Battles BC

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derek
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Battles BC

Post by derek »

For those in north America:

The Battles BC series this evening, Sunday 19th, is about Alexander. It's on the History Channel at 10pm eastern. The others in the series have been a bit comic book in their presentation, but very informative and well worth watching.

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Re: Battles BC

Post by athenas owl »

It was very disappointing. It covered the Battle of the Hydaspes. My husband was laughing at me, after so many times of yelling at the screen..."That's incorrect!".

I found the "300" style cartooning very irritating. Overall just irritating. The map showing the location of the Hydaspes was just terrible as well as the really bad doagram of the actual main battle. God, I can't remember exactly what facts were wrong right now, except something about meeting 300,000 Indian soldiers after the Hydaspes, but before the Hyphases (which they didn't mention)...did I miss the numbers for Sangala being that high. There were so many things like that I just was ticked off.

It was quite sensationalised I thought. Not only did they show ANY of the region, but even the "reenactments" were cheesy. Like talking about the Indian cavalry, but showing a single infantry soldier getting killed. And again, the cartoon blood...just blech.

And they made Porus out to be defending all of "India"!

And they also said that India is what caused ATG's death, from malaria. As a "fact"..not mentioning his illness at Tarsus, or the wound he received at the Malian city.

If I may use the term "half-assed"..this show certainly was.
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Re: Battles BC

Post by marcus »

athenas owl wrote:And they also said that India is what caused ATG's death, from malaria. As a "fact"..not mentioning his illness at Tarsus, or the wound he received at the Malian city.
Nor the fact that he died at least 18 months after leaving India (probably more, but can't remember the exact chronology at the moment!).

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Re: Battles BC

Post by athenas owl »

marcus wrote:
athenas owl wrote:And they also said that India is what caused ATG's death, from malaria. As a "fact"..not mentioning his illness at Tarsus, or the wound he received at the Malian city.
Nor the fact that he died at least 18 months after leaving India (probably more, but can't remember the exact chronology at the moment!).

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Yeah, something along those lines (he got back to Iran in early 324 and died about 18 months after that)...the show said his men made him turn around, which is correct, but they basically said that he went back to Babylon right after that, neglecting to mention the year and more he spent getting back there. And that pesky fighting he had to do all the way down the Indus...including the big fat arrow in his chest.
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Re: Battles BC

Post by Fiona »

This is on tonight in the UK (Tuesday 25th August) at 9.00 on the History Channel.
Thanks for the heads-up, Derek - we didn't have to wait too long for it over here.

Fiona
derek wrote:For those in north America:

The Battles BC series this evening, Sunday 19th, is about Alexander. It's on the History Channel at 10pm eastern. The others in the series have been a bit comic book in their presentation, but very informative and well worth watching.

Derek
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Re: Battles BC

Post by agesilaos »

Normally I don't have time to fit TV in with work and apres-work (so I eschew an idiot-box) sadly the world-wide economic downturn etc, so I've been watching the whole sad series! The experts are not always too bad but the voice over is in a world of it's own.

This was not the worst but aaaarggh! Two sources were quoted in such epitome as to be little more than an undergrad's 'Oh and I remember this dude was on the reading list better mention him!' The graphics were excremental; Alexander on foot wielding two swords! '300' has alot to answer for!

That aside the analysis itself was puerile, and these guys are professors; the myth of the Idians 'anchoring' their bows with their feet was perpetuated, Megasthenes is as guilty as '300'! It was the monsoon and water ***** bowstrings; the stout yeomen of England slaughtered the chivalry France by keeping theirs under their hats (hence the phrase) the Indians simply did not fight in this season; for all the guff about how advanced they were technologically the fact that warfare on the sub-continent had resolved into ritual, constant warfare tends to lead to self regulatory systems to mollify the real horrors, the medieval world invented the system of ransom, the classical Greek a culture of trophies rather than pursuit.

The bit where the voice over talks about the Indians lacking archers and then cuts to a face talking about the chariot archers was classic. The discussion of Alexander's army was the usual crap - the horse archers - hippotoxatoi - are specified as Sakai not bloody Persians as for the hippokontistai they are probably the prodromoi re-armed; the asiatic cavalry were the heavy Bactrians and Sogdians. Why can't anyone just read Arrian before embarking on this sort of high cost guff, the abortion that is consistently made of Gaugamela ;Arbela in this, well that was what Kleitarchos called it and this programme was about as useful as his history.

The research depth is demonstrated no better than the three episodes devoted to the Israelite conquest of Canaan a la Old Testament which archaeology demonstrates to be pure folk-myth, you may as well 'analyse' the strategy (so often used for tactics in this series) of the Orcs in 'Lord of the Rings'!

Give me Bethany Hughes and the chance to explain the realities of these actions over a nice crate of Retsina and some moonlight; oh, sweet fantasy. (No Michael Wood would not do! I not that Greek!)
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Re: Battles BC

Post by Taphoi »

agesilaos wrote:the myth of the Idians 'anchoring' their bows with their feet was perpetuated, Megasthenes is as guilty as '300'! It was the monsoon and water ***** bowstrings; the stout yeomen of England slaughtered the chivalry France by keeping theirs under their hats (hence the phrase) the Indians simply did not fight in this season;
Is it a myth? Curtius 8.14.19 has:
Neither were even their arrows of any use to the barbarians. Since they were long and ponderous, unless the foot of the bow were braced against the ground, they could not be properly fitted and nor could the bow be readily drawn. As the soil was slimy, it hampered bow-bracing, so that whilst struggling to shoot they were overrun by their impetuous opponents.
and the Porus tetradrachms seem to show Indian bowmen resting the feet of their bows on the ground. Perhaps you could clarify?
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Re: Battles BC

Post by Semiramis »

agesilaos wrote:The bit where the voice over talks about the Indians lacking archers and then cuts to a face talking about the chariot archers was classic.
athena's owl wrote:[...] neglecting to mention the year and more he spent getting back there. And that pesky fighting he had to do all the way down the Indus...including the big fat arrow in his chest.
Athena's Owl, if the Indians didn't have archers how could they shoot Alexander with an arrow? At least they're consistent. ;)
agesilaos wrote:The research depth is demonstrated no better than the three episodes devoted to the Israelite conquest of Canaan a la Old Testament which archaeology demonstrates to be pure folk-myth, you may as well 'analyse' the strategy (so often used for tactics in this series) of the Orcs in 'Lord of the Rings'!
Agesilaos, A recent genetic study looked at the DNA of a Canaanite King, Phoenician specimens and a large number of Syrians, Lebanese and Palestinians. Canaanites, Phoenicians and modern inhabitants of the region are all genetically indistinguishable people. They found no genetic trace of any such conquest, which seems to back up the archaeological data.
agesilaos wrote:Give me Bethany Hughes and the chance to explain the realities of these actions over a nice crate of Retsina and some moonlight; oh, sweet fantasy. (No Michael Wood would not do! I not that Greek!)
Have you checked out Bettany Hughes' documentary on Moorish Spain? I thought it was an intelligent and well-researched piece of work (unlike many TV documentaries). Visually spectacular - lovely architecture. :)
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Re: Battles BC

Post by Paralus »

agesilaos wrote: Give me Bethany Hughes and the chance to explain the realities of these actions over a nice crate of Retsina and some moonlight; oh, sweet fantasy.
Well, you'd have to be prepared to share. I'm not....

Then again, you could have the retsina and I'd have the decent Macedonian red I'd thoughtfully brought along.
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Re: Battles BC

Post by Paralus »

I haven’t seen the show – the tyranny of distance has seen to it that the Antipodes are, currently, denied the “pleasure” of this “documentary”. Hydaspes appears its focus from the comments.

The Indian archers are likely based in fact of some sort. That they do not appear in other actions – described as such – is intriguing. If Indians were at Guagamela (with the truant elephants) one might have expected these notable bowmen also to have been present.

Curtius might indeed describe the frustration of the Indian bowmen being unable to brace their huge bows due to the mud. This does not deter him from asserting that Porus – his bowmen unable to brace their bows in mud – sending 100 chariots “each of which carried six men” (8.14.3) to stop Alexander’s gaining of a foot hold. It stands to obvious reason that if a bowman could not brace a bow in the mud a chariot bearing six men was likely going nowhere – fast or slow. Undeterred Curtius tells us that the “charioteers began to drive into the thick of the fray at full speed”. In the mud and rain one has to wonder just what that speed may have been. Arrian is surely correct in his assessment that they were “useless in the mud”.

Curtius also has Thracians involved in the Alexander’s attack force. The source material, though, is very light on Thracians after 330. Parmenion is told to take the Greek mercenaries and Thracians “and march by the land of the Cadusians into Hyrcania” (3.19.7). Later (5.20.7), after Hydaspes, the Thracians rejoin the army – or at least some of them – when “Phrataphernes, viceroy of Parthia and Hyrcania, came to Alexander at the head of the Thracians who had been left with him”. If Thracians were at Hydaspes they can’t have been numerous and it is more likely that Curtius has erred here.

All that said, Curtius’ troop numbers and elephant numbers are far closer to the truth than other sources. Arrian, though he gives the same infantry number (30,000), flagrantly inflates the elephant numbers at 200. These pachyderms are stationed thirty metres apart. This – literally – makes a battle line of some six kilometres. Alexander was taking on this line with two taxeis of the phalanx, the hypaspists, 5,000 cavalry, the Agrianes and archers. These troops, should all aside from the cavalry form a phalanx, amounts to a battle line somewhat less than a kilometre. This is absolute Greco-Macedonian poppycock and Arrian is lucky that tyche saw Polybius born well before him else Kasllisthenes might have been spared that splenetic criticism.

What is abundantly clear is that Alexander clearly intended to assault the enemy with the attack force he took across river. Arrian makes this plain in his description of the battle when he writes that “Craterus and the other officers of Alexander’s army who had been left behind on the bank of the Hydaspes crossed the river, when they perceived that Alexander was winning a brilliant victory. These men, being fresh, followed up the pursuit instead of Alexander’s exhausted troops, and made no less a slaughter of the Indians in their retreat.” These “other officers” include Meleagher and the “centre” force.

This all gives one serious pause with respect to the numbers the sources accord the forces of Porus. The infantry, at 30,000, likely needs to be reduced by a third. At bottom this is a “peripheral” battle fought against a local rajah who’d no support and whose greatest asset, in reality, was a very large Indian river fed by a rather substantial leak from Kevin Costner's "Waterworld" .

Another conqueror might have decided there were easier pickings. Another conqueror might have been satisfied with the gains so far and set about putting an empire in order. Unfortunately for Porus, who had seriously misread the Macedonian, Alexander was not that conqueror. To Alexander Porus (and his forces) simply represented yet another independent people. Porus had to bow or fall. In the end he managed both and Alexander, like any good junkie, set off for the next hit.
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Re: Battles BC

Post by Paralus »

Semiramis wrote:Have you checked out Bettany Hughes' documentary on Moorish Spain? I thought it was an intelligent and well-researched piece of work (unlike many TV documentaries). Visually spectacular - lovely architecture. :)
Lovely architecture indeed.
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Wicked men, you sin against your fathers, who conquered the whole world under Philip and Alexander.

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Re: Battles BC

Post by agesilaos »

Taphoi, look closely at the coin ;the bow is neither against the ground nor the archer's foot! I don't think I am mythtaken :D
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Re: Battles BC

Post by marcus »

Paralus wrote:
Semiramis wrote:Have you checked out Bettany Hughes' documentary on Moorish Spain? I thought it was an intelligent and well-researched piece of work (unlike many TV documentaries). Visually spectacular - lovely architecture. :)
Lovely architecture indeed.
I was going to say "Bettany Hughes - visually spectacular" - but I was clearly too late ...

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Re: Battles BC

Post by Paralus »

With those neat buttresses, sensual arches and primal curves sweeping away male dominated Euclidism, it is somewhat difficult not to become carried away with the architecture on screen.

Back to Bettany, I'm still waiting to see her dance by the Eurotas...
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Re: Battles BC

Post by marcus »

Paralus wrote:With those neat buttresses, sensual arches and primal curves sweeping away male dominated Euclidism, it is somewhat difficult not to become carried away with the architecture on screen.

Back to Bettany, I'm still waiting to see her dance by the Eurotas...
One of my friends runs a TV production company, and had a meeting a while ago with said kallipygean delight. I asked how it went and he just said "Oh ... yes!". Nuff said!

I must re-watch the series Ms Hughes did on the Spartans. She didn't dance by the Eurotas herself, but it was a good series, nonetheless.

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