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Twat McTwatterson
May 31, 2011

Chikimiki posted:

Exactly. And it was also a sign of weakness for the ruler to indulge in his desires. When Caesar's troops joked that he was every woman's man, it was also very mocking, since this meant he couldn't help but screw any women that offered herself to him.

"Caesar conquered Gaul, but Nicomedes conquered Caesar."

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Amused to Death
Aug 10, 2009

google "The Night Witches", and prepare for :stare:

Twat McTwatterson posted:

"Caesar conquered Gaul, but Nicomedes conquered Caesar."

The whole thing from The Twelve Caesars since I actually have the book in arms reach
Gaul was brought to shame by Caesar;
By King Nicomedes, he.
Here comes Caesar, wreathed in triumph
For his Gallic victory!
Nicomedes wears no laurels,
Though the greatest of the three.


Chanted out by Caesar's own troops. I think my favorite line about Roman history comes from that book, I forget who Suetonius attributed the quote to, but in reference to Caesar vs other emperors in terms of vices, "Caesar was the only sober man who ever tried to wreck the constitution"

Amused to Death fucked around with this message at 20:36 on May 24, 2012

Farecoal
Oct 15, 2011

There he go
Did Rome ever have an empress? (I know the Byzantines did, but you can't have a Roman empire without Rome :mad:)

Foyes36
Oct 23, 2005

Food fight!

Farecoal posted:

Did Rome ever have an empress? (I know the Byzantines did, but you can't have a Roman empire without Rome :mad:)

Not to pre-empt the OP, but no, there was never a singular reigning Empress of the Roman Empire. There were however several very powerful women who wielded significant influence during the rule of their husbands or sons. Livia and Agrippina the Younger are two earlier ones who many are familiar with, but the most powerful was probably Julia Avita Mamaea (the mother of Severus Alexander). She more-or-less ran the Empire through the 220s, had her moron sister Julia Soaemias murdered by praetorians (Julia Soaemias also held quite a bit of power during her own son's reign), and even held the title consors imperii. This made her a de facto Empress in the sense that you're looking for (though there was still a reigning emperor in the person of her son).

Of course, she only managed to get her and her son lynched when their military campaigns didn't work out so well. Thus ends the Severan dynasty, and thus begins by far the most interesting period of Roman history.

Foyes36 fucked around with this message at 23:08 on May 24, 2012

DarkCrawler
Apr 6, 2009

by vyelkin
The Crisis of the Third Century?

I'd love if someone made a writeup about it because my knowledge about Rome ends with Augustus' death...

Captain Payne
Sep 27, 2011

by Y Kant Ozma Post
Who's your favorite Roman historian? I took a history course on the Romans a couple of years ago and I loved reading Tacitus. Sallust was pretty entertaining too.

Quebec Bagnet
Apr 28, 2009

mess with the honk
you get the bonk
Lipstick Apathy
Were the Romans really aware of the Greeks during the Persian wars? What was their opinion on those, if any?

Chikimiki
May 14, 2009

Amused to Death posted:

The whole thing from The Twelve Caesars since I actually have the book in arms reach
Gaul was brought to shame by Caesar;
By King Nicomedes, he.
Here comes Caesar, wreathed in triumph
For his Gallic victory!
Nicomedes wears no laurels,
Though the greatest of the three.


Chanted out by Caesar's own troops. I think my favorite line about Roman history comes from that book, I forget who Suetonius attributed the quote to, but in reference to Caesar vs other emperors in terms of vices, "Caesar was the only sober man who ever tried to wreck the constitution"

Don't forget that this was likely a myth spread by Caesar's political enemies ;) He really was known for being a "womanizer."

The chanting comes from the tradition that home-coming legionaries would mock their general, to blow of some steam :hist101:

Octy
Apr 1, 2010

Modus Operandi posted:

It seems like Rome viewed Christianity as a threat not so much for the basic beliefs but that Christianity seemed intent on forming a competing bureaucracy with its eventual hierarchy built from the ground up.

Ha yes, I've just dug up an essay I wrote on the subject which more or less argued this. As much as I like reading about Julio-Claudian politics or the Civil Wars, there's just a whole other dimension to the Late Antiquity that is absolutely fascinating. It ought to be taught more.

Kopijeger
Feb 14, 2010
Apropos Suetonius, the anglo-dutch group HERR released the album "XII Caesars" which sets excerpts from the book to music:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOmPO--avro

More to the subject of the thread: why is it that the dramatic periods in the mid- to late empire seem to be relatively ignored compared to the very late Republic and early Empire? I am primarily thinking of depictions in popular culture and popular histories. For example, the bibliography of Adrian Goldsworthy seems to concentrate on the period before 100 AD. How are the events after 200 AD treated by professional historians? Is there any particular emphasis in current scholarship?

FizFashizzle
Mar 30, 2005







One of the coolest things was the financial crisis that stemmed from a number of causes, like the wealth of Rome getting shipped to China for silk, or massive debasement of the currency. They really didn't understand things like inflation yet.

Diocletian tried to counter this by coming out with a gigantic gently caress off list of everything and what it should cost. This was completely ineffective as you can probably imagine, leading to massive black markets anywhere the emperor wasn't. Mike Duncan joked the only thing that was never sold on the black market was purple cloth, since only the Emperor would have bought it.

A funnier thing is the beer listed on it, with Egyptian beer being the cheapest of them all by an order of magnitude.

As far as wine, they actually drank a weird kind of wine concentrate that had to have water added to it.

Octy
Apr 1, 2010

DarkCrawler posted:

I'd love if someone made a writeup about it because my knowledge about Rome ends with Augustus' death...


Ooo, we can't have that. Go out and buy a copy of Tacitus' Annals. I'm not a huge fan but he's a good start, even though he only goes up to Nero and a few books are missing. If you want someone more readable and entertaining, Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars is fun as he finishes at the end of the first century.

But as a very quick, general and not very well written write-up to hopefully pique your interest: AD14 begins with Augustus' death. His stepson Tiberius comes to power. This guy is one of the least favourite of the ancient historians. He ends his days in a slightly emo depression on the island of Capri, never once visiting Rome.

Our next emperor is Caligula, star of that exceptionally graphic film with Malcolm McDowell. His reign started off well, although he went a bit mad about six months in, started executing people and what not. A popular joke around that time was when Caligula a consul if he had slept with his sister. The consul, who was extremely quick-witted, replied, 'Not yet.' Caligula was eventually assassinated and the Praetorian Guard proclaimed his uncle, Cl-cl-Claudius emperor.

Claudius was a decent enough emperor, despite his stutter and all the other horrible things wrong with him. He successfully launched an invasion of Britain and had, I think, four wives. In fact, his fourth wife, was actually his niece Agrippina the Younger. He had to force the senate to change the law so he could marry her, which goes to show that the Romans were pretty sensible before then. She brought a bit of baggage with her, namely in the form of her son Nero. Nero was older than Claudius' own son Britannicus. Claudius died, possibly poisoned by his wife, in AD54.

So because Nero was older, he became emperor (and possibly for another reason I can't remember). This is the guy who supposedly slept with his mother and later had her killed after a series of overly complicated attempts. Nero is also popularly known for having 'fiddled while Rome burnt' (it was a lyre, I believe.) You're welcome to form your own views on whether or not he actually had anything to do with it. His death in AD68-69 (?) began the Year of the Four Emperors.

The first emperor was Galba who was a hard, authoritarian absolute bastard. He was quickly superseded by one of his followers, Otho. Otho ruled for 95 days and I believe, is the only emperor to have worn a toupee. In turn, Otho was defeated by another general Vitellius. At this time, a guy by the name of Vespasian was hanging around in the East at the head of a huge army but he wasn't doing anything. Eventually he invades Italy and begins the new Flavian dynasty.

I don't know a huge amount about Vespasian but his first son Titus ruled for about two years. He happened to be emperor during the eruption of Vesuvius (yeah, that eruption) which I think was followed by an epidemic and then Rome burnt down again and the whole thing must have been awful for him. Then he died and his younger brother Domitian succeeded.

At this point I'm afraid I actually have to go university. Feel free to correct anything and fill the rest in.

Octy fucked around with this message at 00:51 on May 25, 2012

FizFashizzle
Mar 30, 2005







Lotish posted:

This makes me curious: Why is that particular period the famous one, exactly? I mean it's hazy for me, as an average joe: I know there was still stuff going on, but we just don't seem to care after a while.

This was answered already, but a major reason it's so famous is there is the most history written about it. Why is that?

Most of the papyrus crop, which they used for writing, started dying from some weird plague around the end of the 3rd century, so they didn't have much to write on. They could use vellum but it was hella expensive, and they hadn't invented paper yet like the Chinese had.

Grand Fromage posted:

You sniped me. Belisarius is my vote for general who was recognized as being a massive badass in his day but gets ignored in history. He was one of the finest military minds Rome ever produced.

For someone just generally unappreciated I'll have to think more. I will pound out these questions at school tomorrow, glad there are a bunch.

Fun reminder that he was constantly undercut because Justinian's wife saw him a threat to her husband's legitimacy. Considering she was basically a stripper who caught the Emperor's eye, she was dead set on not going back to her previous life.

quote:

If one believes Procopius' hyperbolic account, Theodora made a name for herself with her portrayal of Leda and the Swan, where she stripped off her clothes as far as the law allowed, lying on her back while some attendants scattered barley on her groin and then some geese picked up the barley with their bills. She also supposedly entertained forty lovers in one night and, 'though she made full use of three orifices, she often found fault with Nature, complaining that Nature had not made the holes in her nipples larger so that she could devise another variety of intercourse there.'[8]

:riker:

FizFashizzle fucked around with this message at 00:53 on May 25, 2012

Shimrra Jamaane
Aug 10, 2007

Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.
It's a miracle that the empire lasted as long as it did all things considered. It's not easy having a century of complete nut cases having absolute power.

euphronius
Feb 18, 2009

Farecoal posted:

Did Rome ever have an empress? (I know the Byzantines did, but you can't have a Roman empire without Rome :mad:)

Western Rome was way to sexist for that to ever be a thing.

Cleopatra was just unfathomable to them.

However the wife of hte Augustus was "Augusta" and treated with reverence sometimes. And women could become players in politics. I guess more so earlier before Western Rome became a rump state run by the generals.

Republican Rome and late Empire are so completely different.

Amused to Death
Aug 10, 2009

google "The Night Witches", and prepare for :stare:
Theodora was just a total badass, I'd probably fear her the most out of Justinian, Belisarius and Narses given the fact she's the one who had to keep Justinian from fleeing during the Nika riots. "Purple is also a good color to die in" or something along those lines.

FizFashizzle posted:

One of the coolest things was the financial crisis that stemmed from a number of causes, like the wealth of Rome getting shipped to China for silk, or massive debasement of the currency. They really didn't understand things like inflation yet.

It's also pretty interesting when you look at it how the economic and social consequences helped lay the groundwork for what would evolve into feudalism in the west.

FizFashizzle
Mar 30, 2005







Amused to Death posted:

It's also pretty interesting when you look at it how the economic and social consequences helped lay the groundwork for what would evolve into feudalism in the west.

Yeah, Diocletian basically said that a son should do what his father did so we won't have to face like a blacksmith shortage in 50 years.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

Was Christianity really popular as an underground movement before Constantine the Great or is this partly a fabrication of Christian writings from the Middle Ages?

This has been addressed pretty well but yes, they were a Big Deal. There's constant debate about whether Constantine actually gave a flying poo poo about Christianity or he just converted because he saw where the wind was blowing. By his era, the majority of the patricians seemed to be Christian and so were a sizable number of the underclasses.

One of the issues with Roman religion was that it didn't really have much to offer. Essentially, you were just trying to keep the gods satisfied so they wouldn't gently caress up your life, and maybe they'd help you out if you did something nice for them. There wasn't much hope. The mystery religions (Isis, Mithras, Dionysus, Christianity) were all essentially the same thing, promising a better future and life after death. Christianity just happened to win out. There's no good reason why Christianity succeeded instead of say, Mithras. If I had to speculate, I'd say there were two factors. One, Christianity tells its followers to go out, preach, and spread the word. The others didn't really do that. Two, the persecutions allowed Romans to see Christians, and we have accounts of how Christian stoicism in the face of persecution touched the Roman soul and made people sympathetic to them, even interested in learning more about the religion.

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

There are some scholars that claim that "Christianization" led to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire but then why did the Eastern Roman Empire survive until 1453?

This claim mostly starts with Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and it has a lot more to do with the general gently caress you to Christianity going on during the Enlightenment than it does with anything actually historical. There's a case to be made that the abandonment of traditional Roman virtues weakened the structure that kept the culture together but that started well before Christianity became a big deal.

Bitter Mushroom posted:

What was the normal Roman life expectancy? I imagine it could be vastly different for different classes.

The average was low, but that's because making it to adulthood was difficult. About half of children died. If you made it to about your teenage years, you could reasonably expect to live into your 60s. Dying before your 50s was unusual. Ignoring the ever-present possibility of violence, plague, famine, etc. The wealthy, soldiers, and gladiators had access to excellent medical care.

Bitter Mushroom posted:

What was social mobility like? Did any former slaves rise particularly high? Was there ever any kind of criticism of slavery?

One of Rome's distinguishing features is that it had far more social mobility than any other ancient society. Now right off I have to say that for the vast, vast majority of people, you were stuck where you started. This is always the reality though, even today in the US. Rome's big distinction is there was no reason why you couldn't rise through the ranks.

There are many, many patrician families that could trace ancestry back to plebs, and some who came from slaves. Slavery in Rome was not a life sentence by any means. Slaves could earn money and buy their own freedom, or they were granted freedom regularly. In fact there was a period where the rules about freeing slaves were tightened up a bit because so many were being freed that there was fear of a labor shortage. Freedmen were a separate social class, not equal, but the children of freedmen were Romans like anyone else.

The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_the_vettii in Pompeii is the best example I know of how high a former slave could rise. There were many freedmen throughout the empire's history who became rich. as. gently caress. Richer than patricians. Freedmen were restricted in what they could do, but being a merchant was open to them. It's broadly similar to the wealth of Jewish people in the Middle Ages--restricted to a job where you could make bank, thus a notable number of them did. Obviously not every freedman (or every Jew) did, but the fact that you could go from being a slave to being one of the richest men in the city was pretty drat good for the pre-modern world.

I don't personally know of any criticism of slavery but I'm sure it existed. Whether or not any of the writings survived is another question.

Bitter Mushroom posted:

I think the likes of Nero and Caligula have been discussed a lot, but the average lives of the people haven't, so if you do that I will give this thread an A++ history mark.

Hopefully that will come out in the thread. We like to talk about it, the problem is just that almost all the source material is left by the upper classes. The best simple thing I can point you to to start reading are the Vindolanda tablets, a bunch of letters from/to Roman soldiers that were accidentally preserved in Britain.

Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 04:21 on May 25, 2012

Modus Operandi
Oct 5, 2010

Farecoal posted:

Did Rome ever have an empress? (I know the Byzantines did, but you can't have a Roman empire without Rome :mad:)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulpia_Severina

Aurelian's wife Ulpia Severina was regarded as an Empress of sorts because she ran the empire for a couple years in the interregnum after his assassination. It's hard to say whether she was a puppet or not though. I'm leaning towards puppet but I haven't read up enough on her to say for sure but it's hard to believe a singular woman could hold sway over murderous Praetorian guards, scheming generals, and the like during that era. She did have coins minted in her name and such.

Modus Operandi
Oct 5, 2010

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

It's a miracle that the empire lasted as long as it did all things considered. It's not easy having a century of complete nut cases having absolute power.

In its time the Roman Emperors have been at one point or another:

Many non-italians.
Many psychotics
Incompetents
A high bidder for the position
A ladyboy
A woman
Son of a freed slave
Many men of common ancestry
Several generals
A barbarian

edit: Does anyone have stats for the average lifespan of a Roman emperor during the 3rd century? I'm guessing it's <6 years.

Modus Operandi fucked around with this message at 03:01 on May 25, 2012

FizFashizzle
Mar 30, 2005







Aurelian did have to deal with the Palmyrene Empire which was headed by Zenobia.

The idea was that the empire was in such disarray at that point that Aurelian was fine with this woman ruling the eastern third of the empire as long as she paid him lip service while he settled up the rest of the country.

She ruled through her son of course but she began minting currency (a major source of propaganda back then) that portrayed her as queen.

Eventually Aurelian had to march his troops out there and burn Palmyra to the ground.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


THE LUMMOX posted:

How much knowledge did the Romans have about the area south of Egypt/Libya/Morocco etc. What did they write about black Africans?

Romans didn't really have a concept of race like we do, so we're not entirely sure what they thought about black Africans. In the Roman world, you were Roman if you were a citizen (or from Rome specifically, earlier on). It's similar to the Greek conception where being Greek just means speaking Greek and accepting Greek culture.

Areas south of the Sahara in the west were basically unknown because crossing the desert was practically impossible. It's likely ships went further south, we know the Romans went as far as the Canary Islands. There's just no record of what, if anything, was going on over there.

In the east there was more contact. Ethiopia was well known, though Ethiopia was also a catch-all term used for some mysterious, far away place. Most Romans wouldn't be sure where reality ended and myth began. There are stories like how in Ethiopia, gold was so common it was used for chains whereas iron was incredibly valuable. There was definitely contact along the Nile and in sea trade, since the Roman trade routes went at least as far down the east coast of Africa as Socotra. What they actually knew is unclear.

Also in the Roman conception of the layout of the world, Ethiopia was east, not south. The Sahara was south of Rome, and then the Ocean that surrounded the whole world.

THE LUMMOX posted:

Also talk about food.

Roman food is salty as gently caress and the Romans invented the hamburger.

Romans ate a huge variety of things, and the rich loved to import the exotic. For the staples, like most of European history most people survived on bread (flatbreads and then later more leavened breads) and porridge made from grain and whatever vegetables you happened to be able to get. Olive oil was standard. Garum and defrutum were the kimchi of the Roman world, used in everything. Garum is a fish sauce made from fermenting fish guts, it's essentially the same thing as fish sauce from Southeast Asia. Defrutum is a concentrated grape sauce made from boiling down grape juice. It was often mixed with garum, and called oenogarum in that case.

One interesting spice was silphium, which was hugely popular. So popular, in fact, that it's extinct now--it couldn't be cultivated and the Romans ate all of the wild stuff. So we don't know what it was exactly, but once it went extinct they used asafoetida as a substitute and the flavors were considered similar enough.

Asparagus was a prized vegetable, very popular. Since urine was collected for use in dry cleaning, you can imagine how pleasant that job was during asparagus season.

Romans seem to have invented the bar snack, you can see this all around Pompeii. Bars will have big jars as part of the bartop and these were full of nuts and figs and whatnot. Wine was the booze of choice, but Roman wine was concentrated and usually mixed with water before drinking. Only barbarians drank unmixed wine.

For more details on specific dishes, the Roman cookbook Apicius has survived largely intact and you can find recipes from it online. I've cooked a few. If you want to experiment, I highly recommend cutting the salt out entirely (leave in the garum) and tasting it before you add any more salt. The first time I made Roman food it was so salty it was almost inedible.

Modus Operandi posted:

Does any museum have a mostly intact Roman eagle standard on display? I'm surprised that even after the fall that more of these weren't preserved since they were prized relics by even enemies of Rome.

I think I saw one in Rome, I'll have to check my pictures. They were made of solid gold so there's a good chance they would've been melted down when found.

Modus Operandi posted:

Also, I read in an article that forgeries of Roman artifacts was really prevalent during the 16th century onward. The estimate was that as high as 40% of everything "discovered" is fake. What do you think about this?

That seems a bit high to me, but there are plenty of forgeries. I wouldn't be surprised if lots of forgeries were sold throughout the ages but generally the stuff in museums is genuine. Generally.

WebDog posted:

What would be your favorite Roman dish and would it ever be feasible to recreate in modern times?

The best one I've made was chicken with leeks, which was supposedly Marcus Aurelius' favorite dish. It's easy to make, I'll see if I can find the recipe later (at work now).

Fight Club Sandwich posted:

How gay were the Romans? Can you opine on if they had more or less gay sex than the Greeks (as a cultural thing, not raw #)?

The concept of gay was quite a bit different at the time. It's very difficult to understand outside of Roman culture but I'll take a shot.

First, the number of gay people's pretty much the same anywhere, any culture, so in that quantity of gayness the Romans were like everyone else.

As for man on man love. The idea of "gay" as a distinct thing is more modern, the Romans didn't really have it. The broad standard that both Romans and Greeks adhered to was similar to the prison rules. If you are the one doing the penetrating, you're not gay and it's cool. If you're being penetrated, you're gay and it's shameful. There is an exception here for boys at the beginning of adolescence, when it's acceptable to experiment with being on the receiving end.

Whether this behavior was considered acceptable is a really complicated question and I can tell you now the answer is not going to be good, but it's hard to wrap your mind around from our cultural perspective. Gay sex was acceptable (as the top, not the bottom) but you would be mocked for it, and it was considered kind of immoral, but not really. Okay. Men having male (boy) lovers was a thing that happened frequently enough, especially among the upper classes. It was also condemned as immoral, but you wouldn't get in trouble for it. It was something you could use as slander. For example, Tiberius was accused of having pools in his palaces on Capri where he banged young boys. Even though this wasn't strictly condemned by the culture, the accusation was a serious slander. Hadrian was mocked for his boy lover, and Caesar was mocked for the accusations that he was banging powerful men to get ahead. Yet, gayness wasn't necessarily seen as wrong.

Like I said, it's all over the place and tough to understand. I don't really grasp it myself.

Lotish posted:

This makes me curious: Why is that particular period the famous one, exactly? I mean it's hazy for me, as an average joe: I know there was still stuff going on, but we just don't seem to care after a while.

More is written about it. More material has survived, and later writers focused on more. Part of the reason is this was the height of Roman power. People like reading about victories, not defeats, and for those 500-odd years the Romans suffered the occasional setback or defeat (see: Cannae), but overall Rome was an unstoppable juggernaut. It has an appeal. Prior to that there simply isn't much surviving record, and after that Rome is in decline from its position at the top of the world so there's less glory to be had.

Also the papyrus thing.

Twat McTwatterson posted:

Is this a general trend for scholars now to move away from designating the East as Byzantium, or just your personal feeling?

Because of course Byzantine is a historian's creation, and the East still called itself Roman, but I think Byzantine serves itself well as a reference to that period.

Like everything in history it's a debate. I'm with the school that finds Byzantine to be a ridiculous invention of later historians and actively destructive to people's understanding of Rome. I believe we are the large majority but I don't know if there's been a poll or anything.

Typically the way I divide things up is between the Roman kingdoms, classical Rome, late antiquity, and Medieval Rome. Roughly that's 753 to 509, 509 to 235, 235 to 632, and 632 to 1453. I find Medieval Rome a better way of distinguishing the Byzantines from the ancient state.

Why 632 is something I'll get into in more detail, I want to group all the "fall of Rome" questions into a big post.

WoodrowSkillson posted:

I'm going to politely disagree. I think it would be a lot easier for you to to focus on the hard and long answer questions, and let other people handle to smaller stuff. You can always correct us, and i thinkthat woudl be easier then you having to answer everything first, and having everyone interested in the topic waiting for your next reply. If you think its not working I'll shut up.

Fair enough, I didn't realize how many questions there would be either. :v: Feel free to hop in on smaller questions, I can always add more if I want.

On the neglected general Belisarius, the orange part of this map is the area he reconquered for the Empire.



Badass.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Ice Phisherman posted:

Also, can you go more into the myth of the battle which Constantine supposedly ordered his soldiers to paint a cross on their shields? I know it has some basis in fact but much of it has been mythologized and hijacked by Christian scholars. What's the actual facts as recorded by history here?

The actual facts are these.

Constantine and Maxentius were the final men in the imperial Thunderdome at the time. Constantine had beaten everyone else, and Maxentius was backed against the wall in Rome. Maxentius and Constantine's forces met at the Milvian Bridge, a major crossing of the Tiber, for what would be the final battle in Constantine's conquest of the empire.

The story goes that Constantine had a vision of some sort before the battle. There are two accounts and they conflict, but basically he saw some sort of cross-like symbol near the sun and was told that "by this sign, you shall conquer". One of the stories says Jesus came to him in a dream that night and showed him the Chi-Rho:



This is a bit suspect since there's no evidence of the Chi-Rho being used for Christianity before Constantine, but whatever, he invented it. Then the story says that he had his soldiers paint the symbol on their shields. It was either the Chi-Rho or some other cross-like thing. Constantine then beat the poo poo out of Maxentius' forces and won the battle, making himself the sole emperor of Rome.

This is where it gets interesting, because it's not actually clear there was anything Christian about this at the time. There's evidence that Constantine interpreted this as being a sign from Sol Invictus. Constantine's triumphal arch was paired with the statue of Sol in Rome, and Constantine's coins depict him with Sol.



At some point, it became a Christian thing, but it's all a little unclear. There's still plenty of debate on whether Constantine ever truly was Christian or if he just did it for political purposes.

Radd McCool posted:

Are there records of ancient Roman conspiracy theories, written down by ancient Roman Truther or Alex Jones analogs?

There certainly were, but I'm not aware of any records. The closest thing I can think of is the Catiline Conspiracy, which I would love to describe to you but no one actually knows what the gently caress it was. There was a guy named Catiline who, in the 60s BCE, was part of/the head of a conspiracy to overthrow the government. What, exactly, this involved is a giant clusterfuck of rumor and partial accounts. Best way is to just look it up, read about it and see what you think. There's no good answer.

Radd McCool posted:

Any records of secret societies or intelligence organizations, working groups, etc. in ancient Rome?

Plenty of secret societies in Rome. The mystery religions were all like this; Dionysus, Isis, Christ, Mithras. The Dionysian Mysteries was one of the more famous of these, there's a mural in Pompeii (at the Villa of the Mysteries) depicting some of the initiation ceremonies.

There was a bit of a freakout involving the rites of Bacchus called the Bacchanalia, and they were officially banned for a while in 186 BCE.

quote:

"Quintus Marcius the son of Lucius, and Spurius Postumius, consulted the senate on the of October (7th), at the temple of the Bellonae. Marcus Claudius, son of Marcus, Lucius Valerius, son of Publius, and Quintus Minucius, son of Gaius, were the committee for drawing up the report.

Regarding the Bacchanalia it was resolved to give the following directions to those who are in alliance with us.

No one of them is to possess a place where the festivals of Bacchus are celebrated: if there are any who claim that it is necessary for them to have such a place, they are to come to Rome to the praetor urbanus, and the senate is to decide on those matters, when their claims have been heard, provided that not less than 100 senators are present when the affair is discussed. No man is to be a Bacchantian, neither a Roman citizen, nor one of the Latin name, nor any of our allies unless they come to the praetor urbanus, and he in accordance with the opinion of the senate expressed when not less than 100 senators are present at the discussion, shall have given leave. Carried.

No man is to be a priest; no one, either man or woman, is to be an officer (to manage the temporal affairs of the organization); nor is anyone of them to have charge of a common treasury; no one shall appoint either man or woman to be master or to act as master; henceforth they shall not form conspiracies among themselves, stir up any disorder, make mutual promises or agreements, or interchange pledges; no one shall observe the sacred rites either in public or private or outside the city, unless he comes to the praetor urbanus, and he, in accordance with the opinion of the senate, expressed when no less than 100 senators are present at the discussion, shall have given leave. Carried.

No one in a company of more than five persons altogether, men and women, shall observe the sacred rites, nor in that company shall there be present more than two men or three women, unless in accordance with the opinion of the praetor urbanus and the senate as written above.

See that you declare it in the assembly for not less than three market days; that you may know the opinion of the senate this was their judgment: if there are any who have acted contrary to what was written above, they have decided that a proceeding for a capital offense should be instituted against them; the senate has justly decreed that you should inscribe this on a brazen tablet, and that you should order it to be placed where it can be easiest read; see to it that the revelries of Bacchus, if there be any, except in case there be concerned in the matter something sacred, as was written above, be disbanded within ten days after this letter shall be delivered to you.

In the Teuranian field.

The formal Roman intelligence service was called the frumentarii. The original frumentarii were tax collectors, specifically for wheat and grain, and this contact with all levels of society throughout the empire made them the perfect spies. Hadrian turned them into a secret service. Romans had of course used spies throughout history, but this was the first time there was any kind of formal state apparatus.

The frumentarii quickly earned a bad reputation, given that they were more of a secret police apparatus than anything, so people resented the whole thing. Diocletian got rid of them and created a new organization, the agentes in rebus. They were officially couriers but handled all the intelligence roles you can think of. They stuck around until the 8th century.

The records of all this are spotty at best, sadly.

i barely GNU her! posted:

Were the Romans really aware of the Greeks during the Persian wars? What was their opinion on those, if any?

Roman and Greek contact at that time would've been in Magna Graecia, which was southern Italy. I don't know of anything written about contact with Greece proper but the Mediterranean world was well connected, the Romans certainly knew about them. At that time Rome was just some barbarian city state so the Greeks couldn't possibly have given less of a poo poo. Until the Pyrrhic War there's not really any record (that I'm aware of) of Greek and Roman contact, but we can safely assume there was trade at least.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Farecoal posted:

Did Rome ever have an empress? (I know the Byzantines did, but you can't have a Roman empire without Rome :mad:)

Not really--the close enough examples were already posted. The situation never came up. However, while Rome was massively sexist, there was a legal precedent that could have potentially created an empress. It was an established fact that if all of the appropriate men of a patrician family were dead, the matriarch of the family would be in charge and have full legal rights, just like a patriarch. This happened numerous times, and the woman was in every legal way equal to a male head of a household. If Roman dynastic succession had been less of a clusterfuck, I think this could've been used to argue for a woman assuming control had the situation come up.

There were powerful women who wielded plenty of influence, but no one you could really call an empress. Ulpia Severina is the closest. We're not totally sure if she was a sole ruler or what exactly was going on at the time.

Captain Payne posted:

Who's your favorite Roman historian? I took a history course on the Romans a couple of years ago and I loved reading Tacitus. Sallust was pretty entertaining too.

Tacitus and Plutarch are good. I hate most of the translations though, there's a tradition of translating Latin into overblown Victorian English and I find it very annoying to read. I wish someone would do translations into a more readable, modern English.

I'll write a big answer to the fall of the empire questions later today. I've skipped a few because I have no loving idea, I'll see what I can dig up about them later.

Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 04:22 on May 25, 2012

Twat McTwatterson
May 31, 2011
Plutarch's The Life of Alexander is one of my favorite books. I keep it under my pillow, as Alexander Megas did with Homer. Of course you have to be quite discerning with fact and hearsay, but regardless, it remains a quick and exhilarating read.

"It is a lovely thing to live with courage, and to die leaving behind everlasting renown."

Octy
Apr 1, 2010

Grand Fromage posted:


This is a bit suspect since there's no evidence of the Chi-Rho being used for Christianity before Constantine, but whatever, he invented it. Then the story says that he had his soldiers paint the symbol on their shields. It was either the Chi-Rho or some other cross-like thing. Constantine then beat the poo poo out of Maxentius' forces and won the battle, making himself the sole emperor of Rome.

I'm not sure if you mean sole emperor of the western part of the empire or the whole empire. Anyway, just in case anyone else is confused, Constantine still had his co-emperor Licinius kicking around in the east. Constantine doesn't actually become sole emperor of the whole empire until AD324.

quote:

Tacitus and Plutarch are good. I hate most of the translations though, there's a tradition of translating Latin into overblown Victorian English and I find it very annoying to read. I wish someone would do translations into a more readable, modern English.

Michael Grant does a good translation of Tacitus. I mean I like it mostly for this line which always cracks me up: 'She several times appeared before her inebriated son all decked out and ready for incest.'

Yes, I am a grown-up, but drat it, it's good.

Modus Operandi
Oct 5, 2010
I like Herodian because there aren't that many "man on the street" accounts to give us scuttlebutt and day to day activities of the elite as it appears to your average citizen. The other historians were partially confined by their status and political biases. If they wrote something that pissed someone off they could find themselves in serious danger.

Herodian is not the most accurate guy but he does give a good real life feel for what it was like during the various eras he lived in, the state of the emperors, and the political atmosphere at the time.

Modus Operandi fucked around with this message at 06:12 on May 25, 2012

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Octy posted:

I'm not sure if you mean sole emperor of the western part of the empire or the whole empire. Anyway, just in case anyone else is confused, Constantine still had his co-emperor Licinius kicking around in the east. Constantine doesn't actually become sole emperor of the whole empire until AD324.

Ah, you're right. Like I said, outside my range. I'm basically familiar with all of Roman history but less confident in some eras like that. I've started reading up more on late antiquity lately.

As I recall, Licinius was not particularly independent and Constantine just waited a while before getting around to deposing him.

Octy posted:

Michael Grant does a good translation of Tacitus. I mean I like it mostly for this line which always cracks me up: 'She several times appeared before her inebriated son all decked out and ready for incest.'

Yes, I am a grown-up, but drat it, it's good.

It's totally cool. lovely, ponderous translations annoy historians too. I'm always afraid to admit how much I hate reading primary sources because of how much the translation style bores me.

Modus Operandi posted:

Herodian is not the most accurate guy

This is true for all historians of the era. The concept of seperating fact from myth in history literally does not exist until later. Historians will happily report rumors, lies, and bullshit as history. There's still lots of actual history in the books, but any time you read a primary source from the ancient world you have to keep in mind that the ancient historians are not trying to present objective facts.

Not to say that modern history is all objective facts either, but at least it's a concept and good historians generally strive for it.

Teriyaki Hairpiece
Dec 29, 2006

I'm nae the voice o' the darkened thistle, but th' darkened thistle cannae bear the sight o' our Bonnie Prince Bernie nae mair.

Farecoal posted:

but you can't have a Roman empire without Rome :mad:)
gently caress you.

The Roman state was always the Roman state. SPQR till 1453. gently caress off with that crap.

Teriyaki Hairpiece fucked around with this message at 08:00 on May 25, 2012

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


SpaceDrake posted:

Do you have any particular "pet" theories on why the Empire fell? Ultimately it fell for a whole bunch of interconnected reasons, but it does seem like every Roman historian has a point which they prefer to give as "the point at which The Fuckening™ was irreversible". Do you have a particular point like that, or do you think it was a all a little too big to treat like that?

THE LUMMOX posted:

What your opinion about Wojtek, the Polish Bear who fought in WWII why the western roman empire fell.

All right, the Fall of Rome. The tl;dr version: there was no such thing in the west.

First, the easy answer. Rome fell on May 29th, 1453 when the Ottoman Turks conquered Constaninople. The point when it was irreversibly hosed was probably the Fourth Crusade, when Constantinople was sacked by the crusaders and they divided the empire up into various states like the Latin Empire, Empire of Nicaea, and Despotate of Epirus. From there the Romans were just hanging by a thread until the Ottomans finally destroyed them.

But I'm pretty sure you were talking about the west, so.

The entire concept of the fall of Rome has itself fallen out of favor with historians. Again, we can trace this back to Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire popularized the notion of a sudden fall, and the date usually used for this is 476, when the last western emperor, Romulus Augustus, was deposed by Odoacer. However, with a greater understanding of what was actually going on at the time, and an evolving definition of what constitutes "Rome", this isn't generally accepted anymore.

If you consider Rome to purely be the line of emperors, then yes, it ends in 476. There's a lot more going on in society than just the emperor though.

First, the image of the various barbarians is wrong. The Germans didn't leave us any written records so we have to piece things together with the Roman sources, other sources, and archaeological evidence, but all of it leads us to conclude that the Germans had no interest in destroying Rome. They wanted to be part of it. The fact is that Rome was an incredibly good place to live. To quote Life of Brian, "All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"

A lot of people viewed Rome this way and wanted to be part of the society. The primitiveness of Rome's barbarian neighbors (especially the Gauls) is vastly overstated in Roman sources, but in the end Rome was the most advanced civilization around and provided a standard of living unmatched anywhere else. So when the Goths are rolling into Rome, it's not because they want Rome to burn. They want to live there. They want to be in charge.

What happens in the 400s is that these barbarian tribes conquer the western empire and take over the roles of the Romans. In some cases it's quite extreme. The Visigoths in Iberia are the best example of this, within a generation of their conquest of Iberia they Romanize themselves so fully that they're largely indistinguishable from actual Romans. The Visigothic kingdom there is a continuation of Roman society and values, just with Germans.

Here's a depiction of the Visigothic king Chindasuinth from the 600s.



This is part of a book of law called the Liber Iudiciorum, laying out the laws of the kingdom (which are largely Roman law, with some Visigothic additions). Do these sound like German barbarian kings or Romans?

The same thing happens across the empire, in Gaul, Italy. Think about the languages. Very little former Roman territory has Germanic languages in it, they're all Romance. If the Germans had just conquered anything, why wouldn't these modern languages be of German origin instead of Latin? The people changed. In the one place Roman culture was just kicked out, Britain, there's nothing Roman left there after a couple of generations.

Roman culture continues on. The Roman senate, despite having had its power neutered by Augustus and completely eliminated by the third century crisis, continues to meet until sometime in the 600s. Latin remains the common tongue. The Roman Catholic church never goes anywhere, and much of Roman government tradition is carried on by the church to this day.

Archaeology also paints a picture of a more or less continuous society until the middle of the 600s. There's no real difference in the coinage or the kinds of goods, distributed by Rome's long-distance trade network, until then. However, in the mid 600s there is a sharp decline. Gold coins vanish and so do the trade goods, and by the 700s it's gone.

If you have to have a time period for a "fall" of western Rome, to me this is a much more compelling one. It's unclear exactly why Roman culture seems to have finally come apart then, but I believe it was because of the rise of Islam. Muslim armies begin storming out of Arabia in 632 (told you I'd get back to this) and rapidly conquer much of the Mediterranean. I believe this was what killed Rome's Mediterranean trade network, and the resulting economic collapse finally brought the downfall of Roman culture in the west.

Of course, it's not that simple. Roman institutions continue to survive--as I said, look at your local catholic church--and there is a constant yearning in the west to revive Rome. The Carolingians do a solid job of beginning the process of putting together the pieces of Roman Europe in the west, transitioning the society into the Middle Ages.

In short, Rome didn't really fall. It just went through a lot of changes that ended up as the medieval age. Where you draw a line in there is somewhat arbitrary. You can make a not ridiculous case for the Vatican and the Roman Catholic church apparatus as the remnants of the Roman state, and therefore it never completely ended. And culturally, it still exists. The Greeks gave us most of our intellectual tradition, but our society and law is quite Roman. Stand in the national mall in Washington DC and read a description of the layout of a Roman forum. Rome's echoes have never gone away.

Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 08:29 on May 25, 2012

Octy
Apr 1, 2010

What happened to the senatorial families? I think most of the original patrician class was gone by the end of the first century AD, but were there any notable descendants of other old families still around in AD400-500? Or had their bloodlines simply merged with the Germans and everyone else to the point where we can't really speak of them as being a real descendant of a family that was around during the time of Trajan or whoever?

Octy fucked around with this message at 08:51 on May 25, 2012

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Octy posted:

What happened to the senatorial families? I think most of the original patrician class was gone by the end of the first century AD, but were there any notable descendants of other old families still around in AD400-500? Or had their bloodlines simply merged with the Germans and everyone else to the point where we can't really speak of them as being a real descendant of a family that was around during the time of Trajan or whoever?

The patricians as a class didn't have much meaning by the time you get into the 300s, it became more of a honorific title. The names were still around and pop up now and then. There was a writer from the Fabia family named Fabius Planciades Fulgentius, writing in the early 500s. There's a guy named Julius Celsus in Constantinople the 600s, who did a revision of Caesar's commentaries. How much relation these guys had to the original family is unclear. There aren't any real records that I'm aware of. I would guess they retained their wealth and power as long as they could and eventually just faded into the rest of society.

Even if there were records, building up your family's history and prestige atop a mound of bullshit was practically an art form for the Romans so you couldn't trust any of it.

Golden_Zucchini
May 16, 2007

Would you love if I was big as a whale, had a-
Oh wait. I still am.

Grand Fromage posted:

Stuff about the "fall."
What I'm getting from this is that saying Rome ended with the deposition of Romulus Augustus makes about as much sense as saying that France ended with the execution of Louis XVI. Sure, the system of government and who was running it changed, but the essence of the state and culture were still there.

Kassad
Nov 12, 2005

It's about time.

Grand Fromage posted:

And culturally, it still exists. The Greeks gave us most of our intellectual tradition, but our society and law is quite Roman. Stand in the national mall in Washington DC and read a description of the layout of a Roman forum. Rome's echoes have never gone away.

Or look at a picture of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

France's leaders between 1789 and 1814 were obviously all massive fans of Roman history and they deliberately designed the new institutions of the state after those of the Roman Republic. For instance, the new upper house was called the Council of Elders (the original meaning of "senate") and they wore togas while in session, as you can see here:



And then there's Napoleon in the centre of that painting. He led a coup d'etat and had himself appointed as Consul until he got sick of pretending and had the Pope crown him Emperor (in Rome, of course). And he tried his best to take over all of Western Europe.

France was actually the most efficient Roman empire copycat in history: we ran the gamut from monarchy to republic to empire to collapse just like Rome did. And it only took us 25 years. :v:

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Golden_Zucchini posted:

What I'm getting from this is that saying Rome ended with the deposition of Romulus Augustus makes about as much sense as saying that France ended with the execution of Louis XVI. Sure, the system of government and who was running it changed, but the essence of the state and culture were still there.

That's a decent comparison. The culture does eventually change into unrecognizable forms, but it's (probably) at least a couple centuries after 476. The big problem with this period is there is gently caress all for surviving written records, so we're piecing together all of it from the scraps that do exist and what the archaeology can tell us.

Chikimiki
May 14, 2009

Golden_Zucchini posted:

What I'm getting from this is that saying Rome ended with the deposition of Romulus Augustus makes about as much sense as saying that France ended with the execution of Louis XVI. Sure, the system of government and who was running it changed, but the essence of the state and culture were still there.

I might be going on a stretch here but in a sense, south-western European countries (Spain, southern France, Italy) are still very, well, latin: imagine reading Grand Fromage's posts in Naples, you'd notice a lot of similarities, in society, daily life, cuisine, etc.
Things like the Roman Empire don't disappear from one day to another, they leave profound traces that are carried on by all the people that were involved.

It's the same way today: would the western world go through a big crisis and the US be carved up into several smaller states, the people and the culture would remain, as would the influences around the world.

Radio Talmudist
Sep 29, 2008
How did Romans see themselves?

I remember taking a classics course where the professor mentioned how many of the great roman writers and orators spoke of Rome being eternal. The pinnacle of civilization, an everlasting glory.

Did the Romans believe themselves to be the ultimate civilizing force in the world? Did they take great pride in their culture, art, religion and history?

Octy
Apr 1, 2010

Radio Talmudist posted:

How did Romans see themselves?

I remember taking a classics course where the professor mentioned how many of the great roman writers and orators spoke of Rome being eternal. The pinnacle of civilization, an everlasting glory.

Did the Romans believe themselves to be the ultimate civilizing force in the world? Did they take great pride in their culture, art, religion and history?

Oh yes, as much as any advanced civilisation does, I guess. I think they even saw the Greeks as inferiors, despite all the culture, religion and learning they took from them. To add to your question, I'd be interested in how the Romans saw themselves in the later empire, before Christianity. When you've got things like the Third Century Crisis, it can't be that easy to see yourselves as 'everlasting.'

Foyes36
Oct 23, 2005

Food fight!

Octy posted:

What happened to the senatorial families? I think most of the original patrician class was gone by the end of the first century AD, but were there any notable descendants of other old families still around in AD400-500? Or had their bloodlines simply merged with the Germans and everyone else to the point where we can't really speak of them as being a real descendant of a family that was around during the time of Trajan or whoever?

There are attempts to trace the royal families of Europe back to a senatorial family that popped up around the 300s. This is called descent from antiquity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_antiquity) and has thus far proven to be elusive.

In particular, if you go back far enough enough in Charlemagne's line, you run into a certain bishop Arnulf of Metz (you eventually have to switch to the maternal line to get here). From records, Arnulf was a son of a Arnoald, who himself was a son of Ansbertus - a Roman senator in the 500s. This part is disputable though, and many think this lineage was invented to promote the prestige of Charlemagne. From here, some sources allege that Ansbertus was the son of Ferreolus, who was the son of Tonantius Ferreolus, who was the son of another Tonantius Ferreolus, who was the son of another Tonantius Ferreolus, who was the grandson of a certain Flavius Afranius Syagrius. This guy was a patrician (like you were looking for, as the Syagrii were fairly prominent in Gaul) and the urban prefect of Rome. The line sort of ends there, right around 369 AD. Of course, I guess this doesn't go back to the patricians you're thinking of (the Julians, etc.), but it's about the best the West can do with a direct lineage. Like the OP said, many of the families just sort of disappeared from the written record after a while, probably intermarrying with others without record and continuing their progress to today. Many of us in the West probably are direct descendants of at least one prominent Roman family if you start skipping between paternal and maternal lines and go back far enough. Sadly, it's impossible to know for sure.

Edit: Sorry OP, but the Roman Empire really fell in 1806. Or 1917. Translatio imperii motherfuckers :colbert:.

Foyes36 fucked around with this message at 13:40 on May 25, 2012

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Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Pfirti86 posted:

This part is disputable though, and many think this lineage was invented to promote the prestige of Charlemagne.

Charlemagne practically made an industry of setting himself up as the legitimate successor of Rome and the new Roman Emperor, so I would not trust this lineage in the slightest.

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