For The Sons of Carthage! (A TL)

Three posts in a row from me on this thread... I don't know if that's frowned upon. This is just an update, and I'll post some content too. Does anybody, by the way, know of a place where I can find plausible names for pharaohs of the newly restored Egypt? For Khababash' son I was thinking Nectanebo III, but there's only so many Nectanebo's one can take. :D

"Nectanebo" is actually a Greek corruption applied to two different Egyptian names: Nakhtnebef and Nakhthorheb. You could alternate between those two for a while, as it gives more options in addition to being more accurate :D

Khababash may also want to harken back to the 26th dynasty, the ruling family in place prior to Persian conquest that oversaw something of a light renaissance. The names Psamtjek (IV+), Nekau (III+), Wahibre (II+), and Iahames (III+) are available to be continued from that dynasty. Of course, you can also just take the name of an Egyptian god* and add any of the following suffixes or prefixes to it:

X-hotep ~ (X is satisfied)
X-mose/-mes(su)/-messe(s) ~ (Born of X)
X-emheb ~ (X Celebrates)
Si-X (Son of X - This one also works with goddesses)
Zenne-X (Brother of X)
Nakht-X (X is Strong)

*Be aware, though, that the standard Egyptian god names like "Isis" and "Osiris" are also Greek corruptions, and wouldn't be appropriate to plug into those affixes. A short list of conversion from Greek corruption to proper Egyptian (the ones to use for the names) would be:

Osiris - Asar/Usar
Isis - Iser/Asat
Horus - Haru/Hor
Seth - Set/Sutekh
Anubis - Ianpu
Thoth - Djehuty
Nephthys - Nebethet (pronounced Nebet-Het, not "Neb-Ethet")
Hathor - Hatharu (Hat-Haru, not Ha-Tharu)

Those are the main ones that spring to mind. If you need any naming help (or just any consultation for Egyptian stuff in general) feel free to PM me :)
 
"Nectanebo" is actually a Greek corruption applied to two different Egyptian names: Nakhtnebef and Nakhthorheb. You could alternate between those two for a while, as it gives more options in addition to being more accurate :D

Khababash may also want to harken back to the 26th dynasty, the ruling family in place prior to Persian conquest that oversaw something of a light renaissance. The names Psamtjek (IV+), Nekau (III+), Wahibre (II+), and Iahames (III+) are available to be continued from that dynasty. Of course, you can also just take the name of an Egyptian god* and add any of the following suffixes or prefixes to it:

X-hotep ~ (X is satisfied)
X-mose/-mes(su)/-messe(s) ~ (Born of X)
X-emheb ~ (X Celebrates)
Si-X (Son of X - This one also works with goddesses)
Zenne-X (Brother of X)
Nakht-X (X is Strong)

*Be aware, though, that the standard Egyptian god names like "Isis" and "Osiris" are also Greek corruptions, and wouldn't be appropriate to plug into those affixes. A short list of conversion from Greek corruption to proper Egyptian (the ones to use for the names) would be:

Osiris - Asar/Usar
Isis - Iser/Asat
Horus - Haru/Hor
Seth - Set/Sutekh
Anubis - Ianpu
Thoth - Djehuty
Nephthys - Nebethet (pronounced Nebet-Het, not "Neb-Ethet")
Hathor - Hatharu (Hat-Haru, not Ha-Tharu)

Those are the main ones that spring to mind. If you need any naming help (or just any consultation for Egyptian stuff in general) feel free to PM me :)

Wow! Thank you very, very much. This will be extremely useful for the Egyptian portion of the update. Now I know how to name the Pharaohs- I didn't want to call them Ramses, for obvious reasons... This will give me the ability to go into a great deal more detail with Egypt, so I don't have to say, "then his son did ____, after which his son ____d ____..."
 
Okay, here's the first half of the Chapter 3 update, dealing with Macedon and Persia. I cut out the Arverni bits, because those deal more directly with the Western Mediterranean. Egypt, Carthage, Various Italic States, and Gaul will all be focused on shortly, but I felt like I should post what I have before I drive myself insane.

Here's the map, little has changed. Macedon took Cyprus, poorly defended as it was, and that's about all the changes:

1dupT.png

Here we go:


Karanos II Huios

In 322, after a 37-year reign, Philip the Great died at Pella, capital of Macedon. His son, Karanos, who had been King of Epiros since the death of Alexander of Epiros, his half-brother in law, at the Battle of Ikonion in 329. At 16 years of age, many suspected that Karanos would be incapable of surviving on the throne, but after a failed assassination lead to the execution of twenty leading nobles, few doubted the danger that Karanos posed, and the power he offered them.

Karanos was known as “The Son” as his father greatly overshadowed his achievements, however, it is likely that without his consolidation, Macedon would have lost Phrygia and Lydia, and been forced to the coasts of Anatolia. It is his achievements, overlooked as they are, that should be appreciated and noted, not just that of his great father.

Karanos strengthened the nobility at the cost of the traditional hoplites, (though Macedon had possessed a hoplite culture since Alexander I, it had never had quite the same spirit as Athens, Thebes or Sparta, so this is not as revolutionary as it might seem,) choosing instead to create massive estates upon which the aristocrats eligible for companion “Hetairoi” status, were expected to provide troops for the crown. These settlements were largely in the recently conquered lands of Phrygia and Lydia, and were Karanos’ attempt at consolidating Macedon within the formerly Persian regions his father controlled.

The Temenoi, (literally meaning the lands cut off and assigned as domains) as these estates were called, soon established a Macedonian presence in the East, very nearly at the cost of Philip’s effective professional army. As massive as the Temenoi were, the greed of the aristocrats proved stronger, and soon only poor levies, unlike the disciplined pikemen envisioned by Philip, were provided.

After a massive invasion of Persia, using these feudal levies failed in 317, defeated by a weak force of one of the contenders for the throne, (The civil war, at this point, had gone on for twelve years,) Karanos changed the nature of the Temenoi, instead changing the troops to the cost of troops proportional to the estate- the larger the estate, the more the Hetairos had to pay to the crown, as upkeep for the amount of soldiers that estate could provide. This however, required a large professional bureaucracy, which was slowly established throughout his reign, and had many repercussions later on.

Karanos would never, however, have a hundredth of the military talent that Philip had, though he successfully incorporated the Lucani, with an expedition shortly after his coronation. Later expeditions, such as the aforementioned Persian Expedition of 317, and the Illyrian expedition of 320, (designed to defeat a rebel chieftain, called Agron,) failed spectacularly. (However, later expeditions did kill Agron, and return Illyria to the fold.)

However, in 310, Karanos, at the age of 28, was killed…



Persia: The Civil War

Persia, after the death of Darius in 329, was catapulted into chaos. Initially, the realm seemed poised to accept a dynamic new king, Bessos, who when he elevated himself to the throne took the name Artaxšaça (Artaxerxes) V. However, shortly after he arose to the throne, Artaxšaça was killed, having little time to reconsolidate his power, and without even the time to appoint a successor.

Three men came forth at this time to attempt for the Persian throne. Their conflict would cut at Persia for nearly 13 years. The first two, both of whose pre-ascension names are unknown, where Artaxšaça (Artaxerxes) VI, and Kambūǰiya (Cambyses) III. They began frenetically attempting to rally the nobles to their cause, when yet another man added himself to the fray. Bardiya II, named after the infamous previous king, who (according to the Greek, Herodotos) had been possibly an imposter.

[Greek painting of Bardiya]
220px-Darius-Vase.jpg
Bardiya II possessed the greatest support initially, but after several battles around Ectabana, he fell back, licking his wounds in the very fringes of the Empire. There he managed to seek audience with the greatest Emperor in India, Dhana Nanda, who agreed, in 321, to send the Persian with 20 heavily armored war elephants, and nearly 5000 infantrymen. These Indians would prove to be a lethally effective addition to Baridya’s army. Soon he pressed forwards, defeating Kambūǰiya in battle, taking Pārsa (Persepolis,) pushing Kambūǰiya towards Babylon, which had become a great stronghold of Artaxšaça.

There it is said that Kambūǰiya joined forces with Artaxšaça, combining their respective strength, while Kambūǰiya abandoned his claim to the throne, but it is far more likely that Kambūǰiya’s nobles simply recognized a sinking cause, and fled to Artaxšaça, killing Kambūǰiya. There, it is said, Artaxšaça had a combined total of nearly 150,000 men, likely more than his logistics could support for a long period of time, which is compared to Bardiya’s considerably more modest 35,000 men.

When Bardiya attacked Babylon, likely in 320, he was repulsed, with effort, and retreated to Pārsa to gather his strength for the coming war. It is then that Karanos seemed to have planned his invasion of Persia, and after three years more of border skirmishing, Artaxšaça was faced with an invasion of Persia by both Macedonians and Bardiya’s ever looming forces. Splitting his shrunken forces, Artaxšaça defeated a massive invasion by Karanos, with a comparatively small veteran force, and swiftly galloped to where Bardiya was marching to attack. With overwhelming force, Artaxšaça overcame Bardiya, and had him executed. In 317, the Great Civil War of Persia came to an end. Exhausted from the fighting, Artaxšaça swept Bardiya’s supporters out of significant government roles, leading to the execution of an estimated 2000 bureaucrats, and settled down in an attempt to rebuilt his nation.

During the war, Persia had lost Egypt, and very nearly had crumbled. But the iron will of Artaxšaça Mathišta (the great) had prevailed, and Persia stood ready to return to her greatness.

[Artaxšaça, from a coin issued 315 BC]
Achaemenid_coin_daric_420BC_front.jpg

I hope you enjoy that, and I will have the rest out as quickly as possible.
 
Its been a month.... is it dead ?

It's not dead yet, I just haven't had a lot of time. I'll try to get out the big Carthage update, but for now here's the piece on Gaul.


Eodhaigh the Great
In 330, Eodhaigh the Great (Edekos Magnas in the chronicles of the time) came to the throne. Educated by Greek tutors, who had initially fled the fall of Syracuse, and then Massilia’s “Medizing” (Alliance with Carthage) he was well aware of the history of the Greeks, and their views of his people as “barbarians.”
The Averni were the most powerful tribe in Gaul before his father, Bituitus, but that meant little. Tribal hegemonies, at the time, were short-lived, and rarely survived the death of the founding king. However, when Edekos came to the throne, he embarked upon a process of consolidation and conquest that would last the entirety of his reign.
Aware of the relatively fluid nature of ancient Celtic tribal affiliation, during his reign, Edekos worked to slowly destroy the meaning of tribe, changing it to “nation,” and writing a "constitution" of sorts for his nation, that guaranteed his supreme powers, for he was aware of the Greek designation of constitutional nations as civilized.
According to his official biographer, Koredinos[1] who wrote in Greek,
“Edekos, in the fourth year of his reign, did set forth a code for the people, that they might obey, and strengthen the Kelts, to make his nation stronger. And his conquests were manifold, and his realm stretched from the lands of the Trader Greeks to the shores of the Outer Ocean.[2] His sword arm was mighty, and his warriors did feast in his great halls knowing of the power of their King, Edekos Megas.”

Edekos soon had a relatively powerful nation that had conquered many of the other tribes, and in doing so, undone its own tribal nature. The power of his rule was not based on tribal authority, but on the sheer military power of the kings. The Greeks, who while they did not approve, did not disapprove in general of the Arverni, called the system a Keltic Tyranny, wherein the powers of the monarch are guaranteed by a constitution.

Edekos, in his initial years, began to train a Greek army, in the style of Phillip II of Macedon, who had demonstrated the power of his armies multiple times. However, this proved doomed to failure in the woods of the Kelts, and after a massive military defeat near the coast of the Atlantic in 327, he began to train an army in the Keltic style, but trained to fight as a unit, in unison.

Largely the army consisted of unarmored spear-armed peasantry, with detachments of solid axmen and talented cavalry. The cavalry, which was renowned throughout the western Mediterranean, was largely an importation from further north, lands which were not tamed, where tribal chieftains quarreled, free from Greek influence, and Arverni dominance. This effective army proved more than capable against the other Kelts, annihilating armies and greatly aiding Arverni expansionism both North and West.

However, Edekos did not himself try out his highly trained semi-barbarian army upon any of the great powers, choosing instead to constantly strengthen his nation at the expense of the other tribes. Soon enough, by roughly 222, he had a realm that stretched from the shores of the Atlantic, to the Mediterranean, and almost completely encircled the Massilian domains.

[1]Koredinos was a survivor of the Carthaginian sack of Syracuse, who fled the city to Massilia, and then Keltica shortly afterwards. Along with many Syracusans, he had gone north to the Kelts in search of a safe home.


Map of estimated domains of the Arverni. Towards the east is more control in name than anything else.

Edekos Magnas.png
 
:D Nice, dont get discouraged if you dont get that many posts trust me theres a lot of lurkers out there (ex-lurker) :p
 
Seems to be interesting and I like the copious amount of media you use, I'll be watching this. :)

EDIT: wait wat. Transferring my watching-ness to the new TL. I completely missed it. :rolleyes: I should read thread discussion more often, rather than just the updates. :p
 
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