CRASSUS YOU MOTHERFUCKER

how can cavalry kill people in testudo?

Cataphracts don't mess around

sure but how can they cut down people in a testudo?

>Testudo
Delet urself right now

They break the testudo? You realize some people holding their shields up isn't gonna stop a horse running at 30km per hour.

>get arrow'd
>go into testudo
>get charged
>leave testudo
>get arrow'd

Crassus had the larger army, had he been Caesar, Pompey or just listened to one of his prefects he would have pressed forward with the whole army towards their baggage train in a regular formation while keeping his own cavalry fresh in the rear to deter encirclement. Horses can't gallop forever. He had captured several walled towns so his own supplies were safe.

Because holding a shield won't stop a heavy cavalryman with a fucking lance.

what can they do poke away at the wall of shields with his spear?

Getting hit by cavalry is like getting hit by a car. Horses can weigh up to 2000 pounds. Now imagine getting hit with 2000 pounds at 20mph

a horse isnt going to run into a shieldwall

Nigga you seem to think a wall of shields = a literal wall stop learning history from Hollywood.

If I recall correctly his scout / guide purposely led the army into the middle of nowhere

nigga it looks pretty hard for cavalry to kill the dudes in there

>run into it
>niggas go flying

Literally just send a fucking armored horse in, you think two guys can stop the force created by a 400kg animal?

>not cicero's righteous beheading

are nigga bitch ass horses that stupid to suicide into that shit?
wouldnt they stop before hitting them?

>suicide
The Romans are the only ones in danger in that situation. The testudo was used to block projectiles not as an actual combat formation you dumb Americano.

>How to defeat horse niggers

Force them to fight uphill

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Cilician_Gates

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mount_Gindarus

As always, Cicero takes second place, like the little bitch that he was

The only thing keeping that shield from smacking into his face is the strength of his arms.

Other posters imagine the horse crashing into it, in reality all that is needed is a well supported spear with the momentum of a horse and rider behind it. Parthian heavy cavalry posed a serious threat and they would have to leave the testudo formation to try and counter it.

explain pls. What should it be called instead?

why didn't Crassus just find the high ground?

youtube.com/watch?v=-fWsQQC0uZo

armenia was enough

are fucking retarted or just 12

Was he that bad a commander or was he just overwhelmed by his desire to prove himself?

They absolutely do. They're trained to do it from birth.

He wasn't a bad commander. Crassus' main issue was that he trusted the locals. Antony did the same thing later and he suffered for it too

Physics user.

The 10- kg, centimetres-thick shield is backed by the physical strength and footing of one dude.
The tip of the 4+ metre long kontos is backed by the rider putting his full strength behind it (secured by a saddle), along with that of his halfton horse and the armour they're both wearing, at the speed of at least 20 km/h. It'd be worse than getting hit by a charging moose.

Actually standing still and trying to brace for impact would be stupid. It'd be more prudent to break formation to avoid the lance, surround the horse and try and drag the rider down. Assuming you didn't just avoid the lance because you're scared. Which is exactly what the Parthians were hoping for, so they could wheel around and pelt the loose formation with arrowfire again.

>distrust the loyal ally Armenia with much to gain from an invasion of Parthia alongside Rome
>trust a snaggletoothed goat herder to lead his 50000 men through the desert
???

Why are the legions so aesthetic?

Because Hollywood makes them seem that way.

In reality they probably had a hodgepodge of different armors with slight variations even between armors of the same general type depending on the smith that made them and a complete clusterfuck of shield paintings.

The whole complete uniformity prevalent in movies is likely an exaggeration. I mean they were generally uniform in that you wouldn't get a guy armed with wildly different weaponry than another but this is still an era where the very idea of interchangeable parts was completely alien. Thus the equipment invariably differed slightly from soldier to soldier and widened between units.

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>AGHHHHHHHHHHH VALENTINIAN HELP ME!!!!!!

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>Because Hollywood makes them seem that way.
Are strips of leather for armor and fibreglass helmets really "aesthetic"?

>In reality they probably had a hodgepodge of different armors with slight variations even between armors of the same general type depending on the smith that made them and a complete clusterfuck of shield paintings.
That's not entirely true, there are only so many ways to make a chain hauberk, which would've been the most common kind of armor in most periods of Roman history, and we know that for most periods things like helmets and swords carried a general design trend, trends widespread enough to sort them into archaeological 'types'.

Plus, uniformity increased dramatically in the Late Roman period, where arms and armor were now made in factories owned by the state instead of private workshops. We also know that legions were identified by a device on their shields, so it definitely wouldn't be a "clusterfuck of shield paintings".

The Lorica segmentata is aesthetic as fuck. Whether you make it out of leather or metal doesn't matter the design is the same.

>That's not entirely true

Everything I say is completely and 100% factual regardless of whatever source you pull out of your ass. You are wron on every single contradictory claim and you should consider suicide for questioning my clearly superior and better informed intellect.

Although I would understand if you wanted to kill every available family member of yours first.

most aesthetic legions coming through, choo choo

except for what seems to be a complete lack of armor, I agree.

3rd century best century

CE or BCE?

Ahh, another man of taste.

Especially when they wear purple

Only late Roman legions were actually that standardized, prior to that they were a complete open clusterfuck with many Legions not even being funded/endorsed by the State.

what the fuck? There's no way that helmet collar just flaps around like that, it must have come with a chain or fiber shroud

Even if they were funded by a single rich guy or general/governor, he'd have to order the gear from a smith or workshop somewhere in bulk to outfit everyone, so among the same Legion there would be some degree of uniformity, with some replacements or modifications done by the Legionaries themselves making for more variety. However they just didnt have to buy their own gear after the Marian reforms. Everyone would get what they were handed, which could be old surplus, repurposed captured stuff or brand new. If legionaries bought and modified their gear, that was under their superiors' permission.

Can't you tell from the image?

That's a pretty shitty depiction

Also, the "Polybian" military was pretty stylish

>HOLY SHIT ARCADIUS YOU FUCKING PARTHIAN CATAMITE GET YOUR MEN IN THERE IESUS CHRISTUS WE'RE BEING SLAUGHTERED
>Flavius what's he saying I can't hear shit out of this mask
>idk man something about Parthians
>Welp that's all I needed to hear, let's get 'em Bucephalus
>*neighhhhhh*

Pretty good depiction.

The lance goes for whatever opening it can find. If it finds one it's likely to hurt the people inside the formation which will definitely effect the person's capacity to hold up a shield for the fraction of a section it takes the armoured horse to make contact with it. If the lance fails to find a gap it instead hits the shield, resulting in something like half a tonne moving in a fast pace centered on a very small area. Good look holding that shield up for when the actual horse is upon you. As if that wasn't enough the cataphracts also comes equipped with maces, axes and heavy swords that will trash your arrow-ridden shield. If they don't break your formation with the utter terror of a cataphract charge the cataphracts can just safely retreat to a comfortable distance with plenty of acess to water while you and your mates bake away in the blistering heat of a desert. If you try to pursue the cataphracts you'll get blastered by arrows from the horse archers who are steadily supplied with arrows by caravans of camels.
In other words: If you move you're dead, and if you stay you'll either get crushed by cavalry charges and the longer you wait the weaker you become.

Yeah, he was foolish enough to trust disloyal guides.

Yeah the 'polybian army' is top tier aesthetics.
I for one just love the italo-corinthian helmet. There's something incredibly appealing about knowing that even ancient people weren't immune to wanting to look as cool as the characters in their favorite vase-anime.

>>IESUS CHRISTUS
>>Parthians.
Not only was the Roman empire as a whole still majority polytheist when the parthians were around, the Roman military was like the aristocracy(I.E the various Senatorial families) in that they remained polytheist for longer then the rest of roman society.

Is the Italian army the successor to the Roman legions?

WHERES OUR DAMN FIRE SUPPORT

testudo is to shield from projectiles, the guys behind the front rank aren't braced at all, they're holding their shield above their heads. if a cavalry charge makes contact with the front rank they'll immediately fly backwards into the guys behind them, there's no mass there.

Germanic rape babies.

Shouldn't this have made them better at war?

>Leather lorica segmentata

>are nigga bitch ass horses that stupid to suicide into that shit? wouldnt they stop before hitting them?

Absolutely yes, the people that claim other wise are full of shit.

>It's over Crassus, I have the high ground!

Why do we have first hand accounts of horses charging directly into enemy formations from basically every era in history, then?

and to be clear I'm saying that horses are not stupid and will not charge into things

Because the enemy formation breaks under the charge and the horses no longer see a uniform obstacle.

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Crassus has often been listed among the "wealthiest individuals in history", although depending on the estimate of the "adjusted value" of a Roman sesterce, his net worth may also be placed in the range of US$200 million to US$20 billion.

Now imagine a grotesquely rich guy that has everything he would ever want, except a triumph earned through military conquest. He was also teased and kinda disliked. Now imagine being a shit general, and ignoring your officers in hostile desert territory.

Instead of heading to Armenia to collect even more soldiers, he said nah not worth the effort. He believed the local guides, who ran 7 legions (around 40-50k soldiers) around the deserts for a while. A Parthian cavalry detachment (1,000 heavy cav, 9,000 horse archers) came upon them and fucked their shit up with hit and run and then heavy cav charges. Crassus had no fucking clue what to do, so 20k romans were killed, 10k captured, 10k ran away while the Parthians lost like 40 heavy cav and unknown horse archers.

So after the trouncing, the survivors threatened mutiny if he did not parlay with the Parthians. He and his generals went to the Parthian camp and were killed. The Parthians then poured molten gold down his throat to mock his wealth and greed that got him killed.

Crassus' death really hurt the alliance between Caesar and Pompey, further contributing to the fall of the republic.

Look up the Battle of Carrhae.

Horses meant for war were bred and trained from birth to tolerate loud noise, ignore obstacles, and be incredibly violent in a melee. You don't even need to go back that far in time to see examples of this. During WW2 the Yorkshire Dragoons trained their horses in the exact same way.

>so among the same Legion there would be some degree of uniformity
And this is basically what was said originally. You fucking 4channers will argue about literally anything even if you're essentially saying the same thing, you're that starved for recognition.

>Now imagine being a shit general,
I wouldn't say that, he managed to basically finish the 3rd Servile War single-handedly. It's a testament to being a dumbfuck in Armenia since Marc Anthony fucked up in a similar manner less than 15 years later.

Putting down a rebellion of slaves does not a great general make.

>ignore obstacles
No amount of training will convince a horse to injure itself to please you, cavalry run THROUGH infantry, not into them. How do you think Napoleonic infantry were able to resist cavalry charges?

If your infantry formation remains in cohesion against a cavalry charge (which is easier said than done), the horses will veer away at the last moment if not outright stop dead in their tracks. This is why Napoleonic era heavy cavalry was typically ineffective against other heavy cavalry, a wall of horses will not run into another wall of horses, no matter how crazy the guys riding them are.

When that rebellion managed to wipe out 2-3 consular armies, then it at least requires a degree of competency. I'm not saying he's a Pompey or Caesar, he just has to be marginally good to defeat the rebellion of Spartacus

Fair enough, capable until he took command of the invasion of Parthia.

No it wasnt

S Q U A R E

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>You underestimate my power!

>pretty good
>leather segmentata

I actually struggled to work out what the fuck was going on

>How many battles do you want senpai

Nisean horses that Iranians used like the Parthians/Parni and Persians were trained from birth to follow a rider's commands completely. That includes charging other horses, and armored men with pointy things. Yes, you can train a horse to do a lot of shit, niggah.

DELET

No you can't, stop being retarded.
Animals are not people, you can't con them into over-riding their self-preservation instincts and make them do things they know will inherently injure them. Ancient Persians did not have some mystical horse training technique that was lost to the ages that trained horses to run into walls their cavalry was subject to the same limitations as everyone else's, if a dense infantry formation held its ground they could not be directly charged and overrun. If that were the case the battle of Carhae would have ended with the first heavy cavalry charge.

>So why were the Romans fucked when they were in their testudo formation if it wasn't because the cavalry was charging into them?

Cavalry overcome a infantry formation that doesn't break by attacking the corners, they do not charge directly into the mass of infantry, they charge past them and whittle them down by killing the men isolated at the edges until the formation's morale fails and the formation breaks, at which point THEN the cavalry charges them directly. The Romans in testudo formation were fucked because it is an entirely defensive formation that didn't offer any practical way for them to attack the cavalry thundering past them killing the men at the edges with impunity.

This is why there was the alternation between heavy cavalry charges and horse archer attacks, rather than just the heavy cavalry riding over the Roman army like a lawn mower and massacring the lot of them. The Romans were attacked by archers putting them in testudo, then they were attacked by heavy cavalry shaving away at the corners, then when the Roman formation leaves testudo to drive off the cavalry the horse archers come back to pepper the Romans with more arrows at which point they go back into testudo and the heavy cavalry come back, repeat until Surena run out of arrows.

Rich dumbass with no military skill thinks he knows more than the generals.
Causes destruction of a once great republic.

Hmmmm.....

Really Romanuses the old Eunt Domus

Wish I had an older brother like Valens that left me with the easy and richer part of the empire whilst he suffers the "German" until his head explodes of anger
Wish they'd ruled for longer then they might've saved the empire.

Damn nigga where did you read all that? Plutarch?