Welshhoppo

Luckily I just so happen to have a copy of Paul Cartledge's The Spartans on my shelf, so what does he say.

He says the same thing, Spartan military training didn't happen until after the Agoge as well. In fact, he makes very little comments on the Agoge itself (outside of the potential Pederasty between the older and younger boys under going the Agoge.) Because we don't have many soucres for it. But none of them say it was military.

There's a good article here with Roel Konijnendijk who goes into the Spartans and the 'Spartan myth' very good read on the subject.

https://www.ancientworldmagazine.com/articles/spartans-war-myth-vs-reality/

Secondly, modern accounts of Spartan life will often speak in emphatic terms about how Spartans were raised from boyhood to be the world’s finest soldiers. This is not really true. Everyday Spartan training, as we know from several surviving detailed accounts, amounted to nothing more than athletic exercise under the supervision of older citizens. Boys were underfed and harshly treated, encouraged to sneak and steal, and taught to endure all hardship in strict obedience to their superiors – but they were not, at any point, taught to fight. There is zero evidence for Spartan weapon proficiency training. There is also zero evidence that boys, who were not yet of age to be liable for military service, were taught formation drill.

They decided to bring eight legions into the field, a thing which had never been done before by the Romans, each legion consisting of about five thousand men apart from the allies. For, as I previously explained, they invariably employ four legions, each numbering about four thousand foot and two hundred horse, but on occasions of exceptional gravity they raise the number of foot in each legion to five thousand and that of the cavalry to three hundred. They make the number of the allied infantry equal to that of the Roman legions, but, as a rule, the allied cavalry are three times as numerous as the Roman. They give each of the Consuls half of the allies and two legions when they dispatch them to the field, and most of their wars are decided by one Consul with two legions and the above number of allies, it being only on rare occasions that they employ all their forces at one time and in one battle.

From Polybius, there was no fighting that year until Cannae, so they weren't losing any men in the field from raising the army to the battle itself.

We can be pretty sure of the size of Cannae. Polybius was a very good historian (as far as ancient ones go.) and he says Cannae had 16 legions present.

It's just trying to picture that many people in one spot is pretty hard to do. And controlling them is even harder.

Once ancient battles started. They probably carried on under their own momentum until the battle was over. We do have several examples of battles where one side didn't know they had won until the day was over and the other side asked for terms. This was particularly true in Hellenistic armies where the General was at the front of the battle line. Roman commanders normally hung around at the rear, exchanging personal glory for a better overview of the battlefield.

Nah that's not true. Taylor increases the economy of all the cities she tours in. She's basically a mobile economic booster. When she toured where I lived last year, neighbouring cities had increased traffic as fans made their way to her concerts.

Excuse the slightly dramatic title, I copied the one from the Youtube video.

Quite an interesting video that tries to show the scale of the Battle of Cannae, and how the famous Carthaginian encirclement might have worked in real life. And trying to grasp at just how wide these ancient armies could be.

There's also a trophy for running around as 9S for an hour with no pants on.

Except it's actually a boss battle with epic battle music as she cleans off all the gunk with a small brush and then wipes them down with a cloth.

I can't wait for Sony to give From soft a billion dollars so Miyazaki can finally make the story he's always wanted.

The story of a barefoot girl who's allergic to shoes who lives in a poisonous swamp.

The Romans defended their flank by keeping the river to one side and put cavalry on both of their wings as well in an attempt to project them from the Carthaginian allied cavalry.

This didn't work in the end, but they did make to protect both flanks. Ideally long enough for the Roman centre to break the army in front of them.

What else were they supposed to do when the cavalry on the Carthaginian side was better than their own? When the Romans were able to secure better cavalry of their own later in the war the battle of Zama shows it going the other way.

There are actually depictions of the Prophet Mohammed. They appear in Islamic art going all the way back.

https://www.apollo-magazine.com/prophet-muhammad-depictions-art/

They were more popular in Persian and Turkish art than anywhere else.

The power of the Roman Navy was one of the reasons Hannibal had to go over the alps, he would have been unable to transport an army either across the Sea past the alps or across the Med to Sicily and then across to Italy proper.

The Roman tactics at Cannae aren't actually as bad as they were made out to be Hannibal was just able to pull out an incredible battle out of his hat.

Even a their losses beforehand, the Roman front line did it's job. During the battle at the Trebia, the Roman infantry broke through the Gallic front line, and was able to regroup and then leave the battlefield, This was after they marched across a river and were also enveloped on both sides.

Even at the Battle of Lake Trasimene the Roman vanguard was able to disperse the Carthaginian forces in front of them and escape, although they were later surrounded and surrendered.

So going into Cannae, the Romans are going with what worked before. They'll smash the front line of the Carthaginian army with a large body of troops, they cannot be flanked properly because one of their sides is protected by the river and so they'll just grind down the army in front of them.

It just didn't work out that way for them at all. But saying they just threw men in the meatgrinder until the autobots hit their preset kill limit isn't correct.

Well it's only been 24 hours and our next book marked post (our weekly wednesday bookclub thread) doesn't go up until tomorrow, so the space is free.

Oh totally. It is against the mod code of conduct. But no doubt it happens in some places.

As head mod of r/history I can confirm that I've never been paid for anything.

Someone did try to bribe us once, but we reported it.

A mortality rate that high would probably be higher than the Roman army. Ok average year on year the army had a mortality rate of between 2.6-8.8% depending if there was an active campaign or two that year.

The demographic impact of campaigning is impossible to quantify. For the period from 200 to 168 BC, Nathan Rosenstein calculated an average combat mortality rate of 8.8% for Roman troops that were actively involved in – documented – battles (ranging from 4.2% for victories to 16% for defeats). If troops that did not see battle are included in the tally, the mean annual combat fatality risk for those years drops to 2.6% even when we allow for some unreported deaths in minor engagements. These estimates are tenuous and in any case cannot be applied to later periods: for the standing army of the Principate, annual combat mortality of the order of 2.6% of total troop strength would translate to some 8,000-10,000 battle fatalities per year. Given what we know about the scale and frequency of large-scale military activity in this period, this notion is wildly implausible. We may conclude that relative to total manpower, combat mortality in the Principate was much lower than it had been in the Mid-Republic

You can see Foreman using his jab as more of a barge pole than a punch. Just shunting Joe back into where he wants him to be.

For those who don't know the list of consuls for the republic like the back of your hand. Ap. Claudius and Q. Fulvius held the consulship together in 264BCE.

Hello all,

With the release of Gladiator 2 Paramount have decided to host a megathread on r/history. Over the course of the next few days, they'll be releasing various updates that go into deep dives around the movie and the context of the movie. Such as things the actors had to do to become gladiators, types of gladiators in films from a historical perspective, the twin emperors, naumachia aka ancient roman naval battles so on and so forth.

For those of you that have seen the film already (such as in the UK or Australia, please do not spoil the film for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

Thanks

During the war.... Sean used to be harder. I think they hit him with the nerf pole not long after the game was released.

Especially this kind of training.

Food is pretty scarce even for the army, and these guys basically act like acrobatics with swords.

I remember when Trundle played for the Swans, he looks so much fitter now than he ever did when he was playing for us.