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Considering the social conventions in place to separate a soldier's identity as a warrior from his identity as a citizen, I'd say they were very aware of it in the era of the Republic. They knew they got lucky with Sulla.
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Nov 27, 2012 16:58
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Grand Fromage posted:There are some cool drawings of this, the Roman buildings overgrown and abandoned. Would've been very interesting to walk around Rome in around the year 1000. It's not hard to understand why it was popularly believed that civilization was gone and everything was downhill from the classical era when you were living among such things. I really suggest you check out Assassins's Creed: Brotherhood. Basically a near-perfect simulation of Rome in the Middle Ages (or as good as one can hope), down to all the old Roman ruins. I've spent hours just wandering around the city. It also tells you about the history of every famous thing you find when you encounter them.
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Nov 27, 2012 17:46
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Barto posted:I don't actually believe the Chinese and Greeks had similar views at all- in fact the Chinese attitude toward foreigners was quite similar to the Roman view. The important thing was being "熟" (cooked>civilized) and not "生" (raw>uncivilized). That changes from dynasty to dynasty since Chinese history is quite long and different regions and eras had different views points. However, considering The First Emperor, Li Bai, and Zheng He were non-Han, Turkish, and Islamic respectively, it's a difficult case to make that the Chinese were racist like the Greeks instead of bigoted like the Romans. In fact when Zhang Qian travelled out and came in contact with the Bactrian's and other settled people West of the barbarian states that pretty much surrounded China at the time, the general Chinese response was general delight to know that they weren't the only civilised people in the world (mostly so they could actually find allies to help put down all these damned horse-archer barbarians). There's a very strong element of Chinese culture that stems from spending a couple of thousand years developing with basically no experience of other settled cultures (that didn't just get conquered/absorbed or grow up later and were a junior to China) and being cut off from all the nations of comparable standing by hordes of barbarians.
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Nov 27, 2012 19:25
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To what grade Byzantine empire was truly Roman and what do you think about the ones that they claim that with time, Byzantium became a Greek empire? also what do you think about those that say that romans may have had conquered the Greeks but, they conquered Romans with their culture?
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Nov 27, 2012 20:29
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Mongmonghi posted:To what grade Byzantine empire was truly Roman and what do you think about the ones that they claim that with time, Byzantium became a Greek empire? That is one of the weird naming issues that is relatively big today, at least in some circles, like the Internet. Basically, Byzantine is a term used by Western authors to separate the "Roman" half from the "Greek" half, partly out of simplicity's sake (cuts out another thousand years of history), partly because they felt that the Greeks were backwards themselves. The Eastern Roman Empire, as it is often known, didn't really see any kind of break with earlier times like the west did. There's a recent book on Roman cultural influence in Europe which posits that there really wasn't much of a cultural difference, but that that all changed with the Muslim invasions during the 7th century, which nearly shattered the empire. I am sure there are earlier versions of the same idea, but this was my first exposure to it. It's called The Inheritance of Rome by Chris Wickham and is undoubtedly one of the best books I've ever read. The second question is a bit tricky, since a lot of Romans enjoyed Greek culture but still thought of it as weird and alien. Hadrian nearly wasn't deified, in part because he did enjoy Greek life so much, which irked the Senate. I would say that the Greek influence is the reason we have our view of Rome that we do, but that did not instantly make it popular, like how a show or movie can have great influence on what comes after, even if it itself is not very successful. The original Star Trek is the first example that comes to mind.
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Nov 28, 2012 00:14
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Fell Fire I don't know but in my mind its the other way around,from what I read and know, the western part was in decline while Costantinopolis became the new center of the empire, and when the city fell all the scholars left and got baçk to the merchant cities of Italy, some even link the birth of Italian reinassence to the scholars these scholars influence. I mean even Gallileo in his original book he credited ancient Greek scholars that motivated his research,but as we know on the final version wasn't.
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Nov 28, 2012 01:26
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It was both. What people seem to forget when doing the stupid "Byzantium was a Greek empire!!!" thing is that the east was always culturally very Greek after Alexander. It was also the Roman Empire. These things are not mutually exclusive. No one would argue that say, Anatolia in 100 AD was not Rome, why would you argue it wasn't the empire in 1000 AD? It was just as Greek in 100 as it was in 1000. Roman and Greek identities and cultures were not incompatible any more than like New Yorker and American are.
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Nov 28, 2012 01:36
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Grand Fromage posted:Roman and Greek identities and cultures were not incompatible any more than like New Yorker and American are. To be fair, that concept of a national identity is relatively modern. You only have to look back 150 years ago to see that there were a lot of Americans who felt quite differently about it. The Brits are still dealing with the issue, as their empire continues to slowly balkanize.
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Nov 28, 2012 06:11
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For it's purposes, what do you think of Crash Course World History's videos on Rome? Keep in mind they're not really supposed to be super in depth, but quick overviews of various points in world history. I like John Green a lot, he's a really accessible and likable historian. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPf27gAup9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PszVWZNWVA
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Nov 28, 2012 06:16
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Kaal posted:To be fair, that concept of a national identity is relatively modern. You only have to look back 150 years ago to see that there were a lot of Americans who felt quite differently about it. The Brits are still dealing with the issue, as their empire continues to slowly balkanize. It was just a convenient example. Being able to have multiple cultural/national identities isn't new. It is worth using this to mention that Rome was never a nation-state in any modern sense. It's very hard to understand--I can't say I totally get it either. But modern analogues are bad for the empire. It's hard to even say where the borders were a lot of the time.
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Nov 28, 2012 06:25
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tbp posted:For it's purposes, what do you think of Crash Course World History's videos on Rome? Keep in mind they're not really supposed to be super in depth, but quick overviews of various points in world history. I like John Green a lot, he's a really accessible and likable historian. 
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Nov 28, 2012 06:38
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How literate was the average Roman, and how complicated was Roman bureaucracy?
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Nov 28, 2012 06:58
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SlothfulCobra posted:How literate was the average Roman, and how complicated was Roman bureaucracy? There's a lot of literacy debate earlier in the thread, not sure which page but it's early. Short answer: not very in the countryside, quite literate in cities. But there is debate on it. I'm unconvinced by the arguments that literacy was rare. But an average would be including the large rural population, so I think it's helpful to divide them. Farmers had little use for it, but the sheer volume of writing in the cities by and for all classes puts me firmly on the common literacy side. There actually was not much of a bureaucracy for a long time, which was a serious problem in the government. Part of Diocletian's reorganization of the empire was creating/expanding a bureaucracy to make the government work better, there's very little before then. It gets appropriately byzantine as time goes on. 
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Nov 28, 2012 07:02
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Grand Fromage posted:It is worth using this to mention that Rome was never a nation-state in any modern sense. It's very hard to understand--I can't say I totally get it either. But modern analogues are bad for the empire. It's hard to even say where the borders were a lot of the time. I think that this also ties into the discussion of Roman "racism", etc. Being Roman was essentially a cultural issue rather than tied to any specific thing. The power was quite distributed, and the Roman Empire extended outside direct control of any Roman citizen. Citizenship and class were important, surely, to a far more significant degree than they are today. Race was certainly still an issue (you could see a lot of that in the Roman v. Italian divide) but it simply paled in comparison to the difference between Roman v. Barbarian. Accepting the limitations of modern-day comparisons, I'd say that being "Roman" was akin to the 1940s concept of the "First-World". It transcends race and religion, and even specific region or government. But few would mistake a First-Worlder for a Third-Worlder before the advent of 1960s Political Correctness.
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Nov 28, 2012 07:15
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Also what about Macedonians, were they Greek? And if not are the modern so called Macedonians, any Macedonians at all?
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Nov 28, 2012 08:53
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Grand Fromage has mentioned farmers compared to city-dwellers a few times, or farmers lives being about the same for centuries, which has made me curious. Can someone talk about the lives of Roman/Greek farmers? What kind of cultural life did they have- any interesting rural festivals or folk traditions? Also, i'm curious about Roman theatre. I know a bit about the plays of Terence and Cicero, what are some other interesting playwrights? What plays were especially popular? Do we know of any plays that didn't quite conform to the traditional style or were unorthodox/controversial?
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Nov 28, 2012 09:30
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Mongmonghi posted:Also what about Macedonians, were they Greek? And if not are the modern so called Macedonians, any Macedonians at all? Ancient Macedonians were greek, modern Macedonians are southern slavs.
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Nov 28, 2012 09:54
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Hogge Wild posted:Ancient Macedonians were greek, modern Macedonians are southern slavs. My personal opinion is that also, I am Greek national so some might say I am biased wich is understandable, but when I have to explain to foreigners about the diplomatic dispute between Greece and Skopje "Macedonia" its hard to do so. Could you be more specific and present an argument about it?
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Nov 28, 2012 12:04
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Mongmonghi posted:My personal opinion is that also, I am Greek national so some might say I am biased wich is understandable, but when I have to explain to foreigners about the diplomatic dispute between Greece and Skopje "Macedonia" its hard to do so. I'm not a linguist, nor a historian, so this is just copied from the internet. Modern Macedonian language is closely related to Serbian and Bulgarian dialects, so it's not a derivative of the Ancient Macedonian. Genetically Macedonians are closer to their slavic neighbours, but of course there has also been mixing with their other neighbours Greeks, Romanians and Turks. Kingdom of Ancient Macedonia was situated originally almost completely in modern northern Greece. When Romans conqured the area, they called the it Macedonia Prima (first Macedonia) and the surrounding areas -ie. modern Republic of Macedonia- Macedonia Salutaris (second Macedonia). This situation lasted with small modifications until Ottomans conquered it from medieval Rome and named all of the southern Balkan Peninsula Rumelia. During the Balkan Wars and First World War modern Republic of Macedonian's area changed hands from Ottomans to Kingdom of Serbia to Kingdom of Bulgaria to Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (ie. Yugoslavia). After Second World War Yugoslavia turned into a communist federation and Republic of Macedonia was set up in the Bulgarian occupation zone as one of the constituent republics. This was the first time when Republic of Macedonia was autonomous. After Yugoslavia collapsed Republic Macedonia got its independence. And the naming dispute with Greece started.  Map of the area. I find it silly that they started to call themselves Macedonians. It's like Latvians started to call their country Russia after they got their independence. And as you said, its hard to explain. One has to hold a presentation from about half of Europes history. 
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Nov 28, 2012 12:58
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Hogge wild I know this already thing is at their maps they claim that their old country used to expand till Thessaloniki, same goes for Albanians that they claim to even a big part of the Epirus region of Greece. Most Skopjans say that Alexander the Great was denied to play at the Olympic games so he was not a Greek.
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Nov 28, 2012 14:24
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Mongmonghi posted:Hogge wild I know this already thing is at their maps they claim that their old country used to expand till Thessaloniki, same goes for Albanians that they claim to even a big part of the Epirus region of Greece. It may well have been that ancient Greeks didn't think that ancient Macedonians were true Hogge Wild fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Nov 28, 2012 |
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Nov 28, 2012 14:37
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Mongmonghi posted:Hogge wild I know this already thing is at their maps they claim that their old country used to expand till Thessaloniki, same goes for Albanians that they claim to even a big part of the Epirus region of Greece. IIRC modern Macedonia doesn't lay claim to any part of current day Greece. From what I can tell Greece holds that the use of the name implies a territorial claim which the Macedonians dispute. The current official Macedonian stance is that they don't make an exclusive claim to the name etc. The Wikipedia article is worth a read since it partially outlines some of the not immediately obvious concerns on both sides and some off the issues framing treaties where you can't use the names of the parties: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonia_naming_dispute That said this is starting to enter derail territory. [e] Also interesting: Wikipedia's list of irrendentist claims and disputes The Balkans feature extensively. Munin fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Nov 28, 2012 |
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Nov 28, 2012 17:09
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Munin posted:IIRC modern Macedonia doesn't lay claim to any part of current day Greece. From what I can tell Greece holds that the use of the name implies a territorial claim which the Macedonians dispute. The current official Macedonian stance is that they don't make an exclusive claim to the name etc. Well I happend to see what their prime minister says, and they claim both heritage and dream of a bigger Macedonia, I know that will never happen but what IF is threatening enough, to raise the neonazis popularity here in Greece. So it's nice to have friendly neighbors that don't provoke the inbred neonazis of Greece and don't cause their future generations to be predisposed negatively against us. But this is not the point the point is next time I meet a Skopjan nazi I want to tell him "hey listen open a book read this and that and please shut up and let me in peace"
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Nov 28, 2012 17:46
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On the topic of ancient Macedonians and whether or not they were Greek, was there a similar sentiment with Thracians?
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Nov 29, 2012 00:49
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I think so. Anyway, the question of who claims ancient Macedonia is just dumb all around to me. They were a different people. There have been so many wars and migrations and territorial exchanges and intermixing and cultural changes and whatnot that nobody can claim them. Statistically speaking I'd bet everyone from the Balkans to Afghanistan could find a Macedonian ancestor and all have about the same strength of claim to the legacy.
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Nov 29, 2012 00:56
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There are a lot of mentions in this thread about who was and was not a Roman. What I haven't heard was what evidence you would have of your citizenship if you were a citizen. I would assume that things like birth certificates weren't big things, so how would a native Roman prove their citizenship? I'm assuming that discharged soldiers would have some paperwork from that.
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Nov 29, 2012 02:31
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Soldiers had paperwork in the form of bronze? sheets carved with their information. I have to admit that I have no idea if regular citizens had these or not. In aristocratic/wealthy families there were birth records and stuff but I'm not sure what a pleb citizen would have.
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Nov 29, 2012 02:33
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Volmarias posted:There are a lot of mentions in this thread about who was and was not a Roman. What I haven't heard was what evidence you would have of your citizenship if you were a citizen. I would assume that things like birth certificates weren't big things, so how would a native Roman prove their citizenship? I'm assuming that discharged soldiers would have some paperwork from that. People faked it for sure. Around the beginning of the first century BC, Rome kicked a bunch of Italians off the census rolls who had gotten on there on false premises somehow. Cicero's Pro Archia is about determining if a particular dude had citizenship or not. A lot of the time early on at least it was determined by where you were from- so if your city had been granted citizenship, you're good, but if you weren't a resident of a citizen city then no. Another thing is names- Roman citizens had the tria nomina thing going on, although that also became foggier later on. I imagine a lot of the time it came down to having someone vouch for you that you were who you said you were, that your parent(s) were citizens, etc. I am someone who doesn't believe in a high rate of literacy for the ancient world. High compared to maybe some places, and high in the cities compared to the rural areas, but I doubt it topped 20% even there. I'm basing that on some reading I have done on the subject, although I have focused on Republican Rome. (Yes, bronze sheets. The original diploma!)
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Nov 29, 2012 02:45
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Ancient Macedonian was very closely related to the Greek dialects spoken further south, but mutual intelligibility appear to have been not quite as good as between the other dialects. Whether this makes Ancient Macedonian a dialect or just very relative of Ancient Greek is IMO not very important Herodotus writes that the Macedonian king was only allowed to participate in the Olympic Games (which where only open to Greeks) after proving to the judges that his ancestors had originally emigrated to Macedonia from Argos in the Peloponessus, in other words, just being a Macedonian was not enough This changed during the Hellenistic age though and during Roman times Macedonians were considered 100% Greek
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Nov 29, 2012 02:49
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Fornadan posted:Ancient Macedonian was very closely related to the Greek dialects spoken further south, but mutual intelligibility appear to have been not quite as good as between the other dialects. Whether this makes Ancient Macedonian a dialect or just very relative of Ancient Greek is IMO not very important A language is a dialect with an army and navy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy Hmm, what kind of navy did Alexander the Great use in his world conquest?You are 100% right that language/dialect status of ancient Macedonia is not very important. Grand Fromage posted:Soldiers had paperwork in the form of bronze? sheets carved with their information.   Could some latinist translate something from these? Hogge Wild fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Nov 29, 2012 |
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Nov 29, 2012 03:06
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Hogge Wild posted:Hmm, what kind of navy did Alexander the Great use in his world conquest? There were supply ships that shadowed the army when they marched near the sea. I'm not aware of any actual naval battles. The only one I can think of that involved naval power was the siege of Tyre, but there they said gently caress it to the ships after a couple of failed attempts and just built a peninsula out to the island to assault by land. Which is still there, incidentally:  The left bit was the original, island, city. The whole peninsula has been filled out and built on these days. How's that for frightening, you're sitting in Tyre watching the Macedonian army slowly building that strip of land, every day getting closer and closer. I imagine it was similar to watching the ramp at Masada go up. You are so hosed. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Nov 29, 2012 |
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Nov 29, 2012 03:24
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Grand Fromage posted:How's that for frightening, you're sitting in Tyre watching the Macedonian army slowly building that strip of land, every day getting closer and closer. I imagine it was similar to watching the ramp at Masada go up. You are so hosed. Yeah, the Romans were big on that kind of massive siege engineering. They did something similar at Iotapata too, although its not as iconic of a siege as Masada.
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Nov 29, 2012 03:38
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Titus – to them, who served as cavalry and foot soldiers in four wings of the army and thirteen of the cohorts I of the Arvacorum, I of the citizens of Rome, II of the Arvacorum, [to the – ] of Frontianus I of the Alpines, I of the mountainous regions, I of Noricum, I of Lepidus, I of the Augusta Ituraeans I of Luca, I of Apina, I of the Britons, II of Asturia and Gallaeci, II of the Spanish, III of Thracians, V of the Breukoi, VIII of the Roetians who were in Pannonia under T Atilius Rufus to veterans with 25 or more years of military service each were released with honourable discharge, likewise to those, who were soldiers in two wings, Roman citizenship and II Arvacorum and to the cohort VIII of the Raetians, and they are under the same things, veterans with 25 years of military service, whose names are written below, he gave freedom and citizenship to them and their descendants and marriage with wives – to the cohort I of the mountainous regions, whose name is Sextus Nerianus, Sextus Filius, Clustumina Clemens, from the foot soldier Soionus Muscellus . . .
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Nov 29, 2012 03:46
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Grand Fromage posted:Siege of Tyre. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Tyre drat! someone should make a movie about it. euphronius posted:Awesome translation. Gratias. Hogge Wild fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Nov 29, 2012 |
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Nov 29, 2012 03:47
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That isnt mine I got it from here by the way http://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/roman.centre/TotFArchaeologyOfRaceCatalogue.pdf page 8
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Nov 29, 2012 03:54
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Im way late on this, but here is the best description of Roman racism vs pressent racism: There was simply not a huge difference "Roman" and "Romanized" at some level, but more importantly most racism in the US that is legitimately studied is based on White vs Black dynamic, which is simply a dynamic that Rome never had in the sense of one privileged "race" vs an under privileged "race". There is tons of obvious 'racism' that went around here before and nobody noticed as in how the Romans viewed Greek people, however that is not fitting in our modern concept of racism. The real reason we dont see it is that racism and our modern views on racism are all sorts of broken. Racism is a very specific subset of a wider series of issues generally assumed as dealing with Gemeinschaft and the other, not a specific thing that is unique in itself, all sorts of bigotry, and xenophobia are literally in their own right indeterminable from racism as in how they work.
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Nov 29, 2012 09:10
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Grand Fromage posted:There were supply ships that shadowed the army when they marched near the sea. I'm not aware of any actual naval battles. The only one I can think of that involved naval power was the siege of Tyre, but there they said gently caress it to the ships after a couple of failed attempts and just built a peninsula out to the island to assault by land. Stories like that are so amazing that it's tempting to suspect it as just a folk origin of a piece of geography. That wasn't exactly an unheard of tactic though, was it? I vaguely remember something about the Romans once just building a hill to get over a wall.
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Nov 29, 2012 16:51
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SlothfulCobra posted:Stories like that are so amazing that it's tempting to suspect it as just a folk origin of a piece of geography. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masada That would be Masada where they built an earth ramp over the wall.
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Nov 29, 2012 17:02
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SlothfulCobra posted:Stories like that are so amazing that it's tempting to suspect it as just a folk origin of a piece of geography. Roman (and Macedonian, in the case of Tyre) military engineering was absolutely incredible - I'd suggest looking particularly into Caesar if you like learning about it, as his legions' skill at engineering was mind-boggling. The walls put up to repel the Helvetian migration near Geneva were 16 ft. (~5m) tall and 19 (Roman) miles long - built in about two weeks, at least if you believe Caesar. The fortifications at the battle of Dyrrhachium were maybe more impressive, with Caesar and Pompey frantically competing to build walls for tactical advantage over the course of the battle; eventually this led to something more akin to the French-German lines during World War I than anything resembling "normal" ancient warfare, with a no man's land between the two sets of walls. Also, Tyre is consistently described as an island until after Alexander so it's almost certainly not a myth. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Nov 29, 2012 |
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Nov 29, 2012 21:28
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Grand Fromage posted:I think so. Anyway, the question of who claims ancient Macedonia is just dumb all around to me. They were a different people. There have been so many wars and migrations and territorial exchanges and intermixing and cultural changes and whatnot that nobody can claim them. Statistically speaking I'd bet everyone from the Balkans to Afghanistan could find a Macedonian ancestor and all have about the same strength of claim to the legacy. A few years ago I was in Thessaloniki, it was cute how the guide would go on and on about how the ancient macedonians were greek and how outrageous it was that the neighbours up north claim the name Macedonia. How anyone not living on a god forgotten island or in the arctic can claim unbroken ethnic purity is beyond me. Especially the greek. Thessaloniki has quite a few treats for the lover of antiquity. The Archeological Museum, Hagia Demetrios and the city wall was quite inspiring, and I hear the museum at Pella is a sight too.
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Nov 29, 2012 21:40
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