Hi everyone and welcome back to another week of ancient warfare answers.

I'm Murray Dan, the assistant editor of ancient warfare magazine, and this is Jasper Ortaj, the editor of ancient warfare.

This is our fourth, so we're thanking you for all your questions and looking forward to doing more of these.

Now, this time round, I've got a question from Yona Lendering from Livia's.org about a question

about Tacitus's histories, which book two section 41. And if you're not intimately

familiar with that paragraph, I'll admit I had to look it up to.

I'll explain what it's all about.

This is an episode from the Year of the Four Empress.

It occurs in April, AD 69 at the start of the first battle of Cremona.

Tacitus says that the troops of Vitellius under the command of Fabius Valens are surprised by the advance of the Athonian soldiers, and here comes the

crucial part, Tacitus says they draw lots to decide the order of March. They let fate decide who

ends up where on the field of battle. What's that all about? Surely a competent general wouldn't do that.

Insert the well-known note by Caesar. But, therefore, the question, if we're going

to put it briefly, is why did the Roman army draw lots in AD 69? Good question. I had really a lot of

fun with that. I bothered several people who know more about the Roman army than I do. It's quite a few

of them, but I couldn't ask all of them.

So apologies, Ross and Duncan and Kate for bothering you this week. But yeah, the original

question was whether this had something to do with avoidance of risk, really. You know, the questioner who'd pose it to Yono, who sent it to me, said, well,

are they trying to avoid being in the front line and therefore avoid getting killed in battle?

You know, that sort of suggested by our expression of drawing the short straw.

But the thing is that that would run counter to Roman military attitude.

It's not, you know, it's not virtus to try and avoid the risk and then trying to avoid battle.

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