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

  1. There had been variations, with the katana made in wartime that thended to be less sharp and more resistant, but in general japanese swords are more brittle and prone to breakage than a European sword of the same size, in exchange of them being sharper. Katanas are not really made for parrying, they are made to bring a single deadly slash to an uncovered part of the enemy's body, or to die in the attempt. Samurai doesn't use shields cause, for most of their history, they had been mounted archers that used the tachi / katana as their secondary weapon, and mounted archers (see Parts, Huns, Mongols...) doesn't use shields (you can't use it while throwing, it doesn't cover the horse...). Other than the samurai, the foot soldiers were mostly conscript peasants, and those were rarely armed with more than a spear in Europe too.
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  2. Really public baths din not fell out of favor with the collapse of the western Roman empire, but survived into the middle age, and we have many depictions of them. They started to be forcefully closed, for moral reasons, only in XV century.
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  3. The hasta (heavy fighting spear) was the weapon of the triarii before the marian reform, but was discarded as a field weapon after it, altough it was still used for special tasks. A post-marian legion would have had a certain number of them anyway, but far less than the total number of legionaries. It was far more common for the legionaries to use the pilum as a fighting spear if needed.
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  4. allegedly, in the Battle of Beneventum, the Romans did not surrounded the Phalanx, but, with packed trowing of javelins, they opened gates were the legionaries could enter and fight with the gladii.
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  5. In Japan that coincided with the final Jomon and early Yayoi periods.
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  6. The name was "strophium" or "mamillare" and it was commonly used. The most common model was a breast band, but there were kinds with shoulder straps too
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  7. In a katana vs gladius clash, the gladius would probably broke the katana. At the price of a big indentation in it's cutting edge, but it will not make it less lethal. To be very sharp, the steel of the katana tend to be very stiff, and so very brittle. It doesn't cope well with hard objects.
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  8. Actually at Crecy the English long bowmen massacrated the french horses. Once standing on a muddy ground, knights were not that mighty any more. Many of them were killed in the pursuit at the end of the battle by the English kinghts and infantrymen.
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  9. All in all the Swiss squares were not that different from the Macedonian phalanx, that the Romans defeated easily even before the Marian reform. Obviously, in that case, the tactic was not to directly attack the front of the enemy formation, but to lure the enemies on rough terrain, where they could not mantain it, or to take advantage of the superior mobilities of the cohorts to attack the flanks. The Swiss were much more disciplined than the average infantry formation of medieval time, but not more disciplined than the oplites or phalangites. After the marian reform, we have to take in account military engineering too. Even on a seemingly favourable terrain for the pikemen's squares, Romans could easily dig or build obstacles that would have made impossilbe to mantain the formation. That's an often overlooked topic. A battle vs a legion was not only a battle vs shield and short sword. It's a battle vs a military system that in no time could build fortifications, trenches, traps, and make a terrain impracticable for the enemy. That doesn't mean that the Roman victory would be a given fact, obviously. Even the Romans had their bad days. But, assuming both the formations to have a capable commander, one that know how to get the best from his men, to me the legion had more possibilities.
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  10. *There could be, and had been used, multiple phalanxes. The pikemen had always more columns cause they came from different places, and, like for the oplite phalanx, the unity of a column depended from the fact that its members came from the same place and thrusted each other. Furthermore, among the Swiss, every column was free to decide wether to attack or rethreat. The coordination was scarce. *To have different kind of soldiers into the same formation is not necessarily an advantage. If you have not enough pikemen to keep the enemy infantry at bay, and not enough swordsmen to fight them in close quarters, it will end in a slaughter anyway. Furthermore, phalangites had swords as well, and they had been easily defeated. *The legion evolved a lot during the years as well. But, until the advent of firearms, I don't see advantages in the pikemen squares over the legion. *Is like saying that, since a AA station can shoot down an attack helicopter, while a tank will have a hard time versus it, the AA station will easily win versus the tank. It doesn't work that way. The pikemen squares evolved exactly to counter the cavalry, but they generally never fought vs other kind od organized infantry. Legions instead fought vs many kind of organized infantry. Pikemen would have been nothing new to them, only a variation of the Oplite-Macedonian phalanx they knew well. And, as said, there is the military engineering to take into account. At the Bicocca the Swiss were defeated mainly by the mere presence of a sunken road transverse to the battlefield. To make better obstacles would have been child play for the legionaries. That's my opinion.
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  11. *Pike squares put togheter men of the same origin. For this cause, often there had been competition, and not cohordination, between the Swiss columns on the same battlefield. *Gauls too fought in close formaftions of spearmen. Formations of spearmen were nothing new for the Romans. They saw it before. *Is not a question of numbers, but of numbers for the same area. In a certain area there could be only a certain number of men. Too few pikemen, and the enemies will find their way to fight in close quarters, and at that point the pikemen will be only an hindrance. Too few swordsmen, and they will not make any difference. If combined formations would have been ALWAYS an advantage, the Romans would have kept the hasta between their squares, or the phalangites would have kept the oplites between theirs. They didn't cause it was not an advantage. *I never said the Romans were invincible. I said: "That doesn't mean that the Roman victory would be a given fact, obviously. Even the Romans had their bad days. But, assuming both the formations to have a capable commander, one that know how to get the best from his men, to me the legion had more possibilities." *Infact, once other organized infantries begun to appear on the battlefield, initially copying the Swiss (cause they were then the only example of efficient infantry available) the pikemen square formation begun to change, incorporating more and more other kind of soldiers (cause heavy cavalry was no more the primary threat) and resembling less and less a pikemen square, until the ones that remained more faithful to the original formation had been the first to be throughly and repeatedly beaten. It doesn't seems a demonstration of strenght of the pikemen squares vs other forms of infantry. *The phalanx could too. There is simply a trade-off between lenght of the spear and number of lines of soldiers employed, and so the effectiveness of the defense, and time employed to change formation. After the harquebuses became the main infantry weapon, the pike remained in use only to protect them from the cavalry charges. It had been abandoned as soon as the bayoned was invented, and a musket with a bayonet is a short spear. So short spears and no shields are the best formation ever? No. Simply shields were useless vs firearms. And, as said, there is the military engineering to take into account. A battle vs a legion is not only a battle vs shield and short sword. It's a battle vs a military system that in no time could build fortifications, trenches, traps, and make a terrain impracticable for the enemy. Historically the pikemen squares did nothing similar, and did not cope well with natural or artificial obstacles. Thanks to you.
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  12. The civilizations that relied on the shield-spear combination , almost always used a variation of the "shield wall" tactic, with the two opposite formations in close contact, pushing one vs the other, the shields locked, and the spear used to hit in the spaces left between the shields. It's a formation that doesn't need much training to be effective. It only needs it's memebers so thrust eachoter (infact it was good for the citizens of the same city-state, ot the inahbitants of the same fiord). On the other hand, this formation is not very deadly. The slaughters se saw in the Greek wars almost always happened during the cavalry's chase after one of the two formations was broken. The Romans used the shield offensively. Their shields were not locked, but used to hit the enemy, or cover his field of view. In this case the gladium gives to the soldier more possibilities. He can instantly decide to hit the enemy's foot, or the leg, ot the shoulder, every square inch of bare skin, without having a long rod behind him to hinder his movements. Furthermore the gladium's blade can't be grabbed if the thrust fails to hit, and the gladium is lighter than the spear, so it's wielder can hit faster and more times first to be tired. This way of fighting was much deadlier. A legion was not a pushing machine with a secondary thrusting capability. To go against a legion with the idea of pushing it back was like to go against a chainsaw with the idea of pushing it back. On the other hand, this kind of formation needs much more training to be effective.
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  13. Different armors were made for different tasks. A Roman legionary was a foot soldier required to fight in first line with shield and sword for about a minute first to be replaced by the man behind him and rest for some time. A samurai was a mounted archer that had to seldom fight on foot. A medieval knight was a mounted spearman that had to very rarely fight on foot.
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  14. +hazzmati That. Being made almost entirely of wood, shields were probably the first piece of equipment a warrior could afford, and one of the most useful too. Only a specialized warrior wielding some sort of two handed weapon (IE, a heavy axe or the Dacian falx) would have willingly renounced to it. But, in any case, those were probably a minor part of their formations (IE shock troops intended to break the enemy lines at some point of the battle), and relied on the ones with shields (or had one that discarded first to go in first line) to protect them from projectiles when they were not directly fighting.
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  15. if you have a polearm aim for the face too. The mask is not a great protection (it seems made to divert the tip of the incoming weapon towards the eyes, mouth and throath).
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  16. dark3031 I said "too" not "only". On the other hand, keep in mind that Samurai are mainly mounted troops. There could be many things ahead of the abdomen (the horse's head, the saddle, the hand that keep the bridle), while the face is exposed.
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  17. Yes and no. In medieval Japan, like in medieval Europe, the job more or less defined the person. There was not social mobility. A peasant was a peasant and a merchant was a merchant, it was not only their job, but the kind of person they were.
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  18. Roman society was sexist (like all the societies of that time), but not as sexist as the Greek one. Roman women could study (actually, until they worn the "toga praetexta", male and female children were considered equal), and, altough they couldn't have a political career, it was considered normal for them to have a political influence, talk with men that were not their relatives, participate in banquets with the men and so on. Roman women usually worn the "stola" that covered more than the tunic, but could leave arms, neck and even the shoulders uncovered. The choice to cover or not the hair was of them, we have depictions of Roman women with or without the hair covered by the "palla" (a kind of mantle).
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  19. At Teotoburg they were simply led into a trap by the commander of their Cavalry. When Varus realized to have been betrayed, the battle was already lost.
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  20. It's obvious that formation fight works better on opern terrain than into a forest, were the trees prevent the maniples to form, but at Teotoburg Arminius continued to give false informations to the Romans for a while after the battle begun (since the legions were stretched for many miles, it were Arminius' men that brought the messages between the cohorts). That way the Germans could simply fight the Roman formations one at a time, being always in clear numerical superiority.
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  21. From the "De Bello Gallico" we know that they used them. But they were not in first line at the moment of the contact with the enemy line (it would have been stupid to have the commander of the centuria there), so they had always the time to draw them first to be in the melee.
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  22. For the western romance languages speakers is very difficult to understand spoken Romanian, cause the pronunciation is very different. A similar thing happens between Italian and French. For an untrained Italian is actually even easier to read a French text than a Spanish one, but spoken French is unintelligible, cause the French pronunciation of the words is completely different from the Italian one.
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  23. And we have not talked about heavy ranged weapons. Romans used a wide range of ballistas in their campaigns. For the Samurais would be a surprise to be hit more than a km away. For the numbers, it was a question of economy. Even before the Romans, the Mediterranean civilization had a developed commercial network that allowed the goods to be produced were it was easier, and paid in gold (When we think about ancient treasures, we tend to think about China and India, but Europe was the real gold producer of the antiquity). the Romans could extract gold from Spain and import wheat from Egypt to feed their army. Much of their goods were mass-produced. All that was lost in the middle age, cause there were no more the technology and organization to extract precious metals in quantity and mantain the Roman road network. A medieval feud had to be largely self-sufficient, and so the production was less efficient, and more peasants and artisans were required to feed and equip fewer soldiers.
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  24. Fact is that, historically speaking, we are not even sure that there had been 300 Spartans (among many other Greek soldiers) at the Thermopylae. Surely, for Sparta, the Thermopylae had been a great propagandistic move since, at the price of 300 warriors, they appropriated of an ultimate victory that had been almost all due to Athens.
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  25. On the other hand, volley fire is expensive. Arrows were not an infinite resource.
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  26. More than other, at the time of the conquest of Greece, the Romans had been trained by the greatest of all, Hannibal. The Greek commanders they found there probably looked like amateurs to them.
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  27. +HeavensBlade TrollMaster Romans were strong supporters of the division of work, so the work did not take that long. The polishing of stones was not perfect, since the final smooth finishing between the large stones was made in concrete (is the lack of the final concrete finishing, that nowadays makes the preserved traits of roman roads seems harsh to carriages). Slaves were mainly private properties, while roads were public works, so it was not so common for slaves to build them (slave labour was really convenient only in farming).
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  28. Moderm martial sports descends from disciplines teaching students how not to die with the real thing. IE In late 19th century it was still extremely common to be challenged to a saber or sword duel in Italy. The Italian saber fencing practice that spreaded throughout Europe in the same period was the way to not be stabbed to death while defending your honor, and the results of the practice were directly observable. When those disciplines make a rule of "not doing something" (IE not show your back to the enemy), it's because IRL that "something" would be almost always useless and/or extremely dangerous for the one doing it. Instead here we see fighters scoring points for doing something (IE try cutting through plates) that IRL would be useless and/or extremely dangerous.
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  29. The katana is not a chopping weapon. Trying to "chop" something with a katana, the most likely outcome is a broken katana. Katanas TEND (with many variations) to have a sharper and harder cutting edge in respect to European swords, so they better to cut throug flesh. Unfortunately that means that they, hitting an hard object, get damaged more easily too.
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  30. Yeah. We have had examples in the Gallic wars. After Gergovia Caesar harshly reprimended his legionaries, telling them that it was up to the commander and the officers, and not them, to estabilish the tactic (exactly cause the legionaries on first line couldn't have an exact vision of the developement of the battle), but at Alesia he personally brought the reinforcements to a falling line, taking care to dress the mantle that made him recognizable, cause the legionaries would have fight harder to protect him.
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  31. +mickey thecookie They were incredibly costly, custom made for the owner, and only a few could afford them. Sometimes foot soldiers could wear simplified versions of them, with less body parts covered by plates, and more by mail, and simplified helmets too, but typically a foot soldier wear a brigandine, or a jack of plate, over a mail shirt.
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  32. Vikings tend to depict the Norse as a more isolated population than they really were. In reality they had even a land border with the Empire (As Denmark borders whit Germany). Many so called Viking swords had been infact produced in France and Germany.
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  33. Kill the horse. Aim for the openings.
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  34. Mind that the testudo was a formation used only in particular situations, not the usual battle formation of the Romans, while the Oplite Phalanx, and the Macedonian Phalanx were the usual (often the only) battle formations of those cultures.
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  35.  @williamjenkins4913  Trinitarians were the wast majority of Christians before the Nicene council. What Constantine cared about was to not have turmoils among Christians in his Empire. On the other hand, the divinity of Christ is already clearly stated by John 1 (end of 1st century), and it was hard to twist that into "Yeah, but he didn't really mean that".
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  36. It's because people are people that we can't be sure if the city on Hisarlik hill is historical Troy. We know it was considered that in Hellenistic and Roman period, but we also know that it was a tourist attraction. In Hellenistic period, in "Troy", there were, IE, the tombs of heroes that didn't even die there. There's no guarantee that the entire city wasn't a tourist trap. The city had been abandoned at the start of the Iron Age. It's entirely possible that, at the end of the "Greek dark age", when the poems on the Trojan war had become famous, people started to search for the city sung there in the region of the Troad, but the memory of the real location had been lost. Then the people that lived around Hissarlik hill reasoned "look at the fine ruins we have here. The shore, the rivers, all seems pretty similar to the poem. And all these people are searching for Troy. Let's THIS be Troy." and proceeded to make Santa Claus' village. Then Santa Claus' village influenced the later narrations of the poem, so the location and the poem became even more alike. Infact the location is pretty similar, yes, but none of the Hisarlik's city strata really line up with the events of the poem. We have to mix up two separate levels to have a big city in the Mycenean period (but destroyed by an heartquake, not a war), and a city destroyed by a war (but too late for the Myceneans to have done that).
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  37. A corinthian hemlet made of steel is a barbute.
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  38. So your argument is "who doesn't share my opinions if a fascist"? You seem like the parody a right-wingers would make of a leftist. People like you are like a gift of god for them.
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  39. Romans would have been baffled by seeing all those cataphracts that had so little armoured horses. Then would have proceded to kill the horses (Roman time cataphracts lived at the peak of the organized infantry warfare, so they armored their horses much more than the average medieval knight did, since they knew enemy infantrymen would have targeted the horses). Almogavars, that were usually armed with a pair of javelins, a short spear and a knife, repeatedly beaten the French cavalry that way.
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  40. Generally the condemned was tied to a seat, while his head was tied to the bent branch of a tree. That way, the moment the head was severed, the tree catapulted it away.
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  41. I'm not a doctor, but only a day after the flight, I exclude Coronavirus or common flu. My bet is bronchitis. Stay well soon!
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  42.  @funkmaster2258  I was talking of historical accounts written after the facts. There was nothing to exploit and the war was over.
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  43.  @funkmaster2258  Why not physics or medicine at this point?
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  44. ​ @funkmaster2258  The "news lately" ceased to have something to do with Roman history several centuries ago.
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  45.  @vonzuchter  Both those shileds were less specialised, and so useful in a much more ample range of situations. The hoplon instead was effective only 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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  46.  @vonzuchter  The hoplite phalanx was effective in a single specific situation. Pitched battle in an absolutely flat battlefield (or guarding a narrow passage, without any risk of being outflanked). In the wars between the Greek city-states it was effective because in their battles there was a large "ceremonial" part (in the peloponnesiac wars you really don't see ambushes or encounter battels, only pitched battles on flat battlefields, or sieges). The Romans, quit using it as soon as they started to fight the Samnites, that lived mainly on broken terrains, and adopted more flexible tactics.
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  47.  @vonzuchter  Greek Hoplites "dominated" the local wars between the Greek city-states (where both the parties used the same tactics) and managed to win some defensive clash with the Persians.
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  48. He covered that. Probably his disciples had their hair and beards the same way.
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  49. Actually there had not even been a real battle at Masada. All the Romans did was to build a siege ramp, then the defenders killed themself.
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  50. The construction of the siege ramp required some month, but the Zealots did not attempt to counterattack the builders (differently to what they did at Gerusalem), and committed mass suicide first than beginning to fight. That's what Roman records say.
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