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How safe would a special to-preserve text be if you gave it to the Eastern Emperor?
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Jul 12, 2012 17:49
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Baron Porkface posted:How safe would a special to-preserve text be if you gave it to the Eastern Emperor? Ultimately, not very.
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Jul 12, 2012 19:08
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Grand Prize Winner posted:
The Romans famously faced Hannibal's elephants during the Second Punic War, although there's a lot of dispute as to how many he actually managed to get over the Alps, if any at all, and they don't seem to have lasted too long in his army in Italy. He certainly deployed them at the last battle at Zama, where Scipio dealt with them by having his men open lanes in their ranks through which the elephants could charge without causing any damage. They were then subject to a hail of spears and missiles from all sides by the Romans until they panicked and fled back to Hannibal's line, causing havoc as they trampled through it.
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Jul 12, 2012 19:57
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Did Rome use elephants in their army (auxiliaries maybe)after the second punic war?
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Jul 12, 2012 20:13
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General Panic posted:The Romans famously faced Hannibal's elephants during the Second Punic War, although there's a lot of dispute as to how many he actually managed to get over the Alps, if any at all, and they don't seem to have lasted too long in his army in Italy. Elephants were quite a shock to the Romans when they fought Pyrrhus at the Battle of Heraclea in 280 BC Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Did Rome use elephants in their army (auxiliaries maybe)after the second punic war? Flamininus at least had elephants in his army during the Second Macedonian War
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Jul 12, 2012 21:31
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Did Rome use elephants in their army (auxiliaries maybe)after the second punic war? I just got done reading "Claudius, the God" by Robert Graves and Claudius uses Indian elephants in Britain. The "I, Claudius" books are mostly from Tacitus and Suetonius.
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Jul 12, 2012 22:51
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Did Rome use elephants in their army (auxiliaries maybe)after the second punic war? Not very often but they did now and then. They were terrifying, after all--that was why people used them, and Romans had access. The Romans really liked elephants, they're one of the few animals we have that for. There's a famous bit of writing about the last time elephants were hunted in the arena. I can't find it and am tired of looking, but basically elephants had been a hunting object in the arena like most animals. But at one show it was just a slaughter, and the elephants were screaming in what's described as a very human-like way, and the crowd totally turned on them and begged for it to be stopped. There was a sense of disgust about killing them from then on. After that elephants continued performing in the arena, but were never harmed. Circus trick kind of stuff like today.
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Jul 13, 2012 03:06
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Elephants screaming in a human-like way was enough to turn the crowd off, but they were perfectly fine with the other gladiatorial shows? I'm pretty sure there was plenty more screaming during those. Romans have some very strange sympathies. In any case, what sort of material do we have on the last Roman emperor? Either Julius Nepos or Romulus Augustulus, depending on which one counts as the last emperor in the west. There's very little about them on Wikipedia, so I'm guessing that few writings survived from the last years of the empire. They were clearly mentioned somewhere if we're aware of them, so what sort of texts survived about them? Speaking of the collapse itself, did the Romans ever feel some sort of awareness about the declining state of their empire, or civilization in the west? Did they notice a trend at any point? Obviously in the modern era we can look back at the rise and fall of civilizations, but I'd like to think that towards the very end of the empire, at least someone had to grow up hearing about the old glory of Rome and ending up wondering where things went wrong.
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Jul 13, 2012 03:24
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karl fungus posted:Elephants screaming in a human-like way was enough to turn the crowd off, but they were perfectly fine with the other gladiatorial shows? I'm pretty sure there was plenty more screaming during those. Romans have some very strange sympathies. It's not that strange. Think of the reaction people have to movie or TV show with fifty guys getting killed versus a dog dying. I mean, I agree with you that it's a bizarre set of priorities but people still act that way.
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Jul 13, 2012 03:26
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St Augustine was writing about the decline of Rome in 410 in the City of God.
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Jul 13, 2012 03:35
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euphronius posted:St Augustine was writing about the decline of Rome in 410 in the City of God. Yeah, though this was triggered by the sack of Rome. People were talking about the decline from the time of Commodus. Those were mostly upper-level types, but I think even the common Roman would've been aware of it by the time we're in the middle of the Crisis of the Third Century. Keep in mind that during the third century, the Roman Empire essentially collapsed. The more you read about it, the more surprising it is that we aren't talking about 235 as the fall of the Roman Empire--a few superb leaders at the end were able to reassemble the broken state and get it to live another thousand years. There's definitely a feeling of lost greatness in the west as we get into late antiquity, the empire starts being overrun by new Germanic leaders and we transition into the divided medieval world. Even though life for the average Roman probably didn't change that much, they were definitely aware that the empire in the west was dying.
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Jul 13, 2012 04:07
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You know, I've always been curious about Pompeii, especially the reactions from the aftermath. Seeing on how it was sudden and involved a phenomenon that typically doesn't happen in that part of the world, what exactly did the Romans think and react to all that?
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Jul 13, 2012 05:53
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Usual curse of the gods stuff. Italy is a volcanic and seismically active region, the Romans weren't unfamiliar with it, it just hadn't been a giant eruption that destroyed a bunch of major cities before. Titus began a rebuilding effort and visited the site of the disaster, and the rebuilding effort continued under Domitian. There's a lot of major construction in the nearby unaffected communities (like Cumae) directly after 79, which Domitian is responsible for and is assumed to be rebuilding/resettlement efforts for the survivors. I believe there were some major sacrifices scheduled afterwards to try to appease whoever had decided to smite Rome that way.
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Jul 13, 2012 06:08
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Logic Probed posted:You know, I've always been curious about Pompeii, especially the reactions from the aftermath. Seeing on how it was sudden and involved a phenomenon that typically doesn't happen in that part of the world, what exactly did the Romans think and react to all that? That region actually is geologically active. Vesuvius and Etna and many other volcanoes in Italy have been active for many 1000s of years. It's still a good question - the eruption would have been the biggest in their experience, I imagine?
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Jul 13, 2012 06:11
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Grand Fromage posted:It's not that strange. Think of the reaction people have to movie or TV show with fifty guys getting killed versus a dog dying. I mean, I agree with you that it's a bizarre set of priorities but people still act that way. Think of going to a soccer game with a full audience and seeing an injured player scream in agony. It's going to drown in the shouts of thousands of agitated spectators. An elephant might actually be heard.
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Jul 13, 2012 06:17
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Nenonen posted:Think of going to a soccer game with a full audience and seeing an injured player scream in agony. It's going to drown in the shouts of thousands of agitated spectators. An elephant might actually be heard. That too, these arenas were every bit as big as a modern stadium. Also, remember that gladiatorial matches did not usually end in death. Ideally, the only people dying in an arena would be prisoners who were being executed. The crowd usually didn't have much sympathy for that (though they often did when Christians were executed, part of the reason the religion spread).
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Jul 13, 2012 07:02
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How seriously did Romans take their religion? From what I remember from my world civ class the Roman religion was more of a cultural/festive thing that wasn't taken nearly as seriously as people take their religions today. Like people would pay homage to the gods but it was more of a background thing to their daily lives and not a central focus like a lot of today's major religions seem to be. But I could be grossly mistaken as I took that class three or four years ago now and Rome was only part of the studies.
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Jul 13, 2012 07:28
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Vigilance posted:How seriously did Romans take their religion? From what I remember from my world civ class the Roman religion was more of a cultural/festive thing that wasn't taken nearly as seriously as people take their religions today. Like people would pay homage to the gods but it was more of a background thing to their daily lives and not a central focus like a lot of today's major religions seem to be. I mean it's all relative, but people had the same variety of beliefs as they do today. Some people don't care at all, some people make a big deal out of it, most people just show up. The idea that pagan gods were not very important is just a bunch of self-serving tripe in an attempt to make our current monotheistic religions look good.
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Jul 13, 2012 07:34
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Vigilance posted:How seriously did Romans take their religion? From what I remember from my world civ class the Roman religion was more of a cultural/festive thing that wasn't taken nearly as seriously as people take their religions today. Like people would pay homage to the gods but it was more of a background thing to their daily lives and not a central focus like a lot of today's major religions seem to be. It really depends on the person, the religion, and the time period. Like Kaal said, you had the same range of commitment as today - somebody like Cato the Younger was much more serious about it than your average Roman. Moreover, Roman religion was not one religion in the modern sense. The state cults and household gods and that sort of thing were pretty varied, and that (the typical Roman paganism we think of today) was not even close to the only religion available; there was also a lot of mixing and matching like in, say, Japan. People who joined mystery religions like Mithraism, early Christianity, the Dionysian Mysteries, etc. were usually a lot more dedicated. The Crisis of the Third Century saw a massive rise in people serious about religion and there was a lot of sacrificing in temples by the state cult followers, mystery religion people did whatever it is that they did, and others flocked to Christianity in droves. Some did more than one or all of these things. My favorite story about the revolving door of emperors during that period has to be when the Senate sacrificed frantically to try to keep the current Emperor, Maximinus Thrax, from ever entering Rome. He never did. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 08:45 on Jul 13, 2012 |
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Jul 13, 2012 08:42
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Jazerus posted:My favorite story about the revolving door of emperors during that period has to be when the Senate sacrificed frantically to try to keep the current Emperor, Maximinus Thrax, from ever entering Rome. He never did. He was Emperor in the second century, Rome was still the capitol, right?
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Jul 13, 2012 11:02
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Maximinus Thrax was a plebian from the rear end-end of the Empire whose only real qualification for the job is that he had a legion and that legion murdered the previous Emperor. The Senate basically thought he was gutter trash and decided pretty much from the outset that they were going to gently caress him over at the first opportunity. Maximinus spent most of his career on campaign, since trouble was breaking out everywhere. A couple years after Maximinus' ascension, there was a serious revolt in Africa, where landowners proclaimed the provincial governor and his son to be Emperor. The Senate thought this was just great, and decided to switch their allegiance from Maximinus to the African dudes. Maximinus thought this was bullshit and decided to march on Rome to settle the whole thing. Unfortunately for the Senate, the governor of Numidia (also in Africa; more or less Algeria/Morocco today) loving hated the governor of Africa, and he was the only guy in the area who had legions. On his own initiative, he marched on Africa and killed the "emperor" and his son. The Senate, having clearly told Maximinus to gently caress off in favor of these other guys, were now stuck. They proclaimed some of their own to be Emperor, but nobody really liked the solution. The story has a very Roman ending, though: on the way back to Rome some of Maximinus' troops decided they didn't like him anymore and murdered him.
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Jul 13, 2012 12:48
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Did eastern Rome retain the senate? Histories I've read on Byzanthium stay silent on such a thing, but I don't know how the state was kept together without the nobility's support - even with the church behind the Emperor.
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Jul 13, 2012 13:02
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Nenonen posted:Did eastern Rome retain the senate? Histories I've read on Byzanthium stay silent on such a thing, but I don't know how the state was kept together without the nobility's support - even with the church behind the Emperor. Yes, rich assholes are a constant part of history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Senate
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Jul 13, 2012 14:34
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Base Emitter posted:That region actually is geologically active. Vesuvius and Etna and many other volcanoes in Italy have been active for many 1000s of years. Vesuvius appears not to have erupted for nearly 300 years by 79 AD. There were several writers during that period who referred to the mountain as having erupted in the past, but it's not clear how far the local people would have been aware of the past activity, still less appreciated it potentially being a risk for the future. They were used to earthquakes of various sizes, but they didn't have the scientific knowledge that we now do to link those to volcanic activity. For the average person in the street, all these phenomena were the doings of the gods, and that idea must have made the eruption even more terrifying.
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Jul 13, 2012 19:15
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Spiderfist Island posted:My Early Middle Ages professor structured his class as a critique of Gibbon's thesis (Rome fell because of Christian moral degradation and barbarism) and later Henri Pirenne's* (Islam's domination of the Mediterranean and trade therein forced western civilization's "center" to move north and develop into autarkic Historiography is the study of history. I took three courses in my undergrad just on that topic. Gibbon's written/secondhand sources are insanely important. They pretty much set the ton for modern historical study. Reading something before his influence and after it is night and day. I'm not a fan of Pirenee, but that's me. Mostly because he discounts Italy/Byzantium and Spain too much.
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Jul 13, 2012 19:46
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Fornadan posted:Elephants were quite a shock to the Romans when they fought Pyrrhus at the Battle of Heraclea in 280 BC Didn't Hannibal had one of his elephants opening it's mouth over a roman general's head and was impressed when he didn't poo poo his pants?
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Jul 13, 2012 20:32
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Yo GF - So I learned this in my 6th grade world history class and also heard it again when I visited the collosseum: the notion that they would flood the arena with water and stage small scale naval battless in it. Fact or fiction? If it's true, what sources do we have? Also - fact or fiction, christians were killed in the collosseum?
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Jul 13, 2012 22:28
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Tao Jones posted:Maximinus Thrax was a plebian from the rear end-end of the Empire whose only real qualification for the job is that he had a legion and that legion murdered the previous Emperor. The Senate basically thought he was gutter trash and decided pretty much from the outset that they were going to gently caress him over at the first opportunity. Maximinus spent most of his career on campaign, since trouble was breaking out everywhere. Thanks.  That era was such a clusterfuck.
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Jul 13, 2012 22:37
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Vigilance posted:How seriously did Romans take their religion? From what I remember from my world civ class the Roman religion was more of a cultural/festive thing that wasn't taken nearly as seriously as people take their religions today. Like people would pay homage to the gods but it was more of a background thing to their daily lives and not a central focus like a lot of today's major religions seem to be.
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Jul 14, 2012 00:44
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Had Romans already started adopting Greek names prior to the fall of the West, or was this adopted by the Byzantines after the fall of the Western Empire?
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Jul 14, 2012 02:39
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Where did Hannibal get his elephants from, anyway?
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Jul 14, 2012 02:48
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TildeATH posted:Where did Hannibal get his elephants from, anyway? Extinct species that lived in north africa. Most of them. He had some asian ones too.
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Jul 14, 2012 02:49
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euphronius posted:Extinct species that lived in north africa. So he went to north Africa to stock up on elephants, then went over the alps to get into Italy? Why didn't he just sail?
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Jul 14, 2012 02:50
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Boiled Water posted:So he went to north Africa to stock up on elephants, then went over the alps to get into Italy? His home base was Spain. He marched from Spain to Rome.
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Jul 14, 2012 02:52
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Plus the Romans had naval superiority, so Hannibal had to go over the alps. So did the other Carthaginian general, Habrudsal (whatever the spelling was), who brought reinforcements to Hannibal over the alps years later, but went at a different time, so the crossing was easier. He got overwhelmed by the Romans before he could meet Hannibal in southern Italy, thankfully since if they had met, it would be game over for Rome.
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Jul 14, 2012 03:21
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R. Mute posted:What Kaal and Jazerus said was spot on, but I'd like to add that it's pretty much impossible to say with certainty how serious they took their religion. Roman views on religion tended to be pretty much focussed on the visible. By which I mean that it didn't really matter if you believed in the gods (though atheism is thought to have been pretty much non-existent) or the rituals and offerings you were performing, as long as you made those offerings and participated in those rituals. This is true for the state cults, which were sort of the minimum effort/faith religions unless you were really into them - there was no stigma against being really into them as your primary religion, but the "just showing up" people usually stuck to just the state cults. The mystery religions...well, we don't know much about most of them, but indications are that they were pretty similar to modern religion in a focus on faith and the intangible; that's part of why early Christianity qualifies as one, for example, though that is a bit controversial in and of itself. Ditto for the philosophical religions, which can sort of be likened to Buddhism in that they're not theistic, but contain a lot of metaphysical ideas that transcend reality - Neoplatonism is the classic example.
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Jul 14, 2012 03:34
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GamerL posted:So I learned this in my 6th grade world history class and also heard it again when I visited the collosseum: the notion that they would flood the arena with water and stage small scale naval battless in it. Fact or fiction? If it's true, what sources do we have? Yes, though it was rare. Page 13 has pictures of the flooding system in the arena in Capua. GamerL posted:Also - fact or fiction, christians were killed in the collosseum? It did happen, though not nearly as often as Christian writers would have you believe. They tended to exaggerate the persecutions and focus on them a lot for obvious reasons. I've completely lost track of the missed questions, if you posted one and I didn't answer it, please repost! And mention it's a repost so I will prioritize it.
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Jul 14, 2012 03:36
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Had Romans already started adopting Greek names prior to the fall of the West, or was this adopted by the Byzantines after the fall of the Western Empire? The eastern part of the empire always had Greek as its main language, so when you get to the Byzantine era of Roman history it's probably just noticeable for the fact most of the land left in Roman hands was now only Greek speaking, and those famous enough to make a mark in history would of course be people under Greek influence all their life most likely with Greek names. Justinian in the 6th century was in fact the last emperor who actually spoke Latin, and Heraclius in the early 7th century just decided to drop all pretenses and make Greek the de jure official language of the empire. e: Big Cheese, in regards to where Hannibal got his elephants, do you think it's more or less true that the Romans essentially hunted big game out of existence in northern Africa to supply the arenas and such? If there is some accuracy to that seems like Hannibal would've had more ready access to elephants than we currently expect to see in places like Algeria and Tunisia. Desertification probably helped a bit too. Amused to Death fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Jul 14, 2012 |
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Jul 14, 2012 04:15
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What were the Romans like in regards to sex? For example, what were the sexual mores of Roman civilization? Did they have any methods of birth control? What did they consider attractive qualities in men and women?
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Jul 14, 2012 04:48
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How many titles could a person hold in Roman? Could a Legatus have other duties / jobs? I remember that Governors were occasionally Legatus & Senators as well. Spartacus Question: How would a Legatus being a Praetor work? How did the Patronage system work?
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Jul 14, 2012 04:55
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