
The Man Who Sacked Rome - pseudolus
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/douglas-boin-alaric-the-goth/612268/
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pp19dd
People romantically (har) think walls were there to keep the enemy out. It's
actually to do the opposite, keep them in. They're chokepoints - takes a long
time for even an organized body of people to cross an obstruction. But an
unorganized horde? It's a death trap.

Hence the Roman engineering solution to this problem, the Roman roads. They
could put a large organized army anywhere within their borders in an insane
amount of time, camps always built on the march in the same exact
configuration, with predictable roads and ditches. Though restructured to a
point historians call fragile, Rome was still a bastion of engineering and
organization. There was nowhere to run to and a price to pay.

In those days battles were always a matter of frustrating chase and escape.
And once an engagement was forced, the Roman fighting style was terrifying and
as equally organized as their infrastructure, nothing like a Hollywood
confrontation with copied and pasted CGI fighters.

Lanes of soldiers in a checkerboard pattern called quincunx, timed by a
whistle. Enemy faced a human chainsaw, basically. Imagine being their enemy,
standing at the forefront of a ragged well-fed line with consistent kits and
gear, each man carrying two spears, a sword and a shield.

Whistle blows, and the front line guys sprint at you full speed. At forty
yards out they throw their light spear with a barbed tip and it gets stuck in
your shield. Guy is still sprinting full speed at you. At ten yards out he
throws the heavier spear and it too gets stuck in your shield. He shield slams
you, hacks at you a few times unsuccessfully. You survived.

Then the whistle blows again.

Your shield feels noticeably heavier with two spears stuck in it. Guy turns
around and runs back and there's another guy sprinting at you, about to throw
a spear. You've just now realized first-hand how the Roman Imperial army
fights.

~~~
chewz
> Enemy faced a human chainsaw, basically.

Enemies must have been crying in their sleep.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman%E2%80%93Parthian_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman%E2%80%93Parthian_Wars)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman%E2%80%93Persian_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman%E2%80%93Persian_Wars)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates_VI_of_Pontus#Mithr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates_VI_of_Pontus#Mithridatic_Wars)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Punic_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Punic_War)

~~~
pp19dd
There were plenty of other punctuated failures to add to your point, like the
missing legions that got ambushed in Spain, England, and near home while in
pursuit of enemy. Centuries apart.

My point is that Rome was a system and its might was a deterrent, not that its
citizen soldiers (then turned into professional soldiers) were invincible.

Collapsing centuries of Roman history into a few broad sweeps, like we read
about, is a naive depiction. The military structure certainly wasn't
monolithic, there were series of reforms throughout the centuries, series of
equipment changes, economic sweeps, but most importantly, redefining of what
citizenship and conscription was like.

For what it's worth, I didn't pull this infantry depiction out of a coloring
book. Specialized in ancient military history for my degree. My intention was
to make it human relatable to the time period in the article.

~~~
chewz
Fair enough. My point is that Roman legions as you have described were
terryfying for primtive and not unified tribes like Germans, Brits or Gaulls
even for Carthago. But more sophisticated enemy like in Asia Minor, Parthia or
Persia were more then equal match for Roman military science.

PS. Eastern Roman Empire had more sophisticated tactics and strategems in my
opinion.

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baxtr
_> Rome’s defenses had not been breached in 800 years—not since a sack by the
Gauls at the beginning of the fourth century b.c., long before Rome became an
imperial power_

Every time I am amazed for how long Rome ruled large parts of the world.
Fascinating

~~~
Mikeb85
Even more amazing IMO is the length of time that Egypt ruled. Ancient Egypt
(Old Kingdom until Alexander the Great) lasted longer than all of the history
that came after it...

~~~
sxp
I've heard this fact phrased as "the time between the construction of the
pyramids and 0 AD is more than the time from 0 AD to present day" which blows
my mind every time I think of it.

~~~
perl4ever
Conversely, the original IBM PC was closer in time to WWII than to now.

And the discovery of quantum mechanics was closer to the war of 1812 than to
now.

~~~
redis_mlc
And it's been almost 100 years since the first patent (1934) on maglev trains,
as built in 2002 in Shangai.

That's why lay people wonder about not seeing scientific progress since the
70s or 80s - it seems like decades since giant steps were made.

But incremental progress adds up, too.

One day we'll merge all those low-temperature superconductor or graphene
experiments into something bigger.

And there's been a bunch of nice proofs coming from random places annually.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev#First_maglev_patent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev#First_maglev_patent)

------
isaacgreyed
Not breached by non-Romans. It's easy to discount all the internal conflict.

------
drclau
If you are interested in history, I can’t recommend enough Dan Carlin’s
Hardcore History podcast.

I’ve just listened recently to The Celtic Holocaust episode [0], which is
pretty much Caeser vs the Celts, and I’m astonished of how well organized the
Roman military was. Also, while the Celts were considered barbarians, it seems
they may have been quite developed, even if not at the same level as Rome. For
instance, they had elected magistrates to run things, and they were in office
for just a year and no one of their family could hold another such position
during the lifetime of a magistrate.

Other interesting facts, Caesar apparently had large debts back in Rome, so
his motivations for attacking the Celts are dubious.

How much the world has NOT changed, isn’t it?

I strongly recommend checking Hardcore History.

[0]: [https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-60-the-celtic-
hol...](https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-60-the-celtic-holocaust/)

