10-05-2021, 11:45 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-05-2021, 12:03 PM by Nathan Ross.)
(10-05-2021, 11:05 AM)Mark Hygate Wrote: Do you include:
Milner's note on Vegetius's text adds that his estimates "will correspond to the speed of a standard march or iustum iter known from Caesar Bell Civ 3.76, defined as a normal route-march on good roads in good weather between camps, leaving time to build the camp and curare corpora and leave in time the next day".
I am assuming that curare corpora (care of the body) includes things other than hard labour! And perhaps that a five-hour summer march day would include a midday rest period as well.
The Roman army was trained to march long distances, as is well known, and I am assuming (again) that the daily march rate could be kept up for long periods. Otherwise a shorter daily march would have been more useful. Our sources often seem to suggest that armies covered long distances relatively quickly (even leaving aside Caesar's 'forced marches' and his comments about marching both day and night!)
I notice in Bell Civ 1.78 that Caesar's legionaries "had been ordered to bring a twenty-two days' supply [of grain] from Ilerda; the light-armed and auxiliaries had none, since... their bodies were not trained to carry burdens." So 22 days rations could apparently be carried 'on the body' by troops trained to do so.
[for those who refuse to accept the idea of legionaries marching every day, I would add that Vegetius's 'full step' of 24 Roman miles (22 modern miles) a day would get Paulinus's force the 198 miles from Anglesey to Godmanchester in 9 marching days - thus allowing two full days off for R&R en route!]
Nathan Ross
