![]() ![]() He altered the training, such as by having the soldiers practice fighting gladiator style, and adjusted “the Roman battle array to resist the barbarian assault” (Matyszak, 2003, p. This gave the new Roman consul Gaius Marius the chance to make reforms to the military, as he is well-known for (Matyszak, 2003, p. Luckily for the Romans, though, the barbarian hordes’ conquest took them west to Spain instead of east into Italy, where no Roman army would have been available to hold them back (Pethrus (Wikipedia), 2010). It was a clear sign that peace times in the empire would be few and far between, and that the oppressed peoples under Roman rule would be anything but submissive. The humiliating defeat at Arausio was an early example of unrest among the Germanic tribes, even before the empire had begun. As part of his punishment for attacking the Germanic army rather than trying to negotiate, as Mallius intended, Caepio’s wealth was seized, he lost all his power in the senate, and he was forced into exile. Apparently, Caepio had disregarded the authority of Mallius Maximus, “ to co-operate” with him, which “led to the disaster at Arausio” (Hornblower, et al, p. “Caepio, who had caused the defeat by his rashness, was convicted” (Lendering: Livy, Book 67). “According to Valerius Antias, 80,000 soldiers and 40,000 servants and camp followers of the Romans were slain at Arausio” (Lendering: Livy, Book 67). Arausio turned out to be more of a massacre that “left Italy at the mercy of the Germans” (Cornell and Matthews, 1982, p. The Roman army of around 80,000 men came out to meet them, being led by the consul Mallius Maximus and proconsul Quintus Servilius Caepio (Matyszak, 2003, p. Unfortunately for the Romans, the battle at Arausio was no different. This Germanic army, estimated at around 300,000 men, was marching from the north, crushing all opposition, and while they did suffer some losses, as the map shows, these were only minor setbacks to their cause (Matyszak, 2003, p. The image above shows the victories (green swords) and defeats (red swords) of the massive Cimbri and Teuton force that swept through Europe and Roman territory (Pethrus (Wikipedia), 2010). Nevertheless, the existence of other forms of land acquisition – through purchase or inheritance (or even fraudulent land-grabs) – cannot be ruled out.Map showing the warpath of the massive Germanic army. The founder of the Loupian estate, which appeared around the mid-1st century BCE, might have been one of these. The counterpart to this land division was the attribution of plots, which varied in size depending on the social rank of the recipients: colonists and indigenous populations who thereby had a land base for setting up a farm. ![]() ![]() These surveying operations were primarily carried out within the first hundred years of the Roman presence, and thus involved the period in which most of the villas appeared. The current Languedoc landscape thus contains several dozen cadastral networks that influenced the region's agricultural history. ![]() For the other cities, examination of vertical aerial photographs and topographical maps have resulted in the identification of heretofore unknown cadastral squares, and the recreation of a theoretical grid based on plot boundaries with recurring orientations. The creation of these plots, for tax purposes, was proved by the fortunate discovery of the marble forma from the public square of Arausio (present-day Orange). Like Italy, the Roman conquest of southern Gaul was followed by large-scale land surveys, the most common form of which was the division of the land into squares plots, known as centuriation. ![]()
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