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The Balkans are a mess of nationalism, and I doubt you could clearly trace a line back from the current people there to whoever lived in the area 2,000 years ago. Even if you could, it wouldn't really matter. Especially when you consider how some of the largest nations today have had the bulk of their populations' makeup shifted around more than once in that time.Jazerus posted:Roman (and Macedonian, in the case of Tyre) military engineering was absolutely incredible - There were loads of crazy engineering feats in the Peloponnesian War too, from Athens's long walls to protect their escape passage to the sea, to the siege of Syracuse, where Athens started out by building walls around Syracuse's walls, so the Syracusans had to build walls to block the Athenians' walls around the walls. It's amazing how much of ancient siege tactics seemed to just vanish by the medieval era. I guess either people started to figure out how to get past walls or building poo poo in the middle of a battlefield just became too costly.
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Nov 29, 2012 22:38
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SlothfulCobra posted:It's amazing how much of ancient siege tactics seemed to just vanish by the medieval era. I guess either people started to figure out how to get past walls or building poo poo in the middle of a battlefield just became too costly. Did military technology change for the better over time? How would a Roman army from the 2nd century fare against one from the 8th and 12th? I'm guessing a uniform army like that of high Rome would be impossible to pay for in fractured Medieval Europe, but what about simpler things like rectangular shields versus the silly oval ones they used in late antiquity and the middle ages? (yes I am a hypocrite) Also, how big would cities be in the Bronze Age? Not necessarily just population wise, but how sprawling would they be too. Is something like this ridiculously oversized? Again a scale thing, how big would walls be? Are things like the epic stone walls in Rome Total War far too massive or could some actually get that big. I feel like it would be completely impossible for them to get anywhere near that big but every depiction of the ancient world seems to have enormous cities with immense fortifications. Is this just a layover from Renaissance prejudices against the middle ages, inflating antiquity; a way of making it all seem more epic for movies and crap; or were there actually huge cities, enormous armies and ridiculously huge walls sometimes. Also, what can people tell me about the Hittites? I know they were a central Anatolian civilization that clashed with the Egyptians (in Kadesh? with chariots! I don't remember), but wikipedia is being pretty useless at providing examples for their art and architecture and I have absolutely no mental image of it, or them as a civilization. Koramei fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Nov 30, 2012 |
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Nov 30, 2012 00:08
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Koramei posted:Did military technology change for the better over time? How would a Roman army from the 2nd century fare against one from the 8th and 12th? I'm guessing a uniform army like that of high Rome would be impossible to pay for in fractured Medieval Europe, but what about simpler things like rectangular shields versus the silly oval ones they used in late antiquity and the middle ages? (yes I am a hypocrite) I would say that some things certainly changed for the better; stirrups were introduced and bow technology, which was never really a Roman priority, improved (or at least seemed to do so). On the other hand, the early imperial legions likely could have destroyed any European army from the Middle Ages pretty easily. Their numbers and discipline alone would dwarf the levies and mercenaries that dominated medieval warfare, and yeah a lot of it was cost-related. quote:Also, how big would cities be in the Bronze Age? Not necessarily just population wise, but how sprawling would they be too. Is something like this ridiculously oversized? Not for a capitol, no. The end of the Bronze Age essentially resulted in widespread deurbanization in areas that were urbanized - there was a discussion maybe 10 pages back about that. Bronze Age cities were much more sophisticated than anything that would follow for quite a long time, so they seem unrealistic to us. quote:Again a scale thing, how big would walls be? Are things like the epic stone walls in Rome Total War far too massive or could some actually get that big. I feel like it would be completely impossible for them to get anywhere near that big but every depiction of the ancient world seems to have enormous cities with immense fortifications. Is this just a layover from Renaissance prejudices against the middle ages, inflating antiquity; a way of making it all seem more epic for movies and crap; or were there actually huge cities, enormous armies and ridiculously huge walls sometimes. There actually were huge cities, enormous armies, and ridiculously huge walls. RTW makes fortifications like that ubiquitous, though, which isn't really accurate; walls of that size were generally reserved for regional and national capitols, though Roman cities were often unwalled until after the Crisis of the Third Century. I forget which emperor shifted that, but around the time that barbarians from across the Rhine and Danube started regularly penetrating the borders the Romans shifted to walling towns and cities so that smaller mobile forces could be used to defend the frontier, rather than garrisoning the border as had previously been done. It's not at all impossible for Roman walls to be that big - remember that this is long after the Pyramids were built! Stone walls couldn't be thrown up nearly as quickly as earthen walls, of course, but those types of huge stone walls were well within the engineering capabilities of the Romans.  That's one of the Theodosian walls around Constantinople - the shorter, thinner outer wall. These aren't representative, as the Theodosian walls were pretty much the best (or most successful, at least) in history, but other major cities would have walls of significant height as well. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Nov 30, 2012 |
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Nov 30, 2012 00:37
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I don't know for certain, but I'd imagine that the increased usage of ranged weapons and fast cavalry probably made it almost a complete waste of time to build something on a battlefield. And of course, in western Europe men who were disciplined enough and skilled enough to build while under attack would be rare enough their talents would be more valuable elsewhere. Speaking of the Hittites, how much non-biblical evidence is there for the nation of Israel? According to their own book, they were a force to be reckoned with in the ancient world, but I never read about them in relation to other known civilizations.
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Nov 30, 2012 00:47
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Romans DID have stereotypes about different groups though; in the terribly entertaining book A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis the author makes the point that in Roman society Africans had quite a reputation for large dongs. The other interesting point in this book re Rome was how powerful circumcision is as a separative tool; in Rome your dick was visible a lot of the time but was considered innocuous unless the head was showing, wherein it became shameful...
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Nov 30, 2012 00:50
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quote:in Rome your dick was visible a lot of the time SlothfulCobra posted:Speaking of the Hittites, how much non-biblical evidence is there for the nation of Israel? According to their own book, they were a force to be reckoned with in the ancient world, but I never read about them in relation to other known civilizations. I always thought they were a reasonably important regional power, but against any of the actual players (Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Persia) they would get stomped on.
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Nov 30, 2012 00:57
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SlothfulCobra posted:The Balkans are a mess of nationalism, and I doubt you could clearly trace a line back from the current people there to whoever lived in the area 2,000 years ago. Even if you could, it wouldn't really matter. Especially when you consider how some of the largest nations today have had the bulk of their populations' makeup shifted around more than once in that time.
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Nov 30, 2012 02:35
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SlothfulCobra posted:Speaking of the Hittites, how much non-biblical evidence is there for the nation of Israel? According to their own book, they were a force to be reckoned with in the ancient world, but I never read about them in relation to other known civilizations. There was definitely a Jewish state, its government was still intact under Roman domination (until they kept revolting and the Romans stomped Judea into the dust). I don't really know much about it. It wasn't a major power, the Levant was consistently being passed around between the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Persians, Greeks, etc. Judea was its own little kingdom in roughly the same area as modern Israel. E: Roman legion engineering can never be underestimated. It was a big part of their effectiveness. On a mountain? gently caress you, we'll build another mountain to climb up on. Across the Rhine? gently caress you, there's a bridge now. Going to encircle us? Surprise, we built a fortress around your entire city before you arrived. Walls? gently caress walls. Ain't got poo poo on us. 
Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Nov 30, 2012 |
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Nov 30, 2012 03:08
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SlothfulCobra posted:...to the siege of Syracuse, where Athens started out by building walls around Syracuse's walls, so the Syracusans had to build walls to block the Athenians' walls around the walls. How did this even happen?
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Nov 30, 2012 04:14
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Volmarias posted:How did this even happen? There's a good description and diagram on Wikipedia, easiest to just look at that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Syracuse_%28415%E2%80%93413_BC%29#Winter_of_415_.E2.80.93_Spring_of_414_BC
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Nov 30, 2012 04:18
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Grand Fromage posted:There's a good description and diagram on Wikipedia, easiest to just look at that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Syracuse_%28415%E2%80%93413_BC%29#Winter_of_415_.E2.80.93_Spring_of_414_BC That's pretty wild. I'm surprised that you'd actually be able to construct a wall while in the middle of a siege; where would you get the supplies to do it? How would you fend off the sieging army from just rolling up with archers?
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Nov 30, 2012 04:48
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Jazerus posted:It's not at all impossible for Roman walls to be that big - remember that this is long after the Pyramids were built! Stone walls couldn't be thrown up nearly as quickly as earthen walls, of course, but those types of huge stone walls were well within the engineering capabilities of the Romans. I always thought large walls weren't completely made out of stone blocks through and through. You would most likely have a stamped earth core, surrounded by a wooden frame, and then lined with stone blocks on the outside for durability and strength.
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Nov 30, 2012 04:58
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Volmarias posted:That's pretty wild. Well, both parties choose different times to contest the constructions of the other. There was a lot of waiting around until the otherside was distracted or whatever and the going and loving with their construction. Thucydides has a really great section on it. You know, I should really just do a Let's Read of the History of the Peloponnesian War.
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Nov 30, 2012 06:30
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Grand Fromage posted:Going to encircle us? Surprise, we built a fortress around your entire city before you arrived. Walls? gently caress walls. Ain't got poo poo on us. I'll add, "going to encircle us? That's fine, we carry walls on our backs and defend ourselves with them. These scutums are pretty sweet!" Things like building a ramp from the materials nearby to overtake a city sounds so cartoonish, but at the time, it was a sound plan. 
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Nov 30, 2012 06:37
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Could anyone recommend any good books on the crisis years or alternatively the reign of Honorius? I feel like watching everything come apart. 
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Nov 30, 2012 07:21
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Koramei posted:Wait what.
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Nov 30, 2012 07:49
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Volmarias posted:That's pretty wild. I'd guess that they picked apart less important buildings in the city. You basically just need to throw up two walls and fill the middle with rubble or stomped earth. Nothing elaborate or complicated. Archers weren't so much in wide use in this area at this particular time, you'd have to worry about slingers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sling_(weapon)). Which makes alot of sense if you think about how complicated it is to make bows of appropriate drawweight and then train the archers to shoot these beasts. It would be a quite interesting question how the most common type of bow looked like at the time of the peloponnesian war. Was it a selfbow, or was it some kind of composite bow like the scythians used? If you ever try fletching arrows, you'll see that it's quite a complicated and timeconsuming task to get the right shafts, glue feathers on in the right way, fix the tip. Best part about it: It's really easy to break wooden (or cane) arrows if you shoot something hard. If you hit stone or metal, at least after the 2nd time, the arrow is hosed. All that work for nothing. With slingers....you could basically pick up stones if you run out of lead bullets, and carry more ammo. I particularly like the inscription on the leadbullet in that link. It says "catch" Archers still had their use on the battlefield, but became much more prominent with the spead of the composite bow and the bodkin point.
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Nov 30, 2012 09:38
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Re wall construction, peoples living in volcanic areas had a huge advantage there. This includes Italians and many Greek city-states. Volcanic rock was called "tuff" or sometimes "tufa/tufo", it's basically soft and porous so very easy to quarry. Over time it oxidizes, hardening considerably and quickly. It was a big edge for Roman fortification efforts.
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Nov 30, 2012 16:09
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SlothfulCobra posted:Speaking of the Hittites, how much non-biblical evidence is there for the nation of Israel? According to their own book, they were a force to be reckoned with in the ancient world, but I never read about them in relation to other known civilizations. Basically they were there, when they weren't fighting their neighbors they were fighting each other. After a civil war, the northern kingdom, "Israel" was "absorbed" by the Assyrians, while the southern kingdom, "Judah" managed to stay nominally independent until the Babylonians came along in c. 600 BC. After the Persian conquest they were allowed to return and set up a Jewish client state, which eventually revolted from the Selucids in 140 BC or so (Hannukah!). That kingdom lasted until it was formally absorbed by the Romans a decade or so after Herod's death. If you want a non-biblical source, Josephus is one of the main ones, although obviously his accuracy leaves something to be desired. quote:Also, how big would cities be in the Bronze Age? Not necessarily just population wise, but how sprawling would they be too. Is something like this ridiculously oversized? The Sumerian cities (Ur, Uruk, Lagash) were probably the largest cities of the early Bronze age, and they are believed to have reached 40-50 thousand people during the height of the pre-Sargonic era (2300 BC).
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Dec 1, 2012 01:31
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I feel like I've heard a lot about the Gauls and Celts, but who was the easiest tribe/peoples/kingdom for the Romans to conquer? Was it a situation where they were culturally already Roman so by the time the troops roll in it was already over? Was their military so weak that they were utterly blitzkreiged by the legions?
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Dec 1, 2012 04:13
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bobthedinosaur posted:I feel like I've heard a lot about the Gauls and Celts, but who was the easiest tribe/peoples/kingdom for the Romans to conquer? Some of the easier ones that the Romans conquered were actually the already "civilized"/hellenized powers in the Eastern Mediterranean. The tribes in Gaul and Spain took a long time to pacify, and rebelled frequently. When the Romans began expanding eastward they found a collection of declining successor states, along with a few really tenacious opponents like King Mithridates of Pontus. To use just one example, Pompey Magnus toppled the remnants of the Seleucid Empire as a kind of side project when he was sent to finally defeat Mithridates.
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Dec 1, 2012 04:30
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I just saw this when I went to NPR and figured it'd be good to post it here. Apparently they're building a new rail line in Istanbul and stumbled upon all kinds of ships from Roman times. It doesn't appear to be new news though beyond mainstream news sources reporting it, I guess the first things started being found in 2006. http://www.npr.org/2012/11/30/166244488/in-istanbul-a-byzantine-era-fleet-surfaces-again Above anything, as an American, I'm just fascinated with the idea a city can construct something but have to continually keep stopping because there's 1,500 year old history that was found and needs to preserved. I mean there's plenty of native American finds here, just not on the same scale as the Roman world. The Romans were probably pretty impressed they had a solid network and hold on an area stretching from Turkey to Britain, and centuries later I'm still kind of awestruck in the fact if you wind up in the right place, people in both Britain and Turkey can unearth a whole bunch of Roman stuff. e: For that matter, Roman poo poo has been unearthed as far away as the far east, but that was never part of the empire, except maybe in some people's campaigns in games.
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Dec 1, 2012 05:32
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Amused to Death posted:Above anything, as an American, I'm just fascinated with the idea a city can construct something but have to continually keep stopping because there's 1,500 year old history that was found and needs to preserved. I mean there's plenty of native American finds here, just not on the same scale as the Roman world. The Romans were probably pretty impressed they had a solid network and hold on an area stretching from Turkey to Britain, and centuries later I'm still kind of awestruck in the fact if you wind up in the right place, people in both Britain and Turkey can unearth a whole bunch of Roman stuff. It's a bit of a corner case, but from what I'm told, finding things underground in Hawaii is a common occurance because Hawaii has not been inhabited for very long, so all of the things found were put or left there within around 1,500 years.
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Dec 1, 2012 08:53
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I apologize if something like this has been asked before, but the thread's huge. I read an interview with Gene Wolfe about his Latro books where he said that he thought the Spartans were far worse than the Nazis, and were basically incomprehensibly awful people. Such horrible people that it's difficult to understand today. He referred to the massacre of the helots, which as I understand is just a "might have happened, we aren't sure" event. He's got some weird views on things, so I'd be keen for somebody who knows a lot of Greek history to give me some stories or explanations that might give me a better idea what the Spartans were like than the weird glorified version of Sparta from 300. Basically, would some Ancient Greece scholars agree or disagree with the assessment that the Spartans were such awful people that the Nazis look like boy scouts?
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Dec 1, 2012 12:24
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I don't know about the Nazi comparison, it's hard to be worse than setting up the industrial slaughter of entire nations. But the Spartans were terrible people, yes. Even by ancient standards they were nasty.
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Dec 1, 2012 12:42
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One of the many reasons 300 is so ludicrous.
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Dec 1, 2012 12:54
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Yeah, they were pretty bad. They were also badass though. "Ok, tear down the city walls." "WHAT? Why??" "Because men are our walls now." 
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Dec 1, 2012 14:09
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physeter posted:Yeah, they were pretty bad. They were also badass though. "Man that wall, soldier!"    I'm curious about urban archaeology. Two questions. You mentioned destruction layers(?) as a way to mark events like wars and looting. Wouldn't the inhabitants have cleaned up afterwards? I'm amazed at the idea that you could find rooms full of corpses in the middle of a city in a noon ritualistic funeral fashion. Second, I understand that in places like Rome with a lot of deep urbanized history, you'll end up digging up a ruin anywhere you throw a shovel. My question is, well, how do these things get buried? How do you end up with people's ancient houses under modern basements?
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Dec 1, 2012 15:15
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Most older civilizations would not stand up very well to the nazi test, genocide is as old as war.
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Dec 1, 2012 15:57
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bobthedinosaur posted:I feel like I've heard a lot about the Gauls and Celts, but who was the easiest tribe/peoples/kingdom for the Romans to conquer? The King of Bithynia bequathed his kingdom by will to the Roman Senate, that was pretty easy.  Although they eventually had to fight Mithridates over it.
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Dec 1, 2012 15:57
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Namarrgon posted:Most older civilizations would not stand up very well to the nazi test, genocide is as old as war. IIRC someone mentioned the Assyrians being so assholish that after their civilisation finally got conquered and collapsed people destroyed all their record works and achievements?
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Dec 1, 2012 16:15
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DarkCrawler posted:The King of Bithynia bequathed his kingdom by will to the Roman Senate, that was pretty easy. Well, Caesar was the Queen, so it was the only thing to do. The King of Pergamum willed his kingdom to Rome as well - apparently, willing your kingdom to the nearest empire if you had no heirs was all the rage in Anatolia. The Greeks in general were pushovers to initially conquer since it was done by coming into Greece to "protect" the independent city-states from Macedonia and just never leaving. The Alexandrian successor states were probably the easiest military conquests, honestly - even Hannibal commanding (maybe; he was certainly in the Seleucid court advising the king about Romans, at the very least) a Seleucid army, having long since been exiled from Carthage and seeking revenge on Rome, went down easily. To be fair, they'd just had most of their territory stripped off by the Parthians and others, but it is still kind of amazing how these kingdoms that, not long before, were at the top of the world were the easy conquests for Rome. Judea went down pretty easily too - the Eastern Empire overall was won at a much lower initial cost than the West. On the other hand, the Romans often paid later for that easy initial conquest - the Mithridatic Wars, the constant Jewish revolts, etc.
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Dec 1, 2012 16:32
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Volmarias posted:You mentioned destruction layers(?) as a way to mark events like wars and looting. Wouldn't the inhabitants have cleaned up afterwards? I'm amazed at the idea that you could find rooms full of corpses in the middle of a city in a noon ritualistic funeral fashion. Not necessarily. Many cities were abandoned after sieges or disasters hosed them up big time. They also didn't have bulldozers or whatever yet, so if your house burned down, you'd pull out any useful bits, do your best to smooth down the rest, and start rebuilding on top of the rubble. If you look in the Roman forum, you can see some neat evidence of this. Check out the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, for example:  The little blue door there is more or less ground level when the church was built on top. There are some realy neat engravings done by Piranesi in the 19th century that show Rome at the time, before major excavation: Here's that same temple/church:  And here's a view from the Capitoline. That's the arch of Septimius Severus over on the left, and I think the Temple of Saturn on the right. Note the workmen, too. They're clearing it.  e: Similar vantage point photo I took: 
Eggplant Wizard fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Dec 1, 2012 |
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Dec 1, 2012 16:44
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Whenever I hear about the crazy terrible stuff the Spartans used to do, I get the impression that a great deal must be exaggerated. The Athenians were the ones who wrote down the historical accounts, and they were bound to do some talkin' poo poo about their greatest rivals.physeter posted:Yeah, they were pretty bad. They were also badass though. They had mountains, they didn't need walls. 
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Dec 1, 2012 16:46
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Amused to Death posted:Above anything, as an American, I'm just fascinated with the idea a city can construct something but have to continually keep stopping because there's 1,500 year old history that was found and needs to preserved. At least Turkey is pretty good at preserving and showcasing their ruins and stuff, they're certainly the best at it here in eastern europe. In contrast, my city is 2600 years old and over time it's been controlled by greeks, persians, romans, byzantines, genoese, ottomans and others and there's a lot of history remaining from them including the remains of what once was the largest mosaic in the Roman empire. Yet today everything is crumbling without anybody giving a gently caress and the old part of the city is in a horrible state, even the newer buildings from the last 100 years turned into ruins there.
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Dec 1, 2012 17:23
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Jazerus posted:Well, Caesar was the Queen, so it was the only thing to do. Well, the Selucids and the Ptolemic empires were in sorry shape by the time Rome turned up. The Ptolemic dynasty seemed to have a thing for nasty brother/husband v. sister/wife civil wars, and the Selucid kingdom had just been beaten by Persia and those aforementioned Jews.
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Dec 1, 2012 17:31
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Eggplant Wizard posted:Not necessarily. Many cities were abandoned after sieges or disasters hosed them up big time. They also didn't have bulldozers or whatever yet, so if your house burned down, you'd pull out any useful bits, do your best to smooth down the rest, and start rebuilding on top of the rubble. If you look in the Roman forum, you can see some neat evidence of this. Check out the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, for example: Yeah and it would also be disastrous for the population, as being driven from their homes would subject them to famine, plague, cold and raiders. Even if the survivors started rebuilding immediately, most of the population might be dead or migrated elsewhere. It could take centuries for the city to grow back in size. Many never did. For a modern example, Warsaw was destroyed completely in WW2 - only 10% of its buildings were left standing. It took decades to rebuild, even with modern machines and building techniques speeding up the process. The Poles went to great pains to clean up the place and try to rebuild the historic city like it was, based on surviving photographs. It also helped to have a modern (communist) nation state to foot the bill.
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Dec 1, 2012 17:52
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Grand Fromage posted:I don't know about the Nazi comparison, it's hard to be worse than setting up the industrial slaughter of entire nations. But the Spartans were terrible people, yes. Even by ancient standards they were nasty.
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Dec 1, 2012 19:02
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Spartan women were basically baby factories and were kind of left to do their own thing when they weren't having babies. In some ways they were treated like men, they had their own physical fitness training sessions and had some kind of formal education. They were also allowed to divorce their husbands if they wanted without any repercussions.
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Dec 1, 2012 19:17
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The free women at least. Helot women were poo poo on just like helot men.
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Dec 1, 2012 19:21
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