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Dalael posted:Why was this reconquest so devastating compared to other times armies were marching allober Italy? Because it just kept loving going year after year after year
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Jun 26, 2020 22:18
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Dalael posted:Why was this reconquest so devastating compared to other times armies were marching allober Italy? Seventeen years of war with tons of sieges, carried on despite an outbreak of bubonic plague which killed 1/4 of the population. Milan, Naples and Rome all got starved out at least once and Rome was badly sacked. Also the extended violence pretty much annihilated the existing (Roman-descended) Gothic state structure and left much of Italy defenseless to another invasion (by the Lombards) shortly thereafter.
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Jun 26, 2020 22:20
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Robert Graves (of I Claudius fame) wrote a novel from Belisarius's perspective that covers the war in Italy (along with the rest of his career), Count Belisaurius. It's historical fiction and leans heavily into the more lurid, Procopian rumors about Justinian, but it's still a fun and interesting read Fuligin fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Jun 26, 2020 |
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Jun 26, 2020 22:52
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I feel like it'd be difficult to maintain slave labor on the relatively small ships that the Romans had on the Mediterranean. Like if there's just a few free members of the crew relying on big strong slaves to row the oars, it seems like it'd be easy to stage a coup and row off somewhere else. I know that there were slave-like conditions during the age of sail, but then there were enough people aboard that there could be more of a defense against mutiny. And then the actual slaves kept in much worse condition where they could barely move, much less rise up.
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Jun 26, 2020 23:23
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Grand Fromage posted:Yeah, in the ancient Mediterranean the slave galley thing is largely a myth. Naval ships were rowed by the crew and merchant ships mostly sailed rather than rowing (and naval ships also mostly used sails outside of battle). I'm not going to say it never happened, but it was at least uncommon. There was a train of thought the ancient Greeks had that a polis' military strength determined its government: strong cavalry produced monarchies, because only kings and their retinues can afford to own horses; strong infantry (hoplites specifically) produced oligarchies, because power was then held by a select land-owning citizenry; and strong navies produced democracies, because you needed all of your poor people to row. The idea that only people with a stake in government fought well was pretty strong. Edit: I don't think it's fair to call ancient ships "small". Polyremes had crew counts that would not be surpassed until the advent of aircraft carriers. Warships did not usually go far from land and had no or very limited on-board crew accommodations, but they weren't exactly small. Later on ship sizes shrank, but even post-Actium the Romans kept some penteres and hexeres around as flagships. FishFood fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Jun 27, 2020 |
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Jun 27, 2020 00:12
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So what did they do at night or on freight ships? Or were freight ships lightly crewed enough that they actually could have the dudes sleep and eat aboard?
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Jun 27, 2020 00:21
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Ancient sailors liked to drop anchor or beach the ship every night if possible. If not I assume they just had rotations and kept sailing. We don't actually have a lot of material describing ancient ships unfortunately, a lot of what we know is from offhand remarks in written sources and shipwrecks.
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Jun 27, 2020 00:28
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Freight ships would not have nearly the same number of rowers if they had any at all. Their crews would be much, much smaller. When you look at a penteres, for example, it has a crew of about 400, 300 of which are rowers and 70 or 75 are marines. That leaves a deck crew of only about 25 or 30. A cargo ship of comparable size probably wouldn't have a crew much larger than that, and if it had oars would probably only have one bank of them. Oars on a cargo ship are for close maneuvering in a harbor; oars on a warship are for getting up to speed to turn your multi-ton wooden monument to the state/king into a huge waterborne battering ram, as well as close maneuvering. From what I know, by the classical era, warships and cargo vessels were fundamentally different. The old pentekonters were multi-purpose ships, but the trieres and friends were only for war.
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Jun 27, 2020 00:35
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Cargo ships looked totally different, number-reme type ships were warships. This is a cargo ship model based on depictions in art: 
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Jun 27, 2020 00:39
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I've never seen a reproduction of a cargo ship and that's super rad, i love the goofy giant steering oars of the era. And yeah, if you look at the warships they were as narrow as they could make them for speed. I rowed boats in high school, (which is part of what got me interested in crazy galleys) and to go fast in the water with an oared vessel you want it to be as lean as possible. The warships had tiny holds and were very reliant on access to land for beaching overnight. Battles almost never occurred on the open ocean, and they were frequently in harbors or straits, which probably played a role in the giant increase in ship-size in the Hellenistic era.
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Jun 27, 2020 00:47
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I'm sure there's a lot of details that only someone really into ships could tell set it apart but to my untrained eye you could drop that same ship down anywhere in the next 2000 years or so and not have me think it's an obvious anachronism I guess there's really only one shape that makes sense for a sail-drive wooden cargo ship
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Jun 27, 2020 01:03
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The steering oars instead of a rudder would give it away at some times/places, at least. The style of rigging is probably a giveaway too, I don't know ships that well. We're going to know a lot more about Roman ships since those completely preserved ones were found in the Black Sea. Going to be a whole lot of papers coming out of that site.
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Jun 27, 2020 01:06
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cheetah7071 posted:I'm sure there's a lot of details that only someone really into ships could tell set it apart but to my untrained eye you could drop that same ship down anywhere in the next 2000 years or so and not have me think it's an obvious anachronism Reminds me of a Chinese Junks, which basically look the same from the 10th century onward.
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Jun 27, 2020 01:19
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One of the things that will always amaze me the most of the ancients, is the scale of these naval battles. We're talking hundreds of thousands of man at sea in some case. It's crazy.
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Jun 27, 2020 01:22
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https://twitter.com/HistoryofPersia/status/1276585885979553792 Twitter nonsense
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Jun 27, 2020 01:45
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Dalael posted:One of the things that will always amaze me the most of the ancients, is the scale of these naval battles. We're talking hundreds of thousands of man at sea in some case. It's crazy. Watching all those wooden ships grappling together on a rolling sea must have been sublime, in a terrible sort of way. No wonder the Emperors staged naval battles every now and again
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Jun 27, 2020 01:54
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cheetah7071 posted:I'm sure there's a lot of details that only someone really into ships could tell set it apart but to my untrained eye you could drop that same ship down anywhere in the next 2000 years or so and not have me think it's an obvious anachronism There are a lot of primitive aspects to that ship: 1) Stump mast. The mainmast is a central pillar with no additional masts on top. This obviously limits the sail dimensions. Also it doesn't have any labor-saving innovations like junk sails or lug sails that you would associate with a modern small merchant ship. 2) Single mast with no boom. This design has a very limited ability to shift its center of lift with the wind. A post mast or a boom like on a modern sloop rig would extend the available sail configurations much further aft. The further forward the ship's center of lift, the worse sailing qualities it has close to the wind. The ancient design above would be a poor sailor with the wind anywhere forward of the beam. They don't have the option of setting sail further aft, which means that their sail plan and the wind on the boat itself will tend to push the bow around. 3) Inboard chains. This is a pretty minor thing, but look at how the main supports on either side of the mast connect to the deck. On later sailing ships they were attached to the hull outside of the rail, to clear the deck and improve structural strength. 4) No rudder. Obvious but it's hard to overstate how superior a rudder is to steering oars, both in the displacement of water and the mechanical advantage afforded by a long tiller connected to a pulley. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Jun 27, 2020 |
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Jun 27, 2020 01:59
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https://twitter.com/McDougallSophia/status/1276540362434187266
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Jun 27, 2020 02:25
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Squalid posted:
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Jun 27, 2020 03:27
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Squalid posted:oh it probably is that. frickin' romans and their cut rate imitations. I wonder if ancient Romans had a saying like "made in Rome" for tasteless or tacky or cheap
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Jun 27, 2020 03:29
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I recently finished up with I Podius, the I Claudius podcast, and I Claudius's take on Caligula and saying that he cannibalized his unborn child was something really crazy. Also everybody in the show seems convinced for some reason that the Republic coming back was just around the corner, right up until Claudius tells his son to bring back the republic and his son doesn't know what that is.
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Jun 27, 2020 04:16
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skasion posted:Seventeen years of war with tons of sieges, carried on despite an outbreak of bubonic plague which killed 1/4 of the population. Milan, Naples and Rome all got starved out at least once and Rome was badly sacked. Also the extended violence pretty much annihilated the existing (Roman-descended) Gothic state structure and left much of Italy defenseless to another invasion (by the Lombards) shortly thereafter. The war is very important, but I think the plague was even more important, because it fed into everything else. I wouldn't be shocked if it hit Italy harder due to food insecurity, which caused the cities to end up mostly abandoned due to initial sackings and subsequent plague. The nail in the coffin comes from the Empire losing a huge chunk of its tax base literally unable to afford the army Justinian could to conquer Italy from the Goths. Thus later Emperor's weren't able to defend against the Lombards because what troops they did have were needed to defend against the pressing Sassanids. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Jun 27, 2020 |
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Jun 27, 2020 07:49
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HEY GUNS posted:i've never seen these before. sincere thanks for this. Hegel are you still in Europe? The museum these are in is in Reggio Calabria in the toe of the boot in Italy. Next to being a few feet away at the code of hammurabi in the Louvre these are the coolest artifacts I've ever gotten to see, you should go when travel restrictions are lifted.
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Jun 27, 2020 09:39
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Just bought a Nero tetradrachm:
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Jun 27, 2020 11:33
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Alhazred posted:Just bought a Nero tetradrachm: That's crazy.
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Jun 27, 2020 12:33
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SlothfulCobra posted:I know that there were slave-like conditions during the age of sail, but then there were enough people aboard that there could be more of a defense against mutiny. And then the actual slaves kept in much worse condition where they could barely move, much less rise up. I mean there's 'using slaves as crew' and there's 'transporting slaves', which are two different things. I'm sure the Romans did plenty of the latter, but obviously over much shorter distances than the Atlantic and as a result with no need to overcrowd their ships.
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Jun 27, 2020 12:53
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Arglebargle III posted:https://twitter.com/HistoryofPersia/status/1276585885979553792 Goddamn Trevor, the man's got a family... Grand Fromage posted:n-reme 
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Jun 27, 2020 14:15
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 bennyfactor posted:Hegel are you still in Europe? The museum these are in is in Reggio Calabria in the toe of the boot in Italy. Next to being a few feet away at the code of hammurabi in the Louvre these are the coolest artifacts I've ever gotten to see, you should go when travel restrictions are lifted. I think they were only first displayed in the seventies so they aren't the most famous work, but when they did appear they immediately become super popular. Unfortunately we have almost no context regarding the ship they sank on so it was very hard for experts to estimate when or where they were produced. However when conservators where attempting halt deterioration in the sculptures caused by its corroding iron skeleton, they found they were still full of the original clay the artists had built up around the frame during the design process. The geology of the clay was such that it could have only come from Athens or some neighboring islands under Athens control. That makes it extremely likely they were produced in an Athenian workshop sometime around the Athenian golden age.
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Jun 27, 2020 18:59
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bennyfactor posted:Hegel are you still in Europe? The museum these are in is in Reggio Calabria in the toe of the boot in Italy. Next to being a few feet away at the code of hammurabi in the Louvre these are the coolest artifacts I've ever gotten to see, you should go when travel restrictions are lifted.
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Jun 27, 2020 22:55
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Don Gato posted:Reminds me of a Chinese Junks, which basically look the same from the 10th century onward. I have a ship’s wheel from one of those, it’s about 250 years old.
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Jun 28, 2020 02:59
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Bar Ran Dun posted:I have a ship’s wheel from one of those, it’s about 250 years old. Send pics pls
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Jun 28, 2020 06:50
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Please get consent before sending people pictures of Chinese junk.
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Jun 28, 2020 08:27
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Please get consent before sending people pictures of Chinese junk. Could be worse I accidentally had people googling Ram’s neck tape in the dangerous chemicals thread. There is an uh, farming, alternative to the marine tape I was referencing talking about securing hatch covers. Any way my junk:  I remembered incorrectly tag says 150 to 250 years old. Heavy as hell. Iron and a hard wood I haven’t identified. I don’t really want to know the wood for a variety of reasons, please don’t guess.
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Jun 28, 2020 17:07
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Is it OK if we guess but don't tell you?
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Jun 28, 2020 17:41
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Yes. It’s very probable that it’s a hardwood that is illegal to harvest anymore. It’s not illegal for me to have it because of its age. Just don’t post it here I don’t need people trying to steal it to make guitar bridges or inlays.
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Jun 28, 2020 18:03
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Speaking of owning old things, does anyone have any reproduction pottery in daily use? I wouldn't mind owning some Samian ware or orange/black figure, but they don't go very well with our interior. Particularly the Greek buggery...
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Jun 28, 2020 18:05
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Probably fake history but still an interesting thread for the mythmaking parts of it: https://twitter.com/AntiokhosE/status/1277150935781965824?s=20
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Jun 28, 2020 18:18
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Yes. OK, I'll bite. We don't know who you are and where you live, why do you think illegal wood harvesters would go through the length of tracking down some random goon? As far as I know, that thing is probably more valuable as it is and you already confirmed you have it. Logically, you should be more afraid of random people showing up to steal that thing
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Jun 28, 2020 18:19
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Badger of Basra posted:Probably fake history but still an interesting thread for the mythmaking parts of it: Interesting and not entirely implausible. Although I'd say those faces look every bit as Afghan as Italian. However, these two lines... quote:DNA studies have been inconclusive. quote:The site superintendent told me funding dried up Are probably related. It would be easy to show a link to the Romans with modern DNA techniques, they probably did and probably got some bad answers and swept the whole thing under the rug.
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Jun 28, 2020 18:30
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Ola posted:Interesting and not entirely implausible. Although I'd say those faces look every bit as Afghan as Italian. However, these two lines... Hmm.. odds are Crassus raised his legions in the east, so most of those legionaires probably came from wherever that was, not Italy.
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Jun 28, 2020 18:40
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