Interested in Roman Riding?

[John Conyard]

Now Byron,

A charge often brought against the late army, for no good reason, is one of poor discipline. But if that could be used against the 3rd century army, we must also consider the various civil wars of the Severan period, the disaster of AD 69 and the Year of the Four Emperors. Civil war is a constant through Roman history, and we need to draw a distinction between the capacity of emperors to control their armies and the effectiveness of those armies. Evidence for lapses of discipline in late Roman armies can be collected, for example in Ammianus (16.12.33, 25.6.11-13, 27.2.9). But I would set against that the evidence of Livy (22.6.11, 25.21), Caesar (B. Gall. 1.40, 7.47-52), Tacitus (Hist. 1.64-9, 2.56), and Cassius Dio (80.4.1-5.1). Discipline never changed that much!

You and others lost the argument on the Comitatus forum already :twisted: