They could hire this chick as an adviser...
Posted on 11/02/2011 8:30:47 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
Rome, Sweet Rome: Could a Single Marine Unit Destroy the Roman Empire?
It was a hypothetical question that became a long online discussion and now a movie in development: Could a small group of heavily armed modern-day Marines take down the Roman Empire at its height? We talked about the debate with James Erwin, the man who scored a movie writing contract based on his online response, and ran the ideas by Roman history expert Adrian Goldsworthy.
James Erwin was browsing reddit.com on his lunch break when a thread piqued his interest. A user called The_Quiet_Earth had posed the question: "Could I destroy the entire Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus if I traveled back in time with a modern U.S. Marine infantry battalion or MEU?"
The question struck a chord with the 37-year-old Erwin, a technical writer from Des Moines, Iowa, who happened to be finishing a book called The Encyclopedia of U.S. Military Actions (Through Facts on File). Erwin tells PM that he wasn’t impressed by other users’ early attempts to answer this question, and so, posting under the username Prufrock451, he came up with his own response. Erwin wrote a 350-word short story chronicling the fictitious 35th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), which suddenly disappears from modern-day Kabul and reappears on the Tiber River in 23 B.C. Erwin posted the piece, finished his meal, and went back to work.
After work, Erwin checked reddit. Thousands of users had read his post and they demanded more. Excited and overwhelmed, Erwin continued submitting pieces of this growing Internet phenomenon. The next day, Los Angeles–based management firm Madhouse Entertainment contacted him about representation. Within the week, after Erwin had put just more than 3500 words to screen, Warner Brothers Studios bought the movie rights.
Erwin’s story, which he titled Rome, Sweet Rome, has a cult following among reddit members, its own subreddit on the site, and has inspired fan music and art. But from the beginning, his posts received comments critiquing the accuracy of his conjured tale. Other redditors commented. Historians commented. Marines commented. "You can definitely tell that the story was something that I dashed out on my lunch hour without doing a lot of research beforehand," says Erwin, an encyclopedia writer and two-time Jeopardy! champ. "Any Marine is going to see mistakes in it, and I’m sure if there were Romans around, they’d say the same thing." He plans on doing intensive technical research during the screenwriting process.
So—disregarding troubling questions about time travel and just why some temporally displaced Marines would feel compelled to destroy an empire——could a single MEU destroy the Roman Empire? To sort through the flood of online responses, PM talked to a Roman military expert and found out how the two sides would line up.
Infantry
An MEU typically contains about 2200 troops, along with their artillery and vehicles. According to Erwin’s original reddit story (which will be altered for the movie), the Marines are transported back in time with what they have with them, including M1 Abrams battle tanks, bulletproof vests, M4 rifles, and grenades.
The year Erwin chose (23 B.C.) falls in the reign of Augustus, great-nephew of Julius Caesar and considered the first Roman emperor. His legions numbered nearly 330,000 men. They wore heavy leather and metal armor, carried swords and javelins, and operated catapults. They would have never heard the sound of an explosion before. "Obviously, there is a massive difference in firepower," says Roman military expert and author Adrian Goldsworthy. "Not only would Roman armor be useless against a rifle round—let alone a grenade launcher or a .50 caliber machine gun—it would probably distort the bullet’s shape and make the wound worse."
In the reddit story, however, Erwin said the Marines would not be resupplied with bullets, batteries, or gasoline from the modern world. "There would be no way of obtaining replacements for these supplies in the ancient world," Goldsworthy says. "An average unit of Marines is not likely to be able to make an oil refinery, start generating electricity, or create machine tools to make spare parts for equipment." And even if they could figure it out, it would take many months or even years. So, as soon as the Marines ran out of gas, their tanks would become little more than hunks of metal.
"In the short term and in the open, modern infantry could massacre any ancient soldiers at little risk to themselves," Goldsworthy says. "But you could not support modern infantry. So all of these weapons and vehicles could make a brief, dramatic, and even devastating appearance, but would very quickly become useless. Probably in a matter of days."
Reinforcements
Erwin’s reddit story stipulates that no more Marines will come back in time, although they may recruit in the ancient world. The Marines would have to; even at their lowest periods, the Roman Empire could conscript hundreds of thousands of soldiers whenever it wanted.
"A Roman centurion would say ‘Let’s take 1000 of these guys. Five hundred of them don’t come back? Get another 500 guys,’" Erwin says. "Americans have never been very good at sending people out as cannon fodder. Marines are better trained and are much harder to replace. No Marine sees himself as a cog, and no Marine is."
Both sides pride themselves on having competent leaders down to the smallest unit level. Goldsworthy says the battle would depend on who had the better officers. Erwin believes it would be shock and awe versus numbers.
"Marines are the best warriors ever trained," he says. "But they can’t fight an endless wave of soldiers. No one can."
Tactics
The Roman legions and Marines are both highly trained with a clear unit structure and hierarchy of command. They emphasize aggression, dominating the opponent, unit cohesion, and being flexible on the ground. "It’s easy to arrange people like chess pieces and march them in a direction," Erwin says. "But when you’ve got basically huge gangs of people going toward each other at knifepoint, it’s very hard to maintain a plan. So they have to improvise."
Romans depended on intimidation to psych out their opponents. They marched in unison and appeared as big and conspicuous as possible, overlapping shields to protect each other from attack. But wearing bright colors and lining up straight isn’t going to do much good against a unit of Marines, who would be best off attacking guerilla-style while the Romans marched.
One advantage for the Marines: a knowledge of military history. The Marines would know from Rome’s history that its legions could be susceptible to ambushes, such as the one that led to their crushing defeat at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. The Marines would have serious disadvantages such as navigation, Goldsworthy says. Besides losing all satellite navigation, their modern maps would be practically useless—everything from the course of rivers to the placement of forests would be different. But, at least in their first encounters with the Marines, the Romans probably wouldn’t know that.
The key for the Marines would be to stay on the move and avoid getting bogged down in one place. If they stood still, Goldsworthy says, the Romans could easily surround them and then take advantage of their huge numbers advantage. The Romans would probably use a variety of nasty siege weapons on the Marines, such as the scorpion, a large crossbow that rapidly fired long bolts. Romans were also known to cut off opponents from water and food supplies, forcing them to surrender or die.
Who Would Win?
Historian Goldsworthy says the MEU would probably lose in the long term—without the ability to resupply their modern weapons, they simply wouldn’t be able to overcome the Roman numbers. However, he says, they could destabilize the Roman Empire, encourage civil war, and initiate regional fracturing. "[The Marines] might discredit the Emperor by defeating the closest army to Rome," he says. "But they would lack the numbers to control Rome itself—with a population of a million or so—let alone the wider empire."
What about in the film? Erwin says he knows the ending, but won’t reveal it anytime soon. He’s currently on leave from his technical writing job to work on the screenplay full-time. A release date for the film version of Rome, Sweet Rome, or what it will be called, is still unknown.
They could hire this chick as an adviser...
Someone go get the guys from Deadliest Warrior.
How about if the Hungarian canon maker who sold artillery to the Turks had been more interested in helping Christians than in making a profit, and the big guns had been pointing the other way?
Of course that could have played out for good — the city is saved, the next push by the Muslims, either the West or the Rus come to the aid of Constantinople in the ensuing war Islam is pushed back into Arabia or even eradicated — or for ill — the next siege, a generation and a half later, succeeds, and when the Turks push into Romania, Vlad the Impaler is long dead, they meet no effective resistance and overrun Europe.
And I wonder where they got THAT idea... ;)
Google Charles Heber Clark’s “Fortunate Island,” to see where Twain got that idea ;-)
L. Sprague DeCamp wrote that. He worked with Heinlein and Asimov in the NY shipyards.
Good book.
Freegards
Bingo!
Victor Davis Hanson’s Carnage And Culture covers that fairly well.
At the start of Australian author Birmingham's stellar debut novel, a United Nations battle group, clustered around the U.S.S. Hillary Clinton (named after "the most uncompromising wartime president in the history of the United States"), is tasked in the year 2021 with stopping ethnic cleansing by an Islamist regime in Indonesia.
And threw up a little.
Roman tradition specified that no Roman legion could be admitted within the city walls except in rare specified circumstances such as a triumph. Bringing troops into the city was considered treason to the state.
While this tradition may have been breached in the later stages of Empire, the fact that Roman Emperors were sometimes assassinated by their Praetorian Guards and the reins of governement turned over in a coup should prove that regular legions were not quartered in or near Rome to protect the Emperor.
I suspect it would be relatively easy for the Marines to off the head of the snake.
A heavily armed and well trained unit like a Marine expeditionary force could easily destroy any armed military units an Emperor might have in Rome. The majority of Roman troops were always out in the provinces, not near Rome.
Outlying legions in the provinces would take months to come to the relief of Rome and by that time it is likely that a new government would have been established.
As far as the population of Rome taking up arms to protect the government, the fact is that a very high percentage of the inhabitants were slaves with no reason to have any allegiance to the government or any particular head of state. In fact, the Marines might find it very easy to recruit spies and warriors to aid them who were familiar with the city and Roman tactics.
Having some facility with languages, I would wager that an intelligent Spanish speaker (of which a MEU would no doubt have any number of) could, in an immersion environment, develop a utilitarian pidgin with Latin speakers. If by chance, they had a Romanian speaker, they'd be even better off (slim chance I know, but curiously enough, in my first assignment to Ft. Riley as a lieutenant, our Battalion S2 spoke Romanian.)
Yep, relentlessness was their course of victory for centuries.
That's what made me think about these scenario in the first place. If one piece of advanced technology (for that era) could make such a difference, imagine what one piece of "modern" technology (ie. an M-2 machine gun) held by the defenders of Constantinople from the top of their walls would have done to Mehmed's 80,000 soldiers below the walls.
I haven't ready my Byzantine History in a while, but I remember reading somewhere that Hungarian engineer actually hoped to sell his ideas to the defenders of Constantinople, but dismissed him as a crank (or couldn't afford to pay him) - will have to do some research on that.
Then the Marines learn Latin, and teach the Romans about democracy..marry their women..
Does a good job of showing the quite significant limitations of superior technology, in combat and economics, especially when available only in small quantities.
For anyone interested, the first two books in the series are available online for free from Baen Publishing.
Both 1632 and 1633 are available in a number of formats for download, or you can read it online as html.
I've read the entire series, including the Gazettes, which are collections of short stories that take place in the '1632' universe.
ONE Super Stallion landing in Rome and claiming to be gods from on high could do the trick.
Especially if the unit had a Latin speaker or two.
I bet they'd run just fine on olive oil.
BFL
If you like Final Countdown, you’ll LOVE a Japanese Anime called “ZIPANG”.
“The newest, most advanced destroyer in the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, the JDS Mirai, sets sail from Japan on a training exercise with the United States Navy. Enroute, they encounter a strange meteorological anomaly, causing the Mirai to lose contact with her sister ships.
After a short time, the crew detects a fleet approaching, but can barely believe their eyes as a massive battleship passes by them. The crew soon identify it as the Yamato, a ship which was sunk in 1945. As the crew scans with their radar, numerous other ships, including a Nagato-class Battleship, are located. Two destroyers from the unknown fleet attempt to intercept the Mirai, but she manages to escape.
After examining the situation, the crew concludes that the ships they passed are part of the Imperial Japanese Navy and that they have somehow been transported back in time more than 60 years to June 4, 1942, the first day of the Battle of Midway.
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