Lurker > HannibalBarca3

Did you know that Tolkien inspiration for orcs came from cruel soldiers he encountered during World War 1.

Did you know that the largest battle in the American Revolution did not take place in the Americas but in Gibraltar? The great siege of Gibraltar saw the British successfully repel a combined French and Spanish force.

Did you know that despite the movie 300 portraying the killing of the Persian messenger as an act of defiance the actual killing of the messenger was seen as a crime against the gods since heralds were seen as having divine protection. For this the Spartans sent two men to be killed by the Persians, Herodotos recalls the tale:

Be that as it may, the anger of Talthybius, Agamemnon's herald, fell upon the Lacedaemonians. At Sparta there is a shrine of Talthybius and descendants of Talthybius called Talthybiadae, who have the special privilege of conducting all embassies from Sparta. Now there was a long period after the incident I have mentioned above during which the Spartans were unable to obtain good omens from sacrifice. The Lacedaemonians were grieved and dismayed by this and frequently called assemblies, making a proclamation inviting some Lacedaemonian to give his life for Sparta. Then two Spartans of noble birth and great wealth, Sperthias son of Aneristus and Bulis son of Nicolaus, undertook of their own free will to make atonement to Xerxes for Darius' heralds who had been killed at Sparta.

Thereupon the Spartans sent these men to Media for execution.
Worthy of admiration was these men's deed of daring, and so also were their sayings. On their way to Susa, they came to Hydarnes, a Persian, who was general of the coast of Asia. He entertained and feasted them as his guests, and as they sat at his board, he asked: Lacedaemonians, why do you shun the king's friendship? You can judge from what you see of me and my condition how well the king can honor men of worth. So might it be with you if you would but put yourselves in the king's hands, being as you are of proven worth in his eyes, and every one of you might by his commission be a ruler of Hellas.

To this the Spartans answered: Your advice to us, Hydarnes, is not completely sound; one half of it rests on knowledge, but the other on ignorance. You know well how to be a slave, but you, who have never tasted freedom, do not know whether it is sweet or not. Were you to taste of it, not with spears you would counsel us to fight for it, no, but with axes.

This was their answer to Hydarnes. From there they came to Susa, into the king's presence, and when the guards commanded and would have compelled them to fall down and bow to the king, they said they would never do that. This they would refuse even if they were thrust down headlong, for it was not their custom, said they, to bow to mortal men, nor was that the purpose of their coming. Having averted that, they next said,

The Lacedaemonians have sent us, O king of the Medes, in requital for the slaying of your heralds at Sparta, to make atonement for their death, and more to that effect. To this Xerxes, with great magnanimity, replied that he would not imitate the Lacedaemonians. You, said he, made havoc of all human law by slaying heralds, but I will not do that for which I censure you, nor by putting you in turn to death will I set the Lacedaemonians free from this guilt. Hdt. 7.135

Did you know that Stuart Little in the book is a mutant human child who looks mouse-like? This was changed in the movies where he's an anthropomorphic mouse born from mouse parents.

VGAddict90 posted...

What if Tifa and 2B were in the next Smash game?

Who?

I have to check mine when I get home

up

Bump

I'm here if ur still down

I'm on my way home.

For real?

bump

Yeah maybe next time. GGs

I'll be around

Still around?

GGs, that was fun. Also Isabelle's backthrow killing across the stage will never not be funny to me.

3 more food almost here

omw

Still around

GGs. I wasn't expecting force palm into a tech scenario that last stock.

omw just gotta renew my subscription real quick

I'm home

I'll be home soon

Tora_Sami posted...

I wouldn't say the tactic is a complete invention of the show. We know they rotated out of battle and this is a good assumption of how they did such a thing. They had historical people on the show to help with accuracy. The whistle is a thing we believe they may have used as some were found on battlefields. It at least has historical bases as we don't exactly know how they rotated whole units. It is still up for debate in how it was actually done but this is the closest we ever got on a tv show.

See:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13h2n3t/how_did_roman_cohorts_communicate_in_battle_to/
Which touches on those points as well as the pulse model pushed by some scholars such as Adrian Goldsworthy.

bump

meralonne posted...

Thats fair, I havent been overwhelmed by any of his movies for a while now.

And I fully acknowledge that Gladiator was, as another poster in this topic already pointed out, a Roman-era fanfic but everyone knew that going in from the trailers at release.

I wouldn't be too sure about that. People do take in more serious movies, well, seriously. That one famous scene in HBO's Rome:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7MYlRzLqD0
Read the comments, people actually believe this is how the Romans fought despite being an invention of the series. In truth Polybios describes Roman units rotating in battle, not individuals as the scene suggests. So, movies and shows can seriously influence the way people perceive the past and what looks "right" in a period piece, even if it's wrong, a concept called "historical verisimilitude" by Professor Bret Devereaux.

Sometimes it can be "harmless" so to speak. Maybe not the right type of costume or cultural norms and the like. Movies are a form of entertainment and film makers are most likely going to push for something more dramatic and flashy rather than reconstruct the past. But other times it can be used to push negative stereotypes. A good example is Oliver Stone's Alexander from 2004:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B40fgE2ZpNo

The Macedonian army is portrayed very nicely here, and it sports the most accurate depiction of the Macedonian pike phalanx in film to date. The costumes are nice too, you can tell the difference between the Macedonian pikemen, the Macedonian hypaspists and even the Thracian peltasts with their phrygian cap, cloaks and crescent shields. The Macedonian forces are portrayed as pretty organized and professional even if the battle scene devolves into the chaotic free for all melee hollywood loves to portray between the film's heroes. Overall, it's clear that while the film takes some liberties in the depiction of the battle Oliver Stone clearly listened to Robert Lane Fox, the film's historical advisor.

However, when it comes to the Persians their depiction falls back to racist orientalists tropes, framing the battle as one of professional "Western" forces vs the Eastern "Asiatic horde". First before the battle you can clearly see Darius III wearing eyeliner which Achaemenid kings never wore, it's an effort to play up the "orientalist" angle and to make Darius appear more effeminate. Second the Persian infantry is all lightly armored, wearing no body armor nor helmets, in contrast to the Macedonian infantry. We know that the infantry core of the Persian royal army, the so-called immortals, wore scale armor, so it makes no sense to depict them that way. Third the Persians infantry makes a mad charge towards the organized Macedonian formation which runs contrary to Xenophon's description of the Persian army at the battle of Kounaxa of an organized Persian army, which he contrast the professionalism of the Persians to the rowdy and loud Greek mercenaries, and you see Persian warriors commit suicide by Macedonian by willingly impaling themselves on a wall of pikes. In fact that sort of charge and depiction is more accurate to the Greeks than it is to the Persians, these crude tactics are what historians like Thukydides and Xenophon tell us about the tactics of most Greek hoplites, Thukydides stops his narrative to explain the Spartan practice of marching in step and Xenophon spent a good deal crying to his readers to adopt Spartan formation drill in the 4th century.

These stereotypes are hurtful because they incorrectly shape up our perception of the past. Dan Carlin in his podcast about the Persians made the claim that the Persians were unable to deal with the new Greek war of war which is plain wrong. Persian armies pretty much wrecked Greek armies up to the battle of Marathon and the Persian were familiar with the way the Greeks fought seeing as they had experience fighting the Ionian Greeks as well as the various heavy infantry cultures on the Eastern Mediterranean. If anything the Greeks were the ones behind heavy infantry development in comparison to the states of the Eastern Mediterranean, while almost up to the Greco-Persian wars the Greeks were fighting with mixed warbands of ranged and melee infantry led by rich men the Sumerians thousands of years earlier had mastered the art of separating heavy infantry into separte formations. The Greeks came late to that party and the concept of a "phalanx" may have been evolving even up to the Peloponnesian War. All these negative stereotypies push the image of the Persian military as one of a lightly armed disorganized horde that used it's massive numbers to win the day but in reality, the Persians had a world conquering army semi-professional army, even before Alexander III of Macedon invaded the Persian empire the Persians had come hot straight out of re-conquering Egypt, showing that the Persians were not militarily weak nor was the empire in decline.

ggs

I can play until food is ready

anyone wanna play

GGs

bump

I wonder if they'll ever make a film not portraying Alexander III of Macedon, or Alex the Great, as this tragic figure and instead as a violent brutal drunk warlord who was handed one professional army with years of expirience in Thrace and Thessaly, and almost all of the Balkans united.

Hmm I'm not sure if I remember him. I know there's another mustang that plays Terry, I've seen him during those coinbox tourneys. Speaking of Wumbo I met him in person a while back during a monthly and got to thank him for the Pichu amiibo lol

Comes out on my birthday, nice.

I'm around.

Smash has like 10 variations of Marth

Depends on what type of turn based you're talking about. BG3 is turn based but it differs greatly from the traditional Final Fantasy combat of four guys standing in a row taking turns whacking each other. Likewise that differs from the style of combat in the original fallouts and even games like Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous.

While I don't mind the old school FF style of combat I think games like BG3 and the DoS series are the future of turn based combat.

bmp

I was watching some vods on the boss fighst and just noticed Jonathan Jones does not appear to be a shark but a creature wearing a shark costume as you can clearly see two glowing eyes coming out of the mouth at certain angles. The original render alluded to it but I never picked up on it.

I don't know if it's criminally underrated since it's a cult classic but Arcanum.

Is Starfield dead? Or just his career?

Xenophon

What does the SS stand for

o tempora o mores

nvm got disconnected lol
GGs, I wanted the run back since I was making the comeback against Snake with Marth

Next one actually

A wild streamhacks appears.

I'll do two more since I have food to pick up

surr

I'm home

I'm on my way home so I can play soonish