Day 19 - A Talk to a Weapons Dealer
Today in WHAP we listened to a guest speaker, Mr. Pichon, talk about Ancient Warfare.
I thought his lecture was very interesting, especially about the phalanx battle formation. It certainly made sense how it was successful, just because so many different people could stab you whenever you tried to approach. It seems like a good archer could snipe people in the middle of the phalanx, which would then separate it, but maybe the shot would be too hard with all the armor and their shields.
Other than that, I also found the Roman battle formations and their "battle corrections" process fascinating as well. The turtle formation sounds like such a musty idea, but yet it worked until hot oil was thought of. However, to me it seems like by dropping large rocks the person holding the shield would probably drop it due to sudden weight on his back. The way the "battle corrections" were done made it seem very tedious (parallelism to WHAP?), but clearly the process was very effective as the empire lasted for quite a while. It seems like, and this may be pretty obvious, but the reason that most very warlike empires fall due to always needing money for the soldiers; thus if battles stop then so does the influx of money used for mercenaries and soldiers.
Overall, I enjoyed the whole presentation today, and I look forward to the other parts in this exclusive series.
With that, the bell rang and we were dismissed. Until tomorrow!
I thought his lecture was very interesting, especially about the phalanx battle formation. It certainly made sense how it was successful, just because so many different people could stab you whenever you tried to approach. It seems like a good archer could snipe people in the middle of the phalanx, which would then separate it, but maybe the shot would be too hard with all the armor and their shields.
Other than that, I also found the Roman battle formations and their "battle corrections" process fascinating as well. The turtle formation sounds like such a musty idea, but yet it worked until hot oil was thought of. However, to me it seems like by dropping large rocks the person holding the shield would probably drop it due to sudden weight on his back. The way the "battle corrections" were done made it seem very tedious (parallelism to WHAP?), but clearly the process was very effective as the empire lasted for quite a while. It seems like, and this may be pretty obvious, but the reason that most very warlike empires fall due to always needing money for the soldiers; thus if battles stop then so does the influx of money used for mercenaries and soldiers.
Overall, I enjoyed the whole presentation today, and I look forward to the other parts in this exclusive series.
With that, the bell rang and we were dismissed. Until tomorrow!
I disagree that the turtle idea was "musty." I think it was very ingenious that the people in the front could dig the walls out, but when hot oil was used, that might have stung.
ReplyDeleteGo Cowboys!