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If the article says that's it's wrong. Incthe east Antioch was second in size only to Alexandria during the classical period, and the two were the main govt centers in the eastern portion of the empire prior to Constantinople's founding.
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Sep 18, 2012 17:42
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Well I learned something then. Never knew Antioch was as common of a city name as Alexandria.
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Sep 18, 2012 21:48
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Agesilaus posted:Huh, I thought you were a Classics major, that explains things. I didn't realise you could be a Roman Historian without being a Classicist. I totally disagree with your opinion of primary sources and the value of studying them, but that's neither here nor there. Was being a condescending prick part of your education, or were you just gifted that way.
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Sep 22, 2012 07:01
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Also as mentioned, the Spartans were elite upper class warriors supported by a slave class. They were not paid soldiers employed by the state. They trained and drilled and such, but they went home at the end of the day, not to the barracks. Most other armies of the day had similar arrangements. I think a short definition would be an army, not elite units, an army of soldiers that are recruited, paid, equipped, and supported by the state.
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Sep 23, 2012 05:14
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Eggplant Wizard posted:e: While I'm doing this, he does also say on p. 187 that Roman soldiers were paid a stipendium from the end of the 5th century on. He cites Crawford Coinage and Money (1985), 22-3. Ancient source: Livy 4.36 & 5.2. If I remember correctly this was done because the Romans were seiging Veii and it required year round garrisons around the city. This was devestating the soldiers farms and families, so the city paid them to prevent armed soldiers turning against the city. The pay was inadequate at best, but it did set a precedent.
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Sep 23, 2012 19:20
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DarkCrawler posted:Anyway, I consider Augustus' achievements to equal Alexander's, of course not in the military sense but in the sense that they were both at the top of the world at a very young age. And Octavian had nothing but his brains, name and Agrippa behind him when he started. I was just listening to the History of Rome today at work, and it got to the part where Octavian has Alexanders body brought out to him. Augustus is probably one of the only people in history who could reflect on ALexander's life, and feel he stacked up there with him.
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Sep 27, 2012 01:39
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Kaal posted:If you've ever wanted to play Rome: Total War, today is the day for you! Extended Greek Mod is my go-to mod for RTW. It adds in a lot of historical accuracy, but does not mess with the game as much as EB does. The core gameplay is the same, and its not much more complex then vanilla. It also has the same huge map as EB I believe. It reworks the Hellenistic (?) factions a ton, making them far more period accurate. No more hoplite phalaxes for the Greek cities. Instead you gets pike phalanxes, Thoratiki(sp) and a bunch more. It also redoes the factions, adding Bactria and creating an indie Greek and Eastern Cities catchall factions for stuff like Massalia. THe only couple gameplay changes are a culture system (think religion from MTW) and area of recruitment units like Galatian swordsmen or Scythian horse The Egyptians are now a successor state themed army instead of the silly ancient Egypt stuff in the vanilla game. God dammit I'm playing RTW tonight instead of Borderlands 2 aren't I?
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Sep 27, 2012 20:21
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Grand Fromage posted:Goddamnit it's not available in Korea. I never actually played the expansion and have been hauling CDs around the world for years. There are  ways of getting it, if denying CA a fraction of a dollar is not a moral issue for you.(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Sep 28, 2012 03:56
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Noahdraron posted:Do we have any evidence that the armies of late antiquity were really getting a lot smaller? It seems that the further you go back, the more ridiculously inflated the troop numbers get because earlier historians basically just made poo poo up and if there were a lot of Gauls coming into Italy they were like "I'm not counting that, let's say it's 200.000". It is very hard to judge. We have rough estimates of how populated Rome was at various times, so we can guess that the historians would not have a barbarian forces show up that were 5-10 times the population of Rome. We know for example the Cimbri and Tuetones we entire peoples migrating, so their numbers were large, maybe like 50000 cimbri and 100000 Tuetones or whatever. We can kinda reliably say it was in the multiple hundred thousands of invading dudes in 110 BC or whenever it was (it's late).
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Oct 26, 2012 09:44
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DarkCrawler posted:Yeah, he's like the one of the few persons in Roman history who achieved everything he exactly wanted. "Yup, it's all good. Restored the republic. Time to retire and spend my days loving hot dudes." I thought he banged chicks?
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Oct 26, 2012 17:00
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Thats the she-wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus and I think that is Trajan but beyond that no idea.
WoodrowSkillson fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Oct 27, 2012 |
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Oct 27, 2012 07:45
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 strikes again.
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Oct 28, 2012 20:03
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achillesforever6 posted:As for a question, who was that soldier in Caesar's army that after a battle had a shield with hundreds of spears stuck to it? Caesar himself at the Battle of Munda. The legions were hesitant to attack the more fortified Pompeiian army, and Caesar forced them attack by allowing the enemy legions to throw their pila at him. According to the story he could not dodge them all, and took the rest on his shield, leaving it stuck full of them.
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Oct 29, 2012 01:08
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That's why I called it a story and not the way it happened.
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Oct 29, 2012 01:57
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Barto posted:Caligula would like a word Granted their idea of a boot is what we would call a sandal with extra straps. Did they ever use boots or shoes that were closer to our conception of them? I imagine the Gauls would have had proper boots due to living in much colder climates, and the idea of wrapping leather around your feet with a hard bottom is not a super complicated idea.
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Oct 30, 2012 15:38
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DarkCrawler posted:Cutest nickname for a horrible tyrant ever. The Queen of Bithynia for Caesar would be one, for his rumored and most likely made up dalliances with the king there when he was diplomat.
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Oct 30, 2012 17:34
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I meant something like This The Romans were clearly advanced enough to figure it out, I was wondering if they actually used them officially.
WoodrowSkillson fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Oct 30, 2012 |
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Oct 30, 2012 22:40
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Grand Fromage posted:I don't know if there's evidence for it but I'd assume they did given the climate. They might be barbarian clothing but if it's that or literally freeze your balls off, time to put on some pants. I have no memery of where I read it, but I recall reading that the Rhine and British legions adopted trousers from the local guals because of the harsh winters compared to Italy. This was especially prevalent one Gaul fully assimilated and the full legionaries were Gaulish by heritage.
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Nov 2, 2012 13:39
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:You're confusing the Greeks and Macedonians (And spears and pikes). This post is accurate enough to describe your average city-state war in Greece proper, but doesn't apply to the immense lands that were considered a part of the hellenic world. The Macedonians were the ones to use the long 9ft pikes in their armies, and managed to bring them all the way to India. These pikes were a great deal longer than a hoplite's spear and that made a lot of trouble for the Greeks. The hoplite spear was about 8 feet long, the Sarissa was around 18 feet long with the successor states going all the way to 22 feet.
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Nov 3, 2012 16:39
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:The thing is, by the time Rome came up in the world, all the states using Alexander's tactics had been fighting for decades to no end, so it wasn't quite like fighting the old Macedonians. Rome pretty much rolled up Macedonia, Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleucid Empire without breaking a sweat. At Gaugemela, there were 7000 of the finest horsemen out of the 47,000 man Macedonian army. At Pydna, their 44,000 man army had a grab-bag of 4,000. We'll never know what would've happened if Rome encountered the sucessor states at their height. Ooooooo... This got missed and I love hypothetical history. Assuming the successor states had been less chaotic and more well organized, I still think the Romans would have won. It would have not been as easy though obviously. The Romans knew their cavalry was weak, and hurried to use the cavalry of everyone they conquered to shore up that weakness. The whole point of the phalanx was to be the anvil for the cavalry hammer. If the phalanx breaks, the gig is up, even if your cavalry dominates the opponent since now the infantry can adequately defend against charges. The Roman infantry and commanders were good enough that I think they would have outmaneuvered the Greeks eventually and fought battles on ground that favored them. The legions were just too good at exploiting weak points in the line of the enemy that sooner or later the phalanx would fall. I think it would have seriously slowed Rome's growth though as a formidable phalanx based army would have handed them some defeats instead of the near effortless wars that occurred. It is amazing that the Selucids got toppled so easily. An empire that stretched from Turkey to Iran to Israel and they got beat in a matter of years.
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Nov 3, 2012 21:41
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Mans posted:Wouldn't it make more sense to go back to the classical hoplite then? They could, in theory, fight in formation and then split up into ridiculously small numbers all the way down to only two, the "lovers", who would could efficiently fight together, one in an offensive style while the other protected him. The hoplite used the phalanx too, with most of the same weaknesses. The Macedonian phalanx destroyed the older hoplite phalanxes of the Greeks during Philip's rise. Carrying a big heavy shield and a large spear only works if you are fighting in formation, its too slow and unwieldy one on one against a swordsman. Hoplites carried swords for close combat if things broke down, but normally that meant the poo poo was hitting the fan anyway. Spears were used all the time because they are cheap and easy to mass produce, not because they are the most effective hand to hand combat weapons. Normally if a spearman fought a swordsman, the spearman lost. As for the pairs thing I thought that was just Thebes who had the 300 warriors made up of 150 pairs of lovers.
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Nov 4, 2012 03:14
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Kaal posted:In fact until the Marian Reforms the primary components of a Roman legion remained spear-based, with the Velites (javelineers), Hastati (spearmen), and Triarii (pikemen) forming the bulk of the maniples. This is only correct for the Camillian legions. That is until the mid 300s BC or so. After the Samnite Wars and the development of the Polybian legions the Hastati and Principes used swords and shields. Marius changed the organization and the recruitment, but not the base equipment.
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Nov 4, 2012 03:29
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physeter posted:They probably got rotated every 15 minutes or so, like GF said. You get to see an example of how this likely happened in the first ep of HBO's Rome. Then they've actually got training and good equipment, unlike most of their foes. And they actually have real life surgeons waiting in the rear, presumably unlike just about every barbarian power they ever fought. Then remember there are other maniples out there whose job it is to flank and relieve the pressure on you, which doesn't even happen in the one big shield wall deployment. On top of that, the Roman fighting style was thought to have been very defensive, with fast safe thrusts from behind a big shield. As far as I know, they did not fight in the checkerboard formation. The maniples were divided into two centuries, and the rear century would move to close the gaps before engagement. The gaps let the velites through, and then the principes could do the same to the hastati if a retreat was needed. As the velites are skirmishing the hastati looked like this XXXXX-----XXXXX-----XXXXX XXXXX-----XXXXX-----XXXXX After the velites retreat past them the rear line of X's moves to their left into the gaps. -------XXXXX------XXXXX------XXXXX XXXXX------XXXXX------XXXXX They then move up and become a solid line just before they charge. The reverse happens if they have to retreat past the principes. They reform the maniple and retreat through the principes gaps, who then form a solid line and charge. This did not always work, and is why Marius largely abandoned the triplex acies in favor the duplex acies, two lines of legionnaires with just enough room in the second lines cohorts for the first line to retreat if needed. The drama of letting the hastati always retreat past the principes was exchanged for having everyone be armored like a principes and then retreat as necessary. WoodrowSkillson fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Nov 5, 2012 |
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Nov 5, 2012 03:02
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Kaal posted:I think that even if you disagree with his premise and his attitude, he clearly deserves a better response than this. Not really no.
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Nov 5, 2012 05:39
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Josef bugman posted:Indeed, the quote is actually a couple of pages back. Yeah, the Parthians did not have the same kind of obsessional record keeping the Romans did, plus they were constantly fighting one another.
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Nov 8, 2012 21:24
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sullat posted:I'd guess slaves. Although really, they came from everywhere. But the Slav trad was pretty big. Slavs as a slave people was later, in the early middle ages. Did the Romans actually import many of their slaves? I thought most were from conquering other people, and then criminals and such.
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Nov 9, 2012 01:39
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Jazerus posted:Basically, yeah, Scandinavia was an island probably full of monsters and nearly superhuman barbarians just waiting for an opportunity to ruin everyone's day. I assume a few Romans had probably been there and knew better, as with Ethiopia, but we don't have any evidence. It was mentioned before, but there might be some awesome stories of Roman traders who went China or Japan or something that are lost to history. The idea of a Roman merchant with some guards in Lorica Segmentata hocking glassware in Chang'an is pretty awesome. The reverse is also true, some Chinese merchant who went all the way to Britain or something but died on the way home or what have you. Its a fun fantasy, has anyone ever written a book about something like that?
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Nov 10, 2012 15:14
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Grand Fromage posted:I dunno any books but Romans definitely went to China, there are Chinese records of multiple instances. The first one is recorded as an official embassy, others might've been official or just merchants. There are no records of Chinese people making it to Rome, the closest they got was Parthia. I doubt Romans went any further than China, though their goods made it to Korea and Japan. Right, my idea was how far could someone have gone. For all we know some guy got to Japan, was broke because he could not sell anything, and then his ship sank on the way home. No history would record that, but given how huge the Roman and Chinese trade networks were, its totally plausible. Its fun to imagine that some of that glassware in Korea might have actually been sold personally by an overreaching Roman merchant. The last line of your story better be Roma Victor (Victrix).
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Nov 10, 2012 15:45
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This is the Roman thread forever and always 
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Nov 13, 2012 04:03
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physeter posted:I think in Western European culture there's this kind of "fear of the East" that's the result of hostile, migratory cultures pouring off the Asian steppe at random times throughout history. The Cumans, the Turks, the Kipchaks, the Mongols, the Timurids, etc etc. And it's funny because that's mostly all in the medieval period. In Antiquity, it went the other way. Western Europeans, specifically Celts and Germans, had this alarming tendency to get up, arm themselves and start migrating east/southeast. The Steppe was a source of problems in antiquity as well. The Huns, the Parthians, the Scythians, and a few I'm forgetting as well. Until the Romans conquered Gaul you could get invaded from either east or west. China also dealt with steppe nomads constantly.
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Nov 13, 2012 14:26
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Grand Fromage posted:Then after the rise of Christianity it becomes wildly exclusive and racist, which (in my opinion) was a lot of why late antiquity went to hell in the west. Earlier Romans would've just incorporated the Germans into the empire, later ones were racist pricks and forced the Germans to fight. I think if I had a gun to my head and had to pick only one reason why the western empire fell, it would be the treatment of the Goths. What could have been a huge tax base increase and military juggernaut was turned into a rampaging monster for no good reason. Treat them humanely and welcome them into the Empire, settle them on the border somewhere with legion protection, and suddenly the Alans and the Vandals are not as much of a powerhouse that can rampage through the Empire. Attila is still going to show up beyond some butterfly effect poo poo, but considering his defeat was the last hurrah of the west as it was, its hard to imagine a stronger, more unified west falling instead. Keep in mind I fully support the death by a thousand cuts reasoning and do not think being nice to the goths would have prevented the fall entirely, but a strong and loyal Goth military may have prevented the Vandal Kingdom, and that alone would have butterfly effected history like woah.
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Nov 27, 2012 04:02
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Koramei posted:Holy poo poo I feel really stupid now. In my defence it is not a word that comes up often in normal conversation. I'm not seeing why the idea of the two phalanxes keeping spearlength apart is weird. No one would want to break formation to push ahead since they would get stabbed by like 5 people. The rear lines would not shove the front lines forward if the idea was to stay spearlength away from the start. As men died and tired, the winning side would inch forward as the front line takes a step or two, with the rear lines stepping up in sequence. Routs would start from the rear, not the front, as too many of the men in front died, and the rear hoplites turn and run. Alternately cavalry smashes the rear or side of the phalanx, causing confusion and chaos as the opposing side move forward, stabbing as they go, and the rear troops run away from the cavalry. This fits with how the casualties are described. Light during the fighting, but exponentially worse afterwards. As for the over vs underhand spear debate, the lack of ability to parry, and the ease of knocking aside the other spear is what convinces me that the overhand was a rarity, or the position the rear troops held their spears to stab over the front line if the sides closed or they were fighting non phalanx troops.
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Dec 2, 2012 21:33
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sullat posted:Weren't lots of Senators murdered during Augustus & Anthony's seizure of the empire? Dissenters, suspected dissenters, and potential dissenters were killed off by soldiers or the mobs. Only during the rise to power, once Augustus because Augustus and not Octavian, he wisely stopped the proscriptions and let his critics air their grievances publicly.
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Dec 8, 2012 23:39
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Big Willy Style posted:I just bought a Punic and Macedonian Wars era 28mm Roman army to use for wargames. I really don't know much about The Punic Wars other than Hannibal almost had Rome during the second war, amd it was before the Marius reforms. Would have armies looked much different from each other or would have their been a pretty uniform look? Who were some of the standout generals, armies and battles of the time? Any resources that people can point me to so I can paint these guys fairly accurately? We have done the legions a few times in this thread, but gently caress it, we all know we love talkin about the legions, and its normal the entry point to Roman history. I'm on my phone so forgive the lack of sources or pictures as well as some spelling mistakes as I have to remember the names. The armies were totally different. Assuming its accurate the minitures you have should show you the Roman army very well. The troops were divided into 5 catagories in this time period. 4 infanty classes and hen cavalry. The infantry were Velities, Hastati, Principes, and Triarii. There were skirmishes, heavy sword infantry, and heavy phalanx infantry respectively. The divisions were according to experience and age. The Hastati and Principes used the Gladius sword and wore chain mail armor, though earlier the Hastati only had a small square breastplate whose name escapes me. The Triarii used a 9ft spear called a Hasta, which is the namesake of the Hastati. They also wore hoplite armor and carried the big rectangular shield you see Roman legions from after Marius carrying. The cavalry was medium armored nobility and were never very good until the 300s AD. Rome used conquered people's cavalry whenever they could since they knew full well their own was substandard. They lined up for battle in thae order of experience. Skirmishers in from to hide the formation from the enemy, and then the heavy infantry in three lines. These lines were divided into Maniples of 300 men each. These Maniples were arranged in a checkerboard formation, with the Hastati maniples in front, Principes behind them directly behind the gaps in the Hastati maniples and Triarii behind them in the same fashion. Ideally the Velities throw their missiles and retreat through the gaps, the Hastati fight and retreat through the Principes, and the Principes break the enemy. The Triarii getting called in means things are going badly, and resulted in a common phrase. "It has come to be Triarii," meaning things were dire. Obviously this is not always how it went, and they also use standard big long lines or troops unbroken by maniples or other formations. The Carthaginians were very different, as their army was entirely made up of mercenaries from their empires holdings. Slingers from the Balearic Islands, phalanx spearman from Libya, various quality infantry from Spain, some of which fought similarly to legionaries, others just used big groups of dudes with spear or swords. Cavalry was lightly armed Numidians who were the best light cavalry in the ancient world. Toss in Greeks and whoever else they could hire. Citizens only were drafted if Africa and Carthage itself were threatened. Also elephants. Carthaginians were the officers and used Greek to give orders. His meant I could be either a disunited and ineffective force, or a flexible and multifaceted army that could change its tactics for any challenge and could hit you however they wanted. The Macedonians used armies that were a legacy of Alexander the Great. A huge line of Phalangites, men armed with a 19ft long pike that fought in a phalanx. They had a small shield strapped to their left arm and had to use two hands to thrust with such a big spear. Cavalry was heavy and meant to flank the infantry pinned down by the phalanx. Alexander did just that over and over again. By this time the armies are nowhere near as well trained as Alexander's were, and the Romans had an army custom buil to be able to move around the phalanx and hit it on the sides or rear.
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Dec 12, 2012 22:37
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Paulywallywalrus posted:. The Byzantines/Eastern Roman Empire/Roman Empire had professional armies till around 11-1200 AD (very rough number). Finding other stuff for them to do was always a problem, since bored troops start making trouble fast. Either by revolting, pillaging local towns o their own, or carousing and causing trouble that way. The Romans solved the problem by having them drill and train endlessly. a Roman soldier was trained to use his sword , shield and javelin of course, as well as bows, slings, spears, and riding horses. The other big thing the Romans did was make them construction workers. They built roads, forts, aqueducts, bridges, and walls.
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Dec 13, 2012 21:00
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Paulywallywalrus posted:Ill just pull the stick out of your own rear end on this one. Gonna quote this for posterity.
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Dec 18, 2012 17:20
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He was gone a year and had nominal control over the entire East. He stayed in Lesbos and never actually went to Syria. If it was an exile it was the wussiest one ever. He basically took a year long vacation to a Greek island and then came back like nothing had changed. He was in control of a large number of troops during his "exile" and that also would make no sense if Augustus and him had a falling out.
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Jan 2, 2013 19:22
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Closest I am coming up with from memory is Caesar and Antony, but that is hardly the equal pairing of Augustus and Agrippa.
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Jan 3, 2013 19:36
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Halloween Jack posted:I don't want to just reference the TV show, but the guys choreographing Rome said that the legionary fighting style was conservative so as not to waste energy; besides thrusts, they would also try to slip their blade around the unprotected leg and slice. Since a shallow thrust is enough to kill someone (eventually), it makes it seem like the battlefields would have been horrific with casualties who were out of the fight but very much still able to crawl around wailing in agony. Maybe an actual historian here knows something about ratios of wounded to outright dead in the aftermath of major battles? Not a historian, but the general pattern of casualties was that they were surprisingly low during the initial portions of a battle, with the worst ratios being when one side gets cornered or routs and is chased down. During the actual fighting at the front, people were primarily making sure they did not die, and opportunistically killing or wounding their opponents. It's when other dudes come in from the sides, or you are running away while cavalry chases you that things get horrific. The oter time being when one side is totally outmatched, which the Romans were on the winning side of for the majority of the empire's reign.
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Jan 16, 2013 21:49
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It seems reasonable to lean towards women holding such power occasionally. The fact that we have nay evidence of it at all is a good indication considering how sexist the Romans were. No one was going out of their way to write down poo poo women were doing, especially not one they might have owed favors too. No one can make a positive statement regarding it, but I see no reason why its not quite likely there were a significant minority of women in the client system. There were also the royal families who often had women in positions of near absolute power, albeit through their sons. There was at least enough acceptance of the concept that women can be able to hold power that a lot of people were willing to follow the Severan women for many years.
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Jan 31, 2013 17:25
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