Found a link to this on Twitter and thought is was interesting.
Rome, Sweet
Rome: Could a Single Marine Unit Destroy the
Roman Empire?
Popular Mechanics ^ October 31, 2011 Alyson Sheppard
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.
