Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "Units of History - Mycenaean Chariots of the Trojan War DOCUMENTARY" video.

  1. About the utility of chariots as "battle taxi" there is a revealing passage in the Iliad where Aenea questions the renowed archer Pandarus (an ally of the Trojans) why he wasn't targeting Diomedes that was salughtering the Trojan first line. Pandarus answered that he hit Diomedes from afar, with no effect, and complained that, having left his chariots and horses home when he departed for Troy, fearing for them to starve in a siege, he couldn't get close to fight him, and so he felt to be useless. In a warfare based on personal duels between heavily armoured and perfectly armed heroes (while infantrymen just had a shield and a one-anded spear, or a mace), not having a chariot was a huge disadvantage. You had to run, in a heavy armor, to reach your target, only to see him carried somewere else, and without possibility to escape if things got bad. An hero with a chariot instead could dictate the time of the battle, since he could decide to fight when, and where, he thought to have an advantage.
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  2.  @SusCalvin  There were no hoplites in bronze age. They were an iron-age classical Greek thing.
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  3.  @Ugly_German_Truths  Four times, and there are even divine interventions. In the Chanson de Roland, Roland tries to break his sword hitting a rock with it, but he breaks the rock instead. That's not how a high medieval sword worked. To say that in Homer there is a realistic depiction of how chariots were used, IT DOESN'T NEED THE ENTIRE POEM TO BE REALISTIC. It's pretty likely that the truth of the bronze age warfare had been mantained in the depiction of a normal moment in a normal battle, while, in the depiction of the final duel, there is much more of poetic licence. It had been long estabilished that in Homer real elements of bronze age armors, weapons and tactics are mixed with the ones contemporary to the writing of the poem. Exactly because the chariots are not contemporary to the poet, it's likely that the accounts on how they have been used are realistic, because they had not been contaminated with what the writer personally knew about them.
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  4. There is a revealing passage in the Iliad where Aenea questions the renowed archer Pandarus (an ally of the Trojans) why he wasn't targeting Diomedes that was salughtering the Trojan first line. Pandarus answered that he hit Diomedes from afar, with no effect, and complained that, having left his chariots and horses home when he departed for Troy, fearing for them to starve in a siege, he couldn't get close to fight him, and so he felt to be useless. In a warfare based on personal duels between heavily armoured and perfectly armed heroes (while infantrymen just had a shield and a one-anded spear, or a mace), not having a chariot was a huge disadvantage. You had to run, in a heavy armor, to reach your target, only to see him carried somewere else, and without possibility to escape if things got bad.
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  5. The horse that native american was mounting was an higly complex weapon that needed millennia of selecting breed to be created. A native american using it was like a Sirian rebel using a TOW missile. He's effective, but his equipment had been made by someone else.
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  6. There is at least another mycenaean big conflict where chariots had been mentioned, that of the seven against Thebes. In the mith, after having failed his assault, Amphiaraus was fleeing whit his chariot from Periclymenus, when Zeus threw his thunderbolt, and the earth opened to swallow Amphiaraus together with his chariot. The chariot of Adrastus is mentioned too.
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  7. Box chariots were protective, but heavy. Quadrant chariots exchanged a little protection for a little lightness. Egyptian chariots were superlight and fast, but fragile, (apt for an archer to rapidly get in and out shooting range). Mycenean rail chariots weren't protective at all, but the railing made really easy to get up and down it (that's why it's believable that they were a "battle taxi" like described by Homer).
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  8.  Afrodisiac  Chariot race was one of the competitions in Olympic games.
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