Antiquity Expert's Main Thread

[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

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Edited April 8, 2021 by Anaxandridas ho Skandiates
made the text reasonable size

[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

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Edited April 8, 2021 by Anaxandridas ho Skandiates
made the text reasonable size

[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

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Edited April 8, 2021 by Anaxandridas ho Skandiates

[Genava55]

Hi,

Thank you for your proposal and your help.

6 minutes ago, Anaxandridas ho Skandiates said:

Architecturally, the Ptolemaic designs are very beautiful, BUT, you need to add some more classical Greek structures - that woud make it actual Ptolemaic. There is a strong tendency to mix too much "old egypt" in - it was a mixture, yes, but Greek architecture dominated.

Yup, we know and your help could be useful in these threads:

[Feldfeld]

6 hours ago, Anaxandridas ho Skandiates said:

(post limit exceeded?)

@feneur @Itms

[Lion.Kanzen]

@Nescio @Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

[Nescio]

Hello and welcome!

0 A.D. is a project that has been (and still is) in development for years; what we have right now is the result of numerous volunteers contributing in their free time, which is great. People come and go, though, and not everyone has the same standards or is fully aware of what has been done before; as a consequence the game is full of inconsistencies (the game is still in alpha stage and is not perfect); e.g. at least three different transcriptions of Greek are currently used, e.g. η is sometimes written as e, sometimes ē, sometimes i.

15 hours ago, Anaxandridas ho Skandiates said:

Pronounciation:
A proposal is to use classical Greek ~350BC as astandard, since the ruling class and nobility always mastered it, and it remained the language of government in Greek civilization, and actually it was the language of Roman nobility as well. You will remember that Cicero studied at a Greek academy, and Caesar did not say "Alea iacta est" but quoted Menandros in Greek. All Romans of education spoke Greek.
This is proposed because it would be super complicated to create separate Greek voice-recordings for ALL Greek civs here (Ptolemaic accent, Seleucid accent, etc.)
 

It would technically be reasonable to use Demotic Egyptian for the Ptolemaic peasants, Attic dialect for Athenian peasants etc. etc., but would it not overcomplicate matters?

I believe the idea is to have two sets of Greek: Attic for the Classical factions and Koine for the Hellenistic states. However, Greek text strings currently in game appear a mixture of Modern, Hellenistic, and Classical, and voice recordings are very much a work in progress.

Anyway, if you're interested in actively contributing to the development version of 0 A.D., you probably should register at https://code.wildfiregames.com/ and https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ as well.

 

[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

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Edited April 8, 2021 by Anaxandridas ho Skandiates

[Lion.Kanzen]

Quote

That is doable, but you want to seriously get an expert to lead that. I will do all that I can, but let me get into contact with your "boss team" over the next week

lol, if you starting that way...

@Itms

[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

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Edited April 8, 2021 by Anaxandridas ho Skandiates

[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

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Edited April 8, 2021 by Anaxandridas ho Skandiates

[Stan`]

Nice to get some historians interested into the game. It does not happen often though I wish we had more visibility in the academic world because we can give more life to academic studies. Even if it's 100% perfect we not are professionals after all but striving to achieve levels like what we did for the Kushites is great IMHO.

So thanks for anything you will bring us.

[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

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[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

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[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

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[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

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[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

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[Sundiata]

20 minutes ago, Anaxandridas ho Skandiates said:

as indeed everywhere else where hellenistic culture lasted - cultures were kept in their strictly separated quarters,

This is where I believe the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom differs. Probably on account of the  2 century old presence of Greeks as subject populations deported by the Persians as early as Darius I, prior to the Macedonian conquest. Hellenistic influences in Bactria are all over the place, and remixed, with each other as well as Iranian (and even some indirect Mesopotamian influences, in architecture at least). The conversion of a decent number of Greeks to Buddhism, as well as Zoroastrianism, and the worship of gods like Zeus-Zoroaster. Some mixed marriages seem to have occurred. The architectural layout of sites like Ai Khanoum also demonstrate a departure from Greek norms, using Hellenistic elements as a decorative veneer, but using Achaemenid principles in layout and function, alongside purely Greek structures like the theatre. Being hopelessly outnumbered by a mixed "native" population of Persians, Bactrians, Sogdians, Scythians and Indians, at such a great distance from the Greek homelands, as well as being largely cut off from new Greek settlers necessitated a more delicate approach to ruling their subjects, causing a much stronger and more genuine mixing of cultures. They are easily one of the most divergent Hellenistic civs, which makes them especially interesting in my opinion. Alexanders dream seems to have come to fruition, to a degree at least, in the furthest reaches of his empire. Ironically, one of the most obscure Hellenistic states, the Indo Greek Kingdom was one of the last (if not the last) independent Hellenistic Kingdom.

[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

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Edited April 8, 2021 by Anaxandridas ho Skandiates

[Lion.Kanzen]

2 hours ago, Anaxandridas ho Skandiates said:

Not only can you give more life to academic studies, you can become THE important part in the education about antiquity. This is the future friends!

i said that before but nobody put such importance. even I suggesting an encyclopedia with some details.

 

 

[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

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[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

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[Sundiata]

@Anaxandridas ho Skandiates, I do understand where you are coming from, and it's difficult to argue about obscurities. It is in the absence of plentiful literary sources that I turn to the archaeological record. Being most familiar with Ai Khanoum, it is clear from that site that the Greco Bactrians did things differently. Most of the structures in this newly built city have strong Achaemenid features, with Greek finishings. Architecture says a lot about a culture, and purely Greek structures are very rare, which is strange for a capital city (Hellenistic remains at Bactra being too scattered to make any conclusions, but considering it's ancient history and importance to Zoroastrianism, which many of the Greeks embraced, it seems unlikely that this city was totally transformed into a "Greek" city the way Alexandria in Egypt was). This is to be expected considering their geographical context. All the other Hellenistic states were surrounded by other Hellenistic states, or states that were (being) heavily influenced by the Greeks. The Greco-Bactrians were surrounded by powerful non-Greek polities, except for their border with the Seleucid empire, which was a peripheral territory for the Seleucids. Their intense contact with the nomadic Scythians (and other steppe people) as well as Maurya India, both radically different from Greeks, and exceedingly powerful in their own right, as well as probably having to contend with local (tribal) rulers and Iranian elites within their territory meant that political manoeuvrings  would have been much more important to maintain stability in a potentially volatile cocktail of cultures. The documented conversion of groups of Greeks to entirely non-Greek religions, their occasional service to Indian rulers and the role that Greeks played in the dissemination of Buddhism is also quite noteworthy.

Remember that this is where Alexander the Great himself married Roxana of Bactria, and where Alexander himself sanctioned mixed marriages (unlike the ones at Susa, there is little to go on to say that Macedonian-Bactrian marriages ended in failure). It is hard to imagine that either of these events weren't enduring symbols of the multicultural nature of the Greco Bactrian Kingdom. Neither can it be ignored that the first generation of Bactrian born Greeks in all likelihood already included people of mixed parentage. I'm honestly not trying to romanticize it. It's just obvious that Greek culture fused with the local Bactrian traditions, more so than in other Hellenistic states. The centuries old presence of deported Greeks and the relative isolation/distance from the greater Hellenistic world would have only facilitated a more speedy integration of Greeks into a much larger regional system.

I'm genuinely curious about the sources saying that the Greeks went "home"?

Basically what I'm saying is yes, their ruling class was Greek, but if they ever get developed for 0AD, and the archaeological references are used correctly, their structures are going to end up looking quite different from the other Hellenistic civs. In terms of units, you'd have the basic Hellenistic roster (with some minor unique elements), in addition to Hellenized Persians, Bactrians, Sogdians, Scythians and Mauryan elephants. They'd look and feel quite unique.   

Edited December 31, 2018 by Sundiata

[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

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[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

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Edited April 8, 2021 by Anaxandridas ho Skandiates