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

Not that I can see.  Where do you get this from?

This appears to be a fairly standard translation of the text:

"He chose a position approached by a narrow defile, closed in at the rear by a forest, having first ascertained that there was not a soldier of the enemy except in his front, where an open plain extended ."

If either army had to approach the position through a narrow pass / defile / isthmus / throat, they must have been approaching somewhere which was terminated by a forest. 

If this was the case the first army would have had to stop and then face the way they had come, which Tacitus says was an open plain. Effectively the Roman army would be in the defile facing the open plain.  

Perhaps the question we should be asking is, what is the definition of “position”? Is it the defile or the plain?

My contention is that the position is the plain itself where the battle is to be fought. 

Tacitus goes on to define the plain by writing “their wives riding in waggons, which they had placed on the extreme border of the plain”.

The plain had then to be defined by something (perhaps hills or woodland) and therefore had to be accessed from outside these limits through an entrance, which brings me onto the second point of the separate defile that the Roman army is in.

"At first, the legion kept its position, clinging to the narrow defile as a defence; when they had exhausted their missiles, which they discharged with unerring aim on the closely approaching foe, they rushed out in a wedge-like column." 

Where did they rush out into? 

Not the defile because they were already in it, so it has to be the plain. 

They managed to turn the enemy who were following their normal tactics of swiftly retreating to fight another day but “flight proved difficult, because the surrounding waggons had blocked retreat.

My point is that the wagons were blocking the exits from the battlefield but that the wagons were not the only cause, it was because the plain was already defined and chosen by Seutonius Paulinus because of the topography.

He would not have chosen a place to fight a battle that was defined by the random placing of the wagons that he had no control over, the wagons were incidental and just added to the original intent.
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 - 03-07-2021, 12:08 PM

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