I never noticed that in Obvilion. The imperials seem very orignal to me in the other games.Homever, when i saw their armor in Skyrim, i instantly noticed their similarities to the Roman Empire. And there are just too many.

-Soldiers

-Ranks

- It's Fall.

-Weapons and armor

These are all the sets of armors we can found in-game:

http://images.eurogamer.net/2011/articles//a/1/4/1/6/4/3/2/1121ImperialArmor.jpg.jpg

This is a concept of a Roman soldier:

http://www.techpin.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/coolest-looking-soldiers.jpg

Now in-movie:

http://www.lore-and-saga.co.uk/assets/images/Legion1.JPG

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_eXc_EwBohOg/TSsS7036sdI/AAAAAAAADIg/ne814r_nFm8/s1600/Caesar.jpg

It's just to similar, even the ranks of Legate and Generals. Now we must notice that the Roman Empire used exclusively spears, now that those of Skyrim uses swords exclusively. Anyone knows why the spears were removed?

Now i must ask, was the Imperial Legion of Skyrim supossed to be inspired from the Romans of the real world?

Well if you played Morrowind that`s how they look. They changed it in Oblivion, then changed it back.

But it`s pretty obvious that the uniform and names is all Roman.

Reason? I guess someone just liked the Roman look and needed a powerful, conquering state for Morrowind, etc.

I thought they were pretty recognizable as Romans in oblivion

I think it would be more correct to say that the Imperial Legion in TES is inspired by the Roman Empire.

Yes, the Imperials are even given ancient Roman first and family names.

Although TES's empire is more like the Roman empire if it had existed into the medieval era as their Roman structure is mixed with medieval architecture and culture.

In the same way Skyrim is inspired by medieval Scandinavia, and High Rock by medieval France (even the name Breton comes from Brettony in France and NPC names are often French). Hammerfell is the equivalent of North Africa with areas similar to the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara Desert.

Yeah sure, but i just don't know how to change the topic name.

originality is only an illusion.

I don't think the Imperials, as a race and a culture, are necessarily inspired by the Roman Empire, but the Imperial Legion certainly is.

Rome didn't actually completely fall until 1453 when the Ottoman Empire finally conquered Constantinopole.

Byzantine, is not really Roman Empire. It's like saying Macedon Empire is Ancient Greece.

You're thinking of the Byzantine Empire, or the Eastern Roman Empire, and the New Rome (Constantinopel). They actually lost control over Rome in 751 AD

The Byzantine Empire is just what we today call the Eastern Roman Empire. They descended from the Roman Empire, they called themselves Romans. Rome, the city itself, lost importance even before the East/West split. Rome stopped being the capital of the Roman Empire in 286 AD. In 324 the capital was changed from Nicomedia to Byzantium which was renamed Constantinople. The Roman Empire was split in 395(permanently, there was a few splits then rejoins before that), the Western Roman Empire fell in 476, and the Eastern Roman Empire(or Byzantine Empire as we call them now) fell in 1453.

The main weapon of the Roman infantry was actually the gladius (a short stabbing sword), though they did throw spears as the enemy advanced on them.

That depends on what time you are talking about. The early Roman armies were equipped with long spears and shield like the Greek soldiers.

Exactly. lol

The simpsons have already done everything anyway.
So we shouldn't worry about it.

That's pretty early, like before the 3rd century BC. The gladius was their main hand-to-hand weapon after that, when they built their empire

They are called Javelins. And are primarily used for ranged attacks. I wonder when the first bow was invented in Europe. Anyone know?

Even the ancient myths come from other ideas LOL. The only guy i know that is original is Tolkien. But i'm not entire sure. They say that he created LOTR by his experiences on the first world war as well on ancient myths.... So just a bit of originality.

About Tolkien. Well... No... Not really, for example Sindarin was loosley based on Welsh and Quenyan on Finnish and his influances come from Norse mythology - V?lsungasaga for example, the famouse poem "The Wanderer" is another example. There is actually little evidance to support that LoTR is based on WWII or I, or even any of the characters - infact, Tolkien directly said in an interview that stories in his lore or characters are not influanced from happenings or people from WWII or I. Shelob, Tolkien Scholours, believe come from him being bitten by a spider when he was a child still living in South Africa.

Anyway, that is WAY off topic.

The javelins, you guys are talking about were/are called pila I think (?).

But, anyway, I LOVE the fact the Imperials are so Roman Empire/Republic-esque. I am looking forward to creating my Roman Centurion inspiried character!

He's about as original as everybody is now. The originality came from the fact that he was the first in a long time to unite so many myths on such a large scale. It's not like he thought of most of those things himself, and even if he did you can always find things in older sources that hugely resemble it...

That's just the problem you have these days, everything has been done and people always like pointing it out.

Lovecraft was probably more original than Tolkien. He's completely from left field.

My favorite writer of that time though was Robert Howard (uh, seeing that I have a Conan avatar). His setting was hardly original. Every single race was a replica of ancient ones. He was a history buff, and wanted to write historical fiction at first. Except, he wanted to write about many periods. So instead, he created a world where they all co-existed (Greeks, Egyptians, Celts, Norse, Mongols, Gypsies all had a place in the same timeline). The clever thing was that it was a sort of pre-Atlantean age, where all of these cultures in his world were the makings of our actual real ones.

Off topic. My favourite writer was David Eddings. Belgariad & Mallareon is loosely based on the English myth Excalibur & King Arthur and Elenium & Tamuli is loosley based on Queen Elizabeth the 1st.

There was never really a Byzantine Empire - the people of that age referred to themselves as Romans. Byzantine Empire is just a term historians invented for utility purposes for the eastern part of the divided Roman Empire, simply because it was very different than the Western part in terms of culture...

BTW, the Macedonian Empire WAS a greek empire, in that Macedonians were Greeks, but again Greece as a nation did not really exist until the early 19th century - saying that ancient Macedonians and Spartans were Greek is little different than saying contemporary Serbians and Bosnians are Slavic...


Anyway, on topic: yeah, most of the races in Nirn are tied to rl human races... Imperials to Romans, Nords to Vikings, Redguards to Arabs, Bretons to Celts/Saxons. Katjiit somewhere between Thibet and S.E.A., and there are 2 of the Akaviri nations tied to Africa and to China. Dwemer were also tied to Assyria/Mesopotamia.

Still haven't found anything tiedto ancient greece, and that is disappointing T_T

Bows is 10.000 year old or older, main problem with the early bows was to week, worked well for hunting and unarmored enemies but not against shields and armor.
One of the purposes of the roman spears was to get stuck in the enemy shields and break up their shield wall,
Now the longbow and other heavy draw bows was designed to pierce armor.

Any evidence? Or are we just assuming that the cavemen used bows?