Duke Leto

Fair enough. I actually glossed that over because I knew Titus had 4 legions, NOT 9. I assumed that he was referring to the war as a whole before Vespasian took a fair number off to battle Vitellius, but that's not the case, he started with 4. So in this case, it's Carrier that's mistaken.

Wiki gives a number of legions at Jerusalem as 5 on the First Jewish War page but 4 in the body of the article text and 4 at Jerusalem Siege article. The narrative of the article makes it pretty clear that Cestius Gallus arrived and actually tried to besiege Jerusalem with ONE legion, got a bit beaten up in an ambush, and caused Nero to send Vespasian with two legions by sea and an additional legion marched overland with Titus from Alexandria. The blurb posted by Iskander corroborates that count. It's possible that Carrier meant to type 4 instead of 9 but the detachments from 5 probably precludes that, so I think he may be confusing it with the 2nd Jewish War, where Hadrian brought a lot more force and really went nuts with the genocide. Cassius Dio says 6 with detachments from another 6 though. He can't have drawn the number from thin air. Corbulo's campaign in Armenia or Trajan's Parthian campaign seem like decent candidates. I could ask but I don't want to bug again.

Before you turn around and say that Wiki gives larger numbers for both Vespasian and Titus' armies in Galilee and Judea, I'll point out that Carrier's numbers for the overall size of the army ARE exactly right. A full strength legion is 5300, full stop. Somewhat less for the attached auxilia is also completely correct. With army sizes Wiki is just repeating the numbers quoted in the sources or estimated by social historians inexperienced in military science. The Wiki article on Alesia does not make this mistake and gives an unsourced estimate for Caesar as having 60,000 in 12 legions, this number being on the low side since he'd have had SOME auxilia even with the mass defections of the Gauls, although he got beat up a bit at Gergovia and was sustaining attrition throughout the campaign. 90,000 is probably more in the ballpark. Big enough that Vercingetorix's alleged 80,000 would let themselves be besieged, small enough that the reported 250,000 relief army would make them prepare the countervalation. I can pull Goldsworthy's Caesar biography if you want the definitive Roman military expert's opinion on Alesia, but I'm in the ballpark. At Pharsalus Caesar had only fractions of 9 legions with half as many auxilia for a total of 30-35,000 men, and he was in BIG trouble with Pompey's 70,000 or so.

My projection of a maximum 40,000ish for Vespasian and Titus' army are perfectly in line with our understanding of the size of the Roman legion.

Wiki's saying that Cestius Gallus somehow had 30,000 with his one legion is really pretty laughable since he left Syria in a hurry and his one Legion, Legio XII Fulminata, might not have been at full strength when it marched. If Gallus left in a real hurry some soldiers on business outside the camp could have been left behind, and more importantly the legion had been badly mauled and routed by the Parthians 4 years previously. The normal pace of recruitment would have to be 250 per legion per year to replace retirements, it's very possible XII was not back up to full strength yet. It went on to be ambushed by the Jews and routed again. It's possible this just wasn't a very good legion. (Corbulo thought this and another legion with auxilia would be enough to fully subdue Armenia though, which is much bigger than Judea.) I would not put Gallus' force above 10,000. I would not discount the possibility that it was as low as 5,000. 8,000 seems about right.

I'm sorry, but you're the one arguing from ignorance of military science here. (This is actually not Carrier's area of specialization either.)


If there are 1.6 million Jews in the area of Modern Israel, then the minimum population was 3.2 million. If it's 800,000 then we're talking a minimum of 1.6 million. There were a pretty fair percentage of Greeks and Samaritans in that area. Enough that Jesus is supposed to have bumped into a goddamned swineherd in Perea. That would necessitate a sufficient number of non-Kosher eaters to consume an entire herd of swine. Unless you want to argue they were pets or pigs kept for milk or wool.


10-15 miles a day overland on good Roman roads. >100 miles 15-20 days travel time. I don't care if your religion says you'll be executed if you don't go, no one less than middle class is going to drop everything and abandon their farms or jobs for the better part of a month to go to a religious festival. If you seriously believe large numbers are making the trip from Southern Syria and Lebanon or overland from Egypt then you really are nuts. This is coming from a guy on disability spending way to much of his day arguing about trivia on an internet forum.


You are absolutely, 100%, totally mistaken. Israel's area under cultivation has more than doubled in a bit over 60 years. The process of reforestation and land reclamation was already decades underway in 1948. I don't have a number for how much the pre-Independence Kibbutzes brought arable land up to get to the 1948 levels, but given the population growth it had to be pretty damned substantial. You are correct that prior to deforestation the area under discussion and the Middle East as a whole were much more fertile and supported a much greater population than they did post-deforestation owing to rapid soil erosion. And this was all over by 500 BCE at the latest.

Duke Leto

Another indicator on overall Judean population? The Antonia Fortress. The biblical history sites I've surveyed give it a footprint of 3 acres, which is about on par with Caernarfon castle in Wales. In both cases a non-trivial part of that is walls.

Caernarfon was designed to be able to accommodate a few hundred people on special occasions in the great hall and serve as a temporary capitol, but the are for the garrison to live in was, notice again, 3 acres. Caernarfon's garrison during the time of a siege in 1404 where Owen Glendower took over all of Wales is stated as 28, and they held. Even I think that's low, or certainly Glendower wasn't trying very hard (busy calling spirits from the vasty deep, perhaps?), but it might mean that Henry IV had been forced to withdraw most of the royal forces in Wales to deal with the rebel army the Percys and Mortimers sent against him in 1403.

Caernarfon was actually stormed and taken by the Welsh soon after it was built, so the standing garrison was emphatically not in the thousands. The castle was occupied as one of the last strongpoints to hold out against Cromwell in 1646, but it had been besieged two previous times in the Civil War and the big engagements of Naseby and Marston Moor drew forces in the low tens of thousands, so this backwater operation can't have taken more than a few hundred besiegers before Cromwell had the big guns free to compel a surrender.

Realistically, 200 looks like a fair number for Antonia/Caernarfon's garrisons. 500 is almost certainly too many. I don't believe the Romans had ANY other fortress of that size in the whole of the area of Israel. Edward I built a total of 10 castles in Wales, most of them smaller than Caernarfon and one of them left unfinished by Edward II. Wales is two and half times the size of Israel. Edward I was constantly fighting the Welsh at the time and some of his secretaries complained in writing that the amount he was spending was a bit nuts (not their words), but still we're looking at 5 times the permanent military presence in Medieval Wales then the Romans could be bothered to deploy in Classical Israel.

So Pilate's Roman troops at the "Passover of Density" probably did not exceed 200. If 400,000 angry civilians took it into their heads to attack 200 Roman soldiers they wouldn't need weapons or tactics, they could probably literally shove them to death. The Romans didn't think they needed more than, at maximum, 500 men to take care of holding and defending Judea. OBVIOUSLY they were wrong, but if a couple thousand clever Welshmen can storm Caernarfon during Edward I's reign than a couple thousand zealots can probably storm the Antonia before the Romans can get their sandals on. Maybe as little as a couple hundred in either case. And as the ambush on the XII showed, these Jewish rebels were not completely dumb.

outhouse

and Sanders

and Finklestien

and Reed

and Ehrman


and many many more



ya I understand your take with no real evidence

outhouse

your ignorance has shined way to bright to keep a converstaion going. its beyond stupidity with that one.


go find someone else to argue childish nonsense with

Duke Leto

So educate me and anyone else who might be reading. Is the wiki article WRONG about the number legions Titus had? If so, what's your source? Books and pages or articles, please, not just names.

I've seen Finkelstein quoted in support of a very low population. Here's a citation of him in Wiki putting the number exiled to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar at 10,000 out of a total population of the Kingdom of Judah of 40,000. Put the two Kingdoms together and you have a population of 120,000-150,000 in 587 BCE. a 900% population explosion in 600 years? Either the amount of land under cultivation went up 10 times or yields went up 10 times. If yields didn't drop after the fall of Rome (they didn't), then Judah got a fractional bushel per acre under the Monarchy, and since it takes a bushel to sow an acre, that would imply the farmers were somehow photosynthesizing calories to feed the crops as some form of anti-population. The other alternative is that the Hasmoneans and Herodians increased the amount of land under cultivation by a factor of ten and it fell by a factor of ten afterwards. Both are a little tough to swallow.

In any case, where does Finkelstein give the number of 9 legions/120,000 effectives that Carrier quoted for First Jewish War? The more I look at it the more I think Carrier must have been thinking of the Gallic War with that number.

You know, it's no longer about winning for me at this point. Throughout this entire process I've been legitimately studying and analyzing the subject and enjoying myself doing it. I now want to explore the subject thoroughly until I'm satisfied with the explanation.

If you want to participate in that process constructively, by all means do so.

If you want to declare yourself victorious and go work on your remedial ascii paragraph layout homework in some other thread that's also fine.

But if you keep going on making insulting comments about points you think are stupid without any elaboration, then you meet every functional requirement for being a troll.

outhouse

http://www.cbcg.org/studies_templemount.htm

The crowds that assembled at the Temple during the Holy Days were overseen by 2,000 Roman troops. In order to prevent disorder and riots among the Jews, they were stationed on a 45-foot wide walkway built atop the four colonnades that surrounded the Temple grounds. During the Jewish festivals, there were three rotations of guards, totaling 6,000 soldiers, each day.

Duke Leto

OK, I'm sorry... WHAT? Your citation is a Christian Bible history website?

And a summary of a book by Ernest Martin, one of the theologian archaeologists. Martin implies a 12 acre footprint for Antonia instead of the 3 acres I got from the reported dimensions on this site, but he was thinking of a rather bigger footprint. This is because his book outlines the theory that the Temple was located at the Gihon Spring and that the Antonia Fortress covered the entire Temple Mount.

That's a minor contradiction with the theory you've been pushing.

The truth appears to be that nobody has the slightest idea what the footprint of the Antonia was. Several archaeologists have disputed whether it was anything more than a single tower sited on less than an acre. My Temple Mount gate schematic from a few pages ago shows a pretty tiny Antonia. But I've gone with the other Christian site's figures for a 4 tower castle attached to the Temple Mount.

So now that we've established that Martin basically wants the entire Temple Mount for his imaginary legion, I have to ask: Where's the legion? I don't think Jerusalem ever had a permanent legion attached in the years it was a Jewish city. The Legion he names, Legio X may have stopped by Jerusalem on its way to the Parthian campaign under Marc Antony, but he's lying through his teeth if he wants us to believe it was there continually. Augustus sent it to Spain and it stayed there until Vespasian moved it to Southern Holland. The reason no Roman Legion was ever kept there permanently is because Judea was neither particularly populous, which I keep trying to demonstrate, nor was it on a border with anyone likely to pose a military threat. OK, NOMINALLY the border between Rome and Parthia was somewhere in the deserts east of Petra, but that route was utterly impassible militarily. (The reason Schwarzkopf chose to attack through it in 1991, actually...) Placing a legion in a non-border province meant that it was really unstable or populous (or both). While it was on the border, Varus had just 3 legions with him to control the lost province stretching through the entire area between the Rhine, Elbe and Danube, which is a very significant hunk of territory.

OK, now for the size of the garrison. If you don't like Caernarfon how about a more pertinent example? The Syrian fortress of the Knights Hospitaller, Krak des Chevaliers housed a maximum garrison of 2000 in the 13th Century. When the French went in to restore it in 1933 they had to clear out a 500 person village that was squatting on the ruins. I had to go to goddamned Google Satellite Maps to get even an approximate size on place, but it looks to be in the ballpark of 7 acres. The 2000 defenders number is from UNESCO according to Wiki, which it isn't, since the cited link is mostly about site preservation. I'd like to see where the estimate on that are from since it goes over the 100 per acre margin where my credulity starts to wear thin. Even still, the thing was more than twice the size of the Antonia (at least) and would not have held half a legion by the official estimate. I'm inclined to think that 2000 was the siege capacity and the 500 squatters more closely approximated the regular garrison.

How about an adorable mini-Castle? Castle Hedingham in Essex is an Earl's seat. The walls have since been demolished but the keep is still standing. The keep is a little less the 55 x 55 feet square and has 4 floors, the bottom being given over to a great banquet hall, the area of which was 30 x 30. So it would seat maybe 100-150 on really special occasions. The walls really couldn't have enclosed more than half an acre. By the metrics I'm now positing for Krak des Chevaliers, Hedingham would have boasted a normal garrison of around 35. If the 13th or 14th century Earl of Oxford had been in danger of siege, he'd have called in his nearby retainers and dug in with 150 or so retainers while the King (or the other rebels) mobilized a relief force. The 17th Earl rode into London once with 140 liveried retainers, which was considered excessive for the 1560s, and the de Veres had 70 manors and possibly a few other keeps (I'd need to check), so that number is not outrageous. But 35 alone might do the job. The outer walls would not have had places to stand and you can count the number of arrow slits/windows in the keep. Storming the place is not something you could do immediately because no army carried a dedicated siege corps, certainly not a feudal one scratched together ad hoc.

In short, 200 at Antonia normally with a max of 500-600 is emphatically not a silly number.

OK. 2000 processing around a causeway on the Temple colonnade? What would be the point? If these are archers then maybe they could do something to further enrage a rioting crowd of 400,000, but if even one in 200 remembered to bring a steak knife and there's any means of climbing up there, you're better off running back to the fortress and saving your ammo. Unless of course these archers are all named Legolas and they have quivers with 200 arrows... Are you legionary? Your effect is more psychological than real. Have you got two pilum? Sure you're going to hit something but the crowd is unlikely to throw them back and if they do you don't want to try and catch them. You've got your gladius but it is not a long range weapon and if the Jews get up to you in any number running is your best option. Posting a sentry on the colonnade every few 100 feet makes sense from a perspective of "I'm watching you!" and so on, but placing a fifth of your force where it's out of action in a crisis is just dumb.

outhouse

it comes straight from a book that was posted there [FACEPALM] you will never learn with that attitude


im positive based on your constant mistakes in your replys you are way over 60.


if so im done with you

outhouse

its idiotic and silly


there were never that few guards there during jesus time.


the 600 was a normal number, but if you did any research you would know with pilate came the extra troops during holdays [FACEPALM] at your ignorance


just stop it

Duke Leto

Yeah, I got references to the author and the book, all the sources agreed that Martin's work was extremely controversial and unreliable. The guy asserted that the Temple Mount was the Antonia fortress and the Temple was by the Gihon spring. There wouldn't be anything near enough area there.

I actually get the impression that the site can't have been summarizing the book faithfully.

What other fortresses in the area of Herod's kingdom were garrisoned by Romans or what Legions were sending detachments from what camps? The Syrian and Egyptian camps were quite a ways off. The site was pretty damned clear that the book said the fortress was designed to hold a legion permanently. Bullshit.