How Many U.S. Marines Could Bring Down the Roman Empire?

The answer is: NO. The moment the US sol­diers start fir­ing, all of the marines whose sur­names end in a vocal would van­ish cause lets face it if you’re Amer­i­can you’re Ital­ian or you’re Irish

I’m in to nego­ti­ate with the emper­or, can I bring my Latin teacher too?

The sto­ry of Isaac Asmi­mov’s Foun­da­tion series keeps repeat­ing. It’s the lit­tle things that bring down an empire. Every­thing in our mod­ern world is total­ly depen­dent on tech­nol­o­gy. The Romans would win eas­i­ly.

Although I appre­ci­ate the his­tor­i­cal curios­i­ty, I am glad to see I was not the only one think­ing that it is a very fas­cist ques­tion. We are lit­er­al­ly fan­ta­siz­ing with the death and suf­fer­ing of thou­sands of men (even Roman sol­diers who made that mat­ter exact­ly their own busi­ness). Of course, we are also for­get­ting the casu­al­ties among our own Marines. Plus the heavy civil­ian dying and suf­fer­ing that takes place in every con­quest.

Think of Pizarro and Cortez and the Aztec and Inca Empires. A mod­ern invad­ing force, if sim­ply intent on using mil­i­tary pow­er might even be defeat­ed if a gueril­la type of war devel­oped on the lines of “mod­erns” agains “ancients”. But you would have to be a pret­ty thick com­man­der if you did not play pow­er pol­i­tics with the ancients.

Rome was a very divid­ed soci­ety: With­in fac­tions of the tiny rulling elite, between rich cit­i­zens and poor cit­i­zens. Between the met­ro­pol­i­tan mem­bers of the rulling class and the provin­cial mag­nates. Between Romans and the dif­fer­ent sub­ject­ed peo­ples of the empire. And of course the slave class whose revolts were always feared.

I sug­est you read Peter Heather’s The fall of the Roman Empire. There he points out that one over­looked but impor­tant ele­ment on the fall of the Empire was the break­down of social order in the coun­try­side sparked by the bar­bar­ian inva­sions. A bar­bar­ian army or peo­ple would come into a province forc­ing at the very least, the legions to retreat and con­cen­trate to strong­holds. With­out the back up of that mil­i­tary arm the rur­al pop­u­la­tion (com­posed of slaves from great noble estates or sup­pos­ed­ly free peas­ants who were half bond­ed by debt to the local mag­nates) took to plun­der­ing and attack­ing a social order that did noth­ing for them, form­ing bands of “brig­antes” i.e. thiefs and rebels that often would fol­low the bar­bar­ian armies to re-plun­der a recent­ly attacked province and effec­tive­ly pre­vent­ed that province to rebuild itself and become a use­full tax pay­ing part of the Empire again.

Using super­sti­tion, using the sup­port of some pop­u­la­tion groups against oth­ers and even using the exter­nal ene­mies of Rome like the Per­sian Empire, you could indeed defeat the roman Empire.

On top of that you can use both the sys­tem the british used to rule India (using local rulers…from chief­tains to prop­er client kings..like Arme­nia, Gala­tia etc) or the Manchu to rule China…by appro­pri­at­ing the Ming admin­is­tra­tion and pow­er struc­tures.

Just read the Rome sweet Rome sto­ry and not con­vinced by it.

Like the Earth­quake and then the sol­diers find them­selves in a dif­fer­ent time and place. But how long would it take you to realise you are 1st in Italy (spe­cial­ly if you have aero­planes which would allow you to start recog­nis­ing basic geog­ra­phy points.…would you real­ly miss the alps or the Po val­ley or mount Etna? If you do you should not be fly­ing an aero­plane) And sure­ly the abun­dance of olive trees would be a give away that you had moved from Afghanistan to some­where in the Mediter­ranean basin.

It could take a bit more time to find, or after find­ing, accept­ing, that you are in a dif­fer­ent time con­tinum.

The author is also not using the biggest weapons at our dis­pos­al: super­sti­tion, knoledge of our ene­my, our tech­no­log­i­cal supe­ri­or­i­ty in litle things, food preser­va­tion, basic med­ical relief…

The issue of morale is interesting…a few roman wench­es, the idea that we are all in this togeth­er and the pos­si­bilites offered by know­ing that you would be part of the rul­ing elite and live quite well off should cheer one up…but also start inter­nal con­flicts.

He doe­sent say much of the civil­ian con­trac­tors and that offers so many sto­ry line pos­si­bil­i­ties my head spins. Imag­ine a nice look­ing UN vol­un­teer, altru­isitc, head set on improv­ing the world, act­ing like a moral voice and ele­ments more inter­est­ed in tak­ing advan­tage of the situation…oh those roman wench­es again…and the mil­i­tary in the mid­dle try­ing to keep the whole group together…with a vision that the amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion knows best but also that you need order to win a war and keep an empire and that human rights for all are ide­al but might be the first casu­al­ty of war (umm do we lib­er­ate the slaves or not…specially when the roman wench­es we like so much would as slaves mend our socks and do oth­er things just as we like it..which they might not want to do if they are free)

Lan­guage would not be an exces­sive obsta­cle. Yes the latin lan­guage speak­ers would be very use­full (Span­ish, Ital­ian, Por­tuguese, French Romanian)…any of them would be very quick to point out that the lan­guage on mile stones, stae­las, etc

A catholic chap­lain could be usefull…I dont think they have to learn latin these days but they still need to know some expres­sions (canon­i­cal right).

Even you eng­lish speak­ers would be amased how much latin you could under­stand if you made an effort.

On Rome sweet Rome I also dont like the fact that the dif­fer­ent sol­diers are not treat­ed as indi­vid­u­als with lives before being draft­ed. Every­body has tal­ents and inter­ests that could sure­ly be used. A for­mer farmer would know alot about agri­cul­ture. The son of a min­er would know alot about min­ing. Some­one that col­lects stamps would know alot on how to orga­nize a postal ser­vice. And we could go on. Knoledge is a thing held by a com­mu­ni­ty, piece by piece and it is incred­i­ble what we pick up even with­out noticing…someone that knows how to hot wire a car already knows more about elec­tric­i­ty than any­one in the Roman empire ever did.

I also do not like the idea that it all has to be reduced to con­flict. I mean, I am sure the roman elite would not fan­cy loos­ing their grip on pow­er so batles are prob­a­ble but if you read about the con­quis­ta­dors of the amer­i­c­as a whole lot more than pure force was used. I mean the con­quis­ta­dors were sleep­ing with the locals and using fam­i­ly con­nec­tions of these women to find allies, they were nego­ti­at­ing with mem­bers of the Inca roy­al fam­i­ly (to back­stab them after) using their own tech­nol­o­gy to impress the natives with their suposed links to the gods. Cun­ing was more impor­tant than force to estab­lish their rule.

Also, if you offer advan­tages to you new­ly con­quered people…or if you impress them enough with your “supe­ri­or­i­ty” in any field, the con­quered ones will find you inter­est­ing as a ruler and may sup­port you or at least want to be in your good books. The romans ben­e­fit­ed from this but also think about the King­dom of Hawaii, Mei­ji Japan…It is said that the arabs had no trou­ble con­quer­ing the iber­ian penin­su­la because when they estab­lished them­selves they actu­al­ly reduced the lev­el of tax­a­tion being required by the visig­oth­ic Kingdom…which paci­fied the provinces of His­pania very quick­ly.

Sor­ry to bore you all but am find­ing this idea rather inter­est­ing.

We must remem­ber, a MEU also has two things in it’s arsi­nal, Chem­i­cal and nuclear weapons that can be used if there is no con­tact with the Com­man­der in chief, as a last result to keep fron get­ting beat­en.

Who says you have to defeat the entire Roman army? Take advan­tage of the con­cen­trat­ed fire­pow­er. A sin­gle armored vehi­cle could dri­ve right up to the emper­or with impuni­ty. A sin­gle fire-team could slice right through the front lines to their com­mand and sup­port. A sin­gle mor­tar strike could pan­ic their cav­al­ry. A sin­gle sniper could take out most of a legion’s lead­er­ship.

Even dis­re­gard­ing the pure fire­pow­er advan­tage, the Romans would have no pro­ce­dures, tac­tics, or strate­gies for deal­ing with explo­sives, the rapid speed of motor­ized vehi­cle, indi­rect fire, or the even the scout­ing advan­tage of binoc­u­lars.

Rome wins.
No rules of engage­ment…

A MEU has nei­ther nuclear or chem­i­cal weapons under ant nor­mal cir­cum­stances.

Why both­er fight­ing the Romans? Once the marines fig­ured out where in the world they were, they could either build, or oth­er­wise acquire, sea-wor­thy ships and sail to Amer­i­ca. Once here, they could befriend, and blend in with the Native Amer­i­cans; and get them ready for the even­tu­al arrival of the Euro­peans. (The marines, know­ing his­to­ry, would para­dox­i­cal­ly, also know the future). Trained and edu­cat­ed by a group of mod­ern US Marines, the Amer­i­can Indi­ans would be much bet­ter pre­pared to meet the future com­ing of the West­ern Euro­pean migra­tion. A pos­si­ble alter­na­tive his­to­ry of Amer­i­ca would be a much more inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion than mere­ly the hypo­thet­i­cal out­come of a fight.

The legions would even­tu­al­ly sur­ren­der after the over­whelm­ing loss­es. The Roman army would­n’t con­tin­ue to fight a los­ing bat­tle. When they fought the bar­bar­ians, sev­er­al of the bat­tles were lost and they regrouped and fell back to avoid major casu­al­ties. This is part of the rea­son why legions liked Cae­sar so much because he only put them in bat­tles he knew he had deci­sive advan­tages.

It’s not how many peo­ple their are it is if you have the skills to take them down.

After the Romans saw their com­rades shred­ded by .50 cal­iber bul­lets and a grenades, I would think that this would have a dev­as­tat­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal effect on the remain­ing Roman sol­diers who would give up the fight.

Or we can win with­out fight­ing at all using Heli­copters with mega­phones telling the romans we are the “gods” and they should lay down their arms or die. On those same chop­pers we will have snipers to pick peo­ple off one by one if they do not com­ply. (tech­ni­cal­ly that’s not con­sid­ered “attack air sup­port”)

Since the con­ven­tion­al weapons treaties did not exist in that era, just 1 marine to flick a switch on an ICBM with a hydro­gen bomb thou­sands of miles away would do it. No need to send in any­thing else. The mag­ni­tude of the ensu­ing explo­sion would be in the range of tens of mil­lions of tons of TNT. The entire empire would be dis­in­te­grat­ed in a frac­tion of a sec­ond.

Was­n’t this done before?( ..“seem to remem­ber an air­craft car­ri­er going through a time tun­nel and land­ing right in the mid­dle of WW2..”)

Any­way, what peo­ple are over­look­ing is the pow­er void that would occur. Wip­ing out the legions would put the Roman empire in a vul­ner­a­ble posi­tion, and the “barbarian/celtic/germanic” tribes would have swarmed into the empire a lot ear­li­er.

The effect would have dev­as­tat­ed world his­to­ry as we know it( the bar­bar­ians incor­po­rat­ed much of roman knowl­edge into their own society).Europe might not have come out of the dark ages UNTIL the rise of Islam, and North Amer­i­ca as well as cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca, even much of Asia would be total­ly dif­fer­ent.

On the oth­er hand, Romans were very resource­ful, and I see Marines,throwing in with the Romans once they real­ize they can nev­er return to the 21st cen­tu­ry. Med­i­cines would have been advanced, as well as weapons and machin­ery( peo­ple don’t real­ize the intel­li­gence and skill found in an MEU); with­in Roman skill at met­al work­ing, even,their ancient knowl­edge of min­er­als, the Roman Army,taught by Marines, would have had mus­ket rifles in as lit­tle as 5 yrs, as well as sim­ple 18th cen­tu­ry style can­nons.

Roman engi­neers would have had a rail sys­tem in approx 20 to 30 yrs( peo­ple for­get romans were pro­lif­ic road and pub­lic works builders-they cre­at­ed indoor plumb­ing and hot water pub­lic baths!!!). With­in an MEU , you have not only Marine fight­ing men, you have­Navy sup­port teams and even civil­ian tech­ni­cal con­trac­tors! Once com­mu­ni­ca­tion is established,say to one of the “like­able emper­ors”, Rome wpuld have been unstop­pable.

Oil would have been dis­cov­ered and processed with­in 15 yrs( peo­ple for­get an M1 abrams can run on damn near ANY liq­uid fuel source, and bio diesel would­n’t be hard to make, giv­en ancient roman resource access, and mod­ern mil­i­tary know how. And with either bet­ter sail­ing tech­niques and train­ing by U.S. Navy per­son­nel, the Romans would have Bet­ter sail­ing ship designs, nav­i­ga­tion, and an Naval and com­mer­cial force resem­bling some­thing like the Eng­lish Navy, cir­ca the 17th to 19th cen­tu­ry. Trade routes to Asia would have been opened with­in 30 yrs of the MEU arriv­ing, bar­bar­ian hordes would have been sur­pressed, and incor­po­rat­ed into Rome, Eng­land would have been solid­ly Roman, and the Amer­i­c­as would have been dis­cov­ered and con­quered by Rome( “Mex­i­cal­ius”, and the City of New Rome instead of New York). I believe the Marines would have influ­enced a Roman empire with an emper­or some­what
Iike the cur­rent british monar­chy, and the Romans form of slav­ery would have been abol­ished for the
9th to ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry form pf cap­i­tal­ism and “wage slav­ery”( see­ing as many cur­rent US mil­i­tary per­son­nel have been shame­less­ly indoc­tri­nat­ed into rightwing pol­i­tics!)

n this lat­ter sce­nario, the only vir­u­lent­ly ugly thing would have been the repre­saion of and pos­si­bly destruc­tion of islam, with hard core rightwing chris­tian­i­ty as the defac­to reli­gion( in place of catholi­cism) and some lim­it­ed allowance pf judi­asm( state of israel would have been allowed to flour­ish, albeit as a roman client state)

Uh guys, you’re for­get­ting some­thing very impor­tant. After sev­er­al tours in the mid­dle east the marines would have begun to ques­tion the wis­dom of their mis­sion and their lead­er­ship. Plus remem­ber that they will even­tu­al­ly real­ize that every­thing they are fight­ing for is GONE. Mom, Dad, fam­i­ly, vet­er­an ben­e­fits, social secu­ri­ty, bank deposits, mort­gages, out­stand­ing park­ing tick­ets, every­thing will nev­er, has nev­er exist­ed! How can your pledge to defend the nation, peo­ple, and con­sti­tu­tion of the USA mean any­thing when all of that does­n’t exist. Plus your com­man­der will nev­er be able to pay you again. Most sol­diers are not saints. Nor are they rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies. Often they joined up just because the civil­ian job mar­ket sucked. Morale and unit cohe­sion is gonna take a dump real fast, with indi­vid­ual sol­diers and groups desert­ing because they think they can set up their own lit­tle king­doms with the help of their BOOM sticks. The Romans are expe­ri­enced in using bar­bar­ians to fight oth­er bar­bar­ians. And when the ammo runs out, god help them.

Marines are the best war­riors ever trained.

Among the best, not the best.

Roman legion num­bered approx­i­mate­ly 5500 sol­diers, and not 11000. This info made the whole the­o­ry invalid. Because the man describ­ing Roman Equip­ment, described it like some­one watch­ing to much movies and know­ing noth­ing about Roman way of fight­ing and that time peri­od.

There­fore, the the­o­ry, is invalid.

Your com­ment brings absolute­ly NOTHING worth wild to the posed ques­tion.

Yours is the best answer so far!

You should study the sec­ond Punic War. The exact sce­nario you are sug­gest­ing would result in sur­ren­der occurred, and it did not result in sur­ren­der.

You should also look up Car­rhae.

What if, instead of killing each oth­er, the Marines joined up with the Roman army. If the Romans see how for­mi­da­ble an ene­my the Marines are, it would sure­ly make sense for them to try and ally them­selves with the Marines, or even incor­po­rate the Marines into the Roman Army. If that were to hap­pen, Rome would be the more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced and sig­nif­i­cant­ly stronger than before.

The ques­tion is a thought exper­i­ment. Sim­i­lar to a ques­tion on who would win between a nin­ja and a pirate.
Please stop pre­sum­ing that every­thing has a polit­i­cal fla­vor behind it.

Would it have made you less riled if the ques­tion had been “Who would win between the Romans and ISIS?” Or would that be pan­der­ing to our ene­mies some­how?

Those who active­ly seek rea­sons to find offense with any­thing rarely find dis­ap­point­ment.

This is stu­pid the Romans fell 18 hun­dred years ago and using humvees and tanks is just stu­pid romes army was the best for over 500 years let’s see if Amer­i­ca is even around in anoth­er 200 years this stu­pid any­one who says oth­er wise isn’t being prac­ti­cal

to make the fight even, both sides must be pre­vent­ed from retreat and allowed enough space, say the size of a foot­ball field to duke it out. Romans wins hands down.

If they fight both sides would lose. A quick slaugh­ter of the Roman army by Marines would cre­ate a pow­er vac­u­um that the small num­ber of Marines with their deplet­ed ammo and fuel reserves could not fill. Provinces and slaves would revolt, the Parthi­ans and bar­bar­ian tribes would invade. Mass chaos and nobody wins. And worst of all Marines would begin to desert since their com­man­ders can­not pay them with Amer­i­can mon­ey or get them back to their homes. Bet­ter to apply just enough force to con­vince the Romans that the Marines would be a good buffer ‘tribe’ on some impe­r­i­al fron­tier. My first choice would be Wales where the indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion began but the Rhur Val­ley, Romania(Dacia) or Crimea(Regnum Bospori) might work also. The remain­ing mod­ern weapons would serve as a deter­rent to out­side inter­fer­ence while the Marines and their new indige­nous fam­i­lies spend the next few decades build­ing up an industrial/commercial/intellectual base pro­duc­ing goods(steam engines and steel plows) and ideas(All men are cre­at­ed equal, etc.) In 50 years the Marines or their descen­dants would march into Rome to cheers of cit­i­zens of a new Demo­c­ra­t­ic Fed­er­a­tion of Euro­pean States.

I love this idea. Sounds like a great book in the mak­ing…

Just watch the movie Sen­goku jieitai . 1st all vehi­cles would be use­less once they run out of fuel . Let’s say they man­aged to fix that “prob­lem” . Romans would attack most like­ly at night , catch the sol­diers off guard . Sure they would post guards for the night but romans would be able to get near them as they would­n’t be see­ing much around their camp at night . Lets say they light up all around the camp , well than romans would just stay fur­ther away in the shad­ows and get some arrow show­ers going . That tac­tic would beat them on the long run . Also if romans were to climb on tanks and dis­able their optics , destroy the machine gun , or say light a fire on the tank , that would sure­ly dis­able it . I see many peo­ple under­es­ti­mate the hier­ar­chy of the romans , well , you should­n’t . They are high­ly trained skilled pro­fes­sion­als , best of the best , I think they would put up a fight , maybe even to the end . Also I saw some­one say they should mur­der the emper­or , eas­i­er said than done . For that you must enter rome , pre­pare to be attacked in an urban envi­ron­ment — arrows from rooftops and high­er sto­ry build­ings , spears thrown at you , lit grass and torch­es . It pos­si­bly would­n’t destroy the marines but it should at least low­er their morale by see­ing their mates filled with arrows . Also in mod­ern world it is easy to treat a wound such as an arrow shot to say shoul­der (since body armor does­nt cov­er it) . But in the old times — not so much . In con­clu­sion the Romans would win as even if marines were to start rul­ing the Rome , I think they would be killed at night in their beds even by the women they slept with as no one likes occu­piers.

USMC would win until they run out of ammo and gas, then get mas­sa­cred by the Romans…

I’m stunned by how many of these moron­ic ques­tions are out there. Duh uh, whoa, uh like what if, uh what if like uh, you know like if the Spar­tans fought against uh, like uh, you know like fought against a bat­tal­ion of like B‑52’s…who would win?
Its unre­al how many peo­ple thought the 300 Spar­tans movie where they fight in their “Bat­tle Panties” was real his­to­ry, omg. Democ­ra­cy does­n’t work, it only breeds dumb peo­ple that have to much free­dom and who should actu­al­ly be kept down in per­ma­nent low­er classe sta­tus with­out access to technology…ever.
lol, do I seem annoyed?

If they save their brass, hard to do with a m‑60, they could reload, make more ammo. They would know how to make gun­pow­der. find an alchemist type to recharge the caps. A black­smith to recon­di­tion the caps. yes I know that mod­ern ammo does­n’t always use caps, but the audi­ence would­n’t catch on.…

Their best bet would be to team up with the empire, and spread it all over the face of the earth. The sun would nev­er set on the roman empire.

decked ships, steer­ing sails (jib), nav­i­ga­tion, where the winds blow (colum­bus’s), spark gap radio, explo­sives, soap, how to break arms n legs in hand to hand com­bat.

If they went back in “hurk”, and land­ed in the emper­ors back yard on Copri; when he’s at home.…

I was the author of the orig­i­nal sup­po­si­tion which was post­ed on a forum on the Above Top Secret.com in 2008. This is very fun­ny to see some sup­posed for­mer solid­er has attempt­ed to graft a sto­ry out of a throw­away remark I made in a sci fi what if ques­tion. Will this gut­less won­der please send me an E Mail. Since I have the orig­i­nal work trade­marked and copy­right­ed.

You have to have bod­ies to replace the injured, dead. You need med­ical resources, san­i­ta­tion, sup­plies, logis­tics is the key to the sto­ry. Hitler out ran his sup­plies, Gen­er­al win­ter caught his ass out in the mid­dle of nowhere. The Sovi­et forces moved their man­u­fac­tur­ing to the far moun­tains west, out of Nazi reach and had plen­ty of resources to sup­ply, their forces,food, weapons, med­ical. Stal­ion could recruit per­son­al from as far reach­ing to Mon­gou­lia, his weapons were sim­ple, easy to manufacture,use, easy to teach a farm boy how to shoot, dri­ve a trank, truck. Stalon was no fool! Hitler should of left them alone. I’m an vet­er­an of the US Army. Logis­tics is the key to sur­vival and 247 MOS’s are need­ed to win any war. The sad fact is that the US Marines may win in the begin­ing but, the lack of fresh per­son­al, sup­plies, med­ical, replace­ment parts , POL ect,that would be their down fall except if they had the NBC or nuclear option at their dis­pos­al, then things may be some what dif­fer­ent. I’ve been to war, seen the crap hap­pen.

Well it all depends on the sol­diers being sent The U.S mil­i­tary is very diverse and depend­ing on pri­or knowl­edge and if forced the mil­i­tary could quite pos­si­bly get fuel for a peri­od and a few var­i­ous oth­er fac­tors would have to be put in place. For exam­ple do you real­ly have to kill every Roman at what point will they retreat or give up. What’s the polit­i­cal cli­mate? In real­i­ty the sol­diers would be slaugh­tered in mass the first few bat­tles but could learn to change tac­tics but who can change tac­tics faster. Maybe the Marines with mod­ern knowl­edge or the romans either way you also have to take in account the fact the marines may run out of mod­ern weapons but they could still make bet­ter weapons then the legions. Also what hap­pens if the marines spread Amer­i­can ideals and con­vert the pop­u­lace to sup­port them? Sor­ry for any spelling errors that may be present.

A large group of Ter­ror­ists are mov­ing down a road when they hear a voice call from behind a sand dune. “One Unit­ed States Marine is bet­ter than ten Ter­ror­ists!”

The Ter­ror­ists com­man­der quick­ly sends 10 of his best sol­diers over the dune, where­upon a gun bat­tle breaks and con­tin­ues for a few min­utes, then silence.

The voice then calls out “One Unit­ed States Marine is bet­ter than one hun­dred Ter­ror­ists!”

Furi­ous, the Ter­ror­ist com­man­der sends his next best 100 troops over the dune and instant­ly a huge fire­fight com­mences. After 10 min­utes of bat­tle, again silence.

The Amer­i­can voice calls out again “One Unit­ed States Marine is bet­ter than one thou­sand Ter­ror­ists!”

The enraged Ter­ror­ist Com­man­der musters one thou­sand fight­ers and sends them across the dune. Can­nons, rock­ets and machine guns ring out as a huge bat­tle is fought. Then silence. even­tu­al­ly one wound­ed Ter­ror­ists fight­er crawls back over the dune and with his dying words tells his com­man­der,

“Don’t send any more men…It’s a trap. There’s two of them!!!”