(09-22-2021, 02:22 PM)Nathan Ross Wrote: We already discussed this same passage of Hesiod back here. He was writing in Greece c.700BC, and any agricultural practice which involves harvesting in early May would seem to be quite out of synch with the practices used in northern Europe by the 1st century AD, when a late summer-autumn harvest was well established.
You haven't addressed the point about the revolt starting in summer and the people supposedly still being away in the spring though.
Hesiod was using observation of planetary bodies to regulate seasons/crop cycles from, this was copied by all so is relavent. I have explained there are 3 ways to look at crop cycles, there is natural, c 1.6 a hectare output, and takes 8 months and requires fallow period,, then there is spring cycle ( most common in this period in societies that had cattle horses to produce over the winter the manure) using manure acumalted over winter cycle with c 3.5 output and 100 to 140 day maturation period, then there is the second single year crop later in the year achieving the same.
Hærfest is old english for modern harvest, and means autumn, and was determined by the phases of the moon, harvest moon, the autumnal equinox, by this time in england they were running a 2 crop yearly cycle.
Actually i have answered this several times, which is why im not sure its safe to compresse it into a single year s timeline.
Tactitus tells us there was a lack of sown crops. Your timeline has iceni mobolise over July August, so a single crop cycle had already been sown and you produce subsistance levels later in the year, the spring crop has been sown, manured weeded and harvested, by mid point in the year, so they have more crops than they need to subsist on, then there is the second crop which they dont need to sow in any event to go to war, but if they did its in the ground already by your timeline but wont get manured in as or weeded.
(09-22-2021, 02:22 PM)Nathan Ross Wrote: I would agree that the Romans would not need a supply base in the Midlands for campaigns into Wales, as Wroxeter would provide all they needed in that regard.
But your 'logistical reality' appears to involve the Roman army having no supply or depot network beyond their own immediate campaign centre, no established towns or forts that could supply troops on the march, and an army operating within settled areas having to carry all its own food and water wherever they go. This is not a very likely scenario for AD61!
Logistic reality is there were 4 legionary basses from which supplies were drawn for legion to operate from. Tacitus tells us its only the Legion main basses that held a years supply of cerials.Second was no chain of supplied forts spaced at 18 miles intervals to draw from at the scale of a legions requirements, and was also not how the army campaigned, civilian contractors acting in settlements, bought cerials from towns and moved it to the legionary basses, so settlements dont have the surplus grain to provide as they already have provided it to the army and delivered it, so taking it meerly adds them to the list of those in revolt, just as tacticus tells us the march from angelsey was through hostile lands. Third, i used a single days water supply carried and allowed water resupply every day and gave a high end example of mule carry weight of 190 lbs for that water and mostly food requirement to sustain itself, which was how the Roman army operated, i did not alow for the legions attached cav which dwarfs the legions requirements, and we are told P lacked supplies. Gentry has shown the volume of grain storage in granaries, in legionary basses, its 24% of land area devoted to grain storage, in timber forts with a cohort garrission is 0.4%to 2.8%, in stone forts, 0.7% to 3.8% https://www.amazon.co.uk/Military-Stone-...0904531457 So no, in this cent you have 4 basses of supply to draw from, the rest lack the storage space to sustain a legions requirment, and are either already in revolt or risk becomming so if you take their food they need need for winter.
Fourth, being in Angelsy in hostile territory fighting a campaign and having your line of supply, and requiring all your logistical lift to sustain yourself there from your base of supply, going back 120 miles to wroxeter would have been reality, in your time line you then change this line of supply to a different location still 120 miles from base of supply, to perform a round trip of 18 mpd requires a min of 17 days for the mules to establish the new network to Godmanchester, and can only deliver c70% of what is needed by those needding it. Lastly, Roman Legions carried everything with them, its how they operated, this is the age of taking everything you need with you, or living of the land which takes time and lowers your march rate, and hand waving awkward logsticl reality does not change reality.
Picking Godmanchester makes sense strategicly as it controls the river to allow concentration, but there is no gaurentee its town or fort are there when you arrive, http://www.godmanchester.co.uk/roman-godmanchester i recall reading the fort was a 2 aux cohort fort but was not in use after the 43 revolt, and then Romans were not safe as far away as South Cadbury, winchester etc in ad 60.
(09-22-2021, 02:22 PM)Nathan Ross Wrote: Using the same ratio on the figures given by Dio - assuming they are based on something genuine-ish, and also assuming (as Tacitus has Paulinus suggest in his pre-battle speech) that the Britons were all mixed up, unarmed women among the warriors - this would give 30,000 Iceni and Trinovante warriors at the start of the revolt, and 57,500 warriors by the final battle. That sounds at least plausible, although we have no way of judging its accuracy.
c57500 looks good, im not convinced all the Iceni mil potential would be massed in one place, so would reduce it further, so what kind of battle was it?, we are told the romans fought in 3 bodies, one was a boars head, this is where the Legion stacks 1 cohort in front of 2, in front of 3 in front of 4, so i prefer the centre legio as one body, in this wedge shape, and its flanks held by the other two bodies. We are also told deep number of ranks were used when the unit was poorrly trained or to face cavalry, and the depth of the British Army must be deep and so present the same issue of weight of push at contact, so a wedge of 2 ranks deep gives each cohort racked up in the wedge the depth of 8 men to counter that, this also give the legion a frontage of 4 cohorts at the rear most line, so 2900 feet, and 10 cohorts acounted for. The two flanks, would need to be deeper than 2 ranks deep or risk being pushed over by weight of numbers, but the wedge shape would also help, so perhaps 4 rank, so 1440 more feet, a total frontage of 4300 feet so a min 1450 front rankers, to which the Brits if the same frontage have 40 man deep formation, but they would be seeking to flank and use their chariots so perhaps 30 ranks deep, still a daunting advanatge.
Cannae is an example of a smaller force defeating a much larger, how more effiecent were HB`s men in that example.
Lets consider efficiency, if Pyrrus has 100 men how much work does he get out of them when fighting Romans?. We have numbers of participants and casualties for a series of engagments, this method gets around all those different numbers involved by normlizing it.
His job as army commander is to get his men as effiecent as possible, so to get his 100 men to kill while staying alive. So you divide how many they kill by how many doing it, you divide how many are killed doing it from how many you had, take one from the other and you have his efiecency at killing while staying alive to kill again.
Example
Asculum he has 40000 and losses 3000 to inflict 8000, so each man did the work of 112. His oppenent also had 40000 but each 100 men did the work of 87. So now you have the battle efficiency.
Then you add in Heraclea and Benventum, and get his average, which was 110, to the Romans 90.
HB for Cannae then is a massive 100 men doing the work of 223.
Our 100 Romans at Watling, are doing the work of 270 men, ( best Roman performence in 2PW was 186) in Tactitus they are doing nearly 800 mens work. So at 270 its still of the scale, if you build upa database of ancient battles it tops the effiecency list, but its not totally inplausable, but tacitus numbers are i believe.
