A (hi)story...
Shameless self promotion... Anceint Warfare Magazine III-2The dead lay everywhere; the ground onto which they had been driven was a charnel house littered with their corpses. Shattered sarisae, viscera and body parts shared the killing ground with the whole weapons and armour that had been abandoned in the final rout. The foetid odours of blood and bowel fouled the increasingly frigid air as the cries of the dying and the wounded faded with the Persian mid-winter sunset. Litter bearers carried the still living from the blood soaked dust into which they had fallen while carts, the produce of carnage piled high, plied their way to funerary fires as yet unlit. Morale in the camp matched the freezing night air as confusion, tinged with anger at the day's proceedings, spread with the smoke from the campfires. The military prospects were not propitious: the phalanx infantry and, more importantly, its Macedonians were shattered. Any resumption of hostilities on the morrow would prove difficult, if not impossible...
Labels: Ancient Warfare magazine, Diadochos, Iran
posted by Father Park at 3/12/2009 08:03:00 PM
9 Comments:
Not familiar with the details but I take it this account is from the period after Alexander departed, taking his dream of universal fraternity or whatever with him. These blokes definitely should've stayed home.
You're correct.
A little more to come...the lot will be published in April.
Men never know when to stay home.
Pretty exciting, Mike! Do give us heads up on publishing details. (Maybe a teaser preview on these or some other pages?)
Caz, that's both our charm and our folly. There would be no 'progress' if men (or women, for that matter) parked their arses at home all day.
No wars either, sure, but that's the grocer's bill.
The triumph and tragedy of volition, or something...
Indeed, and think of the savings in injuries and failed handyman projects when the menfolk are off elsewhere.
But still, someone has to stay at home to stuff and dress the chook for dinner.
Were talking Macedonians here Caz....ancient Macedonians. To quote a fellow - Peter Green - whose use of English is far better than my own:
Most Macedonian nobles preferred the more manly pleasures of hunting, carousing, and casual fornication. Sodomy - with young boys or, at a pinch, with each other - they also much enjoyed.
Had they stayed home they may well have dressed the chook. That it would be for dinner - trussed in a schoolboy uniform - is debatable...
Err, metrosexual / bisexual Macedonians, ahead of their times?
Don't know about the metrosexual / bisexual thingy. Definitely not the sort of blokes to argue with a few kraters of wine.
Actually, not the sort of blokes to have more than a mug of wine with (Diodorus, 16.93.1-6):
There was a Macedonian Pausanias who came of a family from the district Orestis. He was a bodyguard of the king and was beloved of him because of his beauty. When he saw that the king was becoming enamoured of another Pausanias (a man of the same name as himself), he addressed him with abusive language, accusing him of being a hermaphrodite and prompt to accept the amorous advances of any who wished [...]
The incident was widely discussed and Attalus, who was a member of the court circle and influential with the king, invited the first Pausanias to dinner and when he had plied him till drunk with unmixed wine, handed his unconscious body over to the muleteers to abuse in drunken licentiousness.
Perhaps I could intoduce Benny's mate Lieberman to Attalus??
Still sounds very contemporary to me Father, have you ever watched The Bold & the Beautiful?
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