Casse

[The Persian Cataphract]

I think lobf's point is that the Britons had absolutely no impact on the rest of the world until the Romans conquered Britain. I wouldn't argue for their removal, though - how much impact did the Sarmatians or Lusitanians have, after all? EB is a game of "what if".

With all due respect, using that map to say "Keep the Sauromatae" is like arguing for the Sabyn with a map of the Abbasid Caliphate...

The mighty Casse Empire! How the King of the Sabaeans must have hoped, like Alexander, that there were new Worlds to conquer, when he had marched his armies to the edge of the known world! The Armenian king Tigranes almost sacked Rome... if only he hadn't thrown away his entire empire to a single legion. Clearly, some of the factions achieved very little, others built mighty empires. The list is not simply a "power list". Or do you think it is for some reason?

Careless phrasing and invalid examples won't get you anywhere, regardless of how well-founded your main point at hand may be.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Yes that is a point *but* I am unsure of wether even the M2TW engine allows for different weapons used within the same units.

However if not the option to note their social class (as is the practice with current units anyways) within their description fits them well enough, especially if the player takes care to mix & match his deployment of soldiers.

Unless you want to explicitly have this distinction (making a couple of names up as I go: freemen, nobles, mercs) appear in their names... (As it partially does in the Greek unit roster, e.g.: Pezhetairoi, Argyraspides, Hypaspistai, Hetairoi.) But then again there's Solduros, as well as Cingetos and Neitos. From what I heard the latter two would simply refer to being a professional soldier?

[paullus]

aren't most of them divided by social class already? chainmail and swords and horses at the top, some armor and swords and spears/javelins in the "upper-middle class," some swords and mainly spears in the middle class, and lower-quality spears and javelins in the lower classes. (edit: units of axemen would seem to be the main exception here).

so is the question you're raising more a question of naming, or more a question of class? I think to some extent that question is moot: men of a social class sometimes have their social class identified by their military service. Thus the differentiation between Celtic levy units and Celtic "spear-guy" units is actually more of a social distinction than an equipment distinction, because they both carry spears, but from different social groups.

[Elmetiacos]

Careless phrasing and invalid examples won't get you anywhere, regardless of how well-founded your main point at hand may be.

Those are meant to be invalid examples!

[Elmetiacos]

I'm not arguing for mixes within units; I don't think it can be done. I mean that there shouldn't be units with all swords or all axes. Everyone should have spears as their main weapons (in line with sword development through the La Tene period) and be differentiated according to how good their equipment is which would also be reflected in morale and discipline. I think this really needs a new thread to be discussed in detail.

[Foot]

I'm not arguing for mixes within units; I don't think it can be done. I mean that there shouldn't be units with all swords or all axes. Everyone should have spears as their main weapons (in line with sword development through the La Tene period) and be differentiated according to how good their equipment is which would also be reflected in morale and discipline. I think this really needs a new thread to be discussed in detail.

That is how we stat our units. You won't find units equipped with chainmail and the like having stats more suitable for a militia unit (well in most cases).

As for all units having spears, this is not really possible due to the limit of two weapons for each soldier. As one of these slots is generally taken up by some sort of throwing spear or javelins, a spear as a main weapon will be a soldiers only weapon - unfairly limiting a celtic army to spear only units.

Foot

[paullus]

that's quite true, Foot. Many of the professional/elite soldiers, and many other warriors in general, in our period carried 3 types of weapons, and its just an unfortunate limitation of the platform that we can't represent that.

[Ludens]

What comments about the inclusion of factions?
EDIT: Oh, I see, because I said that team aren't inlcuding only mighty, empire building factions, that counts as a comment on faction inclusion. Yes, very clever.

Together with the sarcastic comments on the importance of the Saba, Armenians and Sarmatians those were construed as critisism, yes. Forgive me if I misunderstood you.

Yes that is a point *but* I am unsure of wether even the M2TW engine allows for different weapons used within the same units.

The question came up on the TWC a couple of times. Foot or another team member answered that there will be some variation within a weapon type, but because they want to stat the units accuratly there won't be both short and longswords in a single unit.

Anyway, I've always taken those units to grouped based on battlefield role rather than equipment. Say, Gaeroas as the main battle line and Botroas/Bataroas as the heavy hitters. The names suggest differently, though, but do we know any Celtic word for battlefield roles?

[Elmetiacos]

But Celtic armies do seem to have used spears only in hand to hand combat. Wealthier troops often had swords, but one interesting fact is the way they developed. In the Hallstatt Period, late Bronze and early Iron Age, swords are longer and have points - this is the leaf bladed variety people visualise when they think of a "Celtic longsword". This type is abandoned in the La Tene Period, and swords become generally shorter and with blunt ends. We also find more finely decorated scabbards. Doesn't this suggest that the sword is more of a status symbol and less of a primary battlefield weapon? In the EB time frame, I think Celtic nobles would have used spears and javelins, only resorting to swords if the spear was lost or broken, or to cut the heads off the dead.

[paullus]

that's just not true. many la tene swords are still quite long, though generally not as long as the bronze age swords, and many of them are quite vicious swords. its true that there are also blunter or shorter swords, but those are actually different from one another: most long swords develop blunt ends, while mid-length to shorter swords almost always maintain a sharp end of some sort. we might also bear in mind the importance of swords in representations or descriptions of Celts in the Greco-Roman world, which arise entirely from encounters with La Tene Celts.

[Elmetiacos]

The only example I can find is the famous "Dying Gaul" who has been given an obviously Greek sword anyway... all the warriors on the Gundestrup Cauldron have spears... can you supply any examples of swordbearing Celts in ancient art?

[blitzkrieg80]

This website is hardly the best on the subject, but I EASILY found information useful enough to make your statement meaningless concerning Casse.

http://dnghu.org/indoeuropean/indo-european.htm

"NOTE. Later evolution of Celtic languages: ē >/ī/; Thematic genitive *ōd/*ī; Aspirated Voiced > Voiced; Specialized Passive in -r.

Italo-Celtic refers to the hypothesis that Italic and Celtic dialects are descended from a common ancestor, Proto-Italo-Celtic, at a stage post-dating Proto-Indo-European. Since both Proto-Celtic and Proto-Italic date to the early Iron Age (say, the centuries on either side of 1000 BC), a probable time frame for the assumed period of language contact would be the late Bronze Age, the early to mid 2nd millennium BC. Such grouping is supported among others by Meillet (1890), and Kortlandt (2007).

One argument for Italo-Celtic was the thematic Genitive in i (dominus, domini). Both in Italic (Popliosio Valesiosio, Lapis Satricanus) and in Celtic (Lepontic, Celtiberian -o), however, traces of the -osyo Genitive of Proto-Indo-European have been discovered, so that the spread of the i-Genitive could have occurred in the two groups independently, or by areal diffusion. The community of -ī in Italic and Celtic may be then attributable to early contact, rather than to an original unity. The i-Genitive has been compared to the so-called Cvi formation in Sanskrit, but that too is probably a comparatively late development. The phenomenon is probably related to the Indo-European feminine long i stems and the Luwian i-mutation.

Elmetiacos, did you even do research into true Celtic linguistics beyond internet fandom? What is your method for reconstruction from IE or are you seriously trying to say that Late Celtic language resembles the language of 272BC? I could be wrong, suredly, since I have barely spent time on it, but already I have found information contradicting your own. Is there some rule I should know of that has been dated to have taken place concerning e > i or IE genitive or some other Celtic language rule in effect? If not, I really wonder why you seem so certain.

Also, you assume that Casse is supposing to be nominative plural, but how do you know?

[edit]
Actually I have found some evidence in some Germanic loanwords from Celtic - 'wire' which can prove that the monopthongised ei to ē being different between various forms of Celtic, nonetheless important in their date during EB timeline, unlike Elmetiacos' assumption that all Celtic was fully transformed:

"These forms reflect an IE source ueiros meaning 'curved, twisted' but presuppose transmission through Celtic in its varying dialectal forms. Insular Celtic monopthongised ei to ē (cf. Old Ir. fíar, We. gwyr 'crooked') whilst on the continent the same development to ē took place (reflected in Germanic ē2, hence OHG wiara), but also a different monopthongisation to ī (hence OE wīr). To assume direct descent from IE would not account for the variants found in Germanic, which instead reflect dialectal differentiation in Celtic. When this loan is to be dated is more uncertain" (DH Green 155).

Elmetiacos, it is true that a nominative plural makes most sense, but you also do not know why an -e is there. as you say, a locative or whatever is silly... so there is more going on than a simple gloss. and Casse are not Gauls either.

[lobf]

So the Cassi are staying. That's cool. Is anything going to be done with their history section, though?

[blacksnail]

Are you asking if the history section write-up will be copied and pasted from EB1 into EB2?

[Elmetiacos]

This website is hardly the best on the subject, but I EASILY found information useful enough to make your statement meaningless concerning Casse.

(snip)

Also, you assume that Casse is supposing to be nominative plural, but how do you know?

I don't think I understand the point you're trying to make. What you cite here is irrelevant. Long e becoming i in "later Celtic" (whatever that's supposed to mean) is nothing to do with the final -i < -oi in an O-stem noun plural. Unlike with primitive Germanic, the declensions for Gaulish are pretty much of a known quantity, being attested in inscriptions. If you're going to argue against any of them, you really are out on a limb.

"Casse" not being a nominative is bizarre. Why would it not be? If the faction were given a name meaning "Kingdom of the Cassi" or "Tribe of the Cassi" it might make sense as a genitive but it isn't; it's "Casse" on its own. An -e ending would be a vocative or locative singular of an O-stem, which is silly.

[lobf]

Are you asking if the history section write-up will be copied and pasted from EB1 into EB2?

*Shrug* I don't know. Will it be revised?

[paullus]

let's see...the section of Callimachos' Hymn to Delos, written shortly after the Galatian invasion, refers to the sword as the Galatian weapon of choice (in fact, he refers to shield, sword, and belt).

terracotta Galatian soldiers are always shown either grasping the hilts of their swords, or with their swords (longswords) laid across the front of their thureoi. a series of terracotta figurines popular in Asia Minor show a combative, dynamic warrior in the process of drawing his sword from its scabbard.

several of the other Pergamene Gauls are shown with their swords, which are indeed mostly Hellenic types, but also include Celtic types. traditional Celtic swords are also represented on the Altar of Athena Nikephoros in Pergamon.

several Etruscan urns show nude, thureos-wielding warriors with wild hair and blue cloaks...I'd consider them to be Gauls, and they're shown with swords.

dueling Galatians terracotta from Pergamon shows two Galatians dueling with swords.

several Mysian/Bithynian funeral stelae show Galatians in combat, frequently with swords. MP could address that particular subject area far better than I, and might could shed light on the frequency with which Galatians are depicted with swords v spears.

I will however note that the Galatian stelai from Alexandria depict, when it can be seen, a spear, and I don't think any of them clearly depict a sword.

[Irishmafia2020]

See? My first post back on page 1 predicted that this thread would turn into an all out debate in which champions would emerge from their respective corners and throw down historical evidence, opinion, and interpretation in an all out battle royale. I did not make that post simply to spam, or to read my own prose, but rather to point out to a casual observer that this thread had the makings of the most interesting and hot discussion in this forum in weeks. My hat comes off for all participants, and I humbly defer to your comparable mastery of this subject. Oh yes, and keep the Casse...

[blacksnail]

*Shrug* I don't know. Will it be revised?

By the first open beta? I doubt it, the open beta is for gameplay and bug-testing, and the faction description is fluff. By EB2 1.0, the first true "release?" I'd be surprised if by then any of the faction descriptions were word-for-word identical between versions.

[lobf]

By the first open beta? I doubt it, the open beta is for gameplay and bug-testing, and the faction description is fluff. By EB2 1.0, the first true "release?" I'd be surprised if by then any of the faction descriptions were word-for-word identical between versions.

I'm not talking about minor edits, though. I mean, as far as I understand it, the whole page is nonsense or speculation.

[Bellum]

Are you talking about the faction description or the faction history page?

[MeinPanzer]

The only example I can find is the famous "Dying Gaul" who has been given an obviously Greek sword anyway... all the warriors on the Gundestrup Cauldron have spears... can you supply any examples of swordbearing Celts in ancient art?

I only have some examples concerning the Galatians, but they are numerous. We first have the mention in Livy 38.21.5 of Galatians only using swords. Then we have over a dozen terracotta figurines of Galatian soldiers only armed with swords. Finally, we have several representations on funerary stelae of Galatian soldiers again armed with a sword as their only weapon.

[Elmetiacos]

The Faction History is mostly fantasy. It says the Casse established themselves as a power swiftly after they arrived in the 3rd or 4th Century BC (presumably it has to be the 4th, or they'd be getting off their boats as EB starts) but we know nothing of them apart from what they did in Caesar's war against Cassivellaunus. We don't know if they were Gaulish conquerors or if they'd been around for hundreds of years. "transcribed oral histories, copied in later periods by Christian monks, point to stories of a failed attempt at unifying the whole island under their rule" is fiction; apart from (historically useless) mediaeval romance like Geoffery of Monmouth's History, there are no Irish-style transcribed oral traditions of British history, especially none that mention the Cassi. There's no evidence of a plague striking Britain in this period at all, but the page goes on to say that it was regarded as a bad omen and who died from it. "Catuvallarix" could not mean "King of the Islanders" - there are three Celtic roots in that name *katu- "battle" *walla- "powerful" and *rixs "king". Control of the tin trade implies control of Cornwall and South West England, but only South Eastern tribes have been mentioned.

That's just the first paragraph.

[Ludens]

But Celtic armies do seem to have used spears only in hand to hand combat. Wealthier troops often had swords, but one interesting fact is the way they developed. In the Hallstatt Period, late Bronze and early Iron Age, swords are longer and have points - this is the leaf bladed variety people visualise when they think of a "Celtic longsword". This type is abandoned in the La Tene Period, and swords become generally shorter and with blunt ends. We also find more finely decorated scabbards. Doesn't this suggest that the sword is more of a status symbol and less of a primary battlefield weapon? In the EB time frame, I think Celtic nobles would have used spears and javelins, only resorting to swords if the spear was lost or broken, or to cut the heads off the dead.

Are there any theories as to why the Celts felt the need to downgrade their sword design? It seems counterintuitive unless they completely stopped using them, even as a back-up weapon (and that would beg the question: why did they stop using them in the first place).

I'm not talking about minor edits, though. I mean, as far as I understand it, the whole page is nonsense or speculation.

:sigh:

The page was written by Ranika. Elmetiacos disputes Ranika's expertise and input to the mod. However, you cannot say Ranika is wrong without giving him a chance to defend himself. Unfortunately, he is not active anymore and there is no one else on the team with extensive knowledge of ancient Britain, so we cannot have a proper discussion about it. Presumably, the team is also unwilling to discuss it since it sparked a couple of flame wars previously.

[Mithridates VI Eupator]

I am by no means an expert in the field of ancient celtic grammar, so I will not go into an argument with those giants already at work here.

However, one has to remember that history, no matter how scientific you act in your approach to it, is a science where many facts are forever obscured in the mist of time. Not even those cultures, where the tradition of recording history was indeed strong, can ever manage to produce material that we can percieve as containing "the truth". Merely someone's subjective perspective of it. Then, when there are no written sources, and all we can find is oral tradition, writings from different times, or different parts of the world than the area discussed (like Herodotos description of India), and some archaeological finds, then, all we can do is to try to put all af theese "clues" into a context, and make our own picture from there, although, of course, omitting obvious faults.
Sometimes, like in the case of Casse, there are no 100% reliable sources, and that, what we can find, is often contradictory or incomplete.
Unless you have a time machine, you can never know for sure what the past really looked like; all you can do, is to collect the fragmets that are there, and make the best out of it. As I percieve it, this is what the EB team has done with the Casse faction.

[blacksnail]

I'm not talking about minor edits, though. I mean, as far as I understand it, the whole page is nonsense or speculation.

The dead horse - she is unable to go faster, no matter how much she is beaten.

[Elmetiacos]

Are there any theories as to why the Celts felt the need to downgrade their sword design? It seems counterintuitive unless they completely stopped using them, even as a back-up weapon (and that would beg the question: why did they stop using them in the first place).

I'd be interested to find out more on this, too.

The page was written by Ranika. Elmetiacos disputes Ranika's expertise and input to the mod. However, you cannot say Ranika is wrong without giving him a chance to defend himself. Unfortunately, he is not active anymore and there is no one else on the team with extensive knowledge of ancient Britain, so we cannot have a proper discussion about it. Presumably, the team is also unwilling to discuss it since it sparked a couple of flame wars previously.

I can only say this: If Ranika had quoted any sources, or even given some hints as to where his information came from, it wouldn't need him to be here to defend his assertions. Almost everything I've said on the forums you can go and cross-check and on one occasion Blitzkrieg and Tiberias Nero did some checking and were able to correct my Gaulish. Ranika didn't do anything like this except on one occasion where he quoted two archaeological sites where he claimed warhammers had been found - one turned out to be Viking and the other to contain nothing but slag. Instead he went into this almost Dan Brown world of secret unpublished Gaelic manuscripts - and surprise, surprise, three years on they're all still unpublished. Once again a mighty "hmm".

[Elmetiacos]

Sometimes, like in the case of Casse, there are no 100% reliable sources, and that, what we can find, is often contradictory or incomplete.

In their case, in fact, we have no sources whatsoever. They are a name in list written by Caesar and that's it.

[paullus]

on the sword changes:

1) thanks for recognizing the sources MP and I posted.

2) the old longswords were from the bronze age and, due to the nature of the bronze age economy, proliferated with only minor variations across a huge stretch of the ancient world. those swords, and most of the other forms of arms and armor of that period--including leaf-bladed shortswords, which were actually the more common blade, went extinct everywhere by the middle of the first millenium BC. they look nicer--beautiful in fact--but bronze is apparently not as good for long blades and killing people as an iron blade. Apparently the bronze longsword was so weak (its length was often pushed to its limit in many samples, and many samples are themselves broken, often at the tang, rather than being ritually destroyed as in later Celtic practice) that it had to have been used primarily for thrusting, rather than for cutting. Thus, even the soft iron longswords attributed to the Celts (overstatement anyone?) would be preferable and more attainable than these high quality bronze stabbing longswords.

[blacksnail]

I can only say this:

The problem is that "you can only say this" constantly - one might say "bordering on trollishly" - despite us repeatedly stating that we are looking into the issue internally. Again, I am amazed at the depth of passion you bring to the table for something of which you are no part and have no stake. It certainly doesn't appear as though you wish to "improve" anything here, which leaves me wondering exactly what your motives are for saying the same thing repeatedly in many places.