02-23-2010, 11:50 AM
Campbell wrote:
Evidently in your eyes the work of Roth, Erdkamp and others is worthless?.....well I will leave readers to decide for themselves whether their work is as worthless as you would have us believe, and we have "absolutely no idea"......
The relevant parts of Roth (Logistics of Roman Army etc) pp77-78 say this :
The explanation for a possible second mule is as I stated earlier, and quoted Roth on.....in the very rare occasion that the soldiers were issued more than 5 days rations - see earlier post. Roth is quite clear that the "norm" was a single mule, and any attempt to postulate otherwise is a clear distortion of his expressed views in both papers and his book.
No need for a "marathon bludgeoning match", provided you do not continue to distort Roth's views.....and I have made plain that I agree with you that probably no two Roman Armies transport was the same given the myriad factors that affected it. Still, we can get a better view than "current scholarship....has absolutely no idea"
I'm afraid I ( and I suspect most of our readers) would find your "universal cliche" ( we cannot possibly know.....blah,blah, blah) fairly unconvincing, since, on that basis we may as well abandon any attempt to learn about the past..... :roll: :roll: :lol: :lol:
Quote:Better to state the truth from the outset, than to wander all around the houses with your "educated guesstimates" which end up "giving some idea" that might be "fairly safe" ... when your "minimum/normal" figure could be wildly wrong. As I said, "we have absolutely no idea". Far from being a "universal cliche", it is an accurate statement of current scholarship.The "truth"? Hardly ! :roll: ....contrary to what you say, the figures I have given are not even remotely "wildly wrong". As I said, we can certainly do better than "we have absolutely no idea".....Do you seriously believe that the number of pack-animals employed by a Roman Legion cannot be determined any more closely than "absolutely no idea"? ( somewhere between one and a hundred thousand? ). Current scholarship has "absolutely no idea" ?
Evidently in your eyes the work of Roth, Erdkamp and others is worthless?.....well I will leave readers to decide for themselves whether their work is as worthless as you would have us believe, and we have "absolutely no idea"......
The relevant parts of Roth (Logistics of Roman Army etc) pp77-78 say this :
Quote:"Equipment of the Contubernium
The eight soldiers of the contubernium shared two pieces of equipment that were carried by the unit mule: the squad's tent and handmill.The tent (papilio), made of leather or goatskin, was large enough to accomodate the entire squad.It weighed an estimated 40 kg ( 88 lbs). Since the unit was issued unground grain as a ration, each contubernium had to have its own handmill (mola). Such handmills consisted of two massive round stone disks made of basalt. The upper stone of the mill reconstructed by Junkelmann had a diameter of 31 cm (12 ins) and weighed 14Kg (30 lbs)......The equipment of the contubernium, plus five days rations, easily could have been carried by its eight men and a single mule, with a combined capacity of more than 200 Kg. A second mule could carry a further 11 days (at 125 kg) or 13 days ( at 150 Kg) worth of rations. If there were two mules in the contubernium, they could easily have been managed by a single muleteer."
The explanation for a possible second mule is as I stated earlier, and quoted Roth on.....in the very rare occasion that the soldiers were issued more than 5 days rations - see earlier post. Roth is quite clear that the "norm" was a single mule, and any attempt to postulate otherwise is a clear distortion of his expressed views in both papers and his book.
No need for a "marathon bludgeoning match", provided you do not continue to distort Roth's views.....and I have made plain that I agree with you that probably no two Roman Armies transport was the same given the myriad factors that affected it. Still, we can get a better view than "current scholarship....has absolutely no idea"
I'm afraid I ( and I suspect most of our readers) would find your "universal cliche" ( we cannot possibly know.....blah,blah, blah) fairly unconvincing, since, on that basis we may as well abandon any attempt to learn about the past..... :roll: :roll: :lol: :lol:
"dulce et decorum est pro patria mori " - Horace
(It is a sweet and proper thing to die for ones country)
"No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country" - George C Scott as General George S. Patton
Paul McDonnell-Staff
(It is a sweet and proper thing to die for ones country)
"No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country" - George C Scott as General George S. Patton
Paul McDonnell-Staff
