No pics to post as my various current projects are all slowly grinding along in parallel, a fair way from completion.
Eldest son sent me this article on the veracity of the military scenes in HBO's Rome. It has reminded me why I enjoyed the series so much! Must watch it again... it had me gripped from the very first scene.
11 comments:
An interesting read. He is right in many respects ; not just for Roman soldiers but soldiers in general. Many soldiers refer to their time in conflict as long periods of boredom interspersed with short bursts of excitement. Many soldiers were unaware of how a battle was progressing except in their own particular area which backs up his findings.
The series ..both pt 1 and 2 are excellent.
The fight scene (Alesia) looks very realistic..the bit were Vorenus uses his shield as a weapon to break the guys leg!!! I´m not sure about the holding the gladius belt of the one in front..looks a bit "modern riot police" method to stop someone being dragged out of the line and it would mean one hand would be full.
The idea of revolving the troops would be a hand to hand combat winner...I once read that even very well trained, ie; Fit men can only keep up a max of 20 mins hand to hand comba, the mixture of excitement, fear and exhertion would drain them. so even if they only had 3-5 mins at the front and then went to the rear rank, unless the attrition was heavy, they would only see full action once ever half hour or so.
Watch the fight carefully...the bit as Pullo breaks ranks...he swops the scutum from left to right hand depending on the camera angle ;-D
Cheers
paul
Phil, yes 95% boredom, 5% terror!
Paul, I shall watch it again, has been a year or so. The exchanging of ranks bit did feel plausible (the idea more than the precise execution).
I wonder whether a scuta would be heavy enough to break a leg, though?
Cheers, Simon
A scutum would be heavy enough to break a leg, they weighed about 15lbs and then the force applied by the carrier.
Just watched the fight again..and i noticed that if they are holding the front mans gladius belt..means they haven´t got a shield in that hand! and must, if they were holding a shield at all have it in the right hand.
Cheers
paul
A fascinating article. Many thanks for posting it. I will watch the dvd with renewed interest now.
Rome is an absolute cracker, one of my favorites, and love the lead actors, it would have been awesome if they had some more larger scale battles though.
Thanks chaps. Paul, agree about the belts, that just wouldn't work.
Dan, battles would have been nice, butI think the greatest tragedy was that series 2 was cut so that they had to telescope a lot of the action into a couple of episodes to wrap up the loose ends. A flawed classic!
Cheers, Simon
The greatest tragedy was there were only 2 season.
A great article and a really great series, must watch it again soon!
Yeah lovely series, and very sad that they stopped halfway the second series. It's sad when series like tht cannot get funding, and the telly is full of reality TV excrement at the same time.
Like Firefly, all over again! :-(
Simon
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