east of byzatium

[Azar]

Re: East of Byzantium?

Best trailer ever.

[bell-the-cat]

Re: East of Byzantium?

Best trailer ever.

Historical advisers must have been thin on the ground. Were soldiers that look like Hollywood-style Vikings complete with round shields and braided hair active in 5thC Armenia?

[Azar]

Re: East of Byzantium?

Historical advisers must have been thin on the ground. Were soldiers that look like Hollywood-style Vikings complete with round shields and braided hair active in 5thC Armenia?

You have to sell the movie some way!

[KarotheGreat]

Re: East of Byzantium?

Historical advisers must have been thin on the ground. Were soldiers that look like Hollywood-style Vikings complete with round shields and braided hair active in 5thC Armenia?

You can see round shields being used by the elite of the Yerevanduni Kingdom, the royal guard. Later on in Cilicia there were also spear units with round shields. Add to that the fact that you can find soldiers with round shields on church walls then you can see that this is correct. Don't know much about the hair to be honest.

[bell-the-cat]

Re: East of Byzantium?

This film is not set in the 10th century ("soldiers with round shields on church walls" i.e. Aghtamar) or the 13th "in Cilicia there were also spear units with round shields". I've a feeling your "You can see round shields being used by the elite of the Yerevanduni Kingdom" refers to 19th c or Soviet-period romanticised depictions of that era. Is their original imagery from that far back depicting soldiers? And you would never find a processional cross made with a metal cross fixed onto a second broader wooden cross - there would be just one cross and it would be either all wood or all metal. And I think the conical metal shields shown in some scenes died out in the Urartian period (and those Urartian shields were cermonial shields anyway - not for real fighting).

[KarotheGreat]

Re: East of Byzantium?

This film is not set in the 10th century ("soldiers with round shields on church walls" i.e. Aghtamar) or the 13th "in Cilicia there were also spear units with round shields". I've a feeling your "You can see round shields being used by the elite of the Yerevanduni Kingdom" refers to 19th c or Soviet-period romanticised depictions of that era. Is their original imagery from that far back depicting soldiers? And you would never find a processional cross made with a metal cross fixed onto a second broader wooden cross - there would be just one cross and it would be either all wood or all metal. And I think the conical metal shields shown in some scenes died out in the Urartian period (and those Urartian shields were cermonial shields anyway - not for real fighting).

The thing is you've also got to consider what happened before, like who were the power of that day and what kind of shields they used. For example the Hunnic infantry had round shields and even the Roman had adopted more rounder design for their shield. What is your opinion of it, what kind of shield do you think they used?