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marxmanncc
Jul 13, 2012
What was roman mythology like before greek influence? Or did they always have a polytheist spiritual order that was similar to greece

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Spiderfist Island
Feb 19, 2011

sbaldrick posted:

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.

I didn't mean to discount the importance of Gibbon in how history was studied, I just meant that Gibbon's theses on why Rome collapsed nowadays aren't considered very credible, and are a byproduct of a work being written in the Enlightenment. I guess I was a bit stupid in claiming that Gibbon took his written sources as literal truth. Have there been any major mistakes that later historians found in the Decline?

Again, my Late Antiquity teacher basically did critiques of Pirenne's thesis– he didn't subscribe to him– and pointed out that the "Islamic blockade" never really was in effect: the Papacy had all its records on Nile-grown papyrus until the 10th Century, Charlemagne got a pet elephant from Harun Al–Rashid, and most importantly the growth of Venice and Genoa showed that economic trade and activity still connected Frankish Europe to the rest of the world. He also went into a lot of how Spain and Byzantium figured into things, along with how the Muslims became more Romanized than both Europe and the Mideast would like to admit nowadays.

I'm an Engineer, not a history major, and so being a presumptive amateur who sticks my head where I really shouldn't comes naturally to me. I'm sorry if I'm being an rear end.

Grand Prize Winner
Feb 19, 2007


You're not. Care to spare some words on the Romanization of the Muslims? I seem to remember that the Ottoman sultans carried the title of 'kaysar-i-rum' or something similar until the late 19th century, but what of the rest of it. Were 'Turkish baths' really Roman?

A classics professor I had said that a lot of surviving classical writings come from translations that Muslim scholars made into Arabic, but... what else? Architecture? How much do mosques owe to cathedrals like the Hagia Sophia?

General Panic
Jan 28, 2012
AN ERORIST AGENT

Mister Gopher posted:

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.

It was Hasdrubal (I think).

Hannibal started out in Spain because his family, the Barcas, had basically developed the Carthaginian empire there as almost a family business. Throughout the Second Punic War there was ongoing tension between Hannibal and his relatives and the leadership back in Carthage about the war and how it should be run, to the extent that you wonder how far it was his private war.

The Romans had established naval superiority in the Mediterranean by beating the Carthaginians in the First Punic War. Hannibal did not want a re-run of that.

mediadave
Sep 8, 2011

Grand Fromage posted:

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.

If you know anything about the below I'd be really grateful - though it's a bit esoteric and boring in comparison to lots of ROME facts so if you don't no worries.

mediadave posted:

I volunteered very briefly at the numismatic library of the British Museum. Whilst there I read a couple of interesting articles about Roman tokens that no one knew what they were for - perhaps gaming purposes, perhaps ritual purposes..? Anyway, I've just tried to find reference to these on the internet, and all I can find are mentions of erotic tokens, probably for use in brothels. I'm starting to think that maybe the articles I read were actually talking about the erotic tokens but were just too old fashioned and buttoned up to mention that. Do you know anything about Roman - non monetary - tokens?

Fornadan
Dec 7, 2010

Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:

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?

During the course of Roman history there were of course many changes in the government hierarchy, for simplicity I will stick to the times of Spartacus

There was a law against holding more than one title at the same. However "Governor of X" was not considered a title, but a task. Traditionally it was the senate who decided how the various tasks like governing an area or waging a war to the various consuls and praetors (and their promagistrate equals) Some times a specific appointment was pushed through by way of a plebiscite, this was however a controversial move

A legatus was not an elected magistrate, but a lieutenant who had his power delegated to him by a (pro)consul or praetor. Sometimes the number of legates a magistrate could appoint would be set by law

Nostalgia4Dogges
Jun 18, 2004

Only emojis can express my pure, simple stupidity.

karl fungus posted:

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?


I posted it already but it's fun reading about Silphium




quote:

Silphium (also known as silphion or laser) was a plant that was used in classical antiquity as a rich seasoning and as a medicine.[1] It was the essential item of trade from the ancient North African city of Cyrene, and was so critical to the Cyrenian economy that most of their coins bore a picture of the plant

Many medical uses were ascribed to the plant.It was said that it could be used to treat cough, sore throat, fever, indigestion, aches and pains, warts, and all kinds of maladies.

It has been speculated that the plant may also have functioned as a contraceptive, based partly on Pliny's statement that it could be used "to promote the menstrual discharge"

Some bits say it's not extinct or that it was just over farmed.




Also, I can't find it on google. But I remember I saw it in a GBS thread. It was about a Roman settlement found fairly recently I think in Northern Italy. I think it was under farmland and was right under everyones nose. Like, you could see the walls and structures from a plane window?

Nostalgia4Dogges fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Jul 14, 2012

Fizzil
Aug 24, 2005

There are five fucks at the edge of a cliff...



Grand Prize Winner posted:

You're not. Care to spare some words on the Romanization of the Muslims? I seem to remember that the Ottoman sultans carried the title of 'kaysar-i-rum' or something similar until the late 19th century, but what of the rest of it. Were 'Turkish baths' really Roman?

A classics professor I had said that a lot of surviving classical writings come from translations that Muslim scholars made into Arabic, but... what else? Architecture? How much do mosques owe to cathedrals like the Hagia Sophia?

Its not so much as Muslims were Romanized as much as it was in effect before islam, barring some cultural quirks and the distance greek pottery can be found as far as the UAE [current day] in the arab peninsula. Even during the Islamic conquests the caliph Omar treated Heracleus in a pretty fraternal matter, considering all the war and poo poo that was happening.

I'm not well versed into this though, all i know is the Ummayads movement of their capital to Damascus also meant adopting byzantine methods in administration, also the arab military focused alot on infantry archers which was basically an evolution of the roman legionnaire and was widely used by the Byzantines before moving into a more cavalry centric military with their Themes. Also the Abassids used a salary system that was derived from the byzantine one and probably even improved upon it.

Spiderfist Island
Feb 19, 2011

Grand Prize Winner posted:

You're not. Care to spare some words on the Romanization of the Muslims? I seem to remember that the Ottoman sultans carried the title of 'kaysar-i-rum' or something similar until the late 19th century, but what of the rest of it. Were 'Turkish baths' really Roman?

A classics professor I had said that a lot of surviving classical writings come from translations that Muslim scholars made into Arabic, but... what else? Architecture? How much do mosques owe to cathedrals like the Hagia Sophia?

Well, I'm a little hesitant to overextend my knowledge, but I think I can give at least a good summary of how East Roman culture was absorbed or repurposed by the Caliphates:

Administration: the Caliphate kept much of the same laws and administration that Eastern Rome had in the region, as other people in the thread have said. And when I say, 'Kept,' I really mean kept: one of the earlier Caliphs got rid of religious images by enforcing an old Roman law. Coinage stayed the same: the Roman Denarius became the Arabian Dinar, with the same value. (As an aside, early islamic coins commonly had a bearded figure unsheathing a sword on its obverse that we only can assume was Muhammed.) I don't know that much about how political administration worked in both the Caliphates and Byzantium, but from a distance they looked very similar.

Art and Architecture: Early Islamic art was surprisingly filled with depictions of human forms, and especially strongly influenced by both Arabic paganistic art and Greco-Roman cultural appropriation. The ruins of Qasr Amra in Jordan are some of the best examples we have of the newly established Arabic upper class in ex-Roman territory. Qasr Amra was built after Jordan's conquest, but the building has frescoes of the Zodiac as well as nude women.

In terms of Architecture, the standard design for mosques is pretty similar to that of Eastern churches, so there wasn't that much renovation needed to repurpose the Hagiah Sophia in 1453 (they just covered up the old mosaics, actually, which right now are being restored). Muslim architecture took to greco-roman columns like nothing else, and lots of Roman columns with plant details finalized how the insides of mosques looked. Really, just get a circular orthodox church, break up the space with columns, add Minarets, and you have a mosque. (an architectural history major is probably screaming at me right now.)

Science: Most of the Classical world's knowledge of Math and Science that West Europe knows of today was only kept alive (and added to) by the Byzantine and Islamic world. Aristotle, not only just being preserved, was loving loved by the Islamic world, and was given the title "Teacher–" the west called him "The Philosopher" when it was reintroduced in the High Middle Ages. (Some sects may have regarded him as an earlier prophet or just a holy man but I'm not sure about that.)

In Europe, for whatever reason, of the Seven Liberal Arts (called so because every freeman was expected to know them, but then again the ) the only ones that were kept in common knowledge were the Trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic). The Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astrology) weren't that well known in the west and effectively died out. It wasn't until the 10th Century that the Quadrivium was reintroduced via Islamic Contact in Spain, but it didn't really catch on until much later (Pope Sylvester II was demonized and effectively erased from memory after his death for his constant support for them).

Even then, much of Greek literature and science was just lost over time. Only 3 plays of Sophocles, out of of about 90-odd, have survived. Like with the Greeks and the Western Barbarians, Muslims copied what seemed useful to them and whatever didn't was left on the shelves and rotted away.

As an aside, the whole "dark ages were a time of ignorance" schitck that's pulled is absolute bullshit, but this is too long as it is.

Base Emitter
Apr 1, 2012

?
Speaking of all these lost classics of literature, what are the chances of finding one of these books buried somewhere? Did all of the books we have survive because they were in wide circulation, or are they occasionally rediscovered from time to time?

Morholt
Mar 18, 2006

Contrary to popular belief, tic-tac-toe isn't purely a game of chance.

Christoff posted:

I posted it already but it's fun reading about Silphium


It looks like it might be a relative of hemlock.

Octy
Apr 1, 2010

Base Emitter posted:

Speaking of all these lost classics of literature, what are the chances of finding one of these books buried somewhere? Did all of the books we have survive because they were in wide circulation, or are they occasionally rediscovered from time to time?

I believe it's more a case of the books being in wide circulation (particularly in the medieval period) and copies having been made than being rediscovered from time to time. Then again, I think Fromage mentioned a new library was being excavated at Herculaneum or Pompeii so who knows what might be found there?

Paxicon
Dec 22, 2007
Sycophant, unless you don't want me to be
I'd really be interested in more on the Crisis of the Third Century. We already spoke about Maximinias Thrax and the (Unnamed in the thread) Gordian dynasty - But let's pop up further with the Gallic and Palmyrene empires! How independent were they really in their foreign policies? I know in the east they still coined for the emperor in Rome and the palmyrenes basically funded a mercenary squad that wove in and out of persia with the goal of loving poo poo up for anything in their path... But were there any procurators of the eastern provinces at the time? Who appointed them? Did they keep the traditional provincial divides? Was there a palmyrene senate? Did the central emperor receive any tithe or was it just "We'll pretend you're in charge"?

Postumus in Gaul was in more direct opposition as I understand it; Why didnt he do a classic usurpation, march on Rome, put some heads on spikes etcetc? Did he mint for himself as Augustus of the West or as Augustus of the whole empire? Did he have Spain too, or just Gaul and Britain?

Thanks

physeter
Jan 24, 2006

high five, more dead than alive

Christoff posted:

Some bits say it's not extinct or that it was just over farmed.

It perfectly plausible that silphium could still be out there somewhere. It's alot of coastline. Every once in awhile it seems like some botanist thinks they've found it and the whole community kind of sucks their teeth and says "hmmm" and then twenty years later no one knows what happened with that. But since like the "Damascus steel" of crusader tales, we dcan't really know with 100% certainty what the sources are referring to, it's probably always going to remain debatable.

General Panic
Jan 28, 2012
AN ERORIST AGENT

Grand Prize Winner posted:

You're not. Care to spare some words on the Romanization of the Muslims? I seem to remember that the Ottoman sultans carried the title of 'kaysar-i-rum' or something similar until the late 19th century, but what of the rest of it.

I don't know about the Ottoman sultans, but during the 12th-13th centuries the Seljuk Turks established a kingdom in Anatolia that was generally referred to as the Sultanate of Rum, the name coming from it being a former Byzantine heartland. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the Ottomans revived the title when they came along in the 15th century.

Spiderfist Island
Feb 19, 2011

General Panic posted:

I don't know about the Ottoman sultans, but during the 12th-13th centuries the Seljuk Turks established a kingdom in Anatolia that was generally referred to as the Sultanate of Rum, the name coming from it being a former Byzantine heartland. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the Ottomans revived the title when they came along in the 15th century.

Yeah, Mehmet II claimed that the Ottoman empire was now the effective holder of the title of Roman Empire, which was one of his justifications for pushing further into the Balkans. One of Muhammad's last orders to his troops was to bring Islam to (Eastern) Rome, which the Turks ultimately were successful in doing.

DarkCrawler
Apr 6, 2009

by vyelkin
This is a really silly question but...what happened to all the Romans in conquered Byzantine lands? Moved away? Killed? Converted to Islam and were eventually absorbed into other cultures?

Amused to Death
Aug 10, 2009

google "The Night Witches", and prepare for :stare:

DarkCrawler posted:

This is a really silly question but...what happened to all the Romans in conquered Byzantine lands? Moved away? Killed? Converted to Islam and were eventually absorbed into other cultures?

Depends, who do you count as Roman? If it's anyone in the empire, than most of them basically stayed put, carried on with life. If you mean the dominant cultural force of the empire, the Greeks, well, they more or less stayed put too. There was in fact a sizable minority of Greeks in Constantinople and western Turkey up until the Greco-Turkish(as well as Muslim Turks in Greece) was in 1920 where the end result was forced population exchanges
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange_of_populations_between_Greece_and_Turkey

Some people of course converted, easy way to increase social standing, but most who identified as Greek or any of the other Balkan identities tended not to, you can see it in the current religious make up of the area, most places outside of Bosnia/Albania are pretty heavily Orthodox Christian still. This was probably helped by the fact the Ottomans were generally tolerant to Christians and Jews practicing their religion.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


There are still lots of Christian communities all throughout the former eastern Roman lands. Islam is certainly dominant but the idea that nothing else is tolerated is (mostly) nonsense. I would bet a lot of those are direct descendents of the Christian Roman communities. This is total speculation though.

And yes, the title of Emperor of Rome was taken by the Ottoman sultans, so it technically remained in active use until 1922.

To the token question, I dunno. I'm sure there were things like that (the admission tickets to the arena come to mind) but I don't really know any detail.

Base Emitter posted:

Speaking of all these lost classics of literature, what are the chances of finding one of these books buried somewhere? Did all of the books we have survive because they were in wide circulation, or are they occasionally rediscovered from time to time?

It happens occasionally but not often. Most of the works we have are medieval copies, not originals. It is possible we will find a decent number in the papyrus scrolls from Herculaneum once they're all located and we can read them.

marxmanncc posted:

What was roman mythology like before greek influence? Or did they always have a polytheist spiritual order that was similar to greece

They're distinct traditions that probably have a common ancestry. There are some posts about it on page 26.

Ginette Reno
Nov 18, 2006

How Doers get more done
Fun Shoe
What are the most important lost Roman texts that we think are out there but just don't have? Are there accounts of some really important ones that texts we already have mention that scholars would pop a huge boner to find?

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Most important depends entirely on who you're talking to and what they're interested in. We know of a number of huge history books that have been mostly or completely lost. Any texts from before 400 BCE would qualify as important to most historians, since we have literally nothing.

Baron Porkface
Jan 22, 2007


Why are so many Greco-Roman citites named Neapoli?

Jamwad Hilder
Apr 18, 2007

surfin usa
Well from my limited and possibly incorrect understanding of Greek/Latin, it basically translates to "new city" so I guess you could say the founders/colonists weren't particularly creative.

fantastic in plastic
Jun 15, 2007

The Socialist Workers Party's newspaper proved to be a tough sell to downtown businessmen.

Base Emitter posted:

Speaking of all these lost classics of literature, what are the chances of finding one of these books buried somewhere? Did all of the books we have survive because they were in wide circulation, or are they occasionally rediscovered from time to time?

I can speak a little to this. The chances are really pretty low, but non-zero. All of what we still have is pretty much the result of outrageous circumstances, when you think about it - a book, in some form or another, had to survive from the time that its author wrote it down until the invention of the printing press. The Gutenberg printing press was invented in approximately 1436. Plato, for instance, died in 347 BCE. That means his works had to remain preserved somewhere for 1,783 years. Even considering multiple copies, that's a pretty tall order. In the case of finding something new today, we'd have to tack on another 576 years from Gutenberg, so a lost work of Plato would have had to have survived for 2,359 years. (That's not to say purely physical survival of something written in Plato's hand -- obviously books were copied.)

That isn't to say it doesn't happen every now and then. There were some people in the early Renaissance who became "book hunters". Monastery libraries had a whole bunch of stuff that the monks would copy - not because they understood the language or appreciated the material, but because copying text was painful, boring drudgery and monks were into painful, boring drudgery. One of these book hunters found T. Lucretius Carus' "On The Nature of Things," an ancient Roman philosophical/scientific epic poem.

[Lucretius was roughly contemporary with Julius Caesar, and was a committed Epicurean. Epicureans were, among other things, a bit like the ancient version of Dawkins-esque smug atheists; needless to say, most Epicurean books were 'lost' despite Epicurus having a reputation for the sheer volume of his writings. That this particular work was ever found is amazing, since it straight-up argues that religion is a scam, the gods have no influence on mortal lives, everything is made up of physical particles and obeys physical laws, and so on. (That's not to say Lucretius is right or "modern" about his physics - he's still hilariously wrong about a lot of things. But the assumptions he makes about reality are a lot more like modern assumptions than you might expect from an ancient dude.)]

I also recall reading about a book of Archimedes that was discovered by a rare book collector - he discovered that one of the books he owned was a palimpsest. (In old days, the paper supply was limited, so monks would recycle old codices for their copying work once the pages had faded. These writing-over-writing books are called palimpsests.) With modern equipment, scholars could see the faded writing and recover the Archimedes text.

So it's not impossible, but it is basically the archaeological equivalent of lightning striking.

There are a whole lot of papers that have been found which no one has ever translated or read, so there might be, at least, more fragments to find. A lot of these papers are fragmentary or everyday paperwork, and there aren't many people who are willing to sift through it in the hope of finding something amazing.

Imagine, for example, the amount of paperwork in your city or county's hall of records. Now imagine that it was destroyed in an explosion. Some of the papers survived, but many were lost or became unreadable. Now imagine that all of those records are in a language which nobody has spoken as a mother tongue for two thousand years. Now further imagine that interspersed in all of that paperwork were a few pages that had information on it you really wanted to find - but you don't know whether those pages were destroyed in the blast or not, what they look like, or where to find them among all of the junk. You might bravely decide to start doing it one day, but unless you really like translating paperwork, you'll probably give up after a few days.

Nenonen
Oct 22, 2009
Probation
Can't post for 5 hours!

canuckanese posted:

Well from my limited and possibly incorrect understanding of Greek/Latin, it basically translates to "new city" so I guess you could say the founders/colonists weren't particularly creative.

Not just them, though. Wikipedia knows dozens of towns called Neustadt in Central Europe, and there's at least two Nystad's in Norway and Finland. The same story with Novgorods in Russia. And I wouldn't call New York, Nouvelle Orleans etc. pinnacles of originality either.

Golden_Zucchini
May 16, 2007

Would you love if I was big as a whale, had a-
Oh wait. I still am.

Nenonen posted:

Not just them, though. Wikipedia knows dozens of towns called Neustadt in Central Europe, and there's at least two Nystad's in Norway and Finland. The same story with Novgorods in Russia. And I wouldn't call New York, Nouvelle Orleans etc. pinnacles of originality either.

Also the various Newports.

And let's not forget things like the Sahara Desert (cahra is Arabic for desert), the Gobi Desert (gobi is Mongolian for desert), the River Esk (esk being Celtic for river), and the crowning glory of Pendle Hill from pen (Celtic for hill), hul (Old English for hill), and hill (modern English for hill).

Dr Scoofles
Dec 6, 2004

I read somewhere that a slave could claim sanctuary by standing under a statue of the emperor. So the slave gets to the statue, cries 'Sanctuary!' and...then what? I would be really interested to hear about the process, if indeed it's true, and what 'rights' the owners had regarding their property claiming sanctuary.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


No, imagine how many statues of the emperor might be around. However, there is a rock at Terracina where slaves could be freed by reaching it. I don't know the procedure, not sure if anyone does. There is a medieval version of sanctuary that might be similar.

Dr Scoofles
Dec 6, 2004

That brings up another question - how can you sift fact from fiction is history books?

For example: There was recently a very good documentary on the BBC about Pompeii hosted by Cambridge classics professor Mary Beard. At one point she talked about all the speculation and misinformation that goes around on the subject of brothels in the city. It's often said (by tour guides no less) that the erotic art on the walls was in fact a sex 'menu' for clients to browse - Dr Beard said this is pretty much wild guesswork, zero evidence supports this and most likely it's bullshit.

A book I'm reading on Pompeii right now brought up the sex menu thing as being fact. The same book had that thing about sanctuary statues. Now I'm churning over in head how much of what I'm reading is even remotely reliable! :psyduck:

Nenonen
Oct 22, 2009
Probation
Can't post for 5 hours!
Russian medieval chronicles are fascinating stuff.

According to one of them Alexander the Great was the son of Olympias and pharaoh & wizard Nectanebo. After Nectanebo had died Olympias returned to her home country Ethiopia (her dad was the emperor of Ethiopia) and married a dude named Visa, giving birth to a daughter Antia. Visa then founded a city for the Ethiopian emperor (Tsargrad), which he named Visantia = Byzanthium.

Some time later the Roman emperor Julius sends his brother in law Antonius to conquer Egypt. He does that and marries Cleopatra, at which point Julius sends his brother Augustus to kill Antonius. While Augustus is away, generals Brutus, Pompeius and Crassus rebel in Rome and murder emperor Julius. Augustus returns to Rome and is crowned the new emperor, after which he names his brother Patricius as the king of Egypt and Herod as the king of Israel. Then he put Pius in charge of Hungary. Finally he sent his brother Prus to rule the lands between Veiksel and Niemen, which became known as Prussia. Sometime later the ruler of Novgorod, before dying, ordered to send for a new ruler from Prussia, and they bring home a guy called Rurik who founds Kievan Rus.

It's a somewhat convoluted way of saying "our Tsar is directly related to Julius Caesar". Of course the Tsar was also related to Byzantine emperors and, to be sure, Genghis Khan.

Foyes36
Oct 23, 2005

Food fight!

Tao Jones posted:

There are a whole lot of papers that have been found which no one has ever translated or read, so there might be, at least, more fragments to find. A lot of these papers are fragmentary or everyday paperwork, and there aren't many people who are willing to sift through it in the hope of finding something amazing.

See, I've heard allusions to this document trove before, but I'm curious where it actually exists. Random national libraries across Europe? Old university vaults? Ancient churches? Can you link to some sources on it? It seems like a fuckin' goldmine for any graduate student in the field.

sbaldrick
Jul 19, 2006
Driven by Hate
There are tons of Medieval document troves that no one has looked at (or been able to look at) in centuries. At this point they would require MRI's to even be ready and there is simply not enough resources to study them all.

Frosted Flake
Sep 13, 2011

Semper Shitpost Ubique

Mister Gopher posted:

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.

I'm reading the Fantastic Carthage Must Be Destroyed by Richard Miles, one of the first comprehensive studies on Carthage in decades. It's very confusing because of religious naming conventions, every generation has a few Hasdrubals and Hannibals.

Carthagenian society is facinating though, even from what little we know about them.

General Panic
Jan 28, 2012
AN ERORIST AGENT

Vigilance posted:

What are the most important lost Roman texts that we think are out there but just don't have? Are there accounts of some really important ones that texts we already have mention that scholars would pop a huge boner to find?

It would be interesting if someone found the histories that Claudius wrote before he became emperor, if only because they might have some insights into whether he was anything like Robert Graves imagined him as being in I, Claudius .

Octy
Apr 1, 2010

Frosted Flake posted:

I'm reading the Fantastic Carthage Must Be Destroyed by Richard Miles, one of the first comprehensive studies on Carthage in decades. It's very confusing because of religious naming conventions, every generation has a few Hasdrubals and Hannibals.

Carthagenian society is facinating though, even from what little we know about them.

Ha, is it that good? Richard Miles is a lecturer at my uni and I've had him a couple of times. He can make the most banal stuff sound fascinating and I've seen Carthage Must be Destroyed in the shop but I'm not big on making impulse history book purchases.

Hargrimm
Sep 22, 2011

W A R R E N

Dr Scoofles posted:

That brings up another question - how can you sift fact from fiction is history books?

For example: There was recently a very good documentary on the BBC about Pompeii hosted by Cambridge classics professor Mary Beard. At one point she talked about all the speculation and misinformation that goes around on the subject of brothels in the city. It's often said (by tour guides no less) that the erotic art on the walls was in fact a sex 'menu' for clients to browse - Dr Beard said this is pretty much wild guesswork, zero evidence supports this and most likely it's bullshit.

A book I'm reading on Pompeii right now brought up the sex menu thing as being fact. The same book had that thing about sanctuary statues. Now I'm churning over in head how much of what I'm reading is even remotely reliable! :psyduck:

Tour guides are usually much less well-informed than you would expect (or hope) them to be. Generally, falsehoods like that are spread simply because they are interesting, funny, or confirm stereotypes of 'how things were' back then. See for example, this interesting blog talking about Colonial America and the many myths associated with it, most of which are heard from tour guides at colonial houses and parks.

Also, you should probably stop reading that book (and tell us what it is so we can avoid it too).

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Dr Scoofles posted:

That brings up another question - how can you sift fact from fiction is history books?

If you don't know anything about the subject, it's hard to do. Even if you do it's hard. Good history books will sometimes have that kind of thing slip in. I've probably posted something in this thread that is nonsense but how would you know if you haven't learned more? Basically, if you're interested in a particular subject, try to read a wide variety of material about it and hopefully that will work out what's correct and what isn't.

And never believe tour guides. I was so lucky to go to Italy with my Roman history professor on a class that was essentially a tour with a guide who knew what the gently caress he was talking about.

Smirking_Serpent
Aug 27, 2009

How true is the ending line of Patton – the story about a slave standing behind a general during a triumph and whispering that all glory is fleeting?

Quality_Guaranteed
Jan 23, 2006

by Y Kant Ozma Post
What were the borders of the Roman Empire like? Say you wanted to travel outside the empire, would they have a border patrol or something? What if you wanted to stay off the main roads and out of the towns, and just walked through the wilderness until you were outside the empire; what would stop you?

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euphronius
Feb 18, 2009

Roman borders were mostly staffed with legions, auxiliary units and tax collectors. Most borders were natural: The Rhine, the Danube, the Euphrates, the Atlantic, the Sahara, the cataracts in the Nile. They also built borders like Hadrian's wall and the Limes Germanicus.

Roman power usually extended beyond the frontiers too.

Here is a recent radio show on Hadrian's Wall http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01kkr42

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