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.
I might play the God gambit, I would fly in on a Harrier, set down in front of the Senate or Emperor’s palace and say I am Jupiter and kill the first one that doubts me. Then show them how I can call lightning (missiles) down out of the sky.
Then the Senate, and anyone else in power, can choose to defy me if they have the will.
Hernando Cortez burned his ships to make a point with his men that it was conquer or die. Do you really see a Marine Colonel going all-in like that? Modern values kind of mitigate against wholesale slaughter. Even if he were to give such an order the Marines might hesitate to engage in wanton killing. Unless of course everybody "got their mind around the situation". (Realized that they had little choice).
“Finally we know that the Spainiards made use of native allies. This was the key to their victory.”
Proper point made. I agree. War dogs are often forgotten as Spanish weapons of that time, good show.
A point of clarification - It was the horse and LANCE (not sword) that were the Conquistador’s decisive weapons. Lightly armored Spanish footmen armed with swords had a tremendous advantage over the indians, granted, but no force of indians ever withstood a mounted cavalry charge.
Developing an actual vaccine would probably be beyond their capacity, at least initially, but no doubt one or more of the Marines would know about inocculation, which probably reduces the mortality rate by 90%+.
Anywho, it does not appear smallpox was present in the Roman Empire, at least none of the Greek or Roman medical writers describe this highly describable disease.
The most common theory is that Arabs brought smallpox to Europe in the 7th or 8th centuries.
I also believe Marines, at least those posted to 3rd-world toilets, are vaccinated against every damn thing there is.
Sorry. Mr. Marine is dead.
He may know a little about edged weapons fighting, but Mr. Centurion is a pro with 20+ years experience. He has a pilum or two, a shield and body armor.
This matchup would be just about as one sided as Marine with loaded rifle at 100 yards against a Centurion.
Sorry. Mr. Marine is dead.
He may know a little about edged weapons fighting, but Mr. Centurion is a pro with 20+ years experience. He has a pilum or two, a shield and body armor.
This matchup would be just about as one sided as Marine with loaded rifle at 100 yards against a Centurion.
Not sure. It’s not routine for smallpox immunization, and it is and was present in Egypt. So presumably, marines dropped in that part of the Empire could be affected by it.
Routine inoculation of the US military recuits for smallpox was discontinued in 1990. So 22 years later, it will be only the servicemen over 40 who are still immune to smallpox.
Yeah, but what if you start in North Africa? What then? :)
An issue nobody has brought up is the probably superior fitness of the Romans.
Marines, while they are fit by modern standards, just might not measure up. They generally rid into battle.
Roman legionaires marched 20 to 25 miles every day, carrying 60 to 80 pounds of gear apiece, then build an entire fort before turning in for the night.
Not to knock our Marines, but how many of them could keep this up week after week, then be fresh enough to fight hand to hand all day, the rough equivalent of NFL football but with no timeouts or breaks?
Conditioning is one thing, but I don’t think that Marines would be less fit. Diets are so, so much better. I’d be more worried about mental fitness. Much of the Marine doctrine is to be a part of the whole system. Cut off from that system would be very hard to adapt.
... but could they hold on to it?
Conditioning is one thing, but I don’t think that Marines would be less fit. Diets are so, so much better. I’d be more worried about mental fitness. Much of the Marine doctrine is to be a part of the whole system. Cut off from that system would be very hard to adapt.
I am not sure the Roman soldier’s diet was inferior. They ate mostly whole grains. When supply lines weren’t interrupted they seem to have been remarkably healthy. At least you seldom read about sickness being a big problem, even during sieges, whereas during the medieval and early modern periods it was always a race between starvation of those in the fort and the besieging army killing itself from filth.
The Romans may not have understood the germ theory of disease, but they were really good at practical sanitation. We didn’t climb back to their level till the middle of the 19th century.
There’s a lot we don’t have, which is accurate casulty records. The reason they were so effective is because if you poked a hole in somebody, they died. They had no sulfa, no effective antiseptic to prevent dying.
I’m not sure how many medical supplies the marines carry, but that stuff would be more valuable than their ammunition.
I've worked with Marines in the field, and I know and respect the Marines . . . but North Africa would be a problem. Cleopatra would roll herself up in a carpet to be delivered, and the Marines would not continue beyond Alexandria. They do have their priorities straight. Since there was no threat to the United States at that time, they would pursue other interests.
May 29, 1453. A Tuesday if I rememeber aright.
Let me know how you like it. It really holds up for being a few centuries old. Translation is excellent. Another classic I love is the Siege of Malta by Fuller. Wow-that should be a movie.
I have not. I will look into it. Just recommended Siege of Malta by Fuller. Best military history I have ever read. Should be a movie.
Why would people from a republic teach democracy to a republic?
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