Lucinth wrote:
I always thought The Legion was an adaptation based on the best knowledge Ceasar could gather. Like the devs purposely skewed it to make them more sinister or in more educated eyes, ignorant.
Lorewise, it's established that the Followers perpetuate Latin language and writings - Caesar was a linguist with the Followers, and Arcade can also read Latin, and he says he's read Roman writings (he says that both he and Caesar read Cato Senior, and makes reference to some Romans being "quite pleasant", implying he's read Cicero). Caesar states that he's read Gibbons'
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (which was originally written in the 18th century).
The Legion's slave code is clearly based on Cato Senior's writings (which were extremely controversial in their own time, and the author was seen in many aspects of his general conduct not connected to slavery as abhorrent to Roman morality).
Interpreting his design of the Legion strictly within the context of Roman materials - again,
lorewise, Caesar has obviously read both Julius Caesar and Livy.
Legion tactics and unit definitions are very heavily based on what Julius Caesar describes. The American/NCR equivalent to the centurion, the lieutenant, is a professional military officer trained at an academy, and upwardly mobile to any rank. The centurion, on the other hand, is a veteran enlisted soldier hand-picked based on experience, loyalty and disposition for a leadership role - but a centurion can never become a general, they are not upwardly mobile. A lieutenant has only a few years of military experience - fresh from the academy - but a centurion has at least a decade of front-line experience. These guys are the real "hardcore lifers" that you see in any army. That's how they're described by both Caesars.
The Legion also uses the same three-line tactical deployment the Romans did, putting the least experienced soldiers in the front line, then following up behind with increasingly experienced troops, the senior veterans kneeling down in the back row until the midday sun is high and their opponents' stamina wanes.
Same with other details such as the breakdown of Legion units into
contubernii, literally, "shared sleeping tents". This is another Roman tactical element described vividly by Julius Caesar.
The Legion's culture is clearly based on Livy. When you ask a NCR soldier, "Why did you win the first battle of Hoover Dam?", they'll give the Courier an answer like "Because we had better tactics," "Because we're better with guns than the Legion," "Because of the Rangers". But when you ask the Legion, "Why did you lose the first battle of Hoover Dam?" they'll give answers like, "Because of the weakness and folly of our commander," "Because of panic and inexperience".
This is a very accurate depiction of a major difference between Romans and modern Westerners - the Romans always interpreted reality in terms of moral causes. That's a theme running through most Roman books, but it's most visible when reading Livy. When a battle is won or lost, or things are going well or badly for Roman society, it's always because of factors like unity, loyalty, courage, self-discipline, perseverance - it's never because the other side is physically more powerful, or has more troops, or because of natural disasters, or civil injustice, or luck, good or bad.
This is also why the Greeks and Americans have made much more progress technologically than the Romans - because the Romans simply didn't approach life with the premise that problems had material causes. The in-game Caesar understands this, and he explicitly says this is why he tries to keep the Legion technologically backward.
The Legion also does something the Romans did, which was invade or burn down random towns for no other reason than to terrify their opponents. The Legion also uses booby traps and small-scale raids - the Romans didn't do that because they saw that sort of thing as cowardly, and their tactics were best suited for large-scale engagements and not skirmishes.
There are, of course, a lot of places where the Legion starkly diverges from Roman manners. For one thing, the Legion does "cradle-to-grave" military training, like the Spartans - the Romans did not, they used the same scheme the pre-WWII Americans and NCR use, which is a professional army supplemented in times of need by vast numbers of hastily trained conscripts. Unlike the Legion, the Romans didn't fight in their own coliseums because doing so was suicidal and seen as undignified. I think the divergence there, like the thing about women, is a deliberate choice by the devs to make the Legion not necessarily scarier but more in accordance with modern stereotypes about the Romans.
I think that the in-game Caesar was authored by a different (and less knowledgeable) person than the developer who authored the game ending. In the ending, Caesar is forgiving and merciful to the NCR, Vegas and the Followers, and more humane than Lanius. His reasons for being so generous are somewhat enigmatic. This is strongly consistent with Julius Caesar's personality, as depicted by Plutarch.
The way the in-game Caesar behaves - arrogant, petulant, profane, imperious, truculent - is more a stereotype and not at all the way Julius Caesar behaved. It's a major contradiction and even if you know nothing of the historical Romans, the contrast between game dialogue and game ending is striking.
So, what I think that indicates, is that different devs who wrote different parts of the game had varying levels of knowledge, and that is a major factor in the differing levels of consistency between game lore and actual Roman culture.
The biggest - and most amusing - divergence is that the Legion are portrayed as typically Anglic in their facial features and manner of speech (because most classical materials are created by the modern British), and are on average physically larger than NCR people. The Romans, on the other hand, were a diminutive people (about as large compared to their very tall adversaries as white Americans are to Asians). The Romans were olive-skinned, smaller and darker than modern Italians. Again, this is just a Roman stereotype chosen by the devs.
For want of a better example, Tuhl is a pretty good example of what a Roman person probably looked like, in terms of physical build and appearance.
So anyway, lorewise, Caesar had access to a pretty extensive library - as did the devs - but I think most of the divergence isn't so much due to ignorance or efforts to make them scarier or more evil (the historical Julius Caesar killed about two million Gauls in the space of a decade, mostly through starvation, or herding them into rivers like cattle with BSE) but more appealing to stereotypical views.
I think the bit about women is part of that.
Also, I really enjoy putting my knowledge to use. Might not be sufficiently obvious. Like the Caesar in Fallout, a lot of my in-game tactics in WoW were taken from ancient books.
