Welcome everyone to the latest ancient warfare podcast. I'm Murray Dam.

Jasper is not with us at the moment but therefore I get to host and we've got our usual suspects with us, Mark DeSantis, Lindsay Powell and Mark McCaffrey.

In this episode we're going to be talking about the role of contests and rituals in ancient battle.

So whether it's the speeches before battle,

the auspices before battle, whether it's the acclamation of the general during battle or even

things like battles between champions to represent the armies, there's all sorts of things that we can talk about when it comes to

what actually makes up a ritual and a contest in ancient warfare.

So we've got several questions from our Patrions.

So we can start there and I think we'll kick that off and see what we have to say.

So we've got Dag from Patreon saying the general giving his motivational speech

in front of his men, was this actually a thing? If so, how could anyone more than 50 meters

away hear anything? So speeches before battle. What do we think, gentlemen? Well, I'm going to throw

this in. So we know, for example, that there are records in Julius Caesar, where he talked to his troops.

But even on the coins, they talk about an ad locutia, which is an address to the troops.

So addressing at least some part of the assembled soldiers is part of the ritual of the commander

asserting his leadership and talking points or whatever.

How that's conveyed to the rest of the people in the crowd, I can only imagine it would be people

waiting for the Centurans or the Hoplight leaders or something to relate that back.

But they do appear to be a real thing.

It's also heavily a literary device as well in terms of both the Greek and the Roman authors,

that this is something that is expected when an author gives an account of an ancient battle,

that there is going to be some sort of speech on both sides being given.

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