4 ms·

So sixteen man-days of labour per legionary. And 924 kg of wood; if you get 30 tonnes of wood per hectare (this is a SWAG based on a quick google), that's about

by twic 4y ago

So sixteen man-days of labour per legionary. And 924 kg of wood; if you get 30 tonnes of wood per hectare (this is a SWAG based on a quick google), that's about 300 square metres per legionary. For 5000 legionaries, that's 154 hectares, which is about a quarter of the Presidio in San Fransisco, half of Central Park in New York, or a bit more than Hyde Park in London. It's a lot, but it doesn't strike me as, like, a lot a lot.

notahacker 4y ago
An excellent point. I wonder how it compares with the material and labour resources involved in equipping a modern army.
- tokai 4y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if the man hours per equipped soldier its much higher in a modern army. If you account for all the individual bits and bops, plus vehicles and modern weapon systems. That would follow the trend from the last +100 years where the price tag for the individual soldier sky rocketed.[0] [0]https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna21105586 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna21105586
  - notahacker 4y ago
    The other interesting angle is if you measure it per population unit defended, on the basis the point of all the heavy equipment is the ability to win wars without having to call up a particularly large fraction of the population to fight in them (the Romans are also outliers in history for ruling a large population with a relatively small skilled standing army rather than mass conscription) But still not convinced that comes out at lower cost than the Romans. Lucky we've got a bit more productive capacity not devoted to producing food and basic infrastructure than they did...
    - jabl 4y ago
      IIRC there's a long series on the acoup blog referenced elsewhere in this discussion, that deals with the logistics of moving and feeding an army in pre-modern times. Tl;dr: When you're limited to beasts and wagons, the possible size of your army is severely curtailed. Also foraging for food (again, with beasts and wagons there's only so much food you can transport over any non trivial distance) puts a quite low limit on the size of an army you can have in an area. IOW, the modern mass army enabled by conscription is also dependent on a modern logistics system to supply them.
  - skybrian 4y ago
    I’m no expert, but it’s my understanding that modern war uses huge amounts of ammunition for suppressive fire.
  - ElevenLathe 4y ago
    This is true, but there are a lot more hours available now than then. Global supply chains mean a modern "legion" can draw from the labor of 8 billion people. Those workers live longer lives, and far far fewer of them are working in agriculture just to keep themselves fed. This is before factoring in their productivity -- an hour of 2023 globalized labor is presumably many times more productive than an hour of 500 BCE Roman labor.
hef19898 4y ago
Throw in the resources needed for ships, civilian and military, civil infrastructure and the like, and you see why there is so little forest left in the Mediterranean. Plus, those things have to be replenished and rebuild over time, so it is not a one off.
- CydeWeys 4y ago
  I think the main reason there is that those areas have been inhabited for so long, and that wood is mostly used for cooking and heating, uses which would eclipse military production. And don't forget clearing forests to make fields for agriculture.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    The heating needs are usually regrowing. Agriculture is a thing, sure. The majority of the forests on the Italian peninsula was used up by the powera to be, from the Romans to the Venetians, was used for ships now lying somewhere on the sea floor. You can read up on the history of the Battle of Lepanto, the Venetian Arsenal and just how much wood was cut down for that fleet on the Venetian side not to speak of the Ottomans. Having the logistics in place for these kind of things is among the main reasons the Roman were able to buiod their empire in the first place.
vkou 4y ago
It's a lot for a preindustrial society that has a very low surplus economic output that can be collected and diverted into a military by taxes. Also, the logistics of keeping the legion fed and quartered when it is resting, or campaigning look a lot like 'it eats the countryside bare, and the peasants unlucky enough to be in its path starve'. Even in an industrialized society, how many families do you know that would be able to quarter and feed, say, three to six soldiers for the four months break that they take from winter campaigning?
pvaldes 4y ago
The real problem is that the Mediterranean islands had forests, Forests that evolved in a similar way to the outstanding current Asian temperate forests that are a hot spot of temperate biodiversity. They were the home to endemic conifers, "italojapanese" maples, dwarf European elephants and rodents like bunnies with teddy bear ears. All gone now. We will never know how an European "Asian jungle" would look.

by twic 4y ago

notahacker 4y ago

An excellent point. I wonder how it compares with the material and labour resources involved in equipping a modern army.

tokai 4y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the man hours per equipped soldier its much higher in a modern army. If you account for all the individual bits and bops, plus vehicles and modern weapon systems. That would follow the trend from the last +100 years where the price tag for the individual soldier sky rocketed.[0] [0]https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna21105586 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna21105586
- notahacker 4y ago
  The other interesting angle is if you measure it per population unit defended, on the basis the point of all the heavy equipment is the ability to win wars without having to call up a particularly large fraction of the population to fight in them (the Romans are also outliers in history for ruling a large population with a relatively small skilled standing army rather than mass conscription) But still not convinced that comes out at lower cost than the Romans. Lucky we've got a bit more productive capacity not devoted to producing food and basic infrastructure than they did...
  - jabl 4y ago
    IIRC there's a long series on the acoup blog referenced elsewhere in this discussion, that deals with the logistics of moving and feeding an army in pre-modern times. Tl;dr: When you're limited to beasts and wagons, the possible size of your army is severely curtailed. Also foraging for food (again, with beasts and wagons there's only so much food you can transport over any non trivial distance) puts a quite low limit on the size of an army you can have in an area. IOW, the modern mass army enabled by conscription is also dependent on a modern logistics system to supply them.
- skybrian 4y ago
  I’m no expert, but it’s my understanding that modern war uses huge amounts of ammunition for suppressive fire.
- ElevenLathe 4y ago
  This is true, but there are a lot more hours available now than then. Global supply chains mean a modern "legion" can draw from the labor of 8 billion people. Those workers live longer lives, and far far fewer of them are working in agriculture just to keep themselves fed. This is before factoring in their productivity -- an hour of 2023 globalized labor is presumably many times more productive than an hour of 500 BCE Roman labor.

hef19898 4y ago

Throw in the resources needed for ships, civilian and military, civil infrastructure and the like, and you see why there is so little forest left in the Mediterranean. Plus, those things have to be replenished and rebuild over time, so it is not a one off.

CydeWeys 4y ago
I think the main reason there is that those areas have been inhabited for so long, and that wood is mostly used for cooking and heating, uses which would eclipse military production. And don't forget clearing forests to make fields for agriculture.
- hef19898 4y ago
  The heating needs are usually regrowing. Agriculture is a thing, sure. The majority of the forests on the Italian peninsula was used up by the powera to be, from the Romans to the Venetians, was used for ships now lying somewhere on the sea floor. You can read up on the history of the Battle of Lepanto, the Venetian Arsenal and just how much wood was cut down for that fleet on the Venetian side not to speak of the Ottomans. Having the logistics in place for these kind of things is among the main reasons the Roman were able to buiod their empire in the first place.

vkou 4y ago

It's a lot for a preindustrial society that has a very low surplus economic output that can be collected and diverted into a military by taxes. Also, the logistics of keeping the legion fed and quartered when it is resting, or campaigning look a lot like 'it eats the countryside bare, and the peasants unlucky enough to be in its path starve'. Even in an industrialized society, how many families do you know that would be able to quarter and feed, say, three to six soldiers for the four months break that they take from winter campaigning?

pvaldes 4y ago

The real problem is that the Mediterranean islands had forests, Forests that evolved in a similar way to the outstanding current Asian temperate forests that are a hot spot of temperate biodiversity. They were the home to endemic conifers, "italojapanese" maples, dwarf European elephants and rodents like bunnies with teddy bear ears. All gone now. We will never know how an European "Asian jungle" would look.