Did the Greeks ever adopt foreign equipment ..

[Theodosius the Great]

Probably the most important adoption of foreign military technology by the Greeks was the trireme which, IIRC, they picked up from the Phoenicians. Good move.

Along with Paul, I am somewhat curious as to exactly what your point is.

There have been similar threads in the Roman section about the origins of specific equipment. This one could be just as educational, IMO.

~Theo

[Ghostmojo]

I see...

Well, fair enough. But it is worth bearing in mind this is an international audience. English is the agreed lingua franca, but not all members have that as their first tongue. Even when they do, sometimes the subtleties of grammar, humour, sarcasm and irony of some, are completely lost on others. I have experienced that myself - in both directions! :lol:

[Macedon]

Mainly because the Greeks were not as unique as they'd wish you to think. See the Carians, for example. Scythians, Arabs, Aethiopians, Celts, Iberians... All extremely common mercenaries, not just the Greeks. The enormous success is more due to them being available in huge numbers rather than any uber-advantage in tactics and technology.

Says who?

Your comments sometimes are unbecoming of the seriousness of this forum. Is this thread an effort to downgrade anything the Greeks invented or offered to the world or to seriously enquire on specific items/tactics/armor/weapons as to whether and to what extent were they invented or further developed by them?

What you consistently fail to understand is that most peoples of the ancient years were to a great degree unique. They wore their own traditional garments, they had their own peculiar art, their own techniques in ironsmithing and most other crafts, their own peculiar weapons and tactics, their own political systems, traditions, religions, burial customs, morals etc. The fact that our western society seemingly nurtures more respect towards the Greacoroman civilization and its peculiarity is that it deems itself its direct descendant. It has nothing to do with the Greeks being the inventors of everything, it has to do with the Greeks being the inventors of many things we use or hold dear today. In those eras, the Greeks would be as unique as most other peoples.

Greek warfare was indeed unique in its tactics, mentality, armament etc. The Greeks developed their own school of war not because they were superior minds but because EVERYONE in those times did so... Persians, Lydians, Carians, Egyptians, Scythians, Thracians, Celts, Indians, Romans... all had unique styles and tactics and for some reason they STUCK to them. If your question is why, then the answer is complex but can be summarized as it being easier and more effective to stick with what you know, what has worked and what you trust to copying something that may or may not work, it is because most ancient peoples were set in their ways and could not overnight change military traditions that they followed for centuries en mass. These are but some of those reasons. Adopting small things was common, more was rare to EVERYONE, not just Greeks.

As to who was the first man to forge himself a sword or spear, I think that the matter is of no importance at all. Inventing a certain weapon does not mean that you just made it from scratch. It could just mean that you designed a form of an already existent weapon/armor/shield adopted to the tactics that best suit you and your tribe. So, of course the Greeks did not invent the shield, but they DID invent THEIR shields. And it seems that the Greeks, being a warlike people that had access to every new thing in the known world were more probable to adopt a certain piece of armament than any other people around.

Now, there were times when the Greeks were indeed (as of course we know from Greek sources) considered the best troops around. You might attack the sources as biased, that is your choice, but these are the exact same sources that also praise other nations in various historical eras as well. That the Greek art of warfare was excellent we do not need books to prove. It is proven by the military exploits and expansion of the Greeks of the time. If Greeks did not excel in war, then we would probably never have heard of them, nor would they have left the legacy they did. Of course making such comparisons would be completyely irrelevant to this thread, but, if genuinely interested, you could start a relative thread.

In my opinion you mix up uniquness with influence. The Greeks were not "more unique". They just influenced US more than others. THIS is why we look up to their culture that much. For the Chinese or the Indians, the Greeks are but some alien civilization of average importance. Again, do NOT mix up influence with uniquenss and do not use sarcasm when not joking, because it can easily be mistaken for disrespect.

[tenerife_boy]

I've often wondered why more peoples did not adopt hoplite panoplies and tactics

Etruscan, romans and carthagians (ones of the most developed factions around the mediterranean sea) adopted the panoply and hoplite tactics....

[Darth_Roach]

@Macedon Man, you misunderstood me - my point is that they weren't the only popular mercenaries.

[Macedon]

double posting, please delete

[Macedon]

@Macedon Man, you misunderstood me - my point is that they weren't the only popular mercenaries.

The thing is that your point is not understandable.

You wrote : "Mainly because the Greeks were not as unique as they'd wish you to think. See the Carians, for example. Scythians, Arabs, Aethiopians, Celts, Iberians... All extremely common mercenaries, not just the Greeks. The enormous success is more due to them being available in huge numbers rather than any uber-advantage in tactics and technology."

..the Greeks were not as unique as they'd wish you to think...

What does that mean? Why did they wish us to think they were unique? Why weren't they? As a comment this sounds sarcastic/disrespectful.

..All extremely common mercenaries, not just the Greeks...

Who said they were not? And if they were, we only know it because the Greeks wrote it down. Again, what is the point of this comment? Did anyone say that the Greeks were the only mercs around?

...The enormous success is more due to them being available in huge numbers rather than any uber-advantage in tactics and technology...

Now this, apart from totally unsupported, is actually contrary to what you just claimed! You said that others were as common to act as mercenaries and then you claim that the Greeks were available in "huge" numbers while the others were not? And all that just to support that there was nothing in terms of armament or tactics that made them a better choice as heavy infantry? This whole argument is absurd. Or is it an effort to justify their success as conquerors? In which case your argument sounds even more lacking in evidence... huge numbers of Greeks expanding against small tibes?????

Different peoples, different war traditions, were the Rhodians and the Balearics not superior slingmen? If they were was it only because they had better slings? Did the Spartans not for some reason enjoy a fame of superior ability among the Greeks for years? Or the Athenians, especially in the sea as mariners? Or the Persians in the east? Or the Romans? Is it just the Greeks on the whole that you claim to have had nothing that made them different from the rest of the world or does your argument encompass Roman, Steppes, Byzantine etc warfare as well? Can you really be advocating that Greek art of warfare was not different and as such could not be superior (or inferior or anything) to others? Only by somehow being different can you be better or worse. Even among the Greeks, even among two states with exactly the same look of arms, technology and tactics studied there could be huge differences in matter of discipline, resoluteness, sense of duty and honor etc. Such qualities were not separate from the cultural and sociopolitical reality of the state and could make a nation/tribe/state/societal group more able in war.

You wrote : "It was, just like everything else that ever existed."
Now this came as an answer to "well, muscle cuirass wasn´t invented by greeks?"

Again.. sarcasm... as if someone had claimed here that EVERYTHING that ever existed was invented by Greeks... And no actual answer, like "yes it was" or "no it was not"... What is more sad is the fact that you had already been told by that time that sarcasm should not be used in this way, especially if not clearly put among certain boundaries and in a clear context.

You wrote : "Suggesting there is something not invented by Greeks is simply laughable."

By whom? You kept on propagating the same position while NO ONE here supported such an absurdity.

etc etc etc..

You also wrote about the Romans : "I did not mean adoption on the scale of the Romans - they lived quite well off Celtic and Iberian weapons and Samnite tactics."

It seems that you are all to ready to deny any influence the Romans or the Greeks might have on Celts and Iberians (and any other "barbarian") but ready to accept that they had indeed invented everything... Why is that? The Romans called their sword gladius hispaniensis, but it was not actually the weapon of the Iberians... We say that they adopted Samnite tactics only because of some short comments, while having no idea of what these tactics were and whether they indeed did so. You have to understand that to adopt does not (does rarely) mean to copy! Adopting something only entails taking the general idea and developing it in whatever way you think fit. A khophesh is not a kopis, a hoplon shield is not just a round shield.

Peter, if you want your point to be taken seriously you have to be serious yourself. What you might have started as a thread to "probe the community" could have evolved to a highly educating thread. Members did post some very informative examples of how Greeks adopted foreign technology and practices using both archaeology and literature as evidence. Please, go along that path and stop trying to be sarcastic towards an opinion anyways NOT advocated by the members of this forum. I would also suggest you try to compile more detailed posts in the future, so that it can be easier to understand both your point and your tone.

[Darth_Roach]

My point was perfectly clear - it was there in a discussion regarding them being used as mercenaries. I attached no other meaning to it, and thus am not going to defend any alternate interpretation.

Have a good day.

[Macedon]

My point was perfectly clear - it was there in a discussion regarding them being used as mercenaries. I attached no other meaning to it, and thus am not going to defend any alternate interpretation.

Have a good day.

? To which one of my many comments exactly does that answer? Can you support your claims instead of posting short sentences? Do you think that my comments on what you wrote are wrong or unhistorical? Maybe unfair? Can you defend your position on all these issues with arguments? If your goal was to just incite a discussion in which you will not take part, mission accomplished. But now, I am directly asking you questions and raising points. I understand if you do not wish to answer them, although I do not understand why. If you do not wish to enter such a discussion, I will not harass you any more on this. I just believe that it would be funny considering it is you who initiated this thread on the first place.

[Darth_Roach]

Which claims? That Greeks weren't the only widely used mercenaries around?

[Macedon]

Which claims? That Greeks weren't the only widely used mercenaries around?

Do you really mean that in my post above (two posts back) there is nothing that you conceive as a question addressed to you? Or that you simply are not interested in answering? Anyways... I really do not care for this game. If you really have nothing to add regarding the scholarly essence of this discussion, there is no reason in keeping up this discussion that might be mistaken as meaningless bickering.

[Darth_Roach]

What game, for god's sake? Which post are we discussing now?

I will not discuss questions in which I don't disagree with you!

[hoplite14gr]

@" Roach

OK,I am not an expert at the English language and that might limit my understanding.
But I got the general sense that you limit yourself in the time-period under examination.
Your claims/assertions seem to cover Archaic/Classical age. But there was a Bronze age too (I refer to your linothorax comments.)

What I got from these thread discussion is:

- Greeks adopted foreign items or methods. Sources were offered by members
- Nobody claimed that Greeks invented everything. No member claimed that.
- Greeks were famous perhaps as heavy infantry or archers (Cretans) but were certainly NOT the only hired troops around. No one disagreed with you on that.

As for the humor issue, I personally try to avoid it because in the past (I do have some years in these forum)I offended people without wanting to, so I stick to plain language.

I believe that you offered a lot of points for discussion but some of them probably need threads of their own but you give the impression -even if it is NOT your intention- that you are more interested making humor instead of gathering information.

Kind regards

[Darth_Roach]

Ok, I will heed your advise.

[Idomeneas]

is this another thread in the spirit of '' I hate that Greek culture is more famous than mine, and have to give school exams about it''?
Cause if it is, we dont play this game here. Nobody ever made claims that Greeks did it all and did it perfect.