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Dalael posted:That became his strategy after his own cavalry was massacred tho. The Parthian strategy was to shoot arrows at the Romans until they forced them into the testudo, at which point heavily armored cataphracts could charge the densely packed infantry and cause significant casualties. Then, when the Romans loosened the formation to deal with cataphracts, the heavy cavalry would withdraw and the horse archers would start shooting them again. Crassus was hoping they'd run out of arrows because of this tactic and he ended up losing his cavalry (and his son) when he realized the horse archers were being constantly resupplied by camels and sent them, and a few cohorts of infantry/archers, to deal with them. The Parthians feigned retreat and shot up the pursuing Romans, and when they got far enough away from the main Roman army the Parthian heavy cavalry annihilated them.
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Aug 14, 2019 21:29
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CommonShore posted:By "show up late" mean that masses of highly skilled horse archers don't really seem to bother the Romans much until the Huns get into the mix. I don't know of any times where "And the Romans got hosed up by some loving horse archers" comes into play before the Hun era, anyway. I could be ignorant of further examples. I guess there's the whole "Parthian shot" thing, but that is in my head as a tactical failure in over pursuit and overextension, not a lack of an effective answer. the black sea and eastern borders of the empire extended up to the sort of terrain where horse archery is extremely effective and then stopped. it's fair to say that, much like how they became spooked by germania and gave up on it pretty early so there aren't a lot of stories about the romans getting owned by germans until the germans came to them, a big reason why there aren't more "and the romans got hosed up by horse archers" stories is because they were very uninterested in trying to hold territory against the steppe nomads. not least because the romans loved hiring horse archer auxiliaries and valued them more than holding a mostly worthless stretch of steppe. also wrt phalanx chat. the ideal of the phalanx is that they were supposed to be composed of hardened semi-professional heavy infantry who trained fairly regularly, but why would one of these ideal phalanxes have issues fighting against maniples even on level terrain? pike squares fended off looser formations all the time in hey gal's era, when they were largely composed of professional mercenaries. it was definitely an exaggeration to say you could shove a farmer into a phalanx and he'd be fine, but that was also part of my point: how often did a phalanx really live up to the hellenic city-state ideal? if we're talking athens, sparta, macedon, then yeah sure they're a disciplined force. the gauls, though? for all that they weren't the barbarians depicted by the romans, they obviously lost pretty frequently once the romans had a professionalized army deploying in maniple-style formations (technically after the marian reforms they aren't maniples but marius didn't really change the tactics, just organizational and logistical stuff). the whole point of the maniple style, aside from superior handling of uneven terrain compared to the phalanx, is to pick apart an undisciplined phalanx or shield wall by giving the centurions a degree of independent movement and initiative.
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Aug 14, 2019 22:08
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do we know anything about training in the pre-Marian army? Probably the kind of subject ancient authors could never be bothered to describe in detail
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Aug 14, 2019 22:26
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Squalid posted:do we know anything about training in the pre-Marian army? Probably the kind of subject ancient authors could never be bothered to describe in detail In The Storm Before the Storm an incident was described where a general was stopped from sailing off to his destination by bad weather and put his army through gladiator training routines to kill time, and then was astonished by how much more effective his otherwise-raw recruits were just from that. Apparently this incident inspired some of Marius' training reforms.
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Aug 14, 2019 22:30
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Jazerus posted:pike squares fended off looser formations all the time in hey gal's era, when they were largely composed of professional mercenaries. it was definitely an exaggeration to say you could shove a farmer into a phalanx and he'd be fine, but that was also part of my point: how often did a phalanx really live up to the hellenic city-state ideal? if we're talking athens, sparta, macedon, then yeah sure they're a disciplined force.
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Aug 14, 2019 22:41
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Pre-Marian reforms the Roman army functioned fairly similar to the Greek armies. You had to provide your own equipment, served in a role based on your class, units were made up of levies of men from the same area, etc. I'd imagine training was similar where men of a certain age were just sort of expected to be training during the offseason from farming. The nature of Roman politics/the consulship incentivized putting yourself into debt so you could win glory leading legions (and loot the money back), so with war being a near-constant part of life I'd imagine there were plenty of guys around who knew what they were doing to help train the younger men. But that's all just conjecture on my part.
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Aug 14, 2019 22:42
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Jamwad Hilder posted:...with war being a near-constant part of life I'd imagine there were plenty of guys around who knew what they were doing to help train the younger men. But that's all just conjecture on my part.
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Aug 14, 2019 22:46
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CommonShore posted:The big question that I keep having is 1) what is the counter to this unit? rifles
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Aug 14, 2019 23:37
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Jazerus posted:rifles humidity too I've heard
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Aug 14, 2019 23:38
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cheetah7071 posted:humidity too I've heard not a portable solution tho
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Aug 14, 2019 23:40
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Jazerus posted:not a portable solution tho  
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Aug 14, 2019 23:54
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vaping at genghis khan to own the nomads
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Aug 15, 2019 00:11
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CommonShore posted:While we're on the general topic of ancient formations/counter formations, I'm perpetually impressed by the relative efficacy of the Hun/Avar composite horse archer as I'm working through the relevant historical narrative podcasts. The big question that I keep having is 1) what is the counter to this unit? Over a long campaign I can imagine that it's vulnerable to skill/horse attrition but it really seems to answer every question of warfare in the era, and 2) why did it show up so relatively late? Make friends with a feuding tribe of horse archers and now enjoy ally that can hurt them strategically while you hunker down in a siege. Sometimes the steppe nomads create a strong hegemony like the Mongols and you can't do that anymore oops. But then they have the single greatest military in the world, and they've worked hard for it, so what do you expect? A strong military that can sustain itself well and never gives up is just plain strong, the best you can do is fight them to a standstill and hope they fall apart. In the case of the Huns, this happened, they basically disintegrated into a million constituent tribes when Attila was killed. The Mongols had a stronger succession. Walled cities are not great fortifications because they have to defend a huge area and population. The good castles are small and fit a few dozen-hundred guys with enough supplies to last years. The steppe nomads tend to have bad navies so you can also use coastal forts to good effect.
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Aug 15, 2019 00:22
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I'm sorry for asking something that must come up regularly but I'm showing HBO's Rome to someone again. Is there a YouTube or essay or something that addresses the authenticity of the displayed cultural features such as religious rituals, clothing, street activity, and so forth, rather than the play-by-play of the military campaigns? I know how the late Republic wars went down already courtesy of The History of Rome podcast and this thread. I also know that generally speaking HBO's Rome did a smashing job of authenticity. But this thread has also taught me some useful info like that Atia bathing in bull's blood for a divination in episode 1 or 2 was not authentic - what I'm looking for is a source of information like that, fun information to accentuate watching the show. For example, there was a little boy with a bow and quiver of arrows leading Octavia around her husband's home when she went to see him against her mother's wishes - what was up with that? e: or when Marc Antony proposed that Vorenus rejoin the legion - Antony was fully nude and being tended to by a slave with a stick for some reason. I have subtitles for the show that add historical notes periodically and they said he appeared to be getting cleaned of sweats and oils after exercise. That sort of information is neat. SuperKlaus fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Aug 15, 2019 |
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Aug 15, 2019 02:09
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Antonius was being cleaned. They oiled you up and scrapped the oil and dirt off with a stick Oh look I found it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigil
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Aug 15, 2019 02:15
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Mister Olympus posted:vaping at genghis khan to own the nomads Been awhile since we changed thread titles.
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Aug 15, 2019 02:45
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I think a reason why overlooking the Parthians is they didn't really attack Rome. They were on the defensive for most of the conflicts, minus succession squabbles in Armenia.
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Aug 15, 2019 03:00
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Mister Olympus posted:vaping at genghis khan to own the nomads new title
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Aug 15, 2019 03:09
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The Parthians attacked the Roman east with the help of Quintus Labienus during the Liberators’ War. It actually took a couple years to re-secure the east, that was the context of Antonius’ eastern disaster. During the high empire serious incursions stopped though, because the Parthians weren’t dumb and realized that the united east under Rome was way beyond their weight class. Once the Sassanid state is established the empire is militarily weaker and gets weaker yet after the Cyprian Plague and generally the state structure eating poo poo during the whole second half of the 3rd century, thereby encouraging more incursions. Eventually the east develops an effective military balance with the Persians and a long relative peace develops again, where the east is sufficiently strong that Persia has little to gain from invading.
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Aug 15, 2019 03:23
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cheetah7071 posted:humidity too I've heard I'm not sure how well this holds up. China is also incredibly humid in large swathes of its territory. In addition compound bows were being used throughout China and southeast Asia. Now maybe they used different glues but construction was fairly similar to the Mongol bow.
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Aug 15, 2019 05:44
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GlassEye-Boy posted:I'm not sure how well this holds up. China is also incredibly humid in large swathes of its territory. In addition compound bows were being used throughout China and southeast Asia. Now maybe they used different glues but construction was fairly similar to the Mongol bow. IIRC bows getting wet and loving up glue was mentioned in the history of Rome as an issue for some group of horse archers. Can’t remember if it was rain or humidity or what, but I do think it was an issue. Google isn’t helping me a ton here though.
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Aug 15, 2019 07:10
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From what I've read of recent scholarship the thinking for why the Mongols didn't conquer Europe is a combo of: A) Europe was really far from home base, even for the Mongols. The Mongol territories in Europe became their own thing pretty quickly. B) Europe's terrain isn't great for big hordes of horses. China's isn't either, but China is right there and Europe is way over there. The Mongol territories in Europe are limited mostly to the European end of the Great Steppe. C) The Mongols were capable of siege warfare, but Europe was just so, so dense with castles that assaulting it as a whole would be an endless nightmare. Subutai's scout mission figured this much out while it was pantsing various Eastern Europeans. It would've taken a massive, sustained effort to push across Europe and it wasn't deemed worth the trouble.
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Aug 15, 2019 07:19
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tildes posted:IIRC bows getting wet and loving up glue was mentioned in the history of Rome as an issue for some group of horse archers. Can’t remember if it was rain or humidity or what, but I do think it was an issue. Google isn’t helping me a ton here though. By the sixteenth century, the tables had turned. During the Great Siege of Malta, rain turned Ottoman matchlocks into clubs while the defenders’ crossbows worked a treat. Steel prods may rust in the long term, but in the short term they are unaffected by moisture.
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Aug 15, 2019 07:36
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Shouldn't a guy on foot be able to operate a bigger bow than the guy on the horse and therefore be able to outrange and fight off the guy on the horse? Or is the limiting factor the operator's ability to draw the bow and not its size?
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Aug 15, 2019 11:54
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aphid_licker posted:Shouldn't a guy on foot be able to operate a bigger bow than the guy on the horse and therefore be able to outrange and fight off the guy on the horse? Or is the limiting factor the operator's ability to draw the bow and not its size? The problem with that is that the horse archers can just switch to swords and ride them down. Or call in their heavy cavalry. Or just move out of range until the bowmen on foot have wasted all their arrows. Being mobile gives you lots of options.
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Aug 15, 2019 12:20
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aphid_licker posted:Shouldn't a guy on foot be able to operate a bigger bow than the guy on the horse and therefore be able to outrange and fight off the guy on the horse? Or is the limiting factor the operator's ability to draw the bow and not its size? Composite bows can be significantly smaller than self bows and still have a similar strength.
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Aug 15, 2019 12:33
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aphid_licker posted:Shouldn't a guy on foot be able to operate a bigger bow than the guy on the horse and therefore be able to outrange and fight off the guy on the horse? Or is the limiting factor the operator's ability to draw the bow and not its size? I think at least sassanids also had some fully armored horse archers too, so it wasn't necessarily that easy to just shoot a broadhead into the sides of the horse either.
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Aug 15, 2019 13:09
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skasion posted:Composite bows can be significantly smaller than self bows and still have a similar strength. Yeah there's a limit to how strong a bow can be and have a person still able to pull it, and composite bows already hit that threshold. Crossbows on the other hand do get stronger and can outrange horse archers, which is exactly what the Chinese did to counter them.
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Aug 15, 2019 13:31
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I don’t think we ever hear of Romans doing that though, which is odd since I’m fairly sure they had crossbows.
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Aug 15, 2019 13:45
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skasion posted:I don’t think we ever hear of Romans doing that though, which is odd since I’m fairly sure they had crossbows. Yeah the Romans had crossbows and torsion catapults. https://www.ancient.eu/article/649/roman-artillery/
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Aug 15, 2019 14:27
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah the Romans had crossbows and torsion catapults. https://www.ancient.eu/article/649/roman-artillery/ It's fascinating how little the Romans talked about crossbows. Vegetius apparently speaks of them in passing, but seems to basically assume the reader is familiar with them and disinterested. It's unclear whether they were typically affiliated with the archers or the siege weapons, and frankly the Romans seem more interested in using them on horseback for sport hunting than anything else. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_crossbows#Greece
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Aug 15, 2019 17:18
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Did the "real men fight in melee" stigma ever really go away in roman culture?
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Aug 15, 2019 17:20
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aphid_licker posted:Shouldn't a guy on foot be able to operate a bigger bow than the guy on the horse and therefore be able to outrange and fight off the guy on the horse? Or is the limiting factor the operator's ability to draw the bow and not its size? These look pretty big to me. There was a goon posting here who was very knowledgeable about the bows used by horse archers, but I forgot who.
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Aug 15, 2019 17:24
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aphid_licker posted:Shouldn't a guy on foot be able to operate a bigger bow than the guy on the horse and therefore be able to outrange and fight off the guy on the horse? Or is the limiting factor the operator's ability to draw the bow and not its size? The foot archer has a stabler platform and an easier target too. The cataphracts won't give a poo poo, but in most steppe armies they're a minority, and ideally you have your own armoured cavalry to respond to them. The Achaemenid Persians basic fighting style was based around this principle, the infantry was a stack of archer-spearmen who took cover behind a single wall of guys with big-rear end shields, alongside a healthy component of cavalry. They did alright against steppe armies, losing here and there but not getting overrun. Unfortunately, this makes the infantry less capable against a big mass of guys who all have shields, which is why hoplite-esque infantry like the Greeks or Egyptians or Karians etc were so "heavy" in comparison.
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Aug 15, 2019 17:52
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Did the "real men fight in melee" stigma ever really go away in roman culture? Nope. They stopped thinking cavalry were a bunch of wimps but ranged weaponry was always second class. Vital, they weren't stupid, but you never see a Roman army experimenting with large scale archery or whatever. They do seem to have been real into battlefield artillery though, there are a couple recent-ish discovered battlefields that are just littered with artillery ammo.
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Aug 15, 2019 19:36
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Grand Fromage posted:Nope. They stopped thinking cavalry were a bunch of wimps but ranged weaponry was always second class. Vital, they weren't stupid, but you never see a Roman army experimenting with large scale archery or whatever. They do seem to have been real into battlefield artillery though, there are a couple recent-ish discovered battlefields that are just littered with artillery ammo. Was it pretty limited to siege environments, or did they use "field artillery"? I've picked up that the smaller scorpions were used on the battlefield but what about the big ballistas, onagers, etc?
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Aug 15, 2019 20:34
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It looks like scorpions and ballistae were used in field battles. I didn't see anything about finding onager balls.
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Aug 15, 2019 20:42
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Grand Fromage posted:It looks like scorpions and ballistae were used in field battles. I didn't see anything about finding onager balls. Wouldn't Onager balls be used mostly on defense tho? When it comes to using them on a throng of people running towards you, I would think that any objects (such as rocks) would probably do.
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Aug 15, 2019 20:48
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Dalael posted:Wouldn't Onager balls be used mostly on defense tho? When it comes to using them on a throng of people running towards you, I would think that any objects (such as rocks) would probably do. I think the real problem is I'm not sure you can tell the difference between onager and ballistae balls. I'm just trusting battlefield archaeologists when they say there isn't any evidence of onagers. There's also the matter of transport, there's evidence of scorpions and ballistae being transported by cart already assembled but I think onagers were like trebuchets, they were often built on-site at a siege rather than being brought with the army.
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Aug 15, 2019 20:52
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Zopotantor posted:These look pretty big to me.
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Aug 15, 2019 20:59
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