The amount of Excel and PowerPoint used by modern Western militaries is frankly shocking.
Explanation: While the Roman Legions do rightfully have a reputation as a refined military machine, what enabled that military machine is the same thing that enables modern militaries - organization, and all the (metaphorical) paperwork that goes with it. The Legions in particular were very… exact about how they wanted formulaic requests made, even in things as small as an ordinary legionary requesting a few days leave from his centurion.
They would’ve gone nuts for Excel. And please, no one introduce any ambitious Tribunes to Powerpoint.
Proconsulpoint
They were persnickety enough that their pole arms eventually became a unit of measurement.
Not too weird, until you learn that we still use it to an extent.Someone writing the regs probably had OCD. But hey, militaries run on details…
We will now explain the way in which the cohorts described above pitch their tents. One tent occupies ten feet; this length is increased by two feet for the pitching, and it shelters eight men. A complete century has 80 soldiers, so there will be ten tents which will run in a line 120 feet long. Because the width of the hemistriga is 30 feet, 10 feet are assigned to the tents, 5 feet to the weapons and 9 feet to the pack animals. This makes 24 feet; twice this is 48 feet. So when two centuries camp opposite each other, a striga (strip) of 60 feet will be made; there remains 12 feet which will provide sufficient space for those coming and going. This space is calculated for a complete legionary century. Since 16 men from each century are on guard duty at any one time, they do not pitch more then eight tents per century. In this way their centurion has a place to pitch his tent on the same area as those tents would have been. Otherwise it would have been necessary to allocate more space.
It’s very useful if you need to erect a camp each day while on the march
You bet this is where all the autistic legionnaires gravitated to. Just all the numbers divisible by six is making me excited already. Beautiful.
Not sure if it was the romans exactly, but I read an article on why our railway line tracks have the width they do and it tracked it down to the width of roman roads - carriage axles for horse drawn carriages were made for road width, and it started from there.
“Do you know how much logistics we can fit in this thing!?”
They did have Excel during their time, only it was called “IXCIL”
“iks-kil”
Ummmm, so that’s 9 + 100 + 49? Or should I subtract the 10 from the hundred instead. Fuck
Or any sort of engineering software
