|
Protip: Sell your limbs to passing Chinese mercenaries, then ask the insurance company to pay out for a traumatic injury.
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2017 17:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 16:49 |
|
|
Ataxerxes posted:I remember reading about a battle involving Romans who had a number of slaves fighting for them and had promised freedom to every one who could produce the head of an enemy. This caused some slaves to stop fighting in order to collect a head and the Roman commander reacted by stating that he would free them all if they won, in order to keep them fighting. Dunno if this every actually happened, but makes for a good story. yeah something like that, and I thought it had already come up in this thread.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2017 17:59
|
|
|
Don't forget about the time Bellisarius got his rear end kicked because the Roman peasants he'd pressed into service got distracted by picking up shinies. Edit for content: Bellisarius once got his rear end kicked because the Roman peasants he'd pressed into service got distracted by picking up shinies.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2017 19:16
|
|
|
Raphael is cool but crude, mods please fix.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2017 20:15
|
|
|
gowb posted:Raphael is cool but crude, mods please fix. Gimmie a break!
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2017 01:28
|
|
|
Can we at least agree Michelangelo is a party-dude?
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2017 18:21
|
|
|
A far-out party dude, if the texts are correct.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2017 20:06
|
|
|
Soldiers stopping or breaking battle lines to loot was an issue with a lot of pre-professional armies.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2017 20:21
|
|
|
One of the origin stories for the red hand of Ulster - the heraldic symbol of a province 2/3rds in Northern Ireland and 1/3rd in the north of Ireland - starts with a swimming race, with the first one to touch land winning rulership of the territory. Several warriors start out far from shore, including Niall of the Nine Hostages. Niall is apparently a pretty lovely swimmer, so when they get close to the beach he's lagging behind. Being a badass in areas not involving water sports, Niall lops off his hand and hurls it onto the shore, touching the province first by a technicality and winning the kingship. Or supposedly, being that he's a legendary king and all of this is probably made up. But the other origin stories for the symbol aren't nearly as metal.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2017 01:14
|
|
|
gowb posted:One of the origin stories for the red hand of Ulster - the heraldic symbol of a province 2/3rds in Northern Ireland and 1/3rd in the north of Ireland - starts with a swimming race, with the first one to touch land winning rulership of the territory. Several warriors start out far from shore, including Niall of the Nine Hostages. Niall is apparently a pretty lovely swimmer, so when they get close to the beach he's lagging behind. Being a badass in areas not involving water sports, Niall lops off his hand and hurls it onto the shore, touching the province first by a technicality and winning the kingship. Or supposedly, being that he's a legendary king and all of this is probably made up. But the other origin stories for the symbol aren't nearly as metal. Got that red hand on my family's coat of arms. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2017 03:00
|
|
|
I can't believe people spoke about cutting off dicks for three pages without mentioning the time when it happens in the Bible:1 Samuel 18:25-27 posted:Saul replied, “Say to David, ‘The king wants no other price for the bride than a hundred Philistine foreskins, to take revenge on his enemies.’” Saul’s plan was to have David fall by the hands of the Philistines.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2017 10:03
|
|
|
Red Bones posted:I can't believe people spoke about cutting off dicks for three pages without mentioning the time when it happens in the Bible: Let he who hath never traded his daughter for a bag of dicks cast the first stone
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2017 10:08
|
|
|
Kassad posted:Any idea why this one Pharaoh gave that order? Amenhotep II was an aggressive badass. He was buff and tall, with a bow he boasted only he could pull. When his tomb was found, he still had the bow with him. A couple days later locals broke in and stole it and many other things. His tomb was used as a mummy cache, with other pharaohs and their families put there in the 21 D to protect them, after they'd been stripped of most of their gold. Tutankhamun's grandmother was found there, for instance.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2017 10:44
|
|
|
Nth Doctor posted:Got that red hand on my family's coat of arms. I'm informing the IRA.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2017 11:06
|
|
|
Khazar-khum posted:Amenhotep II was an aggressive badass. He was buff and tall, with a bow he boasted only he could pull. When his tomb was found, he still had the bow with him. A couple days later locals broke in and stole it and many other things. His tomb was used as a mummy cache, with other pharaohs and their families put there in the 21 D to protect them, after they'd been stripped of most of their gold. Tutankhamun's grandmother was found there, for instance. Then you have Sensuret I who called himself "the throat-slitter of Asia". He also had his enemies names' written on clay pots and then he ritually smashed them before going to war.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2017 12:54
|
|
|
Alhazred posted:Then you have Sensuret I who called himself "the throat-slitter of Asia". He also had his enemies names' written on clay pots and then he ritually smashed them before going to war. wow today i learned that zelda was based on real history
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2017 16:42
|
|
|
During WW I the british needed to camouflage their horses when they fought in Africa. This is what they came up with:
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2018 18:49
|
|
|
gowb posted:wow today i learned that zelda was based on real history Zelda's character was named after F Scott Fitzgerald's wife, so that's not too far from the truth.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2018 20:38
|
|
Alhazred posted:During WW I the british needed to camouflage their horses when they fought in Africa. This is what they came up with: Is that a horse or a donkey? I know some horse breeds come small, but that doesn't look much like a horse to me aardwolf posted:Zelda's character was named after F Scott Fitzgerald's wife, so that's not too far from the truth. e: Um, nice try. Zelda is the video game. F Scott Fitzgerald's wife was actually called Link
|
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2018 20:42
|
|
|
F. Scott Fitzgerald had it rough. On the one hand, his wife was into small penis humiliation, whereas he himself was more into having his friends tell him that his dick was adequately sized. The above is actual true history, at least according to Hemingway.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2018 20:51
|
|
|
Sulla-Marius 88 posted:Is that a horse or a donkey? I know some horse breeds come small, but that doesn't look much like a horse to me Uh, that's obviously a zebra.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2018 20:55
|
|
|
Krankenstyle posted:The above is actual true history, at least according to Hemingway. So a total lie then!
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2018 22:36
|
|
|
Trabant posted:So a total lie then! Probably, but one that is well told. For what it's worth, A Moveable Feast is at least nominally supposed to be autobiographical.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2018 22:50
|
|
|
Roman deities generally only communicated with humans via dreams, visions, prophecies or a complex system of divination employed by augurs or haruspices to find out what the gods' will was. All of these venues of communication tended to be pretty cryptic, obviously, and for ancient Romans it was a matter of fact that it took professionals to be able to read and interpret these divine signs. Exceptions to this were rare: once, a voice emanated from the temple of he goddess Juno and commanded the sacrifice of a pregnant sow; another instance is even more interesting. When in the early 4th century BC invading Gallic tribes threatened to attack the city of Rome itself, an unknown divine voice uttered very clear words of warning in everyday Latin to random passersby. Roman historiography is unclear about the details of that incident - one tradition holds that a certain Marcus Caedicius once walked down the Via Nova at night, when he suddenly heard a voice commanding him to inform the Senate that a Gallic attack was imminent. Another tradition (probably the older one) speaks of the voice coming from the sacred grove of Vesta, ordering that the city's defences were to be raised. In any way, the warning wasn't heeded and the city was ravaged by the attackers. As penance, the Senate ordered that a temple were to be built to that unknown god who was only known as Aius locutius, which might roughly be translated as "spoken affirmation", "the act of speaking" or simply "the voice". Its cult eventually died out again, and today we don't know anymore where the temple might have stood, but for centuries the Romans venerated a god whose name they didn't know, who had revealed itself exactly once and (as Cicero quips) who, after being dubbed "the voice", never spoke again. Another fascinating tidbit of Roman religious practice was the ritual of evocatio, which they occasionally observed during he early days of the Republic. This ritual was used when the Romans besieged an enemy city and involved a ceremony where they tried to lure out the city's patron deity, promising it a more dignified and proper worship in Rome itself provided it stopped protecting the city. When the Romans eventually emerged victorious, they would loot the deity's temple and transport its relics and other sacred objects to Rome, where a lavish temple for this god was built as reward for its betrayal. An amazingly dickish way of warfare 
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2018 12:13
|
|
|
System Metternich posted:Roman deities generally only communicated with humans via dreams, visions, prophecies or a complex system of divination employed by augurs or haruspices to find out what the gods' will was. All of these venues of communication tended to be pretty cryptic, obviously, and for ancient Romans it was a matter of fact that it took professionals to be able to read and interpret these divine signs. Exceptions to this were rare: once, a voice emanated from the temple of he goddess Juno and commanded the sacrifice of a pregnant sow; another instance is even more interesting. When in the early 4th century BC invading Gallic tribes threatened to attack the city of Rome itself, an unknown divine voice uttered very clear words of warning in everyday Latin to random passersby. Roman historiography is unclear about the details of that incident - one tradition holds that a certain Marcus Caedicius once walked down the Via Nova at night, when he suddenly heard a voice commanding him to inform the Senate that a Gallic attack was imminent. Another tradition (probably the older one) speaks of the voice coming from the sacred grove of Vesta, ordering that the city's defences were to be raised. In any way, the warning wasn't heeded and the city was ravaged by the attackers. As penance, the Senate ordered that a temple were to be built to that unknown god who was only known as Aius locutius, which might roughly be translated as "spoken affirmation", "the act of speaking" or simply "the voice". Its cult eventually died out again, and today we don't know anymore where the temple might have stood, but for centuries the Romans venerated a god whose name they didn't know, who had revealed itself exactly once and (as Cicero quips) who, after being dubbed "the voice", never spoke again. Okay so you could just hide out in some place with a proper echo and tell random people poo poo and they'd believe you're a god. That's kinda cool. Imagine the ancient roman equivalent of 4chan catching on to that idea.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2018 12:19
|
|
|
I think what's remarkable about it is that it's the exception that proves the rule. As System Metternich said, the Romans had a pretty complex relationship with divinity and numerous ways for determining the 'legitimacy' of any given dynamic. They didn't just have cults popping up overnight because someone heard coughing from a smouldering bush - but once something is seen as 'legitimized', the superstitious bastards will honour it like you wouldn't believe. Presumably there were tonnes of people trying the disembodied voice routine, but only one was lucky enough to presage an actual attack on Rome. And then the Roman existential dread kicks in and you have a cult for centuries. Also, the "stealing other cities' deities" trick never struck me as particularly dickish, it just seems more a reflection of the Roman ego, their religious fanaticism, and also works out being a pretty pragmatic way of justifying looting enemy temples, the treasures of which can be brought back home and used as collateral for emergency war-time loans.
|
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2018 12:32
|
|
|
tbh i wanna know which other ways of communicating with humanity there are for deities (aside from dreams, visions, prophecies, & complex systems of divination)
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2018 12:49
|
|
|
Krankenstyle posted:tbh i wanna know which other ways of communicating with humanity there are for deities (aside from dreams, visions, prophecies, & complex systems of divination) Making a human woman pregnant with your god-baby seems to be surprisingly common in several religions.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2018 12:52
|
|
|
oh poo poo i suppose it can be called communicating a weird god-fetus into a woman
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2018 13:03
|
|
|
Krankenstyle posted:tbh i wanna know which other ways of communicating with humanity there are for deities (aside from dreams, visions, prophecies, & complex systems of divination) Devastating floods are usually a pretty clear sign that they're mad with you. Or just that they'd like you to turn down the music.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2018 13:07
|
|
|
floods and other forces majeures dont count, they affect a ton of people so how can you know god is talking to you specifically?
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2018 13:10
|
|
|
Angels are popular proxies for God in many religions.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2018 13:16
|
|
|
Krankenstyle posted:floods and other forces majeures dont count, they affect a ton of people so how can you know god is talking to you specifically? Well, you said "with humanity".
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2018 13:32
|
|
|
yea i guess i did
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2018 13:40
|
|
|
Stealing patron deities was probably a very smart move to lower morale and resistance in conquered cities, depriving them of a literal idol to look to. I recall hearing that the deification of the Emperor himself may have been adopted to appease Egyptian subjects used to a god-king.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2018 13:59
|
|
|
Definitely. Pre-christian European deities often had a physical component. Islamic diplomats mention a certain tree in Sweden that was important in Norse paganism. There's also supposed to have been a place on the Heligoland island (hence its name, "holy land"). Et cetera. Anyway check out the first christian bishop of Denmark literally toppling the manifestation of the Slavic deity Svetovid/Svantevit.  What an rear end in a top hat.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2018 14:16
|
|
|
Hell, look at the Crusades, Christians aren't immune to getting materially attached to things and places important to their religion to the point of being willing to make war to 'take them back'. (or at least use that as an excuse for conquest and plunder, but aren't they all)
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2018 14:31
|
|
|
i read somewhere, and its probably not true, but you are supposed to be able to build more than one cross from all the splinters in various reliquiae
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2018 14:35
|
|
|
Krankenstyle posted:i read somewhere, and its probably not true, but you are supposed to be able to build more than one cross from all the splinters in various reliquiae There were also multiple of Jesus's foreskin.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2018 14:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 16:49 |
|
|
The joke is more that you could add up all the splinters and you'd have a forest, and absolutely accurate. Crusaders were a pretty credulous bunch. See also bones of saints and feathers from angels, and sometimes the Virgin Mary's milk.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2018 14:38
|
|