Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire 'Rome, Sweet Rome': Could a Single Marine Unit Destroy the Roman Empire?

http://www.popularmechanics.com/mil...le-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?



Getty Mark Ralston
By Alyson Sheppard
Oct 31, 2011

2.3k

James Erwin was browsing Reddit 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."

Trajan's Column, Rome
Getty

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.

Getty

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

"God is on the side of the army with the most artillery."

The USMC would win if they could penetrate to the heart of the Empire and capture or kill the Emporer, in short order. Otherwise, the superior numbers would eventually win out, unless the superstitious primitives believed them to be aliens or whatnot and ran.

I've always enjoyed this concept in science fiction. Island in the Sea of Time was a good book along these lines. Only criticism I have for it, and most others like it, is the authors taking the opportunity to insert their leftist political opinions into it, so you have a hero in the book being a black, butch, lesbian woman, and heterosexual while males taking many of the villain roles. Eventually, this novel got so thick with this crap that I put it down and haven't picked it up again, but I love the general theme of modern people being thrust back in time and having to cope and interact with ancient folks.

Look how Cortés conquered the entire Aztec empire with just a few hundred men armed with matchlock muskets, pikes, swords, and a few canons.

If the Marines succeeded in destabilizing the Roman Empire, they would disrupt the history of the next 2000 years, including who got married to whom, and maybe they would even kill their great great great etc. grandparents. In short, they could never get born and thus could never get back to 23 BC in the first place.

If Rome fell in 23 BC, what would replace it? Almost certainly that area would not have become Christianized in the 300s (AD). Western Europe would never exist, at least as we know it, and probably no United Stated of America would have been founded in 1776. Ergo no Marine Corps.

Kind of a pet theory/fantasy of mine, except I keep wondering how a single company of modern Infantry - Army or Marines - with a supporting heavy weapons platoon would fare against 10,000 Orcs at the Battle of Helm's Deep.

But it all boils down to logistics. Modern troops would massacre anybody up to and including Napolean's forces until they ran out of ammo, after which they have nothing but unwieldy clubs and piss poor spears.

There would be plenty of good spears and swords laying all about them.

True, but now they're a badly outnumbered force - really badly outnumbered - untrained in those weapons fighting against people who mastered those weapons in their early teens.


I read a short story many years ago about an MP who was suddenly transported back to a viking village. After the initial shock he figured he would be king pretty soon because of his pistol and modern knowledge.

However, they considered him very unimpressive. He couldn't row for 20 minutes before his hands got blistered, he knew nothing of sailing or plowing or blacksmithing or anything useful, and while he was in good shape he couldn't barely pick up and swing a sword more than a few seconds before he got tired. They were amused at his neat tricks of fighting where he threw a man over his shoulder (judo), but while his thunder maker (.45 sidearm) exhibited nicer work than any of their blacksmiths could produce and was loud it couldn't kill any further than a good spear throw. Eventually he pissed off someone and they chased him into the hills. He killed a few of them with his .45 but when his thunder maker stopped he was easily killed with a sword.

Remember the Twilight Zone episode where a tank crew, along with their tank, was transported back to Custer's Last Stand, while on a training mission? The tank ran out of gas while tooling around, lost in the desert (before they realized they were back in time). Only after abandoning the tank and going on foot did they begin to realize they had traveled back. Then they came upon the battle. All they had were their .45s, so they racked one in the chamber and headed to Custer's side. That's when it ended.

PS That was when Custer was still considered a good-guy historical figure in the US, before political correctness had set in.

A MEU would roll right through the Roman empire. What would the Romans do against 155 howitzers, M1 tanks, Cobra gunships, and Harriers dropping JDAM's?

Heck, a standard infantry platoon could likely take over the Roman Empire given an unlimited supply of ammunition.

Edit: I just reread the original premise and it says there would be no resupply of anything, fuel, ammo, etc. That would change things a bit, but not by much. The Marines would just take Rome itself, which would only take a few hours, and the rest would fall quickly.

"All they had were their .45's."

I seem to remember M-1 carbines too!

Couldn't the Romans darken the sky with falling arrows at some point?

How do they get the unlimited ammo? That's the whole rub, they only have what they have with them at the time.

Once the gas is gone the planes and choppers are grounded and the tanks are scrap or at best pretty good stationary forts, and once the ammo is depleted the troops revert to unarmored (for the day), poorly armed troops trained in totally different tactics that would be pretty useless against a cohesive Roman legion.

Granted they would slaughter, and I mean absolutely slaughter, anyone they met before that but unless they can kill over 300,000 people they would eventually lose.

I remember that one, the implication being that they died in the battle along with Custer's troops.

I heard tell that Shrapnel is still out there with a metal detector trying to find their tank...

This. What kind of logistics 'trail' could the Jarheads have? If, they could have a 'train' as long as Alexander was reputed to have in his campaigns, the Marines would slaughter 'em in days or perhaps, weeks.

Once the Marines defeated Rome, or substantially changed its course, they would go back to fighting Muslims 600 years in the future.

If the Marines destroyed the Muslim pigs in the first millennium we'd not be dealing with them today.

If I remember my history correctly Rome ceased to exist when their aqueducts were destroyed, no water=no people. A few Marines could have easily destroyed their aqueducts.

There would be plenty of good spears and swords laying all about them. [/quote]

Ah! Would the Marines have the training to use spears and swords? I don't think so. I don't mean to denigrate our Marines of this time or any other time. However, you need to have constant training to use a sword effectively. The muscles need constant working. Ditto for the shield. It's one thing to pick up a Roman Gladius and shield. It's another thing entirely to be effective in combat with it.

The neat thing about timelines is, how do we know someone didn’t go back and alter time? Whatever history we know now is the only history we know. Originally the Renaissance occurred in 800 AD, the atomic bomb was created around 1100, nuclear weapons and delivery systems proliferated, assisted by the Chinese who had advanced their rocket technology to approximately a V2 level, and the Pope ordered a nuclear strike against Saladin who responded in kind, devastating the world. In 1580 Ahnold Schwarzenegger’s tribe in the wastelands of what never was Austria discovered a time machine, went back to 750 and changed everything to what we know today.

Yeah, I know, put down the bong. Speaking of, the bong was originally created in 1214 but a time traveler went back...