For example, if a hoplite at the front of a phalanx had his shield transfixed by a Roman pilum (and therefore couldn't use it), what would that now unprotected soldier do?

The Vikings (As people know them), or the Norse peoples if you prefer, were all known and respected for the ships they built and what their ships were capable of performing. They respected and venerated their ships extremely much too.

But where did they learn how to build their ships, because I know there are different types, including the longship and compared to the rest of Europe, what kind of ships were they using and how big was the difference/advantage in this regard?

Lastly, a somewhat related question, considering that they as a people had quite decent capabilities of travelling across water, how well did the traders and people in a larger town know about other larger towns in the area of Scandinavia and Northern Europe? (Let's say Kattegatt in Norway and Birka in Sweden) Where there networks of traders, or perhaps a family had ties to a different wealthy family through marriage or pacts?

Thank you all. :)

I need some good sources for an internal assesment, about Hitler's aid to Franco in the Spanish Civil War.

Thanks a lot

Would it have been a case of

'Dyas-muhan'? Nah, how about 'Desmond'?

or would it have been a more natural evolution of pronunciations?

Would I be better off asking a linguist?

There is two part in my post :

-How did the Greeks become Romans?

-How did the Greeks keep on being Romans for so long?

I am mostly interested with the first question, but it would be great if both could be answered !

How did the Greeks become Romans ?

My question is not about conquest and political dominance, but about cultural identity.

I know fairly well how the Roman conquest of the various Greeks speaking Empires, City States and other Kingdoms went down, and how the Roman Empire developed structurally and politically in Greek speaking lands.

However, I realized recently that I know pretty much nothing of the processus of transition from an Hellenistic identity to a Roman one Greek speaking people went through.

I am always suprised when I see that Greeks speaking people accepted the Roman identity so well that, after a few centuries, being Roman was their main if not only cultural identity.

Other groups in the Roman Empire were always troublesome, either refusing the Roman identity or Roman political dominance or both.

However, the Greeks, who were both a military and cultural superpower before the Roman, if not the single cultural superpower of the Mediterranean before Rome, and even after Rome rose to proeminence (everyone knows how much the Roman elite saw the Greeks as a superior culture for a while, even after having conquered thems) finally switched to the Roman identity.

How could a group of people who were so much used to do the conquering and asserting their cultural dominance everywhere they went, accept a 'foreign' identity so well ? Was there a lot of resistance against this cultural identity at the beginning ? At what time can we say with certainty that the Greeks really began to see themselves as Romans ? How long did the 'Greek-but-not-Roman' identity linger after Roman conquest ? Did the two identities 'Greek-and-Roman' and 'Greek-but-not-Roman' existed side-by-side at one point ? If yes, was there any friction between the two ?

How did the Greeks keep on being Romans for so long?

Several centuries after the Roman conquest, it seems that being "Greek" mostly meant that you were also Roman. This was accentuated after the fall of the Western part of the Roman Empire, when the Latin people of the West progressively stopped being regarded as Roman by the Greek speaking people of the Eastern part, to the point that, (at least from what I understood, correct me if I am wrong) shortly before the fall of Constantinople a millenium later, it seems that (still from the Greek point of view) to be Roman you kinda had to be Greek. For the next centuries after the fall of Constantinople and in the Ottoman Empire, Greek speaking people would be refered as Romans, and up to the beginning of the 20th century, even after the independance of Greece, a large part of the Greeks would still refer to themselves as Romans.

So my point is that Greek speaking people seem to have accepted the Roman Identity so well that they wouldn't refer to themselves as anything else but Roman for nearly two millenias, while every single other "ethnies" or group of people bound by a common languages who existed in the Roman Empire (and there was a lot of them) and who considered themselves Roman at one point eventually stopped, even the one who were speaking only Latin.

For instance, after the conquest of Roman Gaul by the Franks, the Roman identity lingered for a while: there is a clear distinction between the conqueror, the Franks, and the conquered, the Romans, that lasted several centuries. But eventually the Roman identity disappeared. Same things happened when Roman North Africa was conquered by Arabs: the Roman identity linger for a while before disappearing, leaving only Arabs and other cultural identities present before the Roman : Berbers, Copts etc.

But Greek speaking people never let go of their Roman identity, even after several centuries of submission to their Ottoman overlord.

How could this cultural identity, being Roman, stick without problems for nearly two thousands years for Greek speaking people, even after the conquest by the Ottoman Empire, while the Roman identity eventually disappeared in other conquered ancient Roman land ?

Thanks !

Are there any drastic diferences between romans and greeks ?

I'm just reading Augustine's City of God, and he argues that the darkening of the Sun mentioned in the gospel accounts could not be explained by a lunar eclipse, because the crucifixion occurred at passover which is always a full moon, and eclipses always occur during the "last quarter" of the moon.

Firstly, what does "last quarter" mean for the Romans? Eclipses only occur during new moons - is that consider the "last quarter" in Roman reckoning, or is he mistaken?

Secondly, is this just an empirical observation based on historical reports, or did the Romans actually have a physical model for how eclipses work? That is, did Augustine say that eclipses happen during the last quarter just because historians had noted that eclipses always happen at this phase, or did Augustine say this because the Romans actually knew that the Moon had to be in the correct position for an eclipse to occur?

It's often told of how incredibly popular Chinese silk was with the Roman bourgeoise, but did Rome send anything back along the silk road that was popular/useful in China?

In another post someone said that some historians believe the Byzantine empire ended in 1204 and not 1453. Why do some people believe this? Or was that just kind of a random off hand comment made that isn't actually a common strain of thought in academia.

I am wondering what the czech army was supposed to do during the cold war years 1980-1991, wich NATO units it was supposed to face and where they would face. Also the doctrine I can barely find anything on, if any czech person can help me I'd be greatful.

Admittedly I'm asking for a story I'm writing - but it's a major plot point. Essentially, during the Georgian era (specifically the Regency time), was there a situation where the classical (as we would call it) music of the time was listened to primarily and almost exclusively by the upper class? I've heard of Mozart and various composers travelling round the grand houses of Europe, and I can't imagine ordinary peasants being allowing in to hear. Were the ordinary people given folk music instead? Their music?

I checked the dictionary.com app and it didn't quite satisfy my curiosity.

I've read countless anecdotes about how opposing trenches on the Western Front were at times less than 100 meters apart from one another. How was this achieved given the proximity to the enemy who was often in plain sight?

And what was the specific diagnosis they were supposed to treat? How widespread was it?

Curious about things like SSRIs, benzodiazepine.

I'm curious to know the role and the effectiveness in the concrete reforms that occurred during that time period. Were other groups (such as the social corporatists) more effective?

I must admit to never hearing of the social corportists, so I'm especially curious about their effectiveness.

I cannot find any information on the men raised. Where they were sent to train, when they were brought to Vietnam, where they fought or in which regiment, etc.

Can anyone help me?

So this is for a little question I just answered asking me to come up with a new method of measuring horses instead of hands. And since all flutes these days produce the same sound, they must be of equal length (There are probably different kinds of flutes that are different lengths on purpose, I'm not sure). But then I started to wonder if this has always been the case or if it's just now a product of our standardized measuring systems (Not many things are measured in hands anymore). I'm assuming they hand crafted their flutes, and so there must have been some significant differences in the sounds and sizes of each flute, if not between each flute maker? Or is this not the case and all flutes were the same size? If so how would they have done it.