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One thing I wonder about is how long the goldmines Phillip used to build his army could have kept producing. The reason professional armies are so rare in this period is few countries could afford them. If Phillip instead had wasted that windfall on lavish palaces and purple dye his successors might not have had the resources to do what he did if the gold ran out. I know something similar was the case with Athens and its navy. As I recall Herodotus described how shortly before the Persian wars the Athenians opened up the silver mines on euboea and took a vote on how to spend it: hookers and blow, or build a navy? They chose the navy, but that wasn't predestined. Eventually the mines ran out, but by then Athens was able to sustain its fleet via tribute.
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Feb 14, 2020 03:39
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Didn't Macedon have significantly better cavalry than the Greek city states? Was this native or largely from neighboring regions like Thrace? Seems important to winning wars not just battles.
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Feb 15, 2020 00:03
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The Macedonian phalanx had significant advantages over the standard greek phalanx -- chiefly the 20 ft. sarissa instead of the 7 foot standard greek spear. Alexander (or rather his father Philip) was essentially inventing the pike formation a couple thousand years early ( I said that to troll medievalists). Poorly, because pikes are mostly associated with the early modern.
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Feb 15, 2020 01:38
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feedmegin posted:Poorly, because pikes are mostly associated with the early modern. *Rambles about how the ERE was using Tercio formations in the 900's*
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Feb 15, 2020 01:40
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Weka posted:Didn't Macedon have significantly better cavalry than the Greek city states? Was this native or largely from neighboring regions like Thrace? Seems important to winning wars not just battles. The companion cavalry were Macedonian aristocrats, and the rest of their heavy cavalry was Thessalian (The Greeks barely talk about Thessaly, but when they do they always mention its got nice horses). The light cavalry is not well attested to, but most guesses for their origin are Thrace or Paeonia or Epirus. There were probably Macedonians too, it wouldn't be crazy. As Alexander advanced into Persia he also picked up cavalry from the various peoples of the old Achaemenid empire. It's pretty notable that the cavalry under employ of the Macedonian army actually beat the Persian cavalry head-to-head, because the Greek cavalry was never numerous enough and probably not powerful enough to even try that. Preggo My Eggo! posted:In addition to what's already been posted, my take on the whole Alexander thing was that it's a combination of amazing factors which all contribute to making the conquest possible. Philip II laid the groundwork for the Macedonian state and military; Olympias kept things relatively stable at the royal court level (at least as far as Alexander was concerned); the Persians were comfortable in their proxy war routine with the Greeks; Alexander was surrounded by top-level generals; as a tactical battlefield leader Alexander was both stupidly brave and incredibly lucky not to be killed in the first few battles with the Persians; and strategically the invasion happened so fast that the Persians were defeated early, then the Macedonians stayed for a decade to mop up instead of going back home. Persia was busy being unstable. I don't think anybody is sure what was going on. The last strong Persian emperor, Artaxerxes III noticed the Macedonians and helped support a Thracian city against his siege, but he died and the Persians descended in court drama for the next few years right when the Macedonians began to invade. This happened around the same time as two rebellions in Egypt, and another in Phoenicia. Then you have Darius III getting iced by his satrap Bessus, it all paints a pretty disunited picture.
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Feb 15, 2020 03:19
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Darius didn't get the  until after Alexander was already essentially in control of the Empire, though. Various Persian and non-Persian vassals started switching sides earlier, but it was after the battle of Gaugamela that there started being mass defections to Alexander, even among the high Persian nobility, as I understand it. Darius had lost three major battles (Granicus and Issus, prior to Gaugamela) and after the third one his popular support seemed to collapse.It's astonishing that Alexander won those battles, but not astonishing that Darius' support collapsed given that he did.
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Feb 15, 2020 03:38
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Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Feb 16, 2020 |
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Feb 16, 2020 20:26
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoLY21L_JMk british museum published a video about Schliemann's excavations at 'Troy'. Doesn't get into much of the controversy, but drat, seeing the diagram of how much of the tel he bulldozed and drat, he must have destroyed so much information.
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Feb 18, 2020 19:20
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Dynamiteing things and picking up what came flying out used to be suuuuper common.
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Feb 18, 2020 20:28
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Telsa Cola posted:Dynamiteing things and picking up what came flying out used to be suuuuper common. Yeah, it's hard for me to be super critical of early archeologists because there weren't really any standards to follow or violate and people didn't really understand enough about context generally to know what was important and what wasn't. For Schliemann (and others), Troy was the big prize and the only point of his excavation. Anything that wasn't Troy was useless junk. It took several decades of ham-fisted excavations for them to realize that the other layers and general context were important and worth preserving in their own right so as to get the full picture of what was going on. Yes, a lot of useful information was irreparably lost, but for most part no one really thought it was useful or important information at the time. It took the science a while to get its feet under it and start to develop a more systematic way of proceeding. As an analogy, I've gotten into woodworking in the last few years. Even though I was honestly doing the best I could with what I knew, some of my early projects were fatally flawed due to mistakes that became quite obvious in hindsight. You just have to roll up your sleeves and do stuff for a while before you figure out how to do it right. loving things up early on is just an inevitable part of the process.
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Feb 18, 2020 20:49
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Finished Hellenika. Was the death of Epaminondas the end of Theban ascendancy in the pre-hellenic era? Because if it wasn't, and the ending point Xenophon chose was kind of arbitrary, then it almost seems like he wanted to push until he hit the battle where his son died a hero, then rushed to end it at the very next convenient spot, which is pretty sweet.
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Feb 18, 2020 20:55
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Telsa Cola posted:Dynamiteing things and picking up what came flying out used to be suuuuper common. I still like Gila Cliff Dwellings. Where the PI did everything by the standards of early processual archaeology, but kept all his notes in his house while the artifacts went to the NPS. So we have all the stuff, but no good idea of context for the vast majority of it. It's why the NPS lets people access it in ways you cannot at Tonto National Monument or Mesa Verde. A decent report based on what the NPS did have "The Archeology of Gila Cliff Dwellings" was published in 1986, so it is still better than Kinishba and oddly, Casa Grande, where the most intensive work was so early and so JW Fewkes adjacent that it doesn't say much. KiteAuraan fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Feb 19, 2020 |
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Feb 19, 2020 04:15
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Telsa Cola posted:Dynamiteing things and picking up what came flying out used to be suuuuper common. if it works for CERN...
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Feb 19, 2020 04:15
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I found a really interesting blog by a classicist, mostly debunking various misconceptions about antiquity: http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/ Some of the posts I found especially interesting: Dying and Rising Gods: Are They a Thing?: Turns out they were a thing in ancient myths/religion, but to a much lesser extent than James Frazer thought they were (it was mostly just Orphic Dionysus). Includes the wonderfully icky revelation that Isis was a necrophiliac. The library of Alexandria and the loss of knowledge: The importance of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria is overrated. Why Pythagoras forbade eating beans. We don't actually know the answer, but some of the various hypotheses that have been proposed are wonderfully bizarre. Off limits: these theories aren't for debunking (not here, anyway): Ideas Gainsford is skeptical of, but which are academically respectable enough that he thinks it would be unfair to call them "myths." The 3-parter from August/September 2016 about the historical basis of the Illiad is also worth reading (it's another case where we don't have clear answers, but there's an interesting debate). Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Feb 20, 2020 |
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Feb 20, 2020 03:22
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Silver2195 posted:I found a really interesting blog by a classicist, mostly debunking various misconceptions about antiquity: http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/ Ooooooh
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Feb 20, 2020 03:31
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I have to think that if the library at Alexandria hadn't burned, the likelihood of Ptolemy's history of Alexander the Great surviving would have to have increased. That's the one lost ancient work I'd like to be rediscovered above any other.
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Feb 20, 2020 04:49
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👏Lives👏of👏famous👏whores👏
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Feb 20, 2020 06:58
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Grumio posted:👏Lives👏of👏famous👏whores👏 It turns out the library of Alexandria had been repurposed in the Roman era to serve as the repository for the COMPLETE LIVES OF ANCIENT WHORES, which featured commentaries about the accuracy or innacuracies of various descriptions
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Feb 20, 2020 07:46
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Dating all the way back to the clay tablet letter to Ea-Nasir complaining about a sub-standard prostitute
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Feb 20, 2020 08:10
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Records of the Famous Whores and It's famous novel adaption Romance of the Famous Whores
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Feb 20, 2020 08:16
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galagazombie posted:Records of the Famous Whores and It's famous novel adaption Romance of the Famous Whores Not to mention the infamous video game series, Dynasty Whores.
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Feb 20, 2020 08:45
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as well as Sappho's lost poem Wives of Famous Whores edit: HP Lovecraft's unpublished manuscript of Lives of Squamous Whores Guildencrantz fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Feb 20, 2020 |
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Feb 20, 2020 14:52
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Don Gato posted:It turns out the library of Alexandria had been repurposed in the Roman era to serve as the repository for the COMPLETE LIVES OF ANCIENT WHORES, which featured commentaries about the accuracy or innacuracies of various descriptions If this were true Caesar would never have let it be destroyed
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Feb 20, 2020 15:00
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skasion posted:If this were true Caesar would never have let it be destroyed  Lives of Cato's Sister
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Feb 20, 2020 15:12
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skasion posted:If this were true Caesar would never have let it be destroyed
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Feb 20, 2020 15:54
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Rockopolis posted:
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Feb 20, 2020 17:17
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Nub history question: in Roman times, how long did it take to get around? I suspect that it has a lot to do with who you are and if you are going by sea, but I'm listening to a podcast and I realize I've no idea the time it takes to go from Rome to Antioch, especially if you are taking a big army with you. Other question: why the hell is Ctesiphon sacked so much
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Feb 20, 2020 17:54
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Play around here: http://orbis.stanford.edu/
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Feb 20, 2020 17:56
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Nebakenezzer posted:Nub history question: in Roman times, how long did it take to get around? Depends on weather or not you had a copy of Lives of Famous Whores. 
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Feb 20, 2020 18:03
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Nebakenezzer posted:why the hell is Ctesiphon sacked so much The otherwise excellent map just linked doesn’t show Ctesiphon unfortunately, but if you look up where it was you can get an excellent sense of why the Romans kept stomping it. Just follow the Tigris down from Nisibis and you’ll run right into it.
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Feb 20, 2020 18:11
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Also iirc the Partian army was often out east or north east when the Romans came by.
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Feb 20, 2020 18:13
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And it kept being people's capital.
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Feb 20, 2020 18:13
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Grand Fromage posted:And it kept being people's capital. I guess you could argue this is a chicken-egg thing, it kept being the capital because the Roman frontier was the most important theater of military operations for the Parthians from (at the latest) the Carrhae campaign on
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Feb 20, 2020 18:24
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It was also right across the river from the Seleucid capital iirc so there was some amount of prestige and convenience associated with it
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Feb 20, 2020 18:34
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skasion posted:I guess you could argue this is a chicken-egg thing, it kept being the capital because the Roman frontier was the most important theater of military operations for the Parthians from (at the latest) the Carrhae campaign on Yeah, it kept being the capital because it was a good place for one. It's just easy to forget that east of Iraq is a mountain apocalypse and there's really only like... two routes in? And the more northerly one sucks a lot. So basically every invasion of Persia from the west takes the same path and Ctesiphon is in there. E: Leaving my dumb monument here but I was thinking of Persepolis, not Ctesiphon.
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Feb 20, 2020 18:44
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Feb 20, 2020 18:49
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Are burritos technically trenchers?
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Feb 22, 2020 06:26
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Baron Porkface posted:Are burritos technically trenchers? A lot of people are calling bullshit on those tostadas, though.
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Feb 22, 2020 06:49
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Or sopes
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Feb 22, 2020 07:43
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Nessus posted:No... but tostadas might be. What's Morgan got to say about it?
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