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Barto posted:Does anything the history channel broadcasts ever even slightly adhere to reality? ...sigh Pawn stars? Sorta? 
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Oct 8, 2012 15:54
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Not that history channel doesn't suck, but Caligula was a pretty bad emperor, right? I mean, Tiberius left Rome with a huge surplus and he pissed it all away. Julio-Claudians have a bad rap though, two good and one phenomenal out of five isn't half bad! Better then most dynasties.
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Oct 8, 2012 16:26
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DarkCrawler posted:Julio-Claudians have a bad rap though, two good and one phenomenal out of five isn't half bad! Better then most dynasties. I assume you are including Tiberius as a good emperor? I thought he was generally seen as bad, though not as bad as Caligula and Nero. Sejanus was awful, and Tiberius left Rome to relax at his villa and ignore governing the empire.
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Oct 8, 2012 17:51
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Tewdrig posted:I assume you are including Tiberius as a good emperor? I thought he was generally seen as bad, though not as bad as Caligula and Nero. Sejanus was awful, and Tiberius left Rome to relax at his villa and ignore governing the empire. He left a huge amount of money behind, strengthened the administration, and consolidated the territories. The Empire learned to govern itself pretty well and was generally strengthened. And he killed Sejanus. He was a moody rear end in a top hat who didn't want to be the Emperor in the first place, a possible sexual deviant and a dick to his family in particular, but he was a pretty good Emperor in my books. And a kickass general.
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Oct 8, 2012 17:59
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DarkCrawler posted:He left a huge amount of money behind, strengthened the administration, and consolidated the territories. The Empire learned to govern itself pretty well and was generally strengthened. And he killed Sejanus. He was a moody rear end in a top hat who didn't want to be the Emperor in the first place, a possible sexual deviant and a dick to his family in particular, but he was a pretty good Emperor in my books. And a kickass general. Yeah, Tiberius's bad rap has always puzzled me. His pre-emperor career was outstanding, and his only real offense (governing-wise) was reluctance to do the job - something that Romans fifty years previously would have been excited about! He grew up in the (dying, civil war stricken) Republic and it's not at all strange that he expected the bureaucracy to be able to run without him; I don't have any strong evidence, but I've always suspected that Tiberius wanted to set a precedent of aloof emperors as a sort of "partial restoration" of the Republic. The fiction of senatorial power hadn't yet faded entirely, so it wasn't impossible by any means, but of course his successors were not inclined in that direction. I mean, he'd sit down with senators and advisors and do this: Cassius Dio posted:After setting forth his own opinion he not only granted everyone full liberty to speak against it, but even when, as sometimes happened, others voted in opposition to him, he submitted; for he often would cast a vote himself. Feels to me like a guy who's not too enthused about the idea of there even being an emperor instead of elected officials. He didn't allow himself to be voted the title of Augustus, though he used it on really formal occasions anyway, and he didn't allow himself to be called "imperator" of anyone but the legions. To me he seems focused on tearing down the very office of emperor, an office that someone his age might well still consider as being very un-Roman indeed - perhaps an acceptable state of affairs while Augustus was alive, but still un-Roman. Modern historians have long had a bad habit of accepting ancient historians' evaluations of the emperors without much thought, but it's absolutely necessary to remember that historians in the imperial period assumed that monarchy was superior to a republic; many of their value judgments of looser, delegation-heavy leaders like Tiberius are colored by a perception that a delegating monarch that listens to his "lessers" is weaker than a strong and domineering monarch that centralizes power within himself. Unless you're a dedicated monarchist, you probably value democracy over monarchy, so it's worth evaluating emperors on their merits to you instead of what Suetonius or Cassius Dio think of them. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Oct 8, 2012 |
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Oct 8, 2012 19:28
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Jazerus posted:Yeah, Tiberius's bad rap has always puzzled me. I'm not sure I'm with you on the notion that "Roman historians in the imperial period assumed that [the imperial system] was better than the republic". Livy and Suetonius aren't exactly painting good pictures of what's going on in the empire, at the very least, while Tacitus is suggesting pretty strongly that the whole imperial system is rotten and would be immediately overthrown if the Romans hadn't become cowards as a result of being under tyrannical rule. As for the opinion of Tiberius in particular, I think it tends to depend on what historian you read and what your opinion of absolute power is going in. Tacitus spends hundreds of pages attacking Tiberius, accusing him of every awful thing under the sun (and not just things like "oh, he was a weak delegator instead of a manly authoritarian", but "he systematically murdered or corrupted all of his opponents, took the power away from the institutions that safeguarded the republic, and then abandoned himself to a life of decadence". Tacitus' narrative that power corrupts the powerful was pretty resonant to a lot of people in the English speaking world over the last two centuries, especially given the reaction to the French Revolution, Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin - and in many ways he makes Tiberius the poster boy for destroying liberty.
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Oct 8, 2012 20:09
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My historian statement was an overgeneralization; but it's worth noting that all of the historians you refer to were pretty early in the empire. Livy, especially, who was born during the Republic, could see what had been lost. I should have specified that the imperial system is generally held in higher regard later in the imperial period. Tiberius was not a nice guy and certainly slipped from any high ideals he might have initially held later on in his reign - I don't mean to glorify him. He's just not a particularly bad emperor as emperors go, and he is one with a fascinating possible motivation for a lot of the actions he takes which have been treated as bizarre in most history that I've read. Edit: Nero, too, was a completely obnoxious teenager but not a bad emperor really. Caligula is the only Julio-Claudian that largely deserves his reputation. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Oct 8, 2012 |
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Oct 8, 2012 20:27
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Didn't even Caligula start off "good" but then turned completely batshit insane after a couple of years into his rule?
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Oct 8, 2012 23:05
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achillesforever6 posted:Didn't even Caligula start off "good" but then turned completely batshit insane after a couple of years into his rule? Good in the sense that he wasn't a complete goon when dealing with people, unlike Tiberius. Also, he had a very popular dad, so people were expecting him to be another Germanicus. And he pulled off some crazy parties and everyone was invited. But he was never a good administrator. And he was always a spoiled brat - that's what you get when you have the Roman Legions adopt you as their official mascot at age five or so and obey your commands and cheer for you. quote:To what extent besides he won their love and devotion by being reared in fellowship with them is especially evident from the fact that when they threatened mutiny after the death of Augustus and were ready for any act of madness, the mere sight of Gaius unquestionably calmed them. For they did not become quiet until they saw that he was being spirited away because of the danger from their outbreak and taken for protection to the nearest town. Then at last they became contrite, and laying hold of the carriage and stopping it, begged to be spared the disgrace which was being put upon them. After that, how can you not grow up to think that you are the awesomest person who ever lived?
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Oct 9, 2012 12:41
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The thing about Roman emperors, bad or good, is that they had to be really REALLY bad to actually begin having a strong negative effect on the average citizen. They were one guy in the Iron Age "ruling" this vast empire, but really just acting through a large bureaucracy. Consider that even today, with modern media and transportation, the average American really isn't all that affected by their president. How does Obama affect me? Not sure, something about healthcare? Do I have it yet? Dunno, maybe yes? I'm thousands of miles from DC and the most any president has directly altered my life is when he comes to town and fucks up traffic. Usually because he wants something (votes, money) or wants to look at hurricane damage. In the Roman Empire, the emperor usually didn't even do that much. The two groups of Romans most likely to be affected by the Emperor were the military and the Senate. Non-coincidentally, those were also the two groups most likely to affect the Emperor by assassinating him. For average provincial workaday citizens, the emperor could have been replaced by a parrot for a few years and not much would have changed in their daily lives. So modern day bad v. good Roman emperor retrospectives are about as relevant as a historian 2,000 years from now commenting on Glenn Beck opinions, is sort of what I'm saying. Nice to see Domitian finally getting an overhaul during the last decade though.
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Oct 9, 2012 14:16
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How did the Roman tax system work? With so many subjects, there must have been a huge tax base right? How large did the civil service have to be to manage it all?
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Oct 9, 2012 23:32
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Frosted Flake posted:How did the Roman tax system work? Just going to quote my post from page 36. There was a little more discussion after it if you're still curious. For context, a poster asked about Roman taxation and how it was referred to in the Bible. canuckanese posted:It was essentially "how much money can we squeeze out of the provinces?". By the time of the empire, Rome and Italy as a whole were no longer required to pay taxes, this responsibility was put entirely on the provinces. I may be mistaken though and it was only the war tax, called tributum, which paid for the legions that Rome/Italy were exempt from. Since that's what I'm most familiar with I can talk a little about that. Also since you asked about the Bible, Judea is a good example because it would have been a province and had to pay the tributum. Essentially what happened is that the Senate would say "we need X amount in taxes in order to pay for the legions this year" and each governor was required to provide a certain amount of that total. Beyond the total sum they needed to supply, there were no rules, and governors could tax as heavily as they wanted. Obviously if you over-tax though you risk rebellion, so it was essentially seeing how much you could get out of the provincials before they got significantly riled up. Actual tax collection duty could be done by Romans, but oftentimes leading members of the native populations would do it as a way of sucking up to the governor and potentially getting citizenship if they were loyal servants (plus they could also skim off the top and enrich themselves if they chose to). Many senators coveted governorships in rich provinces because they could use it as their personal piggy bank and as a way to enrich themselves. Your average person wouldn't know how much they were going to have to pay, and taxes were just a reason to hate the Romans. I believe there were certain tribes in Egypt (and probably elsewhere) who would simply go hide in the desert/hills when it came time to pay taxes, a practice which annoyed the Romans so much that they occasionally had to send troops after them to round them up and force them to pay the tax. Jamwad Hilder fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Oct 10, 2012 |
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Oct 10, 2012 00:14
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I have a demographics question about Rome. Is there any sources that talk about the birth rate decline and its direct effects on Roman society? I believe Augustus ended up passing a law to try and raise the birth rate, so it shows that it was a significant concern. Did Rome end up having an older age structure as the result of this, or did other factors like disease or famine prevent this from happening?
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Oct 10, 2012 00:28
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physeter posted:The thing about Roman emperors, bad or good, is that they had to be really REALLY bad to actually begin having a strong negative effect on the average citizen. They were one guy in the Iron Age "ruling" this vast empire, but really just acting through a large bureaucracy. Consider that even today, with modern media and transportation, the average American really isn't all that affected by their president. How does Obama affect me? Not sure, something about healthcare? Do I have it yet? Dunno, maybe yes? I'm thousands of miles from DC and the most any president has directly altered my life is when he comes to town and fucks up traffic. Usually because he wants something (votes, money) or wants to look at hurricane damage. In the Roman Empire, the emperor usually didn't even do that much. Pretty much this. I think Tacitus or Dio says the average person was 'indifferent' to Domitian's assassination, even though the sources talk him up as being a horrible emperor.
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Oct 10, 2012 01:22
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Frosted Flake posted:How did the Roman tax system work? Let's say you're governor of Cyrenaica during the good times of the 100s AD. The central government has decided Cyrenaica is rich and you, as governor, owe 1000 pounds of gold as your taxes this year. This must be collected. There's no Roman bureaucracy for this, no Roman IRS. What you do is hire private contractors. A number of them will make bids on how much money they can bring you. Contractor A says he'll collect 2000 pounds, take 500 for himself and give the rest to you. B says he'll collect 1600, take 400 and give you the rest. C will collect 1400, keep 300 and give the rest. You will first notice that all of those are well above the 1000 required. Everybody's got to get their beak wet, right? Why would you have taken governorship of a rich province if not to get rich yourself? You decide to go with B. You'd make the most with A, but 2000 pounds is a lot of tax and you might end up with your head on a pike. C is a bit low, but B seems like the right quantity of graft without being so high you'll cause a revolt. You hire the contractor, and he and his people go out in the province and collect money by whatever means necessary. When they're done, they deliver it to you. The contractor gets 400 pounds as payment, you keep 200 for yourself, and the other 1000 gets sent to Rome. Taxes done. Obviously this system in no way lent itself to abuse and did not ever make people angry.
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Oct 10, 2012 01:24
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Private contractors? I'm reminded of someone's idea of a libertarian utopia. Would anyone care to go there, i.e. evaluate the Roman empire using the criteria of libertarianism?
Vorgen fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Oct 10, 2012 |
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Oct 10, 2012 02:16
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gently caress you, got mine is the way most pre-modern societies worked.
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Oct 10, 2012 02:17
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You'll also notice that many libertarians have a Roman Republic fetish, it ties into their idea of citizenship and patriotism, and they love saying that the republic collapsed into empire because of demagoguery and populism. I've seen people compare Obama to Caesar, saying he was going to take over the country with the support of the filthy masses he attracts with handouts stolen from the noble yeoman farmer-citizen. The implications of this, namely that America is a country of a few incredibly wealthy plutocrats and a large mass of property-less destitute, and that this is a good thing, fly right over their heads of course. (Or not?  )
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Oct 10, 2012 02:53
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Grand Fromage posted:gently caress you, got mine is the way American society works. Fixed that So has anyone been watching the Caligula thing? I just realized it was on but they're way into it. e: They were just talking about the fact ancient historians often exaggerated like hell because they didn't like him, so it can't be all bad right? Right?? Amused to Death fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Oct 10, 2012 |
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Oct 10, 2012 03:32
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Say, why is the Byzantine Empire called, well, the Byzantine Empire? Asd I recall, they just called themselves Romans, because who the hell wouldn't, right? So where did 'Byzantium' come from?
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Oct 10, 2012 05:15
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Later historians invented it. I think Gibbon might be responsible but I'm not sure. It was never used at the time or for at least a couple centuries after. The name Byzantium itself comes from the Greek city that was there before Constantinople was built.
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Oct 10, 2012 05:20
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Why the distinction, though? Was the Eastern Empire really all that different from the West, or is it some kind of historical 'shorthand'? It all sounds a bit disingenuous if you ask me, since it seems to indicate the Byzantines were a completely different, though Roman-inspired civilization.
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Oct 10, 2012 05:50
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It's a matter of debate, but most modern Roman historians (as far as I know) don't even use the name anymore. There's no real distinction. Medieval Roman Empire is a better term for the period.
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Oct 10, 2012 05:53
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Was Gibbon the origin of the whole Byzantine thing or does it predate him?
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Oct 10, 2012 06:13
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I don't know. That was around the period when it was invented but I don't know by whom.
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Oct 10, 2012 06:14
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Some 16th century German dude collected a bunch of historical sources and named it Corpus Historiae Byzantinae, which was afaik the first recorded use of the term. In the 17th century there was also a French collection of sources collected as the Byzantine du Louvre
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Oct 10, 2012 07:00
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Grand Fromage posted:Let's say you're governor of Cyrenaica during the good times of the 100s AD. The central government has decided Cyrenaica is rich and you, as governor, owe 1000 pounds of gold as your taxes this year. This must be collected. Did the collectors set actual laws and rates or did they just take money from whoever was on the street that day?
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Oct 10, 2012 09:09
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Baron Porkface posted:Did the collectors set actual laws and rates or did they just take money from whoever was on the street that day? It varied alot from the Republic to the Empire, but in general the further back we get the less the roman state itselves wanted to have to do with the provinces and that includes taxing the crap out of them; They prefered client-kingdoms over provinces and they prefered local publicani (The name for the private tax collectors, see also: The Bible) to do their fleecing for them. It's just plain cheaper. I do know that seizing peoples children for slavery if they couldn't pay was a perfectly acceptable option that was frequently invoked by the publicani. I've also read mentions about publicani who could occasionally operate like business conglomerates of today by selling "shares" in squeezing a province, with kickbacks at the end of the season. As far as I know, the tax-rate was fixed up until the reforms of Diocletian so technically the rich would pay more. In practice, especially as the empire progressed, the ultra-rich instead started to just institutionalize the practice of bribing the tax-man until he went away and instead squeezed lucius the pig-farmer for a few solidii more instead.
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Oct 10, 2012 10:08
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Grand Fromage posted:Let's say you're governor of Cyrenaica during the good times of the 100s AD. The central government has decided Cyrenaica is rich and you, as governor, owe 1000 pounds of gold as your taxes this year. This must be collected.
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Oct 10, 2012 12:20
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Just a wee reminder that this is not an American politics thread.
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Oct 10, 2012 13:46
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Grand Fromage posted:It's a matter of debate, but most modern Roman historians (as far as I know) don't even use the name anymore. There's no real distinction. Medieval Roman Empire is a better term for the period. One peculiar thing is that the term "Byzantine" is even used in Modern Greek: If you look at the article in the Greek Wikipedia you will find that they call it Βυζαντινή Αυτοκρατορία (Vyzantiní̱ Af̱tokratoría) rather than some variation on the historical term Basileia tōn Rhōmaiōn. Why they would use this "western", originally derogatory term for the state is an open question.
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Oct 10, 2012 14:19
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I don't think it was derogatory, just a more modern invention that has, in my opinion, hosed up the way the history of the Roman Empire is told. I see articles all the time saying the Roman Empire lasted 400 years. Even when they're not being that dumb, there's a whole thousand years that gets marginalized. I also think academic rivalries play a role. Medievalists don't want classicists taking that back. I've found--in general--that Roman historians don't make any distinction while a good number of medievalists will insist the Byzantine Empire is a totally separate thing that has no relationship to the prior Roman Empire.
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Oct 10, 2012 14:54
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As a crusty 38 year old I admit I still use Byzantine but that's just more force of habit and a general policy of staunch resistance to the fads of academic nomenclature. I also don't use BCE, because suck it Trebeck. But I was always on the side of recognizing continuation of the Empire and hope the term itself is gone with my generation. It really is dumb and ahistorical.
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Oct 10, 2012 17:22
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Kopijeger posted:One peculiar thing is that the term "Byzantine" is even used in Modern Greek: If you look at the article in the Greek Wikipedia you will find that they call it Βυζαντινή Αυτοκρατορία (Vyzantiní̱ Af̱tokratoría) rather than some variation on the historical term Basileia tōn Rhōmaiōn. Why they would use this "western", originally derogatory term for the state is an open question. Byzantium was the Greek name for the city before it was called Constantinople. Byzantium was founded by Greeks, and in many ways the later Eastern Roman Empire was culturally Hellenic and ruled by Greek emperors, so it doesn't surprise me that modern Greek would use the name that emphasizes the Greek-ness of the Eastern empire and not the Roman-ness.
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Oct 10, 2012 17:45
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physeter posted:As a crusty 38 year old I admit I still use Byzantine but that's just more force of habit and a general policy of staunch resistance to the fads of academic nomenclature. I also don't use BCE, because suck it Trebeck. But I was always on the side of recognizing continuation of the Empire and hope the term itself is gone with my generation. It really is dumb and ahistorical. I've always felt BCE/CE was like a terrible joke someone convinced the historical community to accept. It doesn't actually change anything since they're still using the old "Christian" calendar, they've just added a thin veneer of dubious "secularity" on top of it. Of course since this is the Roman thread, we should be using a date based on the years since the "founding" of Rome, so happy 2765 AUC everyone I guess. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Oct 10, 2012 |
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Oct 10, 2012 18:56
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How much impact did the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans have on the European voyages of exploration in the 15th-16th (17th?) century? I've heard that when the city fell a buncha Greek scholars fled west, and kinda kicked off the renaissance and so forth.
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Oct 10, 2012 19:18
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Tao Jones posted:Byzantium was the Greek name for the city before it was called Constantinople. Byzantium was founded by Greeks, and in many ways the later Eastern Roman Empire was culturally Hellenic and ruled by Greek emperors, so it doesn't surprise me that modern Greek would use the name that emphasizes the Greek-ness of the Eastern empire and not the Roman-ness. Perhaps, but "Constantinopolis" is an obviously Greek name as well, and one that it would make more sense to use in the context you describe.
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Oct 10, 2012 20:25
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Kopijeger posted:Perhaps, but "Constantinopolis" is an obviously Greek name as well, and one that it would make more sense to use in the context you describe. "Constantinopolis" is Latin. And Constantine was Roman. Kōnstantinoupolis/Konstantinoúpoli is Greek, but it's just a Greek transliteration of the Latin name. The ironic thing is that "Byzantium" comes originally from Thracian or Illyrian. DarkCrawler fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Oct 10, 2012 |
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Oct 10, 2012 21:22
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DarkCrawler posted:"Constantinopolis" is Latin. And Constantine was Roman. Kōnstantinoupolis/Konstantinoúpoli is Greek, but it's just a Greek transliteration of the Latin name. Pretty sure "-polis" comes from the greek πόλις meaning "city". Unless I am gravely mistaken, the Latin equivalent would be "urbs". The name may have been coined by Latin-speakers, but it still seems to be a Greek name.
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Oct 10, 2012 21:36
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:"founding" of Rome, so happy 2765 AUC everyone I guess. In the consulship of Obama and Biden, if you please 
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Oct 10, 2012 22:14
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