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Noahdraron posted:Do we have any evidence that the armies of late antiquity were really getting a lot smaller? It seems that the further you go back, the more ridiculously inflated the troop numbers get because earlier historians basically just made poo poo up and if there were a lot of Gauls coming into Italy they were like "I'm not counting that, let's say it's 200.000". It is very hard to judge. We have rough estimates of how populated Rome was at various times, so we can guess that the historians would not have a barbarian forces show up that were 5-10 times the population of Rome. We know for example the Cimbri and Tuetones we entire peoples migrating, so their numbers were large, maybe like 50000 cimbri and 100000 Tuetones or whatever. We can kinda reliably say it was in the multiple hundred thousands of invading dudes in 110 BC or whenever it was (it's late).
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Oct 26, 2012 09:44
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Kaal posted:Fundamentally, Russian socialists needed a leader to embody their revolution, and Lenin carried out that role. But there are any number of senior revolutionaries who could have taken his place. What makes Lenin such a good example of this, is that when he died five years after the revolution he was so easily replaced by Stalin. The USSR continued apace under his leadership, and in much the same way for many years. Whereas Stalin represents a much more visceral type of leader figure, much more in common with those famous old Romans. The USSR without Stalin would have been radically different. Similarly, Rome without Augustus would have been radically different - it may well have remained a Republic. I think you are needlessly dividing history in set periods. Consider the lack of information; we don't know what the general opinion in the senate and in the public was considering handing power over to one person. For all we know there would have been another Augustus. Remember that we look at history through the lens of two thousand years of the Great Men theory of history. Augustus would probably not have been able to do what he did if he was born 200 years before his time. You say on the one hand that modern history is shaped much more by groups of people and philosophical opinions (well, you know what I mean) and that ancient history is shaped much more by individuals. I contest that, people haven't fundamentally changed since antiquity.
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Oct 26, 2012 10:30
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Would it be fair to say that the late Roman republic was gradually trending towards some particularly wealthy individuals consolidating their power over the government apparatus? Where Sulla failed, Augustus succeeded. So was it only a matter of time before someone eventually seized the day and became dictator-for-life?
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Oct 26, 2012 12:23
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Phobophilia posted:Would it be fair to say that the late Roman republic was gradually trending towards some particularly wealthy individuals consolidating their power over the government apparatus? Where Sulla failed, Augustus succeeded. So was it only a matter of time before someone eventually seized the day and became dictator-for-life? I didn't know enough about Rome to give an example but this is the general idea of what I mean. Except that wikipedia tells me that Sulla gave up his power voluntarily. Still, it shows that it was totally possible to get as high as that and Augustus was not some special übermensch taking his rightful place as ruler on his rightful throne. Not to diminish what he did, but a society and it's current zeitgeist produces the setting and the actors. The actors operate within the framework of the society (usually by being a charismatic individual and inspiring or commanding other groups of people, see how easy it is to just say "Augustus won this and this battle" and leaving out Agrippa) and in turn shape it. This is how it worked in antiquity and how it still works.
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Oct 26, 2012 12:40
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Sulla didn't fail.
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Oct 26, 2012 12:41
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euphronius posted:Sulla didn't fail. Yeah, he's like the one of the few persons in Roman history who achieved everything he exactly wanted. "Yup, it's all good. Restored the republic. Time to retire and spend my days loving hot dudes." *And he lived happily ever after*
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Oct 26, 2012 12:48
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Whatevs I don't know gently caress all about roman history 
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Oct 26, 2012 12:58
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Speaking to the Great Man theory of history and the general disdain it currently attracts, I have no problem with it. The disdain I mean, in that I think it's academically healthy. But that shouldn't lead us to fail to apply simple statistical thinking to human society. In a large enough sample, there will be outliers. No one has a problem looking at England during the mid-1600s and admitting, "Ok, that's an outlier". Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton at the same time? Way to roll snake eyes in the gene pool, England. You've got these two, and other exceptionally gifted people, associating with each other, and in two generations you've laid the foundation of what will be modern science. And...there's not much more to say about that (other than: holy loving poo poo). You can argue that with similar environmental conditions somewhere else the same thing would have happened, but I'd disagree and frankly, it's infeasible to prove or disprove it. The Roman Civil Wars weren't terrifically different. You've got a handful of military & political leaders over about 4 generations, quite of few of which are actually blood relations to some degree, associating with and mentoring each other. And the level of military and political leadership rises accordingly. To not call it remarkable is silly, as we are remarking on it. But semantics aside I would go further and call it extraordinary, not as a reference to my personal astonishment, but extraordinary in that a statistical outlier was occurring. To examine any historical period that evidences extraordinary contributions and dismiss it as observer bias ignores probability, reason and mathematics. On a long enough timeline, eventually human talent will express itself in an statistically significant outlier, and may very well do so in a discrete geographic region. In fact, they are more likely to do so, to the extent that genetics and early environmental conditions are the causative agents. physeter fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Oct 26, 2012 |
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Oct 26, 2012 14:11
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physeter posted:Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton at the same time? Way to roll snake eyes in the gene pool, England. You've got these two, and other exceptionally gifted people, associating with each other, and in two generations you've laid the foundation of what will be modern science. And...there's not much more to say about that (other than: holy loving poo poo). You can argue that with similar environmental conditions somewhere else the same thing would have happened, but I'd disagree and frankly, it's infeasible to prove or disprove it. Newton and Hooke would have been absolutely wasted if England at the time was still in the stone age. That's what I meant that a society produces the remarkable individual. Without the framework of society Great Men can't exist. And in turn the great people shape the ideas, technologies and direction of the society.
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Oct 26, 2012 15:16
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Namarrgon posted:Newton and Hooke would have been absolutely wasted if England at the time was still in the stone age. That's what I meant that a society produces the remarkable individual. Without the framework of society Great Men can't exist. And in turn the great people shape the ideas, technologies and direction of the society. I'm not taking issue with that, only the idea that all periods are equally great, but we only remember some of them with particular affection. All artistic movements are not the Florentine School, all intellectual exchanges are not Gresham College. And all wars are not the Roman Civil Wars. There's no harm in acknowledging human exceptionalism where it undeniably occurs.
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Oct 26, 2012 15:39
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DarkCrawler posted:Yeah, he's like the one of the few persons in Roman history who achieved everything he exactly wanted. "Yup, it's all good. Restored the republic. Time to retire and spend my days loving hot dudes." I thought he banged chicks?
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Oct 26, 2012 17:00
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euphronius posted:Sulla didn't fail. He did in the end. His goal in his reforms was to set up the system so no one could ever do what he did and take over. But that genie was not going back in the bottle once he and Marius showed that it existed.
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Oct 26, 2012 17:18
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Since the Romans watered down their wine, i'm kinda curious about the quality of water throughout the empire. I'm guessing in Rome itself, it was pretty good because of the aqueducts. But what about other places throughout the empire. Did people drink water in their daily diets, or was it more alcohol based?
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Oct 26, 2012 17:22
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At least he was dead by the time his system fell apart, so he had a better abdication track record than Diocletian.
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Oct 26, 2012 17:24
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Rincewind posted:At least he was dead by the time his system fell apart, so he had a better abdication track record than Diocletian. I love picturing Diocletian coming back and just shouting CHRIST NOT THIS poo poo AGAIN at everyone. Water quality was pretty good. The Romans didn't have germ theory but they had a general understanding of sanitation, and Roman sanitation was the best in the western world until modern times. They didn't drink where they shat--clean water was brought in through aqueducts and was always flowing, which helps keep it from getting full of gross. There were public drinking fountains everywhere, Rome still has these today. Can't really quantify how much water they drank but from the evidence of the water systems I'd guess it was common. They didn't need to purify water with alcohol the way other cultures did. This is assuming you're in a city of course. Which any true Roman was. 
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Oct 26, 2012 17:27
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WoodrowSkillson posted:I thought he banged chicks? He did (and had children), but well, according to Plutarch this happened. quote:Before he left Rome however, Sulla confirmed long standing rumors about his own sexual behavior to a shocked audience. He announced that Metrobius, a famous actor, had been his lifetime lover. As he left Rome, he was accompanied by a large contingent of actors, dancers and prostitutes in a final act of disdain. It just sounds like such an awesome thing that I always have to mention it, but take it with a grain of salt, I guess. There were a lot of rumors about his sexuality either way and he never bothered to disprove them (unlike Caesar, for example).
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Oct 26, 2012 20:24
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Sulla was notorious for being something of a womanizer, and essentially made his first fortune by winning the inheritance of a rich widow. He went through five wives, and was known for having many mistresses besides (he was known for gathering around him a clique of musicians, actors and actresses in regular parties). edit: I should mention that Sulla's reputation for debauchery has a lot to do with the fact that actors were so looked down upon by the Roman elite classes. The Equites pretty much saw them as being little more than prostitutes that refused to be quiet. At least a local brothel keeper could be trusted to keep a secret, instead of coming up with clever quips that entertained the plebeians and made the Equites look bad. quote:The circumstances surrounding Sulla’s initial years of adult independence had a tremendous impact on the growth of his personal habits and characteristics. Without the benefit of “a paternal mansion or a hearth of his own,”[4] Sulla lived in a rented apartment space. His meager housing, located in the lower half of a building rented for a mere three thousand sesterces per year (Plut. Sulla, 1), left Sulla to pursue personal happiness through more non-traditional pursuits. Sulla was notorious in particular throughout Roman society for his love of the theatre and the company of actors, a fairly despised crowd among aristocratic patrician circles in Rome at the time. Nevertheless, this did not deter Sulla from seeking out their company. After all, “it was natural that the warm blooded Sulla, with his strong capacity for forming friendships, should turn to where he would find a welcome,” something that was certainly true about the “theatre folk, a clique…who did not care if he had few coins to jingle in his pocket.”[5] Traveling in these circles, Sulla developed a penchant for humour and comedic plays. He also cultivated a reputation for being a pleasure seeker and carouser. Plutarch remarks that Sulla was given to gathering around him “the most noted players and buffoons,” and even in his later years, “drink and join them with licentious wit,” (Plut. Sulla, 2). It may be the case that as Charles Oman suggests, Sulla was “making up for the enjoyments of which he had been defrauded in his young days.”[6] If these sources can be believed, Sulla had a tremendous personality driven by the motivation to make up for his poor childhood and the need to enjoy life’s pleasures to the fullest extent. Kaal fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Oct 26, 2012 |
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Oct 26, 2012 20:46
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Grand Fromage posted:I love picturing Diocletian coming back and just shouting CHRIST NOT THIS poo poo AGAIN at everyone. Every time I hear someone swing to the opposite of the "Great Man" theory (what is the official name for that, circumstantial history?) I think about Diocletian and how that system fell apart almost overnight without his personal touch. Then again, by all accounts, during a vast portion of Imperial history life would have chugged along unchanged if they'd appointed Caligula's horse to the purple. Maybe better since horses don't spend money on pleasure domes.
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Oct 26, 2012 22:40
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I think the best conclusion to draw from this is, as Namarrgon says, society provides the groundwork for Great People to flourish, and in return they influence the society. Like in this modern age, institutions like universities and corporations are fertile grounds for particularly clever scientists and innovators and entertainers. But if there were to be an asteroid strike and we end up in The Road, someone who would otherwise make great contributions to biology or physics can't do poo poo and instead it'd be whoever can warlord it up over a tribe of bandits and raiders.
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Oct 27, 2012 01:04
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There was certainly less subtlety in affairs of state in those days. I think of when Antony tried to give Caesar a crown in front of a crowd after his first triumph, and Caesar denying him three times. Each time the crowd went wild. It definitely owes to the mentality that the Roman elite held of 'the people' being generally incapable of comprehending politics that they deigned to show themselves off like professional wrestlers. After all, Augustus' funerary inscription is probably the best CV in the world, regardless of whether he deserved as much credit as he gave himself.
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Oct 27, 2012 01:28
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DarkCrawler posted:Yeah, he's like the one of the few persons in Roman history who achieved everything he exactly wanted. "Yup, it's all good. Restored the republic. Time to retire and spend my days loving hot dudes." 
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Oct 27, 2012 01:36
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Agesilaus posted:Yeah, unless you lot have particular examples to complain about, then this is all just baseless whinging. Academic classicists and historians have their place, even if their views and motives are a tad pedestrian; point is not to read the classics and dig things up for the mere sake of it, but to study them as part of one's education in the good. Could you please stop making GBS threads on the people who are the only reason you can even read many of these texts in the first place? I know I'm not the only classical scholar in this thread who's getting tired of reading this kind of thing from you. Bel_Canto fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Oct 27, 2012 |
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Oct 27, 2012 02:36
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QCIC posted:There was certainly less subtlety in affairs of state in those days. I think of when Antony tried to give Caesar a crown in front of a crowd after his first triumph, and Caesar denying him three times. Each time the crowd went wild. Yeah, but you have to admit there's a lot of this in modern politics; there's a tonne of media publicity and public events for the candidates in the upcoming American election to show themselves off. Politicians giving soundbites, doing various talk show and debate appearance, etc. It's not like they're giving each other crowns, but major candidates have large media presence and plenty of people working on their public relations and appearance. achillesforever6 posted:Cincinnatus did it better Is there a source on Cincinnatus' sex life post-dictatorship? Bel_Canto posted:Could you please stop making GBS threads on the people who are the only reason you can even read many of these texts in the first place? I know I'm not the only classical scholar in this thread who's getting tired of reading this kind of thing from you. Read the post you quoted; if you have a specific example, refer to it. Better yet, take it up in PM so you don't poo poo up the thread talking about me. Otherwise, quit your baseless, vague whinging, because this thread isn't about you or me. You're not the reason I can read the classics (lmao), you're not the only classical scholar, and you're not the only one with an opinion. Get back on topic. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 27, 2012 02:52
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Except that in the republican era, canvassing was done to appeal to clientes who would in turn compel their patrons to vote in whichever way. There was no pretense of direct representation until the principate, and that illusion fell away pretty quickly after the first few pleasure domes.
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Oct 27, 2012 03:35
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achillesforever6 posted:Cincinnatus did it better Cincinnatus is almost certainly fictional.
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Oct 27, 2012 05:17
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QCIC posted:Except that in the republican era, canvassing was done to appeal to clientes who would in turn compel their patrons to vote in whichever way. There was no pretense of direct representation until the principate, and that illusion fell away pretty quickly after the first few pleasure domes. Cicero's little book on how to win elections is delightfully cynical and probably still applicable to modern politics, no matter how crazy the Roman election system seems in comparison to the entirely logical and rational and pure American System. 
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Oct 27, 2012 06:03
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Can any of you roman scholars guess what this thing represents?
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Oct 27, 2012 07:40
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Thats the she-wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus and I think that is Trajan but beyond that no idea.
WoodrowSkillson fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Oct 27, 2012 |
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Oct 27, 2012 07:45
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Komet posted:Cincinnatus is almost certainly fictional. Really? I know Wikipedia is Wikipedia but it seems to treat him like a real person and mentions nothing about that.
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Oct 27, 2012 08:04
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Thats the she-wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus and I think that is Trajan but beyond that no idea. Pretty much, its a statue in front of a Bucharest museum representing emperor Trajan (teh father of the romanian people) holding a hybrid between romulus&remus' dog and the wolf head with a snake body which was the flag/symbol of the dacians (teh other fathers of the romanian people) There are a ton of statues of Trajan in Romania and a lot of schools/children/places/etc are named after him, besides a lot of other Roman themed stuff (like for example in my city theres a highschool, an university and a plaza named after the poet Ovid, because he was exiled and died here) but growing up with all this crap you never realize how ridiculous it all is until someone puts up a horrible statue like that one.
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Oct 27, 2012 09:30
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lil sartre posted:Can any of you roman scholars guess what this thing represents? "Don't judge me"?
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Oct 27, 2012 18:29
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lil sartre posted:Can any of you roman scholars guess what this thing represents?
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Oct 27, 2012 18:59
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DarkCrawler posted:Really? I know Wikipedia is Wikipedia but it seems to treat him like a real person and mentions nothing about that. It depends how critical of the traditional narratives for early Roman history you want to be. Wikipedia articles tend to fall into the-not-at-all-critical camp while at the other extreme some modern historians have discarded pretty much everything The first Roman historians lived a couple of hundred years after Cincinnatus' supposed victory. Since obviously they can not have witnessed the events themselves, any authentic information about Cincinnatus would have had to reach them through intermediates. The most secure evidence available to them (and to us) is the list of consuls as these are almost certain to ultimately derive from some kind of official Roman written record of who was consul each year kept by the Roman priesthoods, and the fixed format of such a list meant that if you wanted add or alter names you couldn't just say that it was a never before written down story told to you by your grandfather or something. You'd have to claim that everyone else's lists had holes in them or had gotten some names wrong. (This did not prevent people from trying though, and over time the early sections of the list might have unintentionally been corrupted) It's quite possible that in addition to noting the names of the consuls for each year, short notices of really notable events were also recorded (handy if you want to check if that strange omen has any historical parallels). So beneath the names of the consuls for 458 BC there might have been written something like "L. Quinctius Cincinnatus, the Dictator, won a great victory over the Aequi". But all the details would have had to come through the oral tradition. While it's possible that something like the true story could have been transmitted, it's also possible that over the years it had become transformed out of recognition, including assigning it to the wrong person. However we don't have direct access to the early Roman historians, not to mention the sources they were using, the earliest surviving histories were written in the 1st century BC, so we can't confirm that the story of Cincinnatus has a basis in genuine 5th century records or even reflect 3rd century oral traditions. As already mentioned, the consular lists at the very least are unlikely to have been invented out of nothing, but Cincinnatus was not consul, he was dictator and inventing new dictatorships would have been much easier since the irregular nature of that office meant that you could invent new dictators without displacing existing ones. The same with his suffect consulship, the perfect solution if you want to give the man a consulship without having to invalidate the existing record. To summarize, the story of Cincinnatus rests on pretty shaky evidence and there's nothing in it that could not conceivably have been invented down the road (or be a dim memory of some other event, such as the victory of the dictator T. Quinctius Cincinnatus over Praeneste, traditionally dated to 380 BC), but we can't conclusively prove that it has no historical foundation either.
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Oct 27, 2012 19:08
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Don't forget family records. We think that probably aristocratic families kept records of their eminent ancestors as they went. It's hard to say how much of this was true but elaborated and how much was totally nuts etc., but still, there may have been ways to figure out who was consul when back to a certain point. Generally things in the 4th century are more believable than anything before that, to me, and the third and second centuries are reasonably well attested. I have never heard that Cincinnatus was fake. In general for ancient history (especially history that was ancient to the ancients) you should take all really dramatic stuff with a big bowl of salt, but things can be got out of the sources, and sometimes they fit with archaeology in interesting (and unexpected) ways. This is a big debate in Roman history. The major players are Cornell (Beginnings of Rome) and Wiseman (Unwritten Rome). Cornell's view can also be read to a lesser extent out of the Cambridge Ancient History, which is online and many universities have a subscription to it. Very very often Roman stories do seem to mirror Greek events, so those are a bit tricky. The whole Fabii thing with Veii, for example. I think the plow thing is one of those but I'm too lazy to go hunting through sources to back it up. I read Everitt's Cicero book and it was rubbish. I don't remember exactly why, but it just felt flimsy. Cicero is probably the ancient figure about whom we know the most and yet the fictionalized books by Harris feel much more historical and authentic than Everitt. 
Eggplant Wizard fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Oct 28, 2012 |
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Oct 28, 2012 01:54
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I also have never heard anything about Cincinnatus being fake. The details of the story were very likely invented by later writers to make it a better morality tale but I don't think it's a common opinion that it never happened at all.
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Oct 28, 2012 02:29
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"Cincinnatus was fake." "Pythagoras never existed." You guys are bumming me out. Next you're going to tell me that Corolianus never got spanked by his mother or that Mark Anthony was a figment of Octavian's imagination.
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Oct 28, 2012 06:03
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Mark Anthony is actually a lovely singer, not a Roman figure. Always remember that ancient historians were not interested in writing down unbiased facts. Mixing myth and reality and changing the story to suit a political/moral purpose were totally okay. Not even worth mentioning. So you always have to read the primary sources with this in the front of your mind. I'm not saying that modern history is all objective and never does this so don't go there. The way ancient historians did it is different. The very concept of an objective telling of the facts wouldn't have occurred to anyone.
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Oct 28, 2012 07:28
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sullat posted:"Cincinnatus was fake." "Pythagoras never existed." You guys are bumming me out. Next you're going to tell me that Corolianus never got spanked by his mother or that Mark Anthony was a figment of Octavian's imagination. I have no idea why somebody would deny that Pythagoras existed. Somebody had to start pythagoreanism.
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Oct 28, 2012 08:20
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Suenteus Po posted:I have no idea why somebody would deny that Pythagoras existed. Somebody had to start pythagoreanism. The big meat/big bean agenda in this country doesn't want you to know the truth.
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Oct 28, 2012 09:45
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Gazpacho posted:Wait, so this means that what Jesus is described doing at the Cana marriage is what anyone serving wine in that culture would have done (pouring water into casks and then pouring out drinkable wine). Well, no, if I recall they ran out of wine altogether. The authors of the Gospels weren't quite so dumb as to claim as amazing something that everyone did. 'And then Jesus performed a miracle; he feed the 5000, by going down to Costco and buying a poo poo-ton of hearty Italian and getting a bulk deal on frozen cod!'
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Oct 28, 2012 12:17
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