2,100-year-old Alexander the Great mosaic analyzed for restoration | Hacker News Reader

2,100-year-old Alexander the Great mosaic analyzed for restoration

phys.org

47 pointspseudolus9 comments

From article: "Here, in the Battle of Issus, Alexander's army of 75,000 Greeks faced Darius' vastly superior force of approximately 600,000 Persian troops."

From Wikipedia: "Modern historians find Arrian's count of 600,000 men highly unlikely. They argue that the logistics of fielding more than 100,000 soldiers in battle was extremely difficult at the time."

Basically, the ancient agricultural landscape would be unable to feed an army of more than 100,000.

Macedonian war propaganda, still going strong 2K years later.

The next paragraph, or actually next sentence adresses this immediately:

> These ancient written sourced troop numbers are likely greatly exaggerated as more modern accounting of the battle puts the numbers much lower, but it is how the story was told for the better part of 2,300 years.

Yeah 600k seems pretty outsized for battles of that time, even compared just "reported" numbers.

Dan Carlin's "Hardcore History" podcast mentions this in almost every episode. Numerical values in historical documents are always to be greeted with LARGE amounts of suspicion if not outright disbelief.

Was disappointed to see that it wasn't being shown in the museum when I went there 1.5 years ago. The penis room was also closed, not sure what was worse.

I was there a week ago and it still wasn't back. The penis room was wide open though.

When I to the Naples Archaeological museum website, I get the following.

NOTICE Il Mosaico di Alessandro proveniente dalla Casa del fauno di Pompei è in restauro. Le indagini diagnostiche condotte negli ultimi anni hanno messo in luce una serie di criticità nello stato di conservazione del capolavoro. Attualmente è in corso di ultimazione la prima fase di lavoro, che ha riguardato la progettazione e la realizzazione del sistema di movimentazione del mosaico, il ribaltamento di quest'ultimo e a seguire una ulteriore campagna di indagini diagnostiche e saggi che permetteranno di completare il quadro della conoscenza del manufatto. Seguirà la seconda fase di lavoro, che prevede prima il progetto di restauro e poi l'esecuzione dei relativi interventi sia sulla parte posteriore che su quella frontale. Il pubblico può assistere alle attività del cantiere grazie a due distinti punti di osservazione appositamente predisposti nella Collezione Mosaici.

After "The Macedonian" conquered Persia, he combined his army with the largely intact Persian forces, but unsurprisingly there was friction between the comands, and Alexander admonished his own generals, pointing out that the so called greek and persian languages, were mutualy comprehensable. The most ancient history of greek/persian origins is that they were the same tribe long long ago, but there was a dispute, exactly what is lost, but even to this day greeks carry a grudge and persians give them the piss. There is more, much more to the combined history of the greek and persian tribes, but what with the present fantasy landscaping of the past, its an unpleasant slog to try and comunicate.

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