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Plutonis posted:Athens would absolutely have won against Sparta if the latter weren't bankrolled by Persian gold and supplied with a Persian navy though. That's the other hilarious fun fact how the heroic Spartans ended up essentially serving as a proxy war for the Persians. It's almost like the Persians were better off stirring the pot in mainland Greece via proxy wars instead of their various failed invasion attempts.
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Aug 26, 2019 00:52
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venturing a wild guess that the Battle of Thermopylae was to collect on debts
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Aug 26, 2019 00:55
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Epaminondas did nothing wrong
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Aug 26, 2019 00:56
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Victory Position posted:venturing a wild guess that the Battle of Thermopylae was to collect on debts best part about global warming is soon the sea will be as high as it was at the battle and we can better appreciate how narrow the path was for a few years until its under water.
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Aug 26, 2019 01:00
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athenians were shits too
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Aug 26, 2019 01:10
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the worst
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Aug 26, 2019 01:12
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really when it comes down to it the Persians should have won
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Aug 26, 2019 01:19
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PittTheElder posted:The Storm Before The Storm. All about the causes of Sulla's Civil War, and why the Roman Republic was bleeding to death long before Gneaus, Marcus, and Julius came along. mike Duncan is bad OP. his take is that those crazy gracchi, boy they sure took things too far by not respecting  whereas Plutarch makes it abundantly clear that no matter how good and non-disruptive the Gracchan proposals were, the rich rear end in a top hat senators weren’t going to give the people jack poo poo
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Aug 26, 2019 01:22
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 I did not get that impression when I read the book, and I'm firmly with Plutarch on the Senate being the assholes loving everything up.
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Aug 26, 2019 01:30
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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I mean I don't think its particularly controversial to say that decorum was the only thing holding the republic together. It also prevented major systemic issues from getting addressed and ultimately holding to decorum was at best a bandaid Just like today
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Aug 26, 2019 01:47
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in fairness duncan assigns a lot of blame to the senate, but he also frames the elder gracchus violating the mos maiorum as when things started to go badly, leading him to say both sides are bad actually. he has a similar Simon-schama-rear end centrist take on the French revolution because he doesn’t understand class dynamics
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Aug 26, 2019 01:56
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So why were there so few Spartans later on? I always heard it was because they were eugenic psychos who killed too many ‘inferior’ babies but idk
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Aug 26, 2019 02:52
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Delthalaz posted:So why were there so few Spartans later on? I always heard it was because they were eugenic psychos who killed too many ‘inferior’ babies but idk The short answer is we don't know. There's a big gap in the record between Sparta being a rival to Athens and being unceremoniously defeated by Thebes.
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Aug 26, 2019 02:55
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Their psycho training regime and the constant skirmish warfare with helots and the surrounding city states like Argos probably didn't help.
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Aug 26, 2019 03:00
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The Social Wars are crazy in how many people died and Rome just kept on going somehow.
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Aug 26, 2019 03:08
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cheetah7071 posted:The short answer is we don't know. There's a big gap in the record between Sparta being a rival to Athens and being unceremoniously defeated by Thebes. I’m impressed they just kept up with whatever it was that wasn’t working, watching numbers decline consistently for centuries. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it! Said one of the 100 remaining Spartans.
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Aug 26, 2019 03:17
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twoday posted:It boggles the mind to image that they could have been able to navigate such a vast area of the ocean across generations without the use of maps. However, though they did not have writing as we know it, they were able to do so with the aid of stick charts. That link explains it better than I could. Thanks, rear end in a top hat. I just spent three hours reading about the Rongorongo and now I’m just frustrated that we will clearly never have a loving clue what that is about.
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Aug 26, 2019 04:44
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Delthalaz posted:I’m impressed they just kept up with whatever it was that wasn’t working, watching numbers decline consistently for centuries. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it! Said one of the 100 remaining Spartans. Not that it at all solves the mystery, but it helps to remember that classical greek societies were largely rearward-facing. For all they invented and philosophies they explored, their go-to reaction to any problem was, first, to ask "how would our hallowed forefathers have dealt with this?" and tried whatever came to mind before trying anything else.
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Aug 26, 2019 05:00
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Delthalaz posted:So why were there so few Spartans later on? I always heard it was because they were eugenic psychos who killed too many ‘inferior’ babies but idk Well the agoge was a brutally training process that killed many kids outright and the training process took many years to complete for those that did survive. Most of the success of the Spartan military was due to clever cultivation of the myth of invincibility which meant that most greek armies would rather retreat than face them in a open fight. https://www.ancientworldmagazine.com/articles/spartans-war-myth-vs-reality/
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Aug 26, 2019 06:10
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I guess I really can’t be too critical. Folks in a few hundred years (fingers crossed!) will be examining our ruins like — why didn’t you do anything about the obviously impending climate catastrophe? All signs were pointing to your whole civilization marching off the cliff.
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Aug 26, 2019 06:22
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Bernstrike posted:mike Duncan is bad OP. his take is that those crazy gracchi, boy they sure took things too far by not respecting 
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Aug 26, 2019 12:36
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Delthalaz posted:I guess I really can’t be too critical. Folks in a few hundred years (fingers crossed!) will be examining our ruins like — why didn’t you do anything about the obviously impending climate catastrophe? All signs were pointing to your whole civilization marching off the cliff. The Mayans turned their jungle into plains burning lime for their stupid pyramids, right to the end
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Aug 26, 2019 12:41
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Dreylad posted:The Social Wars are crazy in how many people died and Rome just kept on going somehow. gently caress Rome, Samnites forever! Pompeii is Samnite, Romanae Eunt Dominae!
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Aug 26, 2019 13:11
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You have been PROSCRIBED. Justice will arrive shortly at your location. For your comfort, we recommend you compliantly follow the example below: 
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Aug 26, 2019 13:15
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Bernstrike posted:You have been PROSCRIBED. that looks insanely homoerotic
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Aug 26, 2019 13:46
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Delthalaz posted:So why were there so few Spartans later on? I always heard it was because they were eugenic psychos who killed too many ‘inferior’ babies but idk They fought wars too much and died. The Thebans ended up with the same problem. I dont think the overall population declined all that much, it was just the citizen class that dwindled to nothing as they fought to maintain their hegemonies. Athens skirted the issue by hiring mercenaries with all their money. Captain_Maclaine posted:Not that it at all solves the mystery, but it helps to remember that classical greek societies were largely rearward-facing. For all they invented and philosophies they explored, their go-to reaction to any problem was, first, to ask "how would our hallowed forefathers have dealt with this?" and tried whatever came to mind before trying anything else. Classical Greece is a really fun example of a vibrant and interesting society that would have absolutely gotten steamrolled by colonialism and turned into an olive oil plantation if they were around in the 1800s. Big Dick Cheney posted:Do we know how the Polynesians found all those tiny islands? I feel like the chances are slim that they would just find them randomly. Maybe I just don't know how boats work. Like others said, there are ways of detecting islands while they're still reasonably far away. Navigation wise, Polynesians could accurately measure latitude and heading, fairly accurate speed, and thus longitude through dead reckoning. The hypothesized form of exploration for them would be to sail out during a favourable season of winds, get to a predetermined latitude, and then just sail due West or East looking for signs of land before returning for home latitude on an estimated course. Home waters was where those swell charts were most useful so navigation could be refined as they neared home. Time was on their side and everybody knew how to sail so this wasnt an undue investment for them. The Polynesian societies who found large landmasses like NZ or Hawaii tended to transition to a more sedentary society and lose contact with their original islands over centuries. Slim Jim Pickens has issued a correction as of 18:37 on Aug 26, 2019 |
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Aug 26, 2019 17:27
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Classical Greece is a really fun example of a vibrant and interesting society that would have absolutely gotten steamrolled by colonialism and turned into an olive oil plantation if they were around in the 1800s. One thing I always find funny is the perplexed reaction of those philhellenes that actually went to Greece during the wars with Turkey and found the people there to be...different from what they'd expected.
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Aug 26, 2019 17:34
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Some or a lot of the reason for the ridiculous Greek nationalism you see with for example riots because the government is trying to settle things with Macedonia over that whole name dispute, claiming that Greek has barely changed since the 5th century etc. may be the condescending attitude of many educated Europeans to modern Greeks, seeing them as no true inheritors of classical Greece but mere mongrel usurpers squatting in the ruins of a greater civilization. This tendency has a long history but it's far from being gone, and of course the flip side of that is getting disappointed because modern Greeks don't fulfill your expectations, 2500 years being a very long time.
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Aug 26, 2019 17:42
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The funny part is that at the outset of the war they wanted to revive the roman empire. Greek-speaking orthodox Christians meant "Roman" for a hell of a lot longer than it meant "Greek". Greek-speaking Christians and Turkish-speaking Muslims were all mixed up throughout modern Greece and modern Turkey and I think that lasted until after world war I.
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Aug 26, 2019 17:49
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Yeah, at some point after christianization Hellene came to mean pagan Greek. It wasn't until the nationalist revival in the 19th century Greeks started to call themselves Hellenes again. Another thing about that is that in modern Greece the period of time they call Romaiokratia, Roman rule*, sometimes counted until the founding of Constantinople (Constantine the Great probably didn't even speak much Greek), has had a very low status in modern Greece. Recently a tomb was found in Macedonia and dated to either before or after the Romans started ruling Greece, it was hard to tell, and the issue actually became political and professor of archaeology Olga Palagia, who argued it was Roman, was accused of being unpatriotic for even suggesting such a thing. *At times you see it translated to "roman occupation" in museums and the like. Grevling has issued a correction as of 18:15 on Aug 26, 2019 |
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Aug 26, 2019 17:51
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SEX HAVER 40000 posted:so aside from 1491 and 1493 what books should i read? This may be more colonial history; but awhile back some random goon recommended 'The Island at the Center of the World' which i really enjoyed. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Island-Center-World-Manhattan-Forgotten/dp/1400078679 ladd has issued a correction as of 18:28 on Aug 26, 2019 |
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Aug 26, 2019 18:25
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cheetah7071 posted:The funny part is that at the outset of the war they wanted to revive the roman empire. Greek-speaking orthodox Christians meant "Roman" for a hell of a lot longer than it meant "Greek". Greek-speaking Christians and Turkish-speaking Muslims were all mixed up throughout modern Greece and modern Turkey and I think that lasted until after world war I. Yeah they did a population exchange in 1923. I will use considerable understatement to describe it as "kind of a mess."
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Aug 26, 2019 20:36
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Inspector Hound posted:The Mayans turned their jungle into plains burning lime for their stupid pyramids, right to the end Yeah the other problem with the noble savage living in nature sterotype of North American indigenous people (and indigenous people in general) is there's plenty of evidence of various societies overextending their resources or getting hit with drought/flooding and collapsing. No one society is immune to these problems, and resilience via decentralization to these things tends to run counter to how we tend to organize ourselves at a societal level. Not only the Mayans but several societies in the south western US also went through that cycle, not to mention various peoples living along the Andes and in the Amazon. It's still insane that complex societies developed along the Andes -- as Mann points out in 1491, it's the least likely spot you'd expect anything to emerge given the rapid increase in elevation and dryness. Dreylad has issued a correction as of 20:45 on Aug 26, 2019 |
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Aug 26, 2019 20:42
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Captain_Maclaine posted:One thing I always find funny is the perplexed reaction of those philhellenes that actually went to Greece during the wars with Turkey and found the people there to be...different from what they'd expected. It's like weeboos, time to go experience authentic Greek culture!
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Aug 26, 2019 21:31
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:They fought wars too much and died. The Thebans ended up with the same problem. I dont think the overall population declined all that much, it was just the citizen class that dwindled to nothing as they fought to maintain their hegemonies. Sparta's greatest victory was probably the Peloponnesian Wars, but they could never secure a decisive result and faced the limitations of being a Greek City-State up against much more powerful polities, like the Antigonids, Epirotes, Macedonians, and eventually the Romans. By the time the Romans arrived, the Antigonids were the hegemons of Greece, and their 'freedom' that Rome gave them basically just ended up with the Romans replacing Antigonid garrisons.
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Aug 26, 2019 21:34
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The structure of Spartan society would never allow them much of an empire beyond Laconia, the ruling class would have been too thinly spread and were unwilling to increase their own number outside of natural growth which as it turns out is hard to do when you yeet your kids off a cliff for being an ugly baby. Combine that with Thebe's big gay shocktroopers killing a bunch of soldiers that's takes literally a generation to replaceand you have the recipe for Sparta's decline into irrelevance
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Aug 26, 2019 21:40
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Agean90 posted:The structure of Spartan society would never allow them much of an empire beyond Laconia, the ruling class would have been too thinly spread and were unwilling to increase their own number outside of natural growth which as it turns out is hard to do when you yeet your kids off a cliff for being an ugly baby. Epaminondas: Give me one step and the day shall be ours! Theban Wargays: *shove* Spartans: We are undone *breaks, dies*
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Aug 26, 2019 21:42
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Captain_Maclaine posted:Epaminondas: Give me one step and the day shall be ours! Welp most of our slaves got killed/freed by armed pychos on horseback and now our army is like 1000 dudes max, maybe we should redistribute our land so we can actually do things outside our city state? No! It's the other states who are doing it wrong!
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Aug 26, 2019 21:51
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KiteAuraan posted:gently caress Rome, Samnites forever! Pompeii is Samnite, Romanae Eunt Dominae! you've written "roman female slave owners go" as a statement, not a command i give you full credit for surpassing the monty python sketch in creativity. optime benefactum! tell the others that you wrote the imperative/locative construction "Romani ite domum"
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Aug 27, 2019 00:09
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Panzeh posted:Sparta's greatest victory was probably the Peloponnesian Wars, but they could never secure a decisive result and faced the limitations of being a Greek City-State up against much more powerful polities, like the Antigonids, Epirotes, Macedonians, and eventually the Romans. By the time the Romans arrived, the Antigonids were the hegemons of Greece, and their 'freedom' that Rome gave them basically just ended up with the Romans replacing Antigonid garrisons. Sparta and all the other Greek city states seeking hegemony eventually ran into the same problem: they never developed a political system that could centralize governance over more than one polis. Instead after winning a war they simply relied on installing sympathetic, but fundamentally still independent clients to rule over defeated cities. However again and again these clients either just turned on their former friends or were overthrown by a revolution, and the city states turned on each other once again. Somehow Rome overcame this obstacle and was able to keep its Italian allies cooperative and subservient to Roman authority, and I'm not sure why they alone of all the classical city states was able to do it.
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Aug 27, 2019 01:04
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