I’ve been learning about ancient Roman history, which has both introduced me to new terms and given me some background on others that I knew, but didn’t know-know. For today, I have some terms that are loosely themed around Rome’s long military history.
For example, in 280 BC, Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus (in modern-day Greece and Albania) invaded southern Italy and confronted Roman armies. At the Battle of Asculum (279 BC), Pyrrhus managed to defeat the Romans. But his losses were so great that, as Plutarch reports, “… it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one other such victory would utterly undo him.” Thus we get the phrase Pyrrhic victory, a win that comes at tremendous cost.
Marching along. (<- get it?) In 264 BC Rome got itself into the first of three Punic wars. These were fought against Carthage, an established power that centered on a city-state in what’s now Tunisia.
If the wars were against Carthage, why do we call them the Punic wars? Because the Romans referred to Carthage as Carthāgō and the Carthaginians as Pūnicī, the latter term derived from a Greek word Phoinix that meant “Phoenician.” The inhabitants of Carthage in North Africa and in the western Mediterranean were descended from colonists who had left modern-day Lebanon in the 9th century BC. The Greeks thought of the Carthaginians as Phoenicians and passed this ethnographic lore along to the Romans.
In the second Punic war (218 BC), the Carthaginian general Hannibal audaciously took his army from Spain through France, across the Alps, and into Italy. In direct battles, Hannibal annihilated the Roman armies that faced him. (At Cannae in 216 BC, it’s estimated that the Romans lost 80,000 troops.) The Romans learned their lesson, so thereafter they just harassed Hannibal and avoided direct confrontations. Because this strategy was associated with the Roman dictator Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus (or just Fabius), it’s come to be known as the Fabian strategy.
In US history, the Fabian strategy was employed by George Washington, who also (eventually) learned to avoid direct battles with the British, counting on attrition and on the enemy’s inability to get supplies and reinforcements.[1] It’s possible that you can think of other examples where the Fabian strategy helped a less-powerful army overcame a superior force.
My readings also clarified some terms for me to do with Roman tactics. Roman troops were arranged into legions of between 3000 and 5000 men; legion probably comes from a root meaning “to pick, choose,” which we have in many words today, including to elect. An individual soldier was a legionary. They were organized into units that originally consisted of about 100 men, thus centuria. The officer in charge was a centurion.[2] The troops carried different arms; some carried a short sword, known as a gladius, from which the word gladiator comes—someone who fights with a sword. Gladius, both the word and the weapon, might have been adapted from the Celts, a people that the Romans had long and contentious contact with.
When Romans won a war, they might celebrate a triumph. We use the word today to mean a resounding victory, but to the Romans the word was very specific.
Triumphs probably started as just a victory parade—a pompa, from which we get the words pomp and pompous. Fun fact: the expression pomp and circumstance comes from Shakespeare (“Pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war!” in Othello, III:3), which Edward Elgar took as the subtitle for a series of military marches that he wrote in the early 1900s, and which we use today because March No. 1 is what we hear endlessly at graduation ceremonies. (listen)
Back to triumph. “The triumph was the single most important ceremony that any Roman in public life could hope to perform.”[3] A triumph had to be granted to a victorious commander by the Roman senate, and the bar was high. The ceremony itself was elaborate and long and very ritualistic; for example, the commander was bedecked in a special way and was drawn in a four-horse chariot.
In 60 BC, Julius Caesar, after military successes and while governor of Outer Spain, wanted to run for consul. To become a candidate, he had to enter Rome. But to enter Rome, he had to give up his military command; governors were not allowed to head an army within the boundaries of Italy. Giving up the command would forfeit Caesar’s chance for a triumph. To the shock of many, Caesar forfeited the triumph and ran for (and won) the consulate.
But of course that wasn’t the end of the story. In 49 BC, Caesar returned from the Gallic Wars and deliberately led a legion over the Rubicon river, which marked the northern boundary between Gaul and Italy. He thus crossed the Rubicon—in other words, he committed to an irreversible course of action. This was theoretically a capital crime, but only if Caesar could be held to account. Initially he chased his rivals out of Rome, but eventually, as we know, it didn’t work out. However, before that fateful ides of March, he did end up celebrating four triumphs for his victories in Gaul, Pontus (Turkey), Africa, and Egypt.
And finally, the word thing that surprised me most in all this. In 53 BC, the consul Crassus had an army in the eastern Mediterranean, hoping to take on the Parthians (Persians). He was desperate to achieve military glory (see the previous about triumphs). But he was not nearly the general that Caesar and Pompey were. In his History of Rome podcast (e42), Mike Duncan explains what happened:
After being led away from the Euphrates, the Roman army marched day after day through the sweltering desert heat. Morale was low, and the troops grumbled that Crassus had no idea what he was doing, no idea where he was going, and that he was going to get them all killed. On all three fronts, they were exactly correct.
The Parthians sent archers on horseback to tangle with this doomed Roman army. These archers were very skilled—not only could they shoot arrows while riding toward you, they could turn around and shoot arrows at you while they were riding away from you. Thus the expression Parthian shot, or as we know it today, parting shot.
You don’t believe it? Neither did I. But it seems to be true. A Word Detective column says this:
Most authorities assume that “Parthian shot” was the original form. But even in the 19th century, people who knew who the Parthians were and thus truly understood the reference must have been fairly rare, and as the history of the Middle East became more obscure even among educated English speakers in the West, “parting” stepped up to fill the vacancy.
The expression parting shot makes a lot more sense than Parthian shot, so the theory is that the expression underwent folk etymology—it changed to better suit speakers.
Not everyone is convinced; even in the comments for the column there’s wrangling. But Shakespeare has “Or, like the Parthian, I shall flying fight” in Cymbeline, I:7. So I’m going to leave it as my, haha, parting shot.
Like this? Read all the Friday words.
[1] Hannibal came to the same fate as Cornwallis—eventually he had to give up and go home.
[2] The composition of the Roman military changed over time, and I don’t guarantee that the terms here are all, er, chronisms.
[3] A Brief History of the Romans, Boatwright et al, 2nd ed, pg. 53.