|
Grand Fromage posted:There are stories of being able to basically like hang under the horse's neck and shoot accurately behind you. It's loving ridiculous and yes, there are so many accounts that it's almost certainly true. Parthians were famous for being able to retreat, then turn around and shoot pursuers. The Parthian shot. Why didn't the Romans adapt to it? You would think they'd have learned some lesson after Crassus lost all those troops for nothing
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 06:53
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 18:36 |
|
|
Alan Smithee posted:Why didn't the Romans adapt to it? You would think they'd have learned some lesson after Crassus lost all those troops for nothing Nobody could. You couldn't chase them down with infantry and the Romans didn't have the kind of cavalry required. No army really developed a good way to deal with them until guns showed up and neutralized the tactic. Also they just weren't going to conquer the east and kind of knew it. They were also able to beat the Parthians regularly enough that it didn't seem as pressing. If the Parthians had been a real invading threat and always winning, Rome might've done more to work on it. Later horse archers like the Huns show up when Rome is just holding on, they don't have the resources. If you look at it, none of the horse archer heavy armies ever were the biggest threat. They were tactically devastating but Rome's real losses were all against infantry cultures. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Jun 27, 2012 |
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 06:58
|
|
|
Since this is suddenly the horse archer thread  , does anyone know how many horses the average mongol cavalryman would have owned or been responsible for?I mean, the advantage of animal husbandry is that they breed much quicker than humans, and can live off low quality carbohydrates. I'd imagine a mongol soldier would have owned a team of horses, and swapped between them. Maybe his family takes care of the horses, iunno. Also, I thought the counter to horse archers was bring alot more archers wielding larger bows that could outrange the HAs.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 07:05
|
|
|
I would like to remind the Mongol posters about a military history thread also in this forum. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 07:07
|
|
|
Phobophilia posted:Also, I thought the counter to horse archers was bring alot more archers wielding larger bows that could outrange the HAs. Horse archers were difficult to hit in the first place, and their composite recurved bows were the most powerful available. The Roman response was largely just to build walls and enlist horse archer auxilia from conquered areas. In many ways their response mirrors that of China earlier - similar actions from people in similar situations. Horse archers were potent tactical units, but they couldn't take fortified cities by themselves. I think that if the Mongols had proved to be a more significant problem that the Romans would have adopted the stirrup, horse and composite bow technology more earlier, or had a Marian Reforms Part Two.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 07:52
|
|
|
Phobophilia posted:Since this is suddenly the horse archer thread To reply here before we move to military history: the standard for a normal Mongol horse archer seems to have been 5 horses. In theory that's a decent counter but I'm not sure anybody in regular contact with horse archers had bows that could meaningfully outrange them - and the Romans, being intrinsically biased against archery, certainly didn't. I don't know much about the bows of earlier steppe peoples but the Mongol bows had an absolutely ridiculous draw weight - much higher than your average English longbow for example. Outranging them was not an option.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 07:53
|
|
|
Fun fact: Horse-archer based nomad armies regularly defeated "settled" armies all over the world until the 18th century, even though they did not make strategic gains that often. That's a long time for a weapon to stay effective.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 11:53
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:Burials depends on the era. Classical Rome was mostly cremation, so a family tomb would have urns with ashes and statues/inscriptions. Later when full body burial became more popular we get ridiculously intricate coffins. Fun fact: the Cornelii always buried their dead, as far back as anyone could remember. They were the only patricians that did this.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 12:55
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:
The most used primary source for the reaction of the Crusaders is generally the Alexiad, plus a couple of Church sources. The Ottoian Chronicles are also a drat good source about western reaction to the Roman court. Mostly due to the fact it was the only time a strong Western Emperor really dealt with the Eastern one, it shocked the hell out of the Germans.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 15:03
|
|
|
From what I've seen, it looked like the Byzantine's weren't able to raise a large army (40k max). Why was this? Talking around the time of the Komnenos.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 15:17
|
|
|
Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:From what I've seen, it looked like the Byzantine's weren't able to raise a large army (40k max). Why was this? Talking around the time of the Komnenos. For one thing, raising large armies requires grain surpluses to feed them. The empire had lost its most productive grain areas in North Africa by then and Saracen pirates were affecting trade. The population living in the empire controlled areas was also half of what it had been five centuries before and only 1/4-1/8 of what it had been 1000 years before. While the empire was still the greatest power in Europe, it was only a shadow of the glory days of Rome.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 15:48
|
|
|
Dan Carlin actually did a Hardcore History podcast on the Mongols recently since you're on the topic of horse archers. Here are some awesome facts about them. I would seriously take a look at his podcast as he did five episodes on the fall of the Roman Republic just recently. The pull on their bows was roughly 160 pounds. It's like a bowflex machine that shoots arrows. The longest range one could shoot at was roughly half a kilometer, although actually hitting anything at that range was a big loving deal. The Mongols would use swarm tactics. On flat land they would wreck anything that wasn't also horse archers as no one could hit them, nor could you fire for effect as there was no mass to shoot at. Archers could sometimes hit horse archers, but archers rarely make up a bulk of the forces of an army, while all of the forces of the mongols were horse archers. Usually this meant isolating the archers and taking them down with sabres. The Mongols had several horses in order to refresh their mounts in battle. It could range from three to twenty. How do you corral twenty horses? Well, you don't. You teach them to follow you around like dogs. It's easier that way. The bows did not react well to water. The glue was water soluble so damp or rainy conditions could ruin a bow which took literally weeks or months to make. The mongols had two main tactics. Forming a sort of crescent formation that they would attack from (giving way to swarming) and the feigned retreat. The Mongols would fake a rout and when the enemy gave chase they'd turn around and wreck them as they changed formation. Mongolian armies could ride up to 100 miles a day. Furthermore, they often took limited food and rations with them. Their horses were their food supply. Horses could be milked and tiny cuts could also be made on them in order to drink limited quantities of horse blood. How do you counter horse archers? Hire more horse archers. The steppe normally wasn't unified and it was in the interest of the powers that be (Eastern Roman Empire for example) to keep them fighting amongst themselves. A unified steppe got you Genghis Khan and others just like him. What could stop a horse archer? A couple things could. Rain was one, but you don't get a lot of that on the steppe and rain is rarely reliable. They also weren't that great on defense. They were used to choosing the terrain and the time of battle, so being on defense could be a major disadvantage. The tribes were also stopped by walls. Siege warfare was alien to nomadic barbarian tribesmen and it wasn't until Genghis Khan hired out that the problem was ever fixed. In later years, especially in Europe, grassland would be burned to deny grazing ground. It didn't work immediately, but it had a serious effect on their ability to stay in the field for prolonged periods of time as horses were not only their mounts, but also their food supply. Starve the horses, starve the men. Finally, gunpowder weapons spelled the doom of horse archers. Horse archers took too long to train. Gunpowder units took just a few months. They just couldn't replace their archers quickly enough.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 16:26
|
|
|
Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:From what I've seen, it looked like the Byzantine's weren't able to raise a large army (40k max). Why was this? Talking around the time of the Komnenos. 40K was a huge army till at least the 17th century. However, the Byzantine had just lost Asia Minor before the Komnenos military reforms need them to change the whole makeup of the military. Before that it was based on a standing Imperial Core based in the capital, and a kind of frontier militia which was made up of professional cavalry units and fortresses. This was combined with peasant troops. After the fall of Asia minor however and the military reforms it was almost a complete professional army.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 16:41
|
|
|
Keep in mind that professional armies are incredibly hard to train, field, pay and maintain. Only a few nations before the 17th and 18th century had them. A professional soldier is often not doing much at all. He isn't working a farm and he isn't siring children (at least not with his wife). During the Moorish invasion the man on the Christian side (name escapes me) who proposed training a standing army nearly got his neck cut and excommunicated if memory serves. No one wants to pay for them. Sure they perform well, but if all you're fighting are levees then why not just round up a bunch of dirt farmers and throw them against other poor dirt farmers? The Roman Empire was so large and so wealthy and so well organized that it could field these enormous armies. However, it took significant logistical support and treasure to keep them.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 17:39
|
|
|
You can't say that a professional army didn't do much if they weren't fighting, especially the Roman army. If they weren't fighting, weren't they building massive engineering projects? Weren't they responsible for building all those bridges, aqueducts, walls, and practically every other massive public works project? The reasoning behind that being an army that does nothing is more prone to stage a coup when they're not satisfied? If you keep them busy, they'll be too busy to rebel against their leaders.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 18:36
|
|
|
The massive expense of the professional army is one of the 1,000,000 reasons why the west fell. (I know we had a huge discussion about whether it is right to say the west fell.) Paying all the soldiers destabilized the currency which lead to depressions. At one point the Roman empire reverted almost completely to a barter economy. For taxes, people paid in kind, rather than in coins. For example, a laborer would owe the state 15 days of labor and a horse breeder would owe the state 5 horses. The expense of the army also lead to ridiculous taxes (deficit spending had not been invented yet) which rich people ended up not really paying which lead to class conflict and another reason the west fell.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 18:46
|
|
|
Vigilance posted:How would Rome deal with serial killers? Did they have serial killers? They didn't have any that we know of, at least in the usual modern sense of "person who kills a whole series of other people for basically sexual/psychological reasons". Whilst they may not have had any forensic science or a police force in the modern sense, they did have a society where it was pretty difficult to be anonymous, even in a big city like Rome. People lived in large extended families, families tended to stay in the same neighbourhoods and, up to a point, everyone knew everyone else. If you start murdering people in that environment, you're unlikely to get away with it for long. Serial killers really start in the 19th century, when you start getting more urban anonymity and the weakening of traditional communities. There were people in the Empire who will have repeatedly killed for profit, like bandits or pirates, and ultimately would have called down a military response. Also plenty of murderers for political reasons, but that's not really serial killing as such.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 19:46
|
|
|
General Panic posted:They didn't have any that we know of, at least in the usual modern sense of "person who kills a whole series of other people for basically sexual/psychological reasons". I'm not so sure about this. Gilles de Rais is an example of a pre-modern serial killer in the modern sense - and he was only ever caught because he was a major figure in the aristocracy and a dick to the church. Anonymity in a Roman city very much varied on where in the city you were, and a rural serial killer might have been even safer than one on the "wrong side of the tracks" in a city. It's important to remember that so many of our still-extant sources were high-class people living in closely knit communities like you describe - someone at the very bottom of the economy was not necessarily living in such safety. I would not be terribly surprised if a Jack the Ripper-style prostitute killer would have never even been noticed if he had moved between the major cities.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 19:56
|
|
|
The serial killer thing is one of those aspects that can bring to light the fact that no matter how familiar the Romans might seem to be to us, they will always be alien. They lived in a time when unwanted babies were left exposed and likely eaten by dogs, and in a place that was literally surrounded with bandits, cannibals, human sacrificers and guys who were quite proud of their skull collection. poo poo like dead hookers just wasn't going to rate very high on the cultural alarm scale. I'm sure they would be noticed and perhaps something done, but weren't likely to create such a sensation that mention of them would survive the centuries. Antiquity looks nice seen through the prism of public baths and sparkly legions, but in reality it was closer to post-apocalyptic Somalia than it ever was to modern Western society.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 20:21
|
|
|
TildeATH posted:Hey that's cool. This isn't an argument, I'm just presenting all these facts and poo poo, but cool stories are always cool, bro. I know, I was just kidd- BOSNIA GIVE BACK KLAY TO GLURIOUS SRBIJA
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 22:57
|
|
|
Serial killers would've existed but there's no record of it. I wouldn't go so far as to compare Rome to Somalia but death was much more a part of everyday life in the pre-modern world, it wouldn't have stood out nearly as much.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2012 08:54
|
|
|
I doubt that the concept of 'serial killer' was even around. That is more of a 20th century shock press invention used to describe sociopaths like Ted Bundy. This is important to bear in mind - a hitman, highwayman or terrorist that kill people primarily for money or political cause are not 'officially' defined as serial killers. Until then there were just murderers, some of whom were more prolific than others. The exact count didn't matter when there were no things like fair trials and other such formalities.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2012 09:44
|
|
Morholt posted:Some questions about education. What was Roman education like and who was it avaliable to? Was it expensive? Were non-citizens able to get an education? Probably not women, right? My best mate is studying law and he has an exam this week on Roman law, specifically Roman slave law. We're in Australia, so I'm not sure of the direct relevance. Thanks to this thread I can hold a decent conversation with him about it.
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2012 09:56
|
|
|
physeter posted:poo poo like dead hookers just wasn't going to rate very high on the cultural alarm scale. I'm sure they would be noticed and perhaps something done, but weren't likely to create such a sensation that mention of them would survive the centuries. Antiquity looks nice seen through the prism of public baths and sparkly legions, but in reality it was closer to post-apocalyptic Somalia than it ever was to modern Western society. Anymore random tid-bits like this to add? The riots from sport and Pompeii graffiti really shed light to the "poo poo hasn't changed much." It was discussed before but we all imagine that prostitution was wide, pedophilia, and orgies. But it seems most of that was fabricated? (Plus, y'know, Hollywood) And it was as shunned as it is in today's society? Things that are taboo because, you know, religion or something. I mean we can't say they were all child rapist and having orgies all day and it was ok. Sure, those people might have existed. But it's not like they're not around today. Anyways, yeah, tell me more morbid poo poo that we tend to want to avoid talking/thinking about. Like that people weren't drawing dicks or writing girls names on bar walls back then. Nostalgia4Dogges fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Jun 28, 2012 |
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2012 14:01
|
|
|
I just want to thank you for this thread. I have read every post and am now in the process of listening to some ~25 hour lecture series about ancient Rome.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2012 14:36
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:Serial killers would've existed but there's no record of it. I wouldn't go so far as to compare Rome to Somalia but death was much more a part of everyday life in the pre-modern world, it wouldn't have stood out nearly as much. Definitely. If I remember correctly in the poorer parts of Rome dead bodies were literally just shoved into the sewers, and occasionally this caused the sewers to clog up and a bunch of bloated, dead bodies, and poo poo would just rise back up through the street. Gross.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2012 16:51
|
|
|
Jazerus posted:I'm not so sure about this. Gilles de Rais is an example of a pre-modern serial killer in the modern sense - and he was only ever caught because he was a major figure in the aristocracy and a dick to the church. As I understand it, Gilles de Rais and that Hungarian countess who killed girls to use their blood as a beauty treatment are about the only pre-modern serial killers we have records of. I still have my doubts, but then there are people here who know a lot more than me about Ancient Rome and disagree. Maybe the best answer is that we don't have the necessary historical evidence to determine the question one way or the other.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2012 19:25
|
|
|
General Panic posted:Maybe the best answer is that we don't have the necessary historical evidence to determine the question one way or the other. This is the right answer. People haven't changed in tens of thousands of years, whatever psychological conditions create a serial killer are nothing new. We just don't have records of it until recently.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2012 23:28
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:This is the right answer. People haven't changed in tens of thousands of years, whatever psychological conditions create a serial killer are nothing new. We just don't have records of it until recently. While it is entirely possible we simply don't have the records crimes today are informed by cultural conditions, so it is nothing spectacular to posit that they may have been more or less common.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2012 23:36
|
|
|
Yeah I imagine we like to fancy the Romans had detectives (I remember reading there was a pretty popular series of Roman detective novels), though in reality it was probably more like serial killer: (kill kill kill) witness: "city watch! there are bodies everywhere" city watch: "You there, you were standing by the bodies and you're a nobody, you will be crucified!" witness: "umm but I'm the guy who told you about the bodies" city watch: "Nail em Dano!" witness: "and this is why you dont snitch AHFUCKITHURTS"
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2012 23:41
|
|
|
Can you talk about the Roman gods and goddesses? I've mostly heard that they were reskinned and renamed Greek gods. Is this true?
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2012 00:11
|
|
|
Romans had their own gods & goddesses, but Italy was in contact with Greece from at least like the 9th century, and through syncretism many of the various native gods & goddesses came to be identified with Greek ones, and certain cults were taken up by Italians, like that of Herakles/Hercules (he was very popular in Italy). The Romans shared some gods with other Italic groups, and with Etruscans. Greek religion isn't really "pure" either. Lots of the gods probably are combinations with ones from other traditions, particularly the near east. Off the top of my head I'm pretty sure Apollo is a near eastern dude with new clothes on, but I may be misremembering. Dionysius totally is, even within the Greek traditions about him. This sort of mixing is how you get someone who's the god of the sun, and also music, and also healing (Apollo), or why you have multiple war or fertility or whatever gods. Greek Athena got syncretized with Italic Minerva (Menevra in Etruscan). Whatever she was before she was Athena made her a goddess of war, wisdom, and crafts (Those three things do not naturally go together, no). Roman religion. Right. Well, step 1, religion does not equal mythology and mythology does not equal religion. They're intertwined, but different. So I'm going to talk a bit about ritual now. Romans did a lot of divination. They did augury (which comes from the same "bird" root as the word avis, bird, as in aviation  ), which is divination by birdflight and other things. They were down with omens like lightning and thunder, but it's tricky to know what they meant of course. They did divination also by dissection, which in Rome was performed by a haruspex and which practice probably came from Etruria (or at least the Romans thought it did). They did blood sacrifices and food sacrifices and hymns and dancing and basically anything you can do to worship a god.There was also a pretty substantial a la carte menu of gods and goddesses to choose from.
Those are the big sorts of things people talk about when they mean Roman Religion, but there's more private things too. Lots of groves and streams had sacred beings associated with them. Families had their own genius (gen = same root as genetic, so your genius is your 'belonging to the family' thing) which would be sacrificed to daily along with the Lares, household protection/wealth/etc. gods. On top of that Romans might choose to worship other gods here and there as needed, like sacrificing to Lucina when someone was in childbirth. There's other personal practices like curses and magic, which were often hodgepodge traditions from a zillion sources. There's tons of other religious stuff in Italy as well but I can't chat about it off the top of my head. I know the Marsi (northeast of Rome) were known as snake-worshippers because they had this one snake-oriented god(dess? can't rememeber). tldr: No.
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2012 00:58
|
|
|
Count Chocula posted:Can you talk about the Roman gods and goddesses? I've mostly heard that they were reskinned and renamed Greek gods. Is this true? Eggplant covered it well. I think the idea of Roman gods being renamed Greek gods comes from an Enlightenment era style of being really into Greece and disrespecting Roman intellectual culture in general. Some of that's still around in the field. Also, with distance we have conflated the religions more than the people who were actually involved ever did. The reality is that the Mediterranean cultures were interconnected for thousands of years and the religions across the entire region had a lot of relationships with one another. The Roman gods are distinct from the Greek gods, but there is a similarity because they're all coming out of this common Mediterranean religious culture. If you want a good case study, read about Ares and Mars. People will casually treat these as the same god of war, but the worship, role, and stories of Ares are totally different than those of Mars. Short version is Ares is kind of a dunce and a thug and not particularly respected in Greek religion, while Mars is in many ways the center of the Roman pantheon, almost the equal of Jupiter, and Romans consider themselves Mars' direct descendents.
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2012 01:08
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:Romans consider themselves Mars' direct descendents. Oh man this just reminded me. So you know how earlier I said an eagle was "Jupiter's bird"? They all have birds and you know what Mars' is? It's a woodpecker  No I don't know why. Cracks me up.
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2012 01:12
|
|
|
UberJew posted:While it is entirely possible we simply don't have the records crimes today are informed by cultural conditions, so it is nothing spectacular to posit that they may have been more or less common. More or less common sure, I'm just saying they definitely existed somewhere. There's so much mythology wrapped around serial killers that it's a hard subject to even approach. Like, the "serial killers are white guys in their 40s" thing isn't true at all from what I've read. But there's no reason to continue down this rabbit hole since there is literally zero information, so there's no way to make any kind of informed statement on the issue. Given the Roman propensity toward recordkeeping and legal wrangling, there probably were criminal records of some sort kept, but they no longer exist.
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2012 01:20
|
|
|
Eggplant Wizard posted:Whatever she was before she was Athena made her a goddess of war, wisdom, and crafts I'm fairly sure that her war aspect was different from Ares in that he was sort of the god of the horrible side of war, slaughter and dying and PTSD and what have you, while she was the god of just wars and bravery and what have you.
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2012 01:22
|
|
|
How late did Roman Polytheism continue to exist? Not as in neopaganism or anything but when was it finally snuffed out of historical record?
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2012 01:36
|
|
|
Since Rome tended to adapt gods, was there ever a crossover period where they worshipped all the gods PLUS the one true God and Jesus?
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2012 01:53
|
|
|
Alan Smithee posted:Since Rome tended to adapt gods, was there ever a crossover period where they worshipped all the gods PLUS the one true God and Jesus? okay "they" didn't do anything. We're talking millions of people, all of whom had their own individual religious beliefs or not. I would not be surprised if some of them did public Jesus later on and private pantheism, and some secret Christians definitely did the opposite before it became the state religion. But seriously, "all the gods"? I do not actually think gods are quantifiable.
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2012 01:54
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 18:36 |
|
|
Eggplant Wizard posted:Whatever she was before she was Athena made her a goddess of war, wisdom, and crafts (Those three things do not naturally go together, no). I disagree. Athena is the goddess of intelligence, her war aspect has to be seen together with her brother Ares. Ares, unarmored is the god of the physical aspect of war, slaughter and destruction, his chariot pulled by horses named Fear and Terror. Athena, the god of intelligence and always in armor, represents the tactical aspect of war and is usually victorious when the two come up against each other (e.g. Ares was on the losing side in the Trojan war).
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2012 10:37
|
|