Decimation (Roman army)

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Decimation (Latin: decimatio; decem = "ten") was a form of military discipline used by officers in the Roman Army to punish mutinous or cowardly soldiers. The word decimation is derived from Latin meaning "removal of a tenth".^[1]

Procedure

A unit selected for punishment by decimation was divided into groups of ten; each group drew lots (Sortition), and the soldier on whom the lot fell was executed by his nine comrades, often by stoning or clubbing.^{[citation needed]} The remaining soldiers were given rations of barley instead of wheat and forced to sleep outside the Roman encampment.

Because the punishment fell by lot, all soldiers in the group were eligible for execution, regardless of the individual degree of fault, or rank and distinction.

The leadership was usually executed independently of the one in ten deaths of the rank and file.^{[citation needed]}

Sources

The earliest documented decimation occurred in 471 BC during the Roman Republic's early wars against the Volsci and is recorded by Livy.^[2] The practice was revived by Crassus in 71 BC during the Third Servile War against Spartacus, and some historic sources attribute part of Crassus' success to it. Julius Caesar is often reported as having used the practice on the 9th Legion during the war against Pompey, but this has been disproved.^[3]

Polybius gives one of the first descriptions of the practice in the early 3rd century BC:

"If ever these same things happen to occur among a large group of men... the officers reject the idea of bludgeoning or slaughtering all the men involved [as is the case with a small group or an individual]. Instead they find a solution for the situation which chooses by a lottery system sometimes five, sometimes eight, sometimes twenty of these men, always calculating the number in this group with reference to the whole unit of offenders so that this group forms one-tenth of all those guilty of cowardice. And these men who are chosen by lot are bludgeoned mercilessly in the manner described above [see original text]."^[4]

Plutarch describes the process in his life of Antony. After a defeat in Media:

"Antony was furious and employed the punishment known as 'decimation' on those who had lost their nerve. What he did was divide the whole lot of them into groups of ten, and then he killed one from each group, who was chosen by lot; the rest, on his orders were given barley rations instead of wheat."^[5]

Decimation was still being practiced during the time of the Roman Empire. Suetonius records that it was used for the last time by Emperor Augustus in 17 BC^[6] while Tacitus records that Lucius Apronius used decimation to punish a full cohort of the III Augusta after their defeat by Tacfarinas in AD 20.^[7]

A legend ^[8] suggests that the Theban Legion was decimated in the third century AD. The Legion had refused to a man, to accede to an order of the Emperor, and the process was repeated until none were left. They became known as the Martyrs of Agaunum.

Byzantine Emperor Maurice forbade in his Strategikon the decimatio and other brutal punishments. According to him, punishments where the rank and file see their comrades dying by the hands of their own brothers-in-arms could lead to collapse of morale. Moreover, it will seriously deplete the manpower of the fighting unit.

Modern instances of decimation

The Italian General Luigi Cadorna applied decimation to under-performing units during the First World War.^[9] In his book Stalingrad, Antony Beevor recounts how, during the Second World War, a Soviet Corps commander of a division practised decimation on retreating soldiers by walking down the line of soldiers at attention, and shooting every tenth soldier in the face until his TT-33 pistol ran out of ammunition.^[10]

Decimation can be also used to punish the enemy. In 1918, in the Finnish Civil War, the White troops, after the battle of Varkaus, ordered all the captured Reds to assemble in a single row on the ice of Huruslahti, selected first all leaders and then every fifth prisoner, and executed them on the spot. This incident is known as the Huruslahden arpajaiset (the Lottery of Huruslahti).

Current usage of the word

The word decimation is often used to refer to an extreme reduction in the number of a population or force, much greater than the one tenth implied by the "deci" root.

In Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, Stephen Jay Gould uses "decimate" to indicate the taking of nine in ten, noting that the Oxford English Dictionary supports the "pedigree" of this "rare" meaning.^[11][12]

In Max Brooks' novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War the army of the Holy Russian Empire uses decimation in its traditional sense to punish units who mutiny.

In the 2010 video game, Fallout: New Vegas, a reference is made to decimation when it's reported that Legate Lanius, a high-ranking field commander in Caesar's Legion (itself based upon the Roman Empire), had one tenth of his unit killed by the other nine tenths.

See also

• Fustuarium
• Lachesis (/ˈlækəsɨs/, Greek: Λάχεσις "allotter" or "drawer of lots") measured the thread of life with her rod. Her Roman equivalent was Decima (the 'Tenth').

Notes

1. ^ decimate. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000
2. ^ Ab urbe condita, ii.59
3. ^ Goldsworthy, Caesar: Life of a Colossus, 407
4. ^ Polybius, History of the World. Quoted in Shelton, Jo-Ann, As the Romans Did, p. 248 ISBN 9780195089745
5. ^ Plutarch: Antony, c. 39
6. ^ Suetonius, Augustus, 24
7. ^ Tacitus, Annals, 3
8. ^ Codex Parisiensis, Bibliothèque National, 9550, reproduced in Louis Dupraz, Les passions de st Maurice d'Agaune: Essai sur l'historicité de la tradition et contribution à l'étude de l'armée pré-Dioclétienne (260-286) et des canonisations tardives de la fin du IVe siècle (Fribourg 1961), Appdx I. on the historicity of the Theban Legion.
9. ^ Huw Strachan (2003) The First World War
10. ^ Antony Beevor, Stalingrad, p. 117.
11. ^ Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, 47
12. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition (1989), Volume IV, 331

External links

• Decimatio, article in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities
• Did Julius Caesar Decimate a Legion?