Quote Originally Posted by EatYerGreens
I only found out this thing about decimation meaning a Roman military punishment relatively recently, from a TV doumentary of all places. I'd long had it in my head that it meant destruction of an army down to one tenth of its original size but, checking my dictionary, just now, that is listed as definition number 2 and has the comment "disapproved of by some speakers", indicating that it's considered a misuse of the word.

Definition number 1 is as stated previously in this thread but it says that it was "killing every tenth man (of eg mutinous soldiers)". In that case, loss of a battle need not be involved at all.

It does seem unfair to dish out this kind of treatment where it was actually poor strategy on the part of a general which was to blame for loss of a battle but no-one would get to be general in the first place without some level of demonstrated ability so I imagine such occurences were extremely rare. Some military blunders have been accentuated in the history books, as a salutary lesson to future would-be commanders. Meanwhile, the maxim that "history is written by the winners" might suggest that countless similar, but smaller-scale or less educational, embarassments have been thouroughly covered up by their respective empire's historians, along with any incidences of decimation which followed them, other than historical notes that such a practice existed.

As a punishment for individual units which routed off the field with only light casualties, whilst their companions fought on and got slaughtered all the more for lack of their support, it makes perfect sense. Where the entire army routed together and prematurely, causing the battle to be lost, it makes even more sense - for bringing the empire's entire soldiery into disrepute. The ability to psychologically affect an opponent just by the mere reputation of your army's qualities has the battle half won before it even starts. Anything which threatens that needs to be stamped out fast.

It's sobering to think that the practice of executing individuals for cowardice and desertion was still in use as recently as the first World War and there was an incidence of mass mutiny in the French army which led to randomly selected individuals being picked out, court-martialled and shot. The movie of that story features Kirk Douglas but I forget the title. I think it was a Stanley Kubrick film. Rarely shown on TV these days as it was shot in black and white.
Paths of Glory
1957
Kirk Douglass - Col. Dax
Stanley Kubrick - director