|
Azran posted:It's not a Roman-centered myth, but it's a Roman-related myth I've seen mentioned time and again but without actual evidence - if Carthage had won the Punic Wars, Humanity would already be on Mars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanno_the_Navigator We get the word gorilla straight from them!
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2014 13:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 04:22 |
|
|
God Carthaginian names. Can someone not start with an H please? Hannibal Hasdrubal Hanno Himilco Hamilcar.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2014 13:43
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:God Carthaginian names. Can someone not start with an H please? Hannibal Hasdrubal Hanno Himilco Hamilcar. Well there's Mago, Dido, Gisgo, uh...
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2014 16:39
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:God Carthaginian names. Can someone not start with an H please? Hannibal Hasdrubal Hanno Himilco Hamilcar. Can we have fewer male Romans ending their name with -us please? Marcus Flavius Aemilius Caius Claudius Drusus Maximus.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2014 22:37
|
|
|
Since this is now the global ancient history thread, history of Japanese emperors came up in the Japanese Politics thread and got me to curious about this: I have only a generalist understanding of Japanese history that goes back to roughly 11th century, but as I understood it before then the system kind of operated similar to the Chinese form of governance at the time. But going farther back then that, what is the reach of historiography for the region? For the West I am familiar with all the various collapses and loss of history over time due to accident, destruction, etc., and that we at least have a reasonable picture of the Mediterranean going back to the post-Bronze Age collapse; so what is kind of the threshold for Japanese history?
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 01:51
|
|
|
paranoid randroid posted:Well there's Mago, Dido, Gisgo, uh... Basically my takeaway here is that the perfect Carthaginian name was "Ho Ho Ho"!.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 01:53
|
|
|
Octy posted:Can we have fewer male Romans ending their name with -us please? Marcus Flavius Aemilius Caius Claudius Drusus Maximus. Three different Scipios for three different Punic Wars. I don't know if it's an answerable question but I am very curious why names were so unoriginal in Rome/Carthage.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 03:57
|
|
|
I always figured it was a class thing. "Look how cool I am, sharing my name with all these important ancestors of mine", but taken past the logical extreme.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 04:02
|
|
Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
|
Kaal posted:Basically my takeaway here is that the perfect Carthaginian name was "Ho Ho Ho"!. If they had a machine gun then maybe they wouldn't have lost the war.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 04:02
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:I always figured it was a class thing. "Look how cool I am, sharing my name with all these important ancestors of mine", but taken past the logical extreme. I think so too but how does it get started? Why are there so few being reused? Did anybody get sick of shouting HEY GAIUS and having half the room stand up?
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 04:06
|
|
|
Octy posted:See, I've heard people claim that if Rome hadn't 'fallen', humanity would have been on the moon by the Middle Ages. It's just wild speculation without any evidence and it's contrary to what we know of the Romans and their relationship with technology. Emperor: How much grain is or can be grown on the moon? None at all? Then throw your dumb rockets in the Tiber 
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 04:18
|
|
|
Frostwerks posted:If they had a machine gun then maybe they wouldn't have lost the war. Wow that Santa joke really went in a different direction than I was expecting.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 04:20
|
|
|
Jerusalem posted:Emperor: How much grain is or can be grown on the moon? None at all? Then throw your dumb rockets in the Tiber Just got to wait for a crazy emperor to collect all the seashells from the moon.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 04:29
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:I think so too but how does it get started? Why are there so few being reused? Did anybody get sick of shouting HEY GAIUS and having half the room stand up? I think that is more or less what happened. When you're living in a tiny river town, there might only be a few more Gaiuseseses, and you still have your family nomen to differentiate you. But once your gens has its own bunch of Gaii . . . other cultures went in the direction of more variety in "first names", where the Romans went with more, and more varied, cognomina.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 04:38
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:I think so too but how does it get started? Why are there so few being reused? Did anybody get sick of shouting HEY GAIUS and having half the room stand up? Sometimes I think this must have been some manner of thing that only higher classes people really did and when they recorded their histories they applied the conventions to any lower class people that happened to be relevant. And we end up 2 millenia on having to work out of fractured chunks of those upper class writings for 95% of what we know of naming.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 04:41
|
|
|
homullus posted:I think that is more or less what happened. When you're living in a tiny river town, there might only be a few more Gaiuseseses, and you still have your family nomen to differentiate you. But once your gens has its own bunch of Gaii . . . other cultures went in the direction of more variety in "first names", where the Romans went with more, and more varied, cognomina. Just as well too! There were far too many Flavii from the fourth century on. Literally almost every important Roman had Flavius as their first name.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 06:08
|
|
|
I know there were the frumentarii at some point in Roman history but how did spycraft work in Ancient times? I mean, Crassus Nutella or whathaveyou, would want to keep tabs on some rival, right? Did he just pay some dudes to follow the guy and send updates whenever they could? Were there just like huge networks of underground dudes collecting information on each other? What kind of hierarchy existed?
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 06:19
|
|
|
For noble types I'd assume everyone had spies everywhere. House slaves and guards seem like obvious people to try to turn, you could also rely on people's clients to give some details.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 06:20
|
|
|
Decline and Fall of the Han Empire – 184-189 AD The Three Kingdoms is going to take forever to get through because there are about a dozen key figures doing things that can't be ignored, and unlike a regular dynastic period you can't really gloss them like you would a minor figure from a rebellion in the middle of a dynasty because their actions are going to have second order effects throughout the rest of the narrative. Frankly there's just a lot happening and too much of it is important to skip. I've decided to split the narrative into three parts: the decay and collapse of the Han state culminating in the coups (yes, plural) of 189, the civil wars of 190-229, and the Three Kingdoms period proper ending in the Jin conquest. In addition to the narrative there are notes on the historiography, geography, and economics of the period. I'll only be posting the first part today plus those three notes because it's already taken three hours to write. So: the Three Kingdoms. I suppose I should have some sort of introduction before we go into historiography. The Three Kingdoms is a short period in Chinese history, from 220 to 280 AD, barely three generations long. It's not hard to see why this period is such a fertile setting for historical fiction. The great houses with their retainers, rags-to-riches stories, intergenerational feuds, coups, murders, torture, brothers fighting brothers, charismatic leaders, alliances and secret alliances and backstabbing galore, master strategists facing off against each other, enormous battles, unexpected reverses, lies, bluffs, double-bluffs and reverse secret triple bluffs, and a cast of hundreds across three generations makes this an exciting time in Chinese history. Also a terrible time according to census data before and after. But in the end it's not very surprising, which I hope to show with my notes on geography and the decay of the state. The Han state was ready to collapse by the 180s; one blow or another would eventually have shattered it, and it was likely to shatter into three pieces when it did. The Three Kingdoms in turn were probably not sustainable and ended predictably as well; indeed it's a credit to Zhuge Liang's skill as a strategist that Shu Han lasted even 43 years as an independent state. The real surprise is the Jin Dynasty's failure so soon after reunification, due to some bad decisions and some really terrible luck. First, a note on the historiography of the Three Kingdoms period. The historical records are based entirely on Records of the Three Kingdoms, written sometime between 263 and 297 AD by Chen Shou, some sort of government official in Shu Han and, after Shu Han's conquest by Jin, a Jin court historian. He lived through the end of the Three Kingdoms period and had access to primary sources from all three sides, since Jin unified China shortly before he began work on the Records. So, the Records is probably as accurate as anyone could hope, being written well within a century of the earliest events it records and barely a decade after the latest events. Records of the Three Kingdoms is a collection of biographical chronicles rather than a single narrative, which makes sense when you look at the tangled web of allegiances and unlikely fortunes that characterize the politics of the collapsing Han Dynasty and early Three Kingdoms. It would be extremely difficult to tell a coherent narrative when, for example, Liu Bei switches sides at least five times, flees halfway across the country more than once, ends up in joint command at Red Cliffs mostly by accident, and eventually creates a “side” in the conflict that had not existed previously. Records is very terse, at least as written by Chen Shou. It is so terse that the Emperor of Liu Song decided it should be longer some time in the 420s AD, and commissioned historian Pei Songzhi to annotate and expand the Records. Because Pei Songzhi had an imperial commission to make the text longer, he included sources that Chen Shou had rejected. However he was good enough to write extensive comments on both Chen Shou's original chronicles and his own additions that show the historian at his work. I'll include an example here: Pei adds an account of Zhuge Liang's famous “empty city strategy” of the Northern Expeditions campaigns ”Pei Songzhi's additions” posted:Zhuge Liang garrisoned at Yangping (陽平; around present-day Hanzhong, Shaanxi) and ordered Wei Yan to lead the troops east. He left behind only 10,000 men to defend Yangping. Sima Yi led 200,000 troops to attack Zhuge Liang and he took a shortcut, bypassing Wei Yan's army and arriving at a place 60 li away from Zhuge Liang's location. Upon inspection, Sima Yi realised that Zhuge Liang's city was weakly defended. Zhuge Liang knew that Sima Yi was near, so he thought of recalling Wei Yan's army back to counter Sima Yi, but it was too late already and his men were worried and terrified. Zhuge Liang remained calm and instructed his men to hide all flags and banners and silence the war drums. He then ordered all the gates to be opened and told his men to sweep and dust the ground. Sima Yi was under the impression that Zhuge Liang was cautious and prudent, and he was baffled by the sight before him and suspected that there was an ambush. He then withdrew his troops. The following day, Zhuge Liang clapped his hands, laughed, and told an aide that Sima Yi thought that there was an ambush and had retreated. Later, his scouts returned and reported that Sima Yi had indeed retreated. Sima Yi was very upset when he heard about it later. And then immediately argues that the account is fiction. ”Pei Songzhi's Annotation" posted:When Zhuge Liang garrisoned at Yangping, Sima Yi was serving as the Area Commander (都督) of Jing Province and he was stationed at Wancheng (宛城; present-day Wancheng District, Nanyang, Henan)[About 300 miles from Yangping-Argle]. He only came into confrontation with Zhuge Liang in Guanzhong after Cao Zhen's death (in 231). It was unlikely that the Wei government ordered Sima Yi to lead an army from Wancheng to attack Shu via Xicheng (西城) because there were heavy rains at the time (which would obstruct passage). There were no battles fought at Yangping before and after that period of time. Going by Guo Chong's account, if Sima Yi did lead 200,000 troops to attack Zhuge Liang, knew that Zhuge's position was weakly defended, and suspected that there was an ambush, he could have set up defences to resist Zhuge instead of retreating. Wei Yan's biography mentioned: "Each time Wei Yan followed Zhuge Liang to battle, he would request to command a separate detachment of about 10,000 men and take a different route and rendezvous with Zhuge's main force at Tong Pass (present-day Tongguan County, Shaanxi). Zhuge Liang rejected the plan, and Wei Yan felt that Zhuge was a coward and complained that his talent was not put to good use." As mentioned in Wei Yan's biography, Zhuge Liang never agreed to allow Wei Yan to command a separate detachment of thousands of troops. If Guo Chong's account was true, how was it possible that Zhuge Liang would permit Wei Yan to lead a larger force ahead while he remained behind with a smaller army? Guo Chong's account was endorsed by the Prince of Fufeng (Sima Liang, a son of Sima Yi). However, the story puts Sima Yi in a negative light, and it does not make sense for a son to approve a story which demeans his father. We can tell that this account is purely fiction after reading the sentence, "the Prince of Fufeng generously endorsed Guo Chong's account" So we can thank the Emperor of Liu Song for Pei Songzhi filling out his word count with historiographical notes and producing a work that shows not only the history but the thought behind the selection and compilation of sources. The annotated Records of the Three Kingdoms is more than twice as long as Chen Shou's original. Chen Shou and Pei Songzhi's work is the definitive work on the period; the Book of Later Han, the other major chronicle of the period leading up to the Three Kingdoms, was also compiled in the 5th century in Liu Song, making Chen Shou's compilation the only contemporaneous history of the period. Second, a geographical note. Reading about the Three Kingdoms it again struck me just how rugged and mountainous China is. The natural barriers of China's landscape shaped how the empire disintegrated and the Three Kingdoms formed. In fact, it's likely Sun Quan would have surrendered to Cao Cao and Liu Bei would have had nowhere to hide, if not for the intervention of the Yangtze River and Qin Mountains. Red Cliffs is the pivotal moment of transition from Han to Three Kingdoms and it couldn't have happened without the cliffs. Indeed the Chinese of the time were very aware of the geography and Zhuge Liang himself wrote a treatise on the geographical determinism of the Three Kingdoms. China is divided into three areas of fertile plain: the North China plain stretching north-south from Beijing almost to the Yangtze River delta and east-west from Xi'an (Chang'an in this time) to the low mountains of the Shandong Peninsula; the Sichuan Basin in the west surrounded by high mountains to the south and west and low mountains to the north and east, and the Yangtze River course, highly rugged but interspersed with flat and fertile areas in the west of its run and wide flat floodplain in the east. Each of these main areas is divided from the other two by natural barriers: The North China Plain and Sichuan Basin are divided by the large, steep and complex Qin mountain range; the North China Plain is divided from the Yangtze area by low mountains and steep river gorges in the west, and by the huge river itself in the east; and the Sichuan basin is connected to the Yangtze course by the river but divided by the pervasive mountains that run most of the way from Sichuan down to the river delta. I've included a map to make this more plain (heh):  As you might expect, each state of the Three Kingdoms conforms roughly to one of these flat fertile areas. Wei dominates the North China Plain and the plateaus to the west of Chang'an. Shu Han is basically just the Sichuan Basin with some tributary tribes to the south of the Yangtze and some bits of Jin province, what is now Hubei and Hunan. Wu is the Yangtze River delta; the mountains to the south, and west to the border of Shu Han. Wu held on to the north side of the Yangtze up to the Huai River, a major tributary and itself a natural barrier. Third, we need to talk about the causes of the crisis of 190 that really killed the Han state for good. The Han state collapse was a long time in the making, and not only because of the decay in Imperial legitimacy that I talked about last update. The reasons are the decay of imperial legitimacy, the rise of hereditary governerships and military positions (although the most famous leaders of the period rose from the middle or lower aristocracy), the accumulation of capital by the aristocratic class and the decline of the free peasant, the decay of the state economic interventions designed to check this capital accumulation by Han Wudi back in the 1st century BC, and the Yellow Turban Rebellion. As a quick review, after the three strong emperors Guangwu, Ming and Zhang the throne reverts to child or teenage emperors, powerful Empress Dowagers and their fights with the Eunuch faction created by Emperor Zhang. The Empress Dowagers (and their clans) become increasingly powerful at court and the Emperor is mostly a pawn for the Eunuch faction and the Empress Dowager faction, often either succumbing to assassination attempts by the Empress Dowager or Grand Empress Dowager as chidren or living into their teens to ally with the Eunuch faction and purge the Empress Dowager. There are far too many coup attempts, purges and counter-purges to get into between 100 and 190 AD. Emperor Zhang died in 88 AD and the Han de facto died in 190 AD, to give you an idea of how long this pattern went on. This pattern was exacerbated by two other factors I'll talk about; the rising fortunes of the great aristocratic families, who would often get into Imperial politics via a daughter as the Empress Dowager, and the rise of hereditary offices again. Without a strong hand at the wheel of the ship of state, the aristocrat families were allowed to grow in strength again as they had recovered from their beating under Wang Mang's redistribution programs and the institutional bindings that Han Wudi implemented in the 1st century BC were allowed to slip and decay. I wish I had more information on this, but I think that the imperial examination system didn't so much cease to apply as the noble families became so rich and so powerful that they could bend Imperial authority in their neck of the woods. As I said, there were no strong emperors and any possible candidates were too worried about getting murdered by grandma's relatives to do anything about the aristocrats' arrogation of power. I don't think I did Han Wudi justice; his reforms centralized the Han state and bound the hands of the aristocrats very effectively, mostly through money. In the 1st century BC, Han Wudi of the 57 year reign and great conquests hammered the aristocracy with a variety of novel state institutions designed foremost to strengthen the Empire but with a definite eye to keeping the wealthy noble clans firmly in their place. He passed laws restricting aristocrats' economic activity, basically drawing a line between aristocrats and merchants and requiring aristocrats to remain on their side lest they forfeit their rank, and limiting the scale of landlord absenteeism to boot. His imperial examinations strengthened the state by recruiting the best and brightest but also created a high barrier to nepotism. His salt and iron monopolies weren't merely a tool to bring the state more revenue for his wars of conquest, it took that vast revenue stream away from the rich families who had dominated the industry as private enterprises. He introduced property tax, where previously government revenues had mostly flowed from agricultural taxes. He also established a state grain trade whose stated purpose was to store and distribute grain for the benefit of the people and the state, but whose rates wiped out the private grain arbitrage business which had, again, been dominated by wealthy landowners. Wang Mang had taken on the aristocrats with his radical redistribution program, and failed, and when Guangwu rose it was unsurprisingly with the help of the wealthy landowning families. Throughout the Eastern Han, even before the decay set in after Zhang's reign, the aristocrats won back state privileges. Taxes were reduced and the laws controlling aristocratic economic activities and landlord absenteeism were no longer enforced, although too-obvious mercantilism among the high and mighty was still seen as crass. After Zhang's reign when weak emperors predominated this trend accelerated; the sale of titles and government posts was legalized around 107 and by the 170s had virtually replaced the imperial examination system. Wealthy merchants, in the Eastern Han often the same people or same clan as the aristocracy, also extracted increasing concessions from the government until they were exempt from most taxes and regulations. Grain arbitrage was privatized once again, taking that revenue stream from the central government and returning it to the wealthy landowners and merchants. As always, common merchants were still subject to a wide spectrum of government regulations, it was the very wealthy who were exempt. By the 180s the Han state was run by wealthy clans at every level, from the Empress Dowagers at the top, to the generals and governors who had bought their titles, to the actual mechanism of government which was only nominally the Han state and now equally likely to be made up of the governor/aristocrat's personally loyal retainers. In short, the centralized state built by Emperor Jing after the Rebellion of the Seven States and Han Wudi's reforms and state-building of the 1st century no longer existed. If the state had merely regressed to where it was, dominated by noble clans, in the early 2nd century BC, that would have been bad enough, but the Han China of 180 AD was in fact in a worse situation. China's population had grown steadily and land was more scarce than it had been, especially on the ancient heartland of the North China Plain. The combination of higher population and the growing economic power of the aristocracy lead to a situation not unlike Italy in the time of the Gracchi, when wealthy landowners expanded their estates at the cost of free farmers, turning them into tenant farmers, beggars, or bandits. Over the course of the Eastern Han the economy transitioned from dominated by small landholders to dominated by vast estates worked by tenant farmers, often the descendants of the same free farmers whose families had owned the land in previous generations. This state of affairs combined with the increased population made the Han populace less and less stable over time, as more and more tenant farmers' livelihoods became more and more precarious, subject to the interest of concentrated capital. By the 180s concentration of wealth was lopsided enough that virtually everyone had a problem with the situation; the petty aristocracy (the vast majority of aristocrats) were denied their traditional access to government jobs by the widespread purchase of posts, the small merchants (the vast majority of merchants) chafed under government regulations which no longer applied to their wealthier competitors, and the peasants suffered under landlords with absolute power over their lives. The Yellow Turban Rebellion, and perhaps the collapse of the Han state, is a direct consequence of this economic situation just as the collapse of the Roman Republic can be seen as a direct consequence of the Latifundia. The Yellow Turban Rebellion began in 184 after a surprisingly widespread period of planning. The Yellow Turbans had sympathizers and some of their leaders within the capital, and planned a simultaneous national uprising sometime in 185, but they were discovered and had to kick off early, before they were ready. It was organized by a trio of Daoist faith healer brothers surnamed Zhang, though frankly it might have been organized by anyone who decided to organize a rebellion. The Han government was weak, incompetent, and unpopular among all levels of society and the Zhang brothers found willing conspirators from all walks of life and all around China. This level of organization and motivation probably explains the violence and urgency of the rebellion; in the opening months of 184 rebel armies sprang up all over the North China plain seized a number of cities and threatened Luoyang, the capital. Indeed had the conspiracy not been smoked out the rebellion may very well have taken the capital unawares as they did a number of other cities. In the sudden chaos the capital delegated great powers to military leaders like Dong Zhuo and Yuan Shao, who would never relinquish them. Volunteer armies sprang up on both sides as the regular army was totally unprepared for the organized rising in several regions at once, and the countryside was thrown into chaos in many areas. By 185 the first major risings were defeated with heavy losses on both sides and the Zhang brothers were dead, but sympathetic revolts had broken out in the west and elsewhere. (Another reason I think that had the conspiracy not been discovered the rebellion might have succeeded.) Although the main risings in the North China plain had been put down by early 185 and the capital was safe, the country was never really pacified until after the civil wars that mark the end of the Han dynasty. Now, finally, we've set the stage for the collapse of the Han dynasty. The Han state has been dying by a thousand cuts in the provinces, bled by the nobility and mauled by rebellion, but in 189 it will be suddenly and violently decapitated. This in turn sets up the true crisis of 190, when the great men of the empire will come to the rescue of the Han state, stand shoulder to shoulder and, as one, stab each other in the back. The proximal cause of the crisis resided in the ping-pong match for power between the Empress Dowager and her clan and the eunuch faction at court that had been going on for 100 years at this point. The players in this story are Empress He, her brother He Jin, and Jian Shuo, chief eunuch; none of whom appear to grasp how tenuous their grip on power has become in the near-total dissolution of state power 100 years of power-grabbing by aristocrats, five years of low-burning rebellion in the provinces. Yuan Shao and Cao Cao happened to be in the capital, Yuan Shao as the general of the elite Tiger Guard imperial guard unit, and Cao Cao as General of Cavalry. Anyway, Emperor Ling died in 188 without naming an heir, and naturally Jian Shuo and Dowager Empress He had to have a big conspiracy plot-off to decide who would control the next emperor and who would end up dead. The reasons for the conflict are really so petty and so mundane at this point that I won't go into them. He Jin got wind of Jian Shuo's plot to kill him, and had him executed, but had a falling out with Empress He over whether to kill all the Eunuchs. He Jin went to Yuan Shao and came up with the idea to invite Dong Zhuo, military governor of Liang Province, to march on Luoyang demanding the eunuchs' slaughter, to force the Empress Dowager's hand. This will turn out to be a very bad decision. He Jin went to the palace to demand the eunuchs' surrender and made another very bad decision: he entered the palace against Yuan Shao's advice, where the eunuchs promptly murdered him and took the young Emperor and Crown Prince (his brother) hostage. Imagine you're in Yuan Shao's shoes at this point: the leaders of the Empress and Eunuch factions, He Jin and Jian Shuo, have both contrived to get themselves killed. The Dowager Empress, Emperor, and Crown Prince are held hostage in their own palace by desperate men. Dong Zhuo, a man with a reputation for insubordination, is marching on the capital to support a man who is now dead with an army much larger than yours. gently caress. The situation somehow got worse when a few eunuchs escaped with the Emperor out the north gate of the palace (the palace in Chinese cities is always on the north side of the city with its own gates) to the river, pursued by government forces but fleeing directly towards Dong Zhuo's approaching army. With the Emperor out of harm's way Yuan Shao's men stormed the palace and massacred the remaining eunuchs. Sure enough, when the Emperor and Crown Prince returned to the city it was in the vanguard of Dong Zhuo's army. With the Emperor under Dong Zhuo's control, and the previous two power centers in Luoyang, the He clan and the Eunuch faction, either dead or leaderless, Dong Zhuo basically just set up court in Luoyang. He created himself Prime Minister, a post that had not existed for over 100 years, and took up residence in the palace. Yuan Shao and Cao Cao, seeing the writing on the wall, fled. Dong Zhuo soon deposed the Emperor in favor of the Crown Prince and thereby stripped Empress Dowager He of her title. Then he murdered her for good measure. This all happened in 189, the year of Emperor Ling's death. Finally, we're at the cusp of the crisis of 190. If you think 189 was bad, hold onto your butts because things are going to get a lot worse, very fast. Heads will be chopped, backs will be stabbed, and peasants will be slaughtered for being on the wrong side of lines even more imaginary than usual. Emperors will walk a thousand miles and cobblers will be kings. A whole lot of people will pursue Lu Bu. poo poo will get crazy, is what I'm saying. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Jan 16, 2015 |
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 08:09
|
|
|
Synnr posted:e;Who was it with all the archery chat, I was curious if they had any recommendations for historical bow chat and construction etc. Definitely anything regarding composite doodads from around the world, especially Hungarian and desert stuff. What are you looking for? Something instructive on manufacture? Karpowicz, Adam (2008): Ottoman Turkish bows, manufacture & design is the absolute authoritative work atm. There's a pdf by Peter Bencsik, "The Hungarian Bow of the 9-11th centuries", which gives the parameters for said bows. Methods of construction differ only little. Mikhailov K.A, Kainov S. Yu. (2011):Finds of structural details of composite bows from ancient Rus; In: Acta Archaelogica (2011), Vol. 62, No.1 is interesting, you can also find more titles in the references Sándor Horváth, Géza Körtvélyesi, László Legeza (2006): The Statics of the Traditional Hungarian Composite Reflex Bow, In: Acta Polytechnica Hungarica (2006) Vol. 3, No. 2 has stats and more references. Most stuff is in hungarian, which you can forget, unless you can speak it. I have recently become a member of the Society of Archer Antiquaries, which has a shitton of high quality articles in english, but haven't received the back issues from their journal yet. Also, I'm mostly interested in manufacture of medieval and early modern bows, so don't ask me about Egyptian or Akkadian composite bows. Bemann, Jan (Hg.) (2012): Steppenkrieger Reiternomaden des 7.-14. Jahrhunderts aus der Mongolei is also a good book. There's a chapter on reconstruction of mongolian archery tackle. May, Timothy (2006): The Training of an Inner Asian Nomad Army in the Pre-Modern Period; In: The Journal of Military History, Vol. 70, No. 3 (Jul., 2006), pp. 617-635 has some trivia on strategy, etc. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Oct 3, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 08:21
|
|
|
Frostwerks posted:If they had a machine gun then maybe they wouldn't have lost the war. Didn't the Romans have some sort of contraption that fired multiple arrow bolts at a time?
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 08:57
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:poo poo will get crazy, is what I'm saying. Love it. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 10:22
|
|
|
Octy posted:Can we have fewer male Romans ending their name with -us please? Marcus Flavius Aemilius Caius Claudius Drusus Maximus. QFT. Livy was quite confusing before I figured out there was more than one person called Appius Claudius. Fuckers should get more names.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 10:28
|
|
|
paranoid randroid posted:So I'm going back through the History of Rome podcasts, and man there's all kinds of little details I'm picking up this time that I missed out on originally. My favorite so far is Vespasian busting up laughing at the genealogy someone made for him linking him back to Heracles. Between him and his kid, Emperor "When you got their peckers in your pocket their hearts and minds will follow" Domitian, the Flavians really were a family of time traveling Lyndon Johnsons. Vespasian is my favorite emperor ever. Dude is the least Augustus-looking Augustus of all time, even Nero and the other fat/neckbeardy types have the debauched ruler thing going for them, Vespasian looks like some guy who's worked a job for decades and finally snaps and kills the management when he gets a jelly of the month club membership instead of a Christmas bonus. Which is basically true to life.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 10:40
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:Decline and Fall of the Han Empire – 184-189 AD Oh, yes, it will.  
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 11:37
|
|
|
my dad posted:Oh, yes, it will. I really need should keep on watching that series.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 12:30
|
|
|
BravestOfTheLamps posted:I really need should keep on watching that series. What series is this?
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 12:39
|
|
|
Tell me that's not the battle of Guandu. Did they take out the fort and three rivers? Like in Braveheart when they had the battle of Stirling Bridge with no river and no bridge? I, also, really have to watch that series. Three Kingdoms, 2010. It's a Chinese TV show. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 12:44 on Oct 3, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 12:41
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:Tell me that's not the battle of Guandu. Did they take out the fort and three rivers? Like in Braveheart when they had the battle of Stirling Bridge with no river and no bridge? Yup. Guandu. The only water in that scene is in the tea pot.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 12:57
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:Tell me that's not the battle of Guandu. Did they take out the fort and three rivers? Like in Braveheart when they had the battle of Stirling Bridge with no river and no bridge? Is it a direct remake of the older one? So long as there are versions with English subtitles I might just give it a go.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 13:04
|
|
|
My favorite part is when Zhuge Liang kills a dude just by laughing at him from his wheelchair. And yeah, there's a generous amount of dramatic license, I've heard the 90's series are more faithful to the novel, but whatever. Also, by the end of the series they reuse scenes a lot, so expect to see the same battle footage many times.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 13:10
|
|
|
Yes and you can find it on youtube Guandu was a complicated action with many skirmishes and a lengthy siege. Yuan Shao outnumbered Cao Cao three to one but he had to get across the fords of the Yellow River and two of its tributaries, with the terrain further complicated by an artificial canal, all the while taking a series of forts Cao Cao had constructed to guard the fords, and then reduce the main fort at Guandu in order to continue the advance into Cao Cao's territory. The battle was mostly siege warfare and night raids or cavalry raids. I don't think they ever lined up and had a pitched battle because Cao Cao had fortifications and coming out would have been stupid. That said, the series is based on the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a piece of Ming Dynasty historical fiction that shouldn't be confused with Records of the Three Kingdoms. The novel deletes characters, has generals fight and kill each other instead of dying randomly in battle, messes with chronology and even moves cities around to make a better story. For example in the first episode of the series you will see Cao Cao hanging out in Luoyang working for Dong Zhuo, when the real Cao Cao prudently booked it. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 13:23 on Oct 3, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 13:16
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:Yes and you can find it on youtube So Cao Cao didn't try and stab Dong Zhuo in the back at night, and then murder his uncle in the getaway? Call me disappointed.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 15:46
|
|
|
No, he went home and raised an army. The Cao family had been wealthy and powerful for three generations at that time. Every story about Cao Cao in Romance up to 190, beyond the fact that he was in the capital when Dong Zhuo arrived and left in a hurry, is fiction. At least I think so. Romancewill fill in the gaps in Records, so when Cao Cao shows up at the war council at Hangu with an army and Chen Gong in tow, Records fabricates a whole adventure to explain how they met. Chen Gong and his relationship with Cao Cao will be important later so he's given an introduction and motives. From a broader perspective, Cao Cao is a villain in Romance but comes off pretty well in Records at least compared to his contemporary warlords. So the author gives the fictional Cao Cao some more villainous things to do, like stabbing his uncle. The real Cao Cao did some bad things but massacring peasants is somehow less villainous than murdering your uncle in cold blood.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 16:19
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:The real Cao Cao did some bad things but massacring peasants is somehow less villainous than murdering your uncle in cold blood. Eh, peasants, there's more where they came from. It's not like anyone is going to miss them. (Meng, you sure you got rid of anyone who might miss them?  )
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 16:35
|
|
|
Exioce posted:Didn't the Romans have some sort of contraption that fired multiple arrow bolts at a time? That was the Koreans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwacha
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 19:01
|
|
|
JaucheCharly posted:Good stuff! Yeah, I was curious about construction and use, and for whatever reason those Hungarian bows draw my eye. I've been relaxing by crafting, and self-bows and bamboo laminates only teach so much technique! Break a few poor horns and all that. I can stumble through modern french and german but hungarian is a touch of my reach. How is Society of Archer Antiquaries? £25 isn't too pricey, especially with the price and electronic media back copies in English. Definitely going to bug the librarians when I go in tomorrow about that Karpowicz work and try to find that PDF after class. Thank you!
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 19:06
|
|
|
Alhazred posted:That was the Koreans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwacha That's more of a multiple rocket launcher. Chinese had the first repeating crossbow I'm aware of. I think the Greeks had some sort of repeating crossbow/ballista that involved a chain and crank mechanism but I can't find it right now, anybody know what it's called? Romans had something called a scorpio, which is technically artillery but fires smallish bolts. It wasn't a man-portable weapon but was more of a nasty sniper machine. In Rome Total War I think they fire multiple bolts at once but I don't know if there's any historical basis to that. I don't see why you couldn't do it in principle. Edit: Here it is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybolos Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Oct 3, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 19:13
|
|
|
Synnr posted:Yeah, I was curious about construction and use, and for whatever reason those Hungarian bows draw my eye. I've been relaxing by crafting, and self-bows and bamboo laminates only teach so much technique! Break a few poor horns and all that. We got a sleepy bow thread over at the TFR. Put your bows there, maybe it will lighten up a bit. Crafting composite bows is nothing for the weak or impatient. You let the poo poo cure for 6 months and it breaks when you put a string on it. Or the dog eats it. Google Chrome & translate website e: Go, go, go Argle Power Khan fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Oct 3, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 21:10
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 04:22 |
|
|
Does anyone with archives have a link to Blurred's old bible history thread?
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 21:11
|
|
