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So I'm curious about the influence of non-Greek cultures on the Roman empire. Conquest and intermingling between Indian, Arab and Persian culture led to the formation of hybrid languages such as Urdu for example. Were there any similar occurences in or at the borders of the Roman empire? Or between the Byzantines and Turks/Arabs? How much of an influence did non-Greek conquered peoples have on Roman culture and/or language? On an unrelated note I'm interested in pre-Caesarian figures in the late Republic that were key players in the tensions that led to its downfall. I'm familiar in passing with the Gracchis, Marius and Sulla; would anyone mind doing a few blurbs on any of the others? mila kunis fucked around with this message at 07:19 on Dec 26, 2012 |
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Dec 26, 2012 07:17
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 01:25 |
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I'd like to thank whoever first pointed me towards Dan Carlin. The fall of the roman republic series is really good, and the comparisons to American politics are entertaining if a little wacky. I basically imagine Obama now as the Marcus Livius Drusus the Elder of our day haha.
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Nov 5, 2013 18:35
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So I'm hard pressed to understand why Sulla is viewed in a positive light by anyone. The argument seemed to be that he restored order to Rome, breaking tradition and law temporarily in order to restore it. That seems to be massively hypocritical to me because the faction that he represented in the Senate had no problem simply murdering anyone (like the Gracchis and their supporters) who tried to implement reforms (that Rome seemed to badly need) by the rules, escalating the situation until you had people like Marius and Cinna who understood that playing by the rules was going to be futile and probably get you whacked like their predecessors. It feels like all he did was suppress dissent to the real problems facing the Republic instead of actually trying to solve them, letting them fester and simultaneously laying the groundwork for people like Caesar to march against the civil government.
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Nov 6, 2013 15:51
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Yeah he gave up power but after he murdered everyone that could possibly enact laws not to his taste or get back at him.
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Nov 6, 2013 16:18
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Grand Fromage posted:In Roman terms, this makes him a highly effective politician. I know; which is why the whole Roman system seems to be full of complete bullshit and hypocrisy. On the one hand you're held up as this morally upright individual for giving up power; but it's done once it's safe to do so and having completely butchered the opposition. Sulla just comes off as a short sighted reactionary moron that hastened the Republic's end.
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Nov 6, 2013 16:24
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VanSandman posted:The Republic was doomed anyway, better to end it sooner than later since later means even more civil war. Can't really say either way, addressing the causes of the infighting and civil war might've stopped more coming in the future while still maintaining the Republic. Sulla murdered the wrong people IMO, he should've just done in all the idiots getting in the way of needed reforms like citizenship for the rest of Italy, unemployment due to the slave economy, land ownership etc because it cut into their bottom line.
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Nov 6, 2013 17:02
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Re: masters of rome, I've been reading it recently and I thought the writing was kind of bad and everyone talks like cartoon characters. Hard to take poo poo like a seven year old Caesar speechifying like a middle aged man about his dignitas and ambition seriously.
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Dec 29, 2013 11:58
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I hope Crismus Bonus is re-elected.
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Jan 1, 2014 13:04
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Grand Fromage posted:They did know a little about it both from reports and the wild silk in Europe, which I never knew was a thing until a book I just read. Also the Romans would import Chinese silk, reweave it into thicker stuff, and export it back to China. The Parthians pulled off a hilarious scam and convinced the Chinese that this was Roman silk and was higher quality, and for hundreds of years the Chinese bought back their own silk at a markup, the Parthians skimming profits both ways. Where's the basis for this story and where can I reas more like them? I like quirky tidbits about ancient trade. This one sounds a bit too neat and apocryphal to be true. mila kunis fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Jan 9, 2014 |
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Jan 9, 2014 07:11
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 01:25 |
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I've been reading Michael Hudson's "...and forgive them their debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption From Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year" and it's a really good read so far. His thesis seems to be the motive force of history is basically class struggle that arises when between that develop due to the concentration of wealth, and force the rest of the majority of the population into servitude/debt peons for the upper class. The book takes a look at debt and debt relief in the ancient world. Some excerpts: "The idea of annulling debts nowadays seems so unthinkable that most economists and many theologians doubt whether the Jubilee Year could have been applied in practice, and indeed on a regular basis [...] Instead of causing economic crises, these debt jubilees preserved stability in nearly all Near Eastern societies. Economic polarization, bondage and collapse occurred when such clean slates stopped being proclaimed." [...] "Debt jubilees occurred on a regular basis in the ancient Near East from 2500 BC in Sumer to 1600 BC in Babylonia and its neighbors, and then in Assyria in the first millennium BC. It was normal for new rulers to proclaim these edicts upon taking the throne, in the aftermath of war, or upon the building or renovating a temple. Judaism took the practice out of the hands of kings and placed it at the center of Mosaic Law." [...] "As interest-bearing credit became privatized throughout the Near Eastern economies, personal debts owed to local headmen, merchants and creditors also were cancelled. Failure to write down agrarian debts would have enabled officials and, in due course, private creditors, merchants or local headmen to keep debtors in bondage and their land’s crop surplus for themselves" [...] "This was not a utopian act, but was quite practical from the vantage point of restoring economic and military stability. Recognizing that a backlog of debts had accrued that could not be paid out of current production, rulers gave priority to preserving an economy in which citizens could provide for their basic needs on their own land while paying taxes, performing their corvée labor duties and serving in the army." [...] "Babylonian scribes were taught the basic mathematical principle of compound interest, whereby the volume of debt increases exponentially, much faster than the rural economy’s ability to pay.ii That is the basic dynamic of debt: to accrue and intrude increasingly into the economy, absorbing the surplus and transferring land and even the personal liberty of debtors to creditors" [...] "To insist that all debts must be paid, regardless of whether this may bankrupt debtors and strip away their land and means of livelihood, stands at odds with the many centuries of Near Eastern clean slates. Their success stands at odds with the assumption that creditor interests should take priority over those of the indebted economy at large." [...] "Throughout history a constant political dynamic has been maneuvering by creditors to overthrow royal power capable of enforcing debt amnesties and reversing foreclosures on homes and subsistence land. The creditors’ objective is to replace the customary right of citizens to self-support by its opposite principle: the right of creditors to foreclose on the property and means of livelihood pledged as collateral (or to buy it at distress prices), and to make these transfers irreversible. The smallholders’ security of property is replaced by the sanctity of debt instead of its periodic cancellation." [...] "Violence played a major political role, almost entirely by creditors. Having overthrown kings and populist tyrants, oligarchies accused advocates of debtor interests of being “tyrants” (in Greece) or seeking kingship (as the Gracchi brothers and Julius Caesar were accused of in Rome). Sparta’s kings Agis and Cleomenes were killed for trying to cancel debts and reversing the monopolization of land in the 3rd century BC. Neighboring oligarchies called on Rome to overthrow Sparta’s reformer-kings." [...] "The creditor-sponsored counter-revolution against democracy led to economic polarization, fiscal crisis, and ultimately to being conquered – first the Western Roman Empire and then Byzantium. Livy, Plutarch and other Roman historians blamed Rome’s decline on creditors using fraud, force and political assassination to impoverish and disenfranchise the population. Barbarians had always stood at the gates, but only as societies weakened internally were their invasions successful." ----------------------------------- Hudson in the book (and in his writings and appearances elsewhere) repeatedly stresses that the same principles could be applied today and something like a debt jubilee/debt relief/moratorium on rent seeking is needed in the USA/other economies today for similar reasons: " The burden of debt tends to expand in an agrarian society to the point where it exceeds the ability of debtors to pay. That has been the major cause of economic polarization from antiquity to modern times. The basic principle that should guide economic policy is recognition that debts which can’t be paid, won’t be. The great political question is, how won’t they be paid? There are two ways not to pay debts. Our economic mainstream still believes that all debts must be paid, leaving them on the books to continue accruing interest and fees – and to let creditors foreclose when they do not receive the scheduled interest and amortization payment. This is what the U.S. President Obama did after the 2008 crisis. Homeowners, credit-card customers and other debtors had to start paying down the debts they had run up. About 10 million families lost their homes to foreclosure. Leaving the debt overhead in place meant stifling and polarizing the economy by transferring property from debtors to creditors. Today’s legal system is based on the Roman Empire’s legal philosophy upholding the sanctity of debt, not its cancellation. Instead of protecting debtors from losing their property and status, the main concern is with saving creditors from loss, as if this is a prerequisite for economic stability and growth. Moral blame is placed on debtors, as if their arrears are a personal choice rather than stemming from economic strains that compel them to run into debt simply to survive. Something has to give when debts cannot be paid on a widespread basis. The volume of debt tends to increase exponentially, to the point where it causes a crisis. If debts are not written down, they will expand and become a lever for creditors to pry away land and income from the indebted economy at large." It's funny that brings in the same kinds of reactions today as it did in antiquity - reactionaries and people who see themselves as benefiting from the system insisting that it can't and shouldn't be done, to the detriment of the system as a whole. mila kunis fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Nov 3, 2021 |
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Nov 3, 2021 17:31
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