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feedmegin posted:'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!' That's pretty much what the story is about anyway. "Prince of Peace, also Prince of the Party!"
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Oct 28, 2012 18:06
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Grand Fromage posted:I'm not saying that modern history is all objective and never does this so don't go there.  "An animal is completely useless if it loses its eyesight, and in the same way history without truth has as little educational value as a yarn." Read a little Polybius, or don't, apparently that's not part of "an objective telling of the facts".
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Oct 28, 2012 19:53
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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 20:03
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Agesilaus posted:
Stop. Just stop. Please. Polybius and his spiritual predecessor Thucydides stand out because they did their best to be objective, and even then they failed, crediting their friends with no possible wrongdoing and slandering the hell out of their enemies. The fact of the matter is that there is more of Herodotus and Homer about ancient historians than of Thucydides and Polybius, and even then, the objective of saying this is not to say "this was all bullshit, discount it", but "they came from a storytelling culture and had a habit of embellishing, don't trust until you can verify". (Also, incidentally, while I have no idea where you grew up, you claim to work in Illinois, which makes the Britishisms (like "whinge"; the US version is "whine") look a little silly. Just a tip.)
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Oct 28, 2012 20:19
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I love me my Thucydides and he's a real hero to me because he tried to be objective. But the dude takes every chance to poo poo on Cleon and his whole chapter on Amphipolis basically reads as "It wasn't my fault guys, for real. Nothing I could have done about it. Can I, can I come back now? Please?"
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Oct 28, 2012 20:28
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Besesoth posted:Stop. Just stop. Please. "The very concept of an objective telling of the facts wouldn't have occurred to anyone." Stop pretending like he said something different than that "the very concept of an objective telling of the facts wouldn't have occurred to anyone." This is a thread about Roman history, so you'll forgive me if I point out that the above statement was based on nothing more than modern imagination. Some people have a bad habit of ragging on the ancients, and in this thread especially that needs to be moderated. Stay on topic, too; I'm not from the US originally and until today I had no idea that "whinge" wasn't used here. If it makes you feel better, pretend that I told you to stop whining. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 28, 2012 20:34
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Agesilaus posted:"The very concept of an objective telling of the facts wouldn't have occurred to anyone." Says the man who thinks the Illiad is true fact. Look, that Thucy et. al. had to sit down and say 'I'm going to report the things I saw myself or heard from multiple sources' means they were deliberately creating a contrast between themselves and their peers. Thucydides is not above commenting on how some historians *cough*Herodotus*cough* don't abide by his standards. And yet, I'mma gonna reiterate, he was a very biased writer who had his own take on the war and the people involved.
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Oct 28, 2012 20:46
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Besesoth posted:Stop. Just stop. Please. And even after Leopold von Ranke gave the study of history some form of methodology, we were (and still are) stuck with the same story telling standards in that the best selling history books (whether in book stores or when it comes to receiving government grants) are inspiring morality stories or mythical tales about national heroes, facts be damned. And any history book trying to represent world history across centuries is pretty much Looney Toons history. What is worse is that historians have systematically ignored 50% (and more) of mankind until very lately.
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Oct 28, 2012 20:50
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I am proud of the fact that my history teacher taught me to not only consider if a source was primry, secondary, or tertiary, but also to consider the motivations and culture behind someone who wrote them
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Oct 28, 2012 21:12
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Agesilaus posted:Stop pretending like he said something different than that "the very concept of an objective telling of the facts wouldn't have occurred to anyone." This is a thread about Roman history, so you'll forgive me if I point out that the above statement was based on nothing more than modern imagination. Some people have a bad habit of ragging on the ancients, and in this thread especially that needs to be moderated. Nobody is pretending that. He made a generalization about ancient historians that is, as it happens, largely correct. Instead of replying with "Well, not anyone; Polybius, for example, did his best to be objective...", you were passive-aggressive, smug, and snotty, and now you're hiding behind "WELL HE WASN'T LITERALLY CORRECT THEREFORE HE WAS ENTIRELY WRONG ALSO MAI ANCIENTS  " when we called you on it.And this is a pattern with you. You are smug and snotty and belie your love for but lack of formal education in and vast misunderstanding of ancient history and culture at very nearly every turn, and then you whine (see?) when you're called on it. So I'm asking you to please stop it. Show at least a trivial amount of self-awareness, and have at least a trivial amount of respect for the field - the one you called "pedestrian" a dozen or two posts ago - which allowed you, in all your non-formal-education-having glory, to be exposed to this subject in the first place. Please.
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Oct 28, 2012 22:16
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Take it to PM, I'm very willing to discuss your complaints about me privately. The personal attacks just distract from a good thread. My bottom line on the topic is this: The claim that "the very concept of an objective telling of the facts wouldn't have occurred to anyone" is incorrect and misleads people. The statement is part of a larger myth about backwards ancients being ignorant of basic ideas. I gave a quote, and referred to a Roman-era author who spoke at length about universal history, research methods, and the importance of fairness, truth, and accuracy.
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Oct 28, 2012 22:45
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Eggplant Witch posted: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. The theory that Cincinnatus never existed is put forward by Gary Forsythe in his book on early Roman history http://www.amazon.co.uk/Critical-History-Early-Rome-Prehistory/dp/0520249917/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1351461299&sr=1-1 sullat posted: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. Sorry for taking your joke too seriously, but the fundamental difference between these two is of course that it would take a Fomenko level of effort to remove Marcus Antonius from history while the story Coriolanus, like the story of Cincinnatus, is self-contained and a sceptical person could remove all it without leaving big open scars (it's even made a plot point that Coriolanus was never elected consul) A point in favour though of the story Coriolanus having a historical origin is the clan-based society it seems to describe
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Oct 28, 2012 23:10
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the JJ posted:Says the man who thinks the Illiad is true fact.  Man, I'm sure glad that my fanfic of me traveling back in time and becoming a Greek God and marrying Athena never got that far or on the internet. As for a question, who was that soldier in Caesar's army that after a battle had a shield with hundreds of spears stuck to it?
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Oct 28, 2012 23:24
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achillesforever6 posted:As for a question, who was that soldier in Caesar's army that after a battle had a shield with hundreds of spears stuck to it? Caesar himself at the Battle of Munda. The legions were hesitant to attack the more fortified Pompeiian army, and Caesar forced them attack by allowing the enemy legions to throw their pila at him. According to the story he could not dodge them all, and took the rest on his shield, leaving it stuck full of them.
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Oct 29, 2012 01:08
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Agesilaus posted:The statement is part of a larger myth about backwards ancients being ignorant of basic ideas. No, it isn't. It's a statement about the differences in culture and the approach to the idea of fact. In our modern post-Enlightenment culture, we view facts as a firm piece of data. If you're reporting on the size of an army, you say there were precisely 53,680 soldiers because it was divided into X number of regiments and the Soviets used a regimental size of Y and etc etc. An ancient historian would not think of facts that way. He would know it was a large army, so he would come up with a nice big number. Two hundred thousand men or half a million or whatever sounded best for the story. Especially if you're a Greek and writing about our plucky Alexander beating up Persians. Let's use that example, the Battle of Gaugamela. Alexander was quite outnumbered by the Persians. Modern estimates usually put the Macedonian army around 50K and the Persians at at least 100K. For ancient source let's use Arrian, who said Darius' force was a million men versus Alexander's 47,000. Now, to a modern eye, this is obviously total bullshit. There is no way Darius--or any ancient king--could field a million man army and if he had, Alexander would have gotten his rear end kicked. I don't care how good a commander you are, 20 to 1 is not going to go well for you unless something bizarre happens. However, that is judging Arrian by modern standards, which is unfair. He should be judged by the standards of the culture. He did not literally mean a million men. I doubt anyone at the time thought he did either. What he was saying is that Alexander was outnumbered, which was true, and Alexander was a brilliant commander, also true, and was thus able to pants an army so vast it defied imagination with his relatively small but highly skilled force. In these broad strokes, Arrian's narrative is an accurate assessment of what happened. In the details? Total nonsense, but it makes a good story. Recognizing this fact is not an attack or an insult on ancient historians. It's a vital detail that is required to read them. Otherwise you would end up reading ancient sources with a modern cultural background and approach and get the completely wrong idea from them. When you know that the history you are reading is not an attempt at modern objective narrative but is instead a story, based on facts, about morals and politics and heroes and the culture of the time, then you can understand the author's intention and read it properly. I did word strongly, Thucydides did have an approach that was much closer to the modern version of history. However, he is notable because he is the exception. Herodotus' style was what other writers used, even though they shat on him for it. Plutarch even called him the father of lies, which is pretty rich with the amount of Herodotus-style moralizing bullshit in the Parallel Lives. Polybius is a terrible example if you're going to argue for objective ancient history, since The Histories has a strong moral theme about what makes a good leader and he constantly lauds his friends and shits on enemies. You have to be critical of your sources. This is true of all sources from all periods. WoodrowSkillson posted:Caesar himself at the Battle of Munda. The legions were hesitant to attack the more fortified Pompeiian army, and Caesar forced them attack by allowing the enemy legions to throw their pila at him. According to the story he could not dodge them all, and took the rest on his shield, leaving it stuck full of them. For example, this is surely completely accurate and in no way an embellished story to make Caesar look awesome to the people of Rome.  Here's how you look at this properly. Caesar was big on self promotion and wrote entire books dedicated to it. Caesar was a good soldier and a beloved commander, and was known for leading from the front, especially if his men were hesitant. He probably did charge out with his big red cloak shouting COME ON YOU PUSSIES or whatever the proper Roman equivalent would be. Might've even caught a pila in the shield. And then his men attacked to not be shamed and to protect their commander. This makes a better story when you turn it into Caesar out there dodging spears like Neo and coming back with a shield full of them.
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Oct 29, 2012 01:38
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That's why I called it a story and not the way it happened.
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Oct 29, 2012 01:57
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Yeah I'm not calling you out, you just posted a convenient example! E: Also I hope I've been clear about ancient people being every bit as smart as us. There is a persistent myth that ancient people were dumb and going against that is one of my hobby horses. They were every bit as smart, they just had a different culture and way of looking at things, and didn't know as much as we do. Cuz, you know, we've had another 2000 years of learning poo poo. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Oct 29, 2012 |
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Oct 29, 2012 01:58
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As much as annoys me, he's a necessary evil. 1) The discussion on how to read and critically interpret history is crucial. 2) It teaches us how not to be like
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Oct 29, 2012 03:02
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Phobophilia posted:1) The discussion on how to read and critically interpret history is crucial. Yep. The ancient written sources are usually full of bullshit. They're also invaluable sources of material. A good portion of your education when you study history is learning how to not only separate bullshit from fact, but to analyze the bullshit and use that to give you even more information. Sometimes it's just straight up lies (gold digging Indian ants) but often the specific brand of bullshit being shoveled tells you a lot about the culture of the time, the political situation, the personal circumstances of the author, all kinds of useful stuff.
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Oct 29, 2012 03:35
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Grand Fromage posted:Yeah I'm not calling you out, you just posted a convenient example! But wasn't Roman education as a whole pretty bad? Compared to, say, Egypt or Greece I mean.
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Oct 29, 2012 04:39
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It was rote learning. Very similar to what they do over here in Asia, memorize and repeat. From my own experience working in a school that operates that way, I would say yes, education was bad. Many who could afford it hired private (usually Greek) tutors to get something better than the standard schooling. Marcus Aurelius wrote a lot about how lovely Roman schooling could be and how lucky he felt to have had private education.
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Oct 29, 2012 04:49
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Grand Fromage posted:It was rote learning. Very similar to what they do over here in Asia, memorize and repeat. From my own experience working in a school that operates that way, I would say yes, education was bad. Many who could afford it hired private (usually Greek) tutors to get something better than the standard schooling. Marcus Aurelius wrote a lot about how lovely Roman schooling could be and how lucky he felt to have had private education. Studying for the test? That sounds very familiar in the Western world... But "rote learning" seems fairly typical for your basic education needs throughout history. I was reading about the Sumerians a while back... and their schools were based on rote learning and bribing the teachers.
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Oct 29, 2012 05:11
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sullat posted:Studying for the test? That sounds very familiar in the Western world... It sadly seems to be getting more common but the level is entirely different. That's getting off the topic though, there are threads full of teachers in T&T if you want to hear about the wonderful life of memorizing without thinking. Most of the prominent Romans we know about had private tutors or would go to specialized schools instead of/in addition to the standard education. Caesar going to Rhodes to study rhetoric, for example.
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Oct 29, 2012 06:01
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Grand Fromage posted:E: Also I hope I've been clear about ancient people being every bit as smart as us. There is a persistent myth that ancient people were dumb and going against that is one of my hobby horses. They were every bit as smart, they just had a different culture and way of looking at things, and didn't know as much as we do. Cuz, you know, we've had another 2000 years of learning poo poo. It was like the polar opposite of Ancient Aliens.
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Oct 29, 2012 06:04
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Ancient Aliens is like the peak level of that poo poo. Hurr how does old people make building? Must UFO! They figured that poo poo out, man. My favorite is when they say "it would have taken an unbelievable amount of labor!" Well, yeah. That was one thing they had plenty of. You got a whole summer where all your millions of peasant farmers have literally nothing to do. Put 'em to work building a pyramid.
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Oct 29, 2012 06:08
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Not sure if this has been asked or not. I can't remember if it has. What was the life expectancy like for Romans? I imagine it varied depending on the period we're talking about but on average what was it like?
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Oct 29, 2012 06:11
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Yeah we did but basically, about the same as all pre-modern societies. 50%+ of people died in childhood but if you made it past that you could reasonably expect to live into your 60s or 70s, barring disease/famine/getting stabbed in the eye/whatever. That massive child mortality is why you read about such short average lifespans. They throw the average way off.
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Oct 29, 2012 06:23
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I am also currently studying history, working on my under graduate thesis at the moment, the field of history that I study is very narrow and not popular. I can only imagine the wealth of resources I would be able to find if I was studying a field so exhausted as ROMAN HISTORY however at the same time I wonder if it is also more difficult to study such a period. As a historian do you find it is difficult to study such a popular area of history? Is there a lot of cultural bias? A lot of misconceptions? Just looking for your experiences in studying history.
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Oct 29, 2012 06:38
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At my level it's almost all good. Shitloads of material available about all kinds of things. There are a lot of misconceptions you encounter if it comes up in conversation. I usually don't bring it up since there's nothing more boring than someone going on about his major if you don't care but if people ask I end up fielding lots of questions about vomitoria, gay sex, and gladiator deathmatches. It's also more likely to come up on TV or whatever and get you all nerd ragey when they repeat some bullshit that's become a standard myth. On the other side, I cannot imagine what a pain in the rear end it must be trying to come up with original material for a thesis.
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Oct 29, 2012 06:45
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What are the three greatest Roman myths?
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Oct 29, 2012 07:02
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Grand Fromage posted:Ancient Aliens is like the peak level of that poo poo. Hurr how does old people make building? Must UFO! Pyramids don't even impress me. The natural shape of a certain volume of low tensile strength material is going to be pyramidal. Obelisks and Steles are better (not just because they're giant dicks).
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Oct 29, 2012 07:36
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Pyramids are super impressive because they're not just pyramidal - they're massive, complex, and nigh perfect.
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Oct 29, 2012 08:07
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Give enough people enough time and they can work it out. I'm more impressed with carving something out of one giant chunk of stone, with enough tensile strength to support its own weight, and tipping it onto one end. (Okay fine pyramids are cool, but they're overrated)
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Oct 29, 2012 10:13
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Grand Prize Winner posted:What are the three greatest Roman myths? Do you mean modern myths about the Romans, or Roman myths they would have told over the hearth fires?
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Oct 29, 2012 11:34
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sullat posted:Do you mean modern myths about the Romans, or Roman myths they would have told over the hearth fires? I think he means modern myths about the Romans, like Christians being fed to lions in the arena.
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Oct 29, 2012 12:00
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Well this thread has taught me that B-word Empire somehow being a distinct, almost unrelated entity to the classic Roman Empire is probably up there.
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Oct 29, 2012 12:11
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That's one for me, as part of the larger "Rome ended in 476 because of Germans" narrative. The Romans spending all their time in feasts and orgies is another, that's legitimately the image a lot (most?) people have of Rome and is not true. And that the Romans were cultureless brutes who just kicked in people's doors and stole everything.
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Oct 29, 2012 12:17
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We had another picture of a cultureless brute who had just kicked in a door and was contemplating stealing everything. I have to say that the perception of the Germanic tribes etc also being cultureless brutes is also annoying. As mentioned they had extensive and complex relationships with the Romans and many of them had in fact served in their armies etc. The main annoying thing is how little evidence they left behind. Having an oral rather than written culture makes things rather complicated for us in that respect. As an aside, one thing I wasn't aware of until I started looking into it after the discussion about gallic languages etc is how widespread the use of the greek alphabet for local language inscriptions was. They showed some examples of it in what is now Switzerland etc.
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Oct 29, 2012 14:26
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rjderouin posted:I am also currently studying history, working on my under graduate thesis at the moment, the field of history that I study is very narrow and not popular. I can only imagine the wealth of resources I would be able to find if I was studying a field so exhausted as ROMAN HISTORY however at the same time I wonder if it is also more difficult to study such a period. Yeah, there's a "joke" (  :alcoholism: why isn't that a smiley?) that anything you can think of in Classics and Ancient History has already been written by a 19th century German, usually with a giant moustache. Obviously that's an overstatement, but if you work on literary stuff it can definitely feel like it. The way history is practiced as a field, however, changes so much that there is usually a new way to think about previous events. Grand Fromage is in good shape because he works with archaeology stuff, too, which is HUGELY different from what it used to be. 19th century through around 1960's archaeology was essentially treasure-hunting,* then even after that there was a lot in the way of excavation-by-bulldozer. Since the '70's or so (GF correct me on my chronology; I am talking out of my rear end a bit here date-wise) there has been a lot more focus on archaeology as a science. Technology is constantly improving so we get new forms of evidence and crazy sciency stuff  Here's one grad student doing crazy sciency stuff- I talked with him once or twice and so I always think of him when I try to think of examples. In addition to the technological and procedural advances, there has also been a big change in how archaeologists analyze the material they find. The focus now is much more on trying to understand the cultures behind the objects, and less on simply collecting and categorizing them. Needless to say they are also spending more time dealing with "boring" finds like coarse pottery or poor graves or postholes.Another big way that things have changed is perspective. Like that one guy said, until recently, History more or less ignored half the world. Since the 60's and 70's, there has been a lot more interest in not only talking about not-Europe, but also subordinate groups like women, ethnic minorities, ethnic majorities that aren't white, peasants, working class, etc.-- basically everyone who isn't a wealthy white male involved in political and/or military affairs. Rome & Greece are still Europe, obviously, but by looking at the non-wealthy-male-of-the-political/military-class-and-generally-presumably-white... you know what? I'm going to stick with "traditionally underrepresented." By looking at the traditionally unrepresented, whole new perspectives on history are available. Clearly this means there's more focus on e.g. slaves and women, but it also means that less powerful or less well attested somewhat-dominant groups are also getting more attention. In recent decades for example people have started working on pre-Roman Italy and even Roman period Italy but outside Rome. So they're still the center, but in traditional history it went like this: Italy was there. Rome conquered it. Rome was like this  " HUGE new avenues of research become apparent when the lens is widened even that little bit, nevermind what you can do now with all the other groups. Rich powerful people are always going to be the best attested because they tend to have written and built more and got nicer graves and such, but there is a lot of interesting work going on in our field and elsewhere (lit, other history, economics, sociology...) about the traditionally underrepresented. * I was reading the other day about a 19th century excavation (in a modern work) and they straight up threw out all the bones found in some 8th century tombs in Latium NO BIGGIE  The one guy who wrote the report could only confirm that he saw one bone- apparently a single piece of a single finger from the left hand. Cool. The gold stuff got saved though  )Eggplant Wizard fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Oct 29, 2012 |
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Oct 29, 2012 15:06
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Grand Fromage posted:That's one for me, as part of the larger "Rome ended in 476 because of Germans" narrative. The Romans spending all their time in feasts and orgies is another, that's legitimately the image a lot (most?) people have of Rome and is not true. And that the Romans were cultureless brutes who just kicked in people's doors and stole everything. 
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Oct 29, 2012 15:24
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