04-03-2019, 02:51 AM
Michael wrote:
Also, it seems that Coelius is the link for the Carthaginian information that would have come from Silenos.
Once upon a time I believed the Carthaginian army numbers had come from Silenos. Not now, and I doubt anyone even used Silenos as a source. Even Hannibal’s army at Cannae is based on Roman army numbers. Polybius states Hannibal was outnumbered by two to one, or the Roman army was doubled. The Romans had 16 legions, so someone gave Hannibal 8 legions. Polybius claims Hannibal had “over” 40,000 infantry. That works out to be 40,400 infantry for 8 legions. No Silenos here.
Polybius’ events in the African campaign are more suited to a Monty Python movie. Following Polybius, Scipio (Africanus) sent three ambassadors to confer with the Carthaginians about the violation of the peace treaty. After the Roman ambassadors addressed the Carthaginian council, they left without waiting for a response from the Carthaginians. However, in a following chapter, Polybius claims the Carthaginian senate dismissed the ambassadors without a reply. As the Carthaginian senate were for war, it was decided, with the Carthaginian fleet anchored off the coast near Utica, for three Carthaginian ships to sink the Roman ambassador’s ship. However, this action was not to take place near Carthage, or in the port of Carthage, but to occur as soon as the Roman ship had passed the river Macar, and as Polybius states, in view of the Roman camp. If the Carthaginians had decided to murder the three Roman ambassadors, then wouldn’t murdering them before they left the city give the Carthaginians a far greater chance of success than waiting until the Roman ship was near the Roman camp before the three Carthaginians ships launched their attack? The Carthaginian attempt to sink the Roman ambassador’s ship proved unsuccessful, mainly due to the Roman ship avoiding the rams of the Carthaginian ships, and beating off any boarding attempt. The Romans foraging near their camp then came to the rescue of the ambassador’s ship. Polybius has most of the men on board the Roman ships killed in the engagement. However, the three ambassadors miraculously escaped injury.
What a lot of bollocks. And modern historians just lap this stuff up. The problem is not many modern historians are sceptical of Polybius. They just conform.
Michael wrote:
But then there`s no need to struggle in making Polybius` battle work in the way that it should.
Exactly, it’s also the same with the Trebbia, and trying to work out how the 10,000 Romans that broke through the Carthaginian centre made it back to Placentia. It is fictitious, and that is why it cannot be resolved. Same with Scipio crossing the Trebbia from Placentia to set up his camp and the Carthaginians harassing his rearguard. Wrong place and wrong time. Unfortunately, for Polybius, the Ticinus and the Trebbia were just one bridge too many for Polybius, created from his own confusion. Appian is correct, Scipio took refuge in Placentia, but poor Appian is not on the modern historians reliable list, Polybius is number one man for that. Polybius is claimed to be the most reliable by nearly every modern historian, and yet not one can show any investigation that proves this, not one of them. However, J.S. Reid, a lone voice, written in 1913, had this to say on Polybius:
“One tendency that has grown in my case with the years is to lower my estimate of Polybius as an authority, and to raise my opinion of Livy, great and undeniable though his shortcomings be. The faults of the Roman historian (Livy) have been exposed to an unrelenting fire by critics, while Polybius, for the most part, has been taken at his own valuation. In reality, by carrying out the process which he himself recommends, the process of “interrogating the facts,” it can be shown that he (Polybius) is far from being so correct, so unimpassioned, so deep-thinking, so far-seeing, as he supposed himself to be. There is no error which he condemns in others into which he does not at times fall himself. His self-exaltations, his pedantic and petulant animadversions on other writers, his hard and narrow applications of doctrine and logic to the fluidity of motives and events, render little less than absurd to comparison often instituted between him and Thucydides.” J. S. Reid, “The Problems of the Second Punic War,” The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 3 Part 2, (1913), Page 175-196
Another example of confused battles is Baecula and Ilipa. I have no idea of how Lazenby has the whole Roman infantry doing the outflanking manoeuvre and why. You can get the same result just by having the Roman infantry move straight ahead. The outflanking manoeuvre was the standard consul’s bodyguard cavalry accompanied by the standard velites attached to each standard sized cavalry squadron. Same number of men as used at the Ticinus, except modern historians has interpreted “all his light infantry,” at the Ticinus as being all the light infantry in the whole consular army. The Romans are so standardised, when you understand it, you don’t even need to have some ancient historian provide the numbers, you know automatically how many there are. When Publius Scipio the Elder in Iberia goes on a reconnaissance mission, I know actually the troops types involved and how many. This is one of the great benefits the Romans left us, there chronic standardisation, and their strict adherence to procedure, and this is the same for the Roman fleet. Just provide the rank of the commander and I know how many ships he can command, and if it exceeds that number, it always ends in being a distribution confusion by the ancient historian, so you end up with 50 ships moving, instead of 10 ships moving and 50 ships staying.
Michael wrote:
But if it don`t work... we should attempt to find a more credible version of the Zama campaign.
You must understand that no matter the evidence, it will meet with resistance. The traditional battle of Zama is too ingrained with people. And many people don’t like change, and don’t want to be proven wrong. In the academic world, it is not about finding the truth, it is about protecting egos. I had one academic castigate me because she believed my work will destroy the reputation of many academics, past and present, and questioned me if I was prepared for that. This academic had studied under Lily Ross Taylor who had supposedly written the definitive book on the Roman tribes. She viewed me as a threat, and all she saw was Lily Ross Taylor’s legacy was going to be for nothing. My problem with Lily Ross Taylor was she based a lot of her material on conjecture. She allowed her imagination to get the better of her, so I responded I had no qualms about proving Taylor to be wrong.
Michael, what I have learnt from my research, is people will hate you for knowing more than they do. I get anonymous emails of pure hate directed at me. Some I know are wargamers, others just resentful people. It’s like I was the guy who pulled Excalibur from the stone when so many others had tried, and had deemed that they should be the one. In another example, one so called great Pythagorean researcher demanded I produce references pertaining to Pythagoras that he believed I had made up. I produced them, and realised he never knew about these references, even though I had obtained them from books written by modern historians. I set out to research and understand the mathematical data in the primary sources. This has never been done before, so I had virgin territory to explore. It has taken down a road I never imagine would happen. In fact, I believed it would end nowhere, and the army sizes and unit numbers in the primary sources would just be unexplained numbers. I was proven wrong. It was when I turned the Servian constitution into the tribal structure, I knew I had opened a door into the Roman world. When I found the connection between the Roman tribes and the Pythagorean cosmos, I even had a professor (my mentor) vigorously telling me so far I had done good work and not to go down that road.
So now I am finishing the last stages of my research, and that is to address the contradictions in the primary sources. Again, this is paying great dividends, especially for the Second Punic War and the overthrow of Tarquinius Superbus. It’s not the Romans that wanted to overthrow Tarquinius Superbus, but Tarquinius Superbus trying to overthrow Latin hegemony. In relation to the Second Punic War, most of the battles fought in Iberia are fabrications, and like Zama, very small events turned into major battles. Carthaginian army and fleet numbers are farcical, elephant numbers are exaggerated, the chronology has been distorted, and Polybius is a blatant liar. All in all, it is very disappointing.
Also, it seems that Coelius is the link for the Carthaginian information that would have come from Silenos.
Once upon a time I believed the Carthaginian army numbers had come from Silenos. Not now, and I doubt anyone even used Silenos as a source. Even Hannibal’s army at Cannae is based on Roman army numbers. Polybius states Hannibal was outnumbered by two to one, or the Roman army was doubled. The Romans had 16 legions, so someone gave Hannibal 8 legions. Polybius claims Hannibal had “over” 40,000 infantry. That works out to be 40,400 infantry for 8 legions. No Silenos here.
Polybius’ events in the African campaign are more suited to a Monty Python movie. Following Polybius, Scipio (Africanus) sent three ambassadors to confer with the Carthaginians about the violation of the peace treaty. After the Roman ambassadors addressed the Carthaginian council, they left without waiting for a response from the Carthaginians. However, in a following chapter, Polybius claims the Carthaginian senate dismissed the ambassadors without a reply. As the Carthaginian senate were for war, it was decided, with the Carthaginian fleet anchored off the coast near Utica, for three Carthaginian ships to sink the Roman ambassador’s ship. However, this action was not to take place near Carthage, or in the port of Carthage, but to occur as soon as the Roman ship had passed the river Macar, and as Polybius states, in view of the Roman camp. If the Carthaginians had decided to murder the three Roman ambassadors, then wouldn’t murdering them before they left the city give the Carthaginians a far greater chance of success than waiting until the Roman ship was near the Roman camp before the three Carthaginians ships launched their attack? The Carthaginian attempt to sink the Roman ambassador’s ship proved unsuccessful, mainly due to the Roman ship avoiding the rams of the Carthaginian ships, and beating off any boarding attempt. The Romans foraging near their camp then came to the rescue of the ambassador’s ship. Polybius has most of the men on board the Roman ships killed in the engagement. However, the three ambassadors miraculously escaped injury.
What a lot of bollocks. And modern historians just lap this stuff up. The problem is not many modern historians are sceptical of Polybius. They just conform.
Michael wrote:
But then there`s no need to struggle in making Polybius` battle work in the way that it should.
Exactly, it’s also the same with the Trebbia, and trying to work out how the 10,000 Romans that broke through the Carthaginian centre made it back to Placentia. It is fictitious, and that is why it cannot be resolved. Same with Scipio crossing the Trebbia from Placentia to set up his camp and the Carthaginians harassing his rearguard. Wrong place and wrong time. Unfortunately, for Polybius, the Ticinus and the Trebbia were just one bridge too many for Polybius, created from his own confusion. Appian is correct, Scipio took refuge in Placentia, but poor Appian is not on the modern historians reliable list, Polybius is number one man for that. Polybius is claimed to be the most reliable by nearly every modern historian, and yet not one can show any investigation that proves this, not one of them. However, J.S. Reid, a lone voice, written in 1913, had this to say on Polybius:
“One tendency that has grown in my case with the years is to lower my estimate of Polybius as an authority, and to raise my opinion of Livy, great and undeniable though his shortcomings be. The faults of the Roman historian (Livy) have been exposed to an unrelenting fire by critics, while Polybius, for the most part, has been taken at his own valuation. In reality, by carrying out the process which he himself recommends, the process of “interrogating the facts,” it can be shown that he (Polybius) is far from being so correct, so unimpassioned, so deep-thinking, so far-seeing, as he supposed himself to be. There is no error which he condemns in others into which he does not at times fall himself. His self-exaltations, his pedantic and petulant animadversions on other writers, his hard and narrow applications of doctrine and logic to the fluidity of motives and events, render little less than absurd to comparison often instituted between him and Thucydides.” J. S. Reid, “The Problems of the Second Punic War,” The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 3 Part 2, (1913), Page 175-196
Another example of confused battles is Baecula and Ilipa. I have no idea of how Lazenby has the whole Roman infantry doing the outflanking manoeuvre and why. You can get the same result just by having the Roman infantry move straight ahead. The outflanking manoeuvre was the standard consul’s bodyguard cavalry accompanied by the standard velites attached to each standard sized cavalry squadron. Same number of men as used at the Ticinus, except modern historians has interpreted “all his light infantry,” at the Ticinus as being all the light infantry in the whole consular army. The Romans are so standardised, when you understand it, you don’t even need to have some ancient historian provide the numbers, you know automatically how many there are. When Publius Scipio the Elder in Iberia goes on a reconnaissance mission, I know actually the troops types involved and how many. This is one of the great benefits the Romans left us, there chronic standardisation, and their strict adherence to procedure, and this is the same for the Roman fleet. Just provide the rank of the commander and I know how many ships he can command, and if it exceeds that number, it always ends in being a distribution confusion by the ancient historian, so you end up with 50 ships moving, instead of 10 ships moving and 50 ships staying.
Michael wrote:
But if it don`t work... we should attempt to find a more credible version of the Zama campaign.
You must understand that no matter the evidence, it will meet with resistance. The traditional battle of Zama is too ingrained with people. And many people don’t like change, and don’t want to be proven wrong. In the academic world, it is not about finding the truth, it is about protecting egos. I had one academic castigate me because she believed my work will destroy the reputation of many academics, past and present, and questioned me if I was prepared for that. This academic had studied under Lily Ross Taylor who had supposedly written the definitive book on the Roman tribes. She viewed me as a threat, and all she saw was Lily Ross Taylor’s legacy was going to be for nothing. My problem with Lily Ross Taylor was she based a lot of her material on conjecture. She allowed her imagination to get the better of her, so I responded I had no qualms about proving Taylor to be wrong.
Michael, what I have learnt from my research, is people will hate you for knowing more than they do. I get anonymous emails of pure hate directed at me. Some I know are wargamers, others just resentful people. It’s like I was the guy who pulled Excalibur from the stone when so many others had tried, and had deemed that they should be the one. In another example, one so called great Pythagorean researcher demanded I produce references pertaining to Pythagoras that he believed I had made up. I produced them, and realised he never knew about these references, even though I had obtained them from books written by modern historians. I set out to research and understand the mathematical data in the primary sources. This has never been done before, so I had virgin territory to explore. It has taken down a road I never imagine would happen. In fact, I believed it would end nowhere, and the army sizes and unit numbers in the primary sources would just be unexplained numbers. I was proven wrong. It was when I turned the Servian constitution into the tribal structure, I knew I had opened a door into the Roman world. When I found the connection between the Roman tribes and the Pythagorean cosmos, I even had a professor (my mentor) vigorously telling me so far I had done good work and not to go down that road.
So now I am finishing the last stages of my research, and that is to address the contradictions in the primary sources. Again, this is paying great dividends, especially for the Second Punic War and the overthrow of Tarquinius Superbus. It’s not the Romans that wanted to overthrow Tarquinius Superbus, but Tarquinius Superbus trying to overthrow Latin hegemony. In relation to the Second Punic War, most of the battles fought in Iberia are fabrications, and like Zama, very small events turned into major battles. Carthaginian army and fleet numbers are farcical, elephant numbers are exaggerated, the chronology has been distorted, and Polybius is a blatant liar. All in all, it is very disappointing.
