[HN Gopher] 2,100-year-old Alexander the Great mosaic analyzed f...
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       2,100-year-old Alexander the Great mosaic analyzed for restoration
        
       Author : pseudolus
       Score  : 35 points
       Date   : 2025-01-20 01:30 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (phys.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
        
       | Hikikomori wrote:
       | Was disappointed to see that it wasn't being shown in the museum
       | when I went there 1.5 years ago. The penis room was also closed,
       | not sure what was worse.
        
         | mihevc wrote:
         | I was there a week ago and it still wasn't back. The penis room
         | was wide open though.
        
       | tristramb wrote:
       | From article: "Here, in the Battle of Issus, Alexander's army of
       | 75,000 Greeks faced Darius' vastly superior force of
       | approximately 600,000 Persian troops."
       | 
       | From Wikipedia: "Modern historians find Arrian's count of 600,000
       | men highly unlikely. They argue that the logistics of fielding
       | more than 100,000 soldiers in battle was extremely difficult at
       | the time."
       | 
       | Basically, the ancient agricultural landscape would be unable to
       | feed an army of more than 100,000.
        
         | Maken wrote:
         | Macedonian war propaganda, still going strong 2K years later.
        
         | jaapz wrote:
         | The next paragraph, or actually next sentence adresses this
         | immediately:
         | 
         | > These ancient written sourced troop numbers are likely
         | greatly exaggerated as more modern accounting of the battle
         | puts the numbers much lower, but it is how the story was told
         | for the better part of 2,300 years.
        
         | duxup wrote:
         | Yeah 600k seems pretty outsized for battles of that time, even
         | compared just "reported" numbers.
        
         | michaelcampbell wrote:
         | Dan Carlin's "Hardcore History" podcast mentions this in almost
         | every episode. Numerical values in historical documents are
         | always to be greeted with LARGE amounts of suspicion if not
         | outright disbelief.
        
       | metalman wrote:
       | After "The Macedonian" conquered Persia, he combined his army
       | with the largely intact Persian forces, but unsurprisingly there
       | was friction between the comands, and Alexander admonished his
       | own generals, pointing out that the so called greek and persian
       | languages, were mutualy comprehensable. The most ancient history
       | of greek/persian origins is that they were the same tribe long
       | long ago, but there was a dispute, exactly what is lost, but even
       | to this day greeks carry a grudge and persians give them the
       | piss. There is more, much more to the combined history of the
       | greek and persian tribes, but what with the present fantasy
       | landscaping of the past, its an unpleasant slog to try and
       | comunicate.
        
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       (page generated 2025-01-22 23:03 UTC)