It'd be nice to see an intelligent post from you.
It'd be nice to see an intelligent post from you.
he's usually so, but on a technology front the hoplite is outclassed. however, some may argue an effectively used combined arms approach would beat a 'normal' samurai army but i dont really agree.Originally Posted by [b
Quote[/b] (The Sword of Cao Cao @ July 16 2004,14:23)]It'd be nice to see an intelligent post from you.
Just because the samurai had steel doesn't mean they automatically win, remember: samurai had bamboo armor.
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dude, you obviously have on idea what your talking about. Samurai yoroi was madeo f metal and wood fibers along with a very little bit of bamboo. Samurai yoroi is also considered by many to be one of the best forms of armour out there. And Spartans didnt wear armour to begin with. THey had the red cloak and hoplon.
That is not the kind of line that leads one to civil and enlightening discussion. You may disagree with someone and they may be misinformed, but there is no need to put them down for it.
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Sorry, I simply mean that you dont... know what oyur talking about dude. I'm not trying to insult just stating a fact. Please if your not sure about what your saying, do a little research.
In case the smilie didn't tip you off, it was a joke.
We have a joke smiley. It's this little dude with a jester hat. Use him, and i might be "tipped off"
Ok, I edited my post.
warning thyis may bore you to death and beyond and is probably wrong
In the begining, the spartans did have a lot of armour, but they later abandoned their armour for their Ekidromoi(SP?) and adopted shorter swords to promote stabbing as opposed to slashing. The lack of armour was later mirrored all over greece to match the more agile Lakedomon(sp?) hoplite who actually discarded his armour in the first place to be able to catch peltasts and run faster in the first place.
As everybody followed suit and discarded their armour and adopted shorter swords, one may argue it was a prototype of legionary style warfare.
So the spartans were that good one on one maybe better than the samurai but the spartans whrere too conservative to last. Early spartans with their armour may well have stood a better chance against the teppo and arrows of the samurai and increasingly the ashigaru. later spartans without armour are vulnerable to heavy missile fire. also the spartans and probably the thessalians (arguably the best horse men in greece at the time of spartan hegemony) so their flanks may well have been not covered that well. also, peltasts and citizen archers are clearly no match for the samurai and ashigaru archery and teppo. Also we are not talking just about the spartans when they went to war. We must also take into accoubnt their allies. and by the end of Sparta, helot hoplites, would these have held the line in the face of large missile fire and teppo (which would have been pretty bloody scary) I think the Spartan Spartans may well have done but their allies i'm not so sure.
In hand to hand combat i may well give the victory to the Spartans whose teamwork in the phalanx is obviously undeniable. they have shields which are a big advantage. Also one may take into account i believe that Tokugawa Ieyasu got 80,000 men onto the field in certain fields. While the Spartans may whoop ass 1-1 or 1000-1000 the Samurai warlords (the daimyo) could easily, IMO summon many times more men into the fray so Sparta may win some battles but not the war. It's population was simply too small.
Thank you for listeninig to my (probably incorrect) rant on the subject.
Yea but including logistics and resources really doesn't make it a fair comparison. Sparta (and much of Greece) was on rocky terrain unfit almost entirely for farming. Japan at least had some valleys and fields in which farmers could find a fair amount of success. The resources of Japan would by far out-match those of Sparta. The original topic I believe was asking for a man-to-man comparison of which military system was better. IMO the Spartan system, when it first originated, was probably the best in the world with its tactics and use of the phalanx against the other city-states. But the major factor that caused Sparta to fall and what would cause Sparta to lose in this case is the fact that they would not change their style of warfare to face a new enemy. Out of all the Spartan military history the only major change would probably be that of constructing a fleet to crush Athens, and that was largely a one-timer. The samurai, however, often adapted to their enemies, as can be seen in their inventive styles of warfare (use of muskets, new tactics, early armored ships). These are some of possibly the more larger reasons why Sparta fell to Rome and Japan did not to the Golden Horde.
that is the point, I have stated man for man the spartans may win but in a proper all out war, the samurai may well whoop the hoplite's ass so bad it will take a decade to recover
In many ways this is rather depressing for me, I've always admired the Spartans.
true, but when did sparta ever manage to haul 80,000 men including allies onto a battlefield, prolly never, the samurai could and would do this on a few occasions.
And yes i do admire the Spartans as well
True a army of spartans would be slaughtered by a army of samurai.
I still think that a single spartan warrior could take a samurai and woop his a**
A man's real possession is his memory.In nothing else is he rich,in nothing else is he poor
Shakespeare
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
You can't say civilization isn't advancing: in every war they kill you in a new way.
If the human mind was simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to understand it.
Thats a little rediculous. Your Spartan is in bronze, my samurai is in steel. The hoplon isnt gunna hold of the katana very long, besides the earliest samurai, or rather the samurai that were around in Japan at this time, would be mounted, with a very powerful bow.
This entire argument is rather pointless if you ask me. It's like pitting a Redcoat against a machine-gunner.
Okay, we have a lot of comments about the inequity of Spartans vs the Samurai. Let's level the playing field then. Give the Spartans steel, equalize the army sizes, etc. Given all things relatively equal, who wins? A little explanation of why you pick one over the other would be nice too.
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Re: Spartan Hoplite v Samurai...
Simple, the spartans would set up their phalanx and start marching towards the Japanese. If the Japanese tried a frontal assault those taking part would be slaughtered. Learning from this, they would divide their forces and use their mobility to transfer a large amount of their forces to the Spartan flanks and rear. If the Spartans remain in their original phalanx then they would be slaughtered by the flanking forces. If they formed, oh say, a square formation, the Japanese would pepper them with arrows until they were weak enough to engage in melee combat.
This is assuming it would take place on a flat field. Obviously terrain could be a major factor as well. If the Spartans were facing the Japanese in a confined area, in which the borders of the battlefield was comprised of impassable terrain (a river, cliffs, the like) the Spartans might be able to trap the Japanese against the front of the phalanx and slaughter them. In most cases considering the terrain, the Japanese would win, due to the superior flexibility of their forces, the exact same reason why the Romans were able to conquer Greece.
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