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.
Classic movie.
What if Robert E Lee had adopted the Gatling Gun after Gettysburg?
I hated the name of the carrier, obviously. But the story is fantastic. You just have to put the name aside and enjoy the adventure. It’s worth it.
“The endless harems...”
The endless venereal diseases...
“He would also have to be able to manipulate Roman religion, supersticions, etc.”
Don’t forget folks. The MEU’s officers will include ACADEMY-TRAINED people, who would be fairly familiar with this period’s history, it’s politics, and ROTC Officers with very specific skill-sets, and technical engineering.
They would know what is possible, and be able to adapt local materials in to say, steam engines, over the long term.
Gunpowder would be easily made from local resources.
And the 15 day internal load of an MEU would translate in to MONTHS, or even years, against such a low-tech adversary.
You beat me by about 20 minutes on posting the links to the free Baen books. :-) I should have read the thread all the way to the end.
The Romans learned all they needed to know about democracy from the Greeks. That’s why they created a Republic.
And, at different times, Romans were terrified by elephants, triremes, chariots and other ancient nasties. They adapted, adopted, improvised and conquered.
There was a great book by one of the Conquistadors themselves about the war-Bernal Diaz Del Castillo-called “The Conquest of New Spain”. Phenomenal read by one of the guys in the trenches. True story-he was retired in present day Guatemala living the life when a ship came in from Spain. He saw a book about the conquest by someone who wasn’t there. He became furious because it was wholly inaccurate so he spent several years penning the book to set it straight. He apologizes in the forward to the audience for being an uneducated grunt and then proceeds to write a great book.
Actually, their battle plan relied on discipline—keeping the phalanx intact and moving into close quarters with their short stabbing swords.
This tactic usually worked well against undisciplined barbarians. But I wonder how the discipline would hold when several rows of the phalanx were taken out with one shot from a mile away by a Barret .50?
You’re confusing the Romans with the Greeks. The Romans didn’t use the phalanx. the Greeks [and later the Macedonians] did. The Romans used the triplex acies and the maniuplar/cohort formation [much more maneuverability]. and before the gladii came out, they softened you up with the pilae [javelins].
The difference? Cynochepalis, where the Romans destroyed the phalanx army of Philip VI of Macedon, and acquired Greece.
You and I agree. The Marines avoid pitched battles (too fuel wasteful). They laager up in a region that is defensible by modern arms, and go into the tool making and troop recruiting business. The Romans best chance is to provoke them into big battles, where the Marines run out of fuel like the panzers in the Battle of the Bulge.
Instead, the Marines play God like the Americans after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Let the world wonder how many dozens more of those bombs we had ready to destroy any city at one blow. The Marines do some splashy demo runs to demonstrate their awesome power, while hiding its weaknesses, such as it’s shortages of fuel, ordnance etc.
But if the could “buy” ten years as top dogs in some nice redoubt, they would be making crude guns and cannons and gunpowder.
I agree.
Have you read Aztec by Gary Jennings?
I agree, the marines could go directly into Rome and take it over or level it.
They could probably do this with minimal resistance, even if the Romans could alert an army they were coming, it’s doubtful an army could even move fast enough to stay up with a modern marine unit.
They would walk in unopposed.
In terms of the initial question, the Marines win easily. The shock value of crude gunpowder in the middle ages was signifant. The firepower, mech, aircraft, and artillery in a MEU would be godlike to the Romans.
In essence, they'd become a super Praetorian guard that would rarely have to fire weapons after a couple of quickie encounters. Aimed fire taking out all centurions, tribunes, etc. at a few hundred meters would be impressive as well and would shatter a legion. Snipers using night vision taking out rebellious consuls, etc. None of that would require much ammo. A couple volleys of artillery fire would shatter a legion.
Romantic legends aside, virtually any troops will break and run if they believe that certain death lies ahead. And while the Marines would know their supply of weapons and aviation fuel wasn't inexhaustable, the Romans wouldn't.
The problem for the Marines is that their technology is so advances that they couldn't possibly duplicate it. You'd need some Master Gunnery Sergeants or warrant officers with hobbies in more primitive firearms to set things up. And of course, any MEU sized unit is going to include a fair number of guys with useful civilian-type skills.
One would have to say that the Marines’ edge would be significantly greater than that enjoyed by Cortez or Pizarro. Imagine a Harrier hovering over a key assembly of Roman shot-callers, firing rockets at a few structures. They could only bow before their new god.
Most casual readers know ancient formation of spearmen/infanty by the more widely known generic name of phalanx.
From Wikipedia: “Many spear-armed troops historically fought in what might be termed phalanx-like formations. The word has come into use in common English to describe “a group of people standing, or moving forward closely together”;[2] c.f. “a phalanx of police”.[3]”
However, I take your point. :-)
Thanks for the heads-up. Added to the Amazon list for the next order, I have one incoming now.
They could probably do this with minimal resistance, even if the Romans could alert an army they were coming, it’s doubtful an army could even move fast enough to stay up with a modern marine unit.
They would walk in unopposed.
Then what? Defend Rome itself from the counterattacking legions? Largely cut-off from your fleet base?
I'd probably take Venice as my redoubt. Terrorize Rome with a Harrier pass (those puppies are LOUD). Make a heliborne demonstration. Mostly husband my resources near a secure harbor where my Amphibs can tie-up/anchor. Another possibility is Bari or possibly a base in Sicily. Sicily was alway in some state of rebellion. Always divided.
Goes the other way.
IF there isn’t a national command authority, the Romans might be able to conquer the Marines with a few mule loads of gold, a train of cute female slaves, and an offer of Roman citizenship.
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