Re: Announcement : The Rome 2 Total Realism Team would like to introduce itself to you!
Well I'm obviously not going to convince you, and most the stuff you mentioned isn't relevant to anything we're talking about (amount of soldiers in an army, evolution of the citizen soldier) but...
Polybius called those exact troops "Hoplitai". Well, not that man specifically, but Antigonid phalanx soldiers. Obviously these men were equipped with a sarissa and a large pelte (or chalkaspis, depending on your view of terminology), and he calls them "Makedonian Hoplitai".The man in the right is not a Hoplite.
His shield is a bigger version of Phalangites pelta.
He was Greek, so he must have been talking precisely, just like you said they did.
Those are referred to as Hoplitai in ancient texts...Athens required a "cheaper" kind of warriors to replace Hoplites because there were not enough money to produse hoplons or time to train Hoplites. Ifficrati screated this!
So many Greek military terms evolve and come to be associated with something very differently to what they were originally.
- Hetairoi was just an honorary title for the Makkedonian King's advisers and close friends. Later, it became a military organisation. Do you think all Alexander's Hetairoi cavalry were his close friends and advisers? If so, he must of had a hell of a social life.
- The word Euzonoi originally had no association with the military, but later developed into a class of warrior.
- Sarissaphoroi, a class of cavalry, didn't actually carry a sarissa, that was an infantry weapon. They were a lightly armoured cavalry class that carried the xyston.
That's a few examples, and a few more from other languages, and even other periods;
- hastatus, primarily a unit class associated with the spear (although the specifics aren't clear).
- Grenadiers, first established in the 17th century as a specialist unit for throwing grenades (what a surprise), then, by the mid 18th century, Grenadiers evolved into a heavy assault infantry, and didn't even carry grenades!
- French voltigeurs were first named for their combat role of jumping on an allied horse to get to the field quicker. This practice came out of use in a couple years, but the unit class stayed around with the exact same name for a long time.
- Jagers, Chasseurs, they weren't all hunters, but that's what the title means.
My point is, military terms are not always literal, and this seems to be the case throughout all of history. One of these cases evolved to be the Hoplitai. Sure, it started as a hoplon-bearer, but later came to mean something else.
A point proving that Hoplitai cannot just be hoplon-bearer.Hoplon term could be a Greek incorrect shield definition, because the shield was just aspis. In archaic Greek Hoplon meant many things and it could have been a misinterpretation by Diodorus. For example in ancient Attic dialect, as the one used for example by Xenophon and Thucydides, there's no trace of hoplon word at all. Giving a definition of shield they use words as aspis, sakos, kikos, pelte or gerron but never hoplon. For Herodotus the hopla just means arms, while when he has giving a definition of shield they used, he uses just aspis.
So you say that this is your specialty, but I'm finding that hard to believe
Originally Posted by titanzwh
I JUST J***ED MY PANTS!!!
HAHAHA!) and patch 1.. when reading the reviews, i got discouraged, with all the patches still in beta. so i hope realism would work even just for patch 1 
im using radious mod currently.
