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Tao Jones posted:I suppose what I more meant to get at is that the atomists reject the ideas of a formal or teleological cause that was favored by Aristotle in a way that's superficially similar to the approach of modern science. In fairness, early modern thinkers explicitly claim that what they are doing is banishing "final causes" from physics, but they really seem to have only been rejecting a very narrow version of this: certain medieval theories of "substantial forms" get jettisoned in people like Descartes and Spinoza, but final causation itself is still very much around. (Spinoza's appendix to the first book of "Ethics" is one of the strongest rejections of "final causes" you'll find in the early modern period, and in his letters Spinoza aligns himself with Democritus and Lucretius; but Spinoza also ends up explaining all changes by the "conatus" of things to remain themselves, which is a paradigm of final causation (as Daniel Garber has argued). Descartes also claims he's getting rid of final causes in physics, but his "Le Monde" argues by asking how the world would be designed if it existed for the sake of our knowledge. Leibniz explicitly argued that getting rid of final causes in physics requires them again at the level of metaphysics, with his "entelechies" being the grounds of mechanical change.) But a deeper problem is this: the sorts of causes that people like Lucretius recognize don't line up with anything Aristotle recognizes as a "cause". Aristotle recognize "material cause" as a kind of cause because there can be different kinds of matters, so sometimes you can explain why something happened (as opposed to something else happening) by reference to the matter of the change undergone: a wooden chair floats when an iron chair doesn't because wood is lighter than iron, and "wood" and "iron" name the chairs with reference to their material. But if there aren't different kinds of matter, then you can never explain why a change occurs by reference to the matter a thing is made of: if everything is made of a neutral "stuff", then this "stuff" is always explanatorily idle. So you actually cheated a bit in your examples: atomists don't recognize "atoms that make up stone" and "atoms that make up cat meat" as two different kinds of things, and appealing to either doesn't give an atomistically respectable explanation, except insofar as both can be cashed out in terms of atoms being arranged in certain shapes moving in certain ways. This is not an example of an Aristotelian material cause, because one speaks of an Aristotelian "matter" only as part of a form-matter compound: but atoms of various shapes and sizes in various motions are not one part of a form-matter compound, but are already considered as formed. Aristotle's "efficient causes" are often identified with mechanical causes, which would become *the* causes for someone like Descartes. But this is just a misreading: in the example of the statue, Aristotle calls the carver the efficient causes. Not "the carver's carving of this statue", which would be what the mechanist would point to: the carver himself, as a craftsman, is the Aristotelian efficient cause of the statue. (Also noteworthy: he's the unique efficient cause of the statue. The efficient cause of the craftsman is not an efficient cause of the statue; Aristotelian efficient causation isn't transitive.) So for Aristotle the efficient cause of a kitten would not be "mommy cat and daddy cat had sex", but just "the daddy cat". Atomistic bumps and recoilings aren't Aristotelian efficient causes, they're something Aristotle doesn't think of as a "cause" at all: nowhere does Aristotle talk about something like "the hammer and chisel are striking against the block of marble" as a sort of cause of a statue being formed, because he doesn't think of that as a way of explaining why a statue is being formed. From Aristotle's point of view, atomists aren't trying to explain all changes in terms of efficient causation, but to explain away all changes by redescribing them as changes of a single kind: hard things shoving each other around. Aristotle's "formal causes" are what we give when we answer the question "What is this?" So the formal cause of a kitten is "a cat", the formal cause of a statue of Hercules is "a statue of Hercules", and the formal cause of a pyramid shooting through space is "a pyramid". Much much later, partly under Neoplatonic influence, Aristotelian forms become kinds of "things" which do causal work in a quasi-mechanical way by being present in objects (Roger Bacon is an example of this), but it's difficult to find this sort of picture in Aristotle himself. And if what's involved in "formal causation" is just an entity being of some sort or other, then it's hard to see atomism as rejecting it: they just insist that the formal causes of all changes are "atoms of X shape". The only sense in which atomists reject formal causes is by claiming that almost all formal causal explanations are false: the only true ones describe objects solely in terms of their shape. (The rest are "opinion".) Aristotle's "final causes" are what answer the question "What is this happening for?", in the broad sense that that question has. So Aristotle will say that a statue's final cause is the festival which it's being made for, or a kitten's final cause is growing up to be an adult cat; but he'll also say that the kitten exists to continue the existence of the species "cat", and that the kitten exists because it's trying to imitate the motions of the Prime Mover. Final causes are always multiple in this way: something occurs for the sake of something else, which is done for the sake of something else, and has as a means something else again. Explanations of action as such deal in final causes, because to say that someone is doing such-and-such is to say what it is that they're trying to accomplish, what it is that will determine whether they have done their deed completely and successfully, and this also determines what count as viable means to their end and presupposes other ends that they have. (If I say that you're eating a sandwich, I don't explain what you're doing in terms of a prior cause that has pushed you towards eating a sandwich: I mention what it is that you aim at in so acting, but which you have not yet achieved. In doing this I must also know that your moving of your jaws is a means to eating the sandwich, and that "eating" is a kind of activity that a being like yourself does: if a robot with your shape was making identical motions, this would not be "eating" unless robots also derived sustenance from smashing ham on rye into the jagged hinged bits on the front part of their heads.) So when later thinkers jettison "final causes", they usually still smuggle them in when thinking about the mind and its work in the world. (This is clearly the case in Descartes, and Spinoza calls him on it, but then Spinoza too thinks of actions as determined by something other than prior causes: all bodies move in attempts to remain the same as they are, for Spinoza.) The wikipedia article on Epicurus mentions that he himself did this in his Letter to Menoeceus, distinguish actions done by our agency from both chance and necessity. Thinking about explanations and "why" questions in the way that Aristotle did is actually having a renaissance in the philosophy of science: Bas van Fraassen explicitly invokes the "Physics" when trying to rehabilitate empiricism in his "The Scientific Image", and Nancy Cartwright claims that Aristotelians ended up "winning" the scientific revolution (as a friend of mine summarized the conclusion of her "The Dappled World"). Claiming that atomism is closer to "science" than Aristotle is is just buying into atomist propaganda, and gets both Aristotle and science wrong. quote:I'll have to check that book out - most of my knowledge of ancient atomism comes from Lucretius, moreso than pre-Socratics. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Democritus was pretty wildly metaphysical. I also don't know much about how atomism changed in the medieval era, other than the Church being hostile to it (for obvious reasons) and destroying/suppressing the teachings. This book was the one I found most useful when I asked about how Aristotle's critique of atomism was received, from a historical perspective, but it turned out that most of the arguments later atomists made were rehashes of earlier ones: this old book was really good at discussing those arguments. I can't recall how much of the demise of atomism was due to Epicurean works being burned (which did happen, but lots of works have gotten burned from time to time), and how much of it was just the philosophy genuinely going out of fashion. If memory serves, Epicurus's garden is long gone before there could have been a serious ecclesial threat to it. There's a revival of interest in the stuff in the early modern period, and that's when a lot of mythology surrounding a supposed rivalry between atomism and the church shows up, but its demise seems to have been on its own merits as bad philosophy: the collection I linked mentions several medieval thinkers who were attracted to atomism, but their arguments just aren't as good as the Aristotelian ones. (FWIW, Bill Newman mentioned in class that there were Islamic Atomists, the Kalam school, that seemed to have arrived at atomistic ideas with no influence from any outside source, and which flourished for quite a while under Islam: The SPEP article on "Arabic and Islamic Natural Philosophy and Science" is half about them.)
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Dec 9, 2012 02:56
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MrNemo posted:I'm not sure it's really fair to lump Democritean Atomism in with Epicurean though, they themselves didn't really accept the idea that Void existed as some separate entity that both 'is' and 'is not' but that it provided a means of distinguishing between occupied and unoccupied space. It would also be worth pointing out that their atomism did allow for smaller divisions than atoms, while atoms were the smallest physical object space itself could be divided further into minima. This was what, sort of, allowed them to put forth a creation theory that avoided the first cause problem and so cut out the teleology. Hell I've read some takes on the Epicurean creation story* presents a proto-Quantum physics. I don't see what the "first cause problem" you see them as trying to avoid is. Aristotle explicitly argues that motion is eternal; the sort of "first cause" argument asking for a "first pushing of the first pushed thing" you find later on aren't present in Aristotle, because he doesn't believe in a "first mover" in that sense. Aristotle's arguments for a prime mover are explicitly made in terms of final causes: there has to be an explanation for why changes happen that isn't itself just a mention of another change, and the prime mover's being as "pure act" answers this demand. The swerve does not answer this, because swerves are not explained by themselves in the way that "pure act" is; the doctrine of the swerve just claims that some changes in nature have no explanation, and gives up inquiry at that point. (If this move is a valid one, one wonders why not make it across the board: if we're allowing inexplicable swerves, why not claim that all motions are inexplicable and lose the motivation for positing swerves?) There are also paradoxes about "unoccupied space" that parallel other puzzles, so I don't think I was being too unfair in picking on Democritus's easiest target; see book four of Aristotle's "physics", and the Furley book I linked above. Epicurus and Lucretius are able to avoid some of Aristotle's arguments only by biting a lot of philosophical bullets. (I also don't know how Epicurus could allow for a finitely sized atom to move through an infinitesimally small region of space: Aristotle argues in book six of "Physics" that only an infinitesimally-small object can move through an infinitesimally-small space in any amount of time (which he then argues has to also be infinitesimally-small, at which point he is able to refute atomism by a series of modi tollens from an earlier proof that time is continuous and has no smallest parts). I recall Furley saying that the atomists accepted these arguments, but argued that finitely-sized objects are in fact composed of infinitesimally-sized parts, and that finite motions are composites of infinitesimally-small motions of infinitesimally-small particles moving through infinitesimally-small regions of space in infinitesimally-small amounts of time. But I no longer have the Furley checked out to look up his quotes about this; I might be conflating Lucretian views and properly Epicurean ones.) I want to mention a general point here: one of the hardest parts in reading ancient arguments is keeping in mind that we have a huge amount more math than they did; calculus lets us do things with infinities that the ancients never dreamed of, and Cantorian higher infinities lets some of Aristotle's arguments get side-stepped. Finding a coherent way to think of "summing" infinitesimals is even more recent: Cantor explicitly held that infinitesimals were contradictory, and that it was a scandal that so many mathematicians admitted them. (This sort of thing becomes even more important when you're reading something like the attacks on "the mathematicians" in Plato's Republic: Socrates criticizes them for lacking rigor, but who knows what sort of "proofs" were being passed off then, a century before Euclid? If mathematics was not very rigorous, would it have even been a good idea to try to make more use of mathematics in natural science than someone like Aristotle does? Note that Descartes is able to make a case for mathematics in physics only because he's also revolutionized mathematics: Cartesian motions take place on a Cartesian grid.)
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Dec 9, 2012 03:29
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Holy poo poo guys. So uh How about those aqueducts, eh?
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Dec 9, 2012 03:31
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Eggplant Wizard posted:Holy poo poo guys. Aqueducts are pretty sweet. All watery and stuff.
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Dec 9, 2012 03:47
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Eggplant Wizard posted:Holy poo poo guys. What all were they used for? Did Romans get to poop and pee into flowing water, or was the Roman sewage system just used for dumping stuff into (so they had to use chamberpots or w/e)? How did they wipe?
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Dec 9, 2012 03:52
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Eggplant Wizard posted:Holy poo poo guys. Were they made of atoms, or what?
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Dec 9, 2012 03:56
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Suenteus Po posted:What all were they used for? Did Romans get to poop and pee into flowing water, or was the Roman sewage system just used for dumping stuff into (so they had to use chamberpots or w/e)? How did they wipe? Aqueducts delivered fresh water to city fountains, private homes (very rich ones), and baths complexes. The water systems were set up so that if there was a shortage of water, the other two would run out before the public fountains did (I forget what order though). The public toilets are pretty sweetly designed but I don't know about home waste- I'm inclined to think probably by dumping it in gutters on the street  but I dunno. Latrine at Housesteads (fort on Hadrian's Wall) attached. Note the sponge onna stick. You do your business, then wash your sponge off in the running water that goes around in the lower gutter there. Some public bathrooms in Rome even had heated floors! p.s. I love that there's a book on this. e: Woah, two books. Here's a review of the other. Eggplant Wizard fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Dec 9, 2012 |
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Dec 9, 2012 05:36
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And don't let the fact that they used lead pipes give you any ideas. When water, especially the unfiltered, high mineral content water the Romans had, flows through lead a lot, it tends to calcify quickly, i.e. become coated with calcium on the inside, meaning the Romans were not in fact drinking lead poisoned water. Or pooping in it, for that matter.
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Dec 9, 2012 05:40
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Oh btw you guys can keep talking philosophy if you want, but you might be better served in making an ancient philosophy thread in SAL. You will find more people like you  I have a poster of the picture I attached. I need to get it a frame so I can put it up in my bathroom.
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Dec 9, 2012 05:41
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Suenteus Po posted:What all were they used for? Did Romans get to poop and pee into flowing water, or was the Roman sewage system just used for dumping stuff into (so they had to use chamberpots or w/e)? How did they wipe? Fresh water into the cities. The public toilets did usually flush downstream. There are little channels in front of the toilets at public bathrooms, which we think were full of running water to wipe off your sponge on a stick, which was the method of rear end-wipery preferred by the Romans. Urine would usually be peed into special pots which were collected for use by the dry cleaners. Recycling!
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Dec 9, 2012 05:49
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Grand Fromage posted:
And taxed! Thanks, Vespasian.
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Dec 9, 2012 06:07
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Before you philosophy people leave, could you talk some about non-greek philosophers? It seems like all the ancient philosophers I hear about are greek and probably athenian as well. The ancient world must've had some thinkers outside of Greece.
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Dec 9, 2012 06:34
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SlothfulCobra posted:Before you philosophy people leave, could you talk some about non-greek philosophers? It seems like all the ancient philosophers I hear about are greek and probably athenian as well. The ancient world must've had some thinkers outside of Greece. Aristotle wasn't an Athenian, he was a Stagirite. This is why Plato's academy didn't become Aristotle's academy: he couldn't inherit it, as a non-Athenian, so it passed to Speusippus (whose views often come up for criticism in Aristotle's texts, in harsher terms than Plato's do; I always wonder about the internal politics of the academy when I read that stuff). In general though, philosophy is a collective discipline. There's a reason Plato wrote dialogues: this stuff happens best by having a bunch of folk come together who are interested in arguing about stuff and trying to figure it out by talking a lot over an extended period of time, often without an immediate payoff in view (other than the pleasure of contemplation itself). This happened in Athens, probably partly because there was so much opportunity for leisure (thanks, slavery!), which is why you have an awful lot of good philosophers getting produced in a relatively compressed time. The reason you mostly hear about Greek philosophers is because that's where the philosophers were. And then once Plato and Aristotle have written their stuff, it's impressive enough that a lot of intellectual labor ends up being commentary on it, and folk who might've been inclined towards thinking up philosophical systems instead become teachers of Plato & Aristotle. A similar trend affects the way ancient philosophy is studied now: Plato and Aristotle are just way better philosophers than Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, so they get read more; "Nichomachean Ethics" just seems more deserving of study than "De Officiis" (though this is historically contingent: in the early modern period Cicero is someone everybody wants to claim to their side, and Aristotle's name is mud). There's been a tendency to view "Roman philosophy" as just "Greek philosophy, but worse" since at least the 18th century (19th century Germans seem unanimous in this opinion, and insistent upon it), and the effects of this broad generalization still color what gets read now. If you're asking about philosophy done outside of Plato's Greece but contemporaneously to it, or before Socrates & friends, it's not clear that there was any in the west. There's work on ancient near-east mythology that relates it to presocratic themes, but I only know it through a friend who studied ANE stuff, and even he thought Plato had basically invented a new kind of thing that the world didn't have around before. (You can look at the stuff in the Kirk, Raven, and Schofield book I linked to see how big the jump is between "The Presocratic Philosophers" and Plato. Plato's little books are still read in most "Intro to Philosophy" courses; Heraclitus and Anaxagoras are really alien.) There were obviously people doing serious thinking over in India and China around these times, but I don't know whether you meant to include them in "the ancient world". Any claims of interactions between "eastern philosophy" and "western philosophy" before the past several centuries are speculative; there's just no real evidence of the two impacting each other, that I'm aware of. Also, the poop painting is great.
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Dec 9, 2012 08:10
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SlothfulCobra posted:Before you philosophy people leave, could you talk some about non-greek philosophers? It seems like all the ancient philosophers I hear about are greek and probably athenian as well. The ancient world must've had some thinkers outside of Greece. Confucius? There's loads of philosophers in China at that time. Herodot writes about a guy named Zalmoxis, not a philosopher in the classical sense, but the guy started his own cult over in Thracia. Lots of fun stuff involved that barbarians supposedly liked to do. Sitting in small tents, inhaling hempfumes, eating magic mushrooms and impaling people to make them immortal. I'll probably risk damnatio ad bestias (I know we spoke about them some pages ago), but I wanted to ask about centurions. Is there a recommended book if one wants to know more about them? Power Khan fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Dec 9, 2012 |
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Dec 9, 2012 08:19
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SlothfulCobra posted:Before you philosophy people leave, could you talk some about non-greek philosophers? It seems like all the ancient philosophers I hear about are greek and probably athenian as well. The ancient world must've had some thinkers outside of Greece. Plotinus is possibly the guy who best fits the bill - he was born around 200 AD in Egypt, and might have been (ethnically speaking), an Egyptian, a Roman, or a Greek - we don't really know. If the atomists were hardcore materialists, he was the complete opposite: his writings (called 'the Enneads') are a mystical take on some of the ideas of Plato, stressing that the material world is an illusion, unification with pure Being is what's important, and similar thoughts along those lines. He influenced the mystical tradition in monotheistic religion rather strongly, and bought into some ideas from Plato, to the point where his philosophy is called "neo-Platonic", so he's not exactly outside of the Greek sphere. Beyond that, the alternatives seem pretty slim pickings. Ecclesiastes and Proverbs are philosophical books of the Old Testament. Perhaps St. Augustine, depending on whether you'd classify Christianity as a form of Greek philosophy. There were, of course, dudes doing philosophy in India and China at the same time, but it's doubtful whether or not there was much, if any, interaction between those philosophers and philosophers in Greece. e: And, of course, Marcus Aurelius was a Roman, so I guess you might be able to make a case that the Meditations as being an expression of Roman philosophy. That's not a case I would make, though. fantastic in plastic fucked around with this message at 08:52 on Dec 9, 2012 |
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Dec 9, 2012 08:48
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The Islamic thinkers picked up on Aristotle and Plotinus in a big way, and had their own variations and reactions to them. Al Ghazli is fun to read right after Descartes because he runs up against a lot of the same issues and goes a very different way with them. (They even, I think, mixed the two up at some point and went to some  places trying to reconcile the two.)Hindu and Zoroastrian thinkers were pretty influential too, but I don't remember much about them off the top of my head.
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Dec 9, 2012 09:26
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InspectorBloor posted:Confucius? There's loads of philosophers in China at that time. Zalmoxis/Salmoxis was more of a con-man then a philosopher. He faked his own death, and then faked his resurrection so that he could convince people to worship him. One version of the legend is that he was Pythagoras's slave, and he tried to convert the people to his version of Pythagoreanism.
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Dec 9, 2012 17:37
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sullat posted:Zalmoxis/Salmoxis was more of a con-man then a philosopher. He faked his own death, and then faked his resurrection so that he could convince people to worship him. One version of the legend is that he was Pythagoras's slave, and he tried to convert the people to his version of Pythagoreanism. Thank you. I was looking for the right word. That guy was charlatan in the best sense.
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Dec 9, 2012 18:04
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Grand Fromage posted:Fresh water into the cities. The public toilets did usually flush downstream. There are little channels in front of the toilets at public bathrooms, which we think were full of running water to wipe off your sponge on a stick, which was the method of rear end-wipery preferred by the Romans. I don't know if they were technically dry cleaners. 
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Dec 10, 2012 07:13
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Fly Molo posted:I don't know if they were technically dry cleaners. The guys who used the urine, IIRC, were called fullers, and I think their trade is part of the process of dyeing cloth rather than cleaning clothes as such. If you're interested in charlatans/conmen, a very  example was a guy called Eunus, who led a slave revolt in Sicily in 135-131 BC. He claimed to be a magician/fortune-teller and used to convince his followers of this by hiding a nut full of sulphur in his mouth and using it to "breathe fire" with.To be honest, I'd probably vote for the politician who'd do that myself.
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Dec 11, 2012 21:07
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General Panic posted:The guys who used the urine, IIRC, were called fullers, and I think their trade is part of the process of dyeing cloth rather than cleaning clothes as such. Bleaching, too.
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Dec 11, 2012 22:35
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Somebody needed the ammonia and was not happy during asparagus season, anyway.
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Dec 12, 2012 02:03
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How exactly did the ancient Egyptians worship cats? Did cats have any special place in their mythology, or did they just really like cats?
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Dec 12, 2012 06:03
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I can't answer that one but cats in general were appreciated in cities. People didn't understand disease vectors but they understood that things like rats were bad, they hosed up food storage and spread sickness. So, having lots of cats prowling the city was beneficial for everyone's health. I suspect Egyptian cat stuff originated from that.
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Dec 12, 2012 06:08
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Can you explain why "she-wolf" was a euphemism for a prostitute? Scortum I at least understand, vulgar as it is.
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Dec 12, 2012 07:49
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SlothfulCobra posted:How exactly did the ancient Egyptians worship cats? Did cats have any special place in their mythology, or did they just really like cats? Well there's Bastet. That's all I know really.
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Dec 12, 2012 14:44
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Halloween Jack posted:Can you explain why "she-wolf" was a euphemism for a prostitute? Scortum I at least understand, vulgar as it is. In Rome? I wouldn't think that it was, considering that a particular she-wolf was pretty important to them.
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Dec 12, 2012 17:58
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I was just wonering how much documentation there was on how the Egyptians worshiped cats, because people say that a lot, but for all I know it could've been like the old archeological joke where if somebody sees a bunch of stuff that they can't quickly explain, they just assume it's religious imagery.Halloween Jack posted:Can you explain why "she-wolf" was a euphemism for a prostitute? Scortum I at least understand, vulgar as it is. I would assume that there may be some similarities in the origins of ancient and modern slang. Bitches be bitches man.
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Dec 12, 2012 19:49
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I just bought a Punic and Macedonian Wars era 28mm Roman army to use for wargames. I really don't know much about The Punic Wars other than Hannibal almost had Rome during the second war, amd it was before the Marius reforms. Would have armies looked much different from each other or would have their been a pretty uniform look? Who were some of the standout generals, armies and battles of the time? Any resources that people can point me to so I can paint these guys fairly accurately? This purchase is this threads fault so I see this project as all of your responsibility.
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Dec 12, 2012 20:39
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DarkCrawler posted:In Rome? I wouldn't think that it was, considering that a particular she-wolf was pretty important to them. Actually, the usage of lupa to mean prostitute goes way back. One ancient, rationalizing theory of Rome's founding (it's a fragmentary source that I can't find right now, but it's in Die Frühen Römischen Historiker if you want to check, I just returned my copy to the library) was that Romulus and Remus were actually suckled by a prostitute, not a wolf, because the word was the same.
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Dec 12, 2012 21:40
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Big Willy Style posted:I just bought a Punic and Macedonian Wars era 28mm Roman army to use for wargames. I really don't know much about The Punic Wars other than Hannibal almost had Rome during the second war, amd it was before the Marius reforms. Would have armies looked much different from each other or would have their been a pretty uniform look? Who were some of the standout generals, armies and battles of the time? Any resources that people can point me to so I can paint these guys fairly accurately? Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus is the general you want to imitate. Modeling yourself on him would give you a good excuse for never getting your figures painted.
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Dec 12, 2012 21:42
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Apollodorus posted:Actually, the usage of lupa to mean prostitute goes way back. One ancient, rationalizing theory of Rome's founding (it's a fragmentary source that I can't find right now, but it's in Die Frühen Römischen Historiker if you want to check, I just returned my copy to the library) was that Romulus and Remus were actually suckled by a prostitute, not a wolf, because the word was the same. Yeah that's one rationalization of the story. I always like telling that bit. How does "she-wolf" mean prostitute? I dunno, how does "[word for female dog]" mean "woman I don't like"? And yet there we are.
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Dec 12, 2012 21:44
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Halloween Jack posted:Can you explain why "she-wolf" was a euphemism for a prostitute? Scortum I at least understand, vulgar as it is. Fun fact - allegedly Messalina, Claudius' empress, enjoyed sneaking off at night to work in a brothel under the pseudonym "Wolf Woman." It's probably about as reliable historically as your average piece of salacious celebrity gossip, but for what it's worth...
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Dec 12, 2012 22:02
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Big Willy Style posted:I just bought a Punic and Macedonian Wars era 28mm Roman army to use for wargames. I really don't know much about The Punic Wars other than Hannibal almost had Rome during the second war, amd it was before the Marius reforms. Would have armies looked much different from each other or would have their been a pretty uniform look? Who were some of the standout generals, armies and battles of the time? Any resources that people can point me to so I can paint these guys fairly accurately? We have done the legions a few times in this thread, but gently caress it, we all know we love talkin about the legions, and its normal the entry point to Roman history. I'm on my phone so forgive the lack of sources or pictures as well as some spelling mistakes as I have to remember the names. The armies were totally different. Assuming its accurate the minitures you have should show you the Roman army very well. The troops were divided into 5 catagories in this time period. 4 infanty classes and hen cavalry. The infantry were Velities, Hastati, Principes, and Triarii. There were skirmishes, heavy sword infantry, and heavy phalanx infantry respectively. The divisions were according to experience and age. The Hastati and Principes used the Gladius sword and wore chain mail armor, though earlier the Hastati only had a small square breastplate whose name escapes me. The Triarii used a 9ft spear called a Hasta, which is the namesake of the Hastati. They also wore hoplite armor and carried the big rectangular shield you see Roman legions from after Marius carrying. The cavalry was medium armored nobility and were never very good until the 300s AD. Rome used conquered people's cavalry whenever they could since they knew full well their own was substandard. They lined up for battle in thae order of experience. Skirmishers in from to hide the formation from the enemy, and then the heavy infantry in three lines. These lines were divided into Maniples of 300 men each. These Maniples were arranged in a checkerboard formation, with the Hastati maniples in front, Principes behind them directly behind the gaps in the Hastati maniples and Triarii behind them in the same fashion. Ideally the Velities throw their missiles and retreat through the gaps, the Hastati fight and retreat through the Principes, and the Principes break the enemy. The Triarii getting called in means things are going badly, and resulted in a common phrase. "It has come to be Triarii," meaning things were dire. Obviously this is not always how it went, and they also use standard big long lines or troops unbroken by maniples or other formations. The Carthaginians were very different, as their army was entirely made up of mercenaries from their empires holdings. Slingers from the Balearic Islands, phalanx spearman from Libya, various quality infantry from Spain, some of which fought similarly to legionaries, others just used big groups of dudes with spear or swords. Cavalry was lightly armed Numidians who were the best light cavalry in the ancient world. Toss in Greeks and whoever else they could hire. Citizens only were drafted if Africa and Carthage itself were threatened. Also elephants. Carthaginians were the officers and used Greek to give orders. His meant I could be either a disunited and ineffective force, or a flexible and multifaceted army that could change its tactics for any challenge and could hit you however they wanted. The Macedonians used armies that were a legacy of Alexander the Great. A huge line of Phalangites, men armed with a 19ft long pike that fought in a phalanx. They had a small shield strapped to their left arm and had to use two hands to thrust with such a big spear. Cavalry was heavy and meant to flank the infantry pinned down by the phalanx. Alexander did just that over and over again. By this time the armies are nowhere near as well trained as Alexander's were, and the Romans had an army custom buil to be able to move around the phalanx and hit it on the sides or rear.
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Dec 12, 2012 22:37
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General Panic posted:Fun fact - allegedly Messalina, Claudius' empress, enjoyed sneaking off at night to work in a brothel under the pseudonym "Wolf Woman." It's probably about as reliable historically as your average piece of salacious celebrity gossip, but for what it's worth... The allegation that empresses (and queens and other powerful women) liked to do night-work on the side is a very popular and common accusation. Somehow I doubt many of them have anything approaching "truth" to them, however.
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Dec 12, 2012 22:38
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1. Someone talk about Mithridates please, as I understand he was half persian and half greek and represented a sort of last stand for hellenic culture. 2. This is the best thread since LF 3. Grand Fromage is a hero
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Dec 13, 2012 00:14
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SlothfulCobra posted:I was just wonering how much documentation there was on how the Egyptians worshiped cats, because people say that a lot, but for all I know it could've been like the old archeological joke where if somebody sees a bunch of stuff that they can't quickly explain, they just assume it's religious imagery.  sullat posted:The allegation that empresses (and queens and other powerful women) liked to do night-work on the side is a very popular and common accusation. Somehow I doubt many of them have anything approaching "truth" to them, however. Not just powerful ladies, don't forget Elagabalus.
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Dec 13, 2012 01:57
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Halloween Jack posted:Can you explain why "she-wolf" was a euphemism for a prostitute? Scortum I at least understand, vulgar as it is. The association likely came from the Greek goddess Artemis, who was known both for her wild independence from men and for taking the form of a wolf. But the Romans had lots of different explanations and rationalizations both religious and prurient.: quote:"Some authorities affirm that this name was given them because of a peculiar wolflike cry they uttered, and others assert that the generic was bestowed upon then because their rapacity rivalled that of the wolf. Servius, however, in his commentary on Virgil, has assigned a much more improper and filthy reason for the name; he alludes to the manner in which the wolf who mothered Romulus and Remus licked their bodies with her tongue, and this hint is sufficient to confirm him in his belief that the lupa; were not less skilled in lingual gymnastics. See Lemaire's Virgil, vol. vi, p. 521; commentary of Servius on Aeneid, lib. viii, 631." I think it fundamentally comes down to the love-hate relationship that Romans had with prostitutes in the first place. They had a much more positive view of them than the modern-day American, for instance, and didn't hide them away like we do. Prostitutes were looked down on, but they also had a certain independence that other women lacked. And they had tons of different words for them, many more than we do today. The term "she-wolf" served to tie them into the martial founding mythos of Roman values. A she-wolf is a mother who isn't just another helpless victim It's pretty badass to be an empire of soldiers and whores, and Romans loved being badass. I think their perspective would be, "She's a bitch, but she's our bitch." Here's a couple of excellent web pages about it: http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/socialcustomsdailylife/a/010908Lupercal_2.htm http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_prostitutionnotes2.htm And there's even a book about it, and Google has some pretty good samples up: https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0521194563 Eggplant Wizard posted:How does "she-wolf" mean prostitute? I dunno, how does "[word for female dog]" mean "woman I don't like"? And yet there we are. I think that the history of "Bitch" and http://clarebayley.com/2011/06/bitch-a-history/ Kaal fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Dec 13, 2012 |
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Dec 13, 2012 02:45
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cheerfullydrab posted:It's a good joke. Best post in this thread
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Dec 13, 2012 02:51
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Kaal posted:The association likely came from the Greek goddess Artemis, who was known both for her wild independence from men and for taking the form of a wolf. But the Romans had lots of different explanations and rationalizations both religious and prurient. Uh. I kind of doubt a virgin goddess would be the reason for a slang word for prostitute. Never heard of her taking a wolf form either. Kaal posted:I think that the history of "Bitch" and luna are one and the same, frankly. We use the word as an insult because the Romans did. Luna is moon, or my cat. Lupa is she-wolf/prostitute.
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Dec 13, 2012 02:59
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