Strategikon for instance also stresses that silence must be maintained before the warcry (by that date often a Christianised one, nobiscum ('(God) with us')). The Roman army used warcries and noise to intimidate an enemy, but the difference with others was that they did so at a specific point (before getting to close quarters) rather than all the time. 
 
Some source references for silence and shouting: 
 
Cassius Dio, 62.12 (Romans advancing silently against their noisy enemies). 
 
Arrianus, Ektaxis (note that this silence is maintained before making as loud a warcry as possible) 
 
Josephus, BJ 3.258 (note also the precautions against loud Roman warcry) 
 
Regards, 
 
Sander van Dorst

09-23-2002, 02:28 PM

Salve! 
 
Thanks guys...I'm going to try to find those sources in the coming week. Thanks again! 
 
Britannicus

10-13-2002, 07:56 AM

Advancing in silence before giving one good warcry makes good sense. How else could you hear the signals and commands? The warcry was likely shouted at the moment of pilum discharge and it probably sounded more like ARGH! than Venus Victrix or Christus Invictus...judging by the slingstone inscriptions from Perugia there were probably a few less formal interpolations as well... 
 
Nobody really seems to know when the Barritus got adopted into the main order of battle units but presumably it got really started when Constantine was forming his all-German comitatenses. It would have just got worse after that. 
 
There are still academics around who insist that the hoplites actually shouted ELELELEU when anybody who watches Xena knows perfectly well it was a good old ululation or war-whoop. These are usually the same guys who insist that the Froggus Graecus really said Brekekekex, koax, koax. They probably also believe in the myth of the Greek Legion 69 Apollinaris, of which the less said the better, and own great tracts of swampland in Florida. 
 
Eric

10-13-2002, 03:56 PM

Salve, 
 
The barbarisation/Germanisierung of the fourth century army is a modern myth. H. Elton who has studied the phenomenon by looking at the source material rather than copying statements from earlier publications found that there is no basis for the supposition that the late Roman army was predominantly enlisted from Germanic barbarians. The majority of troops appear to have been of provincial Roman origin with a minority of foreign origin. Enlistment of barbarians was nothing new: it had been since the earliest times that foreigners were enlisted to serve alongside or in the Roman army. Neither was the employment of barbarians as officers quite new as they had been used to command allied and auxiliary forces for many centuries. Their advancement to higher rank was in part due to political reasons as they were unlikely to make a bid for the purple themselves, which born Romans of high military rank were prone to do. There is no evidence that this led to a deterioration in the effectiveness of the army. The Roman army, as portrayed in the work of Ammianus and other late historians proved quite effective in the field. It was by no means an invincible war machine, but then again the Roman army had never proved to be unbeatable. It still had superior logistics and morale and stood more than a fair chance of defeating the various opponents it met. Adrianople was one defeat in a long and distinguished list of other lost battles (eg Cannae, Arausio, Teutoburger Forest, Tapae, Abrittus). 
 
Elton, H., Warfare in Roman Europe AD 350-425 (Oxford 1996) 312p. 
 
 
Regards, 
 
Sander van Dorst

**Robert Vermaat** · 10-14-2002, 09:17 AM

Indeed, gentlefolk, Sander has a very good point here. Elton has proved that there is no basis for the assumption about germanic troops and commanders dominating the Roman army in the 4th century and after. (But, min you, he is very honst in telling us that there is far too few evidence either way!) 
Neither was the army scoured of such troops after Adrianople, also a common myth. I seem to recll that it was (amongst other) Edward Gibbon who made that myth popular, decrying the untrustworthyness of these germanic units as a reason for the fll of the West. 
I'm now reading Foord, Edward (1925): The Last Age of Roman Britain, (George G.Harrap), who actually proposed that Stilicho withdrew British regiments for the defence of Italy because of the known untrustworthyness of his germanic numeri! 
 
Cheers, 
Robert 
 
'Cives Francorum, Miles Romanorum' 
www.fectio.org.uk/

10-14-2002, 02:41 PM

Sandor I agree with you in part. I do think we have to be careful what period we're talking about here. Germanic senior officers are attested at least from the reign of Constantine I in significant numbers, and the Notitia lists give evidence of plenty of units with German names. There is also plenty of discussion of 'barbarization' in late fourth century - early fifth century sources (eg Synesius) I think the important points here are that neither German officers nor German soldiers even in large numbers necessarily meant 'barbarization' in the sense of the collapse of standards of efficiency, and that if we talk about a period from (say) 350 to 425, we are talking about far too long a period. By 425 Julian (for instance) would not have recognized the Army except maybe on paper. 
 
Arthur Ferrill in 'The Fall of Rome: The Military Explanation" makes some significant points here. The first is that the Army in east and west did remain highly efficient as a war machine at least until Adrianople in the East and the Frigidus in the West. The number of 'barbarians' in the Army didn't matter because the intake was gradual enough to train the recruits up to standard, and the senior officers had 'bought in' to Rome by the time they received their commands. It's worth noting as Sander says that Rome had always done this sort of thing, and that the 'Roman' troops of Julian's day were no more 'Roman' than you or I, they were Gauls and Pannonians. I suppose one of them would have punched your head in if you'd suggested he wasn't a Roman! 
 
Things began to change in 378 in the East and 394 in the West. Adrianople meant that there had to be massive replacements in East Roman formations, and a major loss in exprienced officer cadres. For political if not manpower reasons, Theodosius had to employ the Gothic nation-in-arms as independent foederati not subject to discipline and training. The East went through some very unstable times with federate generals until about mid-5th-century when they were able to begin a recovery based on Isaurian recruitment, but the Eastern Army never fell apart completely, and made a recovery (just how, we don't know) between Marcian and Justin I. Anastasius probably should get a lot of credit for unspectacular but effective reform in his thirty-year reign. 
 
The Frigidus in 394 seems to have destroyed the flower of the Western army, and Theodosius left a lot of Eastern troops in the West, where they still were when Stilicho took over. Ferrill suggests that the actual 'barbarization' process (as alluded to by Vegetius for instance) mainly happened in the West, and was due to a few factors: Stilicho's having to recruit federates to make up the numbers after the Frigidus; the difficulty of maintaining standards in "Roman' units serving alongside federates not subject to drill and discipline, and Stilicho's own inadequacies as a politician rather than as a general - he was too interested in the political game at Constantinople and let Alaric slip three times. That he was a perfectly good tactical general is suggested by the fact that he caught Alaric three times and smashed Radagaisus in 506. But he paid no attention to the Rhine frontier, and there is no sign of significant activity on his part in countering the invasion of Gaul. As to his bringing troops from Britain - as far as we know, he didn't, the rebel Constantine did. 
 
Ferrill's thesis is that the years 406-410 were decisive in the destruction of the Western Roman Army as a fighting machine, not through battle, but through inactivity and demoralization. We do not know if they could have fought Alaric successfully in 408-410. The point is, they didn't even try. The logistical system stayed reasonably intact, at least where Ravenna's writ still ran, but the troops themselves became less and less effective; the West turned more and more to federates and the old units were allowed to deteriorate; by Chalons, Attilla is dismissing the Roman units as beneath notice, and they only played a subsidiary part in the battle. 
 
Sources...we don't know exactly when Vegetius wrote, but the weight of opinion seems to place him around Valentinian III. He writes with the explicit assumption that the Roman Army has become inferior in infantry (though superior in cavalry) to the older Roman army, and with the assumption that its battles would be defensive in nature. 
 
By contrast, Ammianus, writing sometime in the 380s, implicitly assumes that the Roman Army is strong and although it has very formidable enemies, it will prevail. He calls Adrianople 'the irremediable catastrophe' but asserts that Rome will recover, as it has from so many other disasters. In a sense, he was right - the Eastern Army did recover eventually in a new form, and it protected the Empire for many more centuries. He could hardly have imagined that in the space of thirty years it would be the Western Army that stumbled into barbarization and then into oblivion. 
 
Eric

10-14-2002, 03:08 PM

Salve, 
 
A distinction must be made between unit titles and actual ethnic composition of the troops. As Roman units tended to recruit replacements in the most convenient manner and did not make any effort to replenish them from men of the original recruitment area, the unit title would cease to be representative within several years. Also a number of those Germanic names of units are derived from existing auxiliary units (eg the units titled Batavi) which had long lost their ethnic identity. New units may have been formed from Germanics, but there is no evidence that this resulted in lasting effects. Units of Frankish and Alamannic troops in Syria would be likely composed of locals in a matter of years. 
 
The number of officers of a certain background need not have reflected the ethnic composition of the army as a whole. In the equites singulares Augusti for instance, a unit which is relatively well documented, the proportion of troopers provided by particular areas of the empire was not matched by the composition of the officer corps. Germanic names do not automatically indicate foreign extraction: Germanic tribes had been part of the empire for centuries and in many part of the empire ethnic names were never fully replaced by Roman ones. In modern publications people are often claimed to be barbarians even when born in the empire. Thus it is not hard to find publications that claim that Stilicho was a Vandal barbarian, when he was born and raised in the empire from a Roman mother and a Vandal father who spent a lifetime in Roman service. 
 
An important part in the decline of the western empire's military capability was in trying defense on the cheap by letting recruitment of replacements into regular army units slip. The economically stronger eastern empire was less affected by this and could maintain its army of regulars better. 
 
Speidel, M.P., Riding for Caesar. The Roman emperors' horse guard (London 1994) 223p. 
 
Regards, 
 
Sander van Dorst

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