Why didn’t the Greeks resist the Romans?

Why didn’t the Greeks resist the Romans?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Persian_Wars
youtu.be/8GyVx28R9-s
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

The reason Greece was so much more effective during the Classical era against the Persians than during the Hellenistic era against the Romans is due to the degradation of the citizen-armies institution.

Around 80,000 Greek soldiers fought against the Persians, all of whom were actually properly trained, armed and experienced. During the Roman invasion of Greece about 10,000 inexperienced, barely equipped mercenaries were recruited to fight, and that's it.

Classical era Greek city states are where you find the "Marine" type military, Hellenistic era Greek city states had basically no military infrastructures/programs, not even Sparta. The Hellenistic military worked more so like the Persian forces did, except they couldn't actually recruit anyone because the Greeks didn't have the slave mind set.

good post

What caused them to lose their citizen-armies?

After the Romans invented communal butt wiping sponges, most groups willingly allowed themselves to be conquered in order to receive this arcane technology, for after tasting its rewards going back to the old ways of leaves, sticks and sand was just unthinkable.

They did and got BTFO.

The Roman manipular army was far superior to the Greek phalanx.

But how did it go from one to the other? There wasn't just a "Roman invasion of Greece", there were six decades of protracted warfare. Philip of Macedon trie d to build a fleet to match the Romans. Perseus of Macedon fielded 40000 men at Pydna.
They did resist, and for decades, they just lost in the end.

During the Classical era, armies consisted of citizens exercising their civic duty of protecting their country. During the Hellenistic era, Alexander the Great and his successors had become so influential that it became pointless and even risky for individual city-states to maintain their own armies - especially not when their interests could be better served by allying with and ceding over part of their sovereignty to one of the few major Hellenistic powers.

In the eyes of the everyday Greek, Rome was just another guarantor power that competed against any of the other major Hellenistic powers for the loyalty and favour of the more than 2,000 Greek city-states in Greece and Asia Minor.

Unlike the Persians, Romans weren't considered evil. They may have been barbarians, however, the Roman way of life was similar enough to the Greek way of life so as not to be considered inferior or oppressing. For that reason Roman involvement into Greek affairs wasn't necessarily a threat that demanded an urgent and unified Greek response as was the case with the Persians. Often enough and depending on the local balance of power, alliance with Rome was desirable and even preferable to alliance with a major Greek state like Macedonia, Pergamon or Pontus.

The Persians on the other hand were vilified from the get go and their dictatorial government system rendered them the epitome of tyranny. For the Greeks, the Persians didn't just threaten their freedom, they threatened their entire way of life. This polarised the Greek world to such a degree that no Greek state could seriously consider alliance with them, and military action was that much easier to organise.

By the time Rome came into the forefront of the Greek world, only a few Greek states had a semblance of an army to command and fewer still unilaterally considered Rome an enemy.

Alexandros' successors (diadochi) internecine warfare
also colonisation of Anatolia and Syria and Egypt left Hellas empty of fighting age people.

the greeks gradually became miscegenated thanks to alexander's conquests and could no longer hold it together against the purer and racially superior romans. the romans befell a similar fate, as will america if a purge is not enacted soon.

This is basically one of the major reasons.

Military tactics aren't anywhere near as a big deal as people think they were. 1 word: Gauls.

Roman's never faced a traditional Greek Phalanx.

>as will america if a purge is not enacted soon.
Kek, america is already only 56% white, on the other hand it's unlikely the romans or greeks mixed with foreigners, and if they did it would be levantines or other europeans.

Daily reminder that post-Dark Age Greece was a Phoenician cultural conquest
Direct reminder that Greeks felt that Punics and Egyptians were above them in cultural sophistication

>Roman's never faced a traditional Greek Phalanx.
The fuck...

kek
I believe it though, plumbing probably seemed incredible to people still shitting in the woods
I guess thats why india was never conquered

It's true though.

you are wrong
persians often supported one side in the various greek vs greek wars, sometimes they even changed the supported side
and in the the greek-persian wars a lot of the greek states were on persia's side
look at this map, you think the cites in anatolia were persian? they were greek

>the greeks gradually became miscegenated thanks to alexander's conquests and could no longer hold it together against the purer and racially superior romans. the romans befell a similar fate, as will america if a purge is not enacted soon.

Huh? The roman empire was multiethnic, I guess Greece was too to a degree but they were much more "purer and racially superior" also are we really going to determine the ability of an empire by their race? We already know niggers can't build their own empire. And America is in no way a good comparison to Rome, you're no where near.

By the time the Romans decided to turn their attention towards Greece they were much too weak and Rome was much too powerful to be stopped.

Now if Alexander has decided he wanted to expand westward instead of to the east, the Romans of the 4th century may have had a serious Greek problem on their hands.... but he went the other way, to their relief.

Now if you're talking about why they didn't resist AFTER they had been capitulated, that's because the Romans allowed them to operate with a certain level of autonomy Roman Rule didnt really affect greeks too much aside from added security. And plus the Romans and Greeks have always had a great mutual respect and admiration for their similar cultures. Greek scholastics and language was a sign of higher education in the Roman world.

This is all evident with the timeless quote.

as Horace said, Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit ("Captive Greece captured her rude conqueror")

Hope i cleared it up for you.

Holy fuck I want to have so much sex with both of them.

Why is ancient Greek armour so fucking erotic? Did they know they were doing it when they did it?

greek phalanx is shit compared to the roman heavy infantry. Sarissas are ironically only really good against other spearmen or cavalry. The romans used short swords instead.

funny fact

indians were actually the first ever civilization to invent plumbing (see harappan civilization)

Jesus you're fucking retarded.
Read a few books

Quality posting?
On Sup Forums?
About an actual and unbiased history?
Well, that's new, well done.

>t. person interested in history

I feel like he copied that off reddit or quora.

Don't be fooled by his long writing. Most of what he writing is flawed.

No. City states simply were outclassed by proper empires, who could use their wealth to maintain massive well trained armies and navies

Don't mistake length and confidence for accuracy.

That said, proper grammar and apparent enthusiasm does a lot for credibility.

Also this
Greek phalanx became outdated
And hoplites were eventually replaced by more flexible roman legionaries as the 'best' unit.

flexibility was the biggest weakness of phalanx, and this is exactly what Romans utilised in their armies.

>except they couldn't actually recruit anyone because the Greeks didn't have the slave mind set.
>don't have "slave" mindset so you get enslaved
lel, so they were draft dodging retards

Yeah, I might have been wrong to judge him so quickly.
I see some flaws now, with phalanx being the good example

>Romans had bigger dicks.

>battles were fought by swinging your dick and screaming

There's always that one fucking guy

In his defense, not that i think he's right or wrong, unless you actually have a post with substance to back up your claims of him being retarded or copypasting, shut the fuck up because otherwise youre just as stupid and using ad hominems at this point.

you sir are a retard.
The Roman empire (Kingdom at the time) was using a Greek phalanx formation, for they were a group of criminals under Greek colonists.
Only after fighting phalanx against phalanx against the Greeks, did they change tactic to the maniple, and defeating them, giving them the tactical advantage over ALL the other armies at the time (that fought in a line geometry)

Simply because Greece had already declined by the time Rome showed up.

They both enjoy bumhole sex

>Why didn’t the Greeks resist the Romans?
Because simply put the romans became the greeks, there was no concept of the modern aberration of 'nation'

Rome was a republic at the conquest of greece and also at the battle against pyrrhus which occurred earlier

Not true. Romans faced the Greek phalanx when they fought pyrrus of Epirus. They also fought the later Macedonian style phalanx in the later invasion of Greece, the Macedonian wars, the seleciud wars and in Egypt.

I meant, when they started out as a Kingdom they used the phalanx.

>it's a clueless yankee flinging shit every which-way episode
I never said he was wrong, retard.

I hate your entire mongrel society so fucking much. All it produces is loud idiots.

A simple google search shows how Greek cities allied with Persians.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Persian_Wars

Ello wher is prof :DDDDD

>I hate your entire mongrel society so fucking much. All it produces is loud idiots.

He's not Russian. He's American.

Could not have said it better myself. Only thing I feel that was left out is that Persia was literally a world away. That the Persians managed to maintain an army that they did in an area so far away was a huge feat. Other than fending over an already stretched thin army, Greece never truly had a widespread victory. They've generally always failed to unite and have always been a set of city states slowly wearing each other thin.

Perhaps you are right about the phalanx, however they were not really greek colonists, but latins, however they probably did have the phalanx seeing as it was the meta at the time

because greeks were already too weak to put up any ressistance by that time
due to the autistic war of the succesors and the parthian threat to the east
the republican rome was too much for them to handle

ironically true

Rarely see much Roman vs phalanx art.

>generalizing an entire of nation people down to a singular stereotype

Don't act as if Australian society differs so much from American society. We're all cut from the same morally Western anglo-saxon cloth.

Conflict between Greek city-states and the Romans occurred over a period of several centuries before the Romans finally overcame the Greeks.

My favorite development during the conflict was the war with Pyrrhus of Epirus.

Pyrrhus is best known for his victory at Ascalum, after which he famously said "Another victory like that against the Romans, and we'll be destroyed." The Romans had lost the battle, but forced such heavy losses on Pyrrhus' forces that he was forced to retreat from the Italian mainland.

But that's not what's awesome about the Pyrrhic war.

Okay, so everyone knows about Hannibal bringing his elephants over the Alps, right? The common myth is that Hannibal terrified the Romans because they had never seen such beasts.

That's not right. Hannibal's elephants couldn't make it through the mountains. Most of them died on the way. The few elephants they had were basically symbolic, with very little military
significance.

It also wasn't the first time that the Romans has seen elephants. Pyrrhus had brought them to Italy to fight the Romans. And he brought a buttload of them. A pachyderm-sized buttload.

The Romans were terrified. The elephants posed a major threat to them, causing them to try rather unorthodox tactics to deal with the problem.

My favorite: Incendiary pigs.

The Romans, in an attempt to frighten and panic the elephants, poured pitch on the back of pigs, lit them on fire, and let them run onto the battlefield, hoping that it would spook the elephants into a panic.

It... kinda worked. Sometimes it would spook the elephants. But it was just as likely that the pigs would wrong the wrong direction, or just spook the horses of the Roman cavalry.

But still--Pyrrhus gave rise to one of the most ludicrous military ideas every implemented. Incendiary pigs.


>It's true though.

I mean, it's not. Romans did in fact face phalanx formations field by the Greeks at various points.

>Don't act as if Australian society differs so much from American society. We're all cut from the same morally Western anglo-saxon cloth.

communal butt wiping sponges may sound unsanitary to us but in reality it probably ensured everyone had a healthy gut. Even today sticking someone else poop up your butt is a legitimate medical treatment to correct bacteria imbalances.

The romans success could well have been from their shared shitting sticks.

I guess that's when their whole craze started. It's just hipsters shitting for nostalgia or irony.

When we learned history in school we spent years on Alexander's conquests and the Persian wars, the Sicilian expedition and the civil war between Athens and Sparta, but being conquered by the Romans was like half a page.

They didn't even say how it happened in the books. I asked my teacher at the time (I remember it) and he just said we didn't resist because their culture was similar to ours so we just accepted it.

I stand corrected.
For some reason I remembered the early Romans as Greek colonists.
The myth is that they are Trojan survivor, who founded Alba Longa. Then Romulus and Remus.

>greek stone throwers are powerless against the tetsudo
>those pikes get loose trampling the others
>javellin throws dismay the phalanx (macedonian) formation
>those autistic small shields can't protect the greeks either
>first cohorts forward stabby stabby with their gladius
>greeks don't have their sarissa as a secondary weapons except the hoplites who are in the second row of formation
>slaughter intensifies

It should be noted that the romans and greeks did not consider one another to be uncivilized like they did most everyone else. In fact the language of the elite in rome was greek at times, latin was the commoner language. This also went back and forth in the eastern empire, when greek became the common language but their laws were still written in latin and nobody saw any need to change it.

So when rome conquered greek it would be morel like the US conquering canada. Some people might put up a little resistance but in the end the fact that everyones way of life would more or less stay exactly the same it wouldnt result in any long term problems.

...

>spout of bullshit about a country you've never even been to because in your retarded mind the whole world is america and resembles america
>"they hate me because they're jealous"
kek

>"Marine"

why do Marines have this reputation worldwide?

Where is the lie though? You have your own niggers/natives (aboriginals), illegal spics (gooks), Jews (Jews)

My brother went to Australia and he says Vegemite tastes like shit!

Two key reasons

First is that Greeks considered the Romans little more than a religious and cultural offshoot with slight variations. They worshipped virtually identical pantheons, most Roman aristocrats spoke Greek, the entire Roman intellectual sphere was written and spoken in Greek. They weren't really considered Non-greek (Barbarian) in the same way that everyone else was.

Second reason is here: and also the fact that the Diadochi(successors to Alexander's empire) had bled the country for centuries trying to wrest total control of Alexander's empire from each other and at this point considered Greece mostly irrelevent, instead focusing on the Pan-Hellenistic civilization that had dominated the near-East in Modern Day Egypt, Turkey, Iraq and Syria for the hundred and fifty years prior.

Basically, if Greeks had've looked outwards rather than inwards after the death of Alexander or had one of the immediate Diadochi (Antigonus for instance) conquered all the others and reunified the Empire, all of world history that would've followed would've been radically different.

Having lived in both countries, let me assure you that the resemblances are superficial.

Australia is still far more British than American - and it also has its own unique Australian-ness to it as well, which you don't see anywhere else (obviously).

Americans have a cult of entrepreneurship which doesn't exist in Australia, for starters.

The MAcedonians at that point could barely field second-rate phalangites. Most of the men had gone of to to the other Diadochi kingdoms for land and higher wages, Not to mention their cavalry was a joke compared to Alexander's Hetairoi.

wouldnt it be "greesh"? this is a greesh?

Post-brexit Canadian-Australian-Kiwi-British federation WHEN?

>They didn't even say how it happened in the books. I asked my teacher at the time (I remember it) and he just said we didn't resist because their culture was similar to ours so we just accepted it.

That's kinda shitty.

I guess it could be kind of embarrassing--I mean, it's hard to build a national identity out of decades of gradual defeat at the hands of a conquering empire. The Persian wars are more inspiring since the Greeks literally did push back an overwhelming foreign army.

Still, though, there's a lot of interesting history in the Greek conflict with the Romans. We all know how it ended up, but that doesn't mean there weren't some great twists and turns along the way.

THIS!

Also if I wasn't sure OP is an underage cocksucker due to my long time here I'd think he wants us to look at ancient Greece as an example of what went wrong,how the hellenistic empires when theoretically at their strongest point had no will to resist and fight.

If you wanna see the reasons for their collapse you can also see the late romans.
Their sense of community had been removed from then since they were not independent but part of some forced coalition,it wasn't a fight of Rome against greece,it became a fight of the different hellenistic rulers against Rome,the hellenistic citizens for the most part had became alienated from their duties and the outcome meant little change since they had been changing rulers every now and then.
Degeneracy was also rampant according to ancient sources they became weak and degenerate just as they looked strongest on paper,like what happened with the romanswer and what's happening to us today,society lost their will to resist and fight,since that too had been taken from them.

>First is that Greeks considered the Romans little more than a religious and cultural offshoot with slight variations. They worshipped virtually identical pantheons, most Roman aristocrats spoke Greek, the entire Roman intellectual sphere was written and spoken in Greek. They weren't really considered Non-greek (Barbarian) in the same way that everyone else was.
This is so very wrong, at least up until the conquest of greece. Roman conservatives hated the greeks and their hellenic ways. The pro-greeks were called "hellenisers" and were bitterly resisted until greece had been in the republic for a while and the conservatives had died

>So when rome conquered greek it would be morel like the US conquering canada
It would be more like USA conquering one of it's colonial countries - let's say Germany.

>In fact the language of the elite in rome was greek at times, latin was the commoner language
In Byzantium, sure. Outside of southern Italy it wasn't spoken in Rome before then.

>Canada
Worthless chinkified cowards.
>British
Only worth keeping around as a museum piece. Their day is done.
>Kiwi
Already our bros - we should respect their sovereignty because they are partners, not subjects.

Australia is an Asian country and its focus should be Asia. We need to develop an All-Asia anti-China front and commit to stronger bilateral links. To do this we must populate or perish. High immigration flows of educated whites from the US, Canada, and Britain will form the backbone of this strategy and populate this empty country.

From the furthest corner of the empire to its new beating heart, Australia will rise.

Or alternatively our politicians will sell us out for Chinabux and then we will become serfs because they lack vision.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Persian_Wars
Those exceptions don't really disprove his point. Were they allied willingly? Did they fight as hard as the Persians? Did they search for opportunities to leave the alliance? Were they given special guarantees to keep their way of life or such?

>It should be noted that the romans and greeks did not consider one another to be uncivilized like they did most everyone else. In fact the language of the elite in rome was greek at times, latin was the commoner language. This also went back and forth in the eastern empire, when greek became the common language but their laws were still written in latin and nobody saw any need to change it.
This is entirely incorrect. Greek was rarely spoken outside of academic uses, latin was the common and formal language of the empire. When the empire split in two latin remained the official language in the east long after the west had collapsed, however greek was more commonly used.

Why doesn't Western Europe resist African and Muslim invaders????

Except everything about "Roman" culture was borrowed from the Etruscans.

it's "philhellenic" (friend of the greeks)
the haters basically did not hate the greek culture
the conservative such as sulla and cicero
they only hated the hellenistic greece
they admired the classical greece
still most romans participated in their own olympic games and spoke greek as for the senate

Because they realised they could upgrade and become byzantium

There was a lot going on.

The Greeks at this point weren't just Athens and Sparta, they were in demographic terms spread all over the Mediterranean and in political terms the rulers of most of Alexander's empire. Something that most people don't realise from just glancing at a map is that the Seleucids and Ptolemys were actually very capable of invading Greece, and Macedon could invade Italy - as Phyrrus had done years earlier. Anyone who says the Greeks were defeated so easily is missing 90%+ of the picture. Rome easily became overlord of the city states of mainland Greece. It did not defeat all the Greek armies with ease, though it was easier than it may have been since the armies that fought were veterans of the Carthaginian wars.

There are the wars against the city states of Magna Graecia and Phyrrus of Epirus, and the first war against Carthage which involved the city state of Syracuse. There is the second war against Carthage which involved a near total revolt by the "allied" city states of Magna Graecia. There are four Macedonian wars. There is the Seluecid-Roman war which happened in between - Hannibal was advisor to the Seleucid emperor at the time. There is the inheritance of Pergamum, a whole Greek kingdom on the coast of Anatolia, to the Roman people because its last king believed that Rome would be a better prospect for his people, and which became a major point in the reforms of the Gracchi brothers and eventually the wars between Rome and her Italian allies which ended up causing massive devastation in Italy.

Once Greece itself was under the Roman thumb there was still the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms to defeat, both with significant Greek populations and ruled by Greek dynasties.

At a rough guess these wars went almost constantly from 300BC to Caesar.

Don't mind the butthurt Australian. He is one of many, just like the brits, just like the new zealanders, just like the south africans, just like the irish, and just like the canadians.

All jealous we actually FOUGHT for our independence and became the greatest nation, the only current global superpower, made english the lingua franca of the global trading community, made American culture predominant through the entire global society (all nations hungrily gulp our fast food restaurants, our films, our games, all the while posting on an AMERICAN WEBSITE on an AMERICAN made invention, the internet)

I'd probably be jealous if i lived in an irrelevant non-country such as Australia myself.

Let them falsify the fact that we have the biggest population of white people in the entire world (223million) and were actually 73% white. It helps them sleep at night.

>tfw spiritual successor to the roman empire

feels good man

roman (italic) itself was not an etnichity but just a mix of numerous renegade italic tribes who banded together and eventually conquered their respectively tribes that they were originated from

"originally"

A lot of good answers here.
I'd like to add another point, Romans have never actually faced even a mercenary phalanx head on and won, in most battles in the "Greek time of troubles" around 250BC, they'd retreat their maniples into rougher ground and then flank the broken up phalanx with light troops of skirmishers, or even cavalery. There is even a quote of Polybius or somesuch saying that facing a Macedonian phalanx is the most fearful thing in the world. The republican Romans were just much more flexibe and the Etruscan checkerboard formation blew every static line in the world out of the water eventually by outflanking

>Degeneracy was also rampant according to ancient sources they became weak and degenerate just as they looked strongest on paper,like what happened with the romanswer and what's happening to us today,society lost their will to resist and fight,since that too had been taken from them.

Actually, the "degeneracy" occurred some decades before the Romans hit the peak of their might.

The decline occurred after more conservative values took hold.

This is not cause and effect--victory and wealth gave rise to people celebrating and having a good time. Decline caused a different set of values to take hold. But it wasn't "degeneracy" that caused Rome to fall--it was largely economic and strategic.

Roman currency was devalued, leading to inflation. At the same time, Rome had really massive borders. The communication tools were not available to maintain control and direct resources across the physical space that was involved--cities often had trade shortages of various kinds, especially grain, and there was no way to communicate information across the Empire quickly enough to head issues off at the pass.

Changes in Roman culture were the result of the economic and strategic issues, not the cause of them.

Except everything about "Etruscan" culture was borrowed from the Greeks

Except everything about "Greek" culture was borrowed from Egypt, Babylon, Phoenicia

Thank god. Finally, someone wrote up a halfway decent summary.

zzzzzzzzzz

Even so going straight into a phalanx like that usually ended poorly for the Romans.

hahahahaha

poor sap complaining about being an american vassal

such is the life of a non-country, i truly weep for you friend, i do.

not my fault Australian women love BBC. (big burger cock)

like i said they had to harass through javellins the phalax first before they proceeded to engange
the greeks were too busy carrying those pikes with two hands so it would've felt awkward to even defend yourself with those small shields and plus the raised pikes behind you (assuming you are in the front of formation) would also trample you

They did. Pyrrhus of Epirus Is a good example. He had a much smaller force then the Romans, made up of mercenaries he he paid very well. He and his troops slaughtered huge numbers of Roman soldiers, similar to what the Templers and Hospitallers did during some battles, but eventually he lost enough troops to the overwhelming numbers of troops the Romans could field. If you look at genetic maps of the Italian penninsula though, there is a distinct difference in genetics one you get a certain distance south of Rome, so he might have been somewhat more successful than you might think.

They tried, it didn't work. But Greeks clearly came out with the better deal from the whole thing.

He's not talking about US marines you fucking retard

>be a clueless idiot making objectively incorrect statements
>"ha ha but my country is more powerful than yours"
Something something patriotism doesn't make you not retarded.

You personally are an idiot, regardless of whether or not your country produces disproportionately more idiots than other countries (it does).

I also kek at how you came into this thread appealing to US-Australian similarities in an attempt to drum up camaraderie but immediately dropped that act the second you realised people weren't going to buy it. Thus we see the value of American goodwill.

You are losing your influence in the Pacific and I am loving every minute of the San Francisco System's dying kicks. You won't realise how misplaced your appeals to 'might make right' are until it's too late.

Too late for you, anyway. We'll be fine.

They don't you fucking idiot. Nobody but the US sucks off the US Marines. Everyone else knows them for the drunk rapey retards that they are.

it wasn't like they didn't try user. they tried to revolt in 88bc but Sulla fucked them so hard they never tried again.

Americans have a reputation as being slow so the internet has become used to using concepts americans are familiar with so they can understand more easily.
"A conversation is only as fluid as it's slower link in the chain"
youtu.be/8GyVx28R9-s