Immortals and Archaic Rome

Chris · 19 Jun 2003, 04:16 · from urth-v0306.mbox · original

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From: "Chris" <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Immortals and Archaic Rome
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 04:16:22 +0000
Message-ID: <urth-v0306-3489 at digest.urth.net>
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Hmm. This, combined with some other posts, made me wonder about languages.=20
Our Lucius was fairly fluent in Greek (even if his memory problem leads to=20
some strange interpretation). IIRC he also was able to talk to Persians and=20
Phoenicians in languages other than Greek. Perhaps he was simply very=20
learned, but I tend to think that he had lived for quite some time in a=20
culturally diverse environment. If Lucius and his contingent had been livin=
g=20
amidst the Persian court for a fair amount of time, this makes it much more=20
likely that they'd be exiles rather than mercenaries. Certainly the Persian=20
kings were fairly generous to other exiles.

And now that I think about it, given the numerical advantage the Persians=20
had and the obvious problems with keeping them supplied, it would seem odd=20
that they would scrounge so far afield for mercenaries anyway.

>The Persians generally lacked infantry to match the Greeks. Before,
>during and after the war they went to some efforts to hire Greek
>infantry. They would have definitely found a use for a cohort or two
>of Roman infantry.
>
>
>J.

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