"USMC in Augustinian Rome e-story" Topic

A gentleman's fleshed out the start of an idea for a time travel story that he's posted at the Reddit web site replying to this original query:

So I've been watching HBO's Rome and Generation Kill simultaneously and it's lead me to fantasize about traveling back in time with modern troops and equipment to remove that self-righteous little Octavian (Augustus) from power.

Let's say we go back in time with a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), since the numbers of members and equipment is listed for our convenience in this Wikipedia article, could we destroy all 30 of Augustus' legions?

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An interesting although not perfect start with suggestions already piling up.

Have fun.

Well, you'd most certainly have the element of surprise at least.

Then you have to consider do you really have to take out all 30 of the Legions to accomplish the primary mission (killing Augustus?)

Helo insertion of the proper elements supported by Cobra's should actually be all that is required (I think the self-imposed "no air support" is a croc; if the supposition is you were able to bring transports, why not the gunships that are organic to the MEU as well?)

I think that destroying one cohort by machine gun fire would probably be plenty. Destroying another one would probably put the poke in the party pig as far as Roman resistance was concerned. You could probably do it with a USMC platoon from WWII.

Read through a lot of the comments…

There is a LOT of misunderstanding of a MEU's already organic logistical footprint. So many commenters think they'd run out of beans, bullets and fuel within days of fighting. So very wrong.

If *fully* disembarked, a MEU can actually survive quite a while without any outside support, it is what they were designed to do until relieved by more robust forces.

Dumb.
The legions are scattered throughout the Empire. They are not sitting in one place to be conventiently slaghtered.

I am curious where he is going to get the gas for his Humvees. You need to go to Germania and Iberia to fight some of those legions. How is he planning to get to Africa? At least he crossed out the Abrams tanks.

He obviously expects the Romans to stand there cooperaing while he shoots them. One bullet = one Roman? What happens when he runs out of bullets, and there are 28 legions left?
How will he feed his batalion?

That sounds like the kind of crap I would dream up when I was in 6th Grade.

He's been watching too much HBO. Great for boobies, not so much for history.

Take out the head of the snake, and install a new ruler.

That should be easy enough, and not take too much ammo, or gasoline.

I hate concepts like this. It simply reinforces the "Head stuck in own rectal cavity" that modern humans have when looking at the past.

I'm itching for those marines to catch something nasty, again and again, until the medical supplies are all gone.

No offence to the actual marines, of course. They didn't ask to be in this story.

I think that destroying one cohort by machine gun fire would probably be plenty.

By the time of Augustus, Rome had a great deal of experience with whole legions, even entire armies being wiped out. They simply raised more and fought on.

I hate concepts like this.

As do I. One of my principle niggles is that everybody fantasizes about how freaked out the Romans (or other historical peoples) would be encountering modern weaponry. Nobody seems to give much thought as to the impact on the unsuspecting time travelers. Besides the shock of, oh, traveling through time and wondering how (if) you're going to get back, you're also in a different epoch of human civilization. A bit unsettling, that.

Did a RPG like this back in high school a squad in veitnam that step in to a time riff and going back in time of the romans we all died!

Take out the head of the snake, and install a new ruler.

That has worked out SO WELL throughout history…

As for Rome specifically, Google "Year of the Four Emperors".
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I assure there were more waiting in the wings.

Set up in Milan, and then watch the Marines run out of gas en route to dispose of the new head on the snake.
These Marines also have to supply themselves with food once the MREs run out. How do you forage on the way to Milan?

This whole stupid concept relies on the Romans (or Han Chinese or Aztecs or Assyrians…) being so terrified of the newcomers' technological superiority that they fold, and stay folded.

As for the medical resources of the battalion, I am more impressed by your faith in it than anything they could do.
Read any general history and you come across all sorts of plagues. We generally call them "The Plague" as if they were all the same disease.
What makes anyone think that the marines medical' teams had access to vaccines for that particular strain or disease?
Witness the mass innocculations against Saddaam's supposed biological weapons program. That was done in the STATES, not in theatre. He expects the medical team to have the necessary treatment for the Ilyrian Plague? It might not even be a harmful disease for the native Romans, but deadly for 21st soldiers.

Needs something more interesting…like a plot. Why get rid of Octavian? The great failing of these types of storees isthe danger of minimizing the understanding of their times, mertods etc and the assumption that anything we bring to the past will be superior.

Read "The guns of the south"

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Don't forget Pizzaro and the Incas or Cortez and the Aztecs. Tiny, technologically superior force with great luck and chutzpah overthrow huge empires.

But Pizarro and Cortez were not dependent on gasoline.

…or GPS.

To the disgust of many, the Naval Academy no longer requires Midshipmen to learn the use of the sextant. In fact, I think the last class to have the requirement was '89, or perhaps shortly thereafter. The logic was that GPS systems are so massively redundant their chances of complete failure are practically non-existent.

{Insert Titanic joke here.}

If only they had 6000 and 1 hulls! When will they learn?

Read "The guns of the south"

No thank you.

Zulu legions managed to flatten a few British formations. Techno shock? Not really. Being big and angry and carrying sharp spears worked for them, as well as being clever and catching the British (occasionally) with their pants down.

I might add that the Romans were not dumb, either. They had pretty sophisticated hardware and could take casualties. They also probably had the delightful knowledge of siege warfare… chuck poo and severed heads in the direction of the enemy. I doubt Interceptor armour is going to deflect a ballista either. Get the Romans torturing some secrets out of some captives… say for gunpowder, petra oleum, etc. then things will get rather interesting. Bloody, long and protracted.

considering most equipment would not work, guns yes but nearly all systems now rely on tech not there then like satelites etc, then the bacteria etc of the time modern troops immunity would not cut it and thats before any fighting!..but a good fantasy anyway

Get the Romans torturing some secrets out of some captives…

Good luck finding any marines who speak Latin.

Semper Fidelis.

-Former Marine, Classics Major.

"By the time of Augustus, Rome had a great deal of experience with whole legions, even entire armies being wiped out. They simply raised more and fought on. "

If you can point out a single legion, cohort or even soldier from Rome that was killed by machine gun fire I will concede the point. Otherwise the presence of modern firepower and weapons on an ancient battlefield would so overawe the people of the time that there would be no need of much fighting.

What they don't tell you about Cortez is that he had the good luck to find a lot of disaffected locals. The Aztecs had a bad habit of cutting a persons heart out for no reason, and their heavy handed governance had triggered a civil war. In steps Cortez, one of history's luckiest SOBs. Pizarro on the other hand found a society which was easily decapitated. There was only one Inca, and the rest of society was his retinue. Romans were a lot more bloody minded.

There is also the effect of up-close-and-personal fighting with cold steel that modern militaries don't deal with. Being shot with arrows has a very real effect on soldiers who have never encountered arrows before. This is recorded in history as is troops breaking who have never had to face cold steel before.In addition, the plastic joke Uncle Sam calls a rifle would be shattered in the first close contact. I think the marines would break in a battle against Roman legionnaires.

Then again, Erwin Rommel noted that US troops were the first to break, and the first to rally.

Then

While the Marines would have the initial shock over the Romans were a lot more worldly than New world Indians. The Indians also adapted very quickly to dealing with the Spanish, with later conquests being much more difficult.

As far as ammo, it takes a surprising large amount of bullets to kill something. After the initially couple of encounters the Romans would be much more careful, e.g. defending behind cover, using dead ground, etc.

What kind of maps would this Marine unit have? Honest question. Do they have maps of everywhere, or just for the area they're deployed to? How different is the topography and ground features (forests, roads, towns could well be different)?

Even if there are Marines with knowledge of latin, does modern Church latin sound much like ancient vulgar latin? In any case, they'd be better off with ancient greek.

Also, let's assume they were passing through Naples (there's a USN base there, so it's possible), and they head straight to Rome, up to the palace and depose Augustus.

Now what?

Even if there are Marines with knowledge of latin, does modern Church latin sound much like ancient vulgar latin?

I'm not going to take sides in this, but I will point out that the Latin taught as part of a Classics curriculum is, unsurprisingly, Classical Latin, not Medieval or New Latin. Cicero, Vergil, Ovid, Comedies and Dramas, and the Historians (Livy, Plutarch, Tacitus, etc.) figure prominently.

That said, I doubt if I could carry on a fluent conversation with your average Roman. It would be a fumbling hit-or-miss…

I'll take on a legion with only one tank, a Sherman Flail.

The Martians living under the Temples would neutralise the modern weaponry with their gamma-thingies.
So now what're you going to do?

What'll they call the movie? Big Testudos of Steel? Erasing August? Get Agrippa?

Gladius Nights?

It seems I was wrong, the Romans turned things around pretty quickly apparently:

SPQR ROE

(BTW, Pictors wins the thread.)

Get Agrippa….Gladius Nights ! I hurt myself laughing.

The Martians living under the temples would neutralize the modern weaponry with their gamma-thingies. Now what are you going to do?

What any Marine would do in such a situation. Fix bayonets and charge.

Anyone who likes the idea should watch " G.I. Samurai " aka timeslip .
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Let's see here: 80 guys marching shoulder to shoulder versus a single M240. I bid 300 rounds fired to destroy the entire century, shooting through the shields. If the jarheads actually sit down and have a range day with a platoon, well, that's not even sporting.

While a Roman ballista is certainly accurate enough within 100 yards to take the gunner off a hummvee, the .50cal that he's using is good to over 1200, and any individual rifleman can pick off the ballista crew at a range greater than the crew can see the Marines.

They'd have a real shock when the guys that look like leaves can take a hit to the chest from a gladius (trauma plate), too.

The problem is getting the Roman legion close enough to the Marines to do something about them. The Marines pretty much own everything within 300m of their position, and have enough designated marksmen to make looking important within 600-800m pretty risky.

And for all you guys saying 'bugs/plague' I have one word: penicillin. All the Marines should already be immunized to smallpox, too.

Fix bayonets and charge? Why, that would be playing right into their hands. Vae victis.

To paraphrase a 26th Marine Staff Officer at Khe Sanh when Col Lowndes was worried about the outcome of hand to gland fighting on India Company's Hill, "Ain't nobody gona take that hill away from a bunch of 19 year old Marines."

Lion in the Stars
Let's see here: 80 guys marching shoulder to shoulder versus a single M240. I bid 300 rounds fired to destroy the entire century, shooting through the shields. If the jarheads actually sit down and have a range day with a platoon, well, that's not even sporting.

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why post all that when we've already seen that the Romans have Dodge weapons carriers fitted with .50 cals – Pictor's post won the thread – leave it

I wanna know what idiot let the Romans 'borrow' a weapons carrier in the first place!

some thoughts i had….

decline of roman control in the world… christ doesn't get crucified? no christianity…. new world time line…

what about the viruses that the marines bring back from the future… wont those be highly evolved well beyond the immune systems of the time?

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this book deals with this idea already towards the end… in the future teams of humans armed with lasars and such use super computers to calculate the benifites of traveling through time to change the out come of battles… kill certain world leaders… to make the future stronger…

battle of thermopylae was won for the greeks by a squad of lasar rifle-men

Hmm, what if the premise is turned around and Octavian, or the Roman legions are accidentally transported to modern Washington? Or some Huns or Goths? Good for some laughs?

Oh, oh. It's been optioned by Warner Brothers.
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I will never fail to be amazed at how companies will throw money away for no other reason than throwing away money. This is even more insane than the whole drama around making Snakes on a Plane.

No way someone stole this idea. It is to terrible!

Dweead is dead. The Romans had a lot of practice with a lot of guys getting dead quick.

We alos seem to love to watch movies about how the high tech aliens show up, and we find ways around their tech to do them in. Only this time we are the high tech aliens.

One of the things that often gets left out of the Spanish in the new world is the huge number of local allies they had working with them. They did at least as much damage with advanced political manuevering as they did with advanced weapons. More probably. And the Romans are as good as anybody in that sort of game.

Sure your marines can shoot down a legionare at a couple hundred yards. What about the hot youn girl with the gallon of cheap wine?

Rome did not last as long as it did by being a bunch of dummys or a bunch of wimps. And yes, some how or other, the romans get thier hands on sdome of that new g4ear, then what?

Also, the marines carry a lot of bullets, how about batterys? Many of my guys coming back from afganistan have complained about all this new geear they have to carry, that loses power all the time because you can get more bullets, but batterys are a real pain. Seems somebody somewhere has decided how long a powerpack should last in a lab, but it doesnt do so well in the field.

Also why Octavian? As far as Roman Emporers go he was not bad at all. Probably you would not want to live under any ancient despot augustas was a lot better than most of them.

Also, I would like to see some results of 5.56 hitting real metal armor. I know we are looking at a new round, like a 6.5 due to the low power of 5.56, an issue that has been around since it first came out in the 1960's. Once long ago I shot a set of chainmmail with my .357. It did not penetrae. Sure it would have hurt, and a 5.56 has better penetration power, but it may break up on a breastplate and not do enough to drop somebody. Yes a M240 will get through I am sure, but you have a lot fewer of them.

Guns are not magic wands. And gladius or a pilum will kill you just as dead. Kill an emporer? Sure can do that. Take out the empire? Thas a whiole nother gig, and takes one hell of a lot more time.

Owen

And I'm pretty sure that after the Romans mop up the Marines, they'll turn their eyes toward conquering the previously unknown (to them) Americas and Australia.

"The sun nevers sets on the Roman Empire…."

A brief analysis:
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Ignoring the complete idiocy of the concept everyone assumes the marines could simply shoot down row after row of massed legionaries without considering the psychological effect on the marines doing the shooting

Romans of that time period understood a Cannae or a Arausio where untold thousands of wounded participants were slaughtered as they lay defenseless yet I shudder to imagine the effect on current day US Marines needing to shoot down thousands upon thousands of what would be (to them) little more then unarmed opponents.

Technically I know they could use a 50cal the mow down a row of soldiers but could they really from 300 yards away knowing all the guy carried was a sword and a pilum?

The marines themselves aren't machines and at some point the sheer volume of killing would (I suspect) begin to play havoc with their effectiveness. I wonder if they would run out of the will to kill in such numbers before they ran out of bullets.

Good points.

The layers of if's involved boggle the mind.

I suspect the lack of communication ability between officers would make any negotiating difficult.

The potential for catching a nasty bug is there, but we of modern stock with proper dental/health care, well established nutrition, etc. we the modern element would hold out well enough.

Do not drink the water (unless treated properly)

Eat the local food with caution.

As for the direct combat…I suspect that if an elephant could cause men to poo themselves then an attack helo or any mechanized units would bring visions of the gods have touched these men…I suspect the Romans would be beside themselves.

The thought of 50cal at 300yds/900ft being a range issue, I would say not at all…

"The M2 has a maximum range of 7.4 kilometers (4.55 miles), with a maximum effective range of 1.8 kilometers (1.2 miles) when fired from the M3 tripod or mounted"

The psychology of it all…I suspect the modern Marine would be able to accept the situation far before the ancient Roman could/would…but in the end war is war.

If the enemy approaches with intent then they are targets of opportunity.

I more suspect it would become an issue of the Marines securing and taking over in short order.

If it were a fight without option for flight well then yes the Marines would destroy the Romans.

Besides the laundry list of potential illnesses that we would bring with us would do a fair job of wiping out most of the people far and wide.

It would be a horror show either way you look at it.

Marines for the win.

Semper Fidelis audentes fortuna iuvat