Cyrano4747 posted:

whatever caveman figured out bashing your fellow tribesman's head in with a rock to take his wife and sweet cloak wasn't optimal for a smoothly functioning society.

Grand Fromage posted:

Mr Enderby posted:

I love the face on that glyptodon. "Just ignore them Greg. You are better than this. Just keep walking."

Guildencrantz posted:

Edit: Actually, would humans even be able to kill that thing with spears? That armor looks pretty tough.

Tunicate posted:

Xenophon is pretty great.

I love his inspirational speech about hoe horses are useless

cheetah7071 posted:

Yeah I'm assuming that it's a combination of Caesar being designed for mass consumption and the Landmark translation's aim at a lay audience but I'm seriously more into this than anything I've read in a while. There might not be many ancient writings that have the same punch but I assume like at least two of Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon would

Tunicate posted:

Xenophon is pretty great.

I love his inspirational speech about hoe horses are useless

King of False Promises posted:

The Landmark Herodotus is excellent.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Yeah I'm still pretty salty that there is now a landmark edition of xenophon's hellenica, and a landmark of Arian's anabasis, but no landmark xenophon's anabasis, what the gently caress

[

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Yeah I'm still pretty salty that there is now a landmark edition of xenophon's hellenica, and a landmark of Arian's anabasis, but no landmark xenophon's anabasis, what the gently caress

[

Epicurius posted:

No dogs. Therefore not Xenophon's best work.

quote:

While I am at home she remains by my side, and accompanies me when I go out, following me to the gymnasium, and, while I am exercising, sits by me. On my return home, she runs in front of me, often looking to see whether I had turned off the road; and as soon as she catches sight of me, shows symptoms of joy, and again, turns and trots in front of me. If I am going out on any government business, she remains with my friend, and treats him exactly the same. If she has not seen either of us for a short time, she jumps up repeatedly by way of greeting, and barks with joy. At meals she pats us, with one foot and the other, to remind us to feed fer.

Having been beaten with a whip as a puppy, if anyone, even to this day, mentions a whip, she will come up to the speaker cowering and begging, and will jump up and hang on their neck, applying her mouth to theirs as if to kiss them, and will not let go until she is appeased.

Now really I do not think that I should be ashamed to write the name of this dog; so that it may be left to posterity.

[I] had a greyhound named Horme, who was of the greatest speed and intelligence and, was altogether excellent.

cheetah7071 posted:

Their website says that's up next

cheetah7071 posted:

An example of the kind of excitement I'm getting from just reading Caesar instead of a history book about Caesar is in book three of the Gallic Wars when he goes into great length about how the Veniti boats are superior to Roman ships in the stormy Atlantic in basically every way, lists all the things that don't work on them, like ramming them, grappling them, building towers on your boats to get higher up, etc. Only when the actual pitched battle is fought does he reveal that he had come up with the strategy of using improvised polearms to cut the ropes connecting the mast to the hull to render their sails useless

Both compelling to read just as a piece of exciting literature and full of cool little historical tidbits I've missed by not reading primary sources and am now kicking myself over (Romans built towers on their boats to try to get the high ground over other boats! That's really cool!)

Platystemon posted:

The Romans were really bad at boats.

cheetah7071 posted:

An example of the kind of excitement I'm getting from just reading Caesar instead of a history book about Caesar is in book three of the Gallic Wars when he goes into great length about how the Veniti boats are superior to Roman ships in the stormy Atlantic in basically every way, lists all the things that don't work on them, like ramming them, grappling them, building towers on your boats to get higher up, etc. Only when the actual pitched battle is fought does he reveal that he had come up with the strategy of using improvised polearms to cut the ropes connecting the mast to the hull to render their sails useless

Both compelling to read just as a piece of exciting literature and full of cool little historical tidbits I've missed by not reading primary sources and am now kicking myself over (Romans built towers on their boats to try to get the high ground over other boats! That's really cool!)

Platystemon posted:

The Romans were really bad at boats.

DCXCIX–DCC AUC: In which Bad Boat Republic invades Good (!) Cav Island

Don Gato posted:

The Romans got good at boats when they mounted flamethrowers on them, I don't know what you're talking about .

Platystemon posted:

“The Romans”

Paging Byzantine.

skasion posted:

Probably the best Roman boat story is that time the Vandals conquered Africa thereby cutting the economic lifeline of the empire in Italy, so the Eastern Emperor understandably freaked out at the possibility of his sister empire being destroyed and his imperial colleague dethroned on his watch, so spent hundreds of thousands of pounds building a fleet of over 1000 boats to help the Western Empire reconquer Africa. Then when they actually showed up, they got distracted negotiating and the Vandals sneakily torched half the fleet in a single night and the Western Empire collapsed within ten years lol

HEY GUNS posted:

i thought that from late antiquity until...way too far into the middle ages, boat combat was land combat on a boat, complete with towers and catapults

HEY GUNS posted:

i thought that from late antiquity until...way too far into the middle ages, boat combat was land combat on a boat, complete with towers and catapults

Grand Fromage posted:

Nah it was about ramming. The Romans were godawful at it in the First Punic War, so they decided "well, we're good at stabbing" and invented the corvus so they could just latch onto a Carthaginian boat and send over soldiers to murder everyone. Eventually they figured out actual boat combat and ditched the corvus.

Basically everyone was riding around in a big torpedo and the goal was to slam the other dude before you got slammed. The only real variation was the period when Roman flamethrower ships were loving up anyone dumb enough to try them.

HEY GUNS posted:

i thought that from late antiquity until...way too far into the middle ages, boat combat was land combat on a boat, complete with towers and catapults

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

Thank the worst ever emperor for that.

quote:

Basiliscus fled to sanctuary in a church, but he was betrayed by Acacius and surrendered himself and his family after extracting a solemn promise from Zeno not to shed their blood. Basiliscus, his wife Aelia Zenonis and his son Marcus were sent to a fortress in Cappadocia,[26] where Zeno had them enclosed in a dry cistern, to die from exposure.

quote:

the best evidence (archaeological and written accounts) suggests that qanat irrigation was first invented in the Armenian-Persian region about 600-700 B.C. Some scholars have suggested that qanats were originally introduced in Syria by the Persians, when Syria was incorporated as a province within their empire in the 6th century B.C. Persians had already used qanats nearby to open up the water supply for Egypt's Kharga Oasis by about 500 B.C. (Forbes, 1964, p. 183), and ancient Persian potsherds found inside qanats in the Arava Valley, in the Israeli Negev, suggest that these qanats were first constructed during the Persian rule of the Holy Land (537-332 B.C.)