Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers. I'm Murray Dan, the assistant editor of ancient warfare magazine, and with me is Yesper Ortage, the editor. Today, we are looking at the question, what did the aftermath of ancient battle look like. Yes.

Well, let's not do the standard we don't know, but... Because we know something.

The problem is that our sources are so focused, you know, as always, they're focused on

the generals, on the standout big men.

And the standout big men are interested in the spoil and plunder,

and, you know, setting up the tropium, the victory monument,

which in the case of the Romans, you know, you go out in the nearby wood, hopefully. You can find a nice big oak tree

and you strip the branches off of it and then you hang, bloodied preferably, equipment from your

enemy on it. And that is your proof, your holy holy evidence that you have won a battle at that

field and that is left in place there until it rots away or just drops off or whatever.

But that's the, that is the most important thing and they take that from the Greeks,

Tropym is a Greek word, to, you know, as evidence of winning a battle.

And then there's, of course, you go and try and find the enemy baggage,

and that's where the spoils and plunder are.

And you might have to set up some kind of division of the spoils where some of the soldiers get some and some of the officers get some more

and the general get the most you might have prisoners of war you can take to back to

Rome or to your home city if it was in Greece where you might be

able to sell them as slaves.

That is all, you know, that's the, the victor has his way.

And it can go, you know, it can get pretty exuberant.

If you look at the Actium monument, we've talked about this more than once, I think,

fairly recently when we had the podcast about ramming.

...