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I spent at least 30 seconds trying to find dickbutt in that.
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Aug 29, 2017 05:22
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FightingMongoose posted:Well, I know how much this thread loves HBO's Rome so here's a new TV show for you all to look forward to. Executive Producer of Electric Ray, Ben Kelly said: “The Romans gave us roads, viaducts and basic sanitation but ‘Bromans’ may prove to be their greatest legacy."
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Sep 2, 2017 08:21
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homullus posted:In one of my Greek classes, one guy insisted on singing his parts when asked to read aloud, using Greek accentuation as his pitch indicators (even though most people don't do that when they read Greek aloud now). Was this as weird and goony as it sounds?
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Sep 14, 2017 04:04
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Anyone in the thread have an opinion on “Soldiers and Ghosts” by J.E. Lendon? https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300119794/soldiers-and-ghosts The summary on that page doesn’t really catch the gist of the book, I don’t think. What I liked best about it was the depiction of the phalanx and legion not as practical, results-oriented designs intended to work in specific terrain or conditions, but as natural outgrowths of the cultural values of the Greeks and the Romans. Especially when he talked about the Roman martial culture, he blew my mind. In a poorly-worded nutshell, he describes the origins of the legion as an unstable balance between the values of virtus (aggression and a desire to win individual glory) and disciplina (commitment to the larger structure and goals). Velites and hastati were less about fielding cheaper fodder units to harass the enemy and soak up casualties so much as an outlet for the unmanageable young men who couldn’t be relied upon to stay in formation instead of getting into one-on-one fights with the enemy in search of personal glory. After a lifetime of hearing “the Romans switched to the legion because the Samnites beat their phalanxes in the hills”, it was so fascinating to get to read a more thoughtful approach. That’s only one small piece of it. There was a lot on how tenuous a hold ancient generals held on their troops, how armies changed over a long period of time with little technical innovation, and other cool poo poo. Anyway, I’m just an interested layman and this could all be speculative bullshit and I wouldn’t know the difference. I’m curious what the more educated folks here might have to say. Steely Dad fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Jul 14, 2018 |
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Jul 14, 2018 05:47
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Commodus was sole ruler of his country as long as FDR was. George Will spotted.
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Aug 21, 2018 19:47
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That’s super interesting. Is there any reading you’d recommend about this period for a casual reader?
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Oct 31, 2018 04:56
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What’s a good, reasonably current book on the early history of Rome, for a lay reader who’s interested in going into more depth? Cultural, political, linguistic, military, any of those areas would be interesting to me. Or a good book on the Etruscans. My dream book would be a Chris Wickham-ish survey of Italian history from, say, 1000BC through the First Punic War, but I recognize that that book probably doesn’t exist.
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Feb 12, 2020 09:07
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cheetah7071 posted:I liked The Beginnings of Rome by T.J. Cornell. The author bucks the academic orthodox in one or two places, but always admits when he does so (and he's not some crackpot; just a history professor with his own research and opinions). It's a thorough look at Rome's devlopment from the earliest archaeology up to it gaining full dominance over Italy. Bought! Looks like just about exactly what I was seeking. I also picked up the B. O. Foster translation of Livy for two bucks on Kindle. I'm aware that sources are limited, and of at least of some of the reasons for that, so I'm not expecting the kind of detail that we get for later periods. I'm just getting bored with Late Antiquity, and that's been the hot topic in recent years. I'm also rereading J. E. Lendon's Soldiers and Ghosts, and I'm going to post about it when I'm done and see if I can drum up any interest or responses. I asked about it in this thread a while back, but didn't get much response, and I think it's one of the more interesting books I've read recently, and I'd love to get thoughts on it from some of the knowledgeable folks in here.
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Feb 12, 2020 18:35
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Yeah, Imperator was a real disappointment. I can’t name a great strategy game from the classical era newer than Rome: Total War, but I’d love to find out I missed one.
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May 19, 2020 16:27
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Grand Fromage posted:Patrick Wyman's podcast Tides of History is starting on prehistory soon, if anybody dropped out of it because the early modern is kinda boring. I blame him, not the early modern. He was so much more knowledgeable about late antiquity than the early modern that his podcast went from fascinating depth to shallow surveys mixed with interviews of domain experts who were often pretty dry and boring. I hope he ups his game with prehistory. Also I assume you were just trolling Hegel
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May 23, 2020 04:01
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British History Podcast is up to just before the Norman Conquest. He did a great job of early Medieval Britain, but new episodes seem to be coming a lot more slowly lately.
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May 23, 2020 23:19
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Grand Fromage posted:I see I'm not the only one who picked up Origins and Odyssey while they're super cheap. God knows when I'll have time to get into them. They both have a pretty cool tour mode that lets you explore without having to spend 50 hours stabbing people and collecting goat asses and whatnot. I’m a few hours into Odyssey and thinking that maybe I’ll just drop out and enjoy the tours instead.
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May 30, 2020 21:38
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FAUXTON posted:now the lugal can google This was fantastic
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Jun 10, 2020 00:00
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cheetah7071 posted:I wouldn't mind the chance to reorganize so there's a single thread for everything pre 20th century. 20th century history can suck all the air out of the room but no reason we can't talk about the roman and holy roman empire in the same thread without being technically off topic This is a fantastic idea.
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Jun 25, 2020 20:06
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I'm fascinated by the early modern, but the trouble is that it doesn't seem to support enough interest to keep a thread alive on its own. The early modern thread here died out, and it's not like our successor forum will be the same size as this one was.
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Jun 25, 2020 20:22
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Grand Fromage posted:It's fun to see the kitsch, but yeah, they're not Romans. They've been DNA tested, there's nothing about anybody in that village that isn't local. Also, we’re talking about a single group of men from two thousand years ago, not a wholesale migration or invasion. How big a difference could that one group make?
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Jun 29, 2020 00:43
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Grand Fromage posted:Yeah. There are always diseases going around that have the potential to get out of control, but the circumstances have to be right. Pandemics don't emerge historically until the Roman period because diseases simply couldn't travel fast enough. The speed of travel in the empire plus the vast long-range connections helped carry diseases around quick. I think it’s hard to say that with total certainty. Plagues are easy to overlook in the archeological evidence; we wildly underestimated the toll of the plague of Justinian up until 15-ish years ago, and this was a relatively well-documented pandemic that was nearly as devastating as the Black Death. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next few decades we realized that actually there had been a Bronze Age pandemic that we’d overlooked, or one in early imperial China.
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Jul 20, 2020 03:26
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