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A Strange Aeon posted:I've been reading the Iliad and was struck by how useless armor seems to be. Everything penetrates right through it and yet as soon as someone drops, everyone scrambles to strip the armor off of their opponent. 'This dude hit this other dude and chopped his arm off' is more entertaining in a story than 'this dude hit this other dude and his sword bounced right off' maybe? Like, you'd only talk about the blows that actually mattered.
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Nov 17, 2015 16:20
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Even armor that doesn't do anything for certain sorts of blows can still protect you in other ways. Think of it like how the smart thing to do when riding a motorcycle is to have a good helmet and some rugged clothes on. It won't do much for you if a semi-truck slams you into a wall, but it can save your life if you simply lose balance on the bike or hit a large pothole that sends you flying. When you're in a war, you're gonna grab some extra armor if you can manage it.
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Nov 17, 2015 16:26
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some armor is better than no armor, especially if it is covering the vitals in the torso. A relatively weak, glancing blow to the stomach that might otherwise be turned aside by even light armor could still gut you, and any penetrating wound to the bowls would lead to a slow and unpleasant death. On the other hand, people have been able to treat relatively bad cuts and broken bones for a really long time, at least well enough to have them not be a death sentence. Also, armor was expensive as gently caress. For your average farmer taking home a couple of suits of armor could be a major windfall. edit: the partial protection thing is still an issue with modern body armor, incidentally. Your average soft body armor that a police officer wears isn't going to stop a rifle round in any conditions, and it will be defeated by magnum pistol rounds at close range. Still, a bunch of the people who might shoot at you are packing normal pistol rounds and its worth the discomfort to not get killed by some idiot with a .22. In that sort of thing "partially effective" is a hell of a lot better than the alternative. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Nov 17, 2015 |
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Nov 17, 2015 16:28
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Also, no armor is perfect or invulnerable. Being a good fighter meant knowing the weaknesses of your own armor and fighting in such a way to minimize your vulnerability, while also knowing where your enemy was weak and striking at the opportune moment. Bad fighters expose themselves despite their armor, and get cut down quickly by good fighters. In the Iliad, particularly, bad fighters "deserve" to die because they are not protecting themselves properly. Hence, the tragedy of the death of Achilles - the greatest warrior of them all, laid low by a random arrow hitting him in a weird, trivial place.
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Nov 17, 2015 17:03
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A while ago I managed to get "Bill, Joseph Howland, “Notes on Arrow Wounds,” American Journal of Medical Sciences, 154, 1892, p. 366", according to his data, 100% of the hits to the abdomen were lethal to the patient. Upper torso comes after that, with a fatal rate of about 50%. Heads getting lost in the wound or stuck in bone, that's when things get really messy.
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Nov 17, 2015 17:12
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it's neither weird nor trivial, it was fated to happen and before he left he was told that he had the choice of a long life spent in complete anonymity or dying young and getting immortal fame he chose the second because anonymity's for chumps this is one reason why some people think that--if they were written by individual people instead of an oral tradition--the odyssey and the iliad might have been written by different people, because i would rather be a slave on earth than king among the breathless dead is so out of character for him
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Nov 17, 2015 17:14
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HEY GAL posted:it's neither weird nor trivial, it was fated to happen and before he left he was told that he had the choice of a long life spent in complete anonymity or dying young and getting immortal fame Hades just sucks that much
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Nov 17, 2015 17:32
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HEY GAL posted:it's neither weird nor trivial, it was fated to happen and before he left he was told that he had the choice of a long life spent in complete anonymity or dying young and getting immortal fame It was weird and trivial to the other characters in the book who didn't know the legend. Shooting your opponents in the heel was not a general combat technique. Readers would know the legend, but the idea of a great hero being killed by a shot to the heel would seem quite ironic. Greeks loved their heroes to have odd fatal weaknesses. There's a reason the idiom "Achille's Heel" exists.
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Nov 17, 2015 18:17
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Deteriorata posted:It was weird and trivial to the other characters in the book who didn't know the legend. Shooting your opponents in the heel was not a general combat technique. Readers would know the legend, but the idea of a great hero being killed by a shot to the heel would seem quite ironic. Greeks loved their heroes to have odd fatal weaknesses. It's because Achilles' mom didn't want to get her hands dirty.
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Nov 17, 2015 18:35
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A Strange Aeon posted:I've been reading the Iliad and was struck by how useless armor seems to be. Everything penetrates right through it and yet as soon as someone drops, everyone scrambles to strip the armor off of their opponent. Today's version of Homer would be The Avengers: superhumans doing superhuman things
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Nov 17, 2015 18:56
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BurningStone posted:Today's version of Homer would be The Avengers: superhumans doing superhuman things The first literary work of note is about Gilgamesh, who is (if I may be concise) a superhuman. It's less known than Homerian heroes, because Homer is studied by hundreds of thousands of pupils each year in Europe and elsewhere in the world.
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Nov 17, 2015 19:10
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when cuchulainn went super saiyan blood shot out his eyes, it was pretty sweet
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Nov 17, 2015 19:12
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Cippalippus posted:The first literary work of note is about Gilgamesh, who is (if I may be concise) a superhuman. It's less known than Homerian heroes, because Homer is studied by hundreds of thousands of pupils each year in Europe and elsewhere in the world. You guys don't read the Epic of Gilgamesh in school?
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Nov 17, 2015 19:13
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Not in the original language, unlike Homer. Not everyone learns ancient Greek, but it's mandatory in the Liceo Classico.
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Nov 17, 2015 19:21
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Cippalippus posted:Not in the original language, unlike Homer. Not everyone learns ancient Greek, but it's mandatory in the Liceo Classico.
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Nov 17, 2015 19:23
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Grand Fromage posted:I used to think this, but the book I just read (Babylon) totally changed my views. I had no idea how much really interesting Sumerian writing there is, and I don't know where I learned that it's all boring tax poo poo but it's so wrong. The stuff the author was quoting was the most engaging writing I've ever seen from the ancient world, and I'm looking for more books that quote it extensively. What was the name and the author of that book? Just trying to search for Babylon unfortunately turns up quite a lot of books!
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Nov 17, 2015 19:26
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HEY GAL posted:homeric? we did sophocles instead In the Italian Liceo Classico you have to do 5 years of Latin and Greek, both grammar and literature. I think something similar happens in Germany in the Gymnasium.
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Nov 17, 2015 19:31
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I quite enjoyed Gilgamesh; it's quite readable and short enough to finish in an evening. Is it reasonable to think that there were other stories like it that just haven't survived? I was never made to read any Homer, let alone Gilgamesh in school, for what it's worth. I'm from the States.
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Nov 17, 2015 19:48
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Cippalippus posted:In the Italian Liceo Classico you have to do 5 years of Latin and Greek, both grammar and literature. I think something similar happens in Germany in the Gymnasium. In Germany you can opt for different general programs, in Baden-Württemberg at least anyway. Studying the classics is not a given if you chose the science or modern languages focus. A Strange Aeon posted:I quite enjoyed Gilgamesh; it's quite readable and short enough to finish in an evening. Is it reasonable to think that there were other stories like it that just haven't survived? Yeah, Gilgamesh is not a struggle to get through. It is a bit annoying that various bits are still a bit sketchy due to the limits of what we've recovered though. Munin fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Nov 17, 2015 |
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Nov 17, 2015 19:56
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Cippalippus posted:In the Italian Liceo Classico you have to do 5 years of Latin and Greek, both grammar and literature. I think something similar happens in Germany in the Gymnasium. In the Netherlands its 6 years Latin, 5 years Greek. Unfortunately the first 3,5 years of Latin is spend reading Latin that is constructed by the writers of the lesson books to explain grammar. Afterwards students cannot read any real Latin, so the next 2,5 years is spend learning that. 
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Nov 17, 2015 19:56
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Munin posted:In Germany you can opt for different general programs, in Baden-Württemberg at least anyway. Studying the classics is not a given if you chose the science or modern languages focus. Works the same in Serbia. I took the science-oriented program in a gymnasium. (50% dropout rate in my class in the first year. University is genuinely easier than that.  We like our education as brutal as possible) Only had Latin for a year, never touched Greek. The one year of Latin was surprisingly useful because, while I understand very little on my own, it gives me a very good idea where to start looking for and what I need to pay attention to in a translation.
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Nov 17, 2015 19:59
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A Strange Aeon posted:I've been reading the Iliad and was struck by how useless armor seems to be. Everything penetrates right through it and yet as soon as someone drops, everyone scrambles to strip the armor off of their opponent. I don't remember it being that bad, there's definitely lots of talk of shields blocking spears, and when Achilles kills Hector it's specifically described as him being almost completely protected and Achilles aims for the small vulnerable spot in his neck. So it's him being awesome not the armour being poo poo. Anyway, they're prestige items rather than purely functional - when Achilles gets new armour made by the gods we get a description of the intricate decorative carving rather than just "it's a really good shield, blocks anything". Plus there' solid gold armour (obviously bullshit but makes the point that they have value beyond function). This makes sense in the context of all the talk about blinged out tripods and cauldrons and poo poo.
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Nov 17, 2015 21:49
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did you just spoiler a 2,700 year old text i mean, it's been around so long the movie's even come out
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Nov 17, 2015 21:53
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HEY GAL posted:it's neither weird nor trivial, it was fated to happen and before he left he was told that he had the choice of a long life spent in complete anonymity or dying young and getting immortal fame Does anyone know much about the concept of the afterlife in Homer-era? I remember there's a bit about seeing Herakles in Hades - but obviously it's only his shade, his spirit is up on Olympus. Did they have a coherent differentiation? Is it "really" Achilles they meet or some sort of lovely ghost that's not really his true spirit? Anyway it doesn't seem all that weird to me - isn't most of the Odyssey the survivors of Troy sitting around going "oh my god literally everyone I know is dead, was this remotely worth it?" Edit: yes I did, BUT it was in jest
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Nov 17, 2015 21:54
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Magnus Manfist posted:Does anyone know much about the concept of the afterlife in Homer-era? I remember there's a bit about seeing Herakles in Hades - but obviously it's only his shade, his spirit is up on Olympus. Did they have a coherent differentiation? Is it "really" Achilles they meet or some sort of lovely ghost that's not really his true spirit? Even in the Iliad there's a fair amount of 'loving hell this is stupid.'
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Nov 17, 2015 22:04
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Magnus Manfist posted:Does anyone know much about the concept of the afterlife in Homer-era? I remember there's a bit about seeing Herakles in Hades - but obviously it's only his shade, his spirit is up on Olympus. Did they have a coherent differentiation? Is it "really" Achilles they meet or some sort of lovely ghost that's not really his true spirit? Homeric afterlife is a mess. There seem to be competing ideas -- the idea of restless dead, the kind many cultures fear and seek to contain/mollify/ward off with proper burial, and the idea of the passive dead, going into a big, grey, dull, mindless, joyless bin. Semi-divine people get a more tailored experience, usually not in a good way. If you mean what Homer's audience thought, good luck.
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Nov 17, 2015 22:15
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homullus posted:Homeric afterlife is a mess. There seem to be competing ideas -- the idea of restless dead, the kind many cultures fear and seek to contain/mollify/ward off with proper burial, and the idea of the passive dead, going into a big, grey, dull, mindless, joyless bin. Semi-divine people get a more tailored experience, usually not in a good way. Yeah. I mean there is even an extensive literature about the degree to which ancient Greeks even believed in their own myths and religion, and its a messy and contested topic.
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Nov 17, 2015 22:18
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A Strange Aeon posted:I quite enjoyed Gilgamesh; it's quite readable and short enough to finish in an evening. Is it reasonable to think that there were other stories like it that just haven't survived? Given we're missing like three quarters of the Epic cycle to which the Iliad and Odyssey belong, which is newer and which people cared about more consistently over the last two millennia, definitely.
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Nov 17, 2015 22:23
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A Strange Aeon posted:I've been reading the Iliad and was struck by how useless armor seems to be. Everything penetrates right through it and yet as soon as someone drops, everyone scrambles to strip the armor off of their opponent. It's definitely not straight history  I also read it a while ago, and my take from it is that armor worked only when it made the scene more dramatic, just like in today's movies. For example some hits penetrated armor but were deflected by belt buckle. also my dad posted:I love the bow posts.
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Nov 17, 2015 22:48
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Munin posted:
Wasn't a good chunk of the missing text found recently?
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Nov 17, 2015 22:51
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Disinterested posted:Yeah. I mean there is even an extensive literature about the degree to which ancient Greeks even believed in their own myths and religion, and its a messy and contested topic. Some things seem pretty absolute, others pretty fuzzy. We have records of the sanctity of Delphi and, most especially, the need to recover fallen bodies and having huge political/foreign relations implications. On the other hand, the castration of the Hermes seems to have been understood by at least Thucy as pretty much pretext for political maneuvering. On the other other hand, we can thus infer that 'you hosed with our statues' was a big enough deal to get a guy axed. Ditto Thucy's attitude towards taking omens before battles. He's pretty snide about the whole thing, but he's snide because people throw away good chances for victory because of what entrails told them. And guys like Xenophon are like 'oh yeah, that guy, terrible general, attacked when the omens were bad.' These things were, it seems, as true as gravity to a lot of them. On the other hand, 'fanfics' of Homer or reworking a myth to honor your city/family whatever was kinda par for the course. Herodotus rolls into Egypt and is like 'here's what they say about all this, I believe these guys for these reasons and these guys for those reasons.' Interestingly, he even accepts a totally different version of the Iliad that has Helen sitting out the war and marrying a nice Egyptian lad like it's no big deal. The gods exist, only weirdos *cough*Socrates*cough* don't believe that, but which story about Zeus/Dionysus/whoever you tell might be a lot more fungible.
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Nov 17, 2015 22:53
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the JJ posted:Some things seem pretty absolute, others pretty fuzzy. We have records of the sanctity of Delphi and, most especially, the need to recover fallen bodies and having huge political/foreign relations implications. The example of Xenophon is a good one - for example the story of how he winds up in the expedition because he consults the Oracle and then is told he asked the wrong question and the manner of his question essentially mandated him to go on the expedition Lest he anger the Gods. You definitely also see it in contexts like the Roman giving of oaths.
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Nov 17, 2015 22:57
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modern polytheistic religions or religions that act in similar ways like Catholics or Orthodox work in a similar manner, like there are regions where Saint X is incredibly important and regions where nobody's even heard of them, or their legends differ from place to place (in some areas st. christopher has a dog's head)
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Nov 17, 2015 22:57
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In genuine news: http://qz.com/551210/researchers-just-unearthed-a-lost-island-in-the-aegean/
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Nov 17, 2015 23:00
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Disinterested posted:In genuine news: http://qz.com/551210/researchers-just-unearthed-a-lost-island-in-the-aegean/ I saw the headline and thought "you don't unearth lost Aegean islands"  but . . . yup. They did.
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Nov 17, 2015 23:05
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HEY GAL posted:modern polytheistic religions or religions that act in similar ways like Catholics or Orthodox work in a similar manner, like there are regions where Saint X is incredibly important and regions where nobody's even heard of them, or their legends differ from place to place (in some areas st. christopher has a dog's head)  I had to post the visual accompaniment. It's one of the odder regional traditions to be sure.
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Nov 18, 2015 01:03
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Cippalippus posted:The first literary work of note is about Gilgamesh, who is (if I may be concise) a superhuman. It's less known than Homerian heroes, because Homer is studied by hundreds of thousands of pupils each year in Europe and elsewhere in the world. Actually, our local school district does Gilgamesh and Beowolf, but I don't think there's any Homer. I'd guess it's because he just goes on for too long, or maybe it was just individual teacher's preference. I do wonder why Gilgamesh hasn't been made into a movie. The oldest story we have, and you could give it to a Hollywood producer and he'd say "Yup, standard buddy adventure."
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Nov 18, 2015 01:46
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Cippalippus posted:The first literary work of note is about Gilgamesh, who is (if I may be concise) a superhuman. It's less known than Homerian heroes, because Homer is studied by hundreds of thousands of pupils each year in Europe and elsewhere in the world. American here, first two years of high school english were american literature and the last two were nonfiction/persuasive writing and survey of british literature/literary criticism. I had the odyssey shoe horned into my freshman year but we didn't get to Beowulf my senior year because we started from the present and went back in time. We only made it to Shakespeare  sarmhan posted:
What breed of dog do you think he was I want to believe he was a pug
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Nov 18, 2015 07:45
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my dad posted:You guys don't read the Epic of Gilgamesh in school? Does the first quarter of college count?
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Nov 18, 2015 08:14
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You don't just read Homer, you study why and how he uses certain words and ideas and try to discern if and how different authors collaborated, and how his works influenced antiquity and modern days, and you do this for years - 4 to 6 - in some western high schools. You don't do the same with Gilgamesh, or at least I don't know about it.
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Nov 18, 2015 08:25
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