Has learning history changed some of your previous held views on certain subjects?

This. It's become impossible for me to take a side anymore.

I used to think the age we lived in was somewhat unique. It's just a more confused Babylon. A thing of magnificent beauty, but most of what survived are just contracts, complaints and the trivial minutia of clerks.

>Rome is the greatest dream any civilization should aspire too.

Also this It's all so tiring sometimes. So many people think they're right and obsess over some long forgotten ideal (like Nazis or Tankies.) that they think will give their life meaning. I've come to sympathize with a lot of people just because you learn so much about the Human experience through time. The only thing I've become convinced by in the time I've spent learning about history is the only person who thinks they know the right way in politics and life is trying to sell to a sucker.

I now understand that adopting classical liberalism is the true path to enlightenment

I realized that people haven't changed that much but the many ideas of the past were in fact better than what we have now and whig history is a complete farce

Why do wh*Tes think history is a linear progression when even people with a 95IQ can see it is cyclical

How so?

Same. It's hard for me to get caught up in all the current political shit. It feels so temporary.

Hebrews warped the Genesis story
>Garden was a zoo
>Creator was self-absorbed
>The snake was a liberator

because once we didn't have ceramics and once we didn't have plastics

Any good books on their religion? I just got the book by Saggs on them but haven't opened it.

>The armies of classical Greece were not a group of highly trained individuals but rather it consisted of clumsy, ill-disciplined men with little to no training.

demonstrably false, OP is a faggot

I haven’t changed really
But l have a pregnancy fetish now and it’s all your fault

I could string up a long winded response. But instead just read this book which tries to frame a new model of Greek warfare based on classical cultural values:

It has made me conservative in the sense of being highly wary of...progressive is a bit of a buzzword but those who want to establish some utopian new order, whether it's a reactionary right wing movement a'la the Taliban or your dime a dozen communists.

I've just seen how the road to hell is paved with good intentions over and over.

I had a reverse happen with Islam. Since about 2005-2006 I was enthralled with Islamic history, loved it and immersed myself in it. Nothing turned me off of Islam or against Islam in Islamic history, but the trajectory of 2006 to the present has codified an ethos best described as good fences make good neighbors.

Try to find solace in the smallness of your life. You are just another traveler, it can be a source of pleasure to realize those you read about (and the many more who were nameless bystanders in the stories of Kings and conquerors) were people like you. You could have gotten along with many of them and been best friends, you could have hated and loathed others. I've found it interesting when I see traits of my own in historical personalities. And not the positive traits of an arrogant twat going "Oh look at that I'm like alexander :^)" but negative ones like learning about Churchill's Depression or Guy de Lusigian's indecisiveness and inclination to listen to the last person he spoke to.

More left wing politically. I don't put Rome or Ancient Greece on as much of a pedestal as I did when first getting into history; becoming more of a Perisa-boo. Religiously speaking, learning more about Paul shifted me away from Christianity; it's sad to think that whatever Jesus' teachings and original following was like died with the Ebionites.

>tries to frame a new model of Greek warfare based on classical cultural values
why? Greek soldiers definitely were well trained and equipped, and were famous for fighting in tight formation.

>What were their aims and intentions when they engaged the enemy? In other words, what did they think was acceptable and achievable in battle?
I'm not interested in mere re-characterization.

>In pitched battle, then, it seems the Greeks did not intend to win a symbolic victory in a fair contest of hoplites, but to destroy the enemy in a ruthless display of military power
>a tactical system which may occasionally have seemed limited, even primitive, but which aimed for victory by any available means, and nothing less.
weird, the author is under the impression people actually think that. This is fucking cringe.

>weird, the author is under the impression people actually think that. This is fucking cringe.

But people do think that. In fact people thought that Greek warfare mostly consisted of one fair fight to settle disputes. You still find people like Victor Davis Hanson pushing the old Orthodox model of unwritten rules and limited warfare despite the evidence showing otherwise.

Anyways, you don't have to read it. As stated on the book, there's nothing to show that the levies of the Greek city-states, aside from Sparta, had anything resembling any sort of training. And as he points out, the military writers of the classical era are constantly stressing that they should adopt some semblance of professionalism.

Also, he talks about the lack of training in chapter 2.

Why?

The more I learned about what a sham the enlightenment was, the more Traditionalist I became.

It hasn't made me change my main views on politics and reality. I was raised by an excommunist that acknowleged the betrayal of the communist party and became a successful bussiness man just before the banks bankrupted. He got ludopathy and wasted some of our savings, got divorced but is still contacting me. He developed a successful algorythm for football bets just some years ago.

My intellect has always been higher than everyone around me. Professor made me take an IQ test, I tried doing it, but I got distracted with irrelevant stuff making me spent more than ten minutes instead of finishing the math part of the test. I got a 147 verbal IQ, and 121 on visual IQ. Final score of 139 IQ.

My brothers have always demonstrated higher intelect in mathematics and holistic analysis than most of their aquaintances in school. That gave me a hint that my andean blood and genes is better than the spaniard one.

When I was 17 years old I discovered 9gag, got bored of it, and found Veeky Forums. Started lurking on /b/ for several months learning how to bait.

Then I started lurking Veeky Forums in 2015. Learnt how to bait with more success thanks to getting used to more extensive vocabulary.
I began getting a hint of argument direction and how to exploit fallacies.

I started lurking Veeky Forums in 2017. Knew some simple stuff about spanish history, and philosophy of the XIX century. I saw how few people talked about it, only to disrespect them or discussion about natives. I never was a fan of using memes, sometimes the brainlet wojak from Veeky Forums, but that was rarely the case just for the laughs.

I stop posting for a while due to preparing myself for the next uni year.

Autumn 2017, I notice a guy who spams the same argument "inca superiority". He literally posts this in every thread. It's actually quite entertaining. He mentioned once that native amerindians had a high development rate and talked about haplogroups.

I knew it.

>thinking the Greeks were Bantu
This is bait but for me studying history made me hate the French even more with just how much they fucked up euripe

>greeks preffered "just fuck my shit up" over professionalism, tight formations and military discipline

top kek and people say that us greeks have no resemblence to ancient greeks

Studying history pushed me away from any ideology and towards the centre but I wouldnt group myself with le radical centrists

Have you actually read Hansen? Hansen's model of "limited"Greek warfare (and that's limited to pre-Peloponesean war), isn't couched in restraint in battle, and he's acknowledged since day 1 that most causal ties happen in the post-rout chase.

Ancient Greek warfare was limited and ritualized owing to the extreme difficulty in taking any fortified position, and the fact that most polishes wouldn't bother. And when the option to hole up exists, it becomes very difficult for one polis to completely impose its will on another through war. There's always a safe haven to retreat to when things go belly up, so wars are generally fought with limited means over limited objectives.

sad

>Started to disregard materialism
>Become more critical of the enlightenment
>End up more and more into Traditionalism
>Unironically become a monarchist
>Leaning towards Indo-European paganism and learning more about Sufism

Why are you sad, lad?

This road leads to an unironic conversion to Islam, you know?

I keep seeing patterns, though i'm wary that may just be egotism. I see immense similarities between the politics of revolutionary Europe and the birth of the industrial era, and our modern world. While thankfully we've not had a second potato famine, the world is undergoing similar social tumult to those heady days of the early socialists and an era when being a Republican meant the liberal-est of the liberal, and the birth of the very concept of nationalism.

Rather than Industrialization causing the poverty of an agrarian populace, we have globalization causing the poverty of an industrialized populace. Professional class jobs are starting to fill up, leading to over educated and under employed young people in debt. People agitate for economic reform, the seizure of the property of the wealthy, and renewed concepts of national identity. Like the English Railway bubble, the pop of the American real estate bubble (which happened almost exactly the same way) has has ripple effects across the rest of the world.

The saving grace of the ruling powers is, again, no Potato famine. Hunger and starvation isn't sweeping the western world. Well, not yet anyway- maybe some form of swine flu or other horror bug out of Asia will cause mass die offs in our livestock. You never know.

But in any case, while this has all made me very cynical, it's also made me hopeful. Because our problems aren't unique, we've faced their like before, and we can overcome them.

>hate the French even more with just how much they fucked up euripe

Europe would have been better off under Napoleon

I became depressed

Thank you for posting this, user. here; this post revitalized me.

You just lack integral insight.

Welcome to the brainlet club.

Its about heroism, the number one novelty of war.
You see, humans want more then just live peacefully, we crave more.

How is it bait?
Have you read the book I linked in tg
He OP? It documents how nasty the Greeks treated each other in war and of their bloodlust towards each other even as far back as the archaic period.

For my second point of most Greek armies being barely above a mob, read this book linked here:

Dont call something bait just because it doesnt fit your worldview

Except that the archaic period is filled with sieges. The book linked on the OP talks about sieges in archaic Greece. In truth the Greeks also didnt seek the fairest plain to fight on, they fought by raids, ambush, surprise attacks and sieges. Pitched battle in the open plains was the last option after both sides had exhausted all avaloable options. If you also want to know why Greek warfare was about destroying your enemy all you have to look is at the practise of the trophy.
The book on Greek tactics points out that the setting of the trophy only occured right after the long and bloody chase of the defeated enemy. In fact the book points out that trophies werent dedicated to just winning battle but it was dedicates to the slaughter of the enemy:

>After this the Syracusans set up a trophy for the sea-fight and for the heavy infantry whom they had cut off up at the lines, where they took the horses; and the Athenians for the rout of the foot driven by the Tyrrhenians into the marsh, and for their own victory with the rest of the army. Thuc. 7.54.1

Thucydides gives us the explicit truth here of the nature of the trophy. The trophy was dedicated to the slaughter of your enemy and the amount of blood shed. Seeing it in this light it explains why two sides set up a trophy as we sometimes see. If both sides thought they had enacted enough bloodshed to warrant it they would set it up. Practices such as this shows there was nothing limited about Greek warfare.

>We are NO different than someone from 10,000 years ago.

In every age, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same.

>The book linked on the OP talks about sieges in archaic Greece.
The only sieges mentioned are Peloponesean war era sieges and a single siege in 427, both well after the Archaic period.

>The book linked on the OP talks about sieges in archaic Greece. In truth the Greeks also didnt seek the fairest plain to fight on, they fought by raids, ambush, surprise attacks and sieges. Pitched battle in the open plains was the last option after both sides had exhausted all avaloable options. If you also want to know why Greek warfare was about destroying your enemy all you have to look is at the practise of the trophy.
That has nothing to do with what I said, and has nothing to do with what Hansen says. So I want an answer: Which of these are the following?

A) You didn't bother reading the post in question. You have also not read anything by VDH.
B) You are so caught up in knocking down a strawman that doesn't actually exist that you invent claims and misread texts to strike at it?

Trophies are irrelevant. Ethics of war have nothing to do with Hansen's arguments, which are grounded in cultures and customs of COST, not some namby pamby "we should be nice". When your army is primarily consisting of your larger landowners, you can't afford to keep it in the field for a planting or harvest season, and thus the need to settle a war quickly take precedence over settling it on the most favorable terms, because the cost of extending a conflict rises too high."(Except in Sparta, where the calculation is slightly different owing to a slave supported professional army. But even then, they can't be away from the city too long, the helots will cause trouble) THAT is the core message in things like The Western Way of War, not "dey wur nice pplz so faught fairs".

1/3?

I've come to understand how critical material circumstances have been throughout history. They dictate not only what developments can take place or succeed, but even what kind of ideas people will have and how they think. Even social organisation primarily exists for the sake of resource management. The raw physicality of our existence is at the center and everything else has to revolve around it.

And seriously, show me, through your paper or other sources, 5 successful city assaults from the Archaic Age (The Archaic age is 8th century until 480 B.C.). Now contrast the number of successful city assaults you've demonstrated with the amount of times you have a war settled by a big battle, or even a succession of small battles, and then signing some kind of treaty. Huzzah, you've now demonstrated that this was not in fact total war. Yes, they took trophies. Yes, they exulted over the defeat of a foe. That's not "Destroying your enemy", especially not the way someone like Hansen defines it. Destroying your enemy is what the Allies did to Germany in the aftermath of WW2. The complete destruction of their force,s the total occupation of their country, and the very real possibility of dissolving them as a political entity. How often did that happen in the classical world, let alone the archaic world?

Not to mention, bringing up Peloponesean war era stuff in order to demonstrate Archaic era war-norms is idiotic. Everyone has acknowledged, from Thucydides on down, that the Peloponesean war really changed how warfare was done in Greece. And those changes are mostly on a civic level, not a tactical level. Remember, ancient Greece doesn't have state provision of arms to people. You went to war with what you could afford to equip yourself with, which necessarily concentrated military power in the hands of people who were wealthy enough to afford good equipment. That in and of itself limits the scope of war, because the poor, the majority of the population, have no business being in a warzone. Until you get to things like large scale naval war and extensive go-like games of circumvellation. Even the poorest can afford a triereme rower's ass-cushion, or haul rocks around. And so suddenly, the number of people involved in the war in a frontline capacity explodes. None of that analysis in regards to "what makes a war a total war" exists in your posts.
2/3

That's not to mention all the other problems you're skipping over. If you're rejecting a Hansen style model of a Hoplite battle, then I assume you think that an Othismos is more of a Golddworthy model; not a literal shoving with shields but a more "conventional" melee fight, where pushing back the enemy is accomplished by fighting and killing him. Do you have anything to reject Hansen's modeling and calculations that unless backed by the momentum of a charge, it's nigh impossible to penetrate a hoplite's breastplace or helm, even before they bring their shield into play? And if THAT's the case, then how do you account for the length of hoplite battles? If they're not pushing the other formation backwards or over, and they're reduced to ineffectiveness once the lines clash, you're left with (and Goldsworthy himself supports this hypothesis) some means of separating the opposing phalanxes for another charge and fight, which implies some kind of mutual assent, since backing up a phalanx when the other side continues pushing is an invitation to get crushed utterly.

Either way, you're left with some degree of yes, ritualization in a hoplite battle. And this ritualization has NOTHING to do with the fact that yes, each side wants to win, and each side is going to fight hard and yes, brutally in order to do so.

Tl;dr. You may be well read, but you have no fucking clue what you're talking about. You're not actually addressing positions anyone holds, largely because you grossly misunderstand what people mean when they say that Classical and Archaic greek warfare was highly ritualized.

fin.

>I've become politically jaded, if anything I've become more apolitical over time as my knowledge of history has increased.
I've become the exact opposite, and concluded that history doesn't matter only politics does. History is only relevant in it's ability to provide justification for modern politics, beyond that it's worthless trivia . You could safely drop history as we know it from the modern curriculum, as we already did with the study of the "classics" and nothing much would change.

an accurate understanding of history is somewhat crucial for military endeavors

good series of posts user

Amerindian superiority is demonstrated by all history. No need to thank me for showing the obvious.

Reading about the ancient near east TOTALLY changed my view of Judaism and Christianity. Aside from a core of Yahweh-only priests and a king or two who specifically patronized them, pre-exile Israelite religion was indistinguishable from its neighbours in terms of practice. The idea of a strict covenant that the people fell away from is pure fiction.

About Genesis, I think the expulsion from was more of a just-so story to explain human society, not a fall into sin. You neatly get the origins of marriage, childbirth, agriculture, cities, nomads, etc. the basics of all ancient near eastern life. The snake isn't evil and is literally just a snake, a trickster animal that fools humans because that's just what it does ("the snake was more crafty than any other wild animal that Yahweh God had made.")

Ive generally accepted that things are often too complex to simplify into a single sentence. As a result ive found it difficult to decide upon my political views and what is best for society and generally became more apathetic.

so just this desu.

Not the guy you're responding to, but I'm not so sure I agree with you on that last part. The word choice, at least by the time Genesis gets written, makes a very clear link between the serpent and the man. The root word for the "crafty" nature of the snake is the same one used to describe the nakedness of the man and his wife just a single verse before, and that verse is almost certainly supposed to suggest a kinship or link between them.

>Ive generally accepted that things are often too complex to simplify into a single sentence. As a result ive found it difficult to decide upon my political views and what is best for society and generally became more apathetic.

Narratives and ideologies are always simplifications. That's not inherently bad. You need simplification to get anything done. Being pure rationalist results in indecision and stagnation.

Some ideoloes are MORE correct than others.

this.

>Some ideoloes are MORE correct than others.
no. some ideologies align more with social realities than others, and to subscribe to that ideology makes you better suited to navigating social relations. it's not more correct, its only more suited to the prejudices of your contemporaries.

Good point, I've also read that it's an ironic connection. Their nakedness ('arum) was nothing to be ashamed of when they weren't self-aware and it represents that, but the snake tricks them into self-awareness with his craftiness ('arum). They become knowledgable beings but now have to work and toil in exchange. I don't know what you imply the meaning is by kinship, though.

I'm saying that Genesis 3:1 could just as easily be read as saying that the serpent was the most naked of all the beasts of the field. And if whomever wrote Genesis simply wanted to stress the serpent's intelligence, why not נוֹצֵץ or מְפוּקָח or בַּר דַעַת ?

עָרוֹם was chosen for a reason, and that reason almost certainly has something to do with the status of humanity. Remember, they WERE naked back in 2:25, they just weren't aware of it or its significance, but the nakedness was present and likely would have kept on going had it not been for the eating episode, the same way that the snake is naked (most naked). The snake isn't the cause of their nakedness, but rather their understanding of such; which puts the snake on even terms, more or less with a pre-fall humanity.

>an accurate understanding of history is somewhat crucial for military endeavors
Not really.
The history is irrelevant to people that study history for understanding of military affairs, it's the scenarios that history has to offer couched in easy to swallow narratives that hide the dry dogma of abstract military theory, that matter.

>Has learning history changed some of your previous held views on certain subjects?

Absolutely.

The more you go down in history, the more you realize we as a planetary civilization have not changed that much in regards to needs/wants/political and spiritual affairs as far as 6000 years BC

Yes, but that's because the snake's intelligence reveals the man and woman's nakedness to themselves. I don't think it's meant to be equal to humanity at all, it represents knowledge and understanding, as it did in some other ANE cultures, the pun exists to show that knowledge via the snake is what creates awareness of the nakedness.

The snake is definitely an actual snake, it can talk because the story is mythical. If it's not a snake, why does Yahweh command it to crawl on the ground, eat dust, and bite women's heels? The story is etiological.

I'm still not sure exactly what you're getting at, what would the snake being "equal" imply?

In a story that goues out of its way to point out that the nakedness was there all along. What purpose does Gen 2:25 then serve? (And let's not forget, the paragraphing system is a way more recent invention than the text itself. An audience contemporary to when it was written probably had a very different organizational scheme, even if what exactly it is has been lost)

And if it's not meant to be equal, why is the single adjective applied to either by that point the exact same word? That doesn't suggest equivalence to you?

I agree that it's definitely a real snake, or at least an archetypal snake alongside the archetypal humans.

>I'm still not sure exactly what you're getting at, what would the snake being "equal" imply?
The snake's being equal implies that the eating the fruit was a trigger, not a root cause of total awareness. After all, there's no indication that the snake ate of the tree, but it is עָרוּם. Even before eating, humanity occupies a more than animal spot, and are supposed to have lordship and dominion over the normal animals, to rule them and to name them. The world is described as man's footstool, an image usually associated with deities. Therefore, in order to be placed in an equal or at least near-equal position, the snake is much more than just an ordinary animal, even a tricky, deceitful, clever one.

I just explained what the pun is for, it's showing the knowledge they'll get and its relation to their nakedness. I don't see the implications of equality, you seem to think the wordplay explicitly says they're equal when it doesn't. You even pointed out that man and woman are special creatures above the rest of Yahweh's creations, the snake isn't part of that. Yahweh made it clever because the snake was a symbol of knowledge, which people don't start with. It's "just-so" that it's clever because ANE beliefs included the idea of snake=knowledge. Everything you said points to it being totally different to humans. It's more than an everyday animal because the story is folkloric.

I think you're treating it more like a philosophical treatise than an ancient myth. Sophisticated in its own way, but very much a story within a culturo-religious context, not a perfectly intricate discourse.

Also you STILL haven't explained what the implication of the equality is. Are you saying the snake is Satan?

>I just explained what the pun is for, it's showing the knowledge they'll get and its relation to their nakedness.
And I've explained for about three times that this makes no sense, because nakedness is the same thing as the awareness of nakedness.

> You even pointed out that man and woman are special creatures above the rest of Yahweh's creations, the snake isn't part of that.
Except of course for the adjective equivalence, and the ability for the snake to seriously affect humanity.

>Yahweh made it clever because the snake was a symbol of knowledge, which people don't start with.
But that's wrong you fucking retard. They are וַיִּהְיוּ שְׁנֵיהֶם עֲרוּמִּים they are both on an equivalent with the snake, before they even meet it.

>I think you're treating it more like a philosophical treatise than an ancient myth. Sophisticated in its own way, but very much a story within a culturo-religious context, not a perfectly intricate discourse.
I think you can't read, or are so caught up in fighting some sort of weird YEC boogeyman that you can't help but read anyone who disagrees with you as not being some gibbering at the mouth Christian fundie.

>Also you STILL haven't explained what the implication of the equality is. Are you saying the snake is Satan?
No, I'm not. Why are you unable to deal with what's written to you and instead go having to invent shit? The snake is an archetypal non-ordinary animal. It has manlike applicable intelligence, that's all. I have not once mentioned Satan, and I have no idea why you are at all. (Besides the aforementioned boogeyman)

Any sane person would reach this conclusion after a while or at least get some sounded views desu

I know you've repeated yourself. I think your reading is a reach, what about the wordplay implies they have a similar status? You keep saying the word is the same therefore the actual characters are equal, but what is the justification beyond that? It's a crafty snake but what makes it equal? Nothing in the story implies equality, the snake is a wild animal or beast unlike the humans, it didn't need to eat the fruit, its punishment is totally different to the humans. Why all these differences if the story is saying they're equal?

I agree that it's not an ordinary everyday snake like we'd see, it's a talking snake of folklore, that's why it can affect humanity. My unanswered question is: what are you saying the equality implies? What is the significance in the story of this supposed equality? We both know the wordplay, but where is the thematic equality and what is its function? I'm talking more broadly than the single word.

I became a Confederate sympathizer. No mercy for those who violate their own countrymen.

you sound like a prick

>history is irrelevant to people that study history for understanding of military affairs
what?
Are you seriously implying that Caesar has nothing valuable to offer in terms of the execution of a military campaign?

For me I feel like factors like technology, industrialization, and population affect politics far more than politics affects them, and they are far more responsible for the state of today's society than whether leftists or rightists win in politics.

I really appreciate all your work. Keep it up, user.

Also, what's your IQ?

>You could safely drop history as we know it from the modern curriculum, as we already did with the study of the "classics" and nothing much would change.

"No". The study of history is needed to create a form of national identity that binds a countries citizens together and creates a nation, it should be required throughout education as a means of instilling 'traditional' values (although they don't need to be old per se just the values that the state wishes to perpetuate. I think a lack of this is going to lead to substantial social issues especially in western countries if large scale migration is going to be the norm there should be an effort made to assimilate those migrants and create a connection to their new parent nations values (however invented they may be). There are others reasons why historical education is important but this is the main one imo

Ill respond to your points once I get on my PC but the reason i brought up the natures of trophies was to showcase that Greek warfare was not only brutal but bloodthristy. It may not have been like ww2, no ancient state had the abilitt to wage it like that, but it doesnt mean Greek warfare was limited in its destruction. Now the setting of the trophy is mentioned BEFORE the Pelopennisian War. Its casually mentioned by Thucydes in the aftermath of the battle of Potidaea in 432 bc (Thuc. 1.63.3). The fact that it is just casually mentioned may mean that it is an fact an older custom and the custom did not originate from the Peloponnesian War. Now recall the quote i posted. How Thucydides told us the Syracusans set up a trophy for the men they had killed. Recall that the trophy was set up only after the chase that followed the rout. It becomes apparant that the Greek tactical thought was about destroying the enemy.

>implying slavery was bad
Lol I bet you're one of those people who used to believe it wasn't about slavery and got corrected.

>the Greek tactical thought was about destroying the enemy
no shit, did you think this was arcane or something?

I don't think it's arcane. However it's still a widely held belief that the Greeks didn't chase each other following the rout. In the context of the post I was responding to he's talking about Victor Davis Hansen. Hanson's belief is this, in the late 8th century BC arose the middle class farmers who basically became the "hoplite class". This new class basically set up the rules of war in which they aimed to limit the amount of destruction cause by war to protect their farms. They fought short and brutal, but fair, affairs in leveled plains. However during the peloponnesian war this order broke down.

My point is that there never was any attempt to restrain the bloodshed. In fact from this list of the classical era, you can see there never was any attempt to restrain the butchering of the enemy. The fact that a custom such as setting up a monument to celebrate the killing of your enemies is casually talked about before this supposed shift in attitude proves that there never was such a thing.

so you're telling me it's surprising people don't allow their enemies in war to regroup?

>making your opponent run away and die is the very thing you hope to achieve when you go into battle
astounding.

300

I'm a lot more open to biological determinism as a theory of human behavior now than I was before, and I'm a lot more right wing even though I do still have some left wing sympathies.

I guess it's evened me out a bit desu

>When I was 17 years old I discovered 9gag, got bored of it, and found Veeky Forums.
Never should have come here

>I don't think it's arcane. However it's still a widely held belief that the Greeks didn't chase each other following the rout.
Exactly who holds this belief?

>n the context of the post I was responding to he's talking about Victor Davis Hansen. Hanson's belief is this, in the late 8th century BC arose the middle class farmers who basically became the "hoplite class". This new class basically set up the rules of war in which they aimed to limit the amount of destruction cause by war to protect their farms.
That is not what VDH writes. Have you ever actually read anything by him?

Is it not what he writes in his little books? Just re-reading Western Way of War reveals his ignorance of Greek warfare. The fact that he says the Greeks have a disdain for tricks and deceit despite the fact that there's plenty of examples of them fighting this way and gardening praise.

>real history
>written by the winners
>says the losers were the bad guys

Also the fact that he calls the Greek phalanx one of stark order and discipline and describes the Persians as disordered mobs. This is just wrong.

No, it is not what he writes in his books. You want Western Way of War?

luna.cas.usf.edu/~murray/pdf/Hanson-01.pdf

Start with PDF page 36.

>A great number died only when there was a sudden collapse, a collective loss of nerve, when the abrupt disruption of the phalanx sent men trampling each other in mad panic to the rear, either in small groups or worse, individually to save themselves from SPEAR THRUSTS IN THE BACK
(Capitalization mine)

Or two pages earlier

>Wheat and barley can be burned but only during a period right before the harvest, which would require the ravagers to arrive in enemy territory at precisely the right time. And numerous difficulties limited that scenario: if they had delays in mustering troops, their arrival on the enemy flatland would be amid grain still green, cereals impossible to use as a supplement to their own rations and not at all combustible; while later invasions, in late June or July, might find fields harvested and a populace willing to ride out occupation, secure in the belief their produce was safe behind strong walls. The key, then, was to invade right at the beginning of harvest, to burn the barley and wheat, to deny the enemy the dividends of an entire year's work and investment, to use the produce to feed the very agents of it destruction. Yet, there remains one final iron;y the invading hoplite army of small farmers had their own responsibilities back home; and the time they spent torching the grain of the enemy might mean that their own fields were left without adequate help just when harvest labor was most precious. In short, agricultural devastation was far from a simple process; even when accomplished it usually had few long-term effects.

No, he doesn't. He says that the phalanx was a tighter and narrower formation than the Persians, not a more orderly one. Do you have a rebuttal to that?
(Page 33)
>The battles at Marathon (490) and Plataia (479) demonstrate this clearly: relatively small numbers of well-led, heavily armed Greeks had little difficulty in breaking right through the hordes of their more lightly equipped and LESS COHESIVELY RANKED adversaries from the East

(again, capitalization mine)

He, right here, quiet literally says that long pursuit was rare in Greek clashes. This is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. See:
(You)

>For, you know, when states defeat their foes in a battle, words fail one to describe the joy they feel in the rout of the enemy, in the pursuit, in the slaughter of the enemy. What transports of triumphant pride! What a halo of glory about them! What comfort to think that they have exalted their city! Everyone is crying: `I had a share in the plan, I killed most'; and it's hard to find where they don't revel in falsehood, claiming to have killed more than all that were really slain. So glorious it seems to them to have won a great victory! Xen. Hiero 2.15-16

In fact he glosses over the purpose of the trophy as well.

>And the Lacedaemonians were in no uncertainty about whom they should kill; for then at least heaven granted them an achievement such as they could never even have prayed for. For to have a crowd of enemies delivered into their hands, frightened, panic-stricken, presenting their unprotected sides, no one rallying to his own defence, but all rendering all possible assistance toward their own destruction,—how could one help regarding this as a gift from heaven? On that day, at all events, so many fell within a short time that men accustomed to see heaps of corn, wood, or stones, beheld then heaps of dead bodies. Furthermore, the Boeotians of the garrison in the port were also killed, some upon the walls, and others after they had climbed up on the roofs of the ship-houses. Xen. Hell. 4.4.12

In fact constructing a trophy occurred only after the chase, which he ignores as well

>The rest of the army returning with Clearidas from the pursuit stripped the dead and set up a trophy. Thuc. 5.10.12

>The Athenians did not pursue far, being held in check by the numerous and undefeated Syracusan horse, who attacked and drove back any of their heavy infantry whom they saw pursuing in advance of the rest; in spite of which the victors followed so far as was safe in a body, and then wnt bck and set up a trophy. Thuc. 6.70.3

uh, he seems to have cited a few sources for that claim specifically referring to Hellenes against each other. Care to address them?

studying Persia will do the same if you're not well acquainted with Zoroastrianism. afterwards Christianity seems like a mix of Zoroastrian and Hebrew ideas.

A lot of those sources are late period sources and some of those sources write of an idealized past but I'll see them. The Thucydides source context is the Spartan King Agis who managed to wheel his entire army to save his left flank, in which his enemies ran away.

In fact Thucydides notes that the Spartans did not pursue very far which some later sources attribute to the fact that they didn't want to kill their fellow Greeks. But in fact this was done so the Spartans wouldn't lose cohesion and have the possibility to face a re-organized routed enemy. Aside from that, as you can see here from this list:
Chasing your defeated foe was the norm, not rare. In fact you have several battles listed in which the pursuing party got counterattacked.

As Xenophon tells us, words can not describe the joy felt in the rout, pursuit and slaughter of your enemy. In which the men of the city-states cry out in joy in having butchered their enemies.

And you only have to look at this quote here to know the Spartans had no trouble in taking joy in slaughtering their enemies:
For to have a frightened, panic stricken, unprotected and totally defenseless man is a gift from heaven.

I began my conversion to Islam.

>He, right here, quiet literally says that long pursuit was rare in Greek clashes. This is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. See:

>For, you know, when states defeat their foes in a battle, words fail one to describe the joy they feel in the rout of the enemy, in the pursuit, in the slaughter of the enemy. What transports of triumphant pride! What a halo of glory about them! What comfort to think that they have exalted their city! Everyone is crying: `I had a share in the plan, I killed most'; and it's hard to find where they don't revel in falsehood, claiming to have killed more than all that were really slain. So glorious it seems to them to have won a great victory! Xen. Hiero 2.15-16

Funny, I don't see anything in there talking about the length of the pursuit. How long did it take? How did the men keep their energy up after fighting what was possibly an hours long battle in heavy and hot armor? You know, stuff that Hansen spends an entire section of the book talking about. You did note that he says a LONG, drawn out pursuit. He draws parallels to Napoleonic warfare, where pursuit can laws longer than the main phase of the battle itself, days. How many chases in Hoplite warfare lasted days?

I can only conclude that you are being deliberately dishonest, as it takes actual work to be this stupid.

So again, deal with VDH's actual claims, not the ones that you want to strawman. How long did these pursuits take? How many of these battles did they result in annihilation of the enemy force? How many resulted in the enemy force taking 50% causalties? 30%?

By the way, while you're at it, and since you apparently now have access to a computer, can you answer the questions that you promised to up in post ? Where are those successful archaic age city assaults? Why do cities rarely attempt to extirpate other city-states as political entities? You claim that

>no ancient state had the abilitt to wage it like that, but it doesnt mean Greek warfare was limited in its destruction.
Which is obviously bullshit. Have you never heard of the Assyrians? Even the Achmaenids would stamp out rival political entities utterly. Where do you see classical Greeks following up a battle victory with the complete dissolution of another Polis?

What exactly do you think the model of Othismos is, and how do you avoid the twin problems of insufficient air circulation among two clashing phalanxes to keep them at it for hours without everyone suffocating, and the enormous danger of backing up first if the enemy doesn't agree to do the same without some degree of ritualization in hoplite war?

Why is it that you focus on the same two things over and over again, chasing and trophies when NOBODY is contesting them?