Talk:Battle of Raphia

Untitled
is the Rome: Total war reference truly neccessary? does every historical event that is related to the game need to be connected to it on this site? It doesn't seem like a serious compendium of human knowledge should focus on that sort of thing. Maybe I'm completely wrong; what do you guys think?

I absolutely agree. A game has nothing to do with this or any other similar topic. It is OK to link an historical entry to a game and another to link a game to a historical entry...

Rometotalrealism Platinium is even more accurate than rometotalwar it is a mod to rometotalwar.

Why was Ptolemy in the center and didnt lead his victorius cavalry on the rigth like the Seleucid King did after the example of Alexander the great.

Dicipline won the day i wonder also how did to phalanx nations figth wachother with those massive sarissas what would motivate men in the first rank that would die for sure facing 5 rows of spearpoints.

Is this date by the proleptic Julian calendar or the proleptic Gregorian calendar? PatGallacher (talk) 21:08, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

How many Seleucid elephants?
The entry as I found stated that Antiochos III had 103 elephants. According to Polybios 5.79.13 he had only 102. If anyone thinks this is a mistake (or has a different ms reading), I'm listening. Ory Amtiay - History @ Haifa University (talk) 16:53, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia itself says that "In general, the Asian elephant is smaller than the African elephant", so the comment on size doesn't make sense Crock81 (talk) 10:15, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Asian versus African elephants
New DNA research from the University of Illinois has shown that Ptolomy's "Eritrean" elephants, believed to be an extinct sub-species of African bush elephant, were actually savannah elephants. If this is the case, Polybius's assertion that the African elephants were significantly inferior in size to their Asian counterparts in Antiochus's army must be incorrect. Link: http://www.igb.illinois.edu/news/war-elephant-myths-debunked-dna

Clean-up needed
The writing is rough in places, and the punctuation inadequate.211.225.34.162 (talk) 06:15, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Changed one sentence in Aftermath to improve syntax and consistency with idea of previous para:

This sentence "The growth in influence of the native Egyptian element in 2nd-century Ptolemaic administration and culture, at first in the financial pressure aggravated[8] by the cost of the war itself." does not make sense. The subject of the opening clause is "the growth in influence", and then this is given a partial cause in the second clause, which is fine as an idea, but the syntax is flawed in English.

It boils down to, "The growth in influence at first in the financial pressure...". It doesn't have proper subject-verb agreement and is not a complete or meaningful sentence, although its objective is clear enough. The growth in influence doesn't do anything in the sentence. It might have read, "the growth in influence... increased more rapidly due to...." and then the subject "growth in influence" would have a verb and adverb attached to it, and then the cause being given would be connected by a causal indicator, "due to" rather than just an "in".

Also, it flows poorly with the idea of the previous para in which the role of the native Egyptians in the battle and the fact Ptolemy had already trained such a force is highlighted. Clearly also part of the process driving that new influence.

So I changed the sentence a little more to: "The native Egyptian element in 2nd-century Ptolemaic administration and culture grew in influence, driven in part by Egyptians having played a major role in the battle and in part by the financial pressures on the state aggravated[8] by the cost of the war itself. " so that now the native Egyptian element, not its growth, is the subject of the sentence, its growth becomes the verb describing what happened to that Egyptian element, and the causal clause is expanded to include the earlier military role and then to the postwar financial pressures, which seems to unite the two main causes the article as a whole is driving at. Random noter (talk) 23:13, 6 February 2019 (UTC)