06-27-2014, 03:14 PM
{This may, indeed have come up before - in which case I would certainly appreciate any links to old threads so I can assess the views made previously}
It derails threads to digress - so I thought I'd ask to keep the discussion separate.....
I've certainly been chided for using modern
hock: /current phrasing, allusions or parallels - and that's just fine. I and others have also been disparaged from using any comparisons if we have military experience; which (see below) may be very short-sighted. I have also seen re-enactors/experimenters dismissed because they have no idea how things were actually done ~2,000 years ago.
I do therefore wonder, because it certainly shapes and often constricts the threads of many discussions, what people actually think...... :?
- There has been no appreciable evolution of humankind in those 2,000 years - in fact there is a good argument that we have devolved more in the last 50 years than evolved in the last 50,000! If I took a child today and sent them back in time to Rome - they would become Roman (and the obverse would be true as well) - there are simply science and technology shifts and therefore cultural experience changes
- Much more, particularly for this sub-forums specific field, I certainly do not find it specious to draw military parallels back to the Roman era - simply because our current military systems are absolutely based upon the Roman ones! When, in the 18thC/post-condotteri horse & musket times, professional nation armies were once more established - it was to the same Greek, Roman & Byzantine texts that we discuss that they looked for inspiration! It is no accident that a French Napoleonic Corps looks almost identical to a Roman Consular Army in construct. Our military structures today have a direct and causal link - and thus there are absolute parallels
- Lastly I offer this, for I had a thought earlier - language shifts. Ancient Greek (as I believe I am correct in saying) has many differences to modern Greek and thus is considered a 'dead language', as is, most definitely, Latin. How can we be sure, if a mere 2,000 years represents a gap that we cannot bridge because it's 'so different', that the language used in those ancient texts has anything like the meanings we ascribe today? Perhaps 'leading' to a Roman means something utterly different to what we use it for today......
- using a specific example that is close to my heart and which everyone will understand, especially as we talk numbers many times, and has changed in only a few decades - how many is a billion? :wink:
It derails threads to digress - so I thought I'd ask to keep the discussion separate.....
I've certainly been chided for using modern
hock: /current phrasing, allusions or parallels - and that's just fine. I and others have also been disparaged from using any comparisons if we have military experience; which (see below) may be very short-sighted. I have also seen re-enactors/experimenters dismissed because they have no idea how things were actually done ~2,000 years ago.I do therefore wonder, because it certainly shapes and often constricts the threads of many discussions, what people actually think...... :?
- There has been no appreciable evolution of humankind in those 2,000 years - in fact there is a good argument that we have devolved more in the last 50 years than evolved in the last 50,000! If I took a child today and sent them back in time to Rome - they would become Roman (and the obverse would be true as well) - there are simply science and technology shifts and therefore cultural experience changes
- Much more, particularly for this sub-forums specific field, I certainly do not find it specious to draw military parallels back to the Roman era - simply because our current military systems are absolutely based upon the Roman ones! When, in the 18thC/post-condotteri horse & musket times, professional nation armies were once more established - it was to the same Greek, Roman & Byzantine texts that we discuss that they looked for inspiration! It is no accident that a French Napoleonic Corps looks almost identical to a Roman Consular Army in construct. Our military structures today have a direct and causal link - and thus there are absolute parallels
- Lastly I offer this, for I had a thought earlier - language shifts. Ancient Greek (as I believe I am correct in saying) has many differences to modern Greek and thus is considered a 'dead language', as is, most definitely, Latin. How can we be sure, if a mere 2,000 years represents a gap that we cannot bridge because it's 'so different', that the language used in those ancient texts has anything like the meanings we ascribe today? Perhaps 'leading' to a Roman means something utterly different to what we use it for today......
- using a specific example that is close to my heart and which everyone will understand, especially as we talk numbers many times, and has changed in only a few decades - how many is a billion? :wink:
