The History Thread!

Some of those jousting armors were also good for field use though it was more common to have a set for jousting and a set for war.

How could you tell the difference?

Specialized jousting armor was much heavier than field plate, since jousting took place in an arena under controlled conditions. In a jousting tournament, if a knight was knocked off his horse, he lost the match (and had to surrender his horse and armor to the winner), but his squires would help him back up. In battle, if a knight got knocked off his horse, he had to get up under his own power and fight for his life.

I thought they continued with a sword fight.

It depends on the era, as well as the type of contest. They might do that in a set duel or a trial by combat, but in general, a formal jousting match is limited to the use of the lance on horseback. Hand-to-hand fighting competitions and archery contests would take place on the following day of the tournament.

In jousting, each match consists of a single pass, repeated only if neither competitor was knocked off. If both get knocked off at the same time, then they might take to their swords. Or they might just saddle back up and have another go at each other.

In Renaissance-style jousting, they use wooden lances designed to shatter upon delivering a solid blow, and a match would be judged by the best of three passes. By that time, it was strictly a sport, and not a viable battlefield tactic.

edited 16th Dec '16 8:25:31 PM by pwiegle

Pwiegle: Some of the jousting armors were actually heavier and afforded less mobility then field armor. That really didn't start happening until around the end of the 1400's though. They were deliberately made heavier as it made it harder to unseat the knight as it took more force to shift more mass. It also provided a more solid base to strike your opponent from. You could be unhorsed and still win the tourney. They typically made multiple passes around 3-5 and then would proceed to combat on foot in which number of blows against an opponent were counted.

As for the prize it seemed to vary quite a bit. From losing all your equipment for the tourney, to just your horse, armor, weapons or any combination to just simply vying for a purse. If I recall correctly the prize purse became the preferred reward by the time jousting as a competitive combat sport ended.

There are some common but not universal differences in tourney and field armors.

Jousting armors typically had an attached or semi-attached shield like device opposite the lance arm which also served as the target. They tended to have more exaggerated gorgets or other neck protection and heavier covering of the joints on the upper torso. The extra protection on the left was usually called the Grand Guard and sometimes had integrated protection for the neck. Sometimes it was part of the breast plate in some cases it was part of the arm armor. They also favored fairly heavy thick helms and later pieces could be found affixed to the breast plate with additional protection from around the collar bone to just below the eyes as a solid or nearly solid piece. You are more likely to find a lance rest on tourney armor which is flange, flap, bar, or device used the help hold and brace a lance. You could find them on field armors as well but they were far more common tourney armor.

By contrast field armors usually lacked the left hand additional armor protection, usually lacked the exaggerated gorgets and attached helms, and had more emphasis on mobility and included heavier protection of the lower limbs and joints.

There is fair bit of cross over between field and tourney armors and there were even armor sets which had parts that could be swapped out to convert a set to tourney armor vs a field armor so all of the above is not universally true.

In 2012 on the History Channel, there was a reality show called Full Metal Jousting. Check it out, if you can find it.

I have seen it. Those are crazy bastards. They used the thinner plate armor for their armors but it was made from modern steel. The grid grand guard did exist in medieval times so even that is accurate to boot. Despite their additional design considerations it is pretty impressive how nasty some of those injuries were.

Perhaps one of the history channels best tries at edutainment.

For the curious.

Well, thank you all for your answers. You guys certainly know a lot! I'll keep investigating about Charles V. I want to find out if he ever fought personally in a battle. It's pretty unlikely though.

NP. This is one of my favorite threads. We get so many different history field focusses that you can usually find something interesting. I liked the ones on South American history and politics personally.

Graffiti from Pompeii

Shitposting hasn't changed for over 2000 years.

edited 18th Dec '16 11:59:57 AM by TerminusEst

Literal shitposting, even.

Mod warning: shut up or be blocked.

Best coming-out message, or best coming-out message of all time?

Says it all, really.

Fitting that the only continuity a backward civilization like Rome has with modern civilization is doodling and whining.

Calling Rome backward is not exactly an accurate description.

Indeed.

Rome was sophisticated, it was brutal, and it was one of the longest empires to exist.

How do you explain the centuries long Medieval Stasis in Rome, the total erosion of science in the 1000 years of Roman hegemony in the Mediterranean and the fact that when science returned and redeveloped, it came from areas outside of Roman hegemony.

I recently added this entry in Medieval Stasis based on some of my reading and understanding. I think it's quite accurate and you guys are welcome to challenge and correct me (and cite sources as well for me to read up).

• From the perspective of the longue durée, one can actually see the true medieval stasis to be...The Roman Republic and The Roman Empire. For all its status in the early modern, enlightened and romantic imaginary as a modernizing and civilizing force in Europe, there was nothing in terms of advancement in science and mathematics for the entire millennia of Pax Romana.
  • The great achievements of the Ancient World in mathematics and physics come from Egypt and Greece. The antique technology of later eras, the Antikythera Mechanism, the Baghdad Battery originated outside Rome. Meanwhile Caesar's invasion of Egypt resulted in the burning of the Library of Alexandria. The Punic Wars saw the death of Archimedes at the hands of a Roman legionary, since he, a Syracusan, fought on the side of Hannibal Barca. The Romans were brilliant engineers but they merely synthesized pre-existing works in engineering from the Etruscans^note whose writing if they knew or capable of deciphering, they did not choose to translate and maintain unlike the Ptolemaic-Greeks with their Rosetta Stone, and their greatest and most enduring technical contribution, the Julian Calendar (later corrected to the modern Gregorian Calendar) came from their interaction with Egyptian astronomers.
  • The Romans fascination for all things Greece led them to adopt the Aristotleian conception of physics for centuries, an attitude that Christians imbibed, and this put a stop to the natural development of the scientific method. Indeed, modern civilization actually revived during the so-called Dark Ages, first with the Viking invasions which revived trade routes across all of Europe, then the rise of the Arabs, the establishment of the House of Wisdom, and their spread of Indian mathematics westward, resulting in the formation of the universally used Arabic Numerals which Fibonacci introduced into the Western World in 1202, to replace the cumbersome Roman numeral system.

I actually think the whole dialectic of Rome=Good, Dark Ages=Bad which came up in the Renaissance through the Enlightenment is an incredible misreading and misapplication of the Baconian concept of "knowledge is power". Becaus "Knowledge is Power" these guys thought "Power is Knowledge" and that because Rome was politically and miltiarily powerful it followed they were also the smartest and brightest and best at everything they did, when they were more or less parasitic imperialists of the worst kind. Swallowing and destroying superior civilizations and polities and giving nothing back. They borrowed from the Etruscans but contributed no ingenuity in return, borrowed from the Greeks but gave nothing, same from the Egyptians. The sole exception is the Calendar of course.

Rome is the outstanding instance of the fact that because we have more sources and information from Roman scribes and historians, we think they are a more important and relevant civilization than the context of their time suggests.

Yeah that is not going to work and much of your conclusion is rather questionable at best.

Alexandria's library caught fire by accident and was not set ablaze on purpose which is attested to in many accounts. The Romans were besieged and burned some of their ships but the fire spread unpredictably and out of control making it to land and setting other places on fire including the library. Even then there is quite a bit of evidence it was not the first time they had serious fire in the Library. Archimedes death didn't magically put Rome in some completely fictional medieval stasis. On your complaints about the Etruscans last I checked they ceased to be a unique entity before Rome became an empire and would you look at that were part of Rome.

Not making any large contributions to math does not put them in a medieval stasis. You completely ignore advances in engineering, architecture, literature and the mediums it was recorded on, sewers, aqua ducts, etc. The Romans are pretty overtly famous for advances in medicine, architecture, construction techniques, roads, the list goes on. There are even aspects of the Roman Military like the Marian reforms and emergency care for combat wounded in what amounts to a Medic Corps that are considered important for modern militaries.

Rome did not stop the advancement of science, was not in a centuries long medieval stasis, and was not in vacuum of learning or knowledge. As for application of the trope it is simply not applicable to Rome.

While yes Rome is over stated on regular basis and has its fan boys pretty much every civilization does. Anyone could sit down and pretty much point out a large list of flaws of any of your perceived "superior civilizations and polities" that would be just as bad. Your conclusion that it was in some sort of Medieval Stasis is simply not correct. Rome was not static it changed constantly through out its existence, thrived, developed, and fell. They created and adopted new technologies, philosophy, and changed socially. It was pretty normal as far as civilizations went and can not be said to have been in any sort of stasis.

When knowledge came back as you say the Roman Empire was gone. You kind of shot your statement in the foot from the get go there. Even then saying returned is erroneous as it never left.

To make matters worse your conclusion is just as rife with bias as anyone getting overly excited about Rome is.

edited 18th Dec '16 10:29:10 PM by TuefelHundenIV

They didn't make contributions in physics, chemistry and astronomy either, except for whatever homework Caesar stole from the Egyptians. I mean it's remarkable that there was no science in the entire Roman period, either the Republican or the Imperial era. Nothing like what was there in Athens or Alexandria. There was no Roman Democritus, and no Roman Archimedes, no Roman Pythagoras.

Well most of that was borrowed from the Etruscan civilizations who were the pioneers in engineering and invented the acqueduct. The Romans were good engineers but not really inventors and that for me is the curiosity whenever I hear people talk of the grandeur that was supposedly Rome.

As for Literature...I am not sure what you mean by "advances" there, because art isn't really something you grade on a curve. And even the Euripides and Aristophanes are way better than the Roman Dramatists (good as they are). Virgil, Ovid and Catullus are geniuses though.

Look the Roman Republic to the end of the Western Empire is somewhere from 330 BCE-400BC, some 700 years. If we compare that to the 700 years before say...700 CE-1400 CE, then the rapid development in Europe in this period is way beyond anything in Rome in that same time.

Knowledge came back when the Arabs entered their golden age and rediscovered and translated Greek and various texts and more importantly started testing out various suggestions put by Aristotle and others. It wasn't some new knowledge that the Arabs discovered (well except for Indian numerals which they adapted). The Arabs invented chemistry (which comes from the world al-chimie, which is also the inspiration for the word alchemy), and optics especially. There wasn't some new knowledge. The Romans had access to the same Greek texts that the Arabs got their hands on, and yet in all those seven hundred years they never saw fit to test out and build and form ideas based on what they had. That's kind of damning no?

If by bias you mean I am questioning Rome's central position in history then yes...but that too is something of a debate since Fernand Braudel in A history of Civlizations noted that eventually people will wonder if classical history is especially relevant. I would say Greek and Egyptian history is relevant but I am not sure if Rome is important to anyone other than Western Europeans and even then the true fathers of Modern Europe are the Vikings who ignited trade and captialism after the end of the Empire, established routes from the west to the east, and actually founded Russia. We have more information about the Romans than we do about the Vikings unfortunately.

I don't think Rome entered a Medieval Stasis. As it has been pointed out, they contributed greatly to engineering and medicine and law, to the point that roman law is still studied today in law schools.

If anything, roman empire changed a lot after the 2nd century and became the basis of medieval society. The German tribes that occupied the territories that used to be part of the empire copied parts of their culture (in the same way romans copied from etruscs and Greeks). However, I don't think this change can be called a stasis, since the situation actually changed, mainly with the introduction of a protofeudalist system, the disaparition of the professional army and other changes.

When we say Medieval Stasis people usually mean a flatline of science and development of technology, they usually don't mean civil bureaucracy, which would be meaningless since most of Rome was a horribly oligarchical slave-run society.

Most of the Roman tech was frozen and consistent after the Axial Age is my point.

And I am curious about Rome's development of medicine since I've read contradictory stuff. And in any case, the Romans had particular remedies and herbs which are Lost Technology but it doesn't seem that they invented or innovated these themselves, or sought to understand the underlying principles.

No Roman contribution to Astronomy so your telling Ptolemy never existed and was totally not a citizen of the empire? Last I checked medicine is part of science so is engineering. Galen's work alone was a major contribution to medicine. They didn't do much with theoretical math true but they extensively used applied math which is still contributing just not to theory of math. Same for physics. Application is just as important as theory it is how theory gets tested and validated off the paper. Again Estrucans were part of Rome centuries before the Roman Empire ever existed the Romans may have learned to make aqueducts from them but the Roman's didn't just keep them as is and made alterations to the designs over time.

Literature as in distribution of it and the Romans widely encouraged the creative arts as well as the scientific. Newspapers ring a bell? The Acta Diurna even predates some of the Chinese examples. They contained information from trials and legal rulings, births, marriages, deaths, and any information deemed important enough to be included. The Romans built two large libraries in the capital itself one to house works in Latin the other dedicated to works in Greek. Another was built next to the imperial palace. Romans in general frequently had their own private libraries or visited those of family and friends. The Romans that could afford education were frequently fond of written works.

Even examining a 700 year period it is a far cry from being static or in a stasis. It is next to impossible for a society to be static and in stasis which is part of why it tends to stand out in fiction. It really is quite an inaccurate exaggeration to sate Rome was static. The populace of Rome proper certainly wasn't static and became very mixed as they took on more territories from all over the empire and even beyond.

You are quite very wrong on the Romans never taking advantage of knowledge they had access to. Again their overt fondness of applying mathematics, engineering, and other concepts is putting that knowledge to use. It would be, as you yourself noted, impossible for them to be good engineers among other things if they couldn't apply or use knowledge they had access to. Even if they used knowledge that existed before the Romans frequently experimented with it to create new versions that sometimes worked better. They are frankly no different then anyone else in that regard. Concrete was not new but they not only altered the composition but experimented with various additives to improve various properties of the material for different uses. Dams? Same thing. Not exactly new and neither was their use but they experimented with them especially when concrete and cement became a key item for their engineering projects. The Romans could not have built up their many monuments, roads, temples, and other structures without understanding and applying knowledge they had access to.

By bias you are overtly and overly focused on Rome and how bad it is while you ignore genuine contributions. You then in turn state some other civilization is some how superior when realistically they are quite likely just as flawed though likely in different ways. Which is really true of all civilizations.

It is one thing to be critical of the view held by some that Rome is some how special, which I do not agree with myself, and another to sit there and make overly broad exaggerations about how terrible and lacking science and innovation their society is or how terrible a civilization they were. That is a rather overt bias.

Here is what I can agree with you at this point. Rome is not the only civilization in the area and not solely important. The Region of the Med overall and adjoining areas are pretty important to history and civilization and other contributing civilizations should be considered.

Myself and others in this thread already have come to the point a while back in this thread that dark ages is usually an exaggeration. Also that the subject needs a more thorough examination for the eras achievements as well as the recovery after the Western Empire fell.

What I obviously disagree on is the assertion that the Romans made zero contributions to the sciences, that they were somehow static or stagnant, and that they were somehow uniquely bad for their era. It is just as silly to say Rome was somehow the center of Europe and the med as it is to say they did nothing for history and civilization.

To answer their contributions to medicine. Galen is one of the biggest contributors in that regard. He made observations, notes, and diagrams based on injuries to solider and by dissecting animals like monkeys. He was a Greek born Roman citizen who spent some 20 odd years before moving to Rome permanently. He became the personal physician of Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Some of the surgical instruments in use today were from ancient Rome. They also had some hand in medicine as it was common practice in Rome to import and study new medicines from locations outside the empire such as India.

edited 19th Dec '16 12:51:44 AM by TuefelHundenIV

I'm pretty sure the regular citizens of the roman empire had a better standard of living than the rest of Europe in the period of time between the 100 BC and 200 AD. I think that would not be possible without a functional administration. I disagree with civil and bureaucratic advances not being relevant. Without them the society crumbles and it is imposible to make science. An stable society is more re likely to advance in all fields of knowledge. Also, I do believe that the greatest thing the romans did was their roads. They connected and gave unity to all their territories, helped greatly to the development of cities and, by extension, science.

Both Galen and Ptolemy were Greek, the latter from Alexandria. They came from traditions that pre-existed Rome. Thus proving my point.

Well without improving theories you are just not going to improve your technology and applications. So I wouldn't say application is just as important as theory. Nor would I say the reverse. I just don't think that application or synthesis of other people's ideas makes you especially innovative.

Without freedom of speech and expression (which didn't exist then), without mass literacy (which Romans were in no mood to propagate), it's just trivial pursuit among elite classes. None of this was partaken in by the majority of the people in that time.

Well I actually think it's healthy that a civilization that defined its neighbours as "barbarians" (and which set a model for empires after them in Western Europe to emulate) is put on trial. I mean the actual Romans would certainly not care to define its greatness on the parameters you apply it, to them it was self-evident. It was based on military conquest and expansion and it was based on dominance. I also find it disturbing that many people still see Rome as a model and guiding hand, like many say America is like Rome, when America solved the problems of slavery and expansive suffrage, the latter of which tore apart the Republic. It's like people still think that Rome is some fount of inspiration.

Well, the western world has been looking up to Ancient Grome for a long time and I don't think that's going to change anytime soon. I reckon Rome had many problems, but those were not Rome exclusive, slavery and oligarchy were present in Egypt and China, and many other societies. However, when people take inspiration on ancient Rome they do not think of it as a society build on slavery ant totalitarianism, but one built on reason and a sort of democracy, no matter how far from reality those assumptions may be.

Application is just as important. You can't ever fully move an idea forward without testing and using it. Theory is all fine and good but you can't find how well a theory works until you put it into practice. The Romans didn't just keep them strictly as is they did experiment with various concepts and ideas.

Many in the classical world lacked the ability to read but enough did it was useful to have the concept of the newspaper. It is still important regardless if the locals could make use of it or not. Freedom of speech has no bearing on the general importance of the concept of newspapers.

No Rome shouldn't be put on trial, no particular piece of history should. Quite simply such things are counterproductive and such efforts almost always tend to be unreasonably biased as they almost always set out with the end already in mind. A trial in concept also includes points of view that might redeem whatever or whoever is on trial but that is seldom what happens.

Rome is hardly the first culture to sneer at and have overt biases in regards to their neighbors and if you honestly examined the views of such neighbors you would find them doing pretty much the same thing. Which is part and parcel why most historians are taught to find as many different sources as they reasonably can for any good examination of a historical period even if it means finding some of those sources outside of both location and time of the original event.

Various views of history are far better served with honest discussion including the pros and cons of the subject, era, culture, or history.