Greek Fire...

[Celtic_Punk]

hehe AOE2 was awesome I always used the spanish or celts. my brother used the huns cause you didnt have to build homes.

[Cute Wolf]

I think it was not napalm alone... According to my organic chemistry textbooks, the polymeric substance that formed napalm was not invented in Greek times, there should be more logical answer:

My Proposal for Greek Fire:
Greek fire was made from a mixture of naphta(or other aromatic compound), tar(for filling), and nitric acid/HNO3 (made by mixing saturated vinegar with saltpeter(NaNO3)... That mixtures was put in a wax tube-case, and transported as a solid ammunition. However, prior to their usage, they are melted down in situ (in their tube-sprayer), and ignited soon before spraying...

[Subotan]

hehe AOE2 was awesome I always used the spanish or celts. my brother used the huns cause you didnt have to build homes.

I liked the Byzantines,Turks, Vikings, Teutons and Mongols. My mate who I always played against always went Britons; having 40 longbowmen shoot a single villager at the same time is awesome.
Pity AoE3 was so bad. It focused too much on America, felt like Warcraft III with a crap plot and ultimately felt dated compared to RTW.

[Celtic_Punk]

I'd always fight the island battles, then make about 150 cannon galleons, bombard their island to smithereens, then destroy the galleons, then build a massive invasion force. Repeat till you conquer the world! too bad the Celts couldn't use cannon large cannon galleons lol.



Cute wolf, we don't know what Greek fire was made of. They could have invented Napalm. So much technology was lost due to the oppressive Christian Dark Ages.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I'd always fight the island battles, then make about 150 cannon galleons, bombard their island to smithereens, then destroy the galleons, then build a massive invasion force. Repeat till you conquer the world! too bad the Celts couldn't use cannon large cannon galleons lol.



Cute wolf, we don't know what Greek fire was made of. They could have invented Napalm. So much technology was lost due to the oppresive Christian Dark Ages.

Fixed that for you.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Religion did not destroy the knowledge and technology, the massive influx of "barbarian" tribes into the Roman Empire that toppled it, did.

EDIT: To clarify, I am not saying the invading tribes themselves destroyed it, I am saying the fact that the Roman people didn't pass on their knowledge to the invading tribes did. I would enjoy an explanation from someone as to why all this great knowledge never passed on to the invaders, I would think it would be held as very valuable to a warlord looking to expand his tribes empire.

[Brandy Blue]

You're quite right that religion did not destroy the knowledge and technology of Rome. What was preserved was largely preserved in monestaries.

I'm not sure what technology you have in mind which a dark age warlord could use, though. If Greek fire first appeared in the Eastern Empire in 513 AD, then a warlord settling in the former Western Empire would not be likely to get access to it. I imagine that the biggest military techlological breakthrough was the stirrup, which was not a Roman invention. It was invented somewhere in the East, I don't know where, and eventually spread to Europe.

Maybe if you could be more specific about what Roman military technology you have in mind, someone might know, or be able to speculate, why it was not passed on. For example, if you mean the testudo formation, I suppose that it would require well trained professional troops, not warrior/farmers lacking long hours of training. If you are thinking of elaborate defensive structures to defend cities, then I imagine the answer is that the tribes which invaded Rome tended to wander about quite a bit at first. (I think the Vandals went to Rome, then Spain, then Africa, for example.) There would be no point in building fancy fortifications when your territorial boundaries are so temporary and ill defined. Maybe by the time things had settled down a bit and economies were strong enough to allow such building projects, all the old Roman engineers had died off. Just a guess, I admit.

[a completely inoffensive name]

You have answered most of questions but what about field artillery? Also, what about farming, blacksmith and other social/practical technologies/techniques that seemed to be lost after the invasions. Surely a warlord with advanced metallurgy techniques like the Romans had would have enjoyed such an advantage over his neighboring/rival tribes who had not adapted such things.

[Subotan]

I'd always fight the island battles, then make about 150 cannon galleons, bombard their island to smithereens, then destroy the galleons, then build a massive invasion force. Repeat till you conquer the world! too bad the Celts couldn't use cannon large cannon galleons lol.

I always fail at naval battles, what ever happens. Happens on Rise of Nations as well, I have massive, metal armada smashed by wooden tiny flotilla. That's why I always refused to fight Archipelago.

.So much technology was lost due to the oppressive Christian Dark Ages.

Fix'd

I think the Christian monasteries were important in preserving a lot of knowledge that would have been lost, but whether that was due to faith, or the fact that they were the last bastions of civilisation is debatable. However, once you got into the Renaissance, the church started to become oppressive when it came to new ideas, e.g. Galileo, Copernicus etc, as it challenged the ideas of, uh, the Ancient Greeks (Read: Harry Stotle)

[antisocialmunky]

... oppressive when it came to new ideas, e.g. Galileo, Copernicus etc, as it challenged the ideas of, uh, the Ancient Greeks (Read: Harry Stotle)

To be fair, it depended on who was in charge. Copernicus's heliocentric theories actually interested a fair amount of clergy and Pope Clement VII even heard one of the lectures I believe. The church even encouraged his research for a time. The Pope he was under when he died wasn't nearly as receptive.

In fact, it is a very blanket statement to say the church supported or oppressed free thought. 1000 + years and so many people cannot be generalized so easily. Its like saying all Americans are fat or all French are stinky. You also have to avoid those crazy anachronisms such as Europeans thinking the earth was flat in 1492. Blame silly Washinton Irving for that one...

Still need to track down and kill whoever started the whole Lorica Segmetata thing.

[Brandy Blue]

For that matter, strictly speaking Galileo was not forced to recant his scientific views as long as he stuck to astronomical observations and left it at that. He annoyed some of the clergy, partly because of his views and partly because he was an annoying person. But he didn't get into real trouble until he took it upon himself to say (in writing!) that the church was incorrect in its interpretation of scripture. That doesn't mean the church wasn't opressive (by modern standards). After all, it did opress him. But not for retaining ideas from ancient civilization about Greek fire or any other ancient technical or theoretical ideas. In fact, I suspect any of us would be very hard pressed to name any military or practical technology or techniques from ancient times which the Catholic church banned, apart from the crossbow, of course, and even that didn't last long. (Astonomy, in that day and age, could hardly be called a practical, except with regard to calculating the seasons, and the church had no problem with that.)

Does anyone know if Copernicus was oppressed for Greek views? I thought he died of a stroke, but I don't know much about his life.


Antisocialmunkey, what do you mean about Lorica Seg-whatever? And why do you have to track down and kill him? (I just hope it wasn't me!)

[Ludens]

Interesting stuff, Brandy Blue and Cimon.

Antisocialmunkey, what do you mean about Lorica Seg-whatever? And why do you have to track down and kill him? (I just hope it wasn't me!)

He probably refers to the person responsible for the general public thinking that all Roman legionaries wore the famous segmented armour (lorica segmentata). The inclusion of LS is a recurring topic on the forums, even though it has been repeatedly stated that it won't be in EB because it appears only at the very end of the time-frame and doesn't seem to have been very common even when it was popular (about 50 to 200 years after EB's time-frame).

Anyway, it probably wasn't a single person that falsified history. More likely it became well know because it is preferred by illustrators and reenactors. It's recognizable, easy to make (compared to chainmail), uniquely Roman and looks good. None of these ever stated it was the only type of armour Roman legions used, but this fixed the image in the public mind. Add to this the history-related laziness of your average Hollywood filmmaker, and you can understand why most people nowadays think of LS as the essential Roman armour.

[Ludens]

Celtic_Punk:
1) Keep it civil.
2) Please present sources that Greek fire was used before the Byzantine empire was founded.

[Aemilius Paulus]

Celtic_Punk:
2) Please present sources that Greek fire was used before the Byzantine empire was founded.

It is possible he is confusing it with other flammable mixtures, such as naphtha for instance, which existed since the dawn of civilization. There wasn't really anything so special or deadly about Greek Fire. It was just one of the hundreds of mixtures employed by the ancients.


This book is exceedingly interesting in this regard. I've read it two weeks ago, and it was very interesting and informative:
Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs

According to it, the Byzantines and the earlier Imperial Romans feared the Parthians mainly because of the naphtha and the scorpions they used in defending against sieges. That was also the reason for the puzzling withdrawal of Septimius Severus during the 198/199 CE siege of Hatra. All that is CE stuff, but naphtha was used in BCE era as well.