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I thought bronze was much ductile than iron?
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Mar 20, 2021 02:20
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The Lone Badger posted:I thought bronze was much ductile than iron? I think the term I should have used is malleability. Bronze has a tendency to work harden when cold and shatters easily. It has to be annealed constantly when being formed to keep it from cracking. Iron is much better in that regard.
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Mar 20, 2021 02:36
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Iron is also much better when fighting leprechauns, fairies, and the like.
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Mar 20, 2021 02:45
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Question about the homeless in the ancient world. My understanding is that for a long, long time, walled cities were the exclusive residence of the citizenry and elite. How was homelessness handled, were they alllowed to remain within the walls or cast out with the general populace? Think like Athens during Pericles.
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Mar 20, 2021 03:24
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I don't know about Athens but I read that in Rome, before the grain dole, homeless people wither moved into the countryside looking for opportunities or died fast. So there wasn't a large homeless population within the city limits.
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Mar 20, 2021 03:29
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CrypticFox posted:There is an excellent book about Ptolemaic and Roman Alexandria called Alexandria Rediscovered. Its a British Museum publication with lots of big pictures, so it is a little bit pricey, but a lot of the images are pretty spectacular. It's not particularly focused on the Late Republican era, but it certainly discusses that time period. Thank you! This seems like a good starting point, given that my ulterior motive is to run a role-playing game set in a fictional second-string city, in a fictionalized Roman imperial holding. The roman stuff is partly set dressing but I think to have it work as set dressing it needs a lot of the functional components. Deteriorata posted:Iron is less dense than bronze, so you get the same protection for less weight or more protection for the same weight. While iron is less dense, I'm not sure it's strong enough for the rest of this statement to hold true. I spent some time looking into this and the hardness and tensile strength numbers I saw for different bronzes were pretty impressive. I don't know the chemical composition for bronze armour, so it might have been mixed with a significant quantity of lead or something, which I know was done in medieval ewers and things, but the stats I saw for phosphor bronze showed it to be something like 1.5 times as good in tension and only like 1/6th denser, and equally hard. Deteriorata posted:I think the term I should have used is malleability. Bronze has a tendency to work harden when cold and shatters easily. It has to be annealed constantly when being formed to keep it from cracking. Iron is much better in that regard. This is something I was curious about. I work with wrought iron most days, and its easy working properties are part of why even in the modern day a lot of blacksmiths have a stash of it somewhere in the shop. If bronze is tricky to forge it would be a less desirable candidate for armour, since getting to the necessary thinness of plate is not something easily done by casting.
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Mar 20, 2021 03:55
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Lawman 0 posted:What did the black sea greeks do for a living? They also trade slaves, and raid for slaves
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Mar 20, 2021 04:40
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Thank you! This seems like a good starting point, given that my ulterior motive is to run a role-playing game set in a fictional second-string city, in a fictionalized Roman imperial holding. The roman stuff is partly set dressing but I think to have it work as set dressing it needs a lot of the functional components. If that's what you are looking for, I'd also recommend looking into Pompeii. Due to the city's unique level of preservation, we have a fantastic amount of information on what life was like in Pompeii in the 70s AD. In fact a lot of our knowledge of urban social life in the Roman world comes from Pompeii, and the not the city of Rome. There are many things that are preserved in Pompeii and nowhere else that shine light on daily life in Roman cities, like street graffiti, advertisements for gladiator games, brothel wall paintings, and restaurant decorations. I didn't mention it initially, since you won't find much specifically about Republican era Pompeii, but culturally and socially, things didn't shift that dramatically in Italy between the end of the Republic and the destruction of Pompeii. If you want to know what life was like in a second-string city in the Roman world, Pompeii is the best resource we have.
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Mar 20, 2021 04:54
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mycomancy posted:Iron is also much better when fighting leprechauns, fairies, and the like. Why is that, anyway? Where did this folk tale weakness to iron come from, as well as silver for vampires and werewolves?
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Mar 20, 2021 08:59
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Fuschia tude posted:Why is that, anyway? Where did this folk tale weakness to iron come from, as well as silver for vampires and werewolves? folk tales were advertisements for iron
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Mar 20, 2021 09:54
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You could never get enough iron the stuff sells itself. Don't need any extra marketing when it cuts your food, chops your trees, and kills your enemies. No reason why it's not just regular mythmaking, the stuff keeps away not only regular physical enemies, but also the magical enemies that make your peasant life miserable.
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Mar 20, 2021 11:14
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20 Blunts posted:folk tales were advertisements for iron Big Iron is trying to keep the peasants down by forci g them to keep iron nails in their pocket which don't even keep away the Fair Folk! Wake up sheeple! For more information look at the message I scratched into Seamus's house.
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Mar 20, 2021 11:36
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I would bet that a lot of the mythical properties of iron weapons come from storytellers presenting the idea that granddad's old iron sword is better than our newfangled steel one. It's the rarity that is getting invoked, much like how expensive silver weapons were associated with similar mythical powers.
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Mar 20, 2021 11:43
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Kaal posted:I would bet that a lot of the mythical properties of iron weapons come from storytellers presenting the idea that granddad's old iron sword is better than our newfangled steel one. It's the rarity that is getting invoked, much like how expensive silver weapons were associated with similar mythical powers. Because theres always some goofy exception somewhere, I can't say "never", but iron swords aren't something that have a noticeable history. Iron is too soft and not flexible enough to make a sword that's good for more than one blow. Additionally, smelted iron and hardened steel show up in the archaeological record at basically the same time because the earliest furnaces produce both during a smelt, so there's really no time when one metal would be "newfangled" unless you want to consider meteoric iron which is exceedingly rare.
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Mar 20, 2021 12:45
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Wasn’t it Pure Iron not just some degraded iron for making weapons? Like it took effort to refine and get the impurities out so by that effort it made it “special”.
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Mar 20, 2021 12:52
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Iron and Steel are fundamentally the same thing, it's all Iron, with different quantities of Carbon in it, as part of the manufacturing process as the iron oxide precursor material is reduced of its oxygen. And that iron originally got that oxygen because planet Earth is an oxidizing environment. It's just what we call Iron is either the stuff with way too much carbon in it, or the stuff with too little carbon. Steel is the perfect goldilocks version of Iron, just the right amount of carbon, which makes it physically superior to the other forms of iron.
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Mar 20, 2021 13:44
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Fuschia tude posted:Why is that, anyway? Where did this folk tale weakness to iron come from, as well as silver for vampires and werewolves? Iron is representative of technology and the ownership humanity is now exerting over the wild places.
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Mar 20, 2021 13:59
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The Lone Badger posted:Iron is representative of technology and the ownership humanity is now exerting over the wild places. and vampires and werewolves were connected with the moon and night, and silver was moon's metal
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Mar 20, 2021 14:21
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Fuschia tude posted:Why is that, anyway? Where did this folk tale weakness to iron come from, as well as silver for vampires and werewolves? Imagine never knowing any other light source than astral objects and open fire, and then seeing a red hot blade glow for the first time. Blacksmiths were feared and venerated and are huge in mythology: https://workingtheflame.com/mythical-blacksmiths/ Metals seem so amazing and impossible if you mostly know about wood and rocks, and a typical mythological construct is to use cunning and a magic bullet to kill an otherwise impervious monster.
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Mar 20, 2021 14:54
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Fuschia tude posted:Why is that, anyway? Where did this folk tale weakness to iron come from, as well as silver for vampires and werewolves? I would guess that it originated before iron smelting was known and the only source of it was meteorites. It was considered a magical, heaven-sent miracle.
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Mar 20, 2021 16:50
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Crab Dad posted:Wasn’t it Pure Iron not just some degraded iron for making weapons? Like it took effort to refine and get the impurities out so by that effort it made it “special”. All wrought iron goes through a refining process, though the level of refining varied depending on intended use, so puddled iron (in use in later periods) was cleaner than a piece that had just come out of a bloom smelt, to look at the extreme ends of the scale. Pure iron is just as soft as wrought iron but less prone to work hardening, which for practical purposes makes it even easier to plastically deform. It would be very poor material for edged weapons or tools. Interestingly, this impression that purified iron is used for steel is something you see in historical sources. Vanoccio Biringuccio in his treatise De la Pirotechnia, for example, describes steel as a purified form of iron, and I reckon this idea is much older than the 16th century. They just didn't understand the chemistry at the time.
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Mar 20, 2021 17:36
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Don Gato posted:Big Iron is trying to keep the peasants down by forci g them to keep iron nails in their pocket which don't even keep away the Fair Folk! Wake up sheeple! For more information look at the message I scratched into Seamus's house. Please listen to this documentary to learn more about Big Iron. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzICMIu5zFY
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Mar 20, 2021 18:53
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Grand Fromage posted:Please listen to this documentary to learn more about Big Iron. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzICMIu5zFY There's also this documentary about that documentary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUPjArxfGLo
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Mar 20, 2021 19:14
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Gaius Marius posted:All the basic instruments of economics are way older than people realize. Check out hammurabi's code for instance. There was a Sumerian king who limited interest rates (20% for loans in silver, 25% for loans in grain) and also put a cap on how long you could force a delinquent debtor and his family into debt slavery (3 years). Another king put a stop to certain business practices as well; he specifically forbade using thugs to beat someone until they agreed to sell to you, which indicates that that may have been a problem at some point. Also debt and farming go together like manure and flies. There's a continual cycle of "poor farmer borrows from rich farmer and promises to pay back after the harvest -> harvest is bad -> poor farmer has land seized and is now homeless and desperate" that plays out in many societies.
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Mar 20, 2021 19:24
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One of the conflicts of the orders in Rome had as one of the central demands of the plebes a complete ban on debt that used the enslavement of the debtor as collateral
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Mar 20, 2021 19:38
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cheetah7071 posted:One of the conflicts of the orders in Rome had as one of the central demands of the plebes a complete ban on debt that used the enslavement of the debtor as collateral Yeah, but they still could seize your land and send you into poverty while buying cheap Gaulish slaves to do the work.
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Mar 20, 2021 20:13
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Imagine being a wise and smart entrepreneur who ended up oppressed by BIG KING for saying that forcing people to buy from you by beating them up is somehow "unfair and immoral".
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Mar 20, 2021 21:21
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ChaseSP posted:Imagine being a wise and smart entrepreneur who ended up oppressed by BIG KING for saying that forcing people to buy from you by beating them up is somehow "unfair and immoral". But enough about Silicon Valley management practices.
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Mar 21, 2021 04:27
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Babylonian Shopkeeper DESTROYS Hammurabi with Facts and Reason
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Mar 21, 2021 05:11
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ChaseSP posted:Imagine being a wise and smart entrepreneur who ended up oppressed by BIG KING for saying that forcing people to buy from you by beating them up is somehow "unfair and immoral".
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Mar 21, 2021 06:03
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Jazerus posted:Babylonian Shopkeeper DESTROYS Hammurabi with Facts and Reason Sequel video: Hammurabi KILLS Shopkeeper with Soldiers and Weapons
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Mar 21, 2021 06:31
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/\LoLDeteriorata posted:Iron is less dense than bronze, so you get the same protection for less weight or more protection for the same weight. It's also more ductile, so it will take a blow and deform whereas bronze will tend to break. Thus you have better protection from repeated blows in battle. Rodrigo Diaz posted:This is something I was curious about. I work with wrought iron most days, and its easy working properties are part of why even in the modern day a lot of blacksmiths have a stash of it somewhere in the shop. If bronze is tricky to forge it would be a less desirable candidate for armour, since getting to the necessary thinness of plate is not something easily done by casting. The article fishfood posted said Phillip's iron armour was iirc 5mm thick, twice as thick as comparable bronze armours, due to manufacturing difficulties.
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Mar 21, 2021 07:05
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ChaseSP posted:Imagine being a wise and smart entrepreneur who ended up oppressed by BIG KING for saying that forcing people to buy from you by beating them up is somehow "unfair and immoral". I want to know more about Sumerian protection rackets.
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Mar 21, 2021 08:48
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Kassad posted:I want to know more about Sumerian protection rackets. Hey, that's a pretty nice ziggurat you have there. It's be a SHAME if something happened to defile it...
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Mar 21, 2021 08:55
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Nessus posted:I feel like this is why the king and the commoners often ended up sort of on the same side in a lot of historical situations: They had a common enemy in the loving nobility. A noble wouldn't be caught dead "keeping a shop" or "engaging in commerce" or "trading"
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Mar 21, 2021 09:13
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Fuschia tude posted:A noble wouldn't be caught dead "keeping a shop" or "engaging in commerce" or "trading" depends on the era and country
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Mar 21, 2021 12:03
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The fall of civilizations pod on Sumeria is good if you haven’t already heard it
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Mar 21, 2021 13:47
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Kassad posted:I want to know more about Sumerian protection rackets. quote:The... administrators no longer plunder the orchards of the poor. When a high quality rear end is born to a shublugal, and his foreman says to him, "I want to buy it from you"; whether he lets him buy it from him and says to him "Pay me the price I want!," or whether he does not let him buy it from him, the foreman must not strike at him in anger. From the recovered tablets.
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Mar 21, 2021 15:52
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sullat posted:From the recovered tablets. I'm hopping mad irl right now E: I have no peace but I cannot strike a shublugal
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Mar 21, 2021 16:01
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Fuschia tude posted:Why is that, anyway? Where did this folk tale weakness to iron come from, as well as silver for vampires and werewolves? Silver is a very effective antiseptic. Also smiths was almost considered magicians (there's lot of mythological smiths).
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Mar 21, 2021 21:10
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