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TheHoosier posted:Yeah I knew they had sports of their own. I misspoke; I meant "modern" sports like basketball or baseball. Soccer has been around in various forms for a long rear end time so I'm sure kicking a ball is something they've done already. I know the complexity of the tactics in soccer and the stats in baseball would be a real eye-opener, but the basics of the game would be easy to introduce. I suspect the Romans and other ancient civilizations would have a big problem with modern sports. They've grown out of the English concept of gentlemanly competition and respect for the rules and authority. Most Roman athletes were criminals and slaves. Hence, they would probably go at all of them with an "anything goes" mentality and be utterly baffled by the limitations on conduct in the rules and the arbitrary authority of umpires and referees. The entire culture of modern athletics would be foreign to them and most contests would devolve in to free-for-all fights for quite a while. Certain classes may have done well with them. The aristocrats would be more pliable, but their interest was usually in betting on the sports, not participating in them.
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Jul 3, 2014 21:42
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But you'd also have to teach them new math to show them spathametrics.  If all else fails you could bring them RPGs, haha. They'd probably just think you're a lazy storyteller, though. I know Kriegspiel was a thing in Prussia, was there anything like that in Roman times?
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Jul 3, 2014 21:42
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Deteriorata posted:I suspect the Romans and other ancient civilizations would have a big problem with modern sports. They've grown out of the English concept of gentlemanly competition and respect for the rules and authority. Most Roman athletes were criminals and slaves. Meh. The Gladiatorial games, for instance, had pretty specific rules about how competitors fought. Rules aren't about gentlemanly conduct, it's about making a game a game.
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Jul 3, 2014 21:46
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PittTheElder posted:What sort of modern armor are we talking about? I sincerely doubt anyone would want to go through the effort of designing ceramic ballistic vests given that they need to be serviced any time they take a hit, and also there's no bullets that need to be stopped. Tanks.
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Jul 3, 2014 21:51
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Ah. Well, best of luck developing a sufficiently powerful internal combustion engine then. Even a proper steam engine would probably be rather difficult given the state of materials science at the time.
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Jul 3, 2014 22:11
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Bah, you people thinking about getting rich in Rome by using time travel to hand over a bunch of tech to romans are looking at the problem from the wrong direction! Obviously you get the tech to the Germans/Gaul/Carthagians to invade and sack Rome at its peak!  "This good sir, is my boomstick" 
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Jul 3, 2014 22:31
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Screw Rome, I'm heading east to find me a nice Scythian woman to settle down with.
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Jul 4, 2014 00:49
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Deteriorata posted:I suspect the Romans and other ancient civilizations would have a big problem with modern sports. They've grown out of the English concept of gentlemanly competition and respect for the rules and authority. Most Roman athletes were criminals and slaves.
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Jul 4, 2014 00:58
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Male Scythian woman or female Scythian woman?
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Jul 4, 2014 01:02
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TheHoosier posted:The chariot-racing faction stuff is interesting. Ancient hooliganism. Some things truly never change. I've found it's impossible for modern scholars to avoid comparing chariot racing and the circus factions to modern soccer and soccer hooliganism. Every single article or book I've read on the factions contains at least one such reference. On that note, Alan Cameron's the Circus Factions is probably the most comprehensive study of the factions, if anyone's interested. He downplays the political significance of the factions, though, so I don't know if his conclusions are widely accepted anymore.
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Jul 4, 2014 01:09
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achillesforever6 posted:I bet the Romans would love Pro Wrestling. That's what actual gladiator games were basically. Hell, weren't gladiator v. gladiator fights rarely to the death? Modern wrestling probably almost has just as many from accidents. (Romans would eat up NASCAR though for sure)
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Jul 4, 2014 02:19
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PittTheElder posted:What sort of modern armor are we talking about? I sincerely doubt anyone would want to go through the effort of designing ceramic ballistic vests given that they need to be serviced any time they take a hit, and also there's no bullets that need to be stopped. Medieval plate armor would do the trick. It's a lot tougher than ancient armor, you'd be very hard to kill. Medieval armor was very, very good--the popular stereotype of inept knights slowly trudging around is total nonsense. There are some great Arab writings from the time of the Crusades where a guy describes knights with like 50 arrows sticking out of him still fighting without slowing down and how terrifying it was. Rockopolis posted:If all else fails you could bring them RPGs, haha. They'd probably just think you're a lazy storyteller, though. 
Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 02:45
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The idea of teenage roman nerds larping as Dorian and Etruscans is amusing.
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Jul 4, 2014 02:47
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PittTheElder posted:Ah. Well, best of luck developing a sufficiently powerful internal combustion engine then. Even a proper steam engine would probably be rather difficult given the state of materials science at the time. Ahem.  e: Holy poo poo, the dude who invented the first steam engine also invented the first vending machine. 2000 years ago!  e2: Every page in this thread blows my mind. Imapanda fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 04:04
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Cyrano4747 posted:Very well could be. I was only responding to the notion that the weapons were somehow more deadly for having removed a plug of flesh I never said more deadly, just that a wound of that shape is harder to heal and takes out more flesh.
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Jul 4, 2014 04:26
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Imapanda posted:Ahem. He also developed a method for finding the area of oblique triangles, and he believed in a distant ancestor of atomic theory.  Hero(n) of Alexandria really doesn't get enough love.Yes, I know that Atomism is actually way different than atomic theory, shush
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Jul 4, 2014 04:30
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Exioce posted:After that nice little time-travelling derail of mine (you've still not suggested anything to make me rich, goons The kinds of theories you're looking for have sort of fallen out of fashion in anthropology and history, mostly because they are difficult to prove and easy to falsify. For an example of why such theories are uncommon today, try asking about Jared Diamond in the Science, Academics and Languages Anthropology thread. Alternatively one could ask rather why we should even expect a Rome in the first place, and why exactly the absence of such an entity can be meaningfully framed as a "lack." Back to the question though, there's an awful lot happening. In particular one of the largest and most consequential migrations of all time, the Bantu expansion. Armed with cereals, oil palms, yams and ceramics, the neolithic Bantu began spreading as early as 3000 BC, and would eventually replace virtually all of the autochthonous hunter-gather peoples then living in sub-Saharan Africa. Iron working appears in the Great Lakes region by the 6th century BC, almost certainly developed indigenously. Jumping forward a bit there were several large and sophisticated polities in sub-Saharan africa during the middle ages, besides the empires of the Sahel there was Great Zimbabwe, a huge stone complex built sometime after 1000 AD, and the Igbo Kingdoms of the Niger delta, who were as expert at the art of lost wax casting as the Greeks, producing many fine busts like this one, from between the 9th and 12th centuries: 
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Jul 4, 2014 05:09
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Imapanda posted:Ahem. The aeolipile was a glorified tea kettle. Even just building a steam engine like one of Watt's would be a doozy, since there wouldn't be any machining worth a spit nor the ability to finely (tenth of an inch, even!) measure anything. I'm not sure if Romans even differentiated between types of coal, which is important for designing the firebox. Heck, the aeolipile didn't even have valves.
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Jul 4, 2014 05:14
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deadking posted:One of the most popular spectator sports was chariot racing. The spectators formed fan clubs (named after the team colors: blue, green, red, and white), who would attack each other pretty frequently. In sixth-century Constantinople, a riot (the Nika Riots) started by these circus factions nearly burned the city to the ground and, according to some estimates, killed thousands of people. Theres a chariot racing vidya game that came out recently.
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Jul 4, 2014 05:39
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Arglebargle III posted:Theres a chariot racing vidya game that came out recently. Wait, seriously? Any good?
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Jul 4, 2014 05:41
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It looked pretty good but I think it's not on steam. Google it homum. It's more of a sports strategy title, you control the racer from overhead view but also manage a racing franchise around the empire.
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Jul 4, 2014 05:51
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Nintendo Kid posted:I never said more deadly, just that a wound of that shape is harder to heal and takes out more flesh. And I described to you exactly why piercing wounds don't remove flesh .
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Jul 4, 2014 07:00
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Grand Fromage posted:Medieval plate armor would do the trick. It's a lot tougher than ancient armor, you'd be very hard to kill. Medieval armor was very, very good--the popular stereotype of inept knights slowly trudging around is total nonsense. There are some great Arab writings from the time of the Crusades where a guy describes knights with like 50 arrows sticking out of him still fighting without slowing down and how terrifying it was. But that's not really based in the design of the armor is it? The Romans certainly had their lorica segmentata, which is approaching the idea of plate armor, and is rather similar to a coat of plates that seems to have been the precursor to full plate. My completely uneducated intuition tells me it's a quality of metal thing rather than a design thing. I know I've read the piece you're talking about (probably in the mil-hist thread), but I'm pretty sure the resistance to arrows derives from the combination of mail and cloth coats underneath. Plate certainly wasn't a thing during the crusades.
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Jul 4, 2014 07:53
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The chariot game is Qvadriga. It's pretty fun, although each of the colours are sponsored by a different political faction which seems ahistorical  . Personally I think they should bring chariot racing back in real life, formula 1 has been pretty drat boring for a while now.
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Jul 4, 2014 10:00
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Turn left, Quintus! Noooo!
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Jul 4, 2014 12:18
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That is just amazing. "Alea iacta est." indeed  All along, we've thought those Legionaries were shooting dice to gamble, they could have been playing RPGs. I bet Nero would have been all over that.
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Jul 4, 2014 13:42
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achillesforever6 posted:I bet the Romans would love Pro Wrestling. They had that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrestling_history#Antiquity
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Jul 4, 2014 13:56
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Also, Greeks introduced Pankration, it was so brutal it puts all modern mixed martial arts into shame. The only forbidden moves were biting and putting fingers into the eyes, mouth or ears, and the referee penalized fouls by whipping the fighters into submission. I don't really know how popular was in the roman world, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had some success because romans appreciated bloody shows, it seems.
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Jul 4, 2014 14:22
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Angry Lobster posted:Also, Greeks introduced Pankration, it was so brutal it puts all modern mixed martial arts into shame. The only forbidden moves were biting and putting fingers into the eyes, mouth or ears, and the referee penalized fouls by whipping the fighters into submission. I don't really know how popular was in the roman world, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had some success because romans appreciated bloody shows, it seems. "In an odd turn of events, a pankration fighter named Arrhichion (Ἀρριχίων) of Phigalia won the pankration competition at the Olympic Games despite being dead. His opponent had locked him in a chokehold and Arrhichion, desperate to loosen it, broke his opponent's toe (some records say his ankle). The opponent nearly passed out from pain and submitted. As the referee raised Arrhichion's hand, it was discovered that he had died from the chokehold. His body was crowned with the olive wreath and taken back to Phigaleia as a hero." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pankration
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Jul 4, 2014 15:12
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Eh, the better story is Damoxenos and Kreugas. They fought all day until sunset, when it was judged that they had to go to penalties, as it were. Each person gets one free hit. Kreugas steps up, smacks Damoxenos in the face, and it does nothing. Damoxenos comes over, strikes with a straight hand, actually tears through the other man's skin and pulls half his guts out. This is adjudged cheating by way of being more than one hit, and the dead Kreugas wins.
Sleep of Bronze fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 15:42
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Sleep of Bronze posted:Eh, the better story is Damoxenos and Kreugas. They fought all day until sunset, when it was judged that they had to go to penalties, as it were. Each person gets one free hit. Kreugas steps up, smacks Damoxenos in the face, and it does nothing. Kreugas comes over, strikes with a straight hand, actually tears through the other man's skin and pulls half his guts out. This is adjudged cheating by way of being more than one hit, and the dead Kreugas wins. It's this sort of stuff that makes me suspect they wouldn't be too keen on the concept of offsides in football or the infield fly rule in baseball.
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Jul 4, 2014 15:45
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Exioce posted:"In an odd turn of events, a pankration fighter named Arrhichion (Ἀρριχίων) of Phigalia won the pankration competition at the Olympic Games despite being dead. His opponent had locked him in a chokehold and Arrhichion, desperate to loosen it, broke his opponent's toe (some records say his ankle). The opponent nearly passed out from pain and submitted. As the referee raised Arrhichion's hand, it was discovered that he had died from the chokehold. His body was crowned with the olive wreath and taken back to Phigaleia as a hero." Sleep of Bronze posted:Eh, the better story is Damoxenos and Kreugas. They fought all day until sunset, when it was judged that they had to go to penalties, as it were. Each person gets one free hit. Kreugas steps up, smacks Damoxenos in the face, and it does nothing. Kreugas comes over, strikes with a straight hand, actually tears through the other man's skin and pulls half his guts out. This is adjudged cheating by way of being more than one hit, and the dead Kreugas wins. drat, the ancients were 
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Jul 4, 2014 18:59
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Cyrano4747 posted:And I described to you exactly why piercing wounds don't remove flesh . BUT WE WEREN'T TALKING ABOUT THE WEAPONS. We're talking about wounds that are already made and are triangular.
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Jul 4, 2014 20:36
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PittTheElder posted:But that's not really based in the design of the armor is it? The Romans certainly had their lorica segmentata, which is approaching the idea of plate armor, and is rather similar to a coat of plates that seems to have been the precursor to full plate. My completely uneducated intuition tells me it's a quality of metal thing rather than a design thing. We could summon Rodrigo to tell us about as to why plate armor became widespread at a certain time. As far as I can remember, it had something to do with the amount of steel that you get out of your process, which wasn't enough for a breastplate, until some smart guy found a new method. Resistance to arrows is dependant on many factors, but generally padding is good at stopping bodkins, while plate or chainmail is good at stopping broadheads. It's not completely foolproof, but will go a long way. You can shoot a hunting arrow right through a buffalo and then still have some power with just a 70# bow. You can figure what a warbow will do to an unprotected person and the guy behind him. Archery versus Mail: Experimental Archaeology and the Value of Historical Context, by Russ Mitchell has some interesting insights for the layman, but I found his bows a bit light, and he's also missing a proper hornbow which exceeds at high drawweights and authentic arrows for these. Design is also something to behold, the 16th century bows have some engineering tricks that the bows of the steppe of the 2nd century didn't have. Hornbows are a scary thing. The Romans were quick to include them into their repertoir of arms.
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Jul 4, 2014 20:52
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Rockopolis posted:That is just amazing. "Alea iacta est." indeed The story about him playing the fiddle while Rome burnt was mistranslated all along. He was playing DnD.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:39
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Noctis Horrendae posted:The story about him playing the fiddle while Rome burnt was mistranslated all along. He was playing DnD.  I wonder if there was a Roman fedora equivalent?
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Jul 5, 2014 02:52
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sarmhan posted:
Evidence for Roman neckbeards found. Thousands of Italian atheists turn to ancestor worship, sparking a revival in ancient customs.
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Jul 5, 2014 03:42
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sarmhan posted:
Roman hipsters wore trousers and grew bushy moustaches. At least the later Western Imperial Romans did.
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Jul 5, 2014 04:19
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How comfortable was shaving back in Roman days?
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Jul 5, 2014 04:51
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Until Hadrian made it cool. Put Hadrian in flannel and a trucker hat and he would pull it off effortlessly.
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Jul 5, 2014 04:56
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