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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.
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May 25, 2012 00:47
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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. 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] 
FizFashizzle fucked around with this message at 00:53 on May 25, 2012 |
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May 25, 2012 00:51
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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.
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May 25, 2012 01:06
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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.
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May 25, 2012 03:03
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:How did Rome fair having 4 Emperors in the later empire? During the Tetrarchy? Diocletian retired to croatia to grow cabbages and it completely fell apart. The final straw was Constantine fighting a massive civil war (twice) to take total control. Diocletian fell so far out of imperial favor he had to bribe officials to get his family out of Rome in one piece. that was kinda the end of it. FizFashizzle fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Jun 8, 2012 |
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Jun 8, 2012 01:58
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Alan Smithee posted:
He'd charge the city exorbitant fees just to watch him as well, and he horrified them. He'd go out there and just murder defenseless giraffes which horrified the people of Rome. euphronius posted:If the legions would have been loyal to the "state" rather than whatever Augustus or Caesar was leading them it may have worked. It seems to me it was just to easy to get a few legions together and start a civil war (or it was just to easy to be reasonably afraid the OTHER GUY was going to start a civil war so you better start one first.) The state didn't give them anything. Remember that after Trajan, there was no expansion for the empire anymore. There was no sacking of cities and no territorial expansion the soldiers could get a piece of (or much land at all anymore). By the end of the Empire, the soldiers weren't even Roman by any degree. They were various germanic and hun mercenaries. Being a soldier was just slavery by another name. The concepts of the state, or "glory of the empire" or whatever bullshit meant nothing to them. What they knew was that this guy was promising them something better than the other guy. Remember what Severus said to his two sons. "Be harmonious, enrich the soldiers, and scorn all other men" They certainly did the second thing, but Caracalla killed his brother at a meeting arranged by his mother to try to broker peace.....in front of their mother. 
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Jun 8, 2012 13:03
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MagneticWombats posted:If gladiators had win/loss records, does that mean that losing didn't necessarily mean death as often as movies/tv shows seem to depict? Gladiators were very expensive and received some of the best healthcare in the empire.
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Jun 8, 2012 13:39
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I dont know about fighting for freedom, but one of the main reasons the pope banned theater was the practice of buying prisoners as stand ins to murder on stage.
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Jun 8, 2012 15:56
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Farecoal posted:Speaking of, do Catholic priests still do Mass in Latin? If so, how close is it to the Roman Latin? In the mid 1960s the Vatican finally allowed masses to be performed in the vernacular. however, every good Catholic can at least recognize the basics of the latin mass, and there's still tons of poo poo said in it. hell, I remember my parents forcing me to learn the Agape, not a word of which I understood.
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Jun 10, 2012 05:46
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Agrippa is such an unmitigated badass. Not only was he probably the best general and naval officer of the era, but he was likely the best architect/engineer in the empire Also how the gently caress are you guys not mentioning Maecenas? He was basically Octavian's director of communication and invented early propaganda. He had such vanguard theories as letting the plebs criticize the princeps to placate them instead of just murdering them outright. Paterculus posted:"of sleepless vigilance in critical emergencies, far-seeing and knowing how to act, but in his relaxation from business more luxurious and effeminate than a woman." FizFashizzle fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Jun 13, 2012 |
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Jun 13, 2012 02:32
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The best thing about Agrippa is there's absolutely no comparison to him throughout roman history. he won all of augustus' battles for him and never once challenged the throne. Anyone with a tenth of his achievements in the 3rd century would be marching for rome. Assuming he doesn't prop up Octavian and takes control for himself (through a bunch of crazy poo poo that would have had to happen), he'd probably be only behind Trajan in the grand scheme of things.
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Jun 13, 2012 02:42
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Paxicon posted:I'm a huge Rome nerd myself, mostly the principate but the already-mentioned History of Rome podcast gave me a growing interest for Honorius. Could someone who knows the later half of the western empire better than me attempt to present a clear outline of just who all these puppeteers pulling the poor idiot-emperors strings are? I lost track round-about the time the incest-rumors with Galla Placidia start! There's like a billion of them. Also, the gooniest emperor was almost certainly Claudius. He most likely had aspergers and only survived various purges because everyone thought he was retarded. The only time he could talk was when he was confined to the rules of public discourse. In private conversation he was a stuttering fool. He got in trouble with his family for publishing a history of the Julio-Claudians which was probably a little too honest. He got murdered by his wife.
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Jun 13, 2012 02:49
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:How can he be goony if he had a wife, let alone contact with females? Nothing as blatant as Commodus in Gladiator but the Romans didn't really understand genetics per se and if you go through the marriage lines, especially with the Julio Claudian line, a lot of that was kissing cousins. Keep in mind though that marriage was as powerful a political tool as there was, so OFFICIALLY a lot of the heirs weren't incestuous. Even back then straight up incest was considered a crime against nature, though.
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Jun 13, 2012 02:56
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sbaldrick posted:The account of the Crusaders showing up in Constantinople may be one of the best thing I've ever read. How overawed and amazed they where at the city. Richer then any other in history (a little hyperbole but not by much given the city wasn't sacked for 900 years and had the wealth of the Empire in it). Those really are hilarious. Just imagine being in the most civilized city in the world, a place with free health care and female doctors, and seeing this horde of unwashed french coming up to your gates demanding passage to the levant. Alexios basically took them all in small groups, guarded the whole time, and showed them around what civilization actually looked like AND IF THEY WERE ON THEIR BEST BEHAVIOR they'd let them drink. It was essentially like those scam student tours in european cities where you get two drink tickets and entrance to a club. All to keep a bunch of drunk nords from burning the place down.
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Jun 26, 2012 19:14
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:The 4th Crusade has got to be one of the most shameful events in all of history. Putting aside the civilian losses during the sacking, which were considerable, the amount of priceless artifacts and long-forgotten knowledge that was maliciously destroyed in the orgy of violence can never be properly estimated. The fact that this tragedy was completely senseless and easily avoidable just makes everything that much worse. As bad as it was, it was nothing compared to the Mongol sack of baghdad. The rivers ran black with ink from all the books that were destroyed, and they even destroyed all their irrigation systems. I can't remember thr exact details but even the Mongol high comman was like "dude poo poo what the gently caress?"
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Jun 27, 2012 01:01
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:How did the Crusaders get away with sacking Constantinople? Did the Pope excommunicate them? Soldiers never go hungry.
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Jun 27, 2012 01:18
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Basically what happened is that the crusaders were supposed to go through egypt, then some pretender to the Byzantine throne promised them the world if they'd just install him as ruler instead. Constantinople actually raised the money that was demanded, but the crusaders decided they were there so they might as well attack anyway. When the crusaders returned to Rome with all their money (and a huge army), the Pope, who'd originally adopted a policy of "what the poo poo, guys" was all "hey great job over there.....yeah."
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Jun 27, 2012 01:34
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I think Constantine's role is overstated. He used Christianity as a political tool more than anything. His justifications for constantly waging civil war was "defending christendom." His deathbed baptism likely never happened. The council of Nicea was really just to avert a civil war. If you really want a number two (if you're assuming Jesus actually existed), look no further than Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan. He was a late to life convert to Christianity, and had Theodosius eating out of his hand.
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Jun 27, 2012 01:39
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Big Cheese, what's your favorite bad movie about Rome? If your answer isn't "The Last Legion," go watch it.
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Jun 27, 2012 02:24
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TildeATH posted:Actually, there's an excellent paper somewhere that indicates that Baghdad was well in decline before its conquest by the Mongols. The whole "Baghdad and Civilization Raped by the Mongols" story isn't historically very accurate, any more than most of the "X and Civilization Raped by the Mongols" stories. Link that poo poo.
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Jun 27, 2012 02:37
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Apparently the Mongols could shoot birds out of the air. This comes up enough that it isn't just apocryphal.
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Jun 27, 2012 03:41
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