Koesj posted:

Bullshit flavored yes, but the guy was probably there going by the amount of stuff he couldn't make up otherwise.

Mitsuo posted:

Kind of a fan of 1632 though

George T. Dennis, S.J., Catholic University of America posted:

THEOPHANES, The Chronicle of Theophanes: An English Translation of anni mundi 6095-6305 (A.D. 602-813), trans. Harry Turtledove. (The Middle Ages.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982. Pp. xxiv, 201. $25 (cloth); $8.95 (paper).

THERE ARE periods in Byzantine history for which there is more than one narrative source, and the historian must compare their data. For the early centuries, though, there are not many such sources or, indeed, much writing of any sort. For most of these years the chronicle of the monk Theophanes is our most accurate and often our only source. Yet these were incredibly critical years in the history of mankind. Half of the Roman Empire was being ruled by barbarians. The eastern half was just barely hanging on and was soon cut in half again. The remainder was under relentless pressure, at times even overrun, by Slavs and Bulgarians to the north and west and by Muslims to the south and east. If the empire had gone under, as it very nearly did, so would Europe have gone, and the western civilization we know would have been grossly deformed or simply aborted. While the empire did find the resources to hold off its external foes, it was nearly torn apart by a conflict within, the struggle over religious images, iconoclasm. The empire survived and came to prosper, but it had been profoundly transformed. In 602 it was recognizably Roman; in 813 it called itself Roman but it was clearly Byzantine. The chronicle of Theophanes, sometimes sketchily, sometimes in detail, records what happened during these
obscure but formative years.

Theophanes strove for chronological accuracy and set a model for subsequent chroniclers. His coverage of events in the Arab world is surprisingly exact. While he proposes to report the facts, his own feelings, particularly on iconoclasm, are not hidden. He never, for example, mentions the name of the iconoclastic emperor Constantine V without some such qualification as accursed, wretched, enemy of God, bloodsucking wild beast, and he delights in retelling the unpleasant incident at his baptism which earned him the sobriquet of Copronymos. Nonetheless, he also records things which put Constantine in a favorable light, such as his military victories. The reader gets the impression that, whatever Theophanes' own views, he can be trusted in recording the events of his time. It is only recently that this important history has been translated, part of it into German in 1957, and the present translation into English, which covers the years 602 to 813 A.D. or, since the Byzantines dated from the creation of the world, the anni mundi 6095-6305. Undergraduates
and scholars as well now have access to a first-rate source for an otherwise obscure period.

The translation impresses this reviewer as quite accurate. It is generally easy to read, although some of the phrasing sounds a bit awkward, but then, the original is no literary masterpiece. Turtledove's introduction is short, informative, and to the
point, and there is a good index. Brief explanatory notes accompany the text, fortunately at the bottom of the page. Some additional notes, however, might have been useful, for example, on towered ships (p. 8), a heresy concerning fasting (p. 48), the covered Hippodrome (p. 173). Some may find the transliterating of names slightly overdone: Nikaia, Kilikia, Kappadokia. One word which should have been transliterated, though, is the vestment worn by the patriarch, the omophorion, as it is usually called; it should never have been translated as surplice (pp. 100, 129), a strictly western garment worn by everyone from altar servers to bishops. The organa
which Irene transported to Thrace (p. 143) may have been musical organs, as in the German translation, and not tools. Stoudion (p. 162) should be corrected to Stoudios. Apart, then, from one error regarding ecclesiastical dress, there is nothing serious to fault in this translation. It is a good piece of work which makes a significant source available to all of us. To give the press its due, I should add that the book is quite nicely presented, and its price is reasonable.

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

By the war

Libluini posted:

Concerning the latest military inovations, this really makes me fear the next great war. Sending in drones and robots like they are normal soldiers just because their leaders subconciously expect them to work like conventional military weapons will end up in a collossal disaster.

Arquinsiel posted:

That it happens at all is noteworthy, and the only one I can think of was a single eight-man section charging a position. The dude in charge got a shiney medal for it though.

the JJ posted:

I think Hegel's talking about a more formalized 'checklist' after which a commander (not the feudal owner of the fort) could surrender and not face ing from their own side. E.G. 'stores were at 50%, they shelled us for 8 days, it'd been 8 months and you fucks never sent help, so... yeah we surrendered.' The return of the thus, led to more assaults.

Hogge Wild posted:

that must be the cleanest Oglaf!

a travelling HEGEL posted:

So I'm reading a book on military superstitions

Frostwerks posted:

What are we looking at here?

Ensign Expendable posted:

Raskolnikov38 posted:

Hastings says as much in Armageddon. Front line troops were too busy actually fighting to do much whereas second echelon and service troops 'settle' down into towns and cities and stay put for a while.

Frostwerks posted:

I remember reading on these forums a long rear end time ago and maybe in this thread's forerunner, the GBS history thread or maybe even an LF mil-hist effort thread that the labyrinthine side streets and alleyways of Paris in the Revolution were conducive to the uprising. I think the reasoning suggested was that thanks to the flighty local belligerents, the topography was great at breaking up troop units into smaller and smaller and more diffuse elements that lost their advantages of massed musket volleys and led to their loss of cohesion and chaotic defeat in detail. There was an implied addendum that the transition to broad avenues of post-revolutionary Paris was to counteract a repeat performance of just such an uprising. I've learned enough from these threads and others that what you've heard and read doesn't necessarily imply historicity and I'm just kinda wondering about how stupid/ how insightful/ or how incidental this hypothetical mattered to the course of history.

WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL posted:

Ilya Berkowitch

Rodrigo Diaz posted:

Constantinople was not besieged after 1453 but it probably would have been in 1878 had the Russians not been stopped by British intervention in the Russo-Turkish War.