11-11-2010, 12:42 AM
Diegis wrote:
Have you forgotten ? “Falx’ means any curved bladed weapon or tool. ANY !! As you can see from Trajan’s column and the Inscriptions of Dacian units in Britain, ALL ‘falxes’/curved blades depicted as used by Dacians are ‘single handed swords/daggers = sicas.
There is no evidence whatsoever that Dacians used the two-handed hedging hook/slashing hook/reed cutter tool as a makeshift weapon – they could afford ‘proper’ swords !
Quite wrong.
Adolf Furtwangler ( the famous German historian ) considered as long ago as 1897(!!!) that the Adamklissi monument depicted defeat of the Bastarnae people
Sir Ian Richmond ( one of the world’s leading archaeologists) pointed out as long ago as 1960 in a lecture delivered to various prominent bodies, that there were three different ethnic groups portrayed on the crenellations as prisoners – Dacians, Sarmatians and Germanic ( who can only realistically be Bastarnae). He also described the metopes, and that all the fighting scenes showed Romans fighting the ‘Germanic barbarians’/Bastarnae.
Lepper and Frere ( 1988), the current foremost work on Trajan’s column and the Dacian Wars considered all possibilities (including the Romanian archaeologist Florescu, who thought they were Dacians) and concluded that Furtwangler and Richmond were right and that they were Bastarnae.
Since you probably have access to mainly Romanian works, who may have followed Florescu’s ( demonstrably incorrect) line, it is understandable that you believe this. Nevertheless the rest of the German-speaking and English- speaking scholars who have studied the subject have concluded for over 100 years that the Germanic barbarians shown on the Adamklissi monument are almost certainly Bastarnae, and are certainly NOT Dacian.
Those pictures you have posted, and all the other metopes show the chopper-wielders being slaughtered and they and their families are massacred!
If we go on the evidence of the Adamklissi monuments (more than one) and the small amount of evidence we have of Trajan’s Wars, the Peucini branch of the Bastarnae were heavily defeated and probably suffered Genocide, though they recovered to be a small part of tribal coalitions later against the Romans, in Marcus Aurelius’ reign and later as part of the Gothic coalition.
I am baffled by this assumption that the two-handed-extemporised-tool-used-as-a- weapon, with a curved blade and therefore called in modern times, a type of “falx”/curve blade was “effective”. (There is no evidence that the two-handed thing was given this or any other name by the Romans)
The so-called “Falx” ( a term ONLY used in modern times to refer to the tool used as a weapon on the Adamklissi metopes), going on such evidence as we have, was such an abject failure that, so far as we know, it never appeared on the battlefield again, having been tried just once !!
Quote:Falx was a Dacian weapon, as Romans back then said so, and at Adamclissi are depicted of course Dacians with falxes.
Have you forgotten ? “Falx’ means any curved bladed weapon or tool. ANY !! As you can see from Trajan’s column and the Inscriptions of Dacian units in Britain, ALL ‘falxes’/curved blades depicted as used by Dacians are ‘single handed swords/daggers = sicas.
There is no evidence whatsoever that Dacians used the two-handed hedging hook/slashing hook/reed cutter tool as a makeshift weapon – they could afford ‘proper’ swords !
Quote:nobody then (and even now, excepting you) said that falx is somehow a Bastarnae weapon.
Quite wrong.
Adolf Furtwangler ( the famous German historian ) considered as long ago as 1897(!!!) that the Adamklissi monument depicted defeat of the Bastarnae people
Sir Ian Richmond ( one of the world’s leading archaeologists) pointed out as long ago as 1960 in a lecture delivered to various prominent bodies, that there were three different ethnic groups portrayed on the crenellations as prisoners – Dacians, Sarmatians and Germanic ( who can only realistically be Bastarnae). He also described the metopes, and that all the fighting scenes showed Romans fighting the ‘Germanic barbarians’/Bastarnae.
Lepper and Frere ( 1988), the current foremost work on Trajan’s column and the Dacian Wars considered all possibilities (including the Romanian archaeologist Florescu, who thought they were Dacians) and concluded that Furtwangler and Richmond were right and that they were Bastarnae.
Since you probably have access to mainly Romanian works, who may have followed Florescu’s ( demonstrably incorrect) line, it is understandable that you believe this. Nevertheless the rest of the German-speaking and English- speaking scholars who have studied the subject have concluded for over 100 years that the Germanic barbarians shown on the Adamklissi monument are almost certainly Bastarnae, and are certainly NOT Dacian.
Quote:Salvete Omnes!
Dacian's falx is really effective weapon against well equipped infantry like roman legionary. See the metopes from Traian's triumphal monument in Adamclisi /Romania/:
Those pictures you have posted, and all the other metopes show the chopper-wielders being slaughtered and they and their families are massacred!
If we go on the evidence of the Adamklissi monuments (more than one) and the small amount of evidence we have of Trajan’s Wars, the Peucini branch of the Bastarnae were heavily defeated and probably suffered Genocide, though they recovered to be a small part of tribal coalitions later against the Romans, in Marcus Aurelius’ reign and later as part of the Gothic coalition.
I am baffled by this assumption that the two-handed-extemporised-tool-used-as-a- weapon, with a curved blade and therefore called in modern times, a type of “falx”/curve blade was “effective”. (There is no evidence that the two-handed thing was given this or any other name by the Romans)
The so-called “Falx” ( a term ONLY used in modern times to refer to the tool used as a weapon on the Adamklissi metopes), going on such evidence as we have, was such an abject failure that, so far as we know, it never appeared on the battlefield again, having been tried just once !!
"dulce et decorum est pro patria mori " - Horace
(It is a sweet and proper thing to die for ones country)
"No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country" - George C Scott as General George S. Patton
Paul McDonnell-Staff
(It is a sweet and proper thing to die for ones country)
"No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country" - George C Scott as General George S. Patton
Paul McDonnell-Staff
