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Why Didn't The Romans Invade Ireland?

Well, yes. A plausible motive for invading Ireland could be provided though. Preventing all those pesky raids littering Britain with Ogham stones. I could imagine that if the Romans had infinite resources, they might want to occupy at least the coast and major rivers for this purposes.
But your point is still a very good one. Ireland is a nation, at this time, of no cities, limited agricultural development, no major resources, and endless minor polities and malarial bogs.
Any Roman Emperor stupid enough to support an invasion of Ireland would have gone down as a tremendous blunderer who invaded a worthless grey island, at great expense, to stop raids that continued anyway, and gained nothing worthwhile out of it.
 
ParkCungHee said:
Any Roman Emperor stupid enough to support an invasion of Ireland would have gone down as a tremendous blunderer who invaded a worthless grey island, at great expense, to stop raids that continued anyway, and gained nothing worthwhile out of it.
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Hmmm...you know this sounds oddly familiar...but I just can't quite put my finger on it.
 
Sorry wrong thread.
 
awesome said:
i guess a legion of britons loyal to rome could've gotten the job done.
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Refer back to earlier pages: why on earth would they want to "get the job done" in the first place? What is there for them out there? No rich cities or kingdoms to conquer. Just a bunch of half naked gits living in a harsh, unforgiving land not even really worth settling, let alone fighting over.
 
ParkCungHee said:
Not to mention how would they have gotten the job done?
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Surely you just take the second rock on the left sailing out from Ynys Môn and you're there? These are Romans we're talking about. Conquering is like, second nature to them.
 
Why would they recruit legions specifically from the British population, too?
 
Owen Glyndwr said:
Surely you just take the second rock on the left sailing out from Ynys Môn and you're there? These are Romans we're talking about. Conquering is like, second nature to them.
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Yeah, but it's still going to be a laborious, slow, difficult process simply because there's not major polities in Ireland, and there's no fixed settlements. There's just a couple thousand ringforts who would need to be conquered one by one, over dense and difficult terrain.
I know I don't know much about Roman military conquests, but I don't know if they've ever dealt with that kind of disperse society.
 
ParkCungHee said:
Yeah, but it's still going to be a laborious, slow, difficult process simply because there's not major polities in Ireland, and there's no fixed settlements. There's just a couple thousand ringforts who would need to be conquered one by one, over dense and difficult terrain.
I know I don't know much about Roman military conquests, but I don't know if they've ever dealt with that kind of disperse society.
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I was being flippant.
 
Oh.

Well now I am genuinely curious, did the Romans have much experience in dealing with that sort of situation?
 
Owen Glyndwr said:
Surely you just take the second rock on the left sailing out from Ynys Môn and you're there? These are Romans we're talking about. Conquering is like, second nature to them.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but it's the Irish we're talking about.

Rebelling against large, invasive empire is, like, first nature to them.
 
ParkCungHee said:
Oh.

Well now I am genuinely curious, did the Romans have much experience in dealing with that sort of situation?
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Sure. Doesn't seem so different from the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. They'd conquer, kill, enslave, and impress on the survivors that submitting might be a good idea. It'd take a long time, but they could do it.
 
Dachs said:
Why would they recruit legions specifically from the British population, too?
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Pop-history canon tells us that the Romans paid their troops in salt, so if the British palette then was anything like it is today they would have been clambering over each other to enlist.
 
this is almost the perfect thread for the history forum. A year old necro and a completely pointless derail about Poland. We only need a certain Turkish poster to give it the coup de grace.
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challenge accepted , hopefully that wouldn't cause a thread closure or a ban on me .

so : Not that ı know anything about Ireland , except the Irish can be pretty impressive , how about Ceasar getting troubled with home troubles , a possible repeat of the Spartacus Affair and a "reform" to a new kind of state where he was to better off than he was . A stop order ; and such stuff have a life of their own . ı heard on TV last night that we lost Selanik in the Balkan Wars , 'cause the Grand Sultan Abdülhamit had left the city . Mind you he was one old man recently deposed . The guys even went on to say , had he left Istanbul during WW1 , that city would have also fall . Power structures quickly grow their own mythology . So , no Roman sandals trespassing beloved Irish soil since Ceasar forbade it .
 
say1988 said:
Come now, we all know the only thing the Irish are good at is getting drunk.
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What a car crash of a thread...
Found this site by accident and really wish I hadn't. You guys might want to read an actual book someday. There are many written on the subject and some even have pictures.
 
The Sun God said:
What a car crash of a thread...
Found this site by accident and really wish I hadn't. You guys might want to read an actual book someday. There are many written on the subject and some even have pictures.
Click to expand...

I do. Thanks for your input.
 
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