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Even without steam engines I'm surprised Rome didn't get into some kind of railroads. It wouldn't take much - a skin of iron over wooden rails, and some decent metal wheels. They had raised, well-drained, and paved roads all over the place - perfect to drop some kind of primitive rail system onto. Sure, it's not that awesome pulling with oxen or mules instead of locomotives, but I'd think the drop in rolling friction would still make it well worth it for heavy loads (ore, grain) over the long distances of the Roman Empire. For grain especially, since transporting grain convoys to the interior towns/legions meant not only a long-rear end time compared to water transport, but you also lose more cargo the longer it takes due to the draft animals eating it along the way. Running the carts on rails would speed things up significantly, right?. Neophyte fucked around with this message at 21:02 on May 31, 2012 |
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May 31, 2012 20:57
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Neophyte posted:Running the carts on rails would speed things up significantly, right?. It's sad that I know this.
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May 31, 2012 21:04
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Do yall think we would be more or less advanced (technologically, intellectually, society, etc.) today if the Roman Empire had not fallen?
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May 31, 2012 21:10
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Neophyte posted:Even without steam engines I'm surprised Rome didn't get into some kind of railroads. It wouldn't take much - a skin of iron over wooden rails, and some decent metal wheels. They had raised, well-drained, and paved roads all over the place - perfect to drop some kind of primitive rail system onto. This kind of thinking is really dependant on the advantage of hindsight. There are a ton of things like this that seem so obvious to us looking backward but for whatever reason, or possibly no reason at all, they just weren't taken advantage of. You can't really just say "But this would have been an improvement!" as if that's all it takes to make an advancement. In reality you need a society that values inventiveness, somebody to invent it, and you need a culture that's ready and willing to take advantage of it. The last part is continual as well; even if the Romans HAD invented rail roads they could very well have been lost as time went on and the empire became more fragmented. EDIT: Also if I'm not mistaken almost all of the long distance transport would have been taken care of by water, certainly for stuff like grain. The legions probably made long over-land trips, but they literally built the roads, and the roads were plenty fast enough for Rome's needs. Modern Day Hercules fucked around with this message at 21:25 on May 31, 2012 |
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May 31, 2012 21:19
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Do yall think we would be more or less advanced (technologically, intellectually, society, etc.) today if the Roman Empire had not fallen? I think that's one of those things that's totally impossible to tell. It's fun to fantasize about a Roman walking on the moon in 1000 A.D. (1753 A.U.C.  ), but I imagine it's just as likely large, stable, lasting Rome would have turned inward much like China, and Eurasia would be bracketed on either end by big, technologically conservative empires that both thought they were the perfect center of the universe.
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May 31, 2012 21:29
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Neophyte posted:Even without steam engines I'm surprised Rome didn't get into some kind of railroads. It wouldn't take much - a skin of iron over wooden rails, and some decent metal wheels. They had raised, well-drained, and paved roads all over the place - perfect to drop some kind of primitive rail system onto. The Greeks knew of wagonways in the form of limestone roads with grooves carved into them as a stable track for wagon wheels. The most famous is the Diolkos which was used for transporting boats overland with wagons. They built it across the 6km long Isthmus of Corinth so boats wouldn't have to circumnavigate the Peloponnese to get from Corinth to the east coast of the mainland, sort of like an ancient Panama Canal. It was built in the 6th century BC and fell into disuse around the 1st century AD. Luigi Thirty fucked around with this message at 21:37 on May 31, 2012 |
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May 31, 2012 21:35
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A few thoughts re: 'how come no rail tracks' 1. Metal (may) have been more precious or had better uses back then. 2. Looters may have seized on such rails to sell. 3. Enemies may have destroyed such rails to disrupt movement/trade. I don't know how abundant metal was in the Roman world, but sources I've read indicate it was *the* resource to have in terms of power/warmaking.
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May 31, 2012 22:25
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Fintilgin posted:I think that's one of those things that's totally impossible to tell. It's fun to fantasize about a Roman walking on the moon in 1000 A.D. (1753 A.U.C. Alright, I had just assumed it wouldn't have progressed all that far due to reliance on slavery (And thus as was mentioned, less likelihood / reason to industrialize).
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May 31, 2012 22:37
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GamerL posted:A few thoughts re: 'how come no rail tracks' In particular, building using metal generally requires transporting it long distances from the foundry. Stone, on the other hand, doesn't rust sitting out in the rain and can be harvested on-site from nearby stone deposits. Even nowadays, building with concrete is cheaper than building with steel.
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May 31, 2012 22:44
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Rome never came close to producing enough iron for any proto-industrial revolution--I'm curious as to their use of coal, though. Song China was the closest to an early industrial revolution, but it was cut short by the Jurchen conquest. Kaifeng (the capital of the Northern Song) was remarkably close to coal and iron reserves and they were starting to produce significant amounts of both. One argument is that an industrial revolution requires that kind of proximity to both sources, with a few other factors in place as well. Remember, the steam pump wasn't invented for drilling or railroads, it was invented to pump water out of mines. Without those kinds of use cases where a small, effective, but still low-level steam pump would prove useful, then you don't have the chance to develop the technology into something effective for larger applications. As for rails, why would you invest so much manpower and money to improve land transportation of goods when sea transport was so cheap?
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May 31, 2012 22:49
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Roman metallurgy wasn't even remotely close to advanced enough to mass produce track and rolling stock, nor were their manual slave-operated mines up to the task of producing enough raw material. One mile of railroad in the 19th century took an estimated 150 tons of iron and the entire iron production of the Empire is only estimated to have been about 84,750 tons yearly, enough for 565 miles of track if every scrap was used for absolutely nothing but railroad. atelier morgan fucked around with this message at 23:31 on May 31, 2012 |
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May 31, 2012 22:55
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UberJew posted:Roman metallurgy wasn't even remotely close to advanced enough to mass produce track and rolling stock, nor were their manual slave-operated mines up to the task of producing enough raw material. Yearly or total Iron Production? Why did they produce so little iron? From what I remember, they mined vastly more Silver / Gold than Iron.
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May 31, 2012 23:26
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Yearly or total Iron Production? Yearly, I'll edit my post to make that clear. Even per year that's not enough to support the mind boggling amount of miles that would be necessary. As for why they mined more gold and silver, it was more valuable and easier to work! Iron smelting for the era was a slow and arduous process (it had to be hammered out by hand from a slag of the melted ore and charcoal remnants into wrought iron) since the Romans didn't pick up the idea of large centralized blast furnaces for producing huge amounts of cast iron like the Chinese did, so there simply wasn't call for massive amounts of iron given how much skilled labor was required for it. e: to point out how huge the discrepancy was between east and west the Han Chinese had waterwheel driven blast furnaces by the first century! Europe wouldn't see a powered bloomery (for the production of wrought iron) for another thousand years, with a powered blast furnace being hundreds of years after that. atelier morgan fucked around with this message at 23:40 on May 31, 2012 |
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May 31, 2012 23:30
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TipTow posted:Wasn't Marcus Aurelius a stoic philosopher? How would that have worked? Sorry, I should have clarified. The Stoics supported the idea of the best man ruling, specifically the idea that their moral values should be on the highest level. Occasionally it went beyond passive arguments like these so you'd get Stoics refusing to recognise the imperial titles of emperors. At any rate, they were perceived as enough of a threat for some emperors, e.g. Domitian, to execute them.
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May 31, 2012 23:55
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Fintilgin posted:I think that's one of those things that's totally impossible to tell. It's fun to fantasize about a Roman walking on the moon in 1000 A.D. (1753 A.U.C. I vaguely recall reading about an inventor appearing before an emperor with something, I don't remember what (I want to say mirror-like glass?) and being executed because the emperor didn't want the invention to kill certain industries
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Jun 1, 2012 00:53
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Alan Smithee posted:I vaguely recall reading about an inventor appearing before an emperor with something, I don't remember what (I want to say mirror-like glass?) and being executed because the emperor didn't want the invention to kill certain industries Jared Diamond presented as part of his thesis in GG&S that big monolithic powers like China were more likely to squash innovation due to their orthodox character, whereas squabbling regions like Europe promoted innovation because you could always shop your idea elsewhere. The reality is that big stable regimes like Song China, Pax Romana, Pax Mongolica, and the Islamic Golden Age produced much more innovation than all squabbling periods except post-Medieval Europe. The recent success of Europe likely has more to do with universal scaling laws fostering the creative class a la Geoffrey West.
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Jun 1, 2012 01:07
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physeter posted:It's sad that I know this. I think every person in this thread would disagree with your last sentence. Feel free to do an extensive writeup on why roman carts were so good.
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Jun 1, 2012 02:18
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Neophyte posted:Running the carts on rails would speed things up significantly, right?. Sea transport. Most of the important parts of Rome were near the Mediterranean or a river. The concept of the railroad was invented by Greeks (posted earlier) but yeah, just not much of an advantage over what they had. And without a steam engine there probably wasn't that much difference between a railroad and the quality of Roman highways. Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Do yall think we would be more or less advanced (technologically, intellectually, society, etc.) today if the Roman Empire had not fallen? All depends if things stagnated. I love to imagine a world where Rome began the industrial revolution about 200 CE and was conquering India with airships and landing on the moon 1500 years ago and poo poo, but who knows. The thing is that the loss of technology in the "dark ages" has been highly overstated by historians who were all about Rome and loved to poo poo on the medieval age. This started as soon as the Renaissance/early modern period and has continued until now, though there's a big pushback. People focus on what they need. The technology for grand engineering disappeared because in early medieval society, it just wasn't useful. Technologies for farming, for example, never went away and actually advanced significantly during the medieval age because that's what mattered. Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Why did they produce so little iron? From what I remember, they mined vastly more Silver / Gold than Iron. It's a pain in the rear end and there weren't economic historians measuring progress by tons of iron produced. Iron's also relatively easy to recycle, which is a large part of why we have so little Roman military gear. Broken helmet gets collected and reworked, not thrown out. A lot of metallic goods would've been produced in easier to work metals like bronze, iron was primarily needed for the military and some construction projects. FullLeatherJacket posted:The statistic I've heard is that no more than 10,000 words of primary source Roman material have ever been discovered (although I would assume this doesn't cover the Byzantine era). I've not heard that one, seems very low. If it just literally means words written by Romans it's going to be fairly low, most of the books we have are medieval copies of the primary sources rather than the primaries themselves. But there's got to be at least 10,000 words of Roman writing on the monuments in Rome alone. Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:How did the Byzantine Imperial Dynasties popup? I've read that most were families from small villages in Greece / Anatolia, which to me implies peasants. No idea here. Alan Smithee posted:What were the greatest stories of upward mobility? Someone lowborn holding high office that sort of thing There are lots of freedmen who got filthy goddamn rich. Like, ridiculously rich. It was considered a serious problem at some points. Some of the patrician families have slave backgrounds as well. DarkCrawler posted:Emperor Justinian was born a peasant who I think could barely read before his uncle (who served in the Imperial Guard) adopted him. Theodora was literally a prostitute before becoming Empress. Belisarius was a peasant as well. Meritocracy for the win! This is probably the most notable one, Justinian was a peasant and ended up one of the greatest emperors of all time. That's a solid rise. TipTow posted:Wasn't Marcus Aurelius a stoic philosopher? How would that have worked? Stoicism was quite compatible with Roman culture, it hits all the right beats for Romans to be into it, but they strongly believed in rulers being the best man and would reject inferior rulers. But you're not allowed to oppose the man in charge in Rome--unless you have an army and can beat him--so they weren't big fans of that. They also didn't really like class distinctions. diphenhydramine posted:Did extremist groups exist in Roman politics? Sure, somebody always seems extreme depending on the position you're in. The Gracchi land redistributionists were considered extreme, Caesar's populism was extreme, the Iconoclasts were extreme, the Christians were considered extremists, Jews could be extremists. There weren't anarchists running around with bombs, but only because there weren't any bombs. Grand Fromage posted:Not particularly. Romans were prudes. All those stories existed because they were so scandalous that they made for effective attacks against people you didn't like. They certainly happened, but they happen today too--I don't think it was particularly different. One addition here, a lot of the bullshit morality stories about Rome were invented by the Victorian historians, who loved to build little morality plays about how Victorian society was great and everyone else had been so immoral and decadent. Orgies were one of the things they loved to talk about; the vomitorium story comes from this era too. And since I brought it up, a vomitorium is any of the big hallways leading in and out of an arena. It's so named because of how quickly an arena could be emptied, it seemed to vomit out (spew forth is the literal translation of the verb) the people. The eating/puking/eating more story is complete nonsense. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Jun 1, 2012 |
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Jun 1, 2012 03:05
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Did the Romans respect some of the adversaries they consider "barbarians" such as the Germanic tribes? They more or less ground Roman expansion to a halt and was credited as being part of the fall or Rome. Was there any significant contact with the Vikings/Varangians prior to the Byzantine period?
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Jun 1, 2012 05:33
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ChineseTea posted:Did the Romans respect some of the adversaries they consider "barbarians" such as the Germanic tribes? I await the expert for the general answer, but there's an interesting passage in the Annals of Tacitus where he describes some barbarian captives being paraded during a triumph and uses their apparently better character as a stick to beat Romans with. It was sort of a mixed message: "look how these savages are behaving honorably whereas Romans who are supposed to be better are so decadent." An early example of the "noble savage vs. decadent modern" stereotype... Of course, Tacitus was projecting Roman values of martial manliness onto them, and he had an axe to grind when he did so.
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Jun 1, 2012 06:19
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ChineseTea posted:Did the Romans respect some of the adversaries they consider "barbarians" such as the Germanic tribes? They more or less ground Roman expansion to a halt and was credited as being part of the fall or Rome. They respected/feared the Gauls a ton, and thought the Iberians were so nifty that they stole the Gladius from them. They were a martial society and would have respected similar, though that did not mean they considered them equals. AS for the Vikings, I do not know much, though they knew people lived in what they called Scanda. Roman traders and merchants may have gone there, but as far as I know there are no records of Roman diplomats being sent to the area a la China.
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Jun 1, 2012 06:49
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I studied Latin for 6 years in secondary and I only now know about the Roman Iberian conquest because I looked it up in Wikipedia. Was it just my education or is this part of Roman history often overlooked?
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Jun 1, 2012 06:56
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Fragrag posted:I studied Latin for 6 years in secondary and I only now know about the Roman Iberian conquest because I looked it up in Wikipedia. Was it just my education or is this part of Roman history often overlooked? It is often overlooked. In fact, I've studied Roman history in some form since Year 7 (I'm a third year university student) and I have never come across it. Obviously I knew it was part of the empire and the Romans must have conquered it at some point before Augustus, it has just honestly never occurred to me read up on it. Time to go read Wikipedia, I guess. So here's my question: Why is it overlooked? Octy fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Jun 1, 2012 |
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Jun 1, 2012 07:09
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Fragrag posted:I studied Latin for 6 years in secondary and I only now know about the Roman Iberian conquest because I looked it up in Wikipedia. Was it just my education or is this part of Roman history often overlooked? Iberia is greatly overlooked. The typical narrative will just at some point say "Oh and Iberia is Roman now" and that's about it. My personal theory is the initial conquests in Iberia are of the Carthaginian areas, so it gets sort of sidetracked by the Punic War. Then after the full conquest of Iberia, there's not much fighting there again ever. Iberia also goes full bore Roman very fast and becomes the most Roman area outside of Italy, like the initial cultures just vanish entirely and it's Roman as gently caress. It's not a coincidence that the first non-Italian emperors come from Spain. After the west breaks apart, Iberia remains the most Roman of the successor states and stays Roman the longest. Basically until the Islamic conquest finishes rolling across the peninsula. Iberia never has the drama of other regions, so I think that's why it doesn't get a lot of attention. ChineseTea posted:Did the Romans respect some of the adversaries they consider "barbarians" such as the Germanic tribes? They more or less ground Roman expansion to a halt and was credited as being part of the fall or Rome. Will get to this after class. No new posts, woo. Okay. First, yes, the Romans respected their adversaries. You can see this in the artwork, the most famous example is this guy, which is actually a Hellenistic sculpture but was hugely popular in Rome:  This is not a triumphant image. It's designed to create sympathy for the Gaul, make him relatable as a person, not just some barbarian. Look at the pain on his face. The Romans recognized the contributions of outsiders and they definitely weren't stupid about the abilities of their enemies. Frankly, they were terrified of Gauls ever since the Gallic sack of Rome in 387 BCE. I would suggest looking at Trajan's Column and how the enemies are depicted there, then look at Marcus Aurelius' column. It's way more sympathetic to the defeated foes, and really kind of makes the Romans look brutal in a way Trajan's does not. It's hard for me to describe it any better than you'll see by looking over those columns carefully. Plus they kick rear end. Roman writers like Tacitus also do frequently talk about how much more noble the barbarians are and what the gently caress happened to Romans. As for the fall of Rome and Germans grinding expansion to a halt, read back a bit. Neither of those is true. I don't believe the Viking culture existed in the classical period, nor was there really anything up there worth trading for, so no. If they did it wasn't notable enough to mention them as a separate group of people, they'd probably just fall within the generic German label. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Jun 1, 2012 |
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Jun 1, 2012 07:14
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Grand Fromage posted:Iberia is greatly overlooked. The typical narrative will just at some point say "Oh and Iberia is Roman now" and that's about it. That collar around his neck - that is to symbolize a slave collar right?
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Jun 1, 2012 08:33
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:That collar around his neck - that is to symbolize a slave collar right? Nope! That's a torc, a kind of jewelry which is heavily associated with Gauls by the Romans, though it's used more widely than that. A torc + a mustache is the standard way to say "this guy is a Gaul" in artwork.
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Jun 1, 2012 08:37
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Don't know if you ever posted in the Rome HBO series thread. Thoughts on what the show did well vs what left you shaking your head?
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Jun 1, 2012 09:46
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Alan Smithee posted:Don't know if you ever posted in the Rome HBO series thread. Thoughts on what the show did well vs what left you shaking your head? Everything was very well done. They rearranged history a bit for the story but no big deal, and it's by far the best depiction of what Roman life and culture was probably like. I have no complaints about it.
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Jun 1, 2012 10:10
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ChineseTea posted:Did the Romans respect some of the adversaries they consider "barbarians" such as the Germanic tribes? They more or less ground Roman expansion to a halt and was credited as being part of the fall or Rome. As a boy who grew up in Belgium and studied Latin as part of my high school education, one of the first original text we read is the start of De bello Gallico, Caesars account of his Gallic wars. We start with this book because it is quite simple to translate (compared to some of the later stuff we did by Plinius or some poets) and because it starts with this bit: Caesar posted:(1)Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur. He starts by explaining (1) how Gaul is divided into 3 pieces, one for the Belgians, one of the Aquitani, and one for the proper Gauls. Then (2) he talks a bit about the rivers dividing the country (not surprising for a military commander) and then he says that the Belgians were the bravest of all because (3) they are the furthest removed from Rome and see the least of its merchants. There was this idea that the influence of the city, and the nice life associated with it makes you feminine. In (4) he explains how we also wage constant war with the Germans across the Rhine. So Caesar has a little of a Noble wildman theme going here, which was mentioned before. And off course, the real reason for writing this is to point out between the lines that he just conquered the bravest of the Gauls. Later in the book he briefly mentions Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, who later became characters in Rome. Pullo charges out to attack the enemy, becomes wounded and surrounded, then Vorenus charges in and saves him, a little bit like the opening scene in Rome.
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Jun 1, 2012 10:33
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Rome was known as a military power but they seem to have more troubles on their campaigns as opposed to other military-based empire, say the Mongols and the Macedonians. For example, they run into trouble with the Huns which were also considered a military power then. I read that Roman military culture is focused less on individual combat prowess and more on teamwork and discipline. Is this a possible cause for their military problems? For example, once a battle starts going pear-shaped for the Romans, they have more difficulty turning things around than the Huns/Gauls/Goths who prize individual valor and skill more. I know next to nothing about the Roman empire except from what I learned from the occasional books (and Asterix comics) but it seems to me that for a military power, Rome was sacked or held to ransom more times most other military empires.
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Jun 1, 2012 11:06
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You've talked about Rome and its influence on the modern world. What about Italy specifically?
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Jun 1, 2012 11:18
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Grand Fromage posted:Nope! That's a torc, a kind of jewelry which is heavily associated with Gauls by the Romans, though it's used more widely than that. A torc + a mustache is the standard way to say "this guy is a Gaul" in artwork. This needs some updating. 
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Jun 1, 2012 11:46
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ChineseTea posted:I read that Roman military culture is focused less on individual combat prowess and more on teamwork and discipline. Is this a possible cause for their military problems? For example, once a battle starts going pear-shaped for the Romans, they have more difficulty turning things around than the Huns/Gauls/Goths who prize individual valor and skill more. Focusing on teamwork and discipline was a thing that grew out of phalanx warfare and was sorta universal in the region, and instead of being a possible problem, it's pretty much the foundation of any sort of modern military apparatus. Once you got the whole teamwork thing going, you can do stuff like have a tactical reserve, do more complex maneuvers with your forces and so on, which more individualistic forces really can't do.
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Jun 1, 2012 11:47
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ChineseTea posted:Rome was known as a military power but they seem to have more troubles on their campaigns as opposed to other military-based empire, say the Mongols and the Macedonians. For example, they run into trouble with the Huns which were also considered a military power then. If you are a city state conquering most of the mediterranean, defeats are going to be expected. At the battle of Cannae, where Hannibal defeated Rome decisively around 50000 men are said to be killed, with only about 14000 survivors. Hannibal keeps gaining victory and 2 years after the start of the war Rome has lost an estimated 150.000 men, A fifth of their adult population. Southern Italy joins up with Hannibal. Every other classical power at this point would bend over backwards to sue for peace. The roman senate on the other hand is different. They punish the surviving soldiers of the Cannae massacre, sending them to Sicily for the rest of the war. They ban crying in the streets, cut down on the mourning period and make it illegal to use the word 'peace'. Then they start a Russian style war of attrition with the Carthaginians, avoiding any big one-on-one army battles, but constantly keep them skirmishing. Meanwhile fortifying all cities in Italy that are still allied to Rome. In the end they come out of the war victorious.
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Jun 1, 2012 11:47
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ChineseTea posted:Rome was known as a military power but they seem to have more troubles on their campaigns as opposed to other military-based empire, say the Mongols and the Macedonians. For example, they run into trouble with the Huns which were also considered a military power then. I don't totally understand the point of view but let's compare the examples you use. The Macedonians go conquering for about 20 years. The Mongols get about 70 years of conquest. The Huns are around for an unclear amount of time but let's say 50. The Gauls have their success when Rome is still a tiny power, and the Goths come in after the west has spent centuries beating the poo poo out of itself. In comparison, Rome is around for 2,200 years. Ignoring everything else, that alone is going to ensure the Romans have a lot more defeats. Rome itself was sacked in 387 BCE, and was not attacked again for eight hundred years. It didn't even have walls most of that time because there was literally zero chance anyone was going to get there. Rome experienced individual defeats in battle, but Rome as a whole was not defeated and pushed back for a solid seven centuries or so. I think you've just gotten a skewed view from whatever you've read, there aren't a lot of states that compare to Rome's history of success in warfare. France, maybe. As for tactics, it's quite the opposite. Roman training and coordination allowed legions to handily defeat forces many times larger than them. Legions would beat literally any force they came across with the sole exception of horse archers, which were a bit of a doomsday weapon until gunpowder. Even then, Romans beat the crap out of Parthia, their biggest horse archer threat, numerous times. But they got annihilated a fair few as well.
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Jun 1, 2012 12:01
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Mescal posted:You've talked about Rome and its influence on the modern world. What about Italy specifically? A lot of things, to be honest it would be shorter to list what isn't influenced by Rome in Italy  First thing is the language, obviously. Italian (and its dialects) is a latin language, it has lost stuff like declination, but a lot of words still remain very similar. There are also all the monuments (roads, aqueducts, etc.), used for centuries and even to the present day, like the Via Appia. An artistic and an engineering tradition that would be rediscovered during the Renaissance and later too. A common History that would help to unify the country. The catholic faith. A culinary culture, as Romans were as food-obsessed as modern Italians. The importance of family (don't quote me on this one though). And if you want to be cynic, clientelism and machoism too. quote:As for tactics, it's quite the opposite. Roman training and coordination allowed legions to handily defeat forces many times larger than them. Legions would beat literally any force they came across with the sole exception of horse archers, which were a bit of a doomsday weapon until gunpowder. Even then, Romans beat the crap out of Parthia, their biggest horse archer threat, numerous times. But they got annihilated a fair few as well. Speaking of which, how important were cataphracts for the Roman army? As the pragmatic bunch the Romans were, I guess they would have quickly adopted heavy cavalry, but why did something like knighthood only evolve centuries later? Chikimiki fucked around with this message at 12:27 on Jun 1, 2012 |
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Jun 1, 2012 12:18
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Chikimiki posted:The importance of family (don't quote me on this one though). And if you want to be cynic, clientelism and machoism too. Roman patricians and the Italian mafia are incredibly similar, honestly.
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Jun 1, 2012 12:54
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Knighthood only makes sense in the frame of feudalism which did not start fully developing until after the Western Empire was gone. (The breakdown of order in the West sowed the seeds of feudalism).
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Jun 1, 2012 12:58
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Chikimiki posted:Speaking of which, how important were cataphracts for the Roman army? Not very. Heavy cavalry doesn't exist until the middle ages because the Romans didn't have lances or stirrups, which made their cavalry significantly less effective than the stuff you're thinking of. Horses are also really expensive to maintain. One of the advantages of a feudal knight is the king doesn't have to pay a cent, the knight's holdings take care of supporting him and his warhorses. The Roman state was on the hook for their troops. Plus it requires a lot of specialized training, while the legionaries could all be trained the same way. So for the reduced role cavalry played in the legions, it would've been easier to hire on auxilia forces. Get some people who already know how to use horses and stick 'em in. The legionaries are handling the bulk of the fighting anyway. Medieval Rome adopted cavalry since everyone else did, the world of warfare had changed by then.
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Jun 1, 2012 13:13
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 01:55 |
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The Roman equites were I suppose similar to "knight" though.
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Jun 1, 2012 13:18
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