Comments by "Stephen Hill" (@stephenhill545) on "Bellum et Historia" channel.

  1. This is true. No humanism, no enlightenment, no explosion of knowledge.
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  2. We don't. As John Stuart Mill said, Marathon was the most important battle in British history.
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  3. Those bloody Thessalians again.
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  4. We're very happy. The Greeks gave us humanism. It made us prosperous and free men. "Marathon was the most important battle in British history", John Stuart Mill.
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  5. Intimidating would be putting it mildly.
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  6. The Athenians had 10,000 hoplites at Marathon. It was a citizen army. Sparta could put 8,000 in the field at that time. There were 800 Thespians at Thermopylae, and 1,000 Plateans at Marathon, so if the Greeks were able to unite, they had the numbers to counter a Persian invasion force, which historians tended to exaggerate the size of. 26,000 Persians at Marathon, of which 9,000 left the field to sail for Athens. 80,000 in the 480 invasion.
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  7. It happened at Edge Hill in 1642, English Civil War. The cavalry charged, then looted the baggage train, forgetting about the battle. The Persian cavalry was also too interested in a bit of looting.
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  8. Wickerwork shields don't tend to work too well against six foot long spears and a wall of bronze. You have to admire their optimism.
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  9. There was no charge. Horses wouldn't charge a phalanx.
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  10. ​ @sagrosalborz-mf7st It failed. At Salamis and Plataea. Rather than completing the conquest of Greece in 479, the Persian army was routed and disintegrated.
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  11. Horses can't do that. Cavalry are a shock weapon or for mobility. The horses would refuse to charge into spearmen.
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  12. Greece was mountainous. They didn't have much use for horses. The horsemen came from the plains of Central Asia.
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  13. They did melee too. They carried swords.
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  14. It was a force of many tribes.
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  15. Not specifically, they were trained for Greek warfare. Their armor, spears, and shields gave them good protection though, as well as being in the middle of a tightly packed group.
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  16. Yes. If the spearmen held their nerve. Horses will not charge into lines of spears. They sometimes refuse to jump over water or fences.
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  17. It was a long way without a fleet.
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  18. They had smiths.
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  19. They probably never got home. Their fleet had been destroyed.
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  20. Hellenic culture has conquered the world. Nations which internalised the principles of the enlightenment led the world into the modern age, and the enlightenment is the daughter of Hellenic teaching.
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  21. A well trained phalanx would have rotated their front line. Guys in full armor would have been exhausted after 3 minutes.
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  22. ​ @tomjohnson5191 They would have had to remove the dead now and then to allow them to keep fighting.
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  23. During the retreat they had to pass over broken terrain, which disrupted their formation, causing the Persians to attack.
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  24. It's the letter L. It stands for Lacadaemon, which we call Sparta.
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  25. Horses don't charge spears. They would refuse.
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  26. The Greeks facing the Athenians fought with spears raised, and the Athenians returned the compliment, while the Lacedonians dealt with the Persians.
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  27. They weren't villages. They were city states.
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  28. Others defeated the Romans. The Germanic tribes defeated the Romans in 9 AD. Rome never conquered Germania. The Huns, the Vizigoths, and the Vandals all sacked Rome. Carthage defeated Rome at Cannae, its greatest defeat ever, etc.etc.
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