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Zopotantor posted:Just a remake of this, which has Sophia Loren in it and is thus intrinsically better. Is that the one where they fight in the middle of a shield wall at the end? The first part of the duel has the Emperor and the hero throwing javelins at each other. I only saw the last couple scenes years ago, but never knew the name of whatever the movie was.
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Apr 4, 2015 15:34
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dupersaurus posted:They don't make trailers like that any more. I feel bad for the 10th actor in the movie. "Not just 1 or 2, but 9 outstanding performances!" And he's sitting there in the theater waiting for his face to come up. And at the end he's like, "Mel Ferrer? What the poo poo?"
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Apr 4, 2015 16:53
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dupersaurus posted:They don't make trailers like that any more. There's some really endearing about how enthusiastic that entire trailer is. They're just so proud of themselves. 
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Apr 4, 2015 17:57
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Comrade Koba posted:https://youtu.be/RUcDdUG22JU I'll have a look, thanks. The opening narration did remind me of this though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLctf4o6feQ&t=25s By odd coincidence, the final fight scene from "Fall of the Roman Empire" happened to be on the TV right after I first watched Gladiator on VHS/DVD.
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Apr 5, 2015 01:06
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Cicero in it, which makes it even better. I believe it's based on one of his actual cases.
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I've been unable to find much about the life or reign of Decius, and I'd like to. Does anyone know if any of his own writing survived, or if I can find much accurate information about him beyond what is in 'The Decline and Fall'?
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Apr 5, 2015 04:07
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Could anyone explain the civilian procedures during a siege/assault on a city or point to some material on the subject? I ask because I have been playing Total War, and as provinces are ravaged/repaired by numerous factions, I often ask myself how civilians deal with their new leaders or just the mayhem in general, since war was fairly common. To be more specific, did they just hide around the city/town and then wait and see who wins? Then back to normal?
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Apr 6, 2015 17:00
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esn2500 posted:Could anyone explain the civilian procedures during a siege/assault on a city or point to some material on the subject? I ask because I have been playing Total War, and as provinces are ravaged/repaired by numerous factions, I often ask myself how civilians deal with their new leaders or just the mayhem in general, since war was fairly common. They often dealt with it by being slaughtered, raped, and/or sold into slavery.
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Apr 6, 2015 17:11
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Civilians would have been involved with the defense to varying extents. Some would be active fighters, others put out fires, brought food and water to the defenders, etc. On occasion, defending armies might force "extra" civilians out of the city before the siege began in order to maximize the amount of available supplies. That being said, many sieges ended with some kind of negotiation and not in a video game or movie style assault where the attackers burst through and kill all the defenders. Those definitely did happen, and in those cases the civilians would probably be killed/enslaved, but if the siege was resolved diplomatically there's a good chance they go back to life as normal except now someone else was in charge. Depending on how nasty the siege was they could still end up being enslaved or worse anyway though. Alesia is a good example. There was no Roman assault to end the siege, Vercingetorix surrendered, but all the survivors were enslaved except for a few tribes Rome wanted to secure as allies. Jamwad Hilder fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Apr 6, 2015 |
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Apr 6, 2015 17:14
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Jamwad Hilder posted:Civilians would have been involved with the defense to varying extents. Some would be active fighters, others put out fires, brought food and water to the defenders, etc. On occasion, defending armies might force "extra" civilians out of the city before the siege began in order to maximize the amount of available supplies. That being said, many sieges ended with some kind of negotiation and not in a video game or movie style assault where the attackers burst through and kill all the defenders. Those definitely did happen, and in those cases the civilians would probably be killed/enslaved, but if the siege was resolved diplomatically there's a good chance they go back to life as normal except now someone else was in charge. It is my understanding that medieval siege warfare went pretty much the same way. An army would show up on your doorstep. Runner's were dispatched to the closest ally to ask for a relief force. A few months might go buy with maybe a few small feeble attempt at an assault but in general, the army would just camp out in front denying supplies. If no relief force showed up, often times the defenders would surrender.
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Apr 6, 2015 17:57
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Do we have threads for Middle Age/early modern European history?
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Apr 6, 2015 18:01
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Halloween Jack posted:Do we have threads for Middle Age/early modern European history? Yes. Milhist is often general purpose history, there are also a number of history threads, a Nazi history thread and a medieval history thread.
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Apr 6, 2015 18:03
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Halloween Jack posted:Do we have threads for Middle Age/early modern European history? There's the medieval thread, and the military history thread is kinda-sorta also an Early Modern history thread due to HEY GAL's 30 Years War posts.
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Apr 6, 2015 18:03
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Jamwad Hilder posted:Civilians would have been involved with the defense to varying extents. Some would be active fighters, others put out fires, brought food and water to the defenders, etc. On occasion, defending armies might force "extra" civilians out of the city before the siege began in order to maximize the amount of available supplies. That being said, many sieges ended with some kind of negotiation and not in a video game or movie style assault where the attackers burst through and kill all the defenders. Those definitely did happen, and in those cases the civilians would probably be killed/enslaved, but if the siege was resolved diplomatically there's a good chance they go back to life as normal except now someone else was in charge. Some interesting pointers here i didn't know about. So if they didn't help with the defense, they just went with the flow and, ultimately, their fates were in the hands of the winning faction if they decided to stay? That depressing peasant life.
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Apr 6, 2015 18:07
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Dalael posted:It is my understanding that medieval siege warfare went pretty much the same way. An army would show up on your doorstep. Runner's were dispatched to the closest ally to ask for a relief force. A few months might go buy with maybe a few small feeble attempt at an assault but in general, the army would just camp out in front denying supplies. If no relief force showed up, often times the defenders would surrender. Playing Total War has given me the impression that no one ever uses sieges to take over a settlement. Only full on assaults the day of arrival. Of course this isn't historically accurate, but it's the reason I've been pondering about ancient history, especially military-wise.
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Apr 6, 2015 18:13
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Halloween Jack posted:Do we have threads for Middle Age/early modern European history? Yeah, the Milhist thread covers all sorts of stuff, but we love talking about that sort of thing there. Hegel will regale with many a tale of esn2500 posted:Playing Total War has given me the impression that no one ever uses sieges to take over a settlement. Only full on assaults the day of arrival. Medieval warfare in particular was dominated by siege warfare, mostly because battles were so risky. With the limited resources at the disposal of most western European rulers, a single defeat would be so damaging that you'd never want to openly fight unless you have to, or because you have a clear advantage and you can manage to force your opponent to give battle somehow. Much of the warfare in the period was conducted through small scale action and siege actions all over the place. Come talk about it in the Mil-Hist thread. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Apr 6, 2015 |
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Apr 6, 2015 18:16
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Yeah, the Milhist thread covers all sorts of stuff, but we love talking about that sort of thing there. Hegel will regale with many a tale of Fixed that for you
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Apr 6, 2015 18:17
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esn2500 posted:Some interesting pointers here i didn't know about. Yup. For most of human history being a commoner meant that your fate was ultimately almost always in the hands of someone else.
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Apr 6, 2015 18:20
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My relatively simplistic/outdated (circa high school) understanding of world history suggests that of all of the main centers of civilization, Europe seems to have been more resistant to wide-scale domination by a single political entity than the others. I assume this is fairly wrong, but how wrong is it? If it's not, are there any particular reasons why? From what I remember, it seems like elsewhere (Mesopotamia, the Indus River valley, China, etc) ran through cycles of big dynasty taking over and ruling for a few generations before being run off by next big dynasty, so on and so forth. Whereas (particularly Western) Europe, other than the Romans and Napoleon, seems to be more about lots of smaller factions fighting amongst each other with only smaller/briefer swings of power in any particular direction. Edit: Mesoamerica follows similarly, but even then we tend to think about the area as waves of roughly unified culture, even if the constituents are city-states at each others' throats. dupersaurus fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Apr 6, 2015 |
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Apr 6, 2015 18:24
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PittTheElder posted:Medieval warfare in particular was dominated by siege warfare, mostly because battles were so risky. With the limited resources at the disposal of most western European rulers, a single defeat would be so damaging that you'd never want to openly fight unless you have to, or because you have a clear advantage and you can manage to force your opponent to give battle somehow. Much of the warfare in the period was conducted through small scale action and siege actions all over the place. Come talk about it in the Mil-Hist thread. Thanks for pointing me to another great thread. I will continue the discussion there on the frequency of sieges in medieval times vs. pre-medieval history for those interested.
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Apr 6, 2015 18:38
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dupersaurus posted:My relatively simplistic/outdated (circa high school) understanding of world history suggests that of all of the main centers of civilization, Europe seems to have been more resistant to wide-scale domination by a single political entity than the others. I assume this is fairly wrong, but how wrong is it? If it's not, are there any particular reasons why? Well, what do you mean exactly by "Europe"? Europe wasn't really a center of civilization until the Romans started kicking out germanic peoples from Gaul, Hispania, Britannia, and the like. As for many of the other well-springs of civilizations, they all had their turnover with little civilizations battling the then entrenched power. Mesopotamia is just chock full of little cultures like the Elamites rising up to take a chunk of territory from the Sumarian cities-states and then getting crushed again only for Sumer to fall and Akkadians or Assryian or Hittites to come in to fight it out and fill the vacuum. Now one point you could make is the geography of western and central Europe as having a wealth of natural resources along with a number of natural borders/barriers makes large-scale invasion more difficult. It's a giant peninsula unlike the traditional cradles of civilization so if you're a Frankish peasant, you've got the channel and the north sea to your north instead of steppe-nomads like China and its northern boundaries. This may also explain Egypt's long history as it was able to dominate the Nile and had desserts to east, west, and south and the Mediterranean on the north.
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Apr 6, 2015 18:56
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dupersaurus posted:From what I remember, it seems like elsewhere (Mesopotamia, the Indus River valley, China, etc) ran through cycles of big dynasty taking over and ruling for a few generations before being run off by next big dynasty, so on and so forth. Whereas (particularly Western) Europe, other than the Romans and Napoleon, seems to be more about lots of smaller factions fighting amongst each other with only smaller/briefer swings of power in any particular direction. Leaving everything else aside, comparing the relative stability of Mesopotamia and the Indus River valley to Europe seems a bit daft considering how much larger than both Europe is - in the course of things it's harder to conquer and unify larger tracts of land. China is a bit more of a fair comparison, but it's worth remembering that it had constant periods of expansion, contraction, and division and was rarely anything as orderly as "And then another dynasty came and then all the Chinese were under one emperor again and everyone lived happily ever after." Hell, one of China's most famous national novels is about how the country was split apart into three pieces for generations (and the novel fails to mention that the country split apart even worse after one dynasty did finally manage to beat all their competitors). I'll also note that "other than the Romans" is a pretty big exception, given that the Romans ruled the majority of Europe for centuries without much of a break, despite the occasional civil war. A bit like saying "But APART from the World Wars, wasn't the 20th century much more peaceful than any other?" Edit: Also, it's worth remembering that "India" as a united entity wasn't really a thing until the British showed up and managed to gain control of the lot.
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Apr 6, 2015 20:15
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esn2500 posted:Playing Total War has given me the impression that no one ever uses sieges to take over a settlement. Only full on assaults the day of arrival. Yeah, but that's because Total War is balanced around the idea that the besiegers take as much damage as the besieged during a siege (which is weird). And it's also balanced around the idea that defenses are useful but ultimately aren't that decisive when you've got a bit of siege equipment (which is utterly ahistorical). So really there's never a reason to attack unless you've got enough troops to take the enemy on an open field, at which point you may as well finish the attack since besieging won't help you all that much.
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Apr 7, 2015 02:05
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Was there ever a situation in which the besieged outlasted the besiegers? Like, the defenders have insanely good stores, and the besiegers supplies are relatively short lasting and they have poor logistics?
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Apr 7, 2015 02:31
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my dad posted:Was there ever a situation in which the besieged outlasted the besiegers? Like, the defenders have insanely good stores, and the besiegers supplies are relatively short lasting and they have poor logistics? I'd imagine this would especially be an issue for fortified coastal cities that can be supplied forever by sea.
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Apr 7, 2015 02:39
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my dad posted:Was there ever a situation in which the besieged outlasted the besiegers? Like, the defenders have insanely good stores, and the besiegers supplies are relatively short lasting and they have poor logistics? Sure, Constantinople did it all the time. It was kind of its shtick. So did Venice and Ragusa. Sarajevo in the modern age. Gilgamesh in the ancient age. Loads more in between.
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Apr 7, 2015 02:46
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my dad posted:Was there ever a situation in which the besieged outlasted the besiegers? Like, the defenders have insanely good stores, and the besiegers supplies are relatively short lasting and they have poor logistics? Not Greek or Roman history, but the 885 Siege of Paris somewhat fits the bill. The city was well-defended enough and the Viking army unenthusiastic enough that they eventually just up and left after being paid a pittance by the king. The Vikings were never particularly impressive siege engineers.
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Apr 7, 2015 02:51
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sullat posted:Sure, Constantinople did it all the time. It was kind of its shtick. So did Venice and Ragusa. Sarajevo in the modern age. Gilgamesh in the ancient age. Loads more in between. The 1747 one's the only one they lost, since it's one of those uninverted posted:fortified coastal cities that can be supplied forever by sea.
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Apr 7, 2015 02:53
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brocretin posted:The city was well-defended enough and the Viking army unenthusiastic enough that they eventually just up and left after being paid a pittance by the king. Part of the deal was that the Vikings would decamp to Burgundy, then in revolt, and ravage that territory during the year it took to gather up the money.
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Apr 7, 2015 02:59
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Pretty much Korea's entire defensive strategy for its history was everybody retreating to mountaintop fortresses and waiting until the besiegers went home.
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Apr 7, 2015 03:20
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brocretin posted:Not Greek or Roman history, but the 885 Siege of Paris somewhat fits the bill. The city was well-defended enough and the Viking army unenthusiastic enough that they eventually just up and left after being paid a pittance by the king. The Vikings were never particularly impressive siege engineers.
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Apr 7, 2015 03:21
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Ynglaur posted:Awww, you ruined the next episode for me. Aw, shucks, sorry, buddy! I don't watch the show  Anyways, I should probably contribute a question to the thread. Do we know what crops and livestock people in Roman Gaul and Britain were raising? Was it mostly sustenance farming or did grain from North Africa and Egypt make its way up there too? e; Zopotantor posted:THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE brocretin fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Apr 7, 2015 |
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Apr 7, 2015 03:29
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Disinterested posted:Lastly, if there is a struggle for power, people do sort of expect you to take it out on the loser, which Sulla obviously did. Indeed, Caesar rather famously was merciful to the other side after he won the Civil War, which turned out to be a real pain in the back for him.
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Apr 7, 2015 04:51
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I was just reading the Wikipedia article of slavery in Rome - at what social level would it be likely someone owns a slave? Would owning a slave impress the other plebs? Are we aware of any preferences for slaves? I mean, would German slaves have a reputation for hardiness, or would someone have a preference for North Africans the way someone today has a preference for a particular car brand? Or again, is it the whole race-blindness-y thing where they'd just want a young, healthy dude to help bring the crops in, regardless where he'd be from. (This question may have slightly inspired by the foreign menhir market in Obelix and Co.)
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Apr 7, 2015 05:38
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Some questions about ancient polytheistic religions, if you don't mind: 1.) How did polytheistic religion work? I remember hearing that many people, mostly contemporary fantasy authors and RPG creators, often get polytheism wrong. But how so? 2.) How did one become a priest or priestess? And if you became one, did you actually live in the temple (or somewhere in the temple complex) or did you live elsewhere in the city and then get up to go to work at the temple? 3.) Were all of the temples of a certain god part of the same system or priesthood? Or was each temple totally separate, even if it worshiped the same god as another temple? Like if you were a priest at a temple of Isis, could you be transferred to another temple of Isis?
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Apr 7, 2015 05:44
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Elissimpark posted:I was just reading the Wikipedia article of slavery in Rome - at what social level would it be likely someone owns a slave? Would owning a slave impress the other plebs? Slaveowners were mandated to provide certain living conditions for their slaves. You would need to be rich to feed and house a living breathing person that you owned. That wealth was probably impressive enough on its own. Being a pleb didn't preclude you or your family from being rich though, it just meant you weren't a member of the established patrician lineages. Any preference for slaves from a specific region would be some kind of personal thing for the individual slaveowner. In general, most educated slaves were Greeks, and "barbarian" slaves were big brawny dudes, but that's essentially the same stereotypes for a free man from the same region. I don't know of any writings that talk about slave purchases.
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Apr 7, 2015 05:54
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The social class thing depends on the time period. At one point slaves were so cheap that slaves owning their own slaves was a thing.
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Apr 7, 2015 06:14
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Blue Star posted:Some questions about ancient polytheistic religions, if you don't mind: In terms of your first question: which polytheistic religion? I think I know what you're getting at with fantasy authors getting it wrong; oftentimes ancient religion is described as like "Dionysus was the god of wine" which isn't false, but may oversimplify things. Greek gods weren't really as limited as descriptions like that imply and had a lot more complex aspects. Maybe an easy way to look at this is Minerva, who's often described as "Roman Athena" but also incorporated learning and trades to the point where learning a trade was being inducted into religious mysteries. (A lot of the funny hats and odd symbolism in colleges and universities, too, has its origins in this; or so I've been led to believe.) In terms of priests, Greek religion was based on mysteries ("secrets" might be a better word but mysteries is the word literature uses to discuss them). There were mysterious sacred rites and you were inducted into them through some process or another. It was punishable by death to reveal the secrets, so we don't really know. Roman religion was a state religion based on observing religious taboos. Priests were chosen by the political leadership, there were four (maybe three? I forget off the top of my head) colleges of priests, each with particular taboos, duties, and privileges. Taboos were things like "priest can't leave the city" or "priest can't enter a house where a woman is menstruating", those sorts of things. Primarily, worship was intended to prevent disasters resulting from divine wrath, which seems to me like a different thing than Christian worship or the sorts of worship in fantasy novels. (For instance, ancient Roman historians seem perfectly comfortable with a kind of Pascal's wager type of thing where they can say openly that the state religion is just superstition and there's no logical basis for it, but maybe it really does stop earthquakes and besides it doesn't hurt anyone so why not? I don't think a Christian author would be comfortable arguing that for many, many centuries after the establishment of the Church.) One thing that I've always found interesting about Greek temples is that they're often where much of the city's treasury was kept. As for your third question, I really don't know - and it probably varied by time and place. In ancient Greece religion was often a city by city affair and who was a god wasn't entirely agreed in all times and places. Consider that the plot of the Oresteia involves the transition from older more primal gods like the Furies to the Olympian gods, or that the dialogue in the Bacchae heavily suggests that to the characters in the play Dionysus is a new maybe-god-maybe-not from Asia. I imagine that the mysteries were similar enough all over that if you were a priest from Athens and you ended up in Corinth somehow, you could do the necessary secret handshakes, but maybe not.
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Apr 7, 2015 06:44
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Slaveowners were mandated to provide certain living conditions for their slaves. You would need to be rich to feed and house a living breathing person that you owned. That wealth was probably impressive enough on its own. Being a pleb didn't preclude you or your family from being rich though, it just meant you weren't a member of the established patrician lineages. This would depend on the type of slave though. If you used your slaves as say, farm labour, they'd pay for themselves, because while you do have to feed them, you're still paying them less than the typical paid labourers that you'd otherwise depend on. Assuming farming is profitable for smallholders of course, which definitely was not the case by the Late Republic. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 07:02 on Apr 7, 2015 |
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Apr 7, 2015 07:00
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Elissimpark posted:I was just reading the Wikipedia article of slavery in Rome - at what social level would it be likely someone owns a slave? Would owning a slave impress the other plebs? Sort of. Roman slaves had their natio (origin; whether it connoted race, tribe, region, whatever) displayed on a sign at the market, and there were definitely connotations between certain natios and certain types of activity. Cicero makes a remark to his friend Atticus in a letter that the new slaves from Caesar's invasion of Britain are completely untalented in the ways of literature or music (presumably there were bagpipes, even then). The poet Martial has a passage where he is evoking the ideal dreamy -- male, naturally -- sex-slave and picks an Egyptian. There were also suggestions that owning too many slaves from the same natio was bad because they'd know all of the old rivalries and one day Quintus would shank Sextus because eight years ago Sextus called his sister a pigfucker, that kind of thing. But I think the ideal is that whatever your natio was before you were sold into slavery was only important to the buyer -- you'd be kind of subsumed into the culture of where-ever you ended up. Which is different quite a bit from how American slavery worked out.
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Apr 7, 2015 07:16
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Martial 4.3 posted:I did not call you a catcher, Coracinus: I am not so thoughtless or bold, or given to telling lies. 
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Apr 7, 2015 07:31
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