Sabaton be like
At 14, I identified as:
It was Rise of Nations for me.
I loved playing the pre industrial campaigns and spamming the machinegunners with a cheat code
I’ve never tried this.
I love so many things about Rise of Nations that it wouldn’t fit in a Lemmy post.
By 14 I had watched Shogun a time or three and read the book not long after. Guess where I fell.
BTW, the new miniseries is the finest television I’ve seen in ages, maybe ever. All my love for the original, but the latest one blows it straight out the water.
What does this choice mean?
BTW search Aristocrat Vest they’re pretty sick
Clockwork orange. Future history.
For some reason I can’t stop reading about Mesopotamia =/
Did you know that in 1770 B.C. Zimri-Lim, king of Madi, was so exasperated by his daughter being such a bitch to his political ally, the king of Ilansura, that he eventually traveled all the way from Madi to Ilansura to “liberate the palace of Ilansura from her presence” (his own words)?
Lmfao. She toxic.
I love history bits like this, thank you for sharing.
I just wrapped up a deep dive into Mesopotamia myself and man it was fucking fascinating. Hadn’t heard this one before, so thanks
Another fun one from Mari was how Shamshi-adad berated his son via correspondence by saying he was too busy womanizing and partying to be a good leader and should be more like his older brother 😂.
There are so many cool stories. I have moved on for now to study some Greek and Egyptian history because I want to have a nice background for when I get to Roman history but one day I wanna grab a book specifically on Assyrian history.
Anyway I am around if you ever want to talk Mesopotamian history haha
No love for Carthage? :(
The newly inspired Roman fan in me wants to say ‘no you filthy Carthaginian scum!’ but the guy who just read about Dido in a Greek mythology book says he needs to learn more about it because it seems really interesting
A Phoenician (the “punic” wars come from a mistranslation from greek to latin, phoenike) colony that became independent due to distance from the capital and just wanted to get rich from trading stuff around. They had an incredible naval industry. All the “losers” and “enemies” of these eras have amazing stories that we’re not taught at school. The many Persian dynasties of those times did incredible public works and had their own advanced bureaucracies and statecraft, which is what later muslim conquerors used as a basis for their own caliphates.
Somewhat related, this video, “Lost Worlds: Secrets of Alexander the Great” is a tracing, initially, of the likely path that created the legend of Jason and the Argonauts, as the myth possibly comes from when sea levels were much higher, to the point that the Black and Caspian seas were connected and you could sail all the way to what today is the middle of Turkmenistan. Later on, it mentions how Alexander didn’t “found” new cities in the region of Bactria, but rather subjugated the cities he happened to walk into
Wasn’t Shamshi-Adad the first one to claim the title “king of the universe”? 🤣
Assyrian boasting always cracks me up. Sennacherib describes this battle against Babylon:
With the dust of their field covering the heavens, like a wide, mighty storm, they drew up in battle array before me on the bank of the Tigris. They blocked my passage and offered battle. I put on my coat of mail. My helmet, emblem of victory, I placed upon my head. My great battle chariot, which brings low the foe, I hurriedly mounted in the anger of my heart. The mighty bow which Assur had given me, I seized in my hands. The javelin, piercing to the life, I grasped. I stopped their advance, succeeding in surrounding them. I decimated the enemy host with arrow and spear. All of their bodies I bored through. I cut their throats, cut off their precious lives as one cuts a string. Like the many waters of a storm, I made the contents of their gullets and entrails rain down upon the wide earth. My prancing steeds, harnessed for my riding, plunged into the stream of their blood as into a river. The wheels of my war chariot, which brings low the evil and the wicked, were spattered with filth and blood. With the bodies of their warriors, I filled the plain like grass. Their testicles I cut out, and tore out their privates like the seeds of cucumbers of June.
Meanwhile, the Babylonian records say:
The Assyrians lost the battle.
Wasn’t Shamshi-Adad the first one to claim the title "king of the universe
I think it was actually Sargon of Akkad! If you haven’t looked into the Akkadian stuff I highly suggest it. It’s woefully lacking in detail since it was the 3rd century BCE. A lot of it was written after Sargon passed, but it’s all very foundational for the Babylonian and Assyrian stuff that came after.
Assyrian boasting always cracks me up. Sennacherib describes this battle against Babylon:
Case in point, a lot of the bragging and boasting started during the Akkadian dynasty. Sargon jumpstarted it by bragging about how he captured Lugalzagessi and paraded him around the city before taking him to the gate of Enlil in Nippur. One of his sons (Rimush or Manishtusu) or perhaps his grandson, Naram-sin, was the first to try and estimate (and brag about) casualties by his army’s hand!
They also bragged a lot about how they put down rebellions…it was a tradition in their line haha 😂
That being said, like their rule, the Assyrians were far more boastful about their straight up brutality. But one thing they had in common that I found interesting and super respectable…they wanted to be remembered more for their creation and restoration than their destruction. Sennacherib and his successors did some really amazing city planning and tried to take care of their people.
I hadn’t seen that entire description from Sennacherib before thanks! I will say, he was fucking pissed and it shows!
Sargon was fucking nuts. From son of a gardener to king of the world.
Fun fact: I always thought the Mask of Sargon looks like the Chad guy in soyjack memes
Hahahaha that’s hilarious. I’ll never unsee it!
Have you been reading books or reading through Wikipedia? The wiki pages are very thorough but I like having an author organize everything for me. I read “Mesopotamia: invention of the city” by Gwendolyn Leick and listened to the majority of the audiobook for “Weavers, Scribes, and Kings.” I was looking at a book by Echart Frohm when I started getting enamored with Rome and I kinda got sidetracked haha
I like the details an author can give that the Wikipedia page doesn’t have room for. I was just listening to The History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer which inspired my initial post.
Would you recommend it? What sort of time span and what cultures does it cover?
Fantastic XD
Both the Romans and the Vikings are a fascinating topic though.
Totes agree. What’s your favourite thing about them?
With the Romans, the technology they had, and what they were able to do and build with the knowledge and techniques available to them. Also just the way Roman civilisation worked was astonishing.
With the Vikings, the seamanship and navigation abilities they had.
If you came up to me and asked me to join you on a voyage across the north sea in a sailboat, with modern gps, life vests, flares, etc I would just laugh. Now doing it with a viking longboat and the stars to navigate? How could anyone sit down to row with such massive balls in the way?
This is a fascinating rabbit hole to go down, but they are actually descendants of the same (hypothetical) prehistoric people.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_society
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_mythology
I liked the Ottomans at 13.
So did JD Vance
I actually prefer the late West Roman period, or East Roman in time of Belisarius and Narses, for the Roman pic. They have for me that association for the piece of that time which is almost possible to emotionally connect with ours.
And vikings didn’t look like that, they looked like the better kind of LOTR illustrations.
The third pic - should have the alternative of Austria-Hungary, with all the nice marches and uniforms and their utter inability to actually function as a military.
The fourth pic - again, nice, but I’d prefer to see a bunch of half-naked ashigara with pikes there and a samurai with a bow, and maybe a couple of muskets.
EDIT: and, eh one of these? why not all?
EDIT2: no Egypt? no Nubia? no fscking Athens even?
Make that 5 if you’re actually from the relevant country/region of one of the older ones.
Source: am viking by birth, hippie by sensibility 😁
Vikings were very into drugs and ending Catholicism, so you might just be full Viking.
That kind of describes much of Scandinavia
Am Danish (born and raised, umpteenth generation), can confirm 😁
You’re missing an English dude with a huge bow.
this image is missing the substantial influence of the Dynasty Warriors game series
What was it again? The Yellow Band Tribe?
I tried to play one of the newer Dynasty Warriors, but it was way too over complicated
It’s an animefication of the Romance of Three Kingdoms novel, which is a fan-fiction/novelization with some artistic liberties of the Three Kingdoms period, the turmoils that led to the fall of the Han dynasty around 186AD and the ensuing war among several warlords, founding the titular three kingdoms: Wei, Wu and Shu.
In the DW games it’s just a one off stage because, “Pffft, peasants rebelling, amirite?”
You’re missing the crusader knights. Deus vult!
This is just school houses. I was in Romans (red) and the other two were Saxons (blue) and Vikings (green, bad behaviour encouraged).
Sad clanking knight noises
Por que no los quatro?
Edit: I do not claim to speak Spanish, or really any other language, including English.