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What are your favorite stories about crazy things happening in Rome? Things like Honoria asking Attila to rescue her from a boring marriage and Attila invading the Empire (ostensibly) because of it.
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Sep 14, 2012 03:00
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I always think it's funny that Vespasian tried to institute a tax on using public urinals (essentially just big pots) and had guards stationed at them and everything in order to try and enforce it. People just pissed in the street instead.
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Sep 14, 2012 04:15
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Don't know if this has been asked, but what is the modern view or your guy's opinion of Theodosius the Great?
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Sep 14, 2012 04:35
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My favorite story from Roman history is when Emperor Valentinian got so angry at being sassed by some Quadi envoys he literally died. By far the best Imperial death.
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Sep 14, 2012 06:44
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canuckanese posted:I always think it's funny that Vespasian tried to institute a tax on using public urinals (essentially just big pots) and had guards stationed at them and everything in order to try and enforce it. People just pissed in the street instead. I thought it was more that Urine had a lot of Industrial uses and he tried to institute a tax on the sale of it to Tanners and Launderers? It also spawned the excellent conversation where Titus complained to Vespesian about the tax and Vespasian held money to his nose and asked him: "Sciscitans num odore offenderetur?" Does it smell? "Non est." No "Pecunia non olet." And yet it comes from Urine. What a smug gently caress  Rincewind posted:My favorite story from Roman history is when Emperor Valentinian got so angry at being sassed by some Quadi envoys he literally died. I've never heard this one, gotta read more. Also, hey Discworld-Name-Buddy!  
Moist von Lipwig fucked around with this message at 10:46 on Sep 14, 2012 |
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Sep 14, 2012 10:44
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Ammianus Marcellinus wrote a pretty detailed account of the death of Valentinian, although it's probably worth noting that Ammianus wasn't the biggest fan in the world of the post-Julian Christian emperors. EDIT: I also made a very silly and inaccurate video about it last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KASCERhuh68 But I was busy running around like a crazy person and working on my thesis at the time so it's not very good. 
Empress Theonora fucked around with this message at 11:12 on Sep 14, 2012 |
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Sep 14, 2012 11:10
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Moist von Lipwig posted:I thought it was more that Urine had a lot of Industrial uses and he tried to institute a tax on the sale of it to Tanners and Launderers? Vespasian was great. "Oh! I think I'm becoming a god!"
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Sep 14, 2012 11:27
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Moist von Lipwig posted:I thought it was more that Urine had a lot of Industrial uses and he tried to institute a tax on the sale of it to Tanners and Launderers? Urine did have industrial uses, but Vespasian was also trying to reform taxation and the economy in general and decided that taxing piss would be a great idea.
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Sep 14, 2012 18:34
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canuckanese posted:Urine did have industrial uses, but Vespasian was also trying to reform taxation and the economy in general and decided that taxing piss would be a great idea. The world's first and last attempt at an "Outgo tax". Later emperors preferred taxing income.
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Sep 14, 2012 19:09
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Moist von Lipwig posted:I thought it was more that Urine had a lot of Industrial uses and he tried to institute a tax on the sale of it to Tanners and Launderers? Your translation's a bit ropey. Pecunia non olet means money doesn't stink.
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Sep 14, 2012 19:32
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Yeah, it should be "Atqui ex lotio est".
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Sep 14, 2012 19:37
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Rincewind posted:My favorite story from Roman history is when Emperor Valentinian got so angry at being sassed by some Quadi envoys he literally died. This is totally the best death. Rage stroke. achillesforever6 posted:Don't know if this has been asked, but what is the modern view or your guy's opinion of Theodosius the Great? I think he's generally considered one of the last competent emperors (in the western line, since he ruled both halves) but I don't know that much about him. From what I do know, after him the emperors in the west are all poo poo except for Majorian, but there are some generals like Stilicho who ruled in all but name and were capable men. Vespasian was awesome and was also a time traveling Lyndon Johnson.   archduke.iago posted:What are your favorite stories about crazy things happening in Rome? Things like Honoria asking Attila to rescue her from a boring marriage and Attila invading the Empire (ostensibly) because of it. I don't actually have any good ones offhand, I think studying a subject for real leads you away from these kinds of stories a lot of the time. Which is no criticism to the crazy poo poo stories because they are fun. I'm at work with nothing to do and a hurricane outside so I will try to think of something to do a writeup about. Spergin' about Marian legions maybe.
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Sep 17, 2012 02:58
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Grand Fromage posted:I'm at work with nothing to do and a hurricane outside so I will try to think of something to do a writeup about. Spergin' about Marian legions maybe. Do It.
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Sep 17, 2012 03:03
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feedmegin posted:Your translation's a bit ropey. Pecunia non olet means money doesn't stink. My translation is beyond ropey, my latin is about really, really bad, but I'm trying to rectify that
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Sep 17, 2012 03:51
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 The legion. The reason why Rome kicked everyone's rear end. A decent part of it, anyway. We've talked about this stuff a little but who cares about repeating. First history. We don't know anything about the original Roman army, back in the days of the kingdom. This is because we don't really know anything about Rome at all prior to 400 BCE. It was probably the same as what the Etruscans were using. We can make some inferences from other material though.  This is a Lucanian tomb painting from Paestum, which is in Campania, just south of Latium. This is where gladiatorial games originated, and these tombs are believed to depict the origins of the sport as a blood sacrifice ritual at funerals. In any case, they show us the people here were using Greek style arms and armor, and this is consistent with other information and material we have. The earliest Roman army we can get any kind of idea about is a Greek style phalanx comprised of citizen soldiers--essentially, the same thing everyone in the Mediterranean cultural sphere was using at the time. The Roman phalanxes continue for a couple centuries. Then come the Samnite Wars. These are a series of three conflicts between Rome and the independent Samnite tribes, whose homeland is in the Appenine mountains along the spine of Italy. If you know anything about phalanxes, you know that their chief weakness is their inflexibility. A phalanx formation is very strong from the front and total poo poo from any other direction, and changing directions is nearly impossible once engaged. They also need a decent amount of flat land, they don't do well in rough terrain. So many Greek battlefields are used over and over because those are the flat bits between areas controlled by one polis or another, and the phalanxes aren't going to be fighting in the mountains so everybody ends up at Thermopylae like 20 times. Anyway, the Roman phalanxes weren't any better on rough terrain than their Greek equivalents, and it made fighting the Samnites a pain in the balls. We don't know exactly when the legions are reorganized into the pre-Marian version but it appears the Samnite Wars drove the Romans to change things up. Alexander's Macedonian phalanxes introduced the tactic of breaking the line up into individual smaller units that could maneuver independently, which allowed his phalanx to adapt better to changing battlefield conditions. The Macedonians used this to walk all up and down everybody's asses. The Samnite Wars were during the same period, with the second one ending in 304 and the third in 290. It's likely that word of this innovation reached the Romans, and the Romans were always willing to adapt new things if they worked. It would've helped a lot in defeating the Samnites. I suspect this is where the maniple system comes from but I am speculating, I don't remember reading about this. Wikipedia says the Samnites used maniples and after getting their poo poo handed to them, the Romans adopted it. In either case, they abandon the phalanx and reorganize.  I would like to apologize that my computer doesn't have Papyrus. I hope Comic Sans is sufficient for you. The velites were light skirmishing troops. Later these are mostly allies, but before Rome had allies to draw on these were poor people. Before Marius, the legions were like all the other ancient armies and consisted of citizen-soldiers who had to pay for their own equipment. Velites were just the general rabble who couldn't afford proper arms and armor, so they were equipped with slings, javelins, that sort of thing. They would scout or just pelt the enemy with javelins then retreat back through the lines. Immediately behind those are the hastati, the least experienced soldiers. The veterans formed the second line as the principes. These two lines are equipped similarly, armor/shield/helmet/sword/pilum, the same general loadout that legionaries will have later. The difference is the experience. Ideally, the hastati will be enough to win the battle and the principes are there for support. The descriptions say that the legions at this time are lined up in a checkerboard formation. Each maniple is 120 men, organized in three lines that are forty men in length. Each maniple leaves about a maniple-sized gap between them. The principes are the same but offset, so you don't just have this hole in the lines. They're close enough to support the front. The gaps allow you to do miniature envelopments and to move the lines around without there just being a bunch of dudes in your way physically preventing you from maneuvers. In the back are the triarii, the most experienced soldiers. These guys had bigass spears and would fight as a phalanx. Even though the Romans abandoned the phalanx as their primary means of combat, it still had its uses when poo poo really hit the fan. The triarii were not expected to fight in a normal engagement, they were there to be the hammer if things got really bad. It gives birth to a phrase that translates to something like "Going to the triarii" which meant to put everything into a situation or use your last resort. This system works fine for a while, but citizen soldiers are still a fundamental problem. You can't be a legionary unless you're a citizen of high enough rank, owning a certan amount of property, and able to buy all your own gear. This, naturally, limits the size of your army--quite severely limited. Also, people have other poo poo to do. You can only fight for so long. Summer campaign season existed because of this, there's a gap of time between planting and harvest when people have little to do so, thus you can go out fighting. But the kinds of wars Rome was beginning to pursue really needed more men, and the ability to keep men in the field until the job was done. There was another problem. Rome had been a society of small farmers. These citizens weren't rich but they had property and were able to fight. However, over time the wealthiest aristocrats were buying up all the land and forming the latifundia, the giant slave plantations that become the standard of Roman agriculture for centuries to come. This meant that a lot of the people who were eligible for military service were now being driven into the cities and no longer able to meet the property requirements. Rome's empire is growing, Rome's wars are expanding, and at the same time the pool of available soldiers is shrinking. Gaius Marius is elected consul in 107 BC and dispatched to fight the war with Jugurtha in Africa. He has no army. No one is available. He has to come up with a new way to get troops. And in part two I will actually talk about what I intended to instead of letting the background paragraph go on forever. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Sep 17, 2012 |
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Sep 17, 2012 04:06
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Did the Romans just march that battle line straight at people and ruin their day? The way you describe it, that's what it sounds like. Did they have no cavalry for support/flanking? What would they do if the enemy had cavalry?
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Sep 17, 2012 06:18
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Vigilance posted:Did they have no cavalry for support/flanking? What would they do if the enemy had cavalry? The Romans had cavalry of their own (equites) from early on, but mostly relied a lot on allied/auxiliary cavalry. Roman cavalry was never anything to write home about until you start getting into the Byzantine era, but they often had great allied cavalry at their disposal. They seem to have preferred using cavalry to counter cavalry. You have to keep in mind, though, that cavalry was often not very decisive on its own for most of Roman history. Winning the cavalry battle might be crucial if the infantry battle was undecided, but if your infantry got crushed it usually didn't really matter that your cavalry beat the enemy cavalry. Obviously there were exceptions to this general rule. Cavalry was also difficult to control, especially in armies with lower levels of discipline. In more than one battle the Roman cavalry would get their asses handed to them, only to have the enemy cavalry keep chasing them way off the battlefield or even veer off in an attempt to plunder the Roman camp, while the rest of the legions crushed the main enemy force. On a more strategic level, when facing cavalry heavy enemies (such as the Parthians) they generally had a lot more trouble than when they fought predominantly infantry armies, but their most successful approach was usually to simply march up to a city and lay siege to it. Chasing elusive horse archers around in the desert generally worked less well, as Crassus found out. Sometimes I get the feeling that there's a kind of myth of invincibility surrounding horse archers, as if they were some kind of superweapon that could never be beaten. This is obviously not the case. The Mongols are usually given as an example of the supremacy of horse archery, but the reason that they were such an incredibly effective fighting force had a hell of a lot more to do with organizational and strategic factors than the mere fact that they shot bows from horseback. Alekanderu fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Sep 17, 2012 |
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Sep 17, 2012 07:08
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Alekanderu posted:Sometimes I get the feeling that there's a kind of myth of invincibility surrounding horse archers, as if they were some kind of superweapon that could never be beaten. Like any weapon, they're situational. If you're in a wide open field area that's good for cavalry, and you're an infantry army going up against a heavy horse archer army, you're pretty much hosed. But if you're in terrain less favorable to cavalry, or you force the issue by laying siege, then you can even the odds. The Romans didn't know how to deal with it at first but they eventually learned how to manipulate the battle situation to neutralize the advantages of the cavalry, which is why they were able to beat up on the Parthians after the initial disastrous encounters.
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Sep 17, 2012 07:12
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It seems like Rome really goes off the rails with Marius. From Marius, you get Sulla, and then it seems clear that the battle for the top spot will be bloody for the next couple centuries, as the pyramid that was the Roman empire had grown so large, that the desire to sit atop it must have been irresistible to the ambitious men of the day. Why Marius, though? I get that he reformed the legions in such a way that they became loyal to their general instead of the republic. Was he that brilliant, that charismatic, that he could be elected consul seven times and make everyone see the laws were worthless if you had power and an army? Also, why did Marius take on so much power? He didn't seem to actually do anything with his power either for good or evil until after the war with Sulla, when he started killing Sulla's supporters. Or am I looking at it wrong, and Sulla is the one who ran the republic into the ground? It just seems that after people see Marius, of course they want to replace him, and Sulla actually did it, rather than Sulla being the one to break conventions and the law. Sulla took it further than Marius, sure, but so did the princepes once Augustus was able to establish his rule. It still all goes back to Marius.
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Sep 17, 2012 13:49
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Tewdrig posted:Why Marius, though? I get that he reformed the legions in such a way that they became loyal to their general instead of the republic. Was he that brilliant, that charismatic, that he could be elected consul seven times and make everyone see the laws were worthless if you had power and an army? Many of Marius' consular appointments were in absentia. He was the commander in chief of the army sent to oppose the massive German invasion and so they kept reinstating him. The current state of affairs is that post-Marius/Post-Sulla is so littered with conjecture and propaganda that we'll never really know who was "at fault". Marius evidently has his poo poo totally together for so much of his life and then just takes a left turn into apparent demogoguery, so abruptly that many authors have reasoned that he became suddenly mentally ill. Likewise Sulla is often depicted as some base villain, gifted with a streak of military genius, who will one day rise to betray his master/defend the republic from his insane former mentor. It makes for Star Wars level drama but none of it makes much sense, and much of it is likely bullshit. Even later Roman historians themselves do not know what went "wrong" with Marius. What I can suggest is that it is a huge mistake to perceive Rome as modern in its civility. Earlier in the thread I said it was probably closer to modern day Somalia than it was to modern day America. I'd stand by that. Warlordism, tribalism, gangsters and interpersonal violence on a scale that most people living today do not really comprehend. Whatever identification we do with guys like Pompey and Caesar, we should remember they were barely more than children when they visited a Forum decorated with the severed heads of their friends and neighbors. Their society was always about 5 seconds from Holiday in Cambodia. Some people would say the same about ours, but that's another thread.
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Sep 17, 2012 15:38
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physeter posted:What I can suggest is that it is a huge mistake to perceive Rome as modern in its civility. Earlier in the thread I said it was probably closer to modern day Somalia than it was to modern day America. I'd stand by that. Warlordism, tribalism, gangsters and interpersonal violence on a scale that most people living today do not really comprehend. Whatever identification we do with guys like Pompey and Caesar, we should remember they were barely more than children when they visited a Forum decorated with the severed heads of their friends and neighbors. Their society was always about 5 seconds from Holiday in Cambodia. Some people would say the same about ours, but that's another thread. During the Samnite and Punic wars, at least, Rome seemed to be able to get its act together, and the republican apparatus worked reasonably well, with the exception of times when each consul commanded the legion for alternating days, and other quirks. Is this history whitewashed with nostalgia by later historians, or was it that these Roman warlords simply had more to gain for themselves in the earlier period from foreign conquests than civil war, but were always the same sociopaths? You seem to take the latter position.
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Sep 17, 2012 17:01
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I would say the personalities of the characters in question mattered less than a) the massive increases in the size of the Roman state gave commanders more resources to plan and execute a coup, and b) each step down the path of revolution* gave commanders more of a precedent to exploit to their own benefit. That's the very short version. * People like the Gracci, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Catiline, Cicero, Caesar and Augustus... Oh and Antony, Lepidus, Crassus, Clodius Pulcher, etc. There were a lot of bad faith actors in the late republican period
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Sep 17, 2012 17:43
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Tewdrig posted:During the Samnite and Punic wars, at least, Rome seemed to be able to get its act together, and the republican apparatus worked reasonably well, with the exception of times when each consul commanded the legion for alternating days, and other quirks. Is this history whitewashed with nostalgia by later historians, or was it that these Roman warlords simply had more to gain for themselves in the earlier period from foreign conquests than civil war, but were always the same sociopaths? You seem to take the latter position. Now, we are arguably right to disparage it, but that's beside the point. The Romans were like most human societies, where political power grows from the barrel of the gun, and like most, that threat was immediate, not abstract. In other words, they were the rule, we are the exception. Chaos, violence and banana republic bullshit are still very much a part of us as a species, it's just that most of us reading this thread have the luxury of existing in bubble of relative calm. With that said, did later Roman historians idealize their more bucolic ancestors? Yes, all the time.
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Sep 17, 2012 18:41
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Grand Fromage posted:I think he's generally considered one of the last competent emperors (in the western line, since he ruled both halves) but I don't know that much about him. From what I do know, after him the emperors in the west are all poo poo except for Majorian, but there are some generals like Stilicho who ruled in all but name and were capable men.
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Sep 17, 2012 19:31
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achillesforever6 posted:He was kind of a douche for deciding to ban all the pagan rituals and close the temples. Just how many Christian rituals are of non-pagan origin, anyway? Eucharist, some Jewish customs?
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Sep 17, 2012 19:49
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I apologize if this has been asked before, but what was the typical Roman's diet like?
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Sep 17, 2012 19:56
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I've always been told what wikipedia says - the Samnites were already using maniples since phalanxes suck in hilly terrain and the Samnites were a coalition of hill tribes. There are a few surviving tombs that show Samnite soldiers equipped (IMO) more like the early hastati than like hoplites from before Rome adopted the system. Certainly not conclusive, though. Also, just as a side note, the early maniples were armed with spears, not swords; they were adopted for wide use from Hispania later. Hastati are named after the spears they used, the hasta. I have no idea why the hastati got stuck with being named after their weapon when the principes and triarii used the same thing at the time, though. One of the really interesting things about the maniple formation is that it's just an inversion of the Roman phalanx with spaces put in; triarii were originally up front, with hastati (of sorts; more like combination hastati/velites) in the back. physeter posted:Many of Marius' consular appointments were in absentia. He was the commander in chief of the army sent to oppose the massive German invasion and so they kept reinstating him. The current state of affairs is that post-Marius/Post-Sulla is so littered with conjecture and propaganda that we'll never really know who was "at fault". Marius evidently has his poo poo totally together for so much of his life and then just takes a left turn into apparent demogoguery, so abruptly that many authors have reasoned that he became suddenly mentally ill. Likewise Sulla is often depicted as some base villain, gifted with a streak of military genius, who will one day rise to betray his master/defend the republic from his insane former mentor. It makes for Star Wars level drama but none of it makes much sense, and much of it is likely bullshit. Even later Roman historians themselves do not know what went "wrong" with Marius. Marius had always had a predilection for allying himself with Rome's radical reformers; he was not very good at politics, and as a new member of the aristocracy the only political alliances he was really good at securing were with people like Saturninus and Cinna. Even in his early career as tribune of the plebs, Marius was a pretty staunch populare, as well, so that was the natural direction he looked for support. Marius was pretty clearly suffering from some sort of dementia by the end of his life, but to characterize his "left-leaning" tendencies as sudden mental illness isn't accurate. His aggressive pursuit of power at the end likely had to do a lot with his dementia, but that didn't last very long. Tewdrig posted:It seems like Rome really goes off the rails with Marius. From Marius, you get Sulla, and then it seems clear that the battle for the top spot will be bloody for the next couple centuries, as the pyramid that was the Roman empire had grown so large, that the desire to sit atop it must have been irresistible to the ambitious men of the day. Marius didn't take on any more power than was typical for a consul until his seventh consulship, which was only seventeen days long - the only thing unusual about his middle five was that they were consecutive, and the first was perfectly normal. I think you might have your timeline a little bit confused - Sulla did not march on Rome while Marius was consul, ever. Sulla marched on Rome the first time because command of the war against Mithridates of Pontus was transferred from him to Marius, who had wanted that command to begin with even though he was officially retired and in poor health. So no, Sulla wasn't really responding to an outright grab of domestic power so much as an usurpation of his personal command. The reason Marius did not "do anything" with his power before the war with Sulla started is that he didn't have any power other than his war hero status and political connections. His sixth consulship was twelve years in the past before the whole chain of events that led directly to war began. It's not like Marius didn't share any of the blame, though - he was convinced that he was fated to be consul seven times and went to any length to attain that, especially later on when he was mentally ill and not at all physically healthy. Plus, he was the guy who essentially transferred soldiers' loyalty to their general rather than the state. However, it is nearly impossible to disentangle Marius and Sulla when you're talking about who really broke the rule of law. Sulla marched on Rome first, but Marius arguably provoked him into doing it. Remember, there was a lifetime of enmity between the two already; it would take a long time to get into it, but suffice it to say that, at least in Sulla's view, Marius was absolutely obsessed with stealing Sulla's glory at every possible opportunity. This latest development of Marius stealing command over the war with Mithridates, one of the most lucrative wars in Roman history to that point, was utterly intolerable and the last straw. Marius doesn't seem to have hated Sulla quite like Sulla hated Marius, but he was well aware that he was constantly dicking Sulla over so he can't have liked him that much. Sulla usually comes off worse in the sources, but that is mostly because he took the bold actions that made the breakdown of order obvious - and Caesar, who was a Marian, went out of his way to attempt to rehabilitate Marius's image later, so that slants things as well. The extremely poor relationship between the two men, more than the actions of either of them individually, led to their violent conflict. Edit: Plus, y'know, economics and social forces and all that poo poo. The underlying factors are really a lot more important in the next generation, though - Marius and Sulla's conflict was a lot more personal than the Caesarian civil wars, though it had a strong element of class conflict to it alongside the personal grudges. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Sep 18, 2012 |
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Sep 17, 2012 23:29
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Mach5 posted:I apologize if this has been asked before, but what was the typical Roman's diet like? Well like most societies, it depended on how wealthy you were. A typical diet consisted of grain, often porridge or bread, olive oil, and wine, supplemented by occasional cheese, meat (usually pork), and fish. Richer folk could branch out and had access to better quality staple foods (eating wheat instead of barley as their grain, for example) as well as exotic imports.
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Sep 17, 2012 23:45
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Just heard about this on Yahoo and thought you guys would be interested http://news.yahoo.com/enormous-roman-mosaic-found-under-farmers-field-191743498.html E: Also how much influence did Roman culture have on Islam? (sorry if this has been asked before) achillesforever6 fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Sep 18, 2012 |
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Sep 18, 2012 03:21
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achillesforever6 posted:Just heard about this on Yahoo and thought you guys would be interested I have a question about this mosaic. The article says it was found just outside of Antiochia ad Cragumm, on the southern coast of Turkey. It then describes the area as having been thought to be "rather peripheral to the Roman Empire." Is that correct? Assuming they are excluding the Eastern Empire, wasn't that area still under Roman control for some 300+ years? Also, its not as if it was an inland area on the borders of the Empire; it's a Mediterranean city.
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Sep 18, 2012 17:26
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If the article says that's it's wrong. Incthe east Antioch was second in size only to Alexandria during the classical period, and the two were the main govt centers in the eastern portion of the empire prior to Constantinople's founding.
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Sep 18, 2012 17:42
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WoodrowSkillson posted:If the article says that's it's wrong. Incthe east Antioch was second in size only to Alexandria during the classical period, and the two were the main govt centers in the eastern portion of the empire prior to Constantinople's founding. It's not about the famous Antiochia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiochia_ad_Cragum
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Sep 18, 2012 17:51
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Yeah, there were like zillion Antiochs. Also zillion Alexandrias. Both were founded by Macedonians!
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Sep 18, 2012 18:49
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50 Foot Ant posted:Did Rome have banking as it resembles today? Were there letters of credit, or was it just mostly barter and coins? Regarding coins, how was their value set? No, they didn't. The barter system is a myth. This is not say that they (by "they" I mean people in general) didn't have credit-debt. As a matter of fact, most of the transactions in the Roman world were done through some sort of credit system. Credit was more on a local scale instead of a central institution that could deal it out. Going to the local pub and want a glass of wine? You got it on credit with the bar tender. Wanted a new pot from the potter down the street? You got it on credit. We know this stuff was on credit simply because they never actually made scales to measure such small amounts of species, metals, and coins. Not because they didn't have the technology to make such scales, but because all such transactions were personal. After a certain amount of time, someone would come around the neighborhood and collect on the debts. Anyway, coins are a different matter and the way they came about is pretty fascinating because if you try to put yourself in the shoes of some poor scrub in a rural village in Gaul, why the gently caress would you have any use for a round little piece of metal?
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Sep 18, 2012 21:07
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Kopijeger posted:It's not about the famous Antiochia: Yeah, Antiochia ad Cragum is further west than the famous one; I think near modern day Alanya.
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Sep 18, 2012 21:19
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Well I learned something then. Never knew Antioch was as common of a city name as Alexandria.
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Sep 18, 2012 21:48
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I remember that the Tokugawa shogunate established a very complex system to deal with its (potentially rebellious) vasalls: Among other measures that only worked with feudal lords (Sankin-kōtai, force them to routineley move their residence between their demesne and the capital, keep 'em poor with the cost of two palaces and huge processions) the Shogunate also forced the lords to keep their families in the capital (under surveillance of the government) when they were at their home provinces - effectively taking them hostage to keep the lords from rebelling. Would something like this have worked to keep the generals under control? "Ok, good luck fighting those barbarians Maximus. Don't worry about your family, they are treated like senators - as long as you keep doing your job and don't decide to cross the Rubicon or crown yourself emperor - it would be a shame to take all the effort to abolish the republic, without any heirs to inherit your title, eh?"  With the Roman focus on family values, this could have been working beautifully - or get you killed ten times over, I guess.
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Sep 18, 2012 22:28
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SavageGentleman posted:I remember that the Tokugawa shogunate established a very complex system to deal with its (potentially rebellious) vasalls: Among other measures that only worked with feudal lords (Sankin-kōtai, force them to routineley move their residence between their demesne and the capital, keep 'em poor with the cost of two palaces and huge processions) the Shogunate also forced the lords to keep their families in the capital (under surveillance of the government) when they were at their home provinces - effectively taking them hostage to keep the lords from rebelling. Nope. Not only you have all those Emperors and generals who became emperors who didn't give a flying gently caress about their family or actively hated them - you also got generals who didn't have any or rose from such obscurity that nobody knows where their family even is. Rome was not Japan. It was not a feudal system - and even if it was, it is a lot easier to keep tabs on your nobles in Japan then an Empire spanning nearly twenty times it's size.
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Sep 18, 2012 23:18
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Agro ver Haus doom posted:No, they didn't. The barter system is a myth. This is not say that they (by "they" I mean people in general) didn't have credit-debt. As a matter of fact, most of the transactions in the Roman world were done through some sort of credit system. Credit was more on a local scale instead of a central institution that could deal it out. Going to the local pub and want a glass of wine? You got it on credit with the bar tender. Wanted a new pot from the potter down the street? You got it on credit. We know this stuff was on credit simply because they never actually made scales to measure such small amounts of species, metals, and coins. Not because they didn't have the technology to make such scales, but because all such transactions were personal. After a certain amount of time, someone would come around the neighborhood and collect on the debts. On a day-to-day "average Publius" basis, you're right. On the other hand, the upper classes essentially served as credit institutions for their clients and each other - not exactly banks, since it was one guy with all the assets, but not terribly different in practice if your social standing was high enough. On the other hand, owing a lot of money to a fellow senator put you under their thumb to an extent, so generosity in lending was obviously a political tool as much as it was a financial system.
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Sep 18, 2012 23:54
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I apologize if this isn't the best forum, but I'm a giant Ancient Rome nerd and I'm heading to Rome in a couple months for about 10 days. Anyone have any must see locations that aren't obvious?
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Sep 19, 2012 01:15
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