.jpg.4d575d1d330147616620e755ddb4c44a.jpg)
Genava55
-
Posts
2.218 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
60
Posts posted by Genava55
-
-
1 hour ago, Veridagorin said:
Does anyone here have suggestions for books, and online resources that I could check out.
Amélie Kuhrt's book is very useful but if you want something focusing on the society, I would suggest "The World of Achaemenid Persia", "A History of Zoroastrianism (Zoroastrianism under the Achaemenians)" and "Women in Ancient Persia, 559-331 BC".
Check the table of contents of "The World of Achaemenid Persia" and see if it could interest you.
-
1
-
-
Epilektoi means "chosen" or "selected", and it was used to designate elite troops. In Athens, it was plausibly a permanent elite force during the 4th century BC.
City Guards is not a good equivalent for a translation.
-
27 minutes ago, nifa said:
but possible to use it for persians or scythians?
Scythians maybe, at least the Saka seem to use something similar, although maybe without the dragon/wolf head:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlat_plaques
Although the Dacians clearly should have them, in the future.
-
1
-
-
@wowgetoffyourcellphone maybe the Eagle standard can be made available when the Marian reforms tech is researched?
-
I take the opportunity to share this study on the military standards:
https://books.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeum/catalog/book/1394
It is written in German.
-
1
-
-
42 minutes ago, Seleucids said:
Care to add a description?
-
-
On 10/11/2021 at 4:06 PM, Phalanx said:
I'm just curious about this, we have the Thespian Black Cloak in the game files, are there any actual historical references to Thespians wearing black/having black cloaks? Or is it just based off of that one drawing that became the definitive version of the Thespians?
I'm not pushing for change here, I'm mostly just curious about the historical facts.
Seems to have been a modern legend:
SpoilerWhat the Thespians hoplites looked like?
by Nikolaos Markoulakis, oct. 2007
It was quite a long time ago that I received the following question from a Σparta’s reader: what the Thespian hoplites looked like? I must confess the question is interesting and should be of importance for a great number of reenactors (sic) and modelists (sic). At the same time the question is difficult to be answered regardless of its easiness and simplicity. It is, thus, a good idea to limit the question’s time broadness to a specific time of period, and we can do that by asking what the Thespian hoplite looked like in 450 to 420 B.C.E?
As you can realize my attempt to reconstruct the uniform used by the Thespiae’s hoplites starts thirty years later of Thermopylae. It was a time of period in which Thespiae had the right to construct its coins. We have two examples of coins; the one c. 456 – 446 in which the one side represents a Boeotian shield and the other an amphora with a crescent at its lower right. The other c. 431-424 has representations of a Boeotian shield, on its one side, and an inscription ΘΕΣ above a crescent. The question that must be answered before we try to draw some conclusions of the potential and more likely symbols of the Thespian’s shield, is as follows: can we trust the iconography representation available in coins?
In my opinion the answer of the above question is no. Unfortunately we cannot take in granted and drive into conclusions of the equipment and symbolism used on hoplite’s shield devices from coins’ and pottery’s iconography (see foo.1). However, iconography can generate different conclusions, such as the religious practices, mythological concepts, general artistic attitudes, trade and financial wealth and even political/governmental stability and/or independence. These are also the conclusions that can be drawn from the already mentioned Thespian coins. There is no evidence, therefore, that can support – or definitely discard – that coins portrait shield devices and/or shield shapes. Thus, we cannot claim that a unified common blazon was in place on Thespians’ shields. We can claim that the Boeotian shield design should have been a common shield blazon as easy as to claim that the crescent was a common blazon.
Most reasonable is to say that the Thespians had in common practice the norm of ‘individual blazons’. We can even suggest that inspiration have been drawn mainly from their allies and neighbors. Most likely, when in the case of the Thespian integration to the Theban governed Boeotian league, in the early 420s, and much later (c.379) with the Spartans, their shield blazon should have been more unified.
As far as their entitlement as melachites, I must confess that I never heard before this title for Thespiae’s hoplites and/or for any of the hoplites. Once again that is a tendency to stick the element of uniformity and contingency. There is no evidence whatsoever that address the Thespian’s uniform as black and/or dark cloaked, as the term melachites points out.
Let us see now where we can find it in literature. The term melachiton (μελαχίτων) which means literary the black-cloaked is mentioned at the chorus in Aeschylus’ Persians which seems to be more like an allegorical image of a ‘scared heart’ (Aesh. Pers. 115). The same kind of meaning – the scared and weak – can been seen in Eumenides, the black-robed, μελανείμων, and the bringers of fear and of self-destruction (Aesh. Eumenides 2.38). There is also the μελαμπέπλῳ στολῇ, the black-robe in which Admetor was dressed – as well as the Spartan Tundareos (Orestes 12.43)- for their πὲνθος (Alcestis 258, 425), extreme sense of sadness. It is also mentioned by Herodotus (4.102,1; 4.107.1) as μελάγχλαινος, the back-cloaked, but for non of the Greek armies and hoplites but rather for the nation-tribe neighboring Scythians as they had also the same customs, who they named as such because of their black uniforms.
For me, thus, it makes more sense to call the Scythians black-cloaked rather than the Thespians. But why, regardless the literary and iconography lack of evidences many believe that the Thespians wore a black-cloak? For some believe that the Thespian army was dressed in black because they worshiped the Melainis Aphrodite, meaning ‘the dark one’ or ‘of the graves’, which was an epithet of the Goddess under which she was worshiped at Corinth (Paus. 2.2.4; ff. 8.6.2, 9.17.4; Athen. 8). I cannot see any mentioned evidences that linked the cult with Thespiae and if indeed there was a cult of Melainis Aphrodite why it became the reason of the supposed black-cloaked Thespians and not of the Corinthians who were so well-known of their cults in honor of the Goddess? And why only the Thespians choose to wear a color so much interrelated with sadness and bad luck? I am sure they did not. It is difficult for me to imagine that only the Thespiae’s hoplites decided to bring with them bad fortune’s symbol at war.
-
1
-
-
28 minutes ago, borg- said:
I'll mention the ones I don't like. Han and Kush.
Interesting. Why?
-
-
Carthage deserves a rework, based on sources that are a little more researched than the usual superficial summaries.
I don't really understand what the Numidians are doing in the civic center. These were not Carthaginian citizens, but allied troops - in other words, auxiliaries - who fought for Carthage under political agreements. Several Numidian peoples were direct clients of Carthage, so I can see why they're part of the standard roster. But not in the civic center.
Slightly problematic are the Libyan lancers, who aren't necessarily at their best in the civic center. Carthage may have massively recruited Libyans into its armies, but the status of citizens for these troops was not systematic. In fact, Carthage mainly enlisted peasants from subjugated states. These peasants also worked in the fields of Carthaginian estates. Their status as peasants argues for integration into the civic center, but their status as foreign citizens argues for the opposite.
I find that it also lacks mention of Libyphoenicians. They made up an important part of the Carthaginian troops and were Phoenician citizens in the other North African colonies. Libyphoenicians were known for their cavalry. In this case they could be recruited in the civic center.
-
1
-
-
-
-
5 hours ago, Seleucids said:
We have determined that it is caused by full hash.
What is "full hash" in this context? The control of all values in the simulation?
-
1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:
Yes, later we could add the Guptas and Tang.
Warring states China would be nice too.
-
1
-
-
4 hours ago, Classic-Burger said:
But Han was not the only dynasty, nor were the Maurya the only Indian kingdom.
For the moment, they are the only representatives of these peoples. But potentially, we could have several representatives of certain civilizations. I am thinking in particular of the Romans, the Persians and the Chinese.
-
10 hours ago, Emacz said:
Ah I thought pretty much all pikeman didnt carry shield?
they were two handed weapons? I guess they could kinda of have a smaller one on their forearm or something.
-
2
-
-
13 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:
The first shield pattern with the lame stripe really bothers me for some reason. There's zero creativity and it's strange.
Yeah it's lame. Although it is easy to see and identify.
5 hours ago, Stan` said:I really wish we had visible upgrades
Is this a feature that is existing but not used, or would we have to implement it in javascript ?
Age of Mythology is in a simpler situation, the game is less realistic. We couldn't have such spectacular changes. But it would still be interesting.
-
Thebes and the Boeotian League, from Britannica:
SpoilerBoeotian League, league that first developed as an alliance of sovereign states in Boeotia, a district in east-central Greece, about 550 bc, under the leadership of Thebes. After the defeat of the Greeks at Thermopylae, Thebes and most of Boeotia sided with the Persians during the Persian invasions of 480 and 479. Subsequently, the victorious Greeks dissolved the Boeotian League as punishment. The Boeotians remained weak until 446, when they revolted against Athenian domination and reconstituted the league in alliance with Sparta. The league later opposed Sparta in the Corinthian War (395–387) and was defeated and again dissolved, Sparta having had Persian help.
Before the Corinthian War the league had grown into a close-knit confederacy, organized in 11 districts by 431. Each district, comprising one or more cities, sent a general (boeotarch), several judges, and 60 counselors to a federal government; the federal council of 660 was probably divided into four panels, each in turn convening for one year. The vote was given only to the propertied classes. Thebes, where the council met, dominated the league since it controlled four districts and supplied the best contingent to the federal army.
In 379 Thebes joined Athens in a successful effort to overturn Spartan supremacy in Greece. The league was then reconstituted on an initially successful democratic basis: all Boeotians, whatever their property, were members of an assembly convened at Thebes; their vote decided all matters of policy. The seven-man executive (one from each of the then seven districts, of which Thebes controlled three) was directly responsible to the Assembly. Other districts under federal systems joined Boeotia: Euboea, Acarnania, Phocis, Thessaly, Arcadia, and Achaea. But this great block of military power was soon split by imperialist ambitions, and the Boeotian League itself destroyed Orchomenus (364) and intervened in the Achaean League (366) and Arcadian League (362).
Decline set in rapidly when Phocis hired mercenaries and ravaged Boeotia in the Sacred War (355–346), which Philip II of Macedon ended as an ally of Thebes. Thebes suffered defeat, however, along with Athens, when Philip quelled their efforts to maintain Greek independence in 338 at the Battle of Chaeronea. The Boeotian League was again dissolved, and after an abortive revolt (335) against Alexander the Great of Macedon, Thebes and the rest of Boeotia fell permanently under external domination.
Boeotia and Boeotian Confederacy, free article on the Oxford Classical Dictionary:
SpoilerBoeotia was a region in central Greece, bounded in the north by Phocis and Opuntian Locris. The east faces the Euboean Gulf, and Mts. Parnes and Cithaeron form the southern boundary with Attica. On the west Mt. Helicon and some lower heights separate a narrow coastline from the interior. Lake Copais divided the region into a smaller northern part, the major city of which was Orchomenus (1), and a larger southern part dominated by Thebes (1). Geography and the fertility of the soil encouraged the growth of many prosperous and populous cities and villages. Although now there is indication of palaeolithic and mesolithic habitation, numerous findings prove a dense neolithic population. Thucydides (1. 12) states that the region was originally named Cadmeis, but that the Boiotoi gave it its present name 60 years after the Trojan War. Yet the Catalogue of Ships (Homer, Il. 2) knows of Boeotians already living in Boeotia before the war. Archaeology also proves both continuity of culture before the putative Trojan War and the decline of population during LH III, probably owing to mass migrations to the east. This late Helladic period was none the less prosperous enough to sustain Mycenaean palaces at Thebes, Orchomenus, and Gla.
Boeotia enters history only with Hesiod of Ascra, whose Works and Days indicates an agricultural society of smallholdings. In his time several basileis in Thespiae possessed the judicial power to settle inheritances. Evidence also indicates that other large cities exercised power over their smaller neighbours, Plataea, Tanagra, and Thebes among them. The result was the development of well-defined political units that formed the basis of an early federal government. The union of these cities in a broader political system was aided by their common culture, ethnicity, language, and religion. By the last quarter of the 6th cent. bce some of these cities formed the Boeotian Confederacy, doubtless under the hegemony of Thebes (see federal states). The Boeotians, as a people, not as a confederacy, were early members of the Delphic amphictiony.
From the outset of the Persian Wars until the Pax Romana, Boeotia was the ‘dancing-floor of war’ in Greece. Boeotian reaction to the Persian invasion was mixed. Plataea, Thespiae, and some elements in Thebes originally favoured the Greeks, but after the battle of Thermopylae only Plataea remained loyal to the Greek cause. The Persian defeat entailed the devastation of Boeotia. A truncated confederacy may have survived, but the region was politically unimportant. In 457 bce Boeotia allied itself with Sparta, which resulted in the battles of Tanagra and Oenophyta, the latter a major Boeotian defeat. Afterwards, Athens held control of Boeotia until the battle of Coronea in 447 bce. Thereafter, Boeotia rebuilt its confederacy, and remodelled its federal government along the lines described by the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia (see oxyrhynchus, the historian from).
Boeotia supported Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, with Thebes helping to inflame it by its siege of Plataea. Boeotia defeated Athens at the battle of Delion in 424 bce, and contributed substantially to its eventual defeat. After the peace treaty of 404 bce relations between Boeotia and Sparta cooled to the point where they broke in 395 bce, when Boeotia joined Athens, Corinth, and Argos (1) to oppose Sparta in the Corinthian War. Sparta's victory and the King's Peace resulted in the political fragmentation of the region. A Spartan attack on Thebes in 382 bce further weakened Boeotia, until 378 bce, when Thebes revolted and re-established the Boeotian Confederacy, which ultimately led to confrontation at the battle of Leuctra. There the Boeotian army under Epaminondas defeated Sparta and created a period of Theban ascendancy that lasted until the Third Sacred War. Weakened by the devastation of that war, Boeotia allied itself with Philip (1) II. The alliance, always uneasy, ended with its decision to join Athens to oppose him at Chaeronea in 338 bce. During the Hellenistic period the region was often the battleground of monarchs and leagues alike. Only with Sulla's victory at Chaeronea in 86 bce did Boeotia enjoy peace under Rome. Forming part of Achaia from 27 bce, Roman Boeotia is evoked, with much convincing detail (F. Millar, JRS1981, 63 ff.), in Apuleius' Golden Ass (mid-2nd cent. ce). Although Thebes had declined, Lebadea (see trophonius) and Thespiae hosted Panhellenic cults and festivals; and the family and circle of Plutarch reveal men of culture among Boeotia's landowners. Archaeological survey shows a strong recovery from earlier depopulation in the 4th-6th cents. ce, when Thebes re-emerged as Boeotia's natural centre.
Other sources on their history:
- Boeotia, on Livius: https://www.livius.org/articles/place/boeotia/
- Thebes and Boeotia in the Fourth Century B.C. by S. C. Bakhuizen, on JSTOR : https://www.jstor.org/stable/1192571
- Subdivisions of the Boeotian Confederacy after 379 BC by J. Rzepka, on academia: https://www.academia.edu/download/61549003/Rzepka_Subdivisions_of_Boeotian_Confederacy.pdf
- The military policy of the Hellenistic Boiotian League by Ruben Post, on McGill University: https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/concern/theses/z316q5029
- Thebes, the Boeotian League, and central Greece: political and military development and interaction in the fourth century BC by M.S. Furman, on St Andrews university: https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/12254
- A history of Boeotia by R.J. Buck, a 220 pages book.
The flamethrower of the Boeotians (5th c. B.C.)
It was the first flamethrower in history and was first used by the Boeotians in the Peloponnesian War for the burning of the Dilion/Delium walls. It consisted of a scooped out iron-bound beam (ripped at length and reconnected) that had a bellow at the user’s end and a cauldron hung from chains at the other end. A bent pipe from the airtight orifice of the beam went down into the cauldron which contained lit coal, sulphur and pitch (tar). With the operation of the bellow, enormous flames were created that burned the wooden walls and removed their defenders. Later it was used for the offence of stone fortifications causing cracks in the stones because of the high temperature and the parallel infusion of vinegar, urine or other erosive substances in them.
Thucydides, 4, 100: [1] The Boeotians presently sent for darters and slingers from [the towns on] the Melian gulf; and with these, and with two thousand men of arms of Corinth, and with the Peloponnesian garrison that was put out of Nisaea, and with the Megareans, all which arrived after the battle, they marched forthwith to Delium and assaulted the wall. And when they had attempted the same many other ways, at length they brought to it an engine, wherewith they also took it, made in this manner: [2] Having slit in two a great mast, they made hollow both the sides, and curiously set them together again in the form of a pipe. At the end of it in chains they hung a cauldron; and into the cauldron from the end of the mast they conveyed a snout of iron, having with iron also armed a great part of the rest of the wood. [3] They carried it to the wall, being far off, in carts, to that part where it was most made up with the matter of the vineyard and with wood. [4] And when it was to, they applied a pair of great bellows to the end next themselves, and blew. The blast, passing narrowly through into the cauldron, in which were coals of fire, brimstone, and pitch, raised an exceeding great flame, and set the wall on fire, so that no man being able to stand any longer on it, but abandoning the same and betaking themselves to flight, the wall was by that means taken. [5] Of the defendants, some were slain and two hundred taken prisoners; the rest of the number recovered their galleys and got home.
More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Delium
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boeotian_flame_thrower,_5th_century_BC,_Greece_(model).jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boeotian_Flamethrower.png
Spoiler
The Boeotian League is also known to have implemented military reform during the Hellenistic period. One of the source supporting this is the Great Stele of Thespiai, from which there are mentions of peltophorai (phalangites), an Agema (elite troops unit inspired from the Macedonian army), epilektoi (elite troops, either hoplite like or peltast like), pharetritai (archers), sphendonatai (slingers). In addition we need to add thyreaphoroi/thureophoroi and traditional hoplitai who are mentioned in other sources.
It is also very important to highlight how the Boeotian League and Thebes implemented a lot of training for their troops, from their confrontation with Sparta which also inspired them and their imitation of Athens which developed the Ephebeia. The institutions of Ephebeia and Gymnastikós (gymnastics) were promoted, amplified and strengthened. Xenophon tells us that “all Boiotians exercised under arms” and Plutarch that the Boiotians became famous for “the attention they paid to exercise”. Diodorus also said, when Alexander the Great’s Makedonian troops attacked the Thebans during their revolt in 335, they were still “superior in bodily strength on account of their constant training in the gymnasium”. Boiotians seem to have been more successful than Athens in making the Ephebeia mandatory. Not only do epheboi and neaniskoi train to fight in formation with a shield, they also train with a bow and javelin and in skirmishing techniques. The young men were assessed during a festival called Pamboiotia, which enabled the troops to demonstrate their individual and collective skills.
-
1
-
Awesome documentary about the Etruscans, check for subtitles and dubbed versions on Arte's website:
-
1
-
-
-
22 hours ago, Stan` said:
I don't imagine there is an equivalent to Celts? Germanic Tribes might work ?
Another name plausible is Teutones.
The name the Germans gave themselves was probably something like this.
*þeudō in proto-germanic would mean 'people' and its derivations as *þeudiskaz 'from the people' and *ϸeudanōz 'those from the people' would be close to the word Teutones. In Proto-Indo-European, *teutonōs would mean "one from the people".
Deutsch derives from this.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/deutsch
-
5 hours ago, Stan` said:
I don't imagine there is an equivalent to Celts? Germanic Tribes might work ?
Caesar said the Gauls called themselves Celts. The Celts was the first name reported in the literature, as Keltoi by the Greeks (Herodotus, Hecateus of Miletus, Aristotle). Only later the name Gauls (Galli in Latin and Galatai in Greek) have been popularized. But the Gauls called themselves Celts. We also know a few tribes in Iberia used the name Celtici.
The Britons probably not. In fact all the so-called Celtic people of the British Isles and Ireland, never have been called Celts and never have called themselves Celts in their literature. It is a much later invention when scholars realized the links between the languages (Gaelic, Welsh, Gaulish etc.). And also the mention of druids in both sides. The modern use of the word Celtic is different from the meaning it had during the ancient times.
The same for German and Germanic. Numerous tribes have been called Germanic, but not all. For example the Goths never have been called Germans or Germanic. We know they spoke a Germanic language, but it is a modern view. Not the view they had in the past.
For the Romans, Gauls and Germans are mostly equivalent. The labels are used for a large contiguous population divided in different tribes but occuping approximately the same geographical region. Every outsider from a geographical point of view, like the Britons and the Goths, were not included in the groupings.
3 hours ago, Lech said:Like Hellens for example, wait not. It's Athenians, Spartans and Macedonian.
In the first iterations of 0 A.D., they were grouped in a single Greek civ.
The only reason they are not, is for the gameplay. There is enough material among Greek city-states and Hellenic kingdoms to make several civs with enough diversity.
But the Iberian civ for example is a extreme case of mixing in 0 A.D., like a patch-work of several different cultures.
2 hours ago, Stan` said:Because those are actually documented. Cimbri -500 0 A.D. are not.
Cimbri are documented, their wandering happened at least between 113-101 BC. Although there is not that much info on them, they are a known people.
They are not the first Germanic population appearing in the historical records, this would be the Bastarnae/Skiri.
-
Germans would be the most consistent with the other civs.
.jpg){kind=link}
Epilektoi Infantry
in General Discussion
Posted
Logades means almost the same thing than Epilektoi. Logades was the term used during the 5th century BC. In the 4th century, they prefered Epilektoi.
Chosen Hoplites is fine. The other possibility could be Veteran Hoplites. Epilektoi were often chosen from people with previous experience as levied hoplites.