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two fish posted:Do we know much about the training regimens of ancient organized militaries, like what you would have found in Rome? Were there exercises that they did daily, and did they have equivalents of things like firing practice? We actually have a military manual describing all of this. It's from late antiquity, but you can likely project a lot of this back a few hundred years. The non-professional citizen military would've been different. https://digitalattic.org/home/war/vegetius/
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Jul 15, 2023 23:09
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two fish posted:Do we know much about the training regimens of ancient organized militaries, like what you would have found in Rome? Were there exercises that they did daily, and did they have equivalents of things like firing practice? Oh boy if I would be on my computer. Anyway: Yes. Big yes. De Re Militari was written by Vegetius. It details physical training, combat training, staff work, logistics, etc. And it is not at all the only book about it. Tacitus and Livy both also wrote about certain training and doctrine aspects, but it wasn’t their forte. Polybius also. Problem is that lot of them just allude to a certain aspect or discuss topics assuming the reader knows the finer details. I believe Vegetius’ book is the only completely surviving military manual, but other authors refer to other books, and we have evidence and bits of many more. Vegetius’ book itself is a collection of information distilled from other sources according to his own words. He cites several authors. In De Re Militari, Vegetius details Conditioning, Drilling and Mock Combats as the three primary training aspects in garrison. Him, and Livy, and surely others, all also have clearly written about the physical standards which we know well. 20 Roman miles in 5 hours loaded with about 45 pounds of equipment was the initial enlistment condition to aspire for and to continue service. The veteran standard was to walk 24 Roman miles (~35 km) within 5 hours. They also had a sort of a basic combat training where all this was done repeatedly on a tightening schedule. In garrison, as a professional soldier, the leader of the tent group, Decanus, was responsible for leading the 8-10 person Contubernium in physical exercise every morning, before morning chores started. If a legionaire would not be in passing physical shape, they had a punishment fat camp where they did extra work and exercises during the day. Edit: Vegetius also bitches and moans that recruits back in the day were stronger, taller, and had more discipline and that the current recruits suck and the officers are dumber lmao Edit edit; he isn’t perfect, and some of the things he cites can be mis-cited from the original author, and sometimes he disagrees with them. It’s a great book, but it is best served by comparing the information in it with what Livy and Polybius write, and for example he goes a bit awry when compared with Sextus Frontinus’ work with regards to Army Engineering. And we should be far more inclined to trust Frontinus in the disagreements because Frontinus was a an Army Engineer Officer for all his military career, and a Civil Engineer by formal education, unlike Vegetius, who wrote about a broad collection of topics. Vahakyla fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Jul 16, 2023 |
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Jul 16, 2023 03:53
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Vahakyla posted:Oh boy if I would be on my computer. Anyway: Sextus Frontinus sounds like the kind of name you make up when you're planning on ditching your girlfriend in Judea or something.
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Jul 16, 2023 05:42
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sullat posted:Sextus Frontinus sounds like the kind of name you make up when you're planning on ditching your girlfriend in Judea or something.
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Jul 16, 2023 06:48
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two fish posted:On the topic of Egypt, did they have philosophers or other big thinkers similar to what you would have seen in Greece? Did any of their writings survive? Here's an article called "The Radical Philosophy of Egypt: Forget God and Family, Write!" quote:New research indicates that Plato and Aristotle were right: Philosophy and the term “love of wisdom” hail from Egypt. quote:When it comes to writing, the Egyptian texts are “often consciously intellectual, making abundant use of wordplay through homophones and homonyms, in which the Egyptian language is particularly rich,” as Wilkinson underscores. Metaphors, idioms, and epigrammatic utterances are some of the other literary techniques applied. As far as surviving texts, "Dispute between a man and his Ba" from the Middle Kingdom is mentioned in there; here's a transcription of that one, original language included. Language and rhetoric as a whole were enormously important. Appropriate utilization of effective rhetoric was indeed an entire religious tenet, as Koramei pointed out last page: in the same way philosophy and language could express worldly truths they were seen to express mystic and cosmic truth as well and thereby guided an individual life. The greater a person's philosophical mastery, the greater their ability to understand and create action in accordance with ineffable truth, and the closer they were to the universal Divine. Here's a whole paper on Egyptian rhetoric as a religious principle that might interest you, though not a public source: Edward Karshner's "Thought, Utterance, Power"  edit: that abstract leans heavily on the word "magic" but I promise the paper covers more than just that 
LITERALLY A BIRD fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Jul 18, 2023 |
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Jul 16, 2023 22:58
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sullat posted:Sextus Frontinus sounds like the kind of name you make up when you're planning on ditching your girlfriend in Judea or something. And then there's Vegetius.
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Jul 19, 2023 08:47
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Vegetius! What does the speculatorius say about his power level? It's over I̅X̅! What I̅X̅?!
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Jul 19, 2023 09:06
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two fish posted:That's a fair point, I had intended what would be popularly called Ancient Egypt, but that itself is a very long timespan. I suppose the New Kingdom would be what I was thinking of. Old Kingdom rather than New, but Imhotep is generally thought of as such, at least until Brendan Fraser killed him. I didn't focus on Ancient Egypt in undergrad so I could be wrong, but it seemed like most of the information we have on major discoveries/innovations of the time usually get described as "happened under Thutmose III" or whatever, rather than pointing to non-pharoahs who actually developed it.
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Jul 19, 2023 16:33
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Doesn't help that Vegeta as a Roman soldier is weirdly fitting. He even works for an Emperor.Dopilsya posted:Old Kingdom rather than New, but Imhotep is generally thought of as such, at least until Brendan Fraser killed him. I didn't focus on Ancient Egypt in undergrad so I could be wrong, but it seemed like most of the information we have on major discoveries/innovations of the time usually get described as "happened under Thutmose III" or whatever, rather than pointing to non-pharoahs who actually developed it. Doesn't help that it's probably hard to get information on specific people in ancient Egypt when you're lucky enough to be able to pinpoint just the general era.
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Jul 20, 2023 07:00
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As the self proclaimed King of all Saiyans, Vegeta would be anathema to republican Rome.
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Jul 20, 2023 16:23
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Végéta always refers to himself as a prince
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Jul 20, 2023 17:04
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zoux posted:As the self proclaimed King of all Saiyans, Vegeta would be anathema to republican Rome. Actually, King Vegita is his father. 
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Jul 20, 2023 18:58
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What? This is an outrage! This ancient history thread is filled with nerds!
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Jul 21, 2023 00:17
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Wait, are we talking about him, his son or the planet?
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Jul 21, 2023 00:22
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I believe Vegeta claimed "Prince," which was his by birth, but did not claim "King," no doubt because a. nobody could properly enthrone him, as the planet was blown up anyway, and b. he has his dignity and there are like four Saiyans
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Jul 21, 2023 01:15
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He'll feel comfortable taking the crown once he finally defeats Kakarot
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Jul 21, 2023 01:19
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euphronius posted:The library of Alexandria was probably one of the most important centers for big brains for hundreds of years Judgy Fucker posted:Well yeah, I inferred that poster was asking more about philosophers from the (more-) indigenous population and culture of Egypt. I was thinking about the Library today, which while yes built during the Ptolemaic era probably had a decent portion of its 400,000 scrolls comprised of works by native Egyptian thinkers, and came across this Wikipedia tidbit I enjoyed quote:The first recorded head librarian was Zenodotus of Ephesus (lived c. 325–c. 270 BC). [...] Zenodotus is known to have written a glossary of rare and unusual words, which was organized in alphabetical order, making him the first person known to have employed alphabetical order as a method of organization.Since the collection at the Library of Alexandria seems to have been organized in alphabetical order by the first letter of the author's name from very early, Casson concludes that it is highly probable that Zenodotus was the one who organized it in this way. World first alphabetizers! That's fun! Though full disclosure I guess, quote:Zenodotus' system of alphabetization, however, only used the first letter of the word and it was not until the second century AD that anyone is known to have applied the same method of alphabetization to the remaining letters of the word. Still. Nice.
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Jul 21, 2023 18:05
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It seems obvious but then again, I have no idea when the "order" of alphabets was "decided". I know that in biblical Hebrew they used letters as numbers in ascending alphabetical order. But Roman numerals were not in alphabetical order AFAIK. According to Wikipedia, it was used much later in the Latin alphabet. Wikipedia posted:Alphabetical order as an aid to consultation started to enter the mainstream of Western European intellectual life in the second half of the 12th century, when alphabetical tools were developed to help preachers analyse biblical vocabulary kiminewt fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Jul 21, 2023 |
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Jul 21, 2023 18:35
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My understanding is that the idea that the alphabet has a natural order, as a pedagogical tool, goes back to the invention of the alphabet. Using that as a sorting method is a different question, of course
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Jul 21, 2023 19:08
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LITERALLY A BIRD posted:I was thinking about the Library today, which while yes built during the Ptolemaic era probably had a decent portion of its 400,000 scrolls comprised of works by native Egyptian thinkers, and came across this Wikipedia tidbit I enjoyed Maybe Zenodotus alphabetized the collection because he was an insecure guy who wanted his own books to be found last (Yes, I know zeta is pretty early in the Greek alphabet, so this joke only works if you mistakenly assume he did it in Latin)
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Jul 21, 2023 19:59
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Obviously it's A B and so on; if it was Delta Gamma Alpha Beta we'd call it the deltagam.
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Jul 21, 2023 20:03
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EricBauman posted:Maybe Zenodotus alphabetized the collection because he was an insecure guy who wanted his own books to be found last  I had a similar thought, so your joke gets a pass from me.Nessus posted:Obviously it's A B and so on; if it was Delta Gamma Alpha Beta we'd call it the deltagam. 
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Jul 21, 2023 20:09
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My high school Greek teacher actually used to say that the alphabet was supposed to start with LMN and that's why there's things called elements. I never knew what was a joke and what was truly archaic wisdom with that guy Edit: turns out it's a dated theory that may not actually hold, but definitely a thing people used to think about the Latin alphabet: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/elementum#Latin EricBauman fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Jul 21, 2023 |
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Jul 21, 2023 23:45
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that Wiktionary page posted:An alternative related idea is that elementum was borrowed into Latin from a Semitic term (probably via Egyptian) halaḥama I Googled that last word and found something related: https://www.timesofisrael.com/first-written-record-of-semitic-alphabet-from-15th-century-bce-found-in-egypt/amp/ First written record of Semitic alphabet, from 15th century BCE, found in Egypt posted:On one side of the flake is Schneider’s recent discovery: the transliteration into cursive Egyptian writing of the sounds that signify the beginnings of today’s Hebrew alphabet (Aleph, Bet, Gimel). On the other, a contemporary, though now lesser-known letter order, called “Halaḥam,” which was deciphered in 2015, on the same limestone flake, by Leiden University’s Dr. Ben Haring. quote:According to Hebrew University’s head of Egyptology, Prof. Orly Goldwasser, the origins of the Semitic alphabet came from Canaanite quarry workers at the Serabit el-Khadim site, who, while experts in extracting the precious blue-green stone, were illiterate. I thought this all very relevant/interesting and that you might find it interesting too, but was on the fence about posting it lest I inadvertently make myself some sort of ancient Egypt grammar facts gimmickposter in this thread. But then I got to this bit quote:What exactly is on the ostracon? and now I am posting because I am pretty outraged we don't live in a modernity where the third letter of our alphabet is "pigeon". Instead we get what, "c"? We were cheated. Cheated.  Look at that. Ridiculous. Fully deserves third place in an alphabet. LITERALLY A BIRD fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Jul 22, 2023 |
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Jul 22, 2023 00:17
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LITERALLY A BIRD posted:I was thinking about the Library today, which while yes built during the Ptolemaic era probably had a decent portion of its 400,000 scrolls comprised of works by native Egyptian thinkers, I wouldn’t necessarily guarantee this, although I’d also assume it’s likely. Alexandria was very firmly a Greek polis in Egypt, not an Egyptian city, and the Ptolemies operated with an ethnic hierarchy with Greeks on top.
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Jul 22, 2023 01:18
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Oh absolutely. But I was thinking about everything that was destroyed with the loss of that library and the Serapeum, and with the Ptolemies having spent centuries aggressively pursuing scrolls with which to fill them -- the older the better -- a significant portion of Egyptian philosophical work must have been lost. To tie back into two fish's original question the other day.
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Jul 22, 2023 01:30
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I haven't read it yet, but there's a book that was published a few weeks by an Egyptologist about the subject of Philosophy in Ancient Egypt, focusing on an Old Kingdom text called The Teaching of Ptahhatp: https://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/the-oldest-book-in-the-world-philosophy-in-the-age-of-the-pyramids-hardcover, which may be of interest to people interested in this subject. From the publisher's blurb: quote:Noted author and Egyptologist Bill Manley renders into approachable modern English for the first time the oldest surviving statement of philosophy from the ancient world: the thirty-seven teachings and twelve conclusions of The Teaching of Ptahhatp, vizier, or chief minister, to the Old Kingdom pharaoh Izezi (2390-2350 BCE). Manley's expert commentary elucidates Ptahhatp's profound yet practical philosophy, which covers such topics as ambition, fame, confrontation, sex, and wisdom, and offers a unique window onto ancient Egyptian life and society. That kind of "Teachings of X" (or "Instructions of X") text is also not unique, there are a bunch of them from various different periods of Egyptian history, usually focusing on how to live a good and moral life. Wikipedia has some good excerpts from a New Kingdom era text of this type, called the Instructions of Any: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instruction_of_Any. For example, "Do not eat bread without giving some to those near you who do not have anything to eat, since the bread is eternal while man does not last," and "Everyone can master their own nature if the wisdom which he has been taught has made that nature stable," both come from the Instructions of Any. There are also a number of collections of proverbs from Ancient Egypt (some of which bear resemblance to those found in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Proverbs), which often have a moral character to them.
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Jul 22, 2023 01:45
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Oh hell yes. I love Teachings of Ptahhotep. Thank you!! 
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Jul 22, 2023 01:52
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Thank you for the on topic response with citations !
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Jul 22, 2023 01:56
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Sorry. I usually lurk because I am phone posting and putting together quotes and citations can be a challenge  but this topic interests me.A citation for my mention of the library Serapeum quote:The Serapeum of Alexandria in the Ptolemaic Kingdom was an ancient Greek temple built by Ptolemy III Euergetes (reigned 246–222 BC) and dedicated to Serapis, who was made the protector of Alexandria. There are also signs of Harpocrates. It has been referred to as the daughter of the Library of Alexandria. The site has been heavily plundered. And Wikipedia quote on the Ptolemies' scroll hunting quote:The Ptolemaic rulers intended the Library to be a collection of all knowledge and they worked to expand the Library's collections through an aggressive and well-funded policy of book purchasing. They dispatched royal agents with large amounts of money and ordered them to purchase and collect as many texts as they possibly could, about any subject and by any author. Older copies of texts were favored over newer ones, since it was assumed that older copies had undergone less copying and that they were therefore more likely to more closely resemble what the original author had written.
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Jul 22, 2023 02:36
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An old in our time https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00j0q53
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Jul 22, 2023 02:39
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CrypticFox posted:"Do not eat bread without giving some to those near you who do not have anything to eat, since the bread is eternal while man does not last," This goes so hard that I almost want a tattoo of it. Honestly this is all incredibly interesting, thank you! I was mostly vaguely aware of this stuff, but my study of Egyptian history recently has focused largely on royal history with just some social and economic history, which AFAICT is the sort of "walk before you run" of studying ancient Egypt (i.e. primary sources are much thicker on royal lives, and that leads to secondaries being much more about that, so its considered pretty much 'the basics' to know at least like, who the kings are and what they did). And I guess this gets to a historiographical thing that I think I said earlier but am very not confident about : do Egyptian primary sources place less import on the specific author of an idea? I had gotten the (very crude) understanding that many ideas and works got attributed to, well, not the original thinker. Which is hardly unusual1, but I'd gotten the vague impression that it was a bit more endemic in Egyptian thought and history, somewhat driven by a tendency to attribute everything good you did to your master (often the king, because so many of our surviving sources are either directly royal or 'people who were close to royals', just due to preservation). I could be extremely off base here, it could just be lazy 19th century colonial perverts followed by lazy 20th century people not wanting to learn foreign names. 1Ancient greek philosophy has False Xenophon (lmao at trying to use Xenophon to make your ideas seem better), nobody seems to get much credit for carvaka even though its a pretty cool school of thought, Chinese philosophy has several elements where people attribute their ideas to a more famous thinker (there's probably no way to tell what things were specific to Confucius and which were ideas his students came up with and then attributed to him; Zhuangzi has all the tell-tales of a compositional work; its entirely probable that there simply isn't a historical Laozi at all and he was kind of made up after the fact to bundle together a bunch of different ideas into a singular thought; and this proceeds into the present tense via Stigler's law and especially the Matthew effect.
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Jul 22, 2023 10:42
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LITERALLY A BIRD posted:I Googled that last word and found something related: Really cool that that weird thing my high school teacher told me in 1998 was actually more or less confirmed by a new translation in 2015!
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Jul 22, 2023 11:38
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Using letters as numbers doesn't seem too weird when you consider how many lists, phrases and ideas in English use the alphabet exactly like that.
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Jul 22, 2023 15:06
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EricBauman posted:Really cool that that weird thing my high school teacher told me in 1998 was actually more or less confirmed by a new translation in 2015!  Tulip posted:This goes so hard that I almost want a tattoo of it. The thing about the Egyptian teachings translations is that they are translations, so it's kind of a grab bag of quality when you look up sources in that regard. That's part of why I didn't post sources and citations for the Maxims of Ptahhotep earlier -- I resonate strongly with a lot of the moral and ethical guidelines within, but my understanding of them is amalgamated from a lot of different translations I have encountered over years in order to try to grasp the essence of the teachings rather than idiosyncrasies of any one or two individual translations. It's a pretty long work put together from three or four Middle Kingdom papyri and, as I say, translated in ways that can vary pretty significantly in sections. For example, here is a complete translation of the Maxims of Ptahhotep someone put together: https://www.ganino.com/anteanus/the_maxims_of_ptahhotep quote:Beginning with a complaint about getting old, The Maxims of Ptahhotep flows seamlessly between rules about civil obedience and social structure to those regarding personal relationships and sex. Crediting his wisdom and inspiration to a god, Ptahhotep ends his writing discussing his long life (110 years), his pleasure in doing Maat (the ancient Egyptian code of righteousness) for the king, and his desire to see his son continue his legacy of good works. One of the sections of which I am particularly fond, in this translation, is as follows: quote:Great is Ma'at, and its foundation is firmly established; Here is that same passage as rendered by Henri Frankfort and cited on the Wikipedia page for ma'at quote:Maat is good and its worth is lasting. But, translation caveats provided, in relation specifically to you liking the quote about it being a good thing to share bread with hungry people -- I like that one a lot too. Carol Lipton's translation posted:Be generous as long as you live the page linked above posted:Be generous as long as you live, A lot of the Teachings are to do with proper socio-political conduct. I have personally taken many of them to heart over the years. All the following are from the source I linked above because  quote:Great of heart are those whom God has established, But he who listens to his stomach is his own worst enemy. quote:Do not repeat slander, And do not listen to it, For it is but the prattling of a churlish man. Repeat only what is seen, not what is heard, Or forget it and say nothing at all, For he who is listening to you can discern I what is trustworthy. quote:If you are influential, you should establish respect for yourself Through knowledge and through courtesy in speech. Do not be domineering I except in official matters, For the aggressive man meets with trouble. Do not be arrogant, lest you be brought low; Do not be silent, but yet be cautious of causing offence When you answer a speech angrily.
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Jul 22, 2023 15:11
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I care a lot about ancient Egyptian philosophy/rhetoric, but it's one of those things I care about in a way I worry others find everything I want to say about it far less interesting than I do
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Jul 22, 2023 15:12
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LITERALLY A BIRD posted:I care a lot about ancient Egyptian philosophy/rhetoric, but it's one of those things I care about in a way I worry others find everything I want to say about it far less interesting than I do 1) pretty sure people reading the ancient history thread want to read about ancient history 2) we still have 227 pages to go before we reach the end of history and close/reboot the thread, so get postin'
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Jul 22, 2023 15:14
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Well those are both very good points! I should be within stone's throw of a computer this weekend, I will try and come up with a big interesting post for everyone to enjoy.
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Jul 22, 2023 15:24
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LITERALLY A BIRD posted:Do not be domineering I except in official matters Genuine lol
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Jul 22, 2023 15:29
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Judgy Fucker posted:1) pretty sure people reading the ancient history thread want to read about ancient history Wonder if there's a way to make a thread that starts at like page -5000 and counts up.
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Jul 22, 2023 17:53
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