Why don’t we? “Just to give a fun sense of how wild these years were, in brief what happens is: Pyrrhus gets hard shut out by Lysimachus’ much larger army in 286, retreating back to Epirus with his tail between… Read More »Collections: Phalanx’s Twilight, Legion’s Triumph, Part IIIb: Pyrrhus
It is important to delegate and build capable leaders to.have a large state or an organization. “Eleven independent commands. And that wasn’t an abnormal year! And then all of these experienced commanders head back to the Senate, where they’re available in… Read More »Collections: Phalanx’s Twilight, Legion’s Triumph, Part IIb: Handfuls of Maniples
How Romans fought. “An enemy that has broken formation to pursue the velites which then slams face-first into the hastati while tired and out of formation is going to have a very bad time” https://acoup.blog/2024/02/09/collections-phalanxs-twilight-legions-triumph-part-iia-how-a-legion-fights/
Coordination and decision making is hard. “in the premodern world—when processing information and coordinating action were both extraordinarily expensive, because communication was slow and coordination outside of relatively small kinship groups was difficult—firms tended to be local concerns, centered either… Read More »How the spreadsheet reshaped America
They don’t work how you think they do.
Gladiators weren’t the NFL of Rome. “I think that’s part of the underlying fundamental problem with this film: it needs Rome to be about gladiators and thus for the Colosseum to be the symbol of Rome and the utmost expression… Read More »Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator II, Part II
We tend to forget that history is long. “It makes about as much sense for Rome to be invading ‘Numidia’ (which, again, the film treats as a town and not a large region) in 200 A.D. as for a film… Read More »Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator II, Part I
Political structure matters. “neither Quintus nor Maximus are going back to their farm after this: they’re going back to Rome to be major figures in Roman politics, living on their large estates since senators were required by law to be… Read More »Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator’s Iconic Opening Battle, Part II
It’s epicly wrong. “The Roman army in this sequence has the wrong composition, is deployed incorrectly, uses the wrong tactics, has the wrong theory of victory and employs the wrong weapons and then employs them incorrectly. Perhaps most importantly the… Read More »Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator’s Iconic Opening Battle, Part I
Or something like it.