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Kinda, you'll often see them called knights in Roman histories. They fill some of the same social roles but it's not really the same thing as a feudal knight. It's the same kind of lowest level nobility category though.
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Jun 1, 2012 13:21
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Equites literally means "horse dudes" so yeah. It's an economic class mostly by the period we actually know stuff about, since eques = dude rich enough to own and maintain a horse. Cato the Censor removed someone from the rolls of the equites for being too fat to stay on his horse, however  (170's BC).By the principate (= emperors) more and more of the cavalry was made up of provincial troops, as opposed to Romans. Even during the second punic war for example it was probably about half Italian levies. They were more of an infantry-based army. A feudal system is kind of irrelevant when you've got slaves and a stronger central government/bureaucratic system.
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Jun 1, 2012 13:53
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TildeATH posted:Jared Diamond  Since it seems current, here's a sperg on Roman nobility. This is typically not well understood, because textbooks often summarize it as “patricians were the upper class, plebians were the lower class”. And that’s a gross oversimplification. Patrician: Those direct descendants of a noble house inhabiting Rome at the time of, or shortly after, the founding of the Republic. Most of these houses, or gens, came from Etruscan or Sabine lineages. Some others from workaday folks, and yes perhaps some from freed slaves. There were only about 15-30 of these true patrician gens in the beginning. Plebian: Everyone else that was a citizen. Nobilis: A growing class throughout the Republic. These are plebians whose families have achieved Senatorial status, but are not patricians by blood or law. This is important. Most of the “patrician” characters in HBO’s Rome, for example, are plebian nobles. In fact, among the main characters, I recall that only Julius Casesar, Brutus and Servilia are actual patricians. Mark Antony, Cato, Cicero, Pompey...all plebs by birth. They socialize, marry and work with patricians but legally are not. Actually for awhile they weren't even allowed to intermarry. What: By the time of the Civil Wars, most of the patrician houses are in financial ruin, total obscurity or extinct. Perhaps only 5-6 of them remain relevant. It had been 500 years since the founding, and for reasons that I hope to make clear below, it was financially very challenging to maintain a Senatorial presence for such a period. A patrician that wasn’t in the Senate was still a patrician, but he might also be a pig farmer and totally irrelevant. Why was it challenging?: Because to be in the Senate you needed to own land that generated 1 million sesterces a year, which was typically about 500 iugera of land. You & your immediate family also could not be engaged in trade, where trade was roughly defined as mercantile activity. So as a senator, income is limited to the following: selling proceeds of the land you own (crops, ore, timber), rents, war spoils, inheritance, gifts and bribes. Now, ok you say, surely they started rich and inherited lots of land and money. Yes, they did. But the problem was a senator with two sons (or more!) was stuck. If he divided his lands between them so that they could both become senators, it was going to initiate an eventual watering down process where they would divide to their sons, and so on and so on. This is how most patrician families are gone by the time of the Civil Wars: they just fell beneath the required income and had to go open businesses/get jobs and stop being senators. This is also why adoption was huge in the patrician houses, because an extra son could spell generational disaster for a patrician senatorial gens. Most patricians still in the Senate at the end of Republic are actually fairly poor. Gens Julius & gens Claudius in particular are having some issues. That's foreshadowing because the Julii et Claudii will emerge from the Civil Wars as the emperors of Rome.  Ok but it couldn’t have been that hard: It was. Because advancement in Roman Republican politics required that all aspirants spend a year as a curule aedile. The aedile’s job was to throw festivals and games for everyone. And he had to pay for that himself. If he did a good job, people would vote for him in the next election as a praetor, which meant he could go govern a province and squeeze money out of it (see war spoils, land rights, gifts and bribes, above). And after praetor, he could have a shot at becoming consul. So personal fortunes were thrown at the aedileship, and if you didn’t have money, moneylenders. If you didn’t do a good job as aedile and make people happy, you’re not moving on to praetor unless you’re a war hero or something. It was the only way to make a name for yourself with the voters, except for… Tribunes of the Plebs?: Exactly. TotPs were ten men elected every year by the voters to represent the commoners of the city. Their job was to make laws, veto things and generally harass the Senate for the amusement of the commoners. Many men made their reputations this way, and lots of bribes were to be had to keep the money coming in. Only one problem: you had to be a plebian by blood. No true patrician could take this office. Blooded patricians had to take the crushingly expensive curule aedileship if they wanted to progress. The only way a patrician could take this office was to undergo some bizarre ritual that would legally convert him and his descendants to pleb status forever. Now, some people will say that over time, the distinction between patricians and plebs diminished, and this is somewhat true economically. But I’m aware of only one or two men that ever elected to give up his patrician status to seek a TotP seat. This stuff still mattered to them a very great deal. Many patrician houses chose to fade out rather than become plebs, even though a few turns as Tribunes of Plebs could have reversed their sagging fortunes. Wait that's not fair: True blood patricians had their own positions that only they could fill. The chief of the Senate had to be patrician by blood. So did many of the high priests. And yes, these positions lost much of the authority they once had, so it's wasn't a good trade. What was Julius Caesar?: A Julius that got hosed by the exact system I’ve just described and went to war over it. JC was a real patrician, so he couldn’t be a tribune of the plebs. His gens didn’t have big money, so he had to borrow for the aedileship. He borrowed a metric asston of cash, so he did a great job. As a result he got voted into praetor/governor of Cisalpine Gaul (?), the Swiss gave him an opening and then he conquered everything up to the English Channel (see war spoils). He pissed off too many people in the process and the second civil war began. What’s a knight?: It’s a bad translation of “equites”, meaning horseman. Legally, this is a Roman citizen who owns land which gives him 400k/year in income. He might also get a state subsidized horse. He’s not a senator, and might not want to be because he can engage in trade. Become a pottery baron or a lord of weapons manufacturing, go ahead! Many of the richest citizens in Rome were equites and quite happy to remain so. Many first time senators were either sons of equites whose rich families bought them the necessary land, or retired equites that had accumulated so much cash they could leave commerce forever. Okay so: This is why Rome had such upward mobility and needed fresh blood. Families were constantly tapping out of the game, others were constantly stepping up with enough capital to have a shot at the big time. But hopefully this sheds light on some of the pressures and motivations of key persons in the Mid to Late Republic. Things really change during the reign of Augustus, and only a couple generations into the Imperial period there’s not much of this old system left. But it was their world for nearly half a millenium, and an understanding of it helps to figure out everything from internal politics to foreign conquests. physeter fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Jun 1, 2012 |
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Jun 1, 2012 15:44
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Grand Fromage posted:Roman patricians and the Italian mafia are incredibly similar, honestly. This is entirely true. The best guideline I can offer to understanding Roman cognomens like "Caesar" and "Magnus" is to watch the scene from Goodfellas where they pan through the club and name all the gangsters. Roman noble names were literally their equivalent of "Jimmy Two Times" and "Joey Bag o Donuts". Caesar means "hairy" and they were all pre-maturely bald. Pompey Magnus (meaning "The Great") had that name because when he was an obnoxious 16 year old general, Sulla would see him coming and mutter "oh look here comes Pompey Magnus". Cool-sounding names typically translate into something like cross-eyed, clubfooted, big nosed, etc etc.
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Jun 1, 2012 16:00
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Eggplant Wizard posted:Cato the Censor removed someone from the rolls of the equites for being too fat to stay on his horse, however Ah, the original goon  quote:Why was it challenging?: Because to be in the Senate you needed to own land that generated 1 million sesterces a year, which was typically about 500 iugera of land. You & your immediate family also could not be engaged in trade, where trade was roughly defined as mercantile activity. So as a senator, income is limited to the following: selling proceeds of the land you own (crops, ore, timber), rents, war spoils, inheritance, gifts and bribes. Now, ok you say, surely they started rich and inherited lots of land and money. I thought the legion commanders were always senators and the non-legion senators were also governors of the Senatorial Provinces to keep them extravagantly wealthy. Iseeyouseemeseeyou fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Jun 1, 2012 |
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Jun 1, 2012 17:17
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In late (western) empire they seemed to have had small groups of horse based troops that could quickly respond to incidents on the borders (Rhine, Danube) and then permanent legions based in forts all year (like the one in Belgrade). The horse based quick response troops probably fought on foot though and just used their horses to get to the action. I am remembering this from the History of Rome podcast so sorry no cites.
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Jun 1, 2012 17:23
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Grand Fromage posted:Not very. Heavy cavalry doesn't exist until the middle ages because the Romans didn't have lances or stirrups, which made their cavalry significantly less effective than the stuff you're thinking of. Horses are also really expensive to maintain. One of the advantages of a feudal knight is the king doesn't have to pay a cent, the knight's holdings take care of supporting him and his warhorses. The Roman state was on the hook for their troops. Plus it requires a lot of specialized training, while the legionaries could all be trained the same way. I thought even the late western empire used cataphracts and clibanari? Heavy cavalry itself was also used extensively by Alexander with his Companions. They did not have stirrups, but they were still used as heavy shock cavalry, and were very effective. The only real difference was the lack of stirrups, but horned saddles compensated for that to a degree. Enough for cataphracts to use lances anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Roman_army
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Jun 1, 2012 17:25
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physeter posted:Since it seems current, here's a sperg on Roman nobility. This is typically not well understood, because textbooks often summarize it as “patricians were the upper class, plebians were the lower class”. And that’s a gross oversimplification. Solid writeup. Were all patricians expected to serve in the military too, or was it possible to go aedileship=>praetor=>consol with no command? And if aediles had to spend their own personal fortunes to maintain their office, does that mean taxes only went to the Senate? How exactly was the Roman tax system set up? One thing that fascinated me about the HBO series Rome was how acceptable criminal gangs (and gangs/mobs in general) were to the political establishment (like when Mark Antony pretty much commands Lucius Vorenus to take command of the gangsters on the Aventine Hill). It was like that was a legit job. How close was that to history? I know so little about the mid/late republic, the Roman constitution is really baffling.
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Jun 1, 2012 17:59
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WoodrowSkillson posted:I thought even the late western empire used cataphracts and clibanari? I know gently caress all about the late army so I could be wrong. I'm reading a book about the era now but there hasn't been much discussion of the military yet. In the period I know well, the heavy infantry were the vast majority of any Roman army.
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Jun 1, 2012 18:14
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Grand Fromage posted:I know gently caress all about the late army so I could be wrong. I'm reading a book about the era now but there hasn't been much discussion of the military yet. Byzantines used Cataphracts quite often if I'm remembering correctly.
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Jun 1, 2012 18:29
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Byzantines used Cataphracts quite often if I'm remembering correctly. Yeah they did, but I don't know about that middle period. Once they started using the weird oval shields and everything was lame.
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Jun 1, 2012 18:30
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Pfirti86 posted:One thing that fascinated me about the HBO series Rome was how acceptable criminal gangs (and gangs/mobs in general) were to the political establishment (like when Mark Antony pretty much commands Lucius Vorenus to take command of the gangsters on the Aventine Hill). It was like that was a legit job. How close was that to history? It was very accurate and a context that you miss in understanding the assassination of Julius Ceasar if you only know of it individually. The whole thing started when the Senatorial elites (the Optimates) murdered Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BCE for trying to cap the amount of land (and thus wealth) that could be held in a single individual's hands to rectify the huge supply of landless poor with the justification that his use of the power of Tribune of the plebs was tyranny. Tiberius' brother Gaius went basically 'okay, if that's how we're going to play it' and organized the people into armed bands to keep from being murdered in the streets by a small group of senators. Instead he was murdered in the streets by a very large group of senators after a political misstep in what was essentially a battle that left thousands dead. Thus started a cycle of populists rising up to be murdered that carried straight on through to the murder of Caesar, including the Third Servile War and the purge/counter-purge of Marcus and Sulla. This makes it a bit easier to understand why the murderers of Caesar, who was after all, largely guilty of what he was accused of, had no traction. The same group of people had spent most of a century murdering their political opponents crying tyranny pretty much regardless. Murdering political opponents who had, by their policy inclinations, all been loved by the great mass of people, no less. Caesar was no exception. You could pretty much call the fable The Senate Who Cried Tyrant, by that point.
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Jun 1, 2012 18:38
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Grand Fromage posted:
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Jun 1, 2012 18:40
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:I thought the legion commanders were always senators and the non-legion senators were also governors of the Senatorial Provinces to keep them extravagantly wealthy. Pfirti86 posted:Solid writeup. Were all patricians expected to serve in the military too, or was it possible to go aedileship=>praetor=>consol with no command? And if aediles had to spend their own personal fortunes to maintain their office, does that mean taxes only went to the Senate? How exactly was the Roman tax system set up? With that said, the Romans had an intricate system of military decorations and the electorate had a deep reverence for it. So yes, if you went off to war as a teenager and managed to score a corona muralis or something, you might skip aedileship and move straight on to quaestor (the office between aedile & praetor). Keep in mind that deliberately trying to win high-end decorations in the Roman army was like playing Russian roulette with 4 chambers loaded, so this was not a Good Plan unless you were suicidal. Taxes changed radically over time but generally went direct into the coffers of the SPQR, less a little here or there to whomever managed to get their mitts on it. Most foreign tax collections were handled by private contractors called publicani. The sale of publicani contracts was a governor's perogative so you get the idea. Pfirti86 posted:One thing that fascinated me about the HBO series Rome was how acceptable criminal gangs (and gangs/mobs in general) were to the political establishment (like when Mark Antony pretty much commands Lucius Vorenus to take command of the gangsters on the Aventine Hill). It was like that was a legit job. How close was that to history?
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Jun 1, 2012 19:05
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physeter posted:With that said, the Romans had an intricate system of military decorations and the electorate had a deep reverence for it. So yes, if you went off to war as a teenager and managed to score a corona muralis or something, you might skip aedileship and move straight on to quaestor (the office between aedile & praetor). Keep in mind that deliberately trying to win high-end decorations in the Roman army was like playing Russian roulette with 4 chambers loaded, so this was not a Good Plan unless you were suicidal. When you're saying trying to get high end decorations was most likely suicide, was this because you'd be smacked down for being an ambitious little poo poo risking lives for no reason, probably be killed due to the dangerous acts necessary to get them, or both?
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Jun 1, 2012 19:15
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Benagain posted:When you're saying trying to get high end decorations was most likely suicide, was this because you'd be smacked down for being an ambitious little poo poo risking lives for no reason, probably be killed due to the dangerous acts necessary to get them, or both? The grass crown was the holiest of holies, I think it had less than ten genuine receipients in its entire history, and involved the actual general himself, or field commander who took over, saving an entire legion from certain destruction through personal heroism. Virtually impossible to win deliberately. Spolia optima was so rare it wasn't even included in the "crowns" system because it verifiably happened only once. To win that, you as the commander had to personally track down the general on the other side and kill him in single combat. The rest were minor medals that were just like "oh you killed 5 guys so here's your trinket" and not likely to impress anyone. physeter fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Jun 1, 2012 |
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Jun 1, 2012 19:37
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How much did the Romans know about the Far East, India, etc., basically the lands they were kind of near but didn't conquer? I hear interesting things about the Silk Road but how often did Romans really come into contact with the Chinese?
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Jun 1, 2012 21:02
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Could someone please write a post about the publicani? From what I can recall they were basically privatized tax collectors - the state held auctions, and whoever promised to deliver the most taxes from province X got the contract. Any surplus taxes they managed to collect, they could keep (thus creating great incentive to bleed the taxpayers dry). If someone could elaborate a bit on how the system worked in practice, that'd be great.
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Jun 1, 2012 21:05
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physeter posted:This is entirely true. The best guideline I can offer to understanding Roman cognomens like "Caesar" and "Magnus" is to watch the scene from Goodfellas where they pan through the club and name all the gangsters. Roman noble names were literally their equivalent of "Jimmy Two Times" and "Joey Bag o Donuts". Caesar means "hairy" and they were all pre-maturely bald. Pompey Magnus (meaning "The Great") had that name because when he was an obnoxious 16 year old general, Sulla would see him coming and mutter "oh look here comes Pompey Magnus". Cool-sounding names typically translate into something like cross-eyed, clubfooted, big nosed, etc etc. Oh God... please give me more gangster name translations of ancient Romans
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Jun 1, 2012 22:14
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Well there were cognomens and agnomens. They sort of blended together over time. Cognomens were the original "descriptor" 3rd names given to help distinguish individuals in a big gens since Romans only had about twenty first names they used. So Publius Scipio Nasica translates to Big-nosed Publius of the Scipio gens. Cross-eyed people got "Strabo" as a cognomen. So Pompey Magnus' dad was Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, literally Cross-eyed Gnaeus Pompey. His dad was a particularly vicious general and after a brutal sack he got the agnomen, Carnifex. So then he was Cross-eyed Pompey the Butcher. Here are a few more, many were derogatory and/or ironic and pretty funny. Crassus, the "Fatty" Nasica, "Big Nose" Bestia, "Beast" or "the Animal" Strabo, "Cross-eyed" Ahenobarbus, "Red Head" or more literally, "Fire Hair" Ahala, "Armpit" Bibulus, the "Drunk" Mus, "Mouse" or "Rat" Dolabella, "Hatchet" Scaurus, "Lame" Varro, "Big Head" Flaccus, "Elephant Ears" It makes Latin class go faster when you realize that the two consuls you're reading about, leaders of the most powerful nation in Antiquity, were legally named Marcus the Animal and Elephant Ears Sextus, or whatever.
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Jun 1, 2012 23:16
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TEBOW 3 16 posted:How much did the Romans know about the Far East, India, etc., basically the lands they were kind of near but didn't conquer? I wrote up a big thing on this in the other thread, but you really have a lot of interest in this subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Roman_relations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Roman_trade Basically, China and Rome were vaguely aware of each other and would send a few embassies back and forth. Most silk came from China and quite a bit of Roman gold went to China, but it all passed between middlemen on the Silk Road so there wasn't much direct interaction. Romans were much more in touch with the many states that made up India (especially once they figured the monsoons out), and had trading posts all over the Indian cost for many years - even after the fall of the Western Empire.
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Jun 1, 2012 23:34
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physeter posted:It makes Latin class go faster when you realize that the two consuls you're reading about, leaders of the most powerful nation in Antiquity, were legally named Marcus the Animal and Elephant Ears Sextus, or whatever. And let's not forget that Cicero, legendary foremost orator of Rome, was actually Mr Chickpea.
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Jun 1, 2012 23:43
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Comrade Koba posted:Could someone please write a post about the publicani? Can't elaborate about the Romans in particular, but tax farming along these lines was a common thing right up until the modern era - it was one of the causes of the French revolution for instance. It's basically an early form of public/private partnership or outsourcing.
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Jun 1, 2012 23:45
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feedmegin posted:And let's not forget that Cicero, legendary foremost orator of Rome, was actually Mr Chickpea. Man, everyone always mentions that Caligula meant 'Little Boots' as a nickname from when he was a child in the legionary camps, but I had no idea nicknaming was so universal.
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Jun 1, 2012 23:51
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It is important to remember that many of the cognomina (third names) were hereditary. There were Caesars before THE Caesar, and there were Ciceros before THE Cicero. They started coming in in the late 3rd century mostly and carried over. Marcus Porcius born 334BC got different ones (Priscus, Censorius), but Cato ("pup" because he was a grouchy guy who barked at others) is the one that stuck. His descendants kept the cognomen on, thus his like double-great (can't be buggered to look it up) grandson is known as Cato the Younger. At a certain point they started adding agnomina (not an ancient term) as well, usually for honorary purposes: Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, the victor at Zama in 202BC is one, and his great nephew by adoption was Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus (because he was born to an Aemilius family) Africanus (victor at Carthage in 146BC) Numantinus (victor at Numantia 133BC). Those ones weren't usually hereditary. Mostly in the sources people just refer to them as "Publius Cornelius" or "Marcus Porcius" or "Marcus Tullius" and you're left to deal with it wooo. In the Imperial period the naming system goes totes nuts, especially for emperors. If you have JSTOR access, this is a pretty neat article: What's in a Name? A Survey of Roman Onomastic Practice from c. 700 B.C. to A.D. 700 Benet Salway The Journal of Roman Studies , Vol. 84, (1994), pp. 124-145 Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/300873
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Jun 2, 2012 00:05
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Pfirti86 posted:I wrote up a big thing on this in the other thread, but you really have a lot of interest in this subject: This is really fascinating stuff, thanks!
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Jun 2, 2012 00:30
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What was Switzerland/the Alps like in Roman times? Were they really sparsely inhabited? How much do we know about pre-republic Rome? Farecoal fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Jun 2, 2012 |
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Jun 2, 2012 02:57
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Farecoal posted:What was Switzerland/the Alps like in Roman times? Were they really sparsely inhabited? They were the territory of various tribes of Gallic peoples, with the Helvetii being the most famous as they were the ones Caesar used to start his Gallic wars. We only know what the legends and archaeological digs tell us about pre-republican Rome. Northern to mid Italy from like 1000-600BC consisted of the Etruscans in the north and Latins in the middle. (I'm generalizing of course there are other peoples too) Rome was founded by Latins but there was massive amount of Etruscan influence, and it is theorized that the Kings of Rome were of Etruscan origin. If you want the legends, just search google for the seven kings of Rome (in reality there were almost certainly way more then 7). The reason we have so little information is because of the Gallic sack of Rome in 387BC, all the records were burned/lost and we only have the legends Romans told their children to fill in the gaps now. There is some awesome stuff in there and it probably generally tells the real story, but no, the dudes who sacked Rome were not miraculously wiped out as they left by the Roman reinforcements arriving just in time.
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Jun 2, 2012 04:07
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TEBOW 3 16 posted:How much did the Romans know about the Far East, India, etc., basically the lands they were kind of near but didn't conquer? Trade between Rome and China was constant. Silk was the main good the Romans bought, and they bought a poo poo ton of it. They exported glass to the east, but mostly they just sent a whole lot of gold and silver to pay for the silk. It was considered a serious economic problem by some, not to mention the moral issue with wearing transparent cloth. Gasp. The Chinese sent at least one person west who never actually got to Rome, the Parthians lied to him and he turned around somewhere near Mesopotamia. He leaves a description of Rome from second-hand sources. Romans first make it to China (as far as we know) in 166, an embassy sent by Antoninus Pius or Marcus Aurelius. There's no record in the west but the Chinese wrote it down. Several other embassies go to China, nothing much comes of any of them but the two were quite aware of each other, and keep in semi-regular contact until the 1300s. Trade reduces a lot when Justinian manages to get silkworms out of China and sets up home grown Roman silk production. I should write a post about that later because it's awesome. There was a whole lot more contact in India. There are a couple of Roman trade outposts on the west coast, and one that appears to have been permanently manned and could be called a Roman city. It's on the Roman world road map and labeled with a temple of Augustus, which implies a lot more of a settlement than just a trade outpost. We're not entirely sure where it was but it may be near the town of Pattanam, there's been some excavation there that's found a whole lot of Roman stuff. It's still in the early stages. There's also some contact the other direction, we don't know exactly how much. There's this thing.  That's a votive statute of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi that was found in Pompeii. Feel free to speculate how it got there, nobody knows. Some Roman glassware excavated in Gyeongju, South Korea:  
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Jun 2, 2012 05:06
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WoodrowSkillson posted:They were the territory of various tribes of Gallic peoples, with the Helvetii being the most famous as they were the ones Caesar used to start his Gallic wars. I thought the Etruscans inhabited the lower part of the "boot" of mainland Italy? If they didn't, who did? Grand: How is it determined that the glassware came from Roman? I assume the way they were made / look?
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Jun 2, 2012 07:15
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Yeah, the glass in particular is a very typical piece of Roman work, those pop up all over. You can also test the material, and Romans were the only ones making glass like that at the time. The lower area of Italy was inhabited by Greeks. I'm not sure who they displaced. Etruscans were in Tuscany, which is where the name comes from (like Lazio -> Latium -> Latins). Wikipedia's map, which looks right to me:  Probably a large part of why Romans hated kings so much was that the kings of Rome were Etruscans who had taken Rome over and ruled them as an elite of outsiders. Something like the Manchus in China. Rome eventually struck back, kicked them out then conquered the Etruscans, which culturally becomes their distaste for monarchy. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Jun 2, 2012 |
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Jun 2, 2012 07:25
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What's you're take on I, Claudius (in particular the BBC TV series since that's the only version I know about)? I know Claudius's characterization is fictionalized for the story, but what about the portrayals of the other emperors, the plots and schemes, and the general flow of events? How accurate is it?
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Jun 2, 2012 13:48
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WoodrowSkillson posted:The reason we have so little information is because of the Gallic sack of Rome in 387BC, all the records were burned/lost and we only have the legends Romans told their children to fill in the gaps now. There is some awesome stuff in there and it probably generally tells the real story, but no, the dudes who sacked Rome were not miraculously wiped out as they left by the Roman reinforcements arriving just in time. This is what Romans say, but there is no archaeological evidence for a burning of Rome. An awful lot of early Roman 'history' comes from sources from the late 3rd/early 2nd centuries B.C., hundreds of years after the kings and early republican events supposedly even happened, and oddly histories got MORE detailed as they got later... There's kind of a debate about how much we can believe, though. For a less skeptical side, you can look at Tim Cornell's "The Beginnings of Rome" and for the more skeptical side, T. P. Wiseman's "Unwritten Rome." I lean more towards the Wiseman end of things, though Cornell is pretty solid generally too. The fact is that the Romans of the middle and late republic probably didn't have much in the way of sources for early Rome, and a lot of their historical events were reconfigured by theatrical performance (probably) and general myth. There were no written histories at Rome till the end of the 200's, whereas in Greece Herodotus wrote in the late 4th century, mere decades after the Persian wars, and Thucydides probably wrote his history of the Peloponnesian Wars concurrently with the events thereof. There are some written sources here and there (a treaty with Carthage allegedly from 509 BC, which Polybius [mid 100's BC] says was in a Latin so old it was difficult to understand even by scholars), but not much. In addition, a lot of important Roman events match up tidily with important Greek events, like the foundation of Athenian democracy by Cleisthenes around the same time as the foundation of the Roman republic, both after periods of tyranny. The Gallic Sack is a notorious example because there isn't really much evidence for it, and it may have been constructed (not necessarily deliberately or manipulatively-- just as an explanation for a lack of records) on the basis of the Persian sack of Athens in the 480's. It can be pretty problematic to listen to the Romans of the first centuries BC & AD for information about the Romans of the eighth through fourth centuries BC. Grand Fromage posted:Probably a large part of why Romans hated kings so much was that the kings of Rome were Etruscans who had taken Rome over and ruled them as an elite of outsiders. Something like the Manchus in China. Rome eventually struck back, kicked them out then conquered the Etruscans, which culturally becomes their distaste for monarchy. The Etruscan kings are a memory of cultural and mercantile relationships between Latins and their neighbors, but their specifics should really not be counted on. I mean, the whole Tarquinius Superbus (expelled 509BC) returning to fight with Italian troops to get his throne back maps onto Hippias' return with Persian troops after his 510BC explusion from Athens. The Greek one is probably historical, the Roman one... less so. Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:I thought the Etruscans inhabited the lower part of the "boot" of mainland Italy? If they didn't, who did? Here's a decent map. The lines weren't probably so clear, though, since there would be a lot of mixing and movement. The southern part of Italy was very much mixed between Oscans and Greeks, often in the same cities (Oscan-speaking people came in and conquered a lot of Greek colonies like Poseidonia [Paestum] and Cumae, and Greek cities on the coasts were interspersed with Italian ones.) CIGNX posted:What's you're take on I, Claudius (in particular the BBC TV series since that's the only version I know about)? I know Claudius's characterization is fictionalized for the story, but what about the portrayals of the other emperors, the plots and schemes, and the general flow of events? How accurate is it? A lot of the stories come from Suetonius, who wrote the lives of the first twelve emperors and lived during the period of the 13th-15th ones more or less. He used a lot of hearsay and gossip, although it seems that for the first two or three Julio-Claudian emperors he probably had access to the imperial archives since he has quotations from Augustus' letters. I wouldn't take the plots and schemes and incest and poisoning and pedophilia at face value, but they were probably based on reports at the time. Suetonius' accounts are much more nuanced than you see in I, Claudius or the Caligula film, too. The basic outline of who died when and who was exiled when is probably about right, and they surely weren't a happy dynasty, but they probably weren't quite as nuts as they are portrayed. eta: That glass and stuff and the site in India are cool as hell. I didn't know anything about those 
Eggplant Wizard fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Jun 2, 2012 |
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Jun 2, 2012 14:47
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Eggplant, I'm definitely interested in those books you posted. My understanding has always been that the Romans always wrote tons of stuff down, and that their account of 387 was more or less kinda what happened. I'm going to look into getting those books, but before then, I have to admit I'm a bit skeptical of calling the entire sack of Rome by Brennus a legend created in the mold of Greek history. It seems odd for a literate society who wrote down detailed accounts of the first punic war to have forgotten and invented an event that occurred only 100 years before.
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Jun 3, 2012 05:57
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What, if anything, do we know about roman music?
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Jun 3, 2012 12:14
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MrBling posted:Was the bureaucracy in Rome really as bad as this would want you to believe? Lots of excellent posting, guys! This is the kind of thread people will be accessing through the archive in the future. Is there any historical truth to the stubborn Gaulish village? With Pax Romana was there must independence/resistance within the conquered territories?
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Jun 3, 2012 13:05
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Eggplant, I'm definitely interested in those books you posted. My understanding has always been that the Romans always wrote tons of stuff down, and that their account of 387 was more or less kinda what happened. I'm going to look into getting those books, but before then, I have to admit I'm a bit skeptical of calling the entire sack of Rome by Brennus a legend created in the mold of Greek history. It seems odd for a literate society who wrote down detailed accounts of the first punic war to have forgotten and invented an event that occurred only 100 years before. It's not so much that it's necessarily a complete fabrication, but trouble with Gauls was more likely in earlier centuries. Also, again, I want to stress that no one thinks that second century BC writers sat down and thought "Okay, gonna make up some poo poo." They had limited material to work with though, and most of the traditions would have been passed down orally and perhaps theatrically (if you buy Wiseman's stuff), and would have been kind of story-fied. They weren't a literate society, at least not in the terms we would consider. This is a huge and very common (even within the field of Classics) misconception about the ancient world. Most elite men and maybe some merchants and definitely specialized slaves could read and write, yes, but that's an eensy weensy portion of the overall population of the ancient world. The standard work on this is Ancient Literacy by Harris, and although his estimates are very conservative, people broadly agree with him. A lot of elites had slaves who would read to them, also, so I wouldn't be surprised if earlier on (say 3rd c. BC and earlier) the literacy rate amongst elites was lower than later, too. A lot of people may have been functionally literate in that they could deal with a list of prices and products or could sign their name, but not much else. We're not talking mass literacy and widespread ability to read laws and records. It's also tricky to know what records they even had. Many believe that the Gallic sack was magnified partly to explain the lack of early records. They definitely liked to display laws and treaties on bronze, and they did do funerary inscriptions. Aristocratic families had records going back several generations, probably, but only of the events their ancestors were involved in (and those, too, could be magnified for political clout). There's the whole thing about the Annales Maximi- the Pontifex Maximus had a white board outside the Regia on which important events of the year were noted: eclipses, omens, anomalies, miracles, and perhaps battles, but these weren't collected together till the late second century, and it's really hard to say what form they could have been stored in (There's an absolutely enormous article by Gregory Bucher on the subject, if you are interested in Roman record-keeping and also hate yourself a little). The first list of early consuls was only put up in the early second century BC by Fulvius Nobilior, and the one Augustus put up that goes back to Romulus is kind of shady. Finally, "only 100 years before." Yes, but non-elites only lived into their 30's and 40's, and many elites died young as well. I don't know when our earliest account of the Gallic Sack is, but as far as I know it's not in Fabius Pictor (earliest historian of Rome, c. 200BC) or Cato (earliest Latin history of Rome, 160's+ BC). We don't have a whole lot of the early guys so we might just be missing that part, though. (eta: I don't know if it's in Ennius [204BC comes to Rome, dies 160's, wrote Annales somewhere in there], but if it was a tradition by that time it probably would have been.). In any case, 387 BC is more like 187 years before Fabius was writing, not 100, and when you don't have a tradition of written history or non-private records, that's a long rear end time to hold onto an accurate memory of events. I think as moderns we tend to overestimate how easy history is because in the past three hundred, four hundred years or so much much much more has been written down and kept than ever was in the ancient world, or in societies that don't have an academic culture. (p.s. I'm not trying to shut anyone down, but I spend a lot of time in the republic so I have a lot of feelings about it.) Eggplant Wizard fucked around with this message at 14:02 on Jun 3, 2012 |
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Jun 3, 2012 14:00
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mediadave posted:What, if anything, do we know about roman music? Lots of drums. I've heard recreated Greek music but I don't know of any Roman offhand, I'll check. Lampsacus posted:Is there any historical truth to the stubborn Gaulish village? With Pax Romana was there must independence/resistance within the conquered territories? For the most part the Romans would leave you alone to live your life as you saw fit. There were even conquered kings who were left in power, but it was all dependent on none of this conflicting with what Rome wanted. Active resistance would end in your village being burned to the ground and everyone in it killed or enslaved, and everybody knew it. There aren't many records of it happening. The various Jewish revolts are the biggest internal resistance problem Rome had. I am of course not counting civil war here. Do you have any articles on literacy you can point me to, Eggplant Wizard? This is literally the first time I've ever heard a suggestion that literacy was not widespread in (urban) Rome and I'm interested, but I don't have access to much in the way of English books where I live. It doesn't jive at all with anything I've read or the evidence I've looked at. I'm not usually looking at early republic though. But this is a good place as any to point out that historians do disagree on things and there is always debate. I am presenting my views and what I know. For something like literacy, there is no way to truly verify it so it's always going to be up for debate. Personally, I'd need to see some seriously persuasive material to make me think literacy was rare in urban Roman society. If we're talking everybody in the empire then yeah, small percentage, especially relative to modern literacy. Most people were still farmers out in the sticks who would've had little use for it. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 14:35 on Jun 3, 2012 |
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Jun 3, 2012 14:30
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Grand Fromage posted:Do you have any articles on literacy you can point me to, Eggplant Wizard? This is literally the first time I've ever heard a suggestion that literacy was not widespread in (urban) Rome and I'm interested, but I don't have access to much in the way of English books where I live. It doesn't jive at all with anything I've read or the evidence I've looked at. I'm not usually looking at early republic though. Harris' book represented an about-face in scholarly opinion. It's relatively new (1989: "new" in Classics scholarship) so it's not surprising that it hasn't percolated much beyond those who really care about literacy. For non-book things, there's Harris' much more vague and general article version, which I can email to you if you want: Harris, W. V. “Graeco-Roman Literacy and Comparative Method.” The History Teacher 24.1 (1990): 93-98. And a proper citation for the book. There are reviews on JSTOR and I could email you some, too.: Harris, W. V. Ancient Literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. Here are some other things, all print unfortunately. Everyone is responding to Harris in the 1990's so it helps to know what he's on about : Humphrey, J. H., ed. Literacy in the Roman World. Ann Arbor: Journal of Roman Archaeology: Supplementary Series 3, 1991. Bowman, Alan K., and Greg Woolf, eds. Literacy and power in the ancient world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Johnson, W. A., and H. Parker, eds. Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. I think Harris is generally accepted among people who care about literacy, and among republican historians at least. I don't know about the imperial period folks so much. Philologists obviously would rather have mass literacy and haven't embraced it too much, but I think there's a growing trend to look at the performance of literature as opposed to individual consumption by reading. Harris' stuff spans from old Greece into the imperial period of Rome for sure, even though I only care about the republic parts. The urban population: Yes, you'd have a higher rate of literacy there than in the sticks. We're still talking the upper classes mainly, though, the people who need writing to get along in trade or politics. Urban populations are mostly not people who need to read or write. I can look at Harris on Monday (it's in my office) if you want me to get more specifics. I could also scan any of the articles in the books mentioned again (I think I might have had to give one of them back but I don't know which) if you see one in the TOC that looks interesting. Grand Fromage posted:Lots of drums. I've heard recreated Greek music but I don't know of any Roman offhand, I'll check. Yeah, and pipes/flutes. Probably some stringed instruments too. Lots of work is being done on Greek music but equally I do not know any on Roman off the top of my head.
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Jun 3, 2012 15:21
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Eggplant Wizard posted:I can look at Harris on Monday (it's in my office) if you want me to get more specifics. I could also scan any of the articles in the books mentioned again (I think I might have had to give one of them back but I don't know which) if you see one in the TOC that looks interesting. Do email that to me, grandfromage at gmail. I'd specifically like to know how he explains the widespread use of written advertisements on walls, the graffiti left in lower-class areas, and the Vindolanda tablets. If there's any special area where he addresses those. Public libraries too, though that I don't find as big an issue. It sucks not having a library around. 
Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Jun 3, 2012 |
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Jun 3, 2012 15:26
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