Historical Geographic Areas and a Legionnaire Recruitment Sub-Mod

[tomFoolery]

I'm probably going to be trying to make a sub-mod that gives legionnaires regional names based on where they were recruited, e.g. Legionari Britanniae, etc, etc. This is mostly going to be geographic (not necessarily political or provincial or historical) regions and I wanted to see and discuss what regions people think generally makes sense. Here's what I have now:

• Italia (this one's obvious)
• Sicily (unless the Romans, after a certain point, considered it a part of what they labeled "Italia")
• Corsica and Sardinia (I figured one recruitment center on either island would probably be servicing both)
• Gaul (including Beglica and Provincia)
• Hispana (including the entire peninsula)
• the Alps (both Cisalpina and Raetia et Noricum)
• Germania (Germania Minor as the farthest western border, and then everything west of Sarmatia and North of the Alps)
• Britain
• Pannonia
• Illyria
• Macedon
• southern greece (the ingame province of Hellas, but I'm not sure what to call those legionnaires, maybe Legionari Graeciae?)
• Thrace
• Dacia
• Sarmatia
• western africa (historically Mauretania and Numidia were different places, nations, and different Roman provinces, I may make them separate recruitment areas in that way)
• Africa (including the ingame provinces of Africa and Phazania)
• Cyrenaica (the ingame province of Libya)
• Egypt
• Aethiopia
• Judea
• Arabia (including the whole peninsula, and what's left of Nabatea)
• Syria
• Bosporus
• the steppes (I'm not yet sure what to call those legionnaires either, but it will correspond to what's the #15 recruitment area on the historical legions sub-mod map)
• asia minor (not sure what to call those units either and I can't find a good latin word that the Romans used to refer to all of Anatolia, so I might just split that up into Asia, Galatia, Cappadocia, etc, etc)
• Persia (constituting the majority of the east, Baktria might be its own recruitment area)

I wanted to get a fairly good idea of what all the regions will be before I start fully making the sub-mod.

[LawL_LawL]

Interesting, would all of them vary slightly or only ones recruited in the extremities of the map/particularly unique regions?

[|Quintus Sertorius|]

Sounds great! I was hoping someone would make a submod like this. Will every province have it's own type legionaries? Will they all have unique appearances (ae textures like shields etc) And indeed, will the colder/warmer regions have specific bonuses for that region.

[Matmannen]

Asia minor has gone by many names historicle, one of the more current is Anatolia, but the province of Asia is asia minor you could call Ionia as that is the traditional greek name (and perhaps also roman) for the western turkish coust...

[tomFoolery]

Interesting, would all of them vary slightly or only ones recruited in the extremities of the map/particularly unique regions?

Sounds great! I was hoping someone would make a submod like this. Will every province have it's own type legionaries? Will they all have unique appearances (ae textures like shields etc) And indeed, will the colder/warmer regions have specific bonuses for that region.

I can't say this from seeing it ingame myself, because Steam has yet to fully update my Rome 2 (hopefully it'll be done by the end of the day, let's not get started on that subject), but from what I read from Selea, legionnaire units should still retain some basic visual differences and basic attributes (like cold/heat resistances) from region to region, so I don't particularly plan on touching those (yet, if at all). I'm going to try to essentially just rename the legionnaire variants present in the base DeI files (there are multiple variants in the db tables, they just all have the same name) and the historical legions sub-mod (it has the same variants, they just actually vary more in visuals and have those legion names tacked on to them), so it shouldn't affect any stats or visuals that are present in base DeI, although I might have to add a few more variants in the tables, necessitating me to give those variants any necessary stat/visuals variations. Although first, to do anything, I need to 1. actually learn how to make this thing and 2. definitively decide on what the various regions are going to be (what this thread is for). If you have any technical modding knowledge or anything not related to the classification of regions, just take it to the main thread in the sub-mod forum (the one I have linked in the top post here).

Asia minor has gone by many names historicle, one of the more current is Anatolia, but the province of Asia is asia minor you could call Ionia as that is the traditional greek name (and perhaps also roman) for the western turkish coust...

I wanted to give the legionnaires from the ingame provinces of Asia, Bythnia et Pontus, Cilicia, Galatia et Cappadocia, and Armenia the same name, but if I can't find a good ancient latin word that encompasses all of Anatolia, or there simply wasn't one and historically they didn't at all see it as a unified geographical region, I'll probably just be splitting it up mostly how it is ingame. Anatolia simply seems too anachronistic to use for that.

[UsulDaNeriak]

I wanted to give the legionnaires from the ingame provinces of Asia, Bythnia et Pontus, Cilicia, Galatia et Cappadocia, and Armenia the same name, but if I can't find a good ancient latin word that encompasses all of Anatolia, or there simply wasn't one and historically they didn't at all see it as a unified geographical region, I'll probably just be splitting it up mostly how it is ingame. Anatolia simply seems too anachronistic to use for that.

The word you look for is Asia. The romans used Asia for the continent Asia or the entire East or for just modern Turkey. Sometimes you read Asia minor, but Asia alone is also very popular. The 3rd meaning of Asia is just the province of Asia. Armenia does not belong to Asia in a narrower sense from a roman point of view afaik. But a pragmatic roman would not care.

Finding the right names for your approach is not that easy, because legionary cohorts were never named this way. But perhaps we can find a hint.

A legion could be named like a region, e.g. Legio II Britannica

A cohort of this legion now was called e.g. Cohors V Legionis II Britannica (or Britannicae?)

Auxiliary cohorts were never named according to regions but often according to the tribes, e.g. not Cohors I Asia but Cohors I Asianorum.

I guess you like to have a different naming for legionary cohorts, than for auxilia cohorts and no numbers? In this case I would use simply the regional name, e.g. Cohors Asia, Cohors Gallia, Cohors Hispania, even if that sounds a bit weird.

[tomFoolery]

The word you look for is Asia. The romans used Asia for the continent Asia or the entire East or for just modern Turkey. Sometimes you read Asia minor, but Asia alone is also very popular. The 3rd meaning of Asia is just the province of Asia. Armenia does not belong to Asia in a narrower sense from a roman point of view afaik. But a pragmatic roman would not care.

Finding the right grammar for your approach is not that easy, because legionary cohorts were never named this way. But perhaps we can find a hint.

A legion could be named like a region, e.g. Legio II Britannica

A cohort of this legion now was called e.g. Cohors V Legionis II Britannica (or Britannicae?)

Auxiliary cohorts were never named according to regions but often according to the tribes, e.g. not Cohors I Asia but Cohors I Asianorum.

I guess you like to have a different naming for legionary cohorts, than for auxilia cohorts and no numbers? In this case I would use simply the regional name, e.g. Cohors Asia, Cohors Gallia, Cohors Hispania, even if that sounds a bit weird.

If they did in fact use the word Asia to refer to what we would now generally call Anatolia or Asia Minor, then I'd be plenty happy to use just Asia, but if they did in fact use the full term Asia Minor (I'm fully aware that both are originally latin words and that in english we get them both from latin) to refer to what we'd actually call Asia Minor or Anatolia today, I'd almost prefer to use that for a bit more specificity if not simply so it's not misconstrued as of the province Asia.

When it comes to the grammar and naming: I simply want the name to reflect the general geographic area the cohort was originally recruited in, not really to do something particularly historical with the cohort names, it's more to inform the player something about their ingame units rather than to make the game spot on historical. The men being recruited are of course Roman citizens, either form elsewhere that moved to an area as sort of colonists or actual natives who gained citizenship in some way or another (a much rarer case, I'm sure). So, to take Gaul as an example, I definitely don't want it to use gallorum (of Gauls), because although a small numbers of soldiers in a cohort might be Gauls who have gained citizenship, it would be a very small proportion (and translating the Marian units to, in english, Legionaries of Gauls doesn't make much sense either). I'm now torn between either Galliae (the form "of Gaul" of the noun Gaul) or Gallicani for Marian units (the plural form of the adjective Gallic) and Gallicana for the imperial units (the singular form, reflecting the singular of the wort cohort). Which sounds more like it's generally describing where the unit was originally made, as opposed to the original nationality of the men in it, Legionaries of Gaul or Gallic Legionaries (Legionary Cohort of Gaul or Gallic Legionary Cohort for imperial units)? I was thinking the former. I don't really want to use the nominative form of a noun, as opposed to the genitive, because Legionaries Gaul or Legionary Cohort Gaul as a unit name just isn't too appealing for me. And can anyone shed any light on the difference of meaning between the adjectives gallicanus and gallicus? My dictionary is a bit vague on that. Although all in all, anything having to do with implementation of any kind of regional cohort units of any kind, such as regional names of some sort or regional attributes such as cold and heat resistance, could be thrown out on the basis of the fact that after 50 years all the men in the cohort are probably going to different than from when it was founded and 100 years later that's definitely going to be the case (et ergo any new members could have been recruited from a different area as the legion moves around) and we know how quick the years go by the Rome 2, but we all know those sorts of things make the game more interesting and flavorful and add a bit of an incentive to widen the Roman legionary recruitment past Italia as the campaign progresses.

And I don't at all plan on touching auxiliary units, because I assume they're going to be properly overhauled with DeI 9.0's AoR, seeing as any auxiliary, either of the polybian andmarian levy/allied unit or the imperial official auxilia system auxiliary, are just another form of foreign AoR units.


And do you know of a latin word used for the general steppes beyond the Black and Caspian seas (the area labeled under #15 in the historical legions sub-mod)?

[UsulDaNeriak]

And do you know of a latin word used for the general steppes beyond the Black and Caspian seas (the area labeled under #15 in the historical legions sub-mod)?

It depends. Initially everything northeast of the Black Sea was called Scythia were the Scythes lived. Later - I guess about the first half of the 1st century AD - the romans learned, that this is Sarmatia, where the Sarmatae lived. At least partially. But some authors still used the one or the other. Especially greek authors sticked with Scythia. Some even called the Goths Scythes, because they did not know better.

But, the Caucasus never belonged to these tribes ethnically. Here you have the mountain tribes of the Iberi and Albani. From a roman point of view perhaps something like Armeni (or Armenii?). The romans were even sometimes allied with these guys, in order to defend the Caucasus and Cappadocia, which is directly behind that barrier. I would pool Caucasus with Armenia, not with the steppes.

Btw, the province Sarmatia is placed fully wrong in Rome 2. The romans speculated about a tribe called Venedae living east of the Vistula river. Perhaps the later Slavs. The Sarmatians always lived in todays Ukraine and East of it and the romans were well aware of this fact. There is a theory, that Scythes is the name for the ethnic group and Sarmates, Massagetae or Parthi and others are just subgroups or tribes. But it is unclear, if the romans knew such a classification.

[UsulDaNeriak]

Hhm, if you like to say something like "Cohort from Gaul" I recommend, that you google for Ablativus originis. As mentioned, I don't know, if thats right, because it was never used this way with cohort names.

The Ablativ of Gallia is Gallia or Galliad. Don't ask me, if this 2nd form is late latin or archaic latin or whatever. So Cohors Gallia should mean Cohors from Gaul. But honestly, I am no expert, if it comes to latin grammar, and surely not about specials like the Ablativ.

For the correct declination or conjugation of latin terms, I found this dictionary very helpful. It is german - latin, but that does not matter, because you are searching for the latin term and its declination anyways.

http://www.frag-caesar.de/