Hi everyone, welcome to ancient warfare answers with me, Murray.

I'm alone again.

So it's Murray's ancient warfare answers, your 10-minute fix of ancient military history, a weekly event, I hope, for all of you.

And I'm going to be answering a question by someone named Andrew, who sent through an email

in a minute.

But of course, you can ask us a question.

You can either back us on Patreon.

There are three levels.

You can be a legionary, an Optio, or a Centurion.

And if you are at the top level, you can get a print copy of the magazine, Ancient Warfare, or an Optio, you get a digital copy.

And, of course, you can also just back us as a legionary.

And you can ask us your own military question, and we'll see whether we have the Nowse to answer it.

Now, today we've got Andrew's question, which is, why did generals

write back to the Senate what they had done? Was that account trustworthy? And how can we tell?

So, the first thing, of course, is when you're looking at the generals in the Republic and then of course the generals who were

representing the emperor under the empire the writing back to the Senate or the Emperor in some cases would of course be required

that you report on what you're up to the second thing is of course that when you have an

Emperor or a

you know Julius Caesar being the most famous example, writing back, they're telling everyone and touting what they've been up to.

So obviously, the commentary of Julius Caesar, the Gallic Wars and the Civil Wars are the most famous example of a consul or an ex-consul writing back about what they've

been achieving.

A pro-consul, obviously, in Gaul in the 50s, BC.

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