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Hi everyone. It's time for another ancient warfare podcast and another trip down memory lane.

We're going back to ancient warfare issue 1-2, which is actually on the cover as issue 2, volume

1, I see, which concerned itself with daily life in the armies of the ancient world. In this issue, we had some

great variety of topics, really, talking about Greek city-states, nomad war camps they did in their daily

life, and we focus quite a lot on Rome, which makes some sense because the Roman army was the first large scale,

I think we can say, standing army of the ancient world.

Joining me today are our usual panelists, Michael Taylor, Lindsay Powell, and Murray Dam.

So how should we start off?

Well, I wonder, maybe this is something that Michael, as someone who served with the military,

would be able to comment on.

I mean, what the troops do when they're not being, you know, soldier on duty?

I mean, how does that work?

You know, I guess one interesting thing about the modern U.S. military

is that a lot of the drudgery,

you know, the cleaning the toilets, cleaning the rooms, a lot of that is increasingly

being given to sort of civilian contractors to do, which you might say is a very new development.

I mean, traditionally, most militaries from Rome on, you know, your life as a soldier is just the drudgery of

...