TO BE A ROMAN LEGIONARY

to be a Roman légionary

A Roman légionary is  a soldier  incorporated in one of the legions constituting the Roman army  in Antiquity.

HOW Does One BECOME LÉGIONARY IN The ROMAN ARMY?

the standard of the Roman legion

In Roman Antiquity, all  the Roman, old citizens from 17 to 60 years, owe the military service in the State:  the juniores  (17-46 years) carry the weapons, while  the seniores  (46-60 years) constitute the reserve of Rome. Each one must provide its own armament. Richest, which can have and maintain a horse, integrate  the cavalry. The remainder of the troop, combatant to foot, composes the infantry.

The Roman citizens are divided between the various  legions, which count each one approximately 6 000 men including 300 riders. Under the Republic, they are directed by the consuls; under the Empire, it is directly the emperor who directs the whole of the army of légionaries.

WHICH IS The ROLE OF The ARMY IN The POWER OF 

ROME?

The army is the principal instrument of the Roman  conquest. Effective equipment, a rigorous organization and a severe discipline ensure the superiority of the Roman army on its enemies.

After a victory, the General is carried in  triumph  during an official ceremony in Rome. Its best soldiers receive  a share of the spoils. This practice made soldiers of the very devoted men to their head.

Of An ARMY OF CITIZENS To An ARMY OF VOLUNTEERS

In the beginning, the majority of the Roman soldiers are  country small holders. The policy of conquest of Rome impoverishes them dangerously because their grounds remain in waste land the time of the campaigns, which limits their incomes.

This is why, in 107 before J-C, the Marius consul decides to transform the army of citizens into  an army of volunteers. Because this new Roman army pays  a pay  as of the soldiers, it recruits many poor citizens. These new légionaries engage for 20 years (when they are Roman citizens) or for 25 years (when they live in the Roman provinces).

WHAT BECOMES A LÉGIONARY AFTER HIS SERVICE?

At the end of the military service, the Roman légionary becomes  a veteran. After the reform of the army by Marius, the Roman soldiers profit from  a ground  to leaving their military service. These colonies of veterans strongly contribute to the romanisation of the Empire.

TO GO FURTHER

? ancient Rome
? Rome, capital of the Roman Empire
? circus games in Rome
? to be Gallo-Roman

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ABORIGINALS

Aboriginals

The Aboriginals are  people of Australia. They are approximately 250 000 today, and represent 1,5 % of the Australian population.

The "indigenous" word was used by the European explorers who approached in Australia in 1770; it wants to say the same thing as "autochtones" or "natives", i.e. it indicates the first inhabitants of a region. Even if the Aboriginals of Australia train people, each group distributed on the Australian territory has  its own name, its art, its traditions.

Some 250 languages aboriginals would have existed before the colonization of Australia by Europeans, and perhaps 500 or 700 tribes.Today  only one score of languages  would be usually spoken and 70 others would be  disappearing. Many Aboriginals speak English in addition to their language.

A TRAGIC HISTORY

The Aboriginals would have arrived to Australia  there is more than 50 000 years  (the island was then uninhabited); they would have from India by the sea, would have reached New Guinea, and finally Australia. Europeans discover them at the same time as Australia starting from  the xvii ^E century.

But the British colonization which begins in 1788 turns to the tragedy. Eliminated by  the massacres,  the diseases, dispossessed of their territory,  off-set  in great number, the Aboriginals are gathered in missions or reserves, become today of the communities.

Much had to settle in the cities, but remained in margin of the company. They know  a rate of very high unemployment  and their life expectancy is 20 years lower than those of the other Australian ones. They obtained a true Australian citizenship only in 1967. Thanks to their fights, they obtained rights and, since 1992, the restitution of some territories, but  their combat continuous. This combat relates in particular to  the protection of their identity,  the access to the land property  and  the disappearance of the economic and social inequalities  of which they are victims.

WANDERING Hunters-gatherers

Deprived of its grounds, the population aboriginal saw  his traditional way of life destroyed little by little. The Aboriginals were wandering hunters-gatherers. They moved in their territory in small groups and established campings of huts or stone shelters. They fished and drove out animals like the kangaroo, the wallaby, the émeu or the tortoise, using nets, of hooks or lances, but also of engines  (will woomera)  and boomerangs.

There were no really heads;  the old ones  took care of the good application of the social and religious laws. Each clan had an animal or a plant like  totem, representing his ancestor founder.

THE TIME OF THE DREAM

The Aboriginals  are very attached to the ground  and have  a large respect for nature. For them, each tree, each rock, animal or mountain, each tribe, with its laws, its beliefs and its territory were created by their ancestors, of the spirits resulting from the ground. They call this remote mythical time the "time of the Dream". After having transmitted to the men knowledge necessary to their survival and their existence in company, the heroes of the ancestral culture disappeared inside the ground.

The ritual one however make it possible to enter the time of the Dream. The time of a particular ceremony, the participants themselves become the primitive ancestors and, recalling their voyages, again live the "strong" time of creation. In the same way, when somebody dies, its heart turns over in this time when it was before being born.

A VERY RICH AND DIVERSIFIED ART

This great myth was transmitted orally by the legends and the ritual one, but also thanks to  the cave paintings  (painted on the walls of the rocks or the caves); oldest go back 45 000 years. Those of the west of the ground of Arnhem, the mountains of Kimberley and the peninsula of York Cape are among most famous. They represent the supernatural ancestors, such as the maker of rain  Wandjina,  the Man-flash or the snake Arc-in-Sky. Indigenous art, very rich, includes/understands also paintings of animals and the human ones where are represented the internal skeleton and bodies (they are known as "with x-rays" because they make think of radios), as well as paintings on bark or ground.

Indigenous art knows  a true revival  since the years 1970. Artists of the desert comb fabrics to acrylic painting in a geometrical style, with circles, lines, small points. Others turn today to the cinema, the music, the literature.

TO GO FURTHER

? history of Oceania
? Australia

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RIVERS AND RIVERS

rivers and rivers

The rivers and the rivers are  rivers. The rivers are thrown in the sea, while the rivers are thrown in other rivers.

RIVERS

From which do the rivers come?

The rivers have different origins: it is what is called  the modes.

–the glacial mode: in high mountain,  the cast iron of the glaciers  gives birth to from the brooks and the torrents which form the rivers (like the Rhone or the Rhine in Europe);

–the nival mode: when there are no mountains, but much of snow, as in certain areas of Canada, in Siberia or in the countries of Northern Europe, in fact  the snow melt  forms the rivers;

–the rain mode: the rivers also come from rainwater, the streaming or the underground water tables (of the water reserves), which take the shape of  sources  emerging from the ground: it is the case of the Seine and the Loire in France.

The mode of the rivers

The rivers receive  affluents  or tributaries which come to reinforce them, then they are thrown in the sea by the intermediary of  an estuary  (like the Gironde or the Loire in France) or of  a delta  (like the Nile in Africa or the Amazon in South America). A river and its affluents form  a catchment area. Certain rivers (like the Nile, the Amazon or Yang-tseu-kiang in China) occupy of the surfaces of several million km².

The rivers of the world offer a large variety of  hydrological modes, because of the various types of climates, rocks and vegetation. In general, the large rivers have  a regular  flow.  The modes  are  simple  when only one period ago of low waters and high waters (as for the Seine); they are  complex  when several periods follow one another in the year (like Congo in Africa or the Danube in Europe). In the equatorial and tropical areas, the hydrological mode follows  the pluviometric mode.

With 6 400 km length and an average annual flow of 180 000 m ³  a second, the Amazon  (in South America) is the most powerful river of the world. It also has  a watershed, i.e. a place where the fresh waters are based in salted water; for the Amazon, this line is located at almost 40 km of the coasts, on the open sea.

RIVERS

One distinguishes various types of rivers,  according to the climate and the nature of the grounds and the rocks which they cross:

–temporary rivers: in areas like the Maghreb (in North Africa), when the climate is desert or semi-desert, the permanent rivers are rare; on the other hand, of the rivers to the temporary flow ( wadis) can appear at the time of the rain season and disappear after a few months from dryness;

–the torrential rivers  run out along a strong slope. These  rivers of mountains  are "capricious" and their periods of risings are violent: a river like Gardon (an affluent of the Rhone, in the south of France) can in a few hours see its flow passing from some m³ a second to more than 3 000 m³ a second;

–underground rivers: in fact  seepage waters  penetrate several tens of meters in the basement and create rivers.

THE WORK OF THE RIVERS AND THE RIVERS

Water models the landscapes. The surface rain and waters degrade and erode the rocks by removing layers of sediments. The rivers and the rivers thus dig their  bed  along the way which they traverse (it is their  course): it is for example the valley of the Rhone in France.

A river or a river can have a particularly low flow (the low water level) or particularly high ( the rising): in both cases, it results from them an action and effects favorable and/or harmful on surrounding nature. In the case of the Nile (in Egypt), the annual risings can cause significant damage, but also deposit on the banks a fertile silt which allows the land utilization by agriculture.

TO GO FURTHER

? water on the Earth

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