Fascinating stuff!
I agree, and best of all, this particular article used “A.D.” for the dating, saving everyone a lot of trouble. :’)
The Roman army after the reforms of Augustus consisted of about 28 legions (140,000 soldiers) of regulars, supposedly Roman citizens (in practice the “Roman” army wasn’t particularly Roman by sometime in the 2nd century), and 28 legions of auxiliaries recruited from among the conquered peoples and moved to different locations in the empire. This was a common practice in ancient empires, because foreign troops pressed into service by the conquering power were at least as widely disliked, and didn’t speak the local language.
I watched the Liz Taylor “Cleopatra” again, and while it is best watched with the sound down, there are nice tidbits in the script here and there, such as when the tutor of Ptolemy says, “and with so few men”. The Romans had what amounted to a ridiculously small army, and when needed elsewhere, still managed to be able to shift whole legions to other parts of the empire. Generally, the distribution was four legions in Gaul and Germania, five in the territories along either side of the Danube, and anywhere between two and four in Britain. During Agricola’s campaign in what is now Scotland, the Romans made contact with the various islands, circumnavigated Britain, and apparently built a long-term presence in NE Ireland, probably a fortified trading presence, similar to the strategy that was used to conquer Britain in the first place.
There were five major naval bases, including one on the North Sea, one on the Black Sea, and at least one in Italy; during the reign of the schismatic emperor Carausius, that leader moved the naval base from the continent over to Britain, a canny move. Sailors operated the ships, which existed to move troops, or to fight the occasional naval battle in the Roman fashion. The empire eliminated piracy in the 1st c AD.
The Praetorian Guard consisted of a 29th legion and was the bodyguard of the emperor (that didn’t always work out that well) as well as the local police force in Rome.
There were a series of Jewish Wars (or Roman Wars, from the standpoint of the Jews; for more than 19 centuries Jews refused to walk through the arch of Titus, see the link below) which required additional legions, but the main reason Rome kept legions in the east was the Parthian empire. In the mountainous parts, Roman forts tended to be cohort-sized, meaning that the legion was spread out along the frontiers. At the empire’s territorial peak, under Trajan, the Roman army washed its weapons in the Persian Gulf. The decline began immediately thereafter, with Trajan’s death and the accession of Hadrian.
Romans in Ireland
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1173950/posts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RomanEmpireterritoryandtemporaryexpansions.gif
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drumanagh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambay_island
