Romans VS Mongols in real life
- Thread starter Jurassic King
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Wrymouth3
Emperor
I don't even think that's Mongolian food to be honest. A lot of the Mongolian food i've seen are these weird bacterial cheese dishes mixed with oatmeal and other odd things.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Just surmising here, but I can't imagine Rome's victory against Carthage required anything less than pure meritocracy.
Gucumatz
JS, secretly Rod Serling
- Joined
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- 6,181
The only thing I know for sure that's Mongolian I have ever tried was airag. Let me just say, I'll stick with the american version of Mongolian beef/stuff from now
Of course the Mongols would win, would it be honorable victory though?
Let's take a look at a Roman vs Mongol open field battle:
Riding around Roman Legion formations firing countless number of arrows at them, avoiding direct contact, until even the well trained Legions would get tired and had lost enough men for the "brave" Mongol Hordes to finally man up, swoop in and basically slaughter them. Or do I have the Huns fighting techniques mistaken for the Mongol ones? Anyway, they couldn't have been that much more different, Huns were practically predecessors of Mongols, right?
Let's take a look at a Roman vs Mongol open field battle:
Riding around Roman Legion formations firing countless number of arrows at them, avoiding direct contact, until even the well trained Legions would get tired and had lost enough men for the "brave" Mongol Hordes to finally man up, swoop in and basically slaughter them. Or do I have the Huns fighting techniques mistaken for the Mongol ones? Anyway, they couldn't have been that much more different, Huns were practically predecessors of Mongols, right?
Us troops of today, like the Marines or Navy Seals, I admit are pretty tough. However, this is a look from a historical point of view and your US troops got their lunch handed to them in the US-(British) Canada war of 1812. They were drastically superior in numbers yet couldn't quite conquer the British and their allies, a relatively small force (numerically) of Tecumseh's native warriors.
MilesGregarius
Half-baked Renegade
Meritocracy for the patricians, perhaps. Things may have been different post-Marius, but no plebeian was ever going to be allowed to climb the ladder to command in Scipio's day.
MilesGregarius
Half-baked Renegade
As opposed to the "cowardly" Roman tendency to hold troops in reserve and have generals not in the front rank of the charge, unlike their "honorable" Gallic and Germanic foes?
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Thanks for the correction.
Allow me to addend: "Within the confines of a bifurcated system".
I'd suggest most of the movement upwards happened when people died. The Roman system was flexible - insofar as it allowed generals to be recalled - but it tended to produce a lot of bad ones because it often drew on people with limited command experience to run things. The Carthaginians tended to be better generals - at least initially - because most of them had experience in fighting in Barcid Spain. So few of them died. It just so happened that the Romans who replaced the ones who died happened to be very good generals indeed.
wolfigor
Emperor
The problem of Sparta was not the quality of it's army (excellent and superior to their contemporaries in Greece) but the very special condition of their society:
1. The Spartan army itself could not grow.
Only full citizens, known as the Spartiates, were raised and trained as elite soldiers.
The size of the core army was very small: the number of Spartiates decreased from 6,000 in 640 BC to 1,000 in 330 BC.
The rest of the army was auxiliaries with relatively poor training and equipment.
2. The main occupation of the Spartan military was to keep the Helots subjugated, so Sparta could only commit part of its forces to any war outside its borders.
I agree that they were excellent soldiers and the Mongolian state could use every Mongol as a soldier.
They had great tactics and capacity to hit hard.
However they were successful mostly against states that were highly divided and incapable to organise a solid and long term defence.
The Mongol failed to win against well entrenched states that could focus their resistance.
So, where goes my vote for the best army?
I saw some recent (propaganda) photos of the army of Thailand:
With such soldiers I would "surrender" immediately
p.s.
the photos are due to a propaganda move of the military regime now in charge in Thailand:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...orous-army-girls-to-win-hearts-and-minds.html
I came back from Thailand recently... great country really
While a battle inwould probably be inaccurate, depending on various factors, many people say in real life, the Mongols would slaughter the Roman Empire. I'm one of those people.
...
Why, if I might ask?
I agree with you and Masada, the Spartans only had temporary hegemony and never really attained the geopolitical status their militarism seemed to imply they were deserving of. Basically the North Korea of its day.
...eww...
Sparta did have culture, and moreso in its early aeons. For example Cheilon was one of the 'seven sages' of Greece, and his manner of producing brief but poignant sentences was termed as 'to lacedaemonise', as in the phrase to lakonizein esti philosophein (to be laconic is being philosophical)
I haven't read much of the history of Sparta, but afaik they needed to become better hoplites than the rest due to nearby Argos, which up to then was a bit of an earlier version of Sparta, and they were Doric Greeks too.
Not many colonies were founded by their polis, and by far the most important one was Taras/Tarantas (Tarentum). Also it was noted (i think by Xenophon? not sure) that if Sparta was to fall one day, the distinct lack of large monuments in their city would not leave much of a trace of what power they had.
But still, in the immortal words of Simonides: (and translated to english in this case )
'These men, having sailed with Lysander, humbled the might of the city of Cecrops (ie Athens),
and made Lacedaemon
of the beautiful choruses...
The highest city of Greece'.
I haven't read much of the history of Sparta, but afaik they needed to become better hoplites than the rest due to nearby Argos, which up to then was a bit of an earlier version of Sparta, and they were Doric Greeks too.
Not many colonies were founded by their polis, and by far the most important one was Taras/Tarantas (Tarentum). Also it was noted (i think by Xenophon? not sure) that if Sparta was to fall one day, the distinct lack of large monuments in their city would not leave much of a trace of what power they had.
But still, in the immortal words of Simonides: (and translated to english in this case
)'These men, having sailed with Lysander, humbled the might of the city of Cecrops (ie Athens),
and made Lacedaemon
of the beautiful choruses...
The highest city of Greece'.
Jurassic King
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2014
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The distinction between patricians and plebians has often been overstated: what mattered was coming from a 'good family', and that placed plebian nobiles over impoverished patricians. Even then, you needed capital - literal and political - to have a hope of winning elections. Pompey was a plebian and a provincial to boot, and Marius himself was a (comparatively) low-born pleb. It was much easier for a well-placed eques to gain influence in the state than for a patrician with neither wealth or connections. That said, Rome was never a meritocracy, nor did it pretend to be. Patronage and agreements between influential men were the foundations of the state; 'democracy' would have been a dirty word and the establishment generally expected people to behave according to their birth. The few cases of remarkable social mobility have been passed down precisely because they are exceptional, in much the same way as Britain made heroes of similar people in the days of Victoria or Thatcher.
And that is exactly what this is about. The Mongols would just dominate the Romans because they had guns. Mounted gunners are deadlier than mounted archers. The Hungarians and Polish couldn't even keep the Mongols out of bay. And the Bulgarians and Russians became under Mongol rule (Bulgaria became a vassal). Also, the Byzantine army fled Thrace when Nogai Khan raided it.
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