Ancient skeletons bury a popular right-wing talking point

[Patrick Waterson]

If the cap fits ...

But seriously, this should be a forum where members can look rationally at historical situations without having to worry about current political fashions.

[aligern]

Yes indeed Ian. The r word should be used most carefully, not bandied around. It has suffered fom meaning creep so that situations that are actually religious debate or cultural discussion are included in its sweep. There is a trend to this sort of inflation which is dangerous in that there are certain things that are firbidden territory......no sensible person would describe themselves a Nazi or a Fascist any more...its too toxic. Poor old Rhodes has now been anathematised , Colston is having his hall renamed.  Stale , pale and male puts you beyond the pale. This has had real world consequences because research into the behaviours of ethnic, religious ir cultural groups is stymied.
Of course, this is a Society that deals in different cultures in conflict with one another so we constantly skate at the boundary of several isms.  It is also a Society of decent, fair people and very often armies of very different culture and ethnicity find passionate advocates.
We should be careful not to allow the natural tendency of debate to adjectival inflation to end in terminology that no longer has any semblance of tight meaning.
Roy

[Erpingham]

You are probably not following the Xerxes thread Roy but Ian is referring to someone describing anyone who criticises Herodotus as "culturally racist".  He is not being entirely serious, I believe.

I think we should back away from this subject carefully now, as the words Nazi, Fascist and Rhodes have been raised, all are political red rags and none of which are ancient history topics.

[aligern]

I am well aware of the Xerxes thread😉. Long ago and far away there was a debate in the pages of Slingshot about Herderism IIRC . It was very destructive, paricularly, if memory serves me, because there is a point at which pushing the idea that all truth is relative and largely a construct of how we see the world now interacting with the perception of the world of an Ancient source and that both are not wholly mapped to the actual truth just drives everyone mad. I am firmly of the opinion that the truth existed and is recoverable even if it is not recogniseable.
The Xerxes debate strikes at the heart of the problem if truth. Justin's original question just approached it from the durection of feasibility rather than did Xerxes have a million or three million men.  Modern revisionists have made a very strong case that the army must have been much smaller. Few nowadays would suppirt the idea of a huge army. That opens up a debate about Herodotus, Greek historians in general and Ancient sources beyond that.  There is a fragility in how we look at the sources and in part it reaches to the centre of the Society's mission. If we go around making army lists based upon statements in prinary sources , ut is crucial that those sources are believable.  In the end it comes down to how we interpret the evidence  and there we have another twist because we have motives fir interpreting the evidence . Patrick slipped a controversial point into the argument in that thread when he claimed that the standard Persian unit was 100 men frontage by 100 men deep. That ought to have consequences on the tabletop ?
There are many other arguable points such as did Franks throw their franciscas in massed battle, did Ostrogiths have hirse armour, did William's Normans throw javelins, did Harold!s Saxons have light infantry, did Companion cavalry break into hoplites frontally? were sarissae fought over or underarm? What we do not have is a methodology for final resolution, apart from the views of the last writer who eventually commits a decision to print!
As to the insult words we both agree that catcalling is not what we are here to do, but there us a point where some of these labels become part of the debate. Anyone for calling Herodotus the father of Orientalism?
Roy

[Flaminpig0]

You are probably not following the Xerxes thread Roy but Ian is referring to someone describing anyone who criticises Herodotus as "culturally racist".  He is not being entirely serious, I believe.

It was meant as a not entirely serious comment on the absurdity of complaining about political correctness whilst playing ancient Greek identity politics.

[RichT]

It's nice to see Godwin's Law in action once again. Though if it had been in the Xerxes thread, it might have provided a welcome reason to wind it up...

On a serious note, the 'cultural racism' remark was already close to invoking Godwin's Law and is the sort of thing that a bit of gentle moderation would help to eradicate, to keep things civil and ancient history related. IMHO this forum would benefit greatly from a proper moderator. Any chance of having one (or two)?

The meta discussions - what is history? what do we know? who are we? what's it all about? - I think are better left alone - or certainly not elaborated on in a thread about racism. I would just say that:

What we do not have is a methodology for final resolution, apart from the views of the last writer who eventually commits a decision to print!

is not true - we do have such a methodology, and it's called 'History'. True, it won't lead to 'final resolution', any more than Physics or Mathematics will lead to final resolution in their fields (or at least, not for the foreseeable future), but final resolution is not the aim - rather a steady, sometimes halting, progression toward a better approximation to the truth.

[Imperial Dave]

look at what i started......

[Erpingham]

Contra the Herderism debate, I think one area we can claim consensus is that objective truth exists.  Our ability to know it is, of course, another matter.

I'm not sure we can entirely avoid meta-issues, as I've raised on the Xerxes thread, but certainly I don't want to discuss them within such an explosive environment either.

[Flaminpig0]

In my experience ancient wargamers are some of the least 'culturally racist' people I meet, most of them that have armies other than from their own culture and generally have some knowledge and sympathy for the ethnicities making up the army.

However, I can think of one exception which was chap I knew many many years ago. The guy had bought an Indian army as it had a lot of exciting and useful elements Chariots, Elephants, massed archers and what not. The problem was that he hated Indians,  in fact he was a kind of equal opportunity racist and seemed to despise anyone who wasn't a White European. His solution was both simple and elegant, paint the Indians in Caucasian skin colours.

[Justin Swanton]

look at what i started......

Putting "right-wing" in your thread title - what were you thinking? I mean, really!

But we seemed to have weathered it so, OK, you're excused. 

Personally, I have only one rule for a forum discussion. Never use the words "You are". Seems to work for me.

Actually I just said "you're". Sorry...

[aligern]

Richard, isn't it a bit hopeful to compare historical methodology with  the sciences?  If someone is willing to argue hard enough fir  their point of view then they can usually makes maintain it because we just do not have good enough evidence to finally nail down an unwrguable conclusion. How many Giths at Adrianople? We don't know , the best guess is around 20,000, though that would offend against the logic that they were a large tribe and the Helvetii were a large tribe and Caesar gives them 368,000 people and 92,000 warriors ( a convenient multiple, but then Caesar did find the documents in the Helvetic camp and its only a councidence  that has him outnumbered 4-1. ) Ammianus gives ipus a relationship to the Romans that might be helpful i.e. that Valens thought his Roman army substantially outnumbered the Goths  and it turns out that he did not. But then someone could argue that Ammianus wanted to blacken the name of whoever was in charge of the Roman's scouting or oerhaps Ammianus was making a moral point that actually the Romans lost rather than that the Goths won. Incidentally there are  those that choose to believe that the Goths flanking cavalry attack was not intentional, but merely an unplanned accident. Now Adrianople has been analysed and commented on fir decades  and there can be no final agreement, because the interpretations cannot easily be ranked in order of probability and counter arguments rise like dragons teeth. Nor are we able to repeat the experinent and if one points to the earlier near repeat it just gets discounted.
The joy of our debates is that we can indulge ourselves with opinions because earlier historians have not been able to cone to conclusions so firm that they are unchallengeable, the frustration is that our own opinions cannot be buttressed with a certainty that would stifle the more outrageous arguments of our opponents.😏
Roy

[Mark G]

The difficulty in appealing to a moderator is that we have an administrator already, and he actively participates in the most contentious threads.

In fact I doubt we could find a member prepared to read the pages and not participate, and also act as moderator.

[Patrick Waterson]

The difficulty in appealing to a moderator is that we have an administrator already, and he actively participates in the most contentious threads.

In fact I doubt we could find a member prepared to read the pages and not participate, and also act as moderator.

Actually, Mark, all our officers have moderator capability, specifically to avoid moderation being in the hands of any single individual who might be tempted to use it in support of his opinions.

[Flaminpig0]

If the cap fits ...

But seriously, this should be a forum where members can look rationally at historical situations without having to worry about current political fashions.

Joking aside Patrick don't you owe an apology to those society members you accused of being racist?

[Justin Swanton]

I think we can acquit Patrick of that charge!

Rereading that section in the thread, the point made was that it is easy to ascribe more gullibility to ancient authors than they actually possessed, rather than try to determine if what they affirm might be more factual than it appears at first sight. I think there was something to the dolphin story since dolphins do actually behave the way Herodotus describes. The trouble is that Herodotus brings Apollo and Poseidon into the story, giving it a religious cast which, in the minds of many contemporaries, automatically disqualifies it. One needs to notice that neither Apollo nor Poseidon actually play any part in the account. The story is not really religious.