New item Saber is not older than: character classes for fighters.
I was reading this, well, very extended errata for a review of Gladiator II. The tl;dr;dw of the review is: Ridley Scott managed to make an interesting period of history very boring so he could shoehorn in anti-gay, pro-fascist tropes. (Movie: brother emperors were sickly, effeminate redheads living decadent lifestyles in Rome. Real life: Brothers had north African heritage, one had his brother killed while in his mother's arms, his mother continued to serve as her son's regent while he spent the rest of his life leading armies in the provinces.)
But then I came across this bit:
And in fact Wikipedia has a list of Roman Gladiator classes. So the idea of arranging a competition for different kinds of warriors, who were strong and weak against certain other types, could have been known to Artoria. Whether she knew it for sure depends on how long Roman style games lasted, how much became oral tradition, and how many artifacts and texts survived.
One thing I've wondered about even the royalty of Britain is how much access to scholarship one would have in the 400s. Romans had tons and tons of writing, but it was done on papyrus, which came all the way from Egypt. Once the empire, and thus the massive (pirate-)free trade zone broke down, goods like papyri became very expensive outside the Eastern Empire. And papyri only last around 100 years outside of the dryness of Egypt and the Levant. If Europeans wanted to save knowledge, they had to copy them to expensive pages of parchment and vellum.
This would have been the time that Brittanic history and culture was literally falling apart, scrolls fraying away a word at a time. And then a horde of illterate pagans invaded and gradually took over. As upset as I have been about Trump lately, things are simply not that bad in our times.
I was reading this, well, very extended errata for a review of Gladiator II. The tl;dr;dw of the review is: Ridley Scott managed to make an interesting period of history very boring so he could shoehorn in anti-gay, pro-fascist tropes. (Movie: brother emperors were sickly, effeminate redheads living decadent lifestyles in Rome. Real life: Brothers had north African heritage, one had his brother killed while in his mother's arms, his mother continued to serve as her son's regent while he spent the rest of his life leading armies in the provinces.)
But then I came across this bit:
Quote:Gladiators were not general-purpose warriors, but highly specialized performers, typically fighting in one of several well-defined, visibly distinct stylized combat roles. So for instance the retiarius (‘net-man’) was lightly armored, fast and fought with a net and a long trident (evoking a fisherman), typically against a secutor (‘follower, chaser’), a heavily armored fighter with a large shield, helmet and arm protections, but with only a sword. So the retiarius is less heavily armored, but faster with a longer reach weapon, while the secutor had the clear advantage in a close-in fight. Gladiators would train on a specific type and often be paired against opposing types. So the secutor and retiarius were a matched pair, but equally murmillones (heavily armored sword-and-shield fighters) were often employed against either the thraex or hoplomachus type.
And in fact Wikipedia has a list of Roman Gladiator classes. So the idea of arranging a competition for different kinds of warriors, who were strong and weak against certain other types, could have been known to Artoria. Whether she knew it for sure depends on how long Roman style games lasted, how much became oral tradition, and how many artifacts and texts survived.
One thing I've wondered about even the royalty of Britain is how much access to scholarship one would have in the 400s. Romans had tons and tons of writing, but it was done on papyrus, which came all the way from Egypt. Once the empire, and thus the massive (pirate-)free trade zone broke down, goods like papyri became very expensive outside the Eastern Empire. And papyri only last around 100 years outside of the dryness of Egypt and the Levant. If Europeans wanted to save knowledge, they had to copy them to expensive pages of parchment and vellum.
This would have been the time that Brittanic history and culture was literally falling apart, scrolls fraying away a word at a time. And then a horde of illterate pagans invaded and gradually took over. As upset as I have been about Trump lately, things are simply not that bad in our times.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto