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Arglebargle III posted:Some researcher on In Our Time said Thucydides included the speeches even though they were fabricated to explain the historical figures' point of view and motivations. Even if they're not real, they're a valuable record of what Thucydides thought about why these people were doing what they did. Thucydides also could have written sentences like "He did X because Y" in place of the speeches. Why doesn't he? Caesar's commentaries ostensibly avoid quoted speeches most of the way and the author was actually there when Caesar did this or that. Why did he do that? Ancient historiography is really interesting. I totally agree about the value. If anything, the "dishonesty" of ancient historiography is more honest about the inevitable move to "story-fy" history.
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Sep 16, 2015 20:04
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homullus posted:Thucydides also could have written sentences like "He did X because Y" in place of the speeches. Why doesn't he? Caesar's commentaries ostensibly avoid quoted speeches most of the way and the author was actually there when Caesar did this or that. Why did he do that? Ancient historiography is really interesting. If you talk an hour, that's alot of transcription. As for interview techniques, it's perfectly legit to put down the main points and leave out the rest if it's not relevant to your subject and in absence of recordings. Obviously, there's a reason why he has people hold speeches, instead of assuming that they did X because Y.
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Sep 16, 2015 20:20
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homullus posted:Thucydides also could have written sentences like "He did X because Y" in place of the speeches. Why doesn't he? Same reason he wore an onion on his belt: it was the style at the time. Not a white onion mind you, because of the war... As long as he admits he's fabricating them, there's no harm in it.
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Sep 16, 2015 20:33
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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JaucheCharly posted:If you talk an hour, that's alot of transcription. As for interview techniques, it's perfectly legit to put down the main points and leave out the rest if it's not relevant to your subject and in absence of recordings. Obviously, there's a reason why he has people hold speeches, instead of assuming that they did X because Y. There are no ancient interview techniques, though. There are no interviews per se. Ancient historians are like the grade school students stitching together their class papers from their three sources, with no source criticism or attribution or really even any thought about whether what they write helps the paper. If the goal of his speeches is to illustrate somebody's motivation, he had the option of saying "this person believed this and so did this other thing." He could write a sentence or a whole scroll explaining somebody's outlook and motivation; other ancient authors wrote whole books about people without any speeches in them. Why write the speech? It's not about assumption vs, fact, since that assumption takes place whether he puts in a speech or just summarizes. PittTheElder posted:Same reason he wore an onion on his belt: it was the style at the time. Not a white onion mind you, because of the war... And yes, that's the answer, or at least partially. But why was it the style? And why call attention to the problem of the style, and then go ahead with it anyway? In case it's not clear, I'm not criticizing Thucydides. I don't think there's even harm per se in ancient historians NOT admitting they've made up the speeches. The harm comes treating the textual survivors of long, ancient, and somewhat alien literary and historiographical traditions as simpleminded transcriptions and veristic accounts of events (as Chinese historians apparently still do, which is what prompted my mention of Thucydides). We learn so much from our ancient texts, and at the same time can hardly trust any of it.
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Sep 16, 2015 20:54
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Actually Thucydides was critical of his sources, it's the big thing that separates him from Herodotus. He even calls out Herodotus for uncritically accepting bad sources.
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Sep 16, 2015 21:30
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Arglebargle III posted:Actually Thucydides was critical of his sources, it's the big thing that separates him from Herodotus. He even calls out Herodotus for uncritically accepting bad sources. We suppose he's talking about Herodotus, but as is usually the case with ancient historians, he doesn't cite his sources. And then he makes up his speeches anyway.
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Sep 16, 2015 21:39
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Is the Latin Empire relevant here should I find somewhere else to ask about it.
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Sep 17, 2015 03:26
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verbal enema posted:Is the Latin Empire relevant here should I find somewhere else to ask about it. Well, it's part of the Roman empire's great and storied history, so ask away!
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Sep 17, 2015 03:34
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sullat posted:Well, it's part of the Roman empire's great and storied history, so ask away! Hell yeah. How on Earth did a failed crusade lead to part of the Byzantine's no longer being under their rule? Well this may not be true but from what I can tell from CK2 (I'm sorry but it is what gave me an interest in them) its certainly close. Were they immediately declared as the Latin Empire? I have a tenuous grasp on what made a Kingdom and what made an Empire back then.
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Sep 17, 2015 03:57
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verbal enema posted:Hell yeah. It's definitely the kind of thing that CK2 can't really emulate because it was so loving messed up. Basically, the crusaders ended up in debt to the Venetians, so they had to sack a few (Christian) cities for them to raise the scratch to pay them back. But even then, compound interest was a bitch, so they decided to head over to Constantinople to "ask" for loan. They had a Byzantine prince on hand (Alexis IV) whose father (Isaac II) had been overthrown by his brother (Alexis III). Alexis IV offered to finance the crusade if they restored him as emperor. At first, once the crusade showed up, Alexis III decided to evacuate the imperial treasury and leg it, so Alexis IV became emperor, but there wasn't enough money to pay off the crusaders. So he resorted to extreme measures to raise the funds, which got him overthrown and lynched by a mob. His replacement (Alexis V) wasn't strong enough to resist the crusaders, who came back and sacked the city with a vengeance. Under the terms of the Venetian-Crusader contract, Venice got 3/8ths of the empire, and the Crusaders got the rest. They turned it into the Latin Empire, which is the modern term for it to distinguish it from the Byzantine Empire. I believe they still called it the Empire of the Romans, even though it was a Greek land ruled by Flemish Catholic.
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Sep 17, 2015 04:39
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sullat posted:It's definitely the kind of thing that CK2 can't really emulate because it was so loving messed up. Basically, the crusaders ended up in debt to the Venetians, so they had to sack a few (Christian) cities for them to raise the scratch to pay them back. But even then, compound interest was a bitch, so they decided to head over to Constantinople to "ask" for loan. They had a Byzantine prince on hand (Alexis IV) whose father (Isaac II) had been overthrown by his brother (Alexis III). Alexis IV offered to finance the crusade if they restored him as emperor. At first, once the crusade showed up, Alexis III decided to evacuate the imperial treasury and leg it, so Alexis IV became emperor, but there wasn't enough money to pay off the crusaders. So he resorted to extreme measures to raise the funds, which got him overthrown and lynched by a mob. His replacement (Alexis V) wasn't strong enough to resist the crusaders, who came back and sacked the city with a vengeance. Under the terms of the Venetian-Crusader contract, Venice got 3/8ths of the empire, and the Crusaders got the rest. They turned it into the Latin Empire, which is the modern term for it to distinguish it from the Byzantine Empire. I believe they still called it the Empire of the Romans, even though it was a Greek land ruled by Flemish Catholic. This is what I was looking for in an answer thank you so much. Yeah in CK2 Venice is still Venice at the bookmark there isn't too much of a difference to them that I noticed. But me as the Latin Empire literally holding Constantinople and the surrounding counties/ duchies was a wtf moment for me. Also you say Flemish but in CK2 your French I'm gonna assume thats like a catch all they did more or less. I guess the dynasty that held the Latin Empire was actually rather prestigious but I'm not sure how much. Unrelated but popped into my head just now. So we had the Roman Empire which then became the Byzantine Empire and w/e the west was I really don't know. So how come at one point many many years later we had a Holy Roman Empire in the middle of Europe. Was that just a name that sprang up because ROMANS YAY ROMANS or what e: wtf constitutes an Empire and a Kingdom I just don't get it.
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Sep 17, 2015 04:54
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verbal enema posted:Unrelated but popped into my head just now. So we had the Roman Empire which then became the Byzantine Empire and w/e the west was I really don't know. So how come at one point many many years later we had a Holy Roman Empire in the middle of Europe. Was that just a name that sprang up because ROMANS YAY ROMANS or what Basically, yes. This was when relations between Rome and Constantinople were reaching a nadir, so the Pope crowned Charlemagne as "Roman Emperor" as an insult to the Byzantines, who were ruled by the Empress Irene. As far as the distinction between an Empire and a Kingdom, in CK2 Empires are collections of Kingdoms, in history, basically you're an empire if you say you are. So the Latin Empire consists of bits of Greece and Asia Minor, while the Russian Empire eventually stretches from Warsaw to Vladivostok.
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Sep 17, 2015 05:18
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sullat posted:Basically, yes. This was when relations between Rome and Constantinople were reaching a nadir, so the Pope crowned Charlemagne as "Roman Emperor" as an insult to the Byzantines, who were ruled by the Empress Irene. As far as the distinction between an Empire and a Kingdom, in CK2 Empires are collections of Kingdoms, in history, basically you're an empire if you say you are. So the Latin Empire consists of bits of Greece and Asia Minor, while the Russian Empire eventually stretches from Warsaw to Vladivostok. That is also wicked cool and another thanks to the smarts.
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Sep 17, 2015 05:27
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Man history owns bones.
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Sep 17, 2015 05:27
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verbal enema posted:Man history owns bones. Byzantine history is pretty crazy. Like, the blinding mechanic in CK2 was totally a thing w/ the Byzantines. They used to cut people's noses off instead, but after one of the guys who had his nose cut off managed to became emperor, they switched to blinding enemies instead. And all this because they weren't barbarians who killed their rivals! Empress Irene had her own son blinded because he started disagreeing with her on religious politics.
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Sep 17, 2015 05:43
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verbal enema posted:e: wtf constitutes an Empire and a Kingdom I just don't get it. They're just titles, and so they're whatever people want them to be. If you're important, and decide that people must call you an emperor now, and they're willing to do so, then congratulations, you now rule an Empire. Or if you want to look cooler than all your friends, but also want to avoid pissing too many people off, you can jump through some legalistic hoops and start calling yourself King in Prussia. Then your grand-kids just start calling themselves Kings of Prussia, because who can stop them? Part of the game is dressing it up in historical and legalistic justification, but ultimately your title is what other people collectively agree to call you.
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Sep 17, 2015 06:06
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sullat posted:Byzantine history is pretty crazy. Like, the blinding mechanic in CK2 was totally a thing w/ the Byzantines. They used to cut people's noses off instead, but after one of the guys who had his nose cut off managed to became emperor, they switched to blinding enemies instead. And all this because they weren't barbarians who killed their rivals! Empress Irene had her own son blinded because he started disagreeing with her on religious politics. Thats kind of hosed up to cut off someone's nose imo PittTheElder posted:They're just titles, and so they're whatever people want them to be. If you're important, and decide that people must call you an emperor now, and they're willing to do so, then congratulations, you now rule an Empire. Or if you want to look cooler than all your friends, but also want to avoid pissing too many people off, you can jump through some legalistic hoops and start calling yourself King in Prussia. Then your grand-kids just start calling themselves Kings of Prussia, because who can stop them? i mean i get what they are in ck2 i was just confused in real life but that makes some sense i suppose. Man wonder how that felt to declare oneself emperor and people being like "hm yeah ok" e: who was the emperor and how'd he become it? I feel like that'd be a thing where most people might not want
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Sep 17, 2015 06:27
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verbal enema posted:Thats kind of hosed up to cut off someone's nose imo There are some other issues. Power and authority and justification have this weird chicken and egg problem even at the best of times. Why is he the emperor? Because he said so. Why listen? He has an army. How so? Well he collected taxes. Why'd the peasants give him money? Well because he had the army. And so on, only it gets way more complicated than that. In CK this is represented as the strong and weak claims. Even with the biggest poo poo kickingest army in the world you still gotta twiddle your thumbs and wait for the CB to roll in. There has been in this thread before (not really interested guys, maybe when we're due a real derailing but not now) some debate about certain claims to legacy, but the important thing to remember is that people do eventually need a reason to obey you that isn't 'because I have a sword and say so,' particularly when you are either a. attempting to abscond with a good chunk of their yearly harvest or b. asking them to get stabbed on your behalf. Additionally, rolling up on someone and going 'this is mine because I want it and I can take it' is not only rude, it's quite bad if your own authority rests on these nominal and nebulous ideas of divine right or inheritance by blood or ancient titles of an empire that is both simoultaniously fallen for about 1000 years and is yet the root of all your family's earthly power and has been for about that long. Sure everyone knows the Venetians just want their scratch, and maybe some personal revenge, but goddamnit we gotta dig up a claimant somewhere otherwise we'll all be admiting that these rules of inheritance are a sham, and that's not an option either. This habit of collective hallucination, incidentally, is still very much how we function today.
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Sep 17, 2015 08:05
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sullat posted:Basically, yes. This was when relations between Rome and Constantinople were reaching a nadir, so the Pope crowned Charlemagne as "Roman Emperor" as an insult to the Byzantines, who were ruled by the Empress Irene. As far as the distinction between an Empire and a Kingdom, in CK2 Empires are collections of Kingdoms, in history, basically you're an empire if you say you are. So the Latin Empire consists of bits of Greece and Asia Minor, while the Russian Empire eventually stretches from Warsaw to Vladivostok. The pope crowned Charlemagne as he considered the throne of Byzantium to be empty because a woman sat on it and he needed help against the Lombards and such, not to deliberately insult the Byzantines. That did happen of course, but wasn't the main goal. We have one source that claims that Irene actually negotiated with Charlemagne to marry, but that it broke off. But yeah, one source only so who knows if its true. Way before the coronation of Charlemagne she had also planned a marriage between her son and a daughter of Charlemagne which she also canceled. So there might have been several opportunities to bring the east and west back together, but alas.
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Sep 17, 2015 08:05
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I thought I've read it in this thread, but can't find the post at the moment: Correspondence between an Assyrian prince and his father about a serial killer praying on children in the prince's city?
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Sep 17, 2015 10:40
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Arglebargle III posted:Actually Thucydides was critical of his sources, it's the big thing that separates him from Herodotus. He even calls out Herodotus for uncritically accepting bad sources. In defense of Herodotus, he usually had multiple sources. The problem was that most of the sources tended to be what some guy in a bar told him, with a followup interview by some other guy in a bar. And he managed to be like 70% right. And that 30% where he got things wrong, is still interesting from a historical perspective.
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Sep 17, 2015 12:58
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I've come around a little on him. If you consider what he had to work with (loads of bullshit) he did an okay job. Imagine trying to write a history of the entire known world with next to no reliable sources and getting a source means finding the one existing copy of a book which is in like, Egypt somewhere. Edit: My mind is also blown by decent maps from before modern technology. I can't even imagine making a map of Britain in 1300 that even vaguely resembles reality. I know intellectually how to do it but actually doing it is incredible. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Sep 17, 2015 |
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Sep 17, 2015 13:02
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This is a definite off-topic but I feel you will have good answers for me. I just finished reading Carthage Must Be Destroyed. I like learning about these lesser known states. Does anyone have any reading suggestions on the higher Mesoamerican cultures? I'd like to know what all they were into, the wars between the civilizations, basically how they operated up to the landing of conquistadors.
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Sep 17, 2015 14:40
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epsilon posted:This is a definite off-topic but I feel you will have good answers for me. I just finished reading Carthage Must Be Destroyed. I like learning about these lesser known states. Does anyone have any reading suggestions on the higher Mesoamerican cultures? I'd like to know what all they were into, the wars between the civilizations, basically how they operated up to the landing of conquistadors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Columbus
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Sep 17, 2015 14:49
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Charlie Mopps posted:The pope crowned Charlemagne as he considered the throne of Byzantium to be empty because a woman sat on it and he needed help against the Lombards and such, not to deliberately insult the Byzantines. That did happen of course, but wasn't the main goal. I thought this was a later supposition, and there was no real evidence from the time of that being a reason? Basically that the real reason he crowned Charlemagne was because him and his dad and grandpa had all done the popes huge favors in reigning in some of the papal lands' neighbors, and there was implied threat that if he didn't play along, maybe they wouldn't anymore.
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Sep 17, 2015 14:55
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Thank you, I've just purchased it.
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Sep 17, 2015 15:18
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epsilon posted:Thank you, I've just purchased it. You won't regret it. It's exactly what I was going to recommend.
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Sep 17, 2015 16:25
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If you cats were listening to the History of Byzantium podcast you'd be up on your Charlemagne history because his most recent 2 episodes were all about him. (It's not as good as History of Rome, but it's matured into it's own thing that's still very good. I like it better when he's doing the broad-scale end-of-the-century survey then the dynastic and military historical narrative). Basically relations between the papacy and Constantinople had been degrading for like a century because of stuff like taxes (emperors wanted popes to pay them), iconoclasm, and conflict with the Lombards, so the popes got in good with the increasingly powerful Franks instead. The coronation in 800 was kind of a culmination of all that.
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Sep 17, 2015 16:37
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Grand Fromage posted:I've come around a little on him. If you consider what he had to work with (loads of bullshit) he did an okay job. Imagine trying to write a history of the entire known world with next to no reliable sources and getting a source means finding the one existing copy of a book which is in like, Egypt somewhere. And of course, anthropologists will also write down whatever stories people will tell them. Herodotus had a very anthropological view. Regarding ancient maps, Lewis and Clark did most of their mapping with dead reckoning. I don't know how old dead reckoning is, other than "pretty old."
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Sep 17, 2015 16:54
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There's a part in Herodotus work where he says that the Finns are the lowest human form of life. They dwell in holes in the ground. Wonder who his source might have been.
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Sep 17, 2015 17:36
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Nintendo Kid posted:I thought this was a later supposition, and there was no real evidence from the time of that being a reason? Basically that the real reason he crowned Charlemagne was because him and his dad and grandpa had all done the popes huge favors in reigning in some of the papal lands' neighbors, and there was implied threat that if he didn't play along, maybe they wouldn't anymore. I got it from Judith Herrin's book Byzantium - the surprising life of a medieval empire. She doesnt cite any sources unfortunately, but she does support the narrative of the pope claiming that the throne was empty: "Of course, this [Irene becoming empress] was not accepted in all quarters. Some western observers refused to believe that Irene could rule as emperor. They used the argument that the imperial position was vacant to promote the superior authority of Charles, king of the Franks. [...] Pope Leo III improvised Charles's coronation and he was acclaimed as 'emperor of the Romans'." But well, it's Byzantine history, so if there is more than one source supporting this idea i would be surprised. Still like it more than the pope just wanting to stick his finger to the east. JaucheCharly posted:There's a part in Herodotus work where he says that the Finns are the lowest human form of life. They dwell in holes in the ground. Wonder who his source might have been. Its part of the Greek (and Roman) world view. If you read say Tacitus' Germania or the work of Pliny the Elder you see the same idea: civilized people live around the Mediterranean Sea, and the further away you get from it the more wild and uncivilized the people get. So the Romans are still quite civilized, the Franks are a bit weirder and once you reach the northern coast of the Netherlands or go past the Scythians its just weird poo poo like Amazons or people with eyes in their belly. The fun thing is that these idea's do not change, not even when area's become part of the Roman empire and the people living there become Roman senators or even emperors. There is a panegyric written by Sidonius Apollinaris written for the emperor Majorian, who lived in the 5th century AD. He tells about how the Franks are wild, love combat, have big moustaches and even bigger dongs. By that time the Romans having been familiar with the Franks for 5+ centuries and the Franks had been thoroughly Romanized. 9-Volt Assault fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Sep 17, 2015 |
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Sep 17, 2015 17:37
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JaucheCharly posted:There's a part in Herodotus work where he says that the Finns are the lowest human form of life. They dwell in holes in the ground. Wonder who his source might have been. I do not recall this.
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Sep 17, 2015 17:54
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JaucheCharly posted:There's a part in Herodotus work where he says that the Finns are the lowest human form of life. They dwell in holes in the ground. Wonder who his source might have been. He is not wrong.
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Sep 17, 2015 18:03
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homullus posted:Regarding ancient maps, Lewis and Clark did most of their mapping with dead reckoning. I don't know how old dead reckoning is, other than "pretty old." Very, very old: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_integration
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Sep 17, 2015 18:35
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epsilon posted:This is a definite off-topic but I feel you will have good answers for me. I just finished reading Carthage Must Be Destroyed. I like learning about these lesser known states. Does anyone have any reading suggestions on the higher Mesoamerican cultures? I'd like to know what all they were into, the wars between the civilizations, basically how they operated up to the landing of conquistadors. The Maya by Robert Sharer is the best book about them I've ever read. I used to live in Honduras and devoured books on the Maya while visiting Copan, Tikal, and umpteen smaller Mayan ruins in the region. The Maya is the best resource on them. This link is for the sixth edition, which is what I bought on 2007. It's now in its eighth edition, and should have updated information. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/08047...7S3L&ref=plSrch 1491 and 1493 are also outstanding books. They survey all pre-Colombian cultures rather than focusing on Mesoamerica.
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Sep 17, 2015 23:08
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Lots of use of the "B" word on this page. I thought at least some posters called those people by their right name.
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Sep 18, 2015 05:34
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cheerfullydrab posted:Lots of use of the "B" word on this page. I thought at least some posters called those people by their right name. "Pre-Ottoman civilization"?
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Sep 18, 2015 06:03
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the roman empire
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Sep 18, 2015 06:22
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JaucheCharly posted:There's a part in Herodotus work where he says that the Finns are the lowest human form of life. They dwell in holes in the ground. Wonder who his source might have been. An Estonian?
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Sep 18, 2015 06:27
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Tao Jones posted:"Pre-Ottoman civilization"? someone in the russia thread coined the term "turkish slavs"
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Sep 18, 2015 06:27
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