12-15-2005, 05:24 PM
Hello all, hope you are well?
Can anyone help me, I am trying to get a better idea of how a Roman press gang worked for military service. Presumably they did exist, I seem to remember being told they did, but does anyone know quite what they did and how they operated.
For example, in Nelsons Navy press gangs would often be made of a few good men, an officer and some local toughs who would be given immunity from pressed services for helping out. So feared were the gangs that apparently some spies wanting to avoid detection pretended to be a press gang and so everyone left them alone.
Does anyone know, under what legal circumstances a Roman Press might be carried out, the terms of service, techniques for pressing (where they as violent as later ones) and anything else about them?
All the best and thanks
Can anyone help me, I am trying to get a better idea of how a Roman press gang worked for military service. Presumably they did exist, I seem to remember being told they did, but does anyone know quite what they did and how they operated.
For example, in Nelsons Navy press gangs would often be made of a few good men, an officer and some local toughs who would be given immunity from pressed services for helping out. So feared were the gangs that apparently some spies wanting to avoid detection pretended to be a press gang and so everyone left them alone.
Does anyone know, under what legal circumstances a Roman Press might be carried out, the terms of service, techniques for pressing (where they as violent as later ones) and anything else about them?
All the best and thanks