Just remembered something. One of the earliest greek colonies in Italy was called Pithekoūsai . It was an island of the cost and was based on trading with the mainland and also receiving the proceeds of pirate raids. Pithekoūsai translates as monkey island, I wonder did they have a secret.
Ancient history - looking for fun facts
- Thread starter CrazyCrab
- Start date
Recommended Videos
CrazyCrab said:
1. Not sure tbh. It might have varied a great deal between Mycenaean and Classical Greece.
2. Yeah, that's pushing it. The Huns don't show for another few hundred years, the Mongols for more than a thousand.
If you want the 'hordes from the north' type thing, the Thracians probably fit the bill. Although you can go for the Scythians or Dacians if you want to go a bit further afield. The Scythians were probably closest to the Huns in general demeanour - unwashed, barbaric horsemen from the steppes!
3. Peltast as the flexible everyman class, Hoplite as the slow knight/damage sink. Thracian or dacian infantry as a heavy offensive class (using these [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falx] things [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhomphaia]). Possibly a sicilian/cypriot as an irregular/scoundrel type class with a pirate background? Cretans/illyrians as missile classes?
4. Slings (effective against unshielded opponents, limited effect against armour), javelins of various weights and sizes (very good for disrupting formations and killing heavy armour). Archers would have been fairly rare by comparison, though more common in eastern locales. Probably more effective than slings, but still pretty limited against armour.
Javelins would probably be most universal because they'd be used by lighter infantry as well as many skirmishers (as per my last post), but dedicated missile units might have had more slings and bows, if you see what I mean.
Agrianian javilinmen, rhodian slingers, and cretan archers were renowned for their abilities. Syrian/persian archers and illyrian/thracian javelinmen to a lesser degree.
Depends on the era. The Eastern Roman Empire, for example, used a lot of Greek units.CrazyCrab said:
But assuming we're talking about the Roman army as everyone imagines it, Greeks never served as legionnaires unless they became Roman citizens (in which case they weren't really Greeks any more). Greeks serving in the Roman army would have been auxilia, but auxilia serving as infantry will almost certainly have been equipped and trained a lot like Roman legionnaires.
Wikipedia tells me that some Roman generals had a bit of a hero-worship thing for Alexander and attempted to revive the Macedonian-style Phalanx (which used long pikes, not 300 style spear and shields) but it seems more a vanity project than anything else. The emergence of Roman legions had made Phalanxes pretty much obsolete as a serious tactic.
Also, Greece wasn't a huge recruiting ground for the Roman Empire, with the exception of a few areas like Crete (the Romans had a massive thing for Cretan archers for a while).
I'm not sure of the cultural specifics here, but just a general note. Fantasy writers tend to get magic wrong.CrazyCrab said:
We live in a world which is fundamentally a disenchanted one. We have a clear separation between the "immanent" (the stuff we see and interact with every day) and the "transcendent" (the stuff which violates and seems to go beyond the immanent). We know there is a natural law, and when something seems out of place in that natural law we can pick it out and call it supernatural, or magic. The idea of some people having "special powers" or being mages or wizards (or superheroes, since it's all basically the same thing) makes sense.
But this world is, at best, a few centuries old.
Before that, there is no separation between magic and anything else. Magic is not cordoned off into this special sphere where people shoot fire from their eyes or say special words to make it rain, magic is an everyday part of reality. The Gods are always there, the natural world around you and even the structure of society itself is physical testament to their existence. When humans influence these things, whether by prayer, ritual or action, they're exercising a power, and that power can be thought of as magic. Sure, there may be specific cultural definitions of magic, but there's no overarching cross cultural definition. Anything can be magic.
Although, this is not to say that there are not some things which are more strange than others. The ability to treat wounds or smelt metal is often thought of as magical (in the sense of being cordoned off, special or sacred) in pre-modern cultures, but that doesn't mean it's just as surprising as the power to make thunder. The point is that any form of human power, not just the things which fall outside of our own 21st century understanding of natural law, can be thought of as magical.
Now, whether ancient Greeks understood some people to just innately have powers others didn't, I don't know. But the whole notion that what some people do is magic because it's supernatural and what other people do isn't magic is a pretty modern one, from what we can tell.
Note: I'm just musing here. I'm not seriously suggesting you try to dig up a 2000 year old way of viewing the world, or even that doing so would be possible or desirable. It's just something to think about.
1.
They were changed into slaves.
Oh. You mean... oh. That's a complicated question, and one that I am not qualified to adequately answer. I imagine there are similarities between the two systems, based on what I do know, that being that Rome took a LOT of inspiration from the Greeks culturally, and in every other way.
2.
Most men wore tunics. Even when those who wore togas (Male Roman citizens and women of ill repute) wore them (usually in Forums or other social situations), they wore them over tunics. Women wore stolas or were considered prostitutes or adulterers.
3.
Axes aren't terribly effective weapons in an organised military. They can be used well without training, and can have great utility for an individual, but in a war, they would be too clumsy. The mace had little use due to the lack of extremely heavy armor that covered the entire body, and even later was never very widely used.
The spear is not only easily used, but is extremely effective when used in formation, and was thus extremely popular at the time (and at almost any time in history). The gladius, a common weapon for the Roman legionnaires, was used similarly to a spear in some ways, being mostly a stabbing weapon.
They were changed into slaves.
Oh. You mean... oh. That's a complicated question, and one that I am not qualified to adequately answer. I imagine there are similarities between the two systems, based on what I do know, that being that Rome took a LOT of inspiration from the Greeks culturally, and in every other way.
2.
Most men wore tunics. Even when those who wore togas (Male Roman citizens and women of ill repute) wore them (usually in Forums or other social situations), they wore them over tunics. Women wore stolas or were considered prostitutes or adulterers.
3.
Axes aren't terribly effective weapons in an organised military. They can be used well without training, and can have great utility for an individual, but in a war, they would be too clumsy. The mace had little use due to the lack of extremely heavy armor that covered the entire body, and even later was never very widely used.
The spear is not only easily used, but is extremely effective when used in formation, and was thus extremely popular at the time (and at almost any time in history). The gladius, a common weapon for the Roman legionnaires, was used similarly to a spear in some ways, being mostly a stabbing weapon.
Well...you had people with weird abilities due to being supernatural, or having blundered into supernatural beings at some point. Cecrops was a king of Athens who was half snake, for example, and there were endless demigods running around.CrazyCrab said:
Yes, those ones would be...but, to the Greeks, everyone who wasn't a Greek was a barbarian[footnote]Everyone who didn't speak Greek as a native, more correctly. Their language was said to be like the bleating of sheep, which is were the name comes from, IIRC[/footnote]. Even Macedonians weren't real Greeks until Philip.CrazyCrab said:
The Persians weren't just Persians, they had an empire. All of the various people's in it would have been considered barbarians. So...you have a barbarian horde there. You have Egyptians and Medes and Lydians and Jews and Babylonians and all sorts of different groups. Each group would arm and outfit their soldiers themselves, resulting in all sorts of different looking soldiers. They even had camel riding cavalry. However, these aren't what we'd can barbarians, they were more advanced than the Greeks in various ways.
Also, the Greek went all over the Mediterranean, and up into the Black Sea, anyone on the coast is someone they'd possibly meet.
However, you seem to have overlooked the Greeks most common enemy, the other Greeks. Each city was a nation in of itself, which would constantly fight against various other nations for various reasons. Cities also had different cultures...when people say "Ancient Greece", they usually mean "Ancient Athens", because there's lots of evidence aobut what things were like there, (and they did forceably spread themselves on other states).
Oh...and the Persian Wars became the inspiration for a story about how Athens saved all of Greece from an invasion of Amazons.
Well...hoplites were the dominant military forces, though you had peltasts (who didn't have as much fancy armour) and the odd cavalryman (who was rich enough to afford a horse). Before the period we seem to be talking about, you might have people fighting from chariot back by throwing javelins at people.CrazyCrab said:
More or less. You had various thrown weapons like javelins as well used by peltasts. Greeks and Romans would inscribe messages to the enemy on their slingshot, stuff like "Gotcha", "Duck", "For Pompey's backside", "Your health" and so on.CrazyCrab said:
...
As an aside, when I decided what to study in university, I decided on history, and decided on ancient history because I thought it'd be less controversial (ask someone what their country did during WW2 and who was more important in its outcome, for example). But...well, there are a few US scholars who've decided that Athenians called their system of government "Democracy", so obviously they were the good guys. The Spartans they were often fighting had a different system, so they were Communists and therefore evil. This got very tiresome.
On the other hand, the Sicilian campaign...The Athenians and Spartans were currently at an uneasy peace, when the Athenians decided to get involved in someone else's war far away, without a clear idea of what they were going to do. The Spartans sent a general to advise the Athenian's Sicilian enemies.
Swap some of the names around and update the equipment, and you've got the US and USSR/China fighting a proxy conflict during the Cold War.
See, if any university offered a half-decent history course here, I'd be teaching that and not English.thaluikhain said:
Yeah, I think that's due to people equating Athens with Greece, Athenian attitudes to, say, pederasty are associated with the rest of Greece.Odgical said:
Plato and Aristotle, among many other philosophers' writings are cornerstones to Western society. I think that's reason enough to consider them fairly important.Odgical said:
That and early democracy.
But when it comes to "liking" them... well, I guess that depends on an individual's feelings about their "positive and negative" aspects. I personally try not to make modern judgments about ancient civilizations. Our rules don't apply.
Greeks did use swords...but swords are expensive compared to spears and the phalanx worked as a more cohesive unit than a bunch of swordsmen. Also not that the Macedonians greatly improved the phalanx by increasing the length of the spear. One reason the Romans were able to defeat the Macedonians was because they could get up close and use swords. Macedonians also bought in cavalry for use in actual battle rather than just chasing down the fleeing enemy, because Macedonia had grass plains and many rich people had horses. Before this Greeks usually just met in a field and bashed spears and shields together. Also unlike always in films soldiers do not throw their spears...you throw your spear you're weaponless. They have desperate javelins for throwing.
Not true of the Greek hoplites. The equipment worn by the hoplites meant only fairly wealthy people could get properly kitted out, and they could afford to own swords. However, the swords were back-up weapons, the primary weapon remained the spear.F said:
Being a Greek myself I decided to pay tribute to my heritage by starting to read as more ancient books I can.
Reading them,I found quite many interesting facts that are either fun,weird,or for some reasons downplayed.
Here is a list of few:
#1 There are some tablets that were found on the Delphic Temple of Apollo were the Oracle was,with 147 maxims instructing people how to live. Among them,are 10 that are the exact same 10 commandments of Moses.
#2 In Plato's 'Timeaus' he tries to explain myths of how the world came to be,and describes the modern scientific Big Bang theory,saying that in the beginning all the physical matter of our universe was concentrated on a single point in space,that at some point started expanding.
#3 In the same book Plato says that the matter of the universe was broken to pieces that started expanding by a single Creator God that wasn't Zeus or any of the beings often associated with ancient Greek religion. It basically proves that there was monotheism in Greece before the coming of Jesus Christ.
#4 It is written that there had been cycles of human civilization. At the end of each cycle humans had very advanced civilizations with science and technology,and huge cataclysmic events were destroying them,forcing those humans remaining alive to start again from point zero.
#5 It is written that Egyptians held on their libraries the most extensive recordings of human history,going back more than 10,000 B.C.,and that these records somehow survived many of the cataclysmic events that happened,giving Egyptians a head-start each time after each cataclysmic event.
#6 Slavery in ancient Athens was nothing like what is today conceived as slavery. The Athenians didn't enslaved people based on race like North-Western Europeans did,but instead they based it on people's financial capabilities. The word the Athenians used for these people wasn't 'slave' but 'doulos' which is a word that derives from the word 'douleia' which means physical labor. The literal meaning of the word 'doulos' meant 'someone who does physical labor'.
This makes more sense when you know that the word that is often translated by non-Greek translators as 'citizen' is the word 'Politis' which is related to the word 'Politiki' which means politics. A more accurate translation instead of 'Citizen' would be 'Politician'. Another thing that is often downplayed is that 'slaves' were paid salaries,and with enough savings they could buy their 'citizenship', or if you prefer that 'physical laborers' could buy their 'politician status'.The above means that in ancient Athens there were three classes: The one of Politicians,the one of Women,and the one of Physical Laborers.
I assume that the above wrong translation and downplaying of certain details is done by North-Western Europeans trying to justify their racist slavery history by offloading the blame to others.
#7 There is the common misconception that ancient Greeks wore skirts because they wanted to look like women and were gay.
Truth is though that skirts was a universal piece of clothing during that age that wasn't seen as belonging to a certain gender. Not only in Greece,but in many other places of the world men used to wear skirts,and they only became a girly thing much later in world history. Pants were found at an age much later than classical Greece,and were designed specifically as a garment for people to wear when they would ride horses. Because women were treated unequal at that time, they weren't allowed to ride on horses,and thus they didn't get to wear pants,thus pants were seen as a symbol of masculinity and manliness. Men too proud of their manliness started to wearing pants even when they weren't riding horses,as a reminder to others of their manliness,and thus pants came to be the usual thing men would wear.
#8 Another modern misconception has to do with Greeks being naked on almost every painting or statue we have discovered.
Some people today assume because of that that the ancient Greeks were perverts. The truth is that nudity was considered shameful and bad only in Israel at that time,and that's because of the teachings of the Abrahamic religions.
Today the vast majority of our world considers nudity to not be acceptable in public,because the vast majority of people are either Christians,Jews,or Muslims,all sharing some common Abrahamic believes. And our modern society relates nudity with sex,because people have been used to only see some parts of human anatomy when it's about having sex. Thus today we think that if someone is naked is because he or she wants to have sex. But back then when people outside of Israel didn't believed that being naked in public is a sin,nudity wasn't so much related with sex,people saw clothes merely as tools to protect themselves from cold and environment hazards. Thus Greeks were nude during the Summer.
#9 Ancient Athenians were addicted to wine and were almost every day drunk.
#10 On the Pelloponesian Wars,the Spartans siege Athens,and because they couldn't penetrate Athenian walls,they instead decided to use biological warfare,and poisoned the rivers that passed through the city that offered Athenians water to drink. Thousands of Athenians died by the poisoning and they were so many that there wasn't enough room on the cemetery to bury each one on his or her own grave,so they made a huge mass grave and piled all the bodies together.
#11 There are many clues that indicate that there was an age at ancient Crete of Woman Supremacy. There are many figurines of Goddesses that were worshiped,and godhood was all female. Some say femininity itself was considered sacred. Frescoes mostly depict women inside buildings doing stuff like chatting,dancing,and always with pale skin. Men are depicted with dark skin and doing physical labor.
Probably,it was usual for men to have darker skin color than women,as they were getting tanned because they spent most of their time outside and under the Sun,doing things like cropping the fields or fishing.Women's color is depicted pale white,as they mainly stayed indoors chatting,dancing,eating and ruling.
#12 There is the popular belief that homosexuality was seen in Sparta like it was on other Greek city states. As just another way to have sexual pleasure.
What is often overlooked is a record we have about Spartan law though: Spartan law forbade pleasure. Getting carried away by passion for pleasure was seen as a weakness that was punished by law,and thus the only kind of sex that was allowed was the one that produces children,making not only homosexuality,but even lots of heterosexual sexual activities illegal.
The only reason to have sex in Sparta was to make more Spartans to make Sparta stronger.
Having sex for pleasure was crime.
Reading them,I found quite many interesting facts that are either fun,weird,or for some reasons downplayed.
Here is a list of few:
#1 There are some tablets that were found on the Delphic Temple of Apollo were the Oracle was,with 147 maxims instructing people how to live. Among them,are 10 that are the exact same 10 commandments of Moses.
#2 In Plato's 'Timeaus' he tries to explain myths of how the world came to be,and describes the modern scientific Big Bang theory,saying that in the beginning all the physical matter of our universe was concentrated on a single point in space,that at some point started expanding.
#3 In the same book Plato says that the matter of the universe was broken to pieces that started expanding by a single Creator God that wasn't Zeus or any of the beings often associated with ancient Greek religion. It basically proves that there was monotheism in Greece before the coming of Jesus Christ.
#4 It is written that there had been cycles of human civilization. At the end of each cycle humans had very advanced civilizations with science and technology,and huge cataclysmic events were destroying them,forcing those humans remaining alive to start again from point zero.
#5 It is written that Egyptians held on their libraries the most extensive recordings of human history,going back more than 10,000 B.C.,and that these records somehow survived many of the cataclysmic events that happened,giving Egyptians a head-start each time after each cataclysmic event.
#6 Slavery in ancient Athens was nothing like what is today conceived as slavery. The Athenians didn't enslaved people based on race like North-Western Europeans did,but instead they based it on people's financial capabilities. The word the Athenians used for these people wasn't 'slave' but 'doulos' which is a word that derives from the word 'douleia' which means physical labor. The literal meaning of the word 'doulos' meant 'someone who does physical labor'.
This makes more sense when you know that the word that is often translated by non-Greek translators as 'citizen' is the word 'Politis' which is related to the word 'Politiki' which means politics. A more accurate translation instead of 'Citizen' would be 'Politician'. Another thing that is often downplayed is that 'slaves' were paid salaries,and with enough savings they could buy their 'citizenship', or if you prefer that 'physical laborers' could buy their 'politician status'.The above means that in ancient Athens there were three classes: The one of Politicians,the one of Women,and the one of Physical Laborers.
I assume that the above wrong translation and downplaying of certain details is done by North-Western Europeans trying to justify their racist slavery history by offloading the blame to others.
#7 There is the common misconception that ancient Greeks wore skirts because they wanted to look like women and were gay.
Truth is though that skirts was a universal piece of clothing during that age that wasn't seen as belonging to a certain gender. Not only in Greece,but in many other places of the world men used to wear skirts,and they only became a girly thing much later in world history. Pants were found at an age much later than classical Greece,and were designed specifically as a garment for people to wear when they would ride horses. Because women were treated unequal at that time, they weren't allowed to ride on horses,and thus they didn't get to wear pants,thus pants were seen as a symbol of masculinity and manliness. Men too proud of their manliness started to wearing pants even when they weren't riding horses,as a reminder to others of their manliness,and thus pants came to be the usual thing men would wear.
#8 Another modern misconception has to do with Greeks being naked on almost every painting or statue we have discovered.
Some people today assume because of that that the ancient Greeks were perverts. The truth is that nudity was considered shameful and bad only in Israel at that time,and that's because of the teachings of the Abrahamic religions.
Today the vast majority of our world considers nudity to not be acceptable in public,because the vast majority of people are either Christians,Jews,or Muslims,all sharing some common Abrahamic believes. And our modern society relates nudity with sex,because people have been used to only see some parts of human anatomy when it's about having sex. Thus today we think that if someone is naked is because he or she wants to have sex. But back then when people outside of Israel didn't believed that being naked in public is a sin,nudity wasn't so much related with sex,people saw clothes merely as tools to protect themselves from cold and environment hazards. Thus Greeks were nude during the Summer.
#9 Ancient Athenians were addicted to wine and were almost every day drunk.
#10 On the Pelloponesian Wars,the Spartans siege Athens,and because they couldn't penetrate Athenian walls,they instead decided to use biological warfare,and poisoned the rivers that passed through the city that offered Athenians water to drink. Thousands of Athenians died by the poisoning and they were so many that there wasn't enough room on the cemetery to bury each one on his or her own grave,so they made a huge mass grave and piled all the bodies together.
#11 There are many clues that indicate that there was an age at ancient Crete of Woman Supremacy. There are many figurines of Goddesses that were worshiped,and godhood was all female. Some say femininity itself was considered sacred. Frescoes mostly depict women inside buildings doing stuff like chatting,dancing,and always with pale skin. Men are depicted with dark skin and doing physical labor.
Probably,it was usual for men to have darker skin color than women,as they were getting tanned because they spent most of their time outside and under the Sun,doing things like cropping the fields or fishing.Women's color is depicted pale white,as they mainly stayed indoors chatting,dancing,eating and ruling.
#12 There is the popular belief that homosexuality was seen in Sparta like it was on other Greek city states. As just another way to have sexual pleasure.
What is often overlooked is a record we have about Spartan law though: Spartan law forbade pleasure. Getting carried away by passion for pleasure was seen as a weakness that was punished by law,and thus the only kind of sex that was allowed was the one that produces children,making not only homosexuality,but even lots of heterosexual sexual activities illegal.
The only reason to have sex in Sparta was to make more Spartans to make Sparta stronger.
Having sex for pleasure was crime.