RE: The Last Movie You Watched
February 23, 2023 at 1:26 am
(This post was last modified: February 23, 2023 at 1:44 am by Anomalocaris.)
(February 20, 2023 at 5:40 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: Could be a comparison thing. "He's a shit ton better than Marcus Black Boardus."
BTW, the Roman navy didn't use slaves on their triremes. Too many extra mouths to feed, mouths that didn't fight. Rowing, on the infrequent times it was needed, was done by the combat troops, kept them fit.
Ben Hur’s depiction of convict and slave rowers chained to their benches reflect the much more recent practices aboard the war galleys of the christian and Islamic powers from the late Middle Ages to as late as early 19th century. It was much more a thing during the battle of Lepanto in 1571 AD than the battle of Actium in 31BC. The Roman navy relied largely on hired and paid professional rowers drawn from free men, ie non-citizen but non slaves, usually from the provinces outside Italy. They were certainly not chained to their benches.
Romans Soldiers usually didn’t row, if they were on ships they functioned either as cargo or occasionally as marines.
Slaves did row for the Roman navy on occasions to fill shortages of free rowers during emergency, such as during the Punic wars, and the war between Marc Antony and Octavian. But slave rowers were pressed for specific occassions and given their formal manumission afterwards, so they were unlikely to have to be chained to the benches like long serving Christian and Islamic slave rowers of late Middle Ages to 19th century Mediterranean.
It is ironic that a novel meant to be a panegyric for Christianity had to impune the Romans with brutalities commonly, recently, and enthusiastically practiced by the Christians, and to be fair Muslims, but seldomly ever by the Romans, in order to show how brutal the Roman world into which Christianity was born had been.