08-26-2009, 10:56 PM
I just found something which may be important. Apologies if it's been brought up before, but I can't remember seeing it in any linothorax discussions.
Aeneas Tacticus, writing c. 350 BC:
This is clearly a reference to a Greek city with Greek citizens and foreigners (likely also other Greeks, for it's hard to imagine significant numbers of non-Greeks attending a Greek public holiday around the time of Aeneas' writing, or their embroilment in such a scheme). I'm not sure if this episode has been linked with any particular one known from the histories, but many of the anecdotes Aeneas gives come from between 400 and 360 BC, with the majority coming from recent history for him (mostly the 360's). Also probably one of the earliest uses of "hopla" for shields here.
What are some thoughts? Is this new or am I just going crazy?
Aeneas Tacticus, writing c. 350 BC:
Quote:I shall now discuss the smuggling into the city of jars and packages, in which there may be something hidden by means of which a city with its acropolis has in past instances been seized.... A city was captured, with the complicity of some within it, upon a public holiday, in some such manner as this. First of all, to the aliens who had established themselves there in anticipation of what was to take place, and to the unarmed citizens who were to be accomplices there were brought in linen corslets [thorakes lineoi], cloaks [stolidia], helmets [perikephalaia], shields [hopla], greaves [knemides], short swords [machairai], bows [toxa], and arrows [toxeumata] stowed away in chests like those of merchants, with the statement that clothing and other merchandise were in them.
This is clearly a reference to a Greek city with Greek citizens and foreigners (likely also other Greeks, for it's hard to imagine significant numbers of non-Greeks attending a Greek public holiday around the time of Aeneas' writing, or their embroilment in such a scheme). I'm not sure if this episode has been linked with any particular one known from the histories, but many of the anecdotes Aeneas gives come from between 400 and 360 BC, with the majority coming from recent history for him (mostly the 360's). Also probably one of the earliest uses of "hopla" for shields here.
What are some thoughts? Is this new or am I just going crazy?
Ruben
He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
