0:06

Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Ancient

0:08

Warfare Answers with me Murray, your

0:10

10 minute weekly fix of ancient

0:12

warfare to get away from whatever's

0:14

happening in your everyday life. Or

0:17

if you're like me who's an ancient historian, it's pretty

0:19

much just doubling down. Anyway, you

0:21

can of course ask us a question, send

0:23

us a postcard, send us an email, ask

0:25

a question on the comment section on a

0:28

video or a podcast. You can back us

0:30

on Patreon on one of three different levels.

0:33

Uchale has another question today.

0:35

I recently watched a

0:37

video by Faria Faraj, I

0:39

hope I say that right, on

0:42

just how inaccurate a lot of

0:44

modern interpretations of ancient music is.

0:46

One of his pet peeves is the

0:48

use of Armenian doodooks for anything vaguely

0:50

Arabic. Two questions, I hope this is

0:52

okay. Do you have a pet peeve

0:55

that every movie gets wrong about ancient

0:57

warfare? Do I? And mine

0:59

are braces. Yes braces, braces are

1:01

great. Have you ever researched

1:03

anything in regards to ancient music in your area

1:05

of expertise? Funnily enough,

1:07

yes. And I think I made a comment

1:09

in a previous video about how that

1:12

question didn't cover off on my love of

1:14

opera. More of that and not. So this

1:17

will be a two parter. The first part

1:19

will be the ancient history part and the

1:21

ancient warfare part. The second part will be

1:23

a still ancient history into music.

1:26

So I will have sucked you in by

1:28

talking about ancient warfare in the first half.

1:30

And then you'll be stuck hearing me talk

1:32

about opera in the second half. Now, so

1:35

coming back to the first part of your question,

1:38

Uchale about pet peeves. My

1:41

pet peeve is probably the domination

1:43

of ancient warfare on film with

1:46

flaming weapons, whether it be arrows

1:48

or balls from, you

1:51

know, catapults and ballasti that

1:54

are flaming, especially when either

1:56

it's a it's a daytime battle

1:59

against infantry. There's no need to flame

2:01

anything. It just looks visually interesting. And I'm not denying

2:03

that it doesn't look cool. I mean, you

2:05

know, the opening battle of the gladiator

2:07

from 2000, amazing, looks fantastic, but that

2:09

wouldn't have happened. There would be no

2:11

need to burn that stuff. And

2:14

the other thing, of course, is that often they're

2:16

being used against stone buildings. And

2:20

you're like, well, what's that gonna light?

2:22

Especially when they're not actually going into said

2:25

stone walls, just impacting

2:28

to look cool. So that's

2:30

probably the biggest pet peeve I have. I

2:32

agree with you. Braces are an

2:35

amazing invention in ancient

2:37

history, medieval

2:39

history, fantasy. When

2:42

you look at the historical record and

2:44

the historical visual record, very

2:46

few warriors, especially non archers, absolutely

2:48

archers, do have some kind of

2:50

bracelet. Doesn't look anything like the

2:52

braces you get in film. But

2:55

none of the other warriors tend to have

2:57

forearm protection a little bit in the

3:00

early bronze hoplite armor, where the

3:02

proto hoplite has a forearm protector.

3:05

And you could argue that Roman

3:08

legionaries with the mannequin on their

3:10

arm in the Trajan station have

3:13

forearm protection, but it's a whole van. So

3:16

that bracelet thing is just why? That's

3:18

just because it looks cool. It's like,

3:21

who decided it looked cool when it

3:23

was so ahistorical? So

3:26

that's probably my pet peeve, is

3:28

definitely the flaming weapons. Also,

3:30

I don't like

3:32

the fact that no matter what ancient

3:35

movie you watch with

3:37

warfare involved, every formation devolves

3:40

into one on one combat

3:42

that just becomes tactically. That

3:46

is another pet peeve of mine. Even

3:48

Spartacus, which the opening scenes of the Spartacus,

3:50

the big battle at the end of Spartacus,

3:52

where you've got this glorious maneuvering

3:54

of a Roman legion as a

3:57

quincan, and it's like, oh, that's

3:59

great. And then you have

4:01

the the the masked gladiator army

4:03

charge and then eventually it's just

4:05

all one-on-one combat. There's no shield

4:07

walls anywhere. There's no cohesion of

4:09

a unit. Perhaps, interestingly, the the

4:12

best film depiction of a unit

4:14

staying as a unit is

4:16

1936's Scipio Efricalis,

4:18

the Italian film, despite

4:21

the fact that it's a fascist propaganda movie

4:23

in many ways, actually has a

4:25

very good use of

4:27

unit cohesion. It

4:29

also peculiarly has Pila

4:31

being thrown, which obviously in a lot

4:34

of later movies for safety reasons, they

4:37

just advance into battle with

4:39

these throwing javelins that never get thrown

4:41

anywhere because that's going to be too

4:43

dangerous. And obviously, again,

4:45

gladiator shows marching forward

4:48

with a throwing spear, not throwing

4:50

it. So that's always a

4:52

problem too. Obviously, there are there

4:54

are more pet peeves come to my mind.

4:56

There are issues with uniforms in

4:59

many, many different films where they get the

5:01

helmet wrong and they get the uniform wrong,

5:03

which is annoying because, you know, it would have

5:05

only taken a question to a historian to get

5:07

it right. But I can

5:09

sort of let those pass. I did make

5:11

the mistake once of leaning

5:14

over to my wife and saying that the uniforms

5:17

were wrong in an opera performance of Julius Caesar.

5:20

I got I got glared at. So I stopped

5:22

doing that. Now, that's a nice

5:24

segue into opera. Now, you talk about in

5:26

your second half of your question about ancient

5:29

music. Now, I've

5:32

done some research into ancient music.

5:34

Well, not ancient music as such,

5:36

but for instance, the opera

5:38

versions of Nero, the Emperor Nero.

5:41

And the funny thing about that is that

5:43

all of the ancient sources talk about Nero being

5:45

a bad singer. And so

5:47

I started to look at some of the vocabulary

5:49

around describing him as a bad singer. And

5:52

it says he has a deep voice

5:54

or a dark voice, not a bad

5:57

voice necessarily. And so it's

5:59

an interesting twist. that most modern views

6:02

of him, if you look at Quo Vardus and Pizzi Euston,

6:04

often things like that, they make him into

6:06

a terrible singer. But there's nothing actually in

6:08

the sources that say he's bad. The shame is

6:10

that it's an emperor singing, not that

6:12

he's a bad singer, or

6:14

a bad liar player. It's just that it's

6:16

him doing it. And how shameful it is

6:18

that an

6:21

emperor or a ruler would

6:23

be stooping so low to perform in such

6:25

a way. So that's interesting. And

6:28

when you look at the opera versions of

6:30

Nero, and he's been a figure

6:32

in lots of operas from the 17th

6:34

century onwards, he's also not

6:37

necessarily a bad singer. Or when

6:39

he's described as a bad singer, he still has to be

6:41

sung by an operatic tenor who

6:44

isn't singing badly. It's a very peculiar mix.

6:47

I also did some research on the

6:49

operatic depictions of Attila the Hun, which

6:52

is fascinating all the way through 17th

6:54

and 18th century opera. Verdi's opera of

6:56

Attila is probably the most famous, which I have actually

6:58

sung way back in 2004. And

7:01

then of course, all the way into

7:03

musicals and some even

7:06

comedic musicals of Attila. So

7:09

again, like many things,

7:11

it's about accessing the

7:13

topic. And even though

7:16

they may choose an instrument or

7:18

a way of playing a

7:20

particular kind of instrument or a sound

7:22

world that isn't necessarily

7:24

cutting edge in terms of

7:27

our knowledge on ancient music. It's

7:29

that thing that most people will recognize

7:32

it. It's like Roman legionaries, they all

7:34

have segmented armor in film, regardless

7:36

of whether you're talking about Romulus and

7:38

Remus all the way through to, you

7:41

know, the very late King Arthur movie from

7:43

2004. So they're always wearing the

7:47

same kind of armor, because that's what we recognize

7:49

as a Roman legionary. And in order to show

7:52

a more accurate Roman legionary, you're going

7:54

to need to have them watching a

7:57

documentary first about the correct

7:59

type of armor. or the correct type of sword

8:01

or the correct type of helmet. And

8:03

so in terms of ancient

8:05

music, that's something that is

8:07

in the same sort of realm, that

8:09

in order to have correct ancient

8:12

music, you're gonna need a documentary to explain what

8:14

that is or what we think that is before

8:17

you then play that kind

8:19

of correct ancient music in your

8:21

film. And so in

8:23

many ways, that kind of idea is tricky

8:27

because you're always going to come

8:29

up against an access point where most people in

8:31

your audience have a certain, or think

8:33

they have a certain amount of knowledge. And

8:36

so if you play against that, if you show

8:38

a Roman in chain mail armor,

8:41

which we know is far more common

8:43

for far longer than segmented armor, people

8:45

are gonna say, but that's not a Roman legionary.

8:47

What sort of soldier is that? Similarly,

8:50

the rectangular curved scooter,

8:53

that's only for about 150, 200 years maybe.

8:57

And the oval shield and then the round

8:59

shield is a far more

9:01

ubiquitous Roman shield, but that's not what

9:04

we think about when we think

9:06

about Roman shields. Similarly with gladiae

9:08

versus the spathae, the gladius is really

9:10

only 150, 200 years and

9:13

then they get longer and longer. So all of

9:15

those things are problematic because what

9:17

people think they know and

9:20

what people who study

9:22

that kind of material know are

9:24

different. And you can't convince the

9:26

people who think they know what Romans look like

9:29

that they're wrong. You can't do that when

9:31

you're doing a film. So it's

9:33

always gonna come back to a particular

9:36

kind of visual and

9:38

sound world for the music, which

9:41

fits with what people think

9:44

was going on. I hope

9:46

that answers your question. And

9:49

join me again for another episode of

9:51

Ancient Warfare Answers. Thanks, bye. Bye.