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 SUP.  The sequel to my last thread (archives) on the subject. I'm not sure what to talk about so you will provide the topics by asking me about Rome. Rome is a very broad, massive topic and no man can know everything. Its history spans from April 21st, 753 BCE to Tuesday, May 29th, 1453 CE. Romans were precise. It is impossible to grasp all of it, but I know a whole lot and can find out things, and have the training to sift through the bullshit. My background, I went to school to be a Roman historian, did some archaeology stuff too, and currently do not work in the field whatsoever because finding a job proved impossible. But I know my poo poo. The period I am most familiar with spans from the first Punic War to the death of Marcus Aurelius, so approximately 300 BCE to 200 CE. This is the big dramatic period that is most famous and best documented, full of all the names you know. Cicero, Caesar, Augustus, et cetera. Ask anything you want from any period and I will do my best to answer. I was going to do more background information here but why step on questions? I'll just answer whatever. Edit: After more thought go ahead and address smaller questions, as was suggested by an ASTUTE POSTER. I will tack on more comments to your stuff if I feel the need. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Jul 14, 2012 |
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May 24, 2012 08:25
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Those are areas nominally under Roman control at Rome's greatest extent. Crimea was a client kingdom, not technically part of the empire but they did what Rome told them. The one in the east is area taken by Trajan and then abandoned by Hadrian, who took the empire's border back to the Euphrates river. The bit at the tip of the Persian Gulf remained a Roman client for a bit until the Parthians took it back--Trajan wanted that as a port for trade to the east. There are some stories about Trajan wishing he had been younger so he could've pushed all the way to India like Alexander. The borders on any Roman map are going to be a bit rough, things weren't as clearly defined as they are today. That one's pretty reasonable for the maximum extent of the empire.
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May 24, 2012 08:37
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Alan Smithee posted:was hoping for some clarification, most Roman soldier reenactors I see use helmets and gear with a lot of stainless steel and I was under the impression this is mostly anachronistic. Throughout its height they would likely have used bronze instead, correct? I know they had steel at some point but I imagine not quite the kind of steel we're talking about today, and even then not used all the time Romans did not use bronze armor in the era you're talking about. Most Roman reenactors are doing the professional legion after the reforms of Gaius Marius, and all equipment was steel. Bronze may have been used a bit very early in Rome's history but not once they started acquiring territory. Roman steel wasn't as high quality as modern but it was steel. The biggest anachronism with those reenactors is they're usually all wearing lorica segmentata, such as this:  Lorica segmentata is totally real, but it wasn't the standard form of armor. This provides excellent protection but it's also expensive. Centurions and veteran troops would likely have it. How many of the standard legionaries would is unknown, but it probably was a minority. There's a lot of debate on this point, I'm with the faction that says lorica segmentata was used by a minority. Standard Roman legionaries would either be wearing lorica squamata, which is a scaled armor.  Or, most commonly, lorica hamata. This is a ring mail armor adopted from the Gauls.  It's basically the same thing as the ring mail used through the Middle Ages, and the reasoning for it being more common than the plate lorica segmentata is the same--it's a lot cheaper.
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May 24, 2012 08:53
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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.
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May 24, 2012 15:15
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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 |
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May 25, 2012 01:09
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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? 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.  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.
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May 25, 2012 03:25
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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. 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.
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May 25, 2012 03:53
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Farecoal posted:Did Rome ever have an empress? (I know the Byzantines did, but you can't have a Roman empire without Rome 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 |
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May 25, 2012 04:15
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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.' 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.
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May 25, 2012 07:13
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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 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 |
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May 25, 2012 08:20
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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.
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May 25, 2012 08:58
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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.
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May 25, 2012 10:45
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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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May 25, 2012 13:44
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Radio Talmudist posted:How did Romans see themselves? I'll do a more thorough post when I have time but I do want to say one thing first. The Romans did indeed see themselves as the best, however they were not closed minded at all. One of the great strengths of Rome was their inclusiveness at all levels of society, and one of those was in ideas. Romans knew that other people had good ideas too, and if the Romans encountered something that was better, they would adopt it and then improve it for their own use. One of the more famous of these is the Roman legionary sword, the gladius. They didn't invent it, they encountered Celts in Iberia who used it, were impressed, and adopted it for their own. It was the perfect weapon for the legions and the tactics it allowed were a big part of why the Romans were virtually invincible in any set piece battle where they could use the legions to their full might. Roman chain mail armor was another, they adapted the technology from the Gauls. The Romans had no fleet until they took Carthage's designs, then they invented the means to adapt naval warfare to Rome's advantages (the corvus, a big bridge that would slam down and attach itself to the other ship, thus turning the naval battle into a land battle). More later, but Roman inventiveness is not given its fair due in most history and Roman openness is incredibly important to understanding the empire. Also, Egypt (and Greece in some ways) was a special exception within the Roman world view that I'll go into detail on.
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May 25, 2012 14:03
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Mithra6 posted:This isn't Roman specific, but Latin in general. I do not speak Latin at all sadly, I switched to Roman history late in my college career and there was no time. thetruth posted:How did political campaigns work in Rome, pre-emperor? In addition to the beatings and clients, there were political ads painted on the walls everywhere, we have some surviving ones in Pompeii. Vote for Quintus because Gaius is a fuckwit. It's remarkably similar to modern political campaigns. There was also no problem at all with bribery, and buying votes was something of an art form. People loved election time because of all the free poo poo they'd get. GamerL posted:Have you read Neil Faulkner's book on the fall of Roman Britain? No, but there is something to be said for the premise. Conquest was incredibly profitable for Rome and once they stopped expanding, they started having more and more financial difficulties. Also, from Hadrian on most of the battles Rome is involved with take place on Roman soil, destroying Roman poo poo, rather than destroying other people's poo poo. That's a drain on the society too. And eventually any semblance of loyalty to the state is gone and legions are loyal purely to their generals, which was the most profound and destructive unintended consequence of Marius' reform of the army. GamerL posted:Also, how much do you know about subroman Britain (i.e. 400-700 C.E.?). Basically dick, it's a big gap in my knowledge that I need to fill. GamerL posted:Was there some decision not to? Or could they not do it because the rough terrain, lack of rich targets prevented it from being worth it/possible to romanize them? I.e. build and defend roman towns, establish regional governments, etc. Germans were incorporated into the empire to an extent but never really accepted. Mostly there wasn't time--Gauls had to deal with the same poo poo for ages until the time before Roman Gaul was a distant memory. But as for provinces, it just wasn't worth it financially. Rome did make excursions into Germania and even founded some towns, but they were all abandoned since there simply wasn't a good motivation for conquering it. The Rhein/Danube made a decently defensible frontier and without any compelling reason to cross it, the Romans mostly stayed on their side.
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May 26, 2012 05:20
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Modus Operandi posted:Speaking of Pompeii what was the Roman obsession of painting and adorning everything with dicks everywhere in that town? People speculated that it was a sign of good luck or brothel markers but they are in the oddest places. Erect dicks were a magical protection against evil. Romans were superstitious as gently caress, I want to get into that occult question after I read a bit. But one of the main places you find the dicks are at crossroads, because Romans viewed everything as having a spirit, including roads, so a crossroad was a magically dangerous place where two spirits encountered one another. The dick would protect you from it. There is also plenty of bathroom graffiti that is identical to what you find today, so some dicks on walls are just dicks on walls. People haven't changed.
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May 26, 2012 05:36
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Octy posted:Not very. Anyone who could actually remember the Republic before the Civil Wars (let alone afterwards) in AD14 would have been either very old or dead. There were various senators over the next few decades who are known to have wanted to restore the Republic, but obviously nothing ever came of it. They tended to be brushed to the side whenever succession issues came up. Once you give people a taste of institutionalised total power, what are the chances people will want to change the system? Yep. Augustus was a brilliant man and neutralized any serious desire to revive the Republic. Another generation after him and I'm not aware of anyone who wanted the Republic back. The new system was in place and everyone was busy exploiting it. Most of the population don't appear to have given a poo poo as long as their taxes weren't too high and they had food to eat.
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May 26, 2012 06:02
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BrainDance posted:I remember someone in the last thread saying Rome was at about an 18th century level of technology before it declined, but they didnt elaborate on how. This is a really vague question, but could you tell me about Roman technology compared to the middle ages? Medical technology, specifically, was unsurpassed until the 1800s. I would say the discovery of antiseptics was the first major medical breakthrough that surpassed Rome's medical knowledge, though the Romans were vaguely aware of the concept too. There's talk in Roman sources of using boiling wine to prevent infection. They didn't understand how but they knew heat/alcohol could be helpful. The Middle Ages gets a bad rap technologically, there was constant advancement throughout the period. It is a really vague and wide question to cover. Romans had invented primitive factories that used water power, and they engaged in mass production. Rome also had access to the steam engine from the first century AD but it was only used as a toy, and then the technology disappeared. Technologically, though, the industrial revolution could have started in the 100s. Agriculture and weaponry were essentially the same. The crossbow is the first major military innovation made after Rome. The basic concept existed in Rome in large siege weapons, scorpions and ballistae, but the idea of a man-portable weapon using similar principles never came up. Roman flamethrowers were a big deal that never got replicated until the modern age. The Medieval Roman fleet was invincible for a good chunk of time because of those, flamethrowers are a bit of a doomsday weapon in the era of wooden ships. Roman engineering and construction technology were unsurpassed until at least the age of the Gothic cathedral. I would say overall that Roman technology was not significantly improved upon until the 1400s, and in some specific fields until the 1800s. Some areas Rome was surpassed rather easily, others it took forever to do better--this is just broadly speaking. The Middle Ages did have a lot more technological and scientific advancement than is popularly believed though, don't knock 'em.
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May 26, 2012 06:41
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Octy posted:And if you've got an endless supply of slaves for all your labour needs, would it ever occur to you that steam power might be applied to something other than opening doors (as an amusement)? This is essentially my hypothesis. Slave societies don't have motivation to industrialize. The technology wasn't suppressed, they just never thought about developing it into something that could be used industrially. They couldn't have known the world-changing potential that little toy represented, and nothing happened with it.
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May 27, 2012 04:47
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The extent of ancient Rome proper is amazingly small, you can walk across it in a couple hours. It would've been unbelievably crowded. That's why Roman buildings were so tall, ten story apartment complexes were standard. Because of fires there were laws that eventually limited buildings to... seven stories? Something like that, but no one seems to have given a poo poo. If you want to see one of these, Ostia is the best place I know of. The really tall ones are all gone but there are a couple two story ones that are mostly intact and you can go inside. It's one of the few places where upper stories in a building survived, usually they collapse. It is really hard to estimate the empire as a whole, I've seen anywhere from 50 to 100 million. ~60 is probably reasonable, 100 is way too high. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 07:46 on May 27, 2012 |
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May 27, 2012 06:07
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Octy posted:While I think of it, do we have any idea just how many people died during say, the Great Fire of Rome? I don't recall any of the sources mentioning it nor would I expect them to, but the number must have been fairly high. Without Crassus' elite 'firefighting' force, it's a wonder they managed to put it out. Not really but it was probably a shitload. Like most pre-modern cities, Rome was a huge firetrap and with the density of population, god. I would not be surprised if the death toll was in the tens of thousands from one of the big fires. This also leads into an interesting bit of defending Nero. He was accused of starting the fire, which was nonsense. One of the pieces of evidence used was that he dispatched soldiers to go out and torch buildings. This is probably true, but completely misrepresenting the facts. Romans didn't have any kind of water-based firefighting technology, the only thing you could do is contain the fire by creating a firebreak and then let it burn out. Those soldiers were out demolishing buildings to stop the fire, not spread it. Nero gets way more poo poo than he deserves (in my opinion). I should write about that later, somebody ask a Nero question. Mediochre posted:Why were many Roman emperors unable to secure adequate personal protection for themselves? Basically because there was never any kind of set method of succession. As long as you had the military and/or financial prowess to secure power, it was yours. That combined with a political system that already had a long history of assassination, the fact that legions were loyal to their commanders first and the state second, and the way Roman culture encouraged power struggle and naked ambition sets you up for a whole lot of bloodshed at the top. Numerical Anxiety posted:Can those who know more than me say something about education on the Latin-speaking side of the Empire? I know of it only through the rather entertaining portrait that Augustine gives in the Confessions, but I'm always left wondering when reading ancient texts who was actually reading these things. I assume it's the tiniest of fragments of the overall population that can read, say, Cicero or Augustine, yes? Roman schooling was remarkably similar to the system that currently exists in East Asia. Memorize, memorize, memorize. Thinking about the material or using it in any way was irrelevant, you just had to cram constantly. Some lucky noble kids got private tutoring instead and were able to flourish. Marcus Aurelius wrote a bit about this and how lucky he was to avoid schooling. Literacy was actually quite widespread. It's impossible to get a firm number but all the evidence suggests the majority of citizens were literate. Roman cities had public libraries and walls were absolutely covered with writing. Graffiti, advertisements, public notices, etc--the outer wall of any building (even a tomb) was considered public space and was usually just covered with writing. They'd be repainted regularly so new ads and such could be put up. We also have the Vindolanda tablets I linked earlier, those are mostly written by common legionaries. That even your generic footsoldiers at the edge of the world could read and write is pretty strong support for common literacy. Educated slaves were also highly valued. There were people who made a living by purchasing slave children who seemed bright, educating them, then reselling them. Like flipping a house. physeter posted:Interestingly enough, it did! The Greeks had an early version called the gastrophetes (sp?), and the Latin name manuballista at least indicates that the Romans had something similar. Many were stone throwers but some may have been bolt launchers. As to why there weren't more of them, I can only chalk it up to that wierd Italian prejudice against shooting other people with anything. They'd go to such great lengths to hire mercenaries that could handle slings and bows, but they were ambivalent about using them themselves. I'd call it a taboo except it apparently wasn't. I guess it's just one of those strange wrinkles in social psychology that we can't quite unravel after a thousand years of living in societies that have emphasized ranged warfare. I had never heard of that, thanks. It wasn't a taboo, just that in Greek and Roman culture if you didn't fight hand to hand you were a giant pussy. Manly virtue required a sword. The Romans were fully aware of the value of ranged troops and legions always had archers and slingers, but to my knowledge these were always auxilia recruited from non-Roman provincials. Or mercenaries. Twat McTwatterson posted:What is the obsession with mythically linking Aeneas to the founding of Rome, and when is this idea first espoused in Roman culture? Certainly Virgil did not create the whole idea. And of course I understand the idea of tracing Rome back to a kingly lineage and whatnot, but why specifically a Trojan? Because it's anti-Greek, or Homer is just that dominant and widespread in Mediterranean thought? The Trojans were boss. Romans are unique in the ancient world (as far as I know) in that their origin myth was never autochthonous, but they always said they came from somewhere else. Some people take this literally and believe the Latin people originated somewhere to the east and migrated to Italy, and this was preserved through these myths. I don't know. Latin culture owes a lot to the Etruscans at least, it's hard to trace the origins. The legend of Rome's foundation is steeped in all kinds of political beliefs, like Rome's cultural inclusiveness and the idea that anyone can become Roman is directly in there where Romulus and Remus collect all the outcasts of Italy to be the citizens of Rome. The Aeneid is our source for the Aeneas myth, which you're right was around before. Probably similar to how the Trojan War story existed but Homer wrote it down. It's important to remember that Virgil was creating Augustan propaganda with the Aeneid, it wasn't just writing a story. But I think the reason why Aeneas is picked is because The Iliad was just a pervasive story in the culture, and in that Aeneas is said to be destined to be king and fucks off somewhere instead of getting killed, so he's an available character. It gives the Romans a proud warrior past and a divinely laid destiny. I don't know if that really answers the question but I don't know that there is a good answer. You'd probably have to ask Virgil. Also mythology isn't really my thing, I know it because you have to in order to understand the culture but I haven't studied it extensively, I prefer the history. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 17:49 on May 27, 2012 |
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May 27, 2012 16:54
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Farecoal posted:Wait, what? I must not be as educated as I thought I was about Rome, I thought the position of emperor just passed down from father to son? I think you've been well answered. When emperors had a son they'd try to pass power down to him, but there were surprisingly few emperors with biological sons available. Vespasian and Marcus Aurelius are the only ones in the first two centuries of having emperors. FourLeaf posted:I've read that women's status in Roman society was the most advanced in world history until the 20th century. I knew Roman women had relatively more rights, but is this an exaggeration?  Disregard whatever you read this in.I mentioned before that there was a legal situation where women would have power. Other than that, women were quite literally property. Roman society had stratification, the top were patricians, then equites, then plebeians, then freedmen, and the bottom were slaves, foreigners, and women. Women didn't even get their own names, they got the feminine form of their father's name. Women were owned by their fathers until marriage, when the ownership transferred to the husband. Women enjoyed no rights. In practice, women could exercise a certain amount of power if they had the motivation/attitude for it, but legally? They didn't have poo poo. Romans were huge misogynists. Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:I thought they conquered Parthia? Nope, Parthia was the rock Rome could never get out of its shoe. Rome did occasionally invade Parthia and a couple times they burned all their major cities and hosed the place up good and proper, but then they'd leave and Parthia would revive. Rome was never able to keep them down. Amused to Death posted:Slaves were just anyone who weren't citizens who by capture or birth happened to wind up as slaves. This is a lot of it, but it also goes back to this question. TildeATH posted:Speaking of slavery, what's the long and short of the slave uprisings and the introduction of chattel slavery from Carthage? There were several slave uprisings, notably in the first century BCE, which was Spartacus' era. The Romans were understandably terrified of slave uprising considering how goddamn many slaves there were, and when there started being multiple uprisings in quick succession slaves began to gain more rights. They had never actually been chattel slaves like we think of it, I'm not sure what you're asking there. When we think slaves we think the American south usually, and that was brutal compared to anything the Romans did. Romans were very practical people and it extended to slaves. If the slaves are revolting, improve the conditions for the slaves so they'll shut up. Many laws were passed dictating what you could do with them, Amused to Death posted a few. By the middle of the 100s CE you had to pay your slaves, you couldn't kill them, you couldn't even just haul off and beat them unless you had a defensible reason. You couldn't break up families, you had to feed and house them properly. As slavery went, it wasn't too bad. Educated slaves were often better off than plebeians. euphronius posted:Legionaries threw pila before engaging so they weren't 100% melee. True, but throwing a couple javelins wasn't really fighting at range so it didn't make you a pussy. Practical people. Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Why was the Varangian Guard not as abused as the Praetorian Guard was? This is something I don't know much more than the basics about. Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:What happened to the German bodyguard of the Roman Emperor's? I remember there were multiple different guards, all from outside of Italy - except the Praetorian Guard, and my next question is why were non-Italian Romans so trusted? I think a lot of it was that they were outside of Roman society, so they wouldn't be affected by Roman problems as much. They were loyal to their employer because he was all they had. If they hosed it up they'd have to go back to freeze their balls off in bumfuck instead of chillin' in Rome. Also Germans/Gauls were seen as much more frightening so their mere presence could dissuade people from starting poo poo. meatbag posted:In your opinion, does Nero get way more poo poo than he deserves? All of the writing about Nero comes from people who loving hated him. Nero was not a great guy, first. He was full of his own poo poo and exploited his position. But a lot of his actions are open to interpretation, and notably there's a pattern of taking power from the senatorial class and putting it into the emperor's office. Remember this is still early on, so the senators are fighting tooth and nail to retain as much of their power as possible. Nero also liked hanging out with artists and actors, who were the lowest of the low in society, so it was scandalous. I believe Nero was trying to increase the authority of his office at the expense of the upper classes, and as a result they demonized him. There are a precious few times when the attitude of the general public is mentioned, and they always seemed to like him. After he was gone, plebeians risked being executed in order to put Nero statues back up. The other writing that exists is from Christians, who also hated him because he did indeed execute a bunch of them as scapegoats. The Book of Revelation is most likely a disguised anti-Nero propaganda piece. Again, not a balanced view. And poo poo like Nero fiddling while Rome burned never happened, but that's the image we have of him now.
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May 28, 2012 02:23
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teagone posted:Were there ever any specific units/legions of the Roman military that performed tasks/missions equivalent to modern-day special forces, e.g., SEAL teams, British SAS, Delta Force, etcetera? Probably, but there aren't any records of it I'm aware of. I suspect there was no formal organization, but the best troops in a legion would be dispatched to do special ops if something were needed. Sort of like the troops Alexander used to assault the Sogdian Rock. There were also the speculatores, which were a scout/intelligence organization. Wouldn't surprise me if they did a bit of this.
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May 28, 2012 05:40
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I do have a memory of reading about Roman frogmen but I can't find it, so it could have been speculation or some sort of fever dream. Anyone else read this before?
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May 28, 2012 06:02
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Arthur Crackpot posted:When Marius was pitching and implementing his military reforms, how did the different classes of Roman society view his ideas? The lower classes were big fans. By this time, land was being consolidated into large estates and Rome was filling with plebeians who had no jobs and no hope. Prior to Marius, the Roman army was essentially the same as all the other ancient ones. People brought their own equipment when the army was mustered, so only people with property and wealth could be soldiers. Now, all these unemployed plebs had been handed a possible career. And it came with a whole lot of benefits to make it attractive. In the upper classes, at first I'm sure it depended on if you were on Marius' side or Sulla's side during the civil war. Ultimately they liked it as well because the professional army was more effective, and there was a lot more glory to be had in all the wars that followed. I've never read any criticism of the reforms from the time, only later when people recognized the problem with having generals run around with their own personal armies. Unintended consequences. The Roman army after Marius was the most powerful military force the world had ever seen, the first true professional army, which (overall) was almost unstoppable. What's not to like for people who love conquest?
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May 28, 2012 11:10
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TheChimney posted:Can any of you recommend some good books about Roman History? I'm looking for something that is entertaining, but accurate. It doesn't have to be military history; I'm open to just about anything. Tom Holland's book Rubicon is my go-to suggestion for an excellent, very readable history. Caesar's era as the title suggests. Start there and I'll see if I can remember some others later.
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May 28, 2012 15:27
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Farecoal posted:In your opinion, who was the "best" Roman emperor? What about "worst"? Trajan is my favorite. Everyone agrees he was an excellent leader, he did everything right and Rome prospered immensely from his actions. A thousand years later he was still being held up as the essence of the ideal ruler. It's hard to find a powerful man in Roman history that isn't criticized, but I cannot remember ever seeing a bad word about Trajan. Augustus and Justinian would be very close second and third. There's a lot of competition for worst. For being a complete piece of poo poo it's hard to beat Caracalla, though his actual policy wasn't too bad. He was a total sociopath though. Maximinus Thrax is the emperor where the crisis of the third century begins, but I have a soft spot for him because I love that the descriptions of him are basically of Gregor Clegane. Eight foot six and crushing rocks in his bare hands. The worst emperor question is a lot harder to answer, you have so many. TildeATH posted:Which reminds me--Gibbon, I believe, tells a story of one of the Four Emperors camped out across the river with his army from the army of another of the Four. Gibbon wrote that a dozen or so men crossed the river and routed the opposing army of 60-100,000 men. It's been over a decade since I read Gibbon, so I'm probably screwing this story up in all sorts of ways, but does any of this have any basis in fact? I don't know the story, but all numbers like this from ancient sources are unreliable--with the notable exception of Cannae, which appears to have been reported accurately. When you read an ancient source and it says the Roman force of 10,000 legionaries went up against a barbarian army of 300,000, that just means the Romans were significantly outnumbered. The historian is not trying to be accurate. 10,000 is a reasonable figure for a legionary force, but the enemy's probably more like 30,000, not 300,000. There are stories of ridiculously lopsided victories. To speculate completely on that one, the guys could've started a fire in the camp or they could've started a bunch of campfires to convince the enemy army there was another force arriving, and trick them into retreating. That kind of thing happened. Pfirti86 posted:Aw poo poo, sorry, I'll stop posting. Don't worry about it, I don't know as much about the era you're posting on so do continue.
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May 29, 2012 01:36
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DTurtle posted:What did Roman agriculture look like? What did they plant, raise, and eat? How good were their crops, agricultural technologies, organization, etc? Roman agriculture was never much above subsistence level. In the early and mid republic, it was largely the domain of family farmers on small plots, worked by the family and their slaves. More and more slaves entered the empire over time, the prices went down, so everyone used them. Slaves were so cheap that we have numerous records of slaves who owned slaves of their own. Gradually what began to happen was the wealthy landowners bought up more and more plots, consolidating the agricultural land into giant plantation estates worked by armies of slaves. Small farmers were pushed further and further into the provinces, or had to go into the cities to live. It becomes a massive problem and land reform/redistribution is a huge political issue. The Gracchi brothers begin addressing it in 133 BCE and get assassinated for their efforts, and this traditionally kicks off a lot of the civil strife that fills the next century, specifically the struggle between the populists and the elites. Romans didn't benefit from many of the technologies that make modern crop yields so good. They had irrigation and mechanical grain mills. They also had some sort of mechanical grain reaper, we've never found one and the technology disappears but there are pictures of it. Grapes were by far the most popular fruit to grow, both for eating and for making wine. Olives were the standard cash crop, olive oil is a big seller everywhere on Rome's trade network. The grains were a bit more varied than what we usually eat today. They grew wheat, millet, barley, emmer (very popular at the time but not much now), rice. Asparagus was highly prized, it would be dried for use throughout the year or stored in the snow in the Alps. Cabbage, turnips, and leeks were common. Beans and chickpeas, lentils were considered especially good. Kale, broccoli, cucumbers, artichoke, mushrooms. Any spices they could get their hands on were prized. A lot of it is similar to the Mediterranean diet of today, since that's what grows in the region.
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May 29, 2012 01:57
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Not to derail, but what were Ethiopia & Mali like during Roman times? Did the Romans trade with them? Mali wasn't around yet. Ethiopia was a mysterious distant land of legend, there was contact and some trade but it was the edge of the world for them. Eventually the empire of Aksum arose in the 100s CE, which was one of the various forms Ethiopia has taken over the ages, and they had a lot more contact. The Roman sea trade route to India started in Egypt, went through Aksum territory, then around Arabia to India. Aksum was considered a pretty big deal. It was the first major state to convert to Christianity, and the writer Mani considered it one of the four great empires of the world, along with Persia, Rome, and China. DarkCrawler posted:Why would they? It's useless desert all the way down Basically this. You have to go a long way to get to any land worth inhabiting, so they never bothered. Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Most of the food (Wheat, Grains, etc.) was farmed in Egypt right? Egypt was one region that produced a huge surplus, and Rome proper got much of its grain shipped from there. But empire-wide no, most production was more local. Italy got a lot of food shipments because the population was larger than the Italian farmlands could support, at least unless they got rid of a lot of the cash crops. Sicily also produced a lot of excess grain for Italy to consume. OctaviusBeaver posted:How did the Romans produce the armor, swords, shields, uniforms and whatever other equipment they needed for their armies? Did they have factories of some kind? Or military contractors? Yes to both. Romans had mass production and factories of a sort where all kinds of things were made, including military equipment. I don't know off-hand of any military contractors but I am absolutely certain they existed. The legions also had an array of craftsmen to repair/replace equipment wherever they happened to be. Permanent military forts would have smithies and whatnot. OctaviusBeaver posted:Also, how standardized was their equipment really? In the movies it looks like the Romans have nearly identical (badass looking) uniforms like what you would see in a modern army. Did they really have standard uniforms? All evidence suggests yes, the equipment was standardized. It was all technologically honed to be as effective as possible, and the tactics required soldiers to be equipped and able to fight the same way. Standardization also simplifies production, and imagine the world of ad-hoc armies and levies. Seeing this massive block of men all in identical high quality equipment would be incredibly intimidating. We don't have as much military equipment as you might think considering how much of it was produced, a lot would've been recycled. But what we do find is all pretty similar and can be put into categories. Things change over time but it appears that if you're in a particular timeframe, it's all the same stuff.
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May 29, 2012 03:00
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MothraAttack posted:What's the most widely supported hypothesis as to the intended usage of those strange metal spheres the Romans produced periodically? Ritual purposes. That is an archaeologist's joke because we are SUCH CUT UPS. If we have no loving idea what something is, "ritual purposes" is a standard way to dodge the question. There are lots of different hypotheses but none with any real widespread support. Without a reference in a written record or finding one in a situation with some other material associated with it, there's no way to know what they were used for. This, incidentally, is why you shouldn't buy artifacts unless they're a museum sale. Some douche with a metal detector finds a dodecahedron and digs it up. Maybe it had some associated material that, together, could've been used to discover what they were used for, but now it's been dug up improperly and that information is gone. Was that the only site where everything survived? Welp, we will now literally never know what they were for. Thanks, metal detector douche.
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May 29, 2012 04:46
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OctaviusBeaver posted:I'm also interested in how defeated generals were treated. I remember in high school learning about the general who lost against Hannibal (I think it was at Cannae) and the Senate was really impressed that he had the guts to show his face back in Rome after losing a whole army. A badly defeated general no longer had a career. You wouldn't necessarily be executed, in fact I don't think it was common at all, but that was it. If you lost a legion you were done. The only way to regain any of your honor, and the path many defeated generals took, was suicide. Hannibal was kind of a special case since he defeated everyone, and the defeat at Cannae was so spectacular and horrific that Rome was in such a state of shock that I don't think that was on their minds. GamerL posted:Forgive me if the answer to this is the seemingly obvious one (i.e. a desert), but why didn't Rome ever (or did they?) try to take more of Africa? A little bit more on this, you could draw Rome's African border a lot further south if you wanted to. The Sahara was, at best, sparsely populated (same as today) and the Romans maintained client kingdom relationships with the nomads there as much as possible so they wouldn't have to deal with raids. The Sahara was within Rome's sphere of influence. Where you draw the line between sphere of influence and part of the empire is up to debate. I don't think most would include the Sahara in Rome's borders but it's not like someone else was there. Radio Talmudist posted:How did Romans see themselves? The Romans saw themselves as the ultimate civilization. They were descended from the gods, an amalgamation of all the peoples of the world, who would bring liberty and peace to the ends of the Earth. The Aeneid is a good way to understand the Roman point of view. Imperium sine fine--empire without end, promised by Jupiter. Romans were superior but not exclusive, they were able to bring in others and make them Roman. For Greeks, there was no becoming Greek. A slave would always be a slave, a barbarian would always be a barbarian. Romans did not share this. It was an open society that took people from across the world, took culture, technology, religions, and combined them all together. Foreigners were still inferior to Romans, but that line between them could be crossed. If you were a Roman living in say, 120 CE, it wasn't hard to believe this. The empire had been continuously expanding for centuries. Roman armies were, overall, unstoppable. Rome itself hadn't been attacked in five hundred years. Roman technology was demonstrably superior to everyone else's. Romans were rich and happy. You could walk from one end of the empire to the other on clean, straight highways without fear for your life. It'd be hard not to believe yourselves superior in such a situation. They were proud to be Romans, but not blind to the fact that other people knew things too, and their culture adapted as it went. Grand Fromage posted:Also, Egypt (and Greece in some ways) was a special exception within the Roman world view that I'll go into detail on. Romans also deeply respected the old, and Egypt was treated differently because of it. Almost reverently. Remember, when Rome shows up on Egypt's doorstep, there's been some form of Egyptian civilization for 3,000 years. Egypt is as ancient to the Romans as the Assyrians are to us. Egypt began as a client kingdom with a lot of freedom, then became a province in 30 BCE. The Egyptians generally got more respect and there are various Egyptian fads throughout the empire. Romans didn't systematically suppress native cultures, but even by Roman standards the Egyptians had a lot of freedom to keep to their traditions. Not to say that Rome was any less harsh when Egyptians revolted, but other than that Egypt in large part enjoyed its traditional culture and life despite being Roman. It also changed how Rome behaved, since the Roman emperors allowed themselves to be depicted as divine pharaohs in order to keep the Egyptians happy. This is where the idea of a divine ruler really begins seeping into Rome. Greeks were also treated like poo poo for being pansies, but Greek culture and learning were hugely popular. Ultimately the two cultures merged quite a bit and the Greek side became dominant in medieval Rome, so they got the last laugh there.
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May 29, 2012 05:09
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Haydrian posted:What was the deal with the sponge on a stick instead of TP? Is that a real thing, was it a universal appliance or just in bigger cities that didn't have outhouses or whatever? I always thought of the Romans as being pretty clean/hygene minded, I'm pretty sure if I had to wipe my rear end with the poo-residue of everyone else that came along before me, I'd freak the gently caress out. Totally a real thing. You would clean it between uses.  This is a typical Roman toilet. That little channel in front of the toilets? That would have running water in it, and you washed your sponge there. Mescal posted:What is the most egregious error on the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Rome ? I'm not getting paid enough to read all that, but I will say that the wikipedia Rome articles I've read are pretty good. It's still wikipedia but I guess the density of Rome nerds helps? I don't know but overall I haven't had many objections to them.
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May 29, 2012 10:24
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Alan Smithee posted:Speaking of Hannibal, was there any particular reasons for Rome's exceptional hatred towards Carthage? I mean Rome was often sacked by barbarian tribes and yet it's MO towards them was always conquer and assimilate. And yet Rome didn't take chances with Carthage, opting instead to famously raze the city and salt the earth (yeah yeah this is speculation) Rome was completely poo poo-your-pants terrified of Carthage. The first Punic War was a typical war between major powers. Rome wins, Carthage is made a client state. There's nothing terribly unusual about it. The second Punic War, Hannibal fucks Rome's poo poo up. Hannibal's invasion is the closest Rome has ever come to being destroyed. Rome is badass enough that I think some people forget that Hannibal was unstoppable. Any time the Romans were foolish enough to meet him in battle, they were obliterated. Zama was his only defeat, it took someone of equal or greater badass like Scipio to stop him. Carthage kept coming back. After the first Punic War, Rome imposed serious peace terms, intending to keep Carthage down by draining its economy. They rebounded and attacked again. After the second war, Rome's peace was absolutely devastating. Carthage couldn't have any military and the economic sanctions were intended to keep Carthage paying forever. But Carthage rebounded and rapidly paid off its debt. The Romans were terrified, stirred up some bullshit reasoning to deliver a completely ridiculous ultimatum, and then used that as an excuse to finally get rid of Carthage. The earth salting didn't happen but they did burn the city to the ground. Carthage, and specifically Hannibal, represented sheer terror to the Romans, and when they could get rid of it they did. Gauls occupied a similar space in the Roman psyche after they sacked Rome in 390 BCE. The Romans kept that grudge going for centuries until Caesar finally brought Gaul into the empire.
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May 29, 2012 15:23
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Alan Smithee posted:Were they unable to simply install a governor/puppet govt? That was basically what they did after the Second Punic War but it didn't work. Also, North Africa is rich as hell in this era so they weren't opposed to the idea of just incorporating it. But it was their first time creating a province outside Italy so they didn't go right to that idea. DarkCrawler posted:Also, can someone tell me how the heck did Romans keep putting armies in the field time after time Hannibal wiped them out? It seemed to me that Hannibal's army was a single one that Carthage wielded in his campaigns while Romans lost what, 100,000 men alltogether and yet were able to invade and completely destroy Carthage not that long afterwards. Romans didn't follow the rules of ancient warfare. What you were supposed to do is meet on the field, get defeated, then surrender. Everybody worked that way. Romans were, for whatever reason, incapable of admitting defeat. They never, ever stopped coming for you, no matter how many of them you killed. This is a large part of why they were so successful even before the transformation of the legions into the professionally trained, elite force we all know and love. The problem in the Second Punic War was that Hannibal was one of the greatest generals in world history and Roman determination wasn't enough to stop him. It was, however, enough to hold on and contain him until they could launch their own invasion of Carthage. Mr. Mambo posted:So they understood the principles of refrigeration to some extent, they created advanced ag. technology, they understood principles of civic sanitation apparently....I've long admired their aqueduct systems, highways, etc. but I'm enjoying learning more from this great thread. Fun fact, there are Roman sewers and aqueducts still in use in Rome 2000 years after their construction. Some other cities where that's true too I believe.
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May 30, 2012 01:45
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euphronius posted:Romans also got lucky in that Hannibal's motives may not have been perfectly aligned with Carthage (Or Carthage's aligned with Hannibal's). He certainly seemed like he could have taken Rome at some point but never did. As Maharbal said (not really but who cares), "Hannibal, you know how to gain a victory, but not how to use one." Why he didn't immediately march on Rome and take it after Cannae is one of those great mysteries of history that will never be solved.
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May 30, 2012 04:57
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If you've not read about the Battle of Alesia, that is the place to start on how terrifyingly effective Roman siegecraft could be. Having all your soldiers trained in basic construction and engineering gave legions an edge that is hard to adequately describe. Edit: Masada is also quite the feat too. My favorite non-Roman siege from the era is Alexander's assault on Tyre. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 05:41 on May 30, 2012 |
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May 30, 2012 05:37
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Mescal posted:I don't know what you mean. What exactly would regular soldiers engineer and build? Roman soldiers in the field would build a fortress to camp in every night. That was the most common construction. They would also regularly build walls, bridges, towers, and some of the siege equipment was built in the field, such as siege towers. At Masada, the soldiers built a gigantic ramp all the way up to the top of the mesa. They also worked in road construction and built the permanent border fortresses.
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May 30, 2012 08:29
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euphronius posted:The Romans also built bridges better than anyone. Some of which are also still in use to this day. BrainDance posted:How come Rome became so powerful? What was it they had that no one else did? It's impossible to quantify. Why did Christianity become dominant and Mithras faded away? Why did the Mongols achieve so much more than the other very similar steppe nomads? It's just the way it worked out. For my personal opinions, one was the aforementioned inability to be defeated. Whatever that was in the Roman character, it made them tenacious in a way other cultures weren't. Another is their inclusiveness. The empire thrived because they didn't try to impose their will on everyone in it. They offered their culture to people, and the majority were happy to take it. That's why there are surprisingly few "nationalist" (nationalism didn't exist yet but it's a reasonable comparison) revolts throughout the empire's history. I can't actually think of any offhand other than the Jewish revolts and the Egyptian one. This isn't to say Romans wouldn't stomp out cultural traditions if they opposed Rome too hard--human sacrifice is a good example of one they didn't tolerate--but for the most part if you paid your taxes and didn't cause any loving trouble, the Romans left you alone to live your life however you wanted. That's a big help when you want a world-spanning empire. On the flip side, they didn't put up with any poo poo. If you threatened the state, the Romans would end you. Ruthlessly. Also, Roman culture placed personal ambition and achievement very high, but below the ultimate cultural value, service to the state. There was no life more honorable to a Roman than a lifetime of hard work, rising through the ranks of society, dedicated to furthering the achievements of the state, your family, and yourself in that order. It's a good set of cultural values and priorities for a society to achieve great things, and when it breaks down later things go haywire. And then the obvious answers go here. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 13:09 on May 30, 2012 |
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May 30, 2012 13:07
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Alhazred posted:Basically a poo poo ton of modern politics comes from ancient Rome. A good answer. Our intellectual traditions are more Greek than anything, but the political/legal systems of the western world are very much Roman. And their legacies are everywhere in places you wouldn't think to look. Any American coin would be instantly recognizable to a Roman, for example. Even the words are the same--liberty, libertas. Trench_Rat posted:was roman metallurgy advanced enough to have made a steam engine? Probably would've blown up a few in the process but they could've figured it out. feedmegin posted:Isn't it more 'power/authority without boundaries/limits'? Imperium does not necessarily mean empire, per se (the word predates the Empire by quite a way in fact) and finis can be either geographical or temporal. I don't know, I don't speak Latin beyond some you pick up naturally through studying Rome. I rely on the translations of others and "empire without end" is what I read for imperium sine fine in that context. You're right that imperium has a lot more meanings, specifically one of power. I'm not sure that empire without end/power without limits would've been much of a distinction to a Roman. DarkCrawler posted:Isn't it true that a SHITLOAD of Roman writings were lost? Like a vast majority of the stuff written during their era? What we have is only the tiniest, tiniest fraction. Romans wrote down everything and made a lot of copies, which is the only reason we have so much. If we have more than 0.1% of what the Romans wrote I'd be shocked. There's definitely more out there to find. For example, at the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, the scrolls that have been excavated are all Latin. Villas of that type usually had two libraries, one Latin, the other Greek. So it's likely that one also had a Greek library, which remains undiscovered. The scrolls there should be preserved exactly the same way so with a little luck, we can read those. And with even more luck, they won't all be copies of poo poo we already have. Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:When did Greek become the dominant language of the Eastern-part of the Empire (Byzantium)? Pre or Post Collapse of the 'Empire'? It became the common language in the east after Alexander. Once the Greeks were integrated into the empire, Greek and Latin were essentially of equal status. All educated people would learn both. In day to day life, Latin was the primary language of the west and Greek the primary language of the east. Justinian is the last native Latin speaking emperor, so if you want to go all emperor-focused you can say the age of Latin ended with him. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 01:01 on May 31, 2012 |
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May 31, 2012 00:59
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Amused to Death posted:Have there ever been any significant amount of wax tablets found? Or more importantly found and translated? I'd love to read the random thoughts of some guy while taking a stroll through the forest near his villa or ect, the real stream of conscious of people at the time. Sadly no. The Vindolanda tablets are the best everyday life writing I know of.
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May 31, 2012 01:52
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