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Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.
Renatus wrote:

Obviously, only those capable of bearing arms would have gone to fight but their families could have accompanied them to provide support. As Nathan has said, in effect, for 'wives' read 'wives and children'. Moreover, if all the fighting men had gone to war, they would have been reluctant to leave their families behind unprotected, where they would have been vulnerable to Roman retaliation or attack by the tribe's traditional enemies. The natural remedy would have been to take them with them. It has been suggested earlier in this thread that the presence of a large number of non-combatants may have been one of the factors that led the inhabitants of Colchester to think that what was approaching was a peaceful tribal movement and nothing to be feared.

Michael, the makeup of the "horde" is sadly an area that we cannot agree on. 

Your comment "but their families could have accompanied them to provide support" perhaps might read their "wives " could have provided them with support which I could agree with.  

In my opinion it is not a natural remedy to take your vulnerable with you to war - even a migration would only be undertaken under severe provocation and the reason for the tribes going to war was to regain their lands - so to leave them just doesn't make any sense. 

Further by leaving their lands with no defence at all would be to defeat the main objective of the war.

I cannot believe that Tacitus wouldn't know the difference between families and wives or a suitable word so to invent a different meaning for "wives" which suddenly includes the whole tribe but I am not a scholar....

I am not sure if we would be allowed to use this thread to try and work out what every general needs to know - what / who was the enemy, their strengths weaknesses, numbers, living structure, grouping etc. not just basing our observations the writings of Tacitus and Dio....
Deryk
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Messages In This Thread
Re: Calling all armchair generals! - by Ensifer - 03-11-2010, 03:13 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-18-2012, 06:26 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 12:02 AM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 02:50 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 05:40 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 11:26 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-24-2012, 05:11 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-24-2012, 09:42 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-24-2012, 10:10 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-25-2012, 03:11 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-25-2012, 03:25 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-25-2012, 08:36 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-26-2012, 02:57 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-27-2012, 01:50 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 08-05-2012, 02:24 PM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-07-2014, 02:18 PM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-08-2014, 01:50 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-11-2014, 02:03 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-18-2014, 07:54 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-20-2014, 02:37 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-25-2014, 08:29 AM
RE: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand. - by Theoderic - 09-18-2016, 03:33 PM

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