quote:

---

The accounts of Leonidas's body being mutilated are plausible, but not completely solid, because atrocity stories in wartime are often exaggerated as propaganda. Since we have no memoirs from Xerxes, though, we have no idea why such a mutilation may have occurred. It could have been out of disgust at how easy it had been to mow down the legendary Spartans with archery. We are told that Leonidas had been awfully rude to Xerxes. Maybe Xerxes was just being a xerk.

---

quote:

---

I have to give Kyrek credit for holding off up to 2 million opponents in this argument.

---

quote:

---

For all we know -- in fact, this would be the best guess -- most of the three-days' battle consisted of standing around waiting for something to happen.

---

quote:

---

They may have measured with a systemic error that threw them off by 5 knots.

---

quote:

---

Different bodies are even more questionable. Where did those bodies go? They either came from nutrition and labor, which we have today, or from genetics, which didn't disappear in a few thousand years. I haven't heard anything about Greek skeletons that suggest great physiological differences, either.

---

quote:

---

Alorael, who also has it on good authority that early Danes were capable of literally tearing monsters apart and slaying dragons. That is not good evidence of amazingly powerful Danes or, for that matter, Danish dragons.

---

quote:

---

None of which means that every single person in ancient Greece was a rower. At best, the experiment might show that those ancient Greeks who rowed triremes were really strong, but it doesn't say anything about any ancient Greek who didn't row a trireme.

---

quote:

---

And isn't it equally possible that there was an agreed-upon speed that meant "heroic, manly, and martial rowing" to the historians.

---

quote:

---

Alorael, who finds it moderately upsetting that you had no ancient civilizations classes in your middle school. If anything says rampaging hordes of barbarians versus a small civilized world, it's middle school.

---

quote:

---

That's quite a number of leaps of logic being made in just one paragraph.

---

quote:

---

If Renaissance artists all depicted God with a long white beard, does that mean everyone living during the Renaissance had a long white beard?

---

quote:

---

Unfortunately, that's life. If a premise is doubtful, it does not make sense to pretend it's rock solid just in order to have a discussion that presumes it. If the closest thing we have to a fact is still a long way off it, acknowledge that, and discuss the evidence and its weakness.

---

quote:

---

How can we be discussing all Ancient Greeks when the experiment you describe is relevant only to the ones who rowed triremes?

Rowing is one of the most intense sports there is; even athletes have difficulty with it without a lot of training and excellent upper-body strength. I'd be more impressed if these "muscular people" had already been trained rowers before the experiment began.

---

quote:

---

I have to ask; Are we talking Spartans, Athenians, or Greeks in general? I could totally see the Spartans being that strong since they were an oligaichic society built on war, but it's hard to see the Athenians having that increased strength.

---

quote:

---

With all due respect to history as a discipline, every discipline has its weak points. I'm pretty sure this is one of them. No doubt the figures we have are the current best guesses of historians, but that doesn't make them good guesses. From the kind of evidence I'm guessing these guys must have used, I'd say their best guess ought to be reliable within a factor of 2, but not much better. In which case there is no point in us pouring much thought into the question of why ancient Greeks were so much stronger than us, because most likely they were nothing of the kind. Very likely they had a lot more practice in building and rowing triremes, but that's no shock.

---

quote:

---

Again, no. Athenians fought as many wars as the Spartans did, and they beat the Spartans in war sometimes. This distinction is something that middle-school history books make, but it doesn't hold up in real research.

---

quote:

---

I'm not counting his days as I_AM_A_MINOTAUR.

---

quote:

---

First rule of newb-hood. You think you aren't.

---

quote:

---

Dikiyoba is afraid that it's probably a holdover from your Minotaur days. But it's not like karma matters anyway.

---