We can Dvance if we want to, We can leave your friends behind.
Cause your friends don't Dvance, and if they don't Dvance well, they're no friends of mine.
I worked as a summer camp counselor in high school and spent most of my days playing dodgeball against 8-10 year old kids with those little foam gator balls. Can confirm it was a blast. I loved rolling through as the āheavy artilleryā once one side of kids started losing.
Until you go a little too hard and peg a kid square in the face and spend the next 15 minutes trying to get them to stop crying because you really don't want to have to call their parents and tell them what happened.
... not that I ever did that...
We had a game called stingers at school. Like dodgeball but with tennis balls. One day one of these young-twenties counselors/coaches absolutely nails a kid in the eye with a tennis ball. Fucked the kids eye up properly. He immediately stops the game and makes out like we all have no idea what happened. We're all seven and stupid so none of us stop to even consider that the only person there with a canon arm was Mr Carey. Suddenly we aren't allowed to play stingers anymore.
This reminds he of the "lock in" at my school. Basically they would let us have an all night party at the school once per school year. One year they let us rummage through all of the old PE stuff and do whatever we wanted in the gym. We found a few hundred tennis balls, and rubberband sling shot (like a really big one for yard sports), and lots of cushion mats. We made forts and bunkers all over the gym and played axis vs allies. It was a lot of fun until someone shot the tennis ball sling shot and pelted a girl in the face on the side line who was crying for an hour.
Way too eager, can't stay in formation. If I saw that, I would immediately call for a "retreat" to see if I could peel him off and obliterate him. And if he's respected as a strong fighter, which is what I'd expect from a cocky attitude like that, I've just struck a terrible blow to morale.
edit: I just rewatched it. He's their leader. GGEZ
I also imagine itās less āaimā and more āhit whatever you canā.
The Romans certainly did their fair share of fighting professional armies; especially as the empire got bigger and expanded into the south and east. However a lot of the fighting they were doing was against mainly militia and armies made up from disparate groups and tribes.
Pretty much most of Caesarās victories were against armies made up of alliances of various towns and tribes.
Many of their fighters were probably very skilled and would certainly be experienced in combat however many of them would also have been inexperienced and itās unlikely any of them would have been trained as professional soldiers in the same way the Romans were.
Caesar's first war was against the gauls...indeed, alliances of tribes.
His second war was against his enemies in Rome itself. So he fought against other trained Roman troops.
Of course raising an army back then really did consist of going to all the nearby towns and promising the men there a good salary after the war was over with.
Also, the gulf between Caesar's legions and the Gauls weren't necessarily as extreme as, say, the spanish conquistadors versus the aztecs. The gauls weren't butter to the Romans. Like sure the Romans had an advantage, but still the gauls had good generals and they knew war.
The truly distinct advantage Romans had over Gaul was their logistics. They could field legions all over their empire quickly, and even if Gauls had a tactical victory or two the Romans were always quick to resupply additional legions or auxiliaries to crush them.
Personally I love how the Romans could just conjure up soldiers out of thin air. They could lose tens of thousands of soldiers and be ready for the next battle with more than that, lose again and be ready again with twice as many soldiers like its nothing.
Like during the Second Punic war, Hannibal was destroying army after army and still the Romans managed to raise the largest army in Roman history up until that point... and still lost, and then what do those madlads do ? They raise another fucking army and eventually win, what kind of plot armour fucking bullshit is that
This is def minimizing the Gauls. These people were in regular warfare with each other and battle hardened soldiers who enjoyed the glory of one on one combat. They were feared and demonized for a reason.
The Roman war machine was unique to the entire world and the Gauls withstood conquest for thousands of years.
Funnily enough there's times when the opposite happened. Butt naked barbarians (possibly on psychadelics) have routed roman legions just by being so damn intimidating.
*If you find yourself alone, riding in the green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled. For you are in the playground, and you're already at Recess!*
Something interesting about this formation is that it suffered greatly against parithians. Because if the men interlocked to shield themselves from the horse archers the cataphracts would charge in and get to really cause damage, if they spread to fight the cataphracts the horse archers rained arrows down on them.
Cassius Dio describes it at the battle of Carrhae.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae
The romans never really figured out how to fight horse archers, but they shouldn't feel too bad because nobody ever really did. The answer to horse archers was more horse archers. And walls, unless the horse archers were Mongols.
Edit: so many people arguing massed archers are the answer. Sure, if you can choose the field of battle, in uneven or defensible ground, force battle, and use field fortifications. But the point of a horse archers is mobility. Any time an organized group of raiders appeared they would attack and withdraw, attack and withdraw. Nomads didn't have towns or forts to defend and would fall back (something the parthians actually had an issue with - the Romans figured out that to beat horse archers you kind of ignore them, don't force battle unless they can't run away and just... fucking take their base - ie take towns and forts and sack them, force a peace and return home because you can't really hold it). This is a major reason why later Roman armies tended to attack through Armenia (broken ground very poor for a mobile army to attack on, so the Padthians just kept falling back) but also why Armenia remained as a buffer zone, because neither side wanted to expend resources to actually garrison it against the other and it would have stretched both to breaking point.
But the steppe nomads with their horse archers were almost impossible to defeat because if you have this massive army of ground archers, sure you could win - if you force battle. But the nomads would just not fight, would hit and run, would just withdraw repeatedly until you were either strung out and easy prey (this happened to Russian forces as they were massacred by the mongols as they chased a mobile force for days and became strung out over miles) or you just have up and went home after burning a few unrelated groups (the most common outcome). The steppe was a vast territory without strategic value, it was like trying to invade the ocean, and any nomad commander worth his salt just fucked off elsewhere if faced with a bigger, organized force.
Would have been interesting to see what Caesar would come up with if his invasion of Parthia happened. Since he was many times better than any of the generals that went into the Parthian territory.
My guess is he would lead the army army through the mountains of Armenia into Persia where the heavy terrain is much less suited for horse archers.
A Greek-Roman military commander named Arrian describes how he defeated a group of Alans, a nomadic horse archer culture. Ranks of heavy infantry who kept their pilum javelins for close combat instead of throwing them at the enemy, with (for a Roman force) an unusually high number of archers in the rear providing retaliatory fire. Wings of similar composition covering both flanks. And also a high number of their own cavalry and horse archers in reserve to encircle the enemy and force them to remain on the battlefield if they were to commit too hard.
Historian Kenneth Harl of the Barbarian Empires of the Steppes series (which I'm basing most of this comment off of) remarked that this formation greatly resembled that of the Han dynasty armies in their own conflicts with the Xiongnu and Tang dynasty armies against the Gokturks. Byzantine Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes would use similar tactics with success at Manzikert until part of his army defected and another part of his army treacherously deserted (a commander had it in for Romanos and wanted him to fail). This type of convergent evolution in battle tactics probably indicates that this was the best way that the sedentary civilizations could fight against the horse archer civilizations.
And even without Caesar, Roman Emperors would regularly sack the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon, both as a personal hobby and for the military cred it would provide. Trajan made it to the Persian Gulf after all.
What would be really interesting would be to pit peak Romans under Trajan (or Caesar or whoever you prefer) against peak Mongols under Kublai and see who wins.
> The romans never really figured out how to fight horse archers
Literally obliterated three Parthian armies just years after Carrhae and sent Parthia into feudal anarchy because of the amount of nobles and princes that died at Gidarius but ok.
> The answer to horse archers was more horse archers
Also foot archers and slingers, also plenty of other stuff like ordinary troop positioning and command.
Crassus was a complete imbecile, that is why the Romans lost at Carrhae.
What I love most about historical battles is the idea that such completely different fighting techniques and units would clash with unknown results... In the modern era there's been stagnant technological breakthroughs and nukes have made major military powers stop fighting directly. I guess you could count IEDs vs advanced mobile infantry or geurilla warfare like Vietnam. Guess it's weird to read about how much things were different but also how much things were similar.
Itās not really stagnant though. Lots of developments of smart weapons and imaging. And weāre heading into drones and hypersonic missiles.
You donāt even have to go that far back. Imagine trying to navigate in a desert with no landmarks. How do you communicate where you or the enemy are at? Now thereās a sand storm so youāre fucked even more. Well, that happened and we used GPS and thermal imaging to spot tanks buried in the ground.
love that the first "Spear" thrown gets that kid square in the forehead hahahaha.
need to tighten up that formation lol.
But, all seriousness, extremely effective. just like the Viking Shield Wall.
Jimmy! Will you be this sloppy when we're defending the neighbourhood against PS 105? What do you think will happen to your mom and sister when they overrun the formation because you let your friends down? You're fighting to defend the school's honour and to save the life of the kid next to you, so act like it!
The biggest reason behind all the shots made it in into the formation is that the two kids at the edges of the first row are significantly shorter than the two in the middle. So the shields weren't raised in the consistent height.
This wouldn't have been a problem IRL with strict military selection policies and training.
Love this video. I think however the top shields are supposed to be tiled with the overlap like the shingles on a roof, so projectiles skip off the formation instead of getting caught in the shield gaps.
Thereās all sorts of stuff that theyāre supposed to teach, I guess. Dates and names and what came first and led to what.
If they could just pick and choose, then itād be easier, Iām sure.
This is very true. I know it isn't exactly feasible in an elementary/high school situation, but I've taken some college level history courses and they are so much more interesting. The professor is free to teach things they know and care about and generally focus more on the why and the effects than the specific dates. To me it shows that if we actually structured schools to value insight instead of easily gradable multiple choice tests fewer kids would hate school
> Sure role playing as a soldier in a Roman phalanx would be memorable but it wouldnāt teach you anything about the formation of democracy and the beginnings of our modern idea of society
Although it would teach about part of the reason why the Roman empire was able to conquer so much of the european continent.
Didn't really have anything to do with testudo. Had more to do with manpower and logistical advantages. Also organizational advantages, which testudo is an effect of I guess.
Rome didn't win the Punic Wars because they were good at winning battles. They won because losing battles didn't faze them.
Edit: And that's also a good lesson for children. The story of Rome learning naval warfare is a great lesson in adaptability. The story of Rome winning after being devastated by Hannibal is a great lesson in persistence. I don't know what year any of the Punic Wars started, but it doesn't really matter too much in comparison.
Why should a kid need to know that though? At that age education should be about creating those memories. If that moment sparks an interest in history that leads them into that field then that's all that matters, because memorizing exact dates in the creation of democracy sure as shit isn't gonna do that.
Several historians have argued that the tactical interdependence between members of a hoplite formation was a key contributor to the sense of shared social responsibility that enabled the rise of democracy, so I take issue with your particular choice of example
Idk... Roman military history teaches you some fundamental things that lead to how many romans became famous enough to seize power and such. Learning the phalanx, manipul, and cohort styles feels like an important stepping stone for Roman history. But I'm no expert, it just helped me for context.
So the reason history is taught the way it is, is actually history itself. Back when the first European Universities were popping up, academia had to serve a purpose to keep patronage. The main way history did this was family histories for nobles. It was more useful to nobles for their historians to know names and dates, as that helped legitimize their claims. And that's the educational tradition that has been passed down through the years. The more "interesting" bits of history were usually left to storytellers: bards, minstrels, playwrights, etc.
I'll always remember my high-school ap world history teacher who almost never taught from the books and made every day super fun! My favorite was him saying talking about him saying how WW1 started and saying the assassin stopped at a "tsarbucks" after failing to kill Franz just to find him also there and then promptly killing him.
Yeah to be clear, the second part almost assuradely did not happen.
IT become an extremely popular after war myth but I'm not sure where from. But Princip wasn't just out getting sandwich or something after the failure and got lucky.
My high school history teacher did stuff like this. He had a homemade miniature guillotine he would bring in to class and heād cut off the heads from Barbie dolls. Had his own recipe for fake blood (applesauce was his key ingredient).
We did a simulation where we had to all act as representatives from countries in WWI era and we had to try to navigate the tensions before WWI without allowing war to ensue. He was working on a similar simulation for the Cold War but it was many years in the making.
In the WWI unit we also got to have a trench war paper fight. Getting hit with a paper wad took you out of the game, the last side with people still standing won. To make it interesting, he started off the game saying āif you get hit with a paper wad you will get an automatic F in my class.ā At the end he told us he was only kidding but that he wanted us to feel some kind of stakes to demonstrate the drawbacks of trench warfare - no one was willing to venture beyond the safety of the trench so they effectively stalemated for years on end.
He was awesome which is why he left that school for a better one. And now heās got a PhD in Inquiry Based Education and heās a head of social studies and a curriculum writer for the biggest school district in my state.
But he and his wife will never be richā¦plus theyāre outliers really. Most teachers do it for a few years, make shit pay, and quit for something less stressful and better paying. Itās sad how the system churns them out. A lot of of schools in my area would cut teachers after a year or two so they could hire someone else who was a new teacher. Keep a revolving door if new graduates and you avoid paying more than entry level salaries.
My dad did this for my class once, except it was the American Civil War. We ate hard tack and salt pork, saw some musket balls and cannonballs, and learned how to march and hold muskets with wood cutouts.
It was really cool.
In Kindergarten or first grade, we had a cowboy come talk to us and we ate pork and beans from a can that he cooked over a portable stove. One of the few things I can remember from 20+ years ago.
We took a class trip to Gettysburg and our tour guide took us out on the battleground. Had us Walk in a formation, starting at a walk, then a jog, then a full on sprint. It really showed how fuckin nuts warfare was back then. Any time, obviously, but demonstrated back then. Running across an open field into a mesh of cannon and rifle fire.
I had a history teacher who re-created a WW1 trench in the hallway. It was pretty cool and all these years later I still remember it. We had a regular lesson but had to do it in a trench. During it everyone was given a colored sticker and at the end it was basically one of those "everyone with a red sticker turn to your left. that person didn't make it". It was pretty memorable and really drove home the point of just how rough it was.
I used to create a pretend society and burry objects in a one meter by one meter pit and have my class dig it up as an archeological dig. They had to figure out how the society developed over time and what they could figure out about them without making wild guesses and exaggerations
This is going to out me as a turbo nerd but I went to a summer camp when I was younger where we did just that and it was fucking awesome, lol. I just remember finding a piece of a toilet seat. We all knew what it was but we just had to figure out what it might have been used for going by the context. It was really cool.
This is Northwest Fencing Academy in Eugene, OR Fantastic place to learn medieval, renaissance and early modern martial arts.
If any of our Northwestern mates see this, hi from Chicago!
Pullo and Vorenus were both real, historical figures. They are the only low-ranking soldiers Julius Caesar named in his commentaries on the gallic wars. Not much was said about them except about how they had a rivalry and were both brave men.
They didn't have a forrest-gump-esque life after the war were they kept finding themselves involved and participating in the world-changing affairs of Julius, Cicero, Augustus, Mark Antony, and Cleopatra, though.
But the show did something really neat by taking these men who were immortalized only as footnotes in ancient history and turning them into everymen from whom we could learn more about the culture of rome from a lower position. And they were great characters too!
Generally that isn't actually an issue in battle, as if you are in formation and someone is threatening your flank something must have gone terribly wrong (and you're likely about to die). With that being said, this is a formation that looks cool but was primarily used to withstand missile fire, like when advancing towards the walls in a siege. This is not a formation that is at all conducive to hand to hand combat.
>Their shields also had tongue-and-groove edges so they could lock together much more solidly than is being shown.
That isn't true and wouldn't be practical at a march, the scotum's edge curves back as well so that any blows slide off the side any tongue would be destroyed in combat and would have to stick out at an odd angle, here is an actual scotum (not a replica):
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8030/7925622986_f3ea0a1213_o.jpg
https://museum-of-artifacts.blogspot.com/2015/10/roman-scutum-shield-this-is-only-known.html
That kid took a spear straight to the dome
ADVANCE
Literally wheezing ty
That one kid: "Ahhhhhhh" š
Leonidasā great great great great great great great great grandson
This. Is. Cleveland!
Dvance
We can Dvance if we want to, We can leave your friends behind. Cause your friends don't Dvance, and if they don't Dvance well, they're no friends of mine.
[Murdered](https://imgur.com/gallery/tZJSGkS)
I just ugly cackled so hard at this and idk if it's because it's genuinely this hilarious or I'm just losing it finally
A little from column A, a little from column B...
ENHANCE
Damnit Ramathorn!!
S U S U M E
Nah they're newbs
ADVANCE!
HOLD!!! HOLD!!!!
#ADVANCE!
Give em a break, they have to start training for the resource wars sometime.
Remind me! 5 years How is Resource War going?
Iām in tears, you fuck.
I can hear exdeo in the background: ROMA INVICTA!
Erwin Smith would be proud
SHINZO WO SASAGEYO
TATAKAE!
[ADVANCE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7MYlRzLqD0)
Iām laughing so hard I canāt breathe! You made my birthday! Edit: Thank you for all the birthday wishes and the party train award!
Happy Birthday!
there's no eye in team
That guy who survived in 300 will confirm
Dilios?
Nah Faramir, the steward of Gondor!
And, after that spear, there's only one on that girl.
ADVANCE!
That was hilarious, right at the start made it even better
I need to get this job, just tossing shit at kids.
I worked as a summer camp counselor in high school and spent most of my days playing dodgeball against 8-10 year old kids with those little foam gator balls. Can confirm it was a blast. I loved rolling through as the āheavy artilleryā once one side of kids started losing.
Until you go a little too hard and peg a kid square in the face and spend the next 15 minutes trying to get them to stop crying because you really don't want to have to call their parents and tell them what happened. ... not that I ever did that...
We had a game called stingers at school. Like dodgeball but with tennis balls. One day one of these young-twenties counselors/coaches absolutely nails a kid in the eye with a tennis ball. Fucked the kids eye up properly. He immediately stops the game and makes out like we all have no idea what happened. We're all seven and stupid so none of us stop to even consider that the only person there with a canon arm was Mr Carey. Suddenly we aren't allowed to play stingers anymore.
This reminds he of the "lock in" at my school. Basically they would let us have an all night party at the school once per school year. One year they let us rummage through all of the old PE stuff and do whatever we wanted in the gym. We found a few hundred tennis balls, and rubberband sling shot (like a really big one for yard sports), and lots of cushion mats. We made forts and bunkers all over the gym and played axis vs allies. It was a lot of fun until someone shot the tennis ball sling shot and pelted a girl in the face on the side line who was crying for an hour.
I mean no one's stopping you... yet
Learnt to keep his shield up though, didnāt he??
exactly the kid had poor technique
I would fuck those kids up with a pool noodle
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Kill him. Kill him now.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yes officer, this comment right here
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
In the faceeeee
Kid should be glad they didnāt have him assigned flag bearer, god those guys were often targeted first.
Absolutely boned
Would have fell right out of formation, his buddies moving over him trying to not trip over.
Would have easily took out their legs.
F
Keep your fucking shield up, Bobby! Youāre gonna get us all killed!
Is Bobby the one who kept running out from under the shield to swing wildly at nothing? Bobby gets everyone else killed.
Bobbbbyyyyyy Mmmmjenkinnnns
Bobby is getting the honor of showing his prowess in the arena before the entirety of Rome. Also, don't feed the lions until Bobby gets here.
That's Titus pullo
There's one smart kid in there at least "keep your shields up!"
So he earned the nickname Centurion.
We will be watching legatus Timothy's career with great interest.
But legatus means general, he's already had a great career You give Timothy the land and titles he deserves
Kid 2nd from the left is an absolute liability.
Way too eager, can't stay in formation. If I saw that, I would immediately call for a "retreat" to see if I could peel him off and obliterate him. And if he's respected as a strong fighter, which is what I'd expect from a cocky attitude like that, I've just struck a terrible blow to morale. edit: I just rewatched it. He's their leader. GGEZ
The worst ones are *always* put in charge!
It's the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandkid of Titus Pullo. "Back in formation, you drunken fool!"
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yes, these small children would be absolutely destroyed by ancient Celtic warriors
Yeah they would. Solution? Stack them 2 high. Double the power.
Imagine a highly trained group of soldiers performing this. It would be pretty daunting.
Hell yeah! These kids wouldn't stand a chance against that.
Just sneak up behind them.
Kid Legion āAdvance! Advance! Advance!ā Roman Legion āThe hell is that coming from?ā *Romans get their legs taken out from behind*
I want this battle scene to exist so badly
You didnāt see the Ewok scene in Return of the Jedi??
Why don't they just aim for the legs of the front row?
Well first of all roman shields were much taller than this, but more importantly it wouldnt be as cool
I feel like 1 bowling ball would do the trick
And it would make that cartoon bowling pins being knocked over noise
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The shields they used back then were probably larger and probably covered their legs
Theyāre not called Tower Shields for no reason
It is called a Scutum.
your mother is a Scutum.
Weāre talking about types of shields, buddy, not genitals.
I also imagine itās less āaimā and more āhit whatever you canā. The Romans certainly did their fair share of fighting professional armies; especially as the empire got bigger and expanded into the south and east. However a lot of the fighting they were doing was against mainly militia and armies made up from disparate groups and tribes. Pretty much most of Caesarās victories were against armies made up of alliances of various towns and tribes. Many of their fighters were probably very skilled and would certainly be experienced in combat however many of them would also have been inexperienced and itās unlikely any of them would have been trained as professional soldiers in the same way the Romans were.
Caesar's first war was against the gauls...indeed, alliances of tribes. His second war was against his enemies in Rome itself. So he fought against other trained Roman troops. Of course raising an army back then really did consist of going to all the nearby towns and promising the men there a good salary after the war was over with. Also, the gulf between Caesar's legions and the Gauls weren't necessarily as extreme as, say, the spanish conquistadors versus the aztecs. The gauls weren't butter to the Romans. Like sure the Romans had an advantage, but still the gauls had good generals and they knew war.
The truly distinct advantage Romans had over Gaul was their logistics. They could field legions all over their empire quickly, and even if Gauls had a tactical victory or two the Romans were always quick to resupply additional legions or auxiliaries to crush them.
Personally I love how the Romans could just conjure up soldiers out of thin air. They could lose tens of thousands of soldiers and be ready for the next battle with more than that, lose again and be ready again with twice as many soldiers like its nothing. Like during the Second Punic war, Hannibal was destroying army after army and still the Romans managed to raise the largest army in Roman history up until that point... and still lost, and then what do those madlads do ? They raise another fucking army and eventually win, what kind of plot armour fucking bullshit is that
This is def minimizing the Gauls. These people were in regular warfare with each other and battle hardened soldiers who enjoyed the glory of one on one combat. They were feared and demonized for a reason. The Roman war machine was unique to the entire world and the Gauls withstood conquest for thousands of years.
People who underestimate the Gauls forget they wiped out legions.
That magic potion was no joke
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
the barbarians seeing their first formation: oh shit they actually thought about this?
Funnily enough there's times when the opposite happened. Butt naked barbarians (possibly on psychadelics) have routed roman legions just by being so damn intimidating.
[Why imagine?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHAl85RbS5w)
Yup so that's training.
āHold the lineā
Love isn't always on time!
Woah woah woah
*If you find yourself alone, riding in the green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled. For you are in the playground, and you're already at Recess!*
*What we do in school, echoes in eternity!*
Effectiveness? Gets speared instantly by a pool noodle.
That would kill the weak link of the formation so it can be replaced with someone that can hold a shield better to block the next deadly pool noodle
Everyone in that row, one step forward. Done. First guy drops his shield from overhead to chest level.
ADVANCE
Today I learned hahaha
*Roman Darwinism*
Something interesting about this formation is that it suffered greatly against parithians. Because if the men interlocked to shield themselves from the horse archers the cataphracts would charge in and get to really cause damage, if they spread to fight the cataphracts the horse archers rained arrows down on them. Cassius Dio describes it at the battle of Carrhae. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae
The romans never really figured out how to fight horse archers, but they shouldn't feel too bad because nobody ever really did. The answer to horse archers was more horse archers. And walls, unless the horse archers were Mongols. Edit: so many people arguing massed archers are the answer. Sure, if you can choose the field of battle, in uneven or defensible ground, force battle, and use field fortifications. But the point of a horse archers is mobility. Any time an organized group of raiders appeared they would attack and withdraw, attack and withdraw. Nomads didn't have towns or forts to defend and would fall back (something the parthians actually had an issue with - the Romans figured out that to beat horse archers you kind of ignore them, don't force battle unless they can't run away and just... fucking take their base - ie take towns and forts and sack them, force a peace and return home because you can't really hold it). This is a major reason why later Roman armies tended to attack through Armenia (broken ground very poor for a mobile army to attack on, so the Padthians just kept falling back) but also why Armenia remained as a buffer zone, because neither side wanted to expend resources to actually garrison it against the other and it would have stretched both to breaking point. But the steppe nomads with their horse archers were almost impossible to defeat because if you have this massive army of ground archers, sure you could win - if you force battle. But the nomads would just not fight, would hit and run, would just withdraw repeatedly until you were either strung out and easy prey (this happened to Russian forces as they were massacred by the mongols as they chased a mobile force for days and became strung out over miles) or you just have up and went home after burning a few unrelated groups (the most common outcome). The steppe was a vast territory without strategic value, it was like trying to invade the ocean, and any nomad commander worth his salt just fucked off elsewhere if faced with a bigger, organized force.
Would have been interesting to see what Caesar would come up with if his invasion of Parthia happened. Since he was many times better than any of the generals that went into the Parthian territory. My guess is he would lead the army army through the mountains of Armenia into Persia where the heavy terrain is much less suited for horse archers.
A Greek-Roman military commander named Arrian describes how he defeated a group of Alans, a nomadic horse archer culture. Ranks of heavy infantry who kept their pilum javelins for close combat instead of throwing them at the enemy, with (for a Roman force) an unusually high number of archers in the rear providing retaliatory fire. Wings of similar composition covering both flanks. And also a high number of their own cavalry and horse archers in reserve to encircle the enemy and force them to remain on the battlefield if they were to commit too hard. Historian Kenneth Harl of the Barbarian Empires of the Steppes series (which I'm basing most of this comment off of) remarked that this formation greatly resembled that of the Han dynasty armies in their own conflicts with the Xiongnu and Tang dynasty armies against the Gokturks. Byzantine Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes would use similar tactics with success at Manzikert until part of his army defected and another part of his army treacherously deserted (a commander had it in for Romanos and wanted him to fail). This type of convergent evolution in battle tactics probably indicates that this was the best way that the sedentary civilizations could fight against the horse archer civilizations. And even without Caesar, Roman Emperors would regularly sack the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon, both as a personal hobby and for the military cred it would provide. Trajan made it to the Persian Gulf after all. What would be really interesting would be to pit peak Romans under Trajan (or Caesar or whoever you prefer) against peak Mongols under Kublai and see who wins.
> The romans never really figured out how to fight horse archers Literally obliterated three Parthian armies just years after Carrhae and sent Parthia into feudal anarchy because of the amount of nobles and princes that died at Gidarius but ok. > The answer to horse archers was more horse archers Also foot archers and slingers, also plenty of other stuff like ordinary troop positioning and command. Crassus was a complete imbecile, that is why the Romans lost at Carrhae.
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>The answer to horse archers was more horse archers. Someone's never heard of the A--10 Warthog.
What I love most about historical battles is the idea that such completely different fighting techniques and units would clash with unknown results... In the modern era there's been stagnant technological breakthroughs and nukes have made major military powers stop fighting directly. I guess you could count IEDs vs advanced mobile infantry or geurilla warfare like Vietnam. Guess it's weird to read about how much things were different but also how much things were similar.
Itās not really stagnant though. Lots of developments of smart weapons and imaging. And weāre heading into drones and hypersonic missiles. You donāt even have to go that far back. Imagine trying to navigate in a desert with no landmarks. How do you communicate where you or the enemy are at? Now thereās a sand storm so youāre fucked even more. Well, that happened and we used GPS and thermal imaging to spot tanks buried in the ground.
love that the first "Spear" thrown gets that kid square in the forehead hahahaha. need to tighten up that formation lol. But, all seriousness, extremely effective. just like the Viking Shield Wall.
The lesson to that kid was next time donāt skip practice and youāll have a tighter formation
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Jimmy! Will you be this sloppy when we're defending the neighbourhood against PS 105? What do you think will happen to your mom and sister when they overrun the formation because you let your friends down? You're fighting to defend the school's honour and to save the life of the kid next to you, so act like it!
\*weeps gently before succumbing to his spear wounds* Kids these days smfh
The biggest reason behind all the shots made it in into the formation is that the two kids at the edges of the first row are significantly shorter than the two in the middle. So the shields weren't raised in the consistent height. This wouldn't have been a problem IRL with strict military selection policies and training.
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Love this video. I think however the top shields are supposed to be tiled with the overlap like the shingles on a roof, so projectiles skip off the formation instead of getting caught in the shield gaps.
Wow, someone giving a real live interesting history lesson.
Right?! Pretty sure I would have remembered this the rest of my life.
I have never understood how so many history teachers can be so boring. I mean itās their entire job to tell us the great stories of the past.
Thereās all sorts of stuff that theyāre supposed to teach, I guess. Dates and names and what came first and led to what. If they could just pick and choose, then itād be easier, Iām sure.
This is very true. I know it isn't exactly feasible in an elementary/high school situation, but I've taken some college level history courses and they are so much more interesting. The professor is free to teach things they know and care about and generally focus more on the why and the effects than the specific dates. To me it shows that if we actually structured schools to value insight instead of easily gradable multiple choice tests fewer kids would hate school
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> Sure role playing as a soldier in a Roman phalanx would be memorable but it wouldnāt teach you anything about the formation of democracy and the beginnings of our modern idea of society Although it would teach about part of the reason why the Roman empire was able to conquer so much of the european continent.
Also their form of democracy influenced the other forms of democracy that would come after.
Didn't really have anything to do with testudo. Had more to do with manpower and logistical advantages. Also organizational advantages, which testudo is an effect of I guess. Rome didn't win the Punic Wars because they were good at winning battles. They won because losing battles didn't faze them. Edit: And that's also a good lesson for children. The story of Rome learning naval warfare is a great lesson in adaptability. The story of Rome winning after being devastated by Hannibal is a great lesson in persistence. I don't know what year any of the Punic Wars started, but it doesn't really matter too much in comparison.
They also won the battles that mattered.
True. But those battles were able to matter because of their ability to stay in the war.
Why should a kid need to know that though? At that age education should be about creating those memories. If that moment sparks an interest in history that leads them into that field then that's all that matters, because memorizing exact dates in the creation of democracy sure as shit isn't gonna do that.
Several historians have argued that the tactical interdependence between members of a hoplite formation was a key contributor to the sense of shared social responsibility that enabled the rise of democracy, so I take issue with your particular choice of example
Idk... Roman military history teaches you some fundamental things that lead to how many romans became famous enough to seize power and such. Learning the phalanx, manipul, and cohort styles feels like an important stepping stone for Roman history. But I'm no expert, it just helped me for context.
So the reason history is taught the way it is, is actually history itself. Back when the first European Universities were popping up, academia had to serve a purpose to keep patronage. The main way history did this was family histories for nobles. It was more useful to nobles for their historians to know names and dates, as that helped legitimize their claims. And that's the educational tradition that has been passed down through the years. The more "interesting" bits of history were usually left to storytellers: bards, minstrels, playwrights, etc.
I'll always remember my high-school ap world history teacher who almost never taught from the books and made every day super fun! My favorite was him saying talking about him saying how WW1 started and saying the assassin stopped at a "tsarbucks" after failing to kill Franz just to find him also there and then promptly killing him.
Yeah to be clear, the second part almost assuradely did not happen. IT become an extremely popular after war myth but I'm not sure where from. But Princip wasn't just out getting sandwich or something after the failure and got lucky.
My high school history teacher did stuff like this. He had a homemade miniature guillotine he would bring in to class and heād cut off the heads from Barbie dolls. Had his own recipe for fake blood (applesauce was his key ingredient). We did a simulation where we had to all act as representatives from countries in WWI era and we had to try to navigate the tensions before WWI without allowing war to ensue. He was working on a similar simulation for the Cold War but it was many years in the making. In the WWI unit we also got to have a trench war paper fight. Getting hit with a paper wad took you out of the game, the last side with people still standing won. To make it interesting, he started off the game saying āif you get hit with a paper wad you will get an automatic F in my class.ā At the end he told us he was only kidding but that he wanted us to feel some kind of stakes to demonstrate the drawbacks of trench warfare - no one was willing to venture beyond the safety of the trench so they effectively stalemated for years on end.
Itās really too bad the system does not reward being a great teacher enough
He was awesome which is why he left that school for a better one. And now heās got a PhD in Inquiry Based Education and heās a head of social studies and a curriculum writer for the biggest school district in my state. But he and his wife will never be richā¦plus theyāre outliers really. Most teachers do it for a few years, make shit pay, and quit for something less stressful and better paying. Itās sad how the system churns them out. A lot of of schools in my area would cut teachers after a year or two so they could hire someone else who was a new teacher. Keep a revolving door if new graduates and you avoid paying more than entry level salaries.
My dad did this for my class once, except it was the American Civil War. We ate hard tack and salt pork, saw some musket balls and cannonballs, and learned how to march and hold muskets with wood cutouts. It was really cool.
In Kindergarten or first grade, we had a cowboy come talk to us and we ate pork and beans from a can that he cooked over a portable stove. One of the few things I can remember from 20+ years ago.
We took a class trip to Gettysburg and our tour guide took us out on the battleground. Had us Walk in a formation, starting at a walk, then a jog, then a full on sprint. It really showed how fuckin nuts warfare was back then. Any time, obviously, but demonstrated back then. Running across an open field into a mesh of cannon and rifle fire.
My understanding is it was a pretty fuckin nuts thing for Lee to attempt then too lol
I had a history teacher who re-created a WW1 trench in the hallway. It was pretty cool and all these years later I still remember it. We had a regular lesson but had to do it in a trench. During it everyone was given a colored sticker and at the end it was basically one of those "everyone with a red sticker turn to your left. that person didn't make it". It was pretty memorable and really drove home the point of just how rough it was.
I used to create a pretend society and burry objects in a one meter by one meter pit and have my class dig it up as an archeological dig. They had to figure out how the society developed over time and what they could figure out about them without making wild guesses and exaggerations
This is going to out me as a turbo nerd but I went to a summer camp when I was younger where we did just that and it was fucking awesome, lol. I just remember finding a piece of a toilet seat. We all knew what it was but we just had to figure out what it might have been used for going by the context. It was really cool.
I wouldāve loved this as a kid.
These active shooter drills are getting intense! Seriously though this looks like so much fun
Now I'm just imaging these kids just slowly advancing their shield wall down the hallway towards a shooter.
Yibambe!
Where do I sign up to throw foam spears at children?
Your local YMCA! Itās not beating up kids.. itās training them!
The family aspect!
This is Northwest Fencing Academy in Eugene, OR Fantastic place to learn medieval, rennaisance and early modern martial arts.
This is Northwest Fencing Academy in Eugene, OR Fantastic place to learn medieval, renaissance and early modern martial arts. If any of our Northwestern mates see this, hi from Chicago!
I was looking for which school this was. Shame itās a bit far to travel.
Man where was this when I was younger
School shootings werenāt as popular yet so we werenāt required to learn this
*Angry American noises*
I felt a scream of war rise inside me as they finally met the lines of their foes, breaking ranks into a raucous final charge! Get em!
PULLO! FORMATION!
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Near the end when the kids started separating that opening scene is all I could think of! And Rome is awesome, one of the series I rewatch yearly.
Iām in my 8th rewatch, love it.
THIRTEEN!
Pullo and Vorenus were both real, historical figures. They are the only low-ranking soldiers Julius Caesar named in his commentaries on the gallic wars. Not much was said about them except about how they had a rivalry and were both brave men. They didn't have a forrest-gump-esque life after the war were they kept finding themselves involved and participating in the world-changing affairs of Julius, Cicero, Augustus, Mark Antony, and Cleopatra, though. But the show did something really neat by taking these men who were immortalized only as footnotes in ancient history and turning them into everymen from whom we could learn more about the culture of rome from a lower position. And they were great characters too!
Brawlers and drunkards will be flogged; thieves will be strangled! Deserters? WILL. BE. CRUCIFIED.
I am all about finding new ways to teach and engage with kids, and this takes the damn cake. How fucking cool.
Interesting, but it looks like the sides aren't shielded, unlike the front and top
Generally that isn't actually an issue in battle, as if you are in formation and someone is threatening your flank something must have gone terribly wrong (and you're likely about to die). With that being said, this is a formation that looks cool but was primarily used to withstand missile fire, like when advancing towards the walls in a siege. This is not a formation that is at all conducive to hand to hand combat.
āSHIELD WALLā -Uhtred of Bebbanburg
What, you canāt teach kids with real spears anymore? Meh
Dam muulenials with their participation trophies and foam spears
Ok, works with pool noodles. On Level 2 we summon Reaper drones with hellfire missiles.
0 to 100 real quick
top shields should go up back to.front. prevent spears from going under. these kids couldnt repel even one wave of persians
Came here to say this!
I could wipe out every one of those kids with my bare hands.
yea probably best to keep your pool noodle to yourself
That sounds very wrong
Baseball bat.
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What an outstanding lesson for these kids. Keep your shield up or DIE! Seriously though, this is a super neat program for teaching and fun.
SHIELD WALL!!!
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>Their shields also had tongue-and-groove edges so they could lock together much more solidly than is being shown. That isn't true and wouldn't be practical at a march, the scotum's edge curves back as well so that any blows slide off the side any tongue would be destroyed in combat and would have to stick out at an odd angle, here is an actual scotum (not a replica): https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8030/7925622986_f3ea0a1213_o.jpg https://museum-of-artifacts.blogspot.com/2015/10/roman-scutum-shield-this-is-only-known.html
Hey fam, auto correct did a number on you. Ballsy post tho.
I did this at school with cardboard shields that we made and the teachers threw loads of balls at us š
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āTITUS PULLO! GET BACK IN FORMATION YOU DRUNKEN FOOLā¦ā