Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "Metatron" channel.

  1. Many times, both from sources and reconstructions. In general, a knight in full plate armor had more mobility than a modern day infantryman in full gear. But unfortunately this, and others, mith on Middle Age spread during Victorian Era, where "middle age = bad" (heavy and cumbersome armors, heavy and dull weapons, illiteracy, superstitions, filth...). So it's deeply routed.
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  2. @Vvv IRL knights fared pretty well vs. Mongol riders. Already in the first invasion, it had been noticed that Europeans tended to win small scale engagements. The real difference was the Mongol chain of command, capable to effectively cohordinate tens of thousands of men in pitched battles, while European commanders still led from the front, so knew what was happening only close to them. In the subsequent attempts of nvasion, Hungarians and Poles exploited that advantage. Increased the number of mounted heavy units, and divided the campaign into multiple small engagements instead of seeking big pitched battles.
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  3. His coins, like those of his father and his brother, don't depict him as black.
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  4. Not all the Germans rooted for Arminius. Not even all of his own tribesmen. Not even his own brother and father-in-law.
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  5.  @Narrmo  The weight of those weapons had been estabilished when their real life counterparts were still used, to be good proxies for the real thing. An epee weights 770g, that's substantially HEAVIER than a 19th century duel sword (here you can see the weight of real samples https://fencingclassics.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/weapons-eight-dueling-epees/ ). It weights more than a smallsword (600g) and even more than a 1786 pattern spadroon (700g, obviously the spadroon has more weight in the blade). At 500g the sabre is pretty lightweight, but not that much. A 19th century duel sabre weighted around 600g, and both the duel sword and the duel sabre were easily lethal. All in all they are more similar to their real counterparts than a 440g shinai / 500g bokken to a 1.1/1.2 kg katana, or all the wooden proxies used in the other martial arts listed.
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  6.  @LionClanChief  In case of Memnon, he can be depicted as a black African, a black Indian, a middle eastern (like his father), or even a white European (his mother, Eos, was "the goddes with rosy fingers"), but stating "Memnon was not from Africa" is incorrect. Memnon had been considered African for much of classicity.
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  7. +HotSkull Not in the recent decades.
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  8. Is not a question of advantages. Samurai armors were light armor for European standards, and so have to be compared with European light armors (half armors, corsaletti, ecc...) that were higly mobile too.
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  9. +295Phoenix The armor was not "pret a porter". It was an incredibly costly item, that was made expressily for the owner. If he was left-handed, the armor was made left-handed as well. If he instead wanted it to be symmetrical, the armorer made it symmetrical.
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  10. It's very effective, but in a single specific situation and, even in that situation (frontal close-formation fight) it had been finally made obsolete simply by a longer spear.
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  11. In classic time they said they adopted it from the Samnites (Polybius). Infact the "Samnite" gladiator fought with short sword and rectangular shield.
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  12. Kings could have dozens of illegitimate childs, they didn't enter in the dinastic succession.
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  13.  @indrajitgupta3280  The Flemish did beat the cavalry with the gotendags (Golden Spur) the Lombards with spears and shields (Legnano), the Almogavars routinely with javelins and falchions. Every weapon was effective if well used, but none of those was a game-changer. At Crecy and Agincourt it was the preparation of the battle that counted more than the weapon used.
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  14. Crossbows became paramount in northern Italy because they were great for a citizen's militia. A shopkeeper, by training on sunday, after the mass, became proficient enough to kill a fully equipped knight (and that's why they were frowned upon by the upper class, see the papal ban. They were socially levelling). Obviously, when there were many crossbowmen around, the better trained were better, and the better trained were the Genoese, because they were full-time used on the ships.
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  15.  Joe Blow  Is difficult to find datas for Germanic people of Roman times, but Viking males, form skeletons found (usually we find burial of high-class people, so the average height is probably overestimated, since in ancient times they tended to eat better and so be taller than the average peasant) had an average height of 172cm. We already talked about legionaries but, from skeletons, the average male population of Pompeii and Herculaneum (and there are no class differencies there, since they all perished in a natural disaster) was of 168cm, so the Germanic people were probably on average taller than the Romans, but nothing so dramatic.
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  16. The main source of slave labour for ancient cultures was war. At the time of the construction of the pyramids Egypt was not an expansionist state, so there were few slaves. It has to be seen how much "free" the labor of the Egyptian workers was. As it was very likely an obligatory corvee for peasants, like in ancient China, or medieval Europe.
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  17. The reality is that this kind of things are condescending. It's not like anyone at Netflix believes that 'documentary'. What they really meant by doing this is: "facts are too hard for these people to face. Let's pack this load of bullshit for them, call this a 'documentary', and they'll be happy with that." The "documentary" should have been titled: "Queen Cleopatra" "a load of bullshit we packed to make you feel better".
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  18. Quintus Sertorius would probably be at the top of the list.
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  19.  @baldingbee5403  It's told that a one-eyed sailor had been in possess of the recipe for some time. He's name was "Popeye", or something like that.
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  20.  @undertakernumberone1  I didnt' say "body armour". Vehicle armors too are made to avoid shot traps. If a spear point hit any part of the fluting, is diverted where it can do the most damages, becaus the same flutings avoid it to glance off.
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  21.  @undertakernumberone1  On a simply curved surface, the hit can glance in any direction (the direction the incoming hit was more angled). On a fluted surface, the hit can glance only in two directions, even if those were not the dirctions the incoming hit was more angled with. so more force is transfered to the armour. That's how shot traps work. If you look at the pictures of Maximilian armour, the fluting direct the hits towards the waist and the throat. The last places you want them to arrive to. Fluting does not encourage weapos to slide away. It prevents to do so. Physics doesn't change, and fluting wasn't used when making AP shells bounce off was paramount.
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  22. The story of the Gracchi is important because it had been a precedent. Never before a political dispute between Roman Citizens ended in a homicide. The senatorial class, that chose to silence the Gracchi that way, unknowingly prepared it's own demise. If the killing of a political adversary was acceptable, the the Republic would have been led by who could kill the most, the military leaders.
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  23.  @brucetucker4847  He's not questioning the history and legacy of racism in the US, but historical accuracy in characters' representation. Also, a US black citizen can be lectured about history of racism in the US by a Scandinavian if he gets it wrong. Being born somewere, or with some skin colour, doesn't give anyone any special right to be right. What someone personally witnessed is a thing. History is another thing.
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  24. @ It was a crusade, that means an all-out war, not a trial.
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  25. In middle age your would have been considered an hunting bow, not a warbow. The draw of warbows was at least double than that (and came up to 180lbs and more). Same for middle-age China. MIlitary archers back then had a completely different body complexion (due to the training in drawing very stiff bows) than regular soldiers. It had been reported that they looked like hunchbacks.
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  26. So you don't agree with Hannibal, his father and his brother?
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  27.  @nostalji93  They didn't exclude non living things. Infact the explanation of the "bad air" was still there. But mind that, at that time, known poisons were almost all of biological origin. So, if the effects of a disease were similar to that of a poisoning, it was natural to search for a biological cause to it.
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  28. Jesus is represented as white, black, native American, Asiatic and so on, depending on where the church is located.
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  29.  Alex Evans  The Romans considered their scuti to be derived by the Samnites' ones. Semi-rectangular/oval shields were diffused among several Italic populations.
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  30. To me the change shown in the first episode of "Rome" is pretty much accurate, except for the fact that it shows a continuous "chain" of men retreating. In reality it takes only few seconds to reach the last line, so , if the legionary in first line fought for even just two minutes. You would not see that "chain". If a maniple fought in battle in a 5X32 formation (so pretty stretched), and every legionary fought for 2 minutes, he could then rest for 8 minutes (14 minutes in a 8X20 formation). That way a trained soldier could fight in the best conditions for hours.
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  31. He should introduce himself, dressed like this and speaking only Latin, in the first day of school.
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  32. In 1 vs. 1. Not that much in formation fights.
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  33. Those games were not made to make people join any armed force. They were meant to sell. They depicted battles because feigned battles are fun and, a good wargame sells and makes money for the company. There isn't any contradiction in being a pacifist and liking wargames.
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  34. Because blacks profited form slave trade, destroyed etc. as well.
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  35. Today that's not completely true. Italian and Greek males are on average taller than German males (Italians 176.5, Greeks 177.0, Germans 175.4). Spaniards and Portuguese tend to still be a bit short anyway (173.1 and 173.9). However at 5.9 you are not short by any mean. ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_human_height_by_country
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  36. "easier to train" was the reason crossbows became the ranged weapon of choice on northern Italy, the land of merchant municipalities. It was great for citizen's militia, since a shopkeeper, training on sunday after the mass, could kill a trained and fully kitted knight. Obviously, once you have a lot of crossbowmen available, the professional ones are better, and the Genoese were professional. However, if you see the recruitment standards, the Genoese companies recruited among the lower strata of the population, or among artisans in economic difficulties, that decided to became mercenaries (even if the Genoese crossbowmen were not really mercenaries, since only the Republic of Genoa could sell their services), even for just a period. So people without, or with little, experience were recruited and intensively trained in a short period. The same with archers was nearly impossible. An archer was the son of an archer, that trained since childhood.
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  37.  @jeremievivianagriffin9458  Numidian cavalry was quite famous a millennia before arabs.
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  38. No discriminations in the legion. You'll use the scutum with the left and the gladius with the right like all the others.
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  39. Moreover, the "Vesuvius" we know, the central cone visible at 2:18, didn't exist back then. What existed, and the Romans called "Vesuvius" was the semi-circular ridge of Mt. Somma (also visible in the picture. It was there that, for example found refuge the rebels of Spartacus, and it was its internal, very steep, slope (while the external slope was covered in vineyards) that they descended using vine branches as ropes. that of 79 AC had precisely been the last of a series of explosions, thousands of years apart, that destroyed the old vulcanic edifice of Mt. Somma. The Romans didn't, and couldn't, recognize the Vesuvius as a Volcano. Because it had nor the shape, nor the activities they could attribute to a volcano. The current central cone formed in the subsequent two millennia of effusive eruptions, and infact it was lower than the ridge of Mt. Somma still in 18th century depictions. See R. Cioni, R. Santacroce e A. Sbrana, "Pyroclastic deposits as a guide for reconstructing the multi-stage evolution of the Somma-Vesuvius Caldera".
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  40.  @alicelund147  Right hand needs more mobility for using the sword. Also, a right handed person with a pole weapon (always the primary weapon) has his left hand ahead, so the left side is more exposed to hits.
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  41. Wars were typically fought in summer, so some protection had to be sacrified in exchange of the possibility to fight for more time. IE some historian stated that, at Azincourt, many French knights had been put out of combat by the heat way before being hit by a weapon.
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  42.  @renettedescartes  "Yes, you don't need a professor to know Romans were shorter than germans" But you need some research to know of how much. Is difficult to find datas for Gauls and Germanic people of Roman times, but Viking males, form skeletons found (usually we find burial of high-class people, so the average height is probably overestimated, since in ancient times they tended to eat better and so be taller than the average peasant) had an average height of 172cm. We already talked about legionaries but, from skeletons, the average male population of Pompeii and Herculaneum (and there are no class differencies there, since they all perished in a natural disaster) was of 168cm, so the Germanic people were probably on average taller than the Romans, but nothing so dramatic. The difference in average height between Italian and Scandinavian males today is of about 4 cm.
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  43. Actually there is no proof Boudicca ever fought. Boudicca is recalled as she is because she was a woman, and Romans did'nt expect a woman leading (not personally fighting) one of the largest anti-Roman revolts ever, and committing such atrocities. That elevated her to a semi-mythical status. Had she been a man, "he" would have been recalled only for said atrocities, and "his" sheer incompetence as a military leader (that has nothing to do with Boudicca being a woman, but she managed her army to be easily slaughtered having 10/1 numerical superiority, and the fact that there were many women in it doesn't exaclty aid the cause of putting women in first line in a shield and spear battle). The later revolt of Venutius had been far more successful with less resources, and none recalls him. Matilda of Tuscany would have probably been a better example.
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  44. 1) First crusade. Gerusalem had been taken only with the arrival of the Genoese. Among them, the crossbowmen, that neutralised the Mameluc archers. 2) 1192, battle of Jaffa. Richard, a far better military commander than Philip VI, deployed the crossbowmen, by far the most numerous troops he had, behind a defensive hedge of spears. From there, the crossbowen destroyed Saladin's cavalry, that outnumbered the Christians 4 to 1. 3) 1248, battle of Parma, Holy Roman Emperor Fredrick II decisively defeated by the Lombard league (with the complete loss of the army, camp, crown, banner, scepter and seal), among them, the Genoese crossbowmen. And obviously many naval battles, (Meloria, Curzola...).
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  45. I think you misinterpreted his previous video.
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  46. The Romans ceased to use the phalanx (the oplite phalanx) and began using the maniples during the Samnitic wars (probably borrowing them from the same Samnites). Cause the phalanx could have had a slight advantage in completely flat terrains, but was at a great disadvantage on broken terrains. Since completely flat terrains were much rarer than broken terrains, the choice was obvious.
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  47. It depends on what "Germans" you are speaking of. In 1st century Arminius, being the commander of the Roman cavalry, simply led Varus legions into a trap, but it had been a "one of". During the migration era, the number of German tribes pushing on the limes was too high to simply repel all of them. The Romans had to decide whom admit, romanize, and use to defend the same limes, and which fight. In the end, however, the same existence of extremely strong Roman armies near the border, that were linked to the same territory (cause much of the soldiers had there their families and tribe of origin), accentuated the separatist tendencies, of the external parts of the empire.
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  48. However, the result of the Mongols' raid in Eastern Europe was exactly the one Metatron said. The first time, the Poles and Hungarians fought like they were used to, and were thoroughly beaten. Then they analysed what worked and what not at Legnica and Mohi. Changed their equipment and tactics in few years, and won the next time.
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  49. +Mallorn Tree Not really. The scutum was used offensively, it was heavier than the sword, and it had to absorb hits, kicks and shouldering. Right handed legionaries had to train to made their left arm as strong, or stronger, than their right one.
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  50. They were used by the triarii until the Marian reform, so they were in use during the Second too.
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