Spy satellites reveal hundreds of Roman forts across Iraq and Syria

A series of declassified satellite images from the Cold War era have revealed hundreds of undiscovered Roman forts in Iraq and Syria.

A total of 396 new sites have been identified from the images taken in the 1960s and 1970s, with the findings, published in the journal Antiquity, changing the perception of how the region functioned.

A previous 1934 aerial survey, conducted by French explorer Antoine Poidebard, recorded 116 Roman forts across the region.

They were previously thought to form a defensive line against incursions from Arabia and Persia along the Roman Empire’s eastern flank.

The latest findings, however, suggest Rome’s borderlands were more fluid than previously thought, as the forts are arranged along what appear to be strategic routes running east to west. This is leading researchers to suggest each marks a stage along a road network, with the outposts supporting caravan-based trade and communication lines as well as serving military purposes.

That's right, the Carthaginian army was a mostly local officer corps, with troops being mostly mercenaries. That turned into a major weakness, as they also relied on local alliances, and over decades the Barca family in particular were in a constant state of war.

Carthage had a formidable navy, the entire port complex was set up to both protect it and make it easy to rapidly launch a large flotilla. As the Athenians and Spartans had done, the rowers were paid recruits, and as long as they did as they were told, no one cared where they were from.

Hannibal marched his army (including a few surviving elephants) into Italy and carried out a series of flanking maneuvers with a handful of battlefield victories over a period of 15 years. He never took any Italian cities, but had some Italian allies, apparently cities that wouldn't let him in, but knew they wouldn't be relieved by Roman armies.

The rival families in Carthage were happy to have him not in town.

Scipio first took the Barca family's holdings (nominally Carthaginian) in Iberia, then crossed into Africa and turned most of Carthage's allies to the Roman cause, or persuaded them to sit it out.

When Scipio arrived in Africa and won some victories against Carthaginian forces, Hannibal's fellow Carthaginians immediately wanted him back to defend the city. The fleet arrived at Italy, Hannibal and his army embarked, and Italians waved buh-bye. Years later he wanted the Seleucid king to put together another invasion fleet and was offered its command, to land again in southern Italy.

He's easily the most wildly overrated ancient commander, imho. He also was a vicious anti-Roman bigot, and eventually was kicked out of Carthage by the rest of the ruling families who were sick of his BS. He spent his remaining years advising various adversaries of Rome. The Romans also tired of his BS, and hunted him down. He killed himself to avoid his just desserts. Hannibal had been of interest to a couple of the Alexandrian successor states, and they wound up getting spanked so hard their grandkids couldn't sit down.

It's ironic that Rome ended up ruling the Mediterranean basin and swathes of Europe and the Middle East, all because various ambitious warmongering jokers and Gallic hordes and whatnot kept attacking Rome over a period of a couple hundred years.

The main impediments to the Roman resistance were that the place was ruled by a few dozen elite families, who owned everything except for what they hadn't yet stolen, and they were the only source for commanders, whether they had ability or experience or not; Hannibal and his officers were old pros. The very same Roman elite were opposed to any move that could elevate or edify anyone of a less lofty background (such as Scipio). During the long 2nd Punic War, he was elected consul, but was refused money to raise troops -- so he did it with volunteers and donations. *While he was still fighting in Africa* one of the succeeding consuls tried to replace him in command there, but luckily for Rome was rebuffed.

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Trials of the Scipios [wikipedia]
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I did the transcript the usual way, then the teletype way (since the original had punctuation and capitalization), then processed that into one-sentence paragraphs using search-replace. And since the narrative is more than 27 minutes, I decided not to include it.

The little gizmo that processes keywords into links with dates took more than the entire run time of this video to process the Yemen keyword, btw. I just watched the whole video like a good doobee and enjoyed it. Feel free to skip the brief ad that's quite near the beginning, the real stuff starts at 2:26.

In this history documentary we bring to life the insane scale of a Roman Army on the March! We begin with the basic marching rates for individual soldiers to establish a baseline for our analysis. We then calculate the true size of a Roman Army made up of four legions and its auxiliaries. These are then placed four men across and arranged end to end to calculate their maximum length of over 25 kilometers. However this is just part of the story.

We then cover the logistics of actually moving a force of this size from point A to point B. This is done by simulating a 24 hour cycle of a Roman army on the march. The result is a stunning 3D rendering in Unreal Engine 5 of what such a monstrously large force would have looked like. This hopefully gives you a better appreciation for the mechanics of ancient armies and how disasters such as the Battle of Teutoburg Forest could have unfolded.
The Insane Logistics of a Roman Army on the March
- 24 Hour Simulation 3D DOCUMENTARY | 27:47
Invicta | 1.43M subscribers | 826,633 views | Premiered September 22, 2023

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