New German Battlefield find

[Capt Gabriela Fullpepper]

Just say this and it's interesting to those of us who are history buffs.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2009/01/04/pleitgen.ger.battlefield.german.cnn

This shows that Gladiator has a bit of historical accuracy to it. They found coins of Comidis (sp), Scorpian tips, arrow heads, spear tips stirups. All very interesting.

[Richard de Graeme]

It pays to keep an open mind. All is not as it seems.

[captmarga]

Jo-walkin-Phoenix?  Um....

But that's a mule shoe, not a horse-shoe.  Completely the wrong shape to go on a horse foot.

Capt Marga

[DonaCatalina]

You're right about that being a mule-shoe. But that's not surprising since the Romans mostly used mules in their supply trains.
I saw some of this on the history channel.
One puzzling thing that is not mentioned in the CNN video is the state of the Roman bodies.
None of them were plundered and still lay as they died, with their weapons and armor.
Obviously they defeated or drove off the Germans, but why didn't they gather their own dead for cremation?

[captmarga]

Being the Registrar for the American Donkey and Mule Society, I see more mistakes where mules WERE and horses ARE used in many "historic" documentaries.

Last year I spent months working with a researcher trying to figure out how much space, feed, time and manpower it would take to move 30,000 mules.   It was a massive task just to research it.  The time-frame was almost impossible to imagine. 

The Roman army, moving that many men and beasts, would have trampled and scoured the ground clean in swaths.  But I do recall coming across some text somewhere that said when the legions were recalled, they LEFT.  Period.

Capt. Marga

[brier patch charlie]

If the Roomans were on the move they may not have had time to burn or even bury the dead. I forgot witch legion it was that GOT ALL BUT WIPED OUT BY THE Germans some were near Bad Baton, but the it was said the bones of 5,000 Romans littered the forrest. I wish I could find that article again I would love to reread it.

[chainshot]

I think you may be thinking of the XVII, XVIII, and XIX legions plus the six cohorts of auxiliary troops led by Publius Quinctilius Varus who were massacred by the German leader Arminius in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD.  Legend has it that once the news reached Augustus Caesar, the emperor according to the Roman historian Suetonius in his Lives of the Twelve Caesars, showed signs of near-insanity, banging his head against the walls of his palace and repeatedly shouting Quintili Vare, legiones redde! ('Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!').