Roman/ancient history: Checkmate, Atenists

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Roman/ancient history: Checkmate, Atenists

achillesforever6: Apr 23, 2012; psst you wanna do a communism?

Grand Fromage posted:

That one's not a legend. Some parts might've been fabrication and there are a few different stories, but some guys who were monks or disguised as them definitely stole silkworms and techniques from the Chinese (a very carefully guarded Chinese state secret) and sold/gave them to the Romans during Justinian's reign. Either independently for profit or sent out by Justinian to do it. One of the great spy missions of history.

So now we know how'll find out about the secret to that Ancient Chinese Dry Cleaning, MONKS!!! :haw:

# ? Nov 12, 2012 03:06

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# ? May 13, 2024 07:18

Amused to Death: Aug 10, 2009; google "The Night Witches", and prepare for

I'm still pretty surprised there's yet to be a Hollywood movie on the stealing of silk from the Chinese. Romans? Massive spy operation? Evil Chinese we must steal secrets from? It has every aspect of a blockbuster.

# ? Nov 12, 2012 03:21

NLJP: Aug 26, 2004

Tao Jones posted:

Astronomy had been pretty well-developed by the Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians, and other ancient people. The main text for ancient astronomy is Ptolemy's Almagest, written around 150 AD. (Well, Ptolemy called it the 'mathematical syntaxis' or 'mathematical index'; Almagest is what the Arabs called it.)

It's a little hard to lay out ancient astronomy, since it rests on incorrect premises and a lot of it is arcane unless you're really into geometry or astronomy. Greek astronomy rested on the premises of Aristotelian cosmology, which said that the Earth is the center of the universe, and all of the heavenly bodies move in perfect, circular motions. It turns out that you can actually do quite a lot with those premises, though!

For a baseline of how ancient astronomy tended to proceed, imagine going outside at night and looking up - it may be hard to imagine what the night sky looks like in places where there's no light pollution, but you can see a lot of stars on a cloudless night if you're far away from civilization. With just your naked eye and your imagination, you can see that the stars all move in regular ways, as though they were affixed on the surface of a sphere with the earth at the center, and the sphere rotates around you in a regular way while you remain fixed. You can tell the stars all move in a regular way because they have particular spatial relationships to each other (constellations) and the whole constellation moves at once. But four or five stars don't quite obey this rule and just kind of wander around in a regular way, but one not apparently influenced by anything - so they're "wandering stars", or planets.

(At the risk of belaboring this point, ancient astronomy's most advanced tool for inquiry about the heavens was pretty much the astrolabe. Part of Ptolemy's Almagest are a schematic for an armillary sphere, which is like an astrolabe inside of another astrolabe. The important thing to take-away here is that optics and the telescope were completely unknown here - using a telescope to look at the heavens was one of Galileo's great contributions.)

So because you know that constellations move in regular ways and the planets move in fairly regular ones, you can start measuring relative positions at the same time each night. (Early astronomy was very much linked to early mathematics. This is why circles have 360 degrees, for instance, since ancient stargazers used the distance that the stars adjusted in a night as one degree.) Now, if you have hundreds and hundreds of years of recorded data about where things should be, you can make a pretty good map of the cosmos.

But this model has some pretty serious conceptual problems. As I said, Ptolemy was pretty solidly married to the ideas of Aristotle. There are two main problems with the model - first, planets vary in brightness, which doesn't make sense if they're at a constant distance, and second, the movement of the planets involves retrograde motion. By retrograde motion, I mean - well, this gif does a better job of explaining it than my words:

The stars on the outside are the supposed sphere where all of the fixed stars hang out, the red dot is a planet like Venus, and the blue line is the path the planet would appear to take. Ptolemy's solution is also illustrated; he put the circular motion that the planet has to travel in around an imaginary point (the "epicycle"), which also moved in a perfect circle, thus avoiding contradicting Aristotle's doctrine of perfect circular motion. The system works pretty well if you don't think about the mathematical consequences too hard, though eventually you end up putting epicycles on other epicycles:

But again, it's not all insanity - from a practical standpoint, Ptolemy is accurate enough that you can go get a copy of it and (if you know what you're doing), use it to predict locations and phenomena like eclipses with accuracy. The errors involved are errors of cosmology more than errors of mathematics.

This is a good post that shouldn't just fall off and be ignored.

Thanks man.

# ? Nov 12, 2012 04:00

OctaviusBeaver: Apr 30, 2009; Say what now?

Amused to Death posted:

I'm still pretty surprised there's yet to be a Hollywood movie on the stealing of silk from the Chinese. Romans? Massive spy operation? Evil Chinese we must steal secrets from? It has every aspect of a blockbuster.

Speaking of which, has there ever been a movie set in the Eastern Roman Empire? It is so depressingly neglected. Though given how awesome the Rome HBO series was I would take some regular old Roman Empire movies, last big one I remember was Gladiator.

# ? Nov 12, 2012 04:25

Phobophilia: Apr 26, 2008; by Hand Knit

Taken 2

# ? Nov 12, 2012 04:58

Smart Car: Mar 31, 2011

OctaviusBeaver posted:

Speaking of which, has there ever been a movie set in the Eastern Roman Empire? It is so depressingly neglected. Though given how awesome the Rome HBO series was I would take some regular old Roman Empire movies, last big one I remember was Gladiator.

Their politics were a bit too Byzantine for adaptations like that.

# ? Nov 12, 2012 11:25

Kopijeger: Feb 14, 2010

OctaviusBeaver posted:

Speaking of which, has there ever been a movie set in the Eastern Roman Empire?

There's this small list, none of which look particulary promising:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_set_in_the_Byzantine_Empire

# ? Nov 12, 2012 15:29

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

How clearly defined were the separate domains of the roman gods? Was it as simple as one god for each individual aspect of life, or was there a lot of overlapping?

# ? Nov 12, 2012 17:12

Alchenar: Apr 9, 2008

SlothfulCobra posted:

How clearly defined were the separate domains of the roman gods? Was it as simple as one god for each individual aspect of life, or was there a lot of overlapping?

That's kind of the wrong question. The Roman/Greek conception of the gods is to imagine an episode of Jersey Shore where all the characters have super-powers.

# ? Nov 12, 2012 17:22

Fornadan: Dec 7, 2010

Jazerus posted:

Basically, yeah, Scandinavia was an island probably full of monsters and nearly superhuman barbarians just waiting for an opportunity to ruin everyone's day. I assume a few Romans had probably been there and knew better, as with Ethiopia, but we don't have any evidence.

There's quite good archaeological evidence of Scandinavians having returned home after serving in the legions though

# ? Nov 12, 2012 17:29

Xguard86: Nov 22, 2004; "You don't understand his pain. Everywhere he goes he sees women working, wearing pants, speaking in gatherings, voting. Surely they will burn in the white hot flames of Hell"

SlothfulCobra posted:

How clearly defined were the separate domains of the roman gods? Was it as simple as one god for each individual aspect of life, or was there a lot of overlapping?

Its very vague and complex. Alongside the big state deities you have gods of local rivers/fields/whatever, ancestor family spirits, various imports like Isis and Mithras plus maybe some hang over local gods that are semi-merged with the others brought from outside (so you worship "Jupiter" but to you hes also whatever local big sky god your great grandparents prayed to and has some small differences from the "Jupiter" worshiped on the other end of the Empire).

Then there's the weird stuff like Fates and Furies that are more like natural forces and not fully humanized and viewed kind of differently.

Then you've got stuff like changes over time and the varying view points because this belief system was followed over 100s(1,000s?) of years by a wide array of people. For example, how Athena's domain over war is different from Ares' and then how the Roman war god Mars is a different combination but modern people just say "oh ok Ares = Mars".

# ? Nov 12, 2012 17:56

sullat: Jan 9, 2012

Fornadan posted:

There's quite good archaeological evidence of Scandinavians having returned home after serving in the legions though

Vsrangian Guard, for sure. But I was not aware of any evidence of Scandinavians serving during the early Imperial period.

# ? Nov 12, 2012 18:06

General Panic: Jan 28, 2012; AN ERORIST AGENT

OctaviusBeaver posted:

Speaking of which, has there ever been a movie set in the Eastern Roman Empire? It is so depressingly neglected. Though given how awesome the Rome HBO series was I would take some regular old Roman Empire movies, last big one I remember was Gladiator.

There were some great characters and great stories in Byzantine history - you can imagine the life of Belisarius as a Charlton Heston-type epic very easily, for instance. I don't think they've ever got past the prejudice of Western Catholicism against an Orthodox empire that they faced throughout the Middle Ages; later on you also got a lot of Enlightenment-era people like Gibbon who weren't keen on the church full stop and so preferred Rome before it went Christian.

For 1500-odd years, influential cultural figures have been telling everyone else about how great Rome was. The Eastern Empire has never had that fanbase.

# ? Nov 12, 2012 20:08

Teriyaki Hairpiece: Dec 29, 2006; I'm nae the voice o' the darkened thistle, but th' darkened thistle cannae bear the sight o' our Bonnie Prince Bernie nae mair.

So in historiography, Theodosius is the emperor of Rome. After his death, the empire is divided up into Eastern and Western halves with an Eastern emperor and Western emperor. This had happened before, but the Empire had always been united again under a sole emperor who was just called the emperor of Rome. So why was the next sole Roman emperor called the only the emperor of the East? Very frustrating.

# ? Nov 12, 2012 20:43

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

Xguard86 posted:

Its very vague and complex. Alongside the big state deities you have gods of local rivers/fields/whatever, ancestor family spirits, various imports like Isis and Mithras plus maybe some hang over local gods that are semi-merged with the others brought from outside (so you worship "Jupiter" but to you hes also whatever local big sky god your great grandparents prayed to and has some small differences from the "Jupiter" worshiped on the other end of the Empire).

Then there's the weird stuff like Fates and Furies that are more like natural forces and not fully humanized and viewed kind of differently.

Then you've got stuff like changes over time and the varying view points because this belief system was followed over 100s(1,000s?) of years by a wide array of people. For example, how Athena's domain over war is different from Ares' and then how the Roman war god Mars is a different combination but modern people just say "oh ok Ares = Mars".

If the Roman gods are too much of a melange of different cultures' religions, how about the greek gods? Are they any more clearly defined?

# ? Nov 13, 2012 00:44

Eggplant Wizard: Jul 8, 2005; i loev catte

SlothfulCobra posted:

If the Roman gods are too much of a melange of different cultures' religions, how about the greek gods? Are they any more clearly defined?

No. See: Artemis, virginal huntress moon fertility goddess, or her brother Apollo the healing archer sun prophecy god.

e: I'm teaching a class on Greek & Roman myth & religion next term, and I am not all up on the research yet, but once I have things more together in my brain maybe I'll do a big effortpost if this thread is still going.

Eggplant Wizard fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Nov 13, 2012

# ? Nov 13, 2012 00:58

Eric Cantonese: Dec 21, 2004; You should hear my accent.

sullat posted:

There is the legend of the Roman legionnaires captured at Carrahae and sold as slaves or as mercenaries who ended up in Western China. Just a legend, of course, backed up by on;y a few slivers (probably misinterpreted) of evidence, but it makes for a good story.

Another legend is that Byzantine monks stole the secret of silk-making from China and brought it back to Constantinople. Once again, it may be apocraphyl, but sericulture did begin in the Mediterranean about that time, so there may be a grain of truth.

Sounds like part of the inspiration for Gore Vidal's Creation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_(novel)

# ? Nov 13, 2012 01:37

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Kopijeger posted:

There's this small list, none of which look particulary promising:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_set_in_the_Byzantine_Empire

My god, it's full of stars. I need to see this litany of losers.

sullat posted:

Vsrangian Guard, for sure. But I was not aware of any evidence of Scandinavians serving during the early Imperial period.

I'm not sure what evidence he's referring to but there was contact for sure. There was a fort posted earlier in the thread that showed Roman military influence in Scandinavia, and the amber/fur trade. Denmark bordered the empire just barely. I would guess some of the "Germans" in the legions were from Scandinavia.

Eggplant Wizard posted:

e: I'm teaching a class on Greek & Roman myth & religion next term, and I am not all up on the research yet, but once I have things more together in my brain maybe I'll do a big effortpost if this thread is still going.

Please do. We shall keep the thread burning forever. :hist101:

# ? Nov 13, 2012 03:09

SneezeOfTheDecade: Feb 6, 2011; gettin' covid all
over your posts

First - thanks for the thoughts on Carcopino. He wrote in 1940 so I know he's out of date, but I was just curious whether he was "we've learned more" out of date or "oh, you poor benighted soul" out of date.

Ms. Wizard and Mr. Fromage, this may be out of line, but is there interest in/a possibility of changing this to a Greek/Roman (or just "ancient/classical Mediterranean/Europe") thread? Or is that too much overlap with the "Classicists" thread?

(third: am I overdosing on slashes? The answer may be yes!)

# ? Nov 13, 2012 03:12

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Nah, Roman thread. Romans are better. :colbert:

Talking about other Mediterranean stuff is totally fine since it was all connected. Or make an ancient Mediterranean thread and then this thread can go conquer it. :hist101:

# ? Nov 13, 2012 03:14

Eggplant Wizard: Jul 8, 2005; i loev catte

Besesoth posted:

First - thanks for the thoughts on Carcopino. He wrote in 1940 so I know he's out of date, but I was just curious whether he was "we've learned more" out of date or "oh, you poor benighted soul" out of date.

Ms. Wizard and Mr. Fromage, this may be out of line, but is there interest in/a possibility of changing this to a Greek/Roman (or just "ancient/classical Mediterranean/Europe") thread? Or is that too much overlap with the "Classicists" thread?

(third: am I overdosing on slashes? The answer may be yes!)

Absolutely not.

_{Done. The SAL Classics thread is pretty slow and more academicy and I think it's okay how it is. This one definitely gets more non-nerd traffic. Well, non-professional nerd, anyway.

_{Your addressing me as Ms. Wizard made me realize how totally sweet it's going to be when I finish my PhD and get to go "THAT'S DR. WIZARD TO YOU! I DIDN'T GO TO SCHOOL FOR 7 YEARS TO BE CALLED MS.!" Yes, I do mean on the forums.}}

Eggplant Wizard fucked around with this message at 03:28 on Nov 13, 2012

# ? Nov 13, 2012 03:25

lonelylikezoidberg: Dec 19, 2007

General Panic posted:

There were some great characters and great stories in Byzantine history - you can imagine the life of Belisarius as a Charlton Heston-type epic very easily, for instance. I don't think they've ever got past the prejudice of Western Catholicism against an Orthodox empire that they faced throughout the Middle Ages; later on you also got a lot of Enlightenment-era people like Gibbon who weren't keen on the church full stop and so preferred Rome before it went Christian.

For 1500-odd years, influential cultural figures have been telling everyone else about how great Rome was. The Eastern Empire has never had that fanbase.

I'd recommend a couple of things for Byzantine history if you are interested:

Count Belisarius by Robert Graves (same guy who wrote I Claudius. This time Livia is not a stand in for his mother.)
The Secret History by Procopius. Probably not where you should start, but it is crazy old timey slander
Nonfiction - Byzantium: The Empire of the New Rome by Cyril Mango. Its a little dry, but sort of a travelogue, and you get a feel for how fractured the Eastern Roman Empire was

# ? Nov 13, 2012 03:38

awesomecopter: Aug 16, 2012

The cynic in me says the Eastern roman/Byzantine empire lacks popularity due to some squabble and whatnot with the Catholic church, leading to some unpleasant events during the fourth crusade.

Also Turkish conquest would have made it impossible for those enlightened Italians to go and sing praises of the Byzantines, despite them having preserved the art of not throwing your feces in the water supply for a lot longer.

# ? Nov 13, 2012 03:38

SneezeOfTheDecade: Feb 6, 2011; gettin' covid all
over your posts

Eggplant Wizard posted:

_{Your addressing me as Ms. Wizard made me realize how totally sweet it's going to be when I finish my PhD and get to go "THAT'S DR. WIZARD TO YOU! I DIDN'T GO TO SCHOOL FOR 7 YEARS TO BE CALLED MS.!" Yes, I do mean on the forums.}[/sub]

I solemnly swear to refer to you as "Ms. Wizard" after your degree is awarded just so you can say that.

# ? Nov 13, 2012 03:43

WoodrowSkillson: Feb 24, 2005; *Gestures at 60 years of Lions history*

This is the Roman thread forever and always :colbert:

# ? Nov 13, 2012 04:03

furushotakeru: Jul 20, 2004; Your Honor, why am I pink?!

Grand Fromage posted:

Nah, Roman thread. Romans are better.

Talking about other Mediterranean stuff is totally fine since it was all connected. Or make an ancient Mediterranean thread and then this thread can go conquer it.

I think is is seriously my favorite post in this thread

# ? Nov 13, 2012 04:16

Phobophilia: Apr 26, 2008; by Hand Knit

I'm going to post a thread named "Ask me about being a barbarian" and come in and ruin you all.

# ? Nov 13, 2012 04:33

SneezeOfTheDecade: Feb 6, 2011; gettin' covid all
over your posts

I love this thread. :swoon:

# ? Nov 13, 2012 04:47

Hedera Helix: Sep 2, 2011; The laws of the fiesta mean nothing!

Does this mean that I can ask about the Greek Dark Ages now, and not be directed to a different thread?

# ? Nov 13, 2012 04:56

Eggplant Wizard: Jul 8, 2005; i loev catte

Hedera Helix posted:

Does this mean that I can ask about the Greek Dark Ages now, and not be directed to a different thread?

Yes.

I don't know poo poo about them though so good luck.

# ? Nov 13, 2012 04:58

SneezeOfTheDecade: Feb 6, 2011; gettin' covid all
over your posts

Hedera Helix posted:

Does this mean that I can ask about the Greek Dark Ages now, and not be directed to a different thread?

What would you like to know about them? I've got a couple books on the shelf.

# ? Nov 13, 2012 04:59

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Eggplant Wizard posted:

Yes.

I don't know poo poo about them though so good luck.

I was in the middle of posting literally the exact same thing. Rome isn't all I know but it's most of what I know in detail.

# ? Nov 13, 2012 05:02

Jazerus: May 24, 2011

cheerfullydrab posted:

So in historiography, Theodosius is the emperor of Rome. After his death, the empire is divided up into Eastern and Western halves with an Eastern emperor and Western emperor. This had happened before, but the Empire had always been united again under a sole emperor who was just called the emperor of Rome. So why was the next sole Roman emperor called the only the emperor of the East? Very frustrating.

Nobody was ever sole emperor of the full Empire ever again - though de facto Constantinople continued to have significant influence on the West. If you mean, "why is it that, once the Western emperor position no longer existed, the Romans didn't go back to just calling the Eastern emperor 'the emperor'?", then the short answer is that they never stopped. East vs. West was not an official distinction - they used the same titles and hypothetically had power over the other's half too, though of course only the East actually could intervene in the West's affairs.

If you're asking why historians call guys like Justinian "Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire" instead of "Emperor of the Roman Empire", it's because they fall on the other side of the Roman/Byzantine divide, which is a useful distinction to make, but Byzantine isn't considered to be a very relevant term anymore so "Eastern Roman" is substituted for it, sometimes awkwardly.

Phobophilia posted:

I'm going to post a thread named "Ask me about being a barbarian" and come in and ruin you all.

Sorry, that's scheduled for page 476. You're a bit early.

# ? Nov 13, 2012 05:08

Hedera Helix: Sep 2, 2011; The laws of the fiesta mean nothing!

Besesoth posted:

What would you like to know about them? I've got a couple books on the shelf.

To begin with, what exactly happened? What caused it? How total was the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization? How much survived? How did the region fare, in comparison to the other Bronze Age societies?

# ? Nov 13, 2012 06:02

the JJ: Mar 31, 2011

Hedera Helix posted:

To begin with, what exactly happened? What caused it? How total was the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization? How much survived? How did the region fare, in comparison to the other Bronze Age societies?

If I'm remembering correctly, it was a pretty general collapse across the Eastern Med. There's a lot of evidence that some sort of roving barbarian peoples (the 'Sea Peoples') may have been a cause... or a symptom. We do know that population levels dropped, a coupla empires came apart at the seams, and there's a lot more emphasis on fortification in the architecture of the time.

# ? Nov 13, 2012 07:24

Grand Prize Winner: Feb 19, 2007

Any solid ideas about who the Sea People were? Wikipedia gives out a laundry list of possible IDs and then just lists all the stuff they tore up.

# ? Nov 13, 2012 07:37

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Nope. The Bronze Age Collapse is one of the great mysteries of the ancient world. There are lots of hypotheses but very little in the way of answers.

# ? Nov 13, 2012 07:41

Base Emitter: Apr 1, 2012; ?

Grand Fromage posted:

Nope. The Bronze Age Collapse is one of the great mysteries of the ancient world. There are lots of hypotheses but very little in the way of answers.

Would you (or someone) care to give a little background for those of us (possibly just me) who are just hearing about this now?

# ? Nov 13, 2012 08:52

the JJ: Mar 31, 2011

Base Emitter posted:

Would you (or someone) care to give a little background for those of us (possibly just me) who are just hearing about this now?

I think we've hit the highlights.

Okay, before the Dark Age there must be a light, in this case, the Hittites in Anatolia, the Mycenaean Palace Builders in Greece (e.g. those guys who went and fought in the Iliad), and Egypt had a good, more or less contemporary run at things. At a certain point, the Hittites collapse, and the Greek palace complexes are abandoned, destroyed, or become heavily militarized. Meanwhile, the Egyptians have to put up with some narsty marauders of some sort, but seem to weather the whole ordeal a bit better.

And that's... really all we know for sure. The Greek writing system at the end of this ends up looking a lot different than it did at the start, so a lot of people think there was some migratory chain pushing going on from north or west of the Greek heartlands.

e: More authoritative people feel free to chime in, I'm away from my basic Greek textbook and I'm running on memories and wikipedia.

# ? Nov 13, 2012 09:15

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# ? May 13, 2024 07:18

Base Emitter: Apr 1, 2012; ?

Were there significant population losses, loss of technology (of whatever sort), and so on, or was it largely political? Or do we even know that much?

Are there comparable collapses? Is it analogous to or wholly different from, say, the collapse of the Maya (at least the urban part of the culture)?

# ? Nov 13, 2012 09:22

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