The Jewish War: First half of Book 2

[cahn]

Last week: Discussion on how Herod stacked up against various Roman emperors in terms of body count of his nearest and dearest; how Friedrich Wilhelm might hear the Josephus text; Herod throwing money around; Cleopatra!

This week: ...uhhhh there was a lot going on and I haven't actually finished the reading yet *ducks* -- I am doing that right now and I should most likely be able to comment tomorrow. (I don't anticipate this being a problem again for at least two more months, and most likely not then either; this was a confluence of various time sinks that doesn't usually happen all at the same time.) But I wanted to go ahead and get the post up because I know you guys have read it... (ETA: have finished the reading now :P :) )

Next week: finishing up Book 2!

Comments

Re: Finishing up with Herod's finances

[cenozoicsynapsid]

Yeah, what equipment troops train with is not really a question of whether they can find it by this period. It's more whether Herod asks troops to 'show up, bring weapons' and gets whatever the local culturally sanctioned fighting style is, or whether he does some amount of drill and provides some equipment to get them to adopt a particular style. My impression is that if you just call up "soldiers" in this period, you get people who are equipped by the local blacksmith and taught to fight by their older brothers/uncles/dads, so you get big regional differences. But Romain auxilia (as selenak says) are drilled to fight in the legionary style instead, which makes them more effective.

Re: Finishing up with Herod's finances

[cahn]

Ah ok thanks! :D