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House Louse posted:This made me wonder - why are the dick statues called herms, as in Hermes? And hermaphrodite, come to think of it. Why was Hermes/Mercury associated with masculinity more than Ares, Zeus, or someone a bit manlier? Hermes was connected to dicks - some myths have Priapus and/or Eros as his son. I don't think there's any evidence as to why this is, particularly. He's associated with some stories of sexual conquest, such as telling Odysseus that the way to defeat Circe is to force her to bed. He's featured as the god of clever tricks, and seduction is a kind of trick. He's the god of travel, and it was mostly men who traveled around in those days, and a lot of stories of travel involve the hero sampling the local princess. He's the god of commerce, and there's an argument that there were a lot of metaphysical links between sex and how money developed. As for why Hermes and not Ares or Zeus, I think it's because having a penis wasn't completely equal to 'being a man'. (As in, you needed a dick to be a man, but having a dick wasn't the only requirement.) Effeminacy and bisexuality were perceived as negative traits, so I don't think it would have been seen as appropriate to link manly things like justice and war with a figure that was half woman. (This is, of course, just my speculation. It's hard to point at any aspect of a god's portfolio and try to scientifically, rationally determine why it's so. The gods are a blend of useful just-so stories and, I'd argue, a kind of collective id, and much like Freudian or Jungian psychology, there's a lot of speculation involved in trying to paint a picture of what might be going on.)
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Jan 10, 2013 10:14
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FWIW, the wikipedia page gives the impression that Hermes was named for the herms, not vice versa, but that intuitively sounds wrong to me. More interestingly, it also mentions the famous incident in 415 BC when Alcibiades, the Athenian statesman, was accused of mutilating some herms. He was allowed to go off and lead the Athenian invasion of Sicily, which was a disaster and lost them the Peleponnesian War, but eventually got sentenced to death in his absence. I think he spent the rest of his life in exile as a result. It was largely a politically motivated trial, but it does show how seriously the Athenians took these things.
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Jan 10, 2013 19:42
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General Panic posted:FWIW, the wikipedia page gives the impression that Hermes was named for the herms, not vice versa, but that intuitively sounds wrong to me. He was actually tried & sentenced for publicly mocking the secret Elusinian rituals (also politically motivated, but had the added benefit of probably being true). He also had a pretty eventful career after his exile, selling Athenian secrets to the Spartans, Greek secrets to the Persians, before returning in triumph to Athens before fleeing again. The Spartans or possibly the Persians had him assassinated.
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Jan 10, 2013 20:14
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sullat posted:He was actually tried & sentenced for publicly mocking the secret Elusinian rituals (also politically motivated, but had the added benefit of probably being true). He also had a pretty eventful career after his exile, selling Athenian secrets to the Spartans, Greek secrets to the Persians, before returning in triumph to Athens before fleeing again. The Spartans or possibly the Persians had him assassinated. Why isn't there a HBO series about this guy?
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Jan 10, 2013 20:27
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House Louse posted:This made me wonder - why are the dick statues called herms, as in Hermes? According to Wikipedia this is because the Greeks had special numbers for each of their gods, and Hermes' was 4. And the herma, being rectangular monuments, have four corners. I'm not sure if I'm convinced...
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Jan 10, 2013 20:41
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Lord Tywin posted:Why isn't there a HBO series about this guy? As a young man, Alcibiades may have been Socrates' lover. He was certainly one of Socrates' students, and one of the charges that Socrates had to address was teaching him. He was also impossibly pretty and spoke with a lisp. It would make for pretty great TV.
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Jan 10, 2013 21:50
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IS IT TRUE THEY INVENTED VENTING MACHIES
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Jan 10, 2013 21:58
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Hero of Alexandria, a famous inventor who also made something that might have been an early attempt at a steam engine, did also invent a device that resembles a vending machine. I found a sketch of it online and translation of the explanation, from Hero's book Pneumatics, but I don't have an attribution for who the translator is. Hero of Alexandria posted:If into certain sacrificial vessels a coin of five drachma be thrown, water shall flow out and surround them. Let A B C D (fig. 21) be a sacrificial vessel or treasure chest, having an opening in its mouth, A; and in the chest let there be a vessel, F G H K, containing water, and a small box, L, from which a pipe, L M, conducts out of the chest. Near the vessel place a vertical rod, N X, about which a lever, O P, widening at O into the plate R parallel into the bottom of the vessel, while at the extremity P is suspended a lid, s, which fits into the box L, so that no water can flow through the tube L M: this lid, however, must be heavier than the plate R, but lighter than the plate and coin combined. When the coin is thrown through the mouth A, it will fall upon the plate R and, preponderating, it will turn the beam O P, and raise the lid of the box so that water will flow; but if the coin falls off, the lid will descend and close the box so that the discharge ceases. (37)
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Jan 10, 2013 22:20
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Ah, but he was clearly asking about venting machi
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Jan 10, 2013 22:26
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Golden_Zucchini posted:Aphrodite was married to Hephaestus and rather unhappy since he was so ugly. She started sleeping around with other guys, Ares in particular, and Hephaestus caught wind of it. Hephaestus then decided to catch them at it by pretending to go on a trip, then snared Ares and Aphrodite in a bronze net. Once they were caught, Hephaestus summoned all the other gods there to witness their (and his) shame. Apollo made a comment to Hermes to the effect of "Embarrassing but worth it, huh?" Hermes responded with an emphatic yes, and once the whole thing was settled Aphrodite, never one to learn from her mistakes, rewarded Hermes for his enthusiasm with a night all to themselves. Hermaphroditus was the result. Heh heh, I knew the first half of that story but not the second, thanks! Golden_Zucchini posted:As I look further I see that Hermes was also a fertility god early in his career, which would explain his connection with the phallus and why there were an important part of herms, which was indeed named for him as god of travelers and crossroads. That might also explain why he was chosen as the father of Hermaphrodite: I can see male fertility god and female sex/reproduction goddess combining to make a being that is fertile unto itself. That's pure speculation, though. Tao Jones posted:Hermes was connected to dicks - some myths have Priapus and/or Eros as his son. I don't think there's any evidence as to why this is, particularly. He's associated with some stories of sexual conquest, such as telling Odysseus that the way to defeat Circe is to force her to bed. He's featured as the god of clever tricks, and seduction is a kind of trick. He's the god of travel, and it was mostly men who traveled around in those days, and a lot of stories of travel involve the hero sampling the local princess. He's the god of commerce, and there's an argument that there were a lot of metaphysical links between sex and how money developed. Ah, that's the kind of answer I was interested in. And yeah, this kind of thing's always speculative, but it looks good, or at least intriguing. The travellers-and-sex idea ties in with sailors having a girl in every port. Thanks very much to both of you.
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Jan 10, 2013 23:10
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Tao Jones posted:As a young man, Alcibiades may have been Socrates' lover. He was certainly one of Socrates' students, and one of the charges that Socrates had to address was teaching him. He was also impossibly pretty and spoke with a lisp. It would make for pretty great TV. I don't think there's much evidence for this other than "hey, wouldn't it be nifty?". Alcibiades definitely had a rep for sticking it in anything young and pretty but not even Aristophenes mentioned anything about their relationship being anything but teacher/student. After all, Socrates appears to have taught many of the big names of that era, Plato, Critias, Alcibiades, Xenophon, and probably more. If anything, it was Critias's sins that Socrates had to answer for, not Alciabiades'. But yeah, HBO should be all up in a Greek-era miniseries. Lots of boobs, blood and backstabbing.
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Jan 10, 2013 23:13
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Alcibiades is probably one of my favorite historical figures ever. Such a clever, conniving, slimy son of a bitch who had a huge impact on the Greek world through his actions. Allegedly when assassins finally cornered him, they surrounded him and set his house on fire, prompting him to charge out naked and armed with nothing but a dagger, before being shot down by a bunch of arrows.
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Jan 10, 2013 23:53
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sullat posted:I don't think there's much evidence for this other than "hey, wouldn't it be nifty?". Alcibiades definitely had a rep for sticking it in anything young and pretty but not even Aristophenes mentioned anything about their relationship being anything but teacher/student. After all, Socrates appears to have taught many of the big names of that era, Plato, Critias, Alcibiades, Xenophon, and probably more. If anything, it was Critias's sins that Socrates had to answer for, not Alciabiades'. But yeah, HBO should be all up in a Greek-era miniseries. Lots of boobs, blood and backstabbing. Yeah, that's true. I mostly base that on Plato's depiction of the relationship in First Alcibiades and Symposium, and even then it's not like Socrates is like "Hey, Alcibiades, remember that time when you were twelve and we had sex?" So I guess I'm more on the "yes, it would be nifty" side of the speculation. v  v
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Jan 11, 2013 00:07
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sullat posted:I don't think there's much evidence for this other than "hey, wouldn't it be nifty?". Alcibiades definitely had a rep for sticking it in anything young and pretty but not even Aristophenes mentioned anything about their relationship being anything but teacher/student. After all, Socrates appears to have taught many of the big names of that era, Plato, Critias, Alcibiades, Xenophon, and probably more. If anything, it was Critias's sins that Socrates had to answer for, not Alciabiades'. But yeah, HBO should be all up in a Greek-era miniseries. Lots of boobs, blood and backstabbing. Since things have turned this way, I haven't engaged in Ancient Philosophy in quite a while. Is there a scholarly consensus about which of Plato's Socratic dialogs, if any, likely represent some version of actual dialogs involving Socrates as opposed to Plato simply using Socrates as an authoritative mouthpiece for his own views? I seem to recall someone saying that the dialogs up to (and perhaps including?) the Phaedo are generally considered to have some basis in history and at least be a reasonable approximation of Socrates' views, while the dialogs after the Phaedo are generally considered to be purely Plato's views told through the mouthpiece of Socrates.
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Jan 11, 2013 00:40
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Tao Jones posted:As a young man, Alcibiades may have been Socrates' lover. He was certainly one of Socrates' students, and one of the charges that Socrates had to address was teaching him. He was also impossibly pretty and spoke with a lisp. It would make for pretty great TV. And, at some point during his stay with the Spartans, there was an earthquake and he ran out of the Spartan Queen's bedchambers. Later, Lysander used this to put on the throne instead of the kid born 9 months after the earthquake.Not My Leg posted:Since things have turned this way, I haven't engaged in Ancient Philosophy in quite a while. Is there a scholarly consensus about which of Plato's Socratic dialogs, if any, likely represent some version of actual dialogs involving Socrates as opposed to Plato simply using Socrates as an authoritative mouthpiece for his own views? I seem to recall someone saying that the dialogs up to (and perhaps including?) the Phaedo are generally considered to have some basis in history and at least be a reasonable approximation of Socrates' views, while the dialogs after the Phaedo are generally considered to be purely Plato's views told through the mouthpiece of Socrates. I do know that the Socrates as described by Xenophon is a pretty different fellow. As far as I know, few people think that, except maybe the trial and maybe the execution, that Plato was doing word for word transcriptions of Real Conversations. It's quite likely that a lot of the ideas at least originated with Socrates, but everything Plato wrote had a very Plato spin to them that most people call Platonic not Socratic. e: I want an HBO series that charts Alcibiades and then picks up with Xenophon. the JJ fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Jan 11, 2013 |
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Jan 11, 2013 00:54
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Not My Leg posted:Since things have turned this way, I haven't engaged in Ancient Philosophy in quite a while. Is there a scholarly consensus about which of Plato's Socratic dialogs, if any, likely represent some version of actual dialogs involving Socrates as opposed to Plato simply using Socrates as an authoritative mouthpiece for his own views? I seem to recall someone saying that the dialogs up to (and perhaps including?) the Phaedo are generally considered to have some basis in history and at least be a reasonable approximation of Socrates' views, while the dialogs after the Phaedo are generally considered to be purely Plato's views told through the mouthpiece of Socrates. I don't think any ancient scholar thinks that any of the dialogues is a transcription of anything; they're too polished for that. (And Plato has a character explicitly say that he wasn't present for Socrates's actual death.) I see a lot of very general agnosticism about Socrates as a person among stuff I've read. We know (from Diogenes Laertius IIRC) that more people than just Plato and Xenophon wrote Socratic dialogues, but that the other authors are all lost. So there might be essentially nothing connecting the man Socrates with the character(s) Socrates, except that he somehow lead to this literary trope. It's also worth remembering that the dating of dialogues is entirely speculative: the only way we have to "order" Plato's dialogues is by their content, and so any ordering will presume a background theory about the roles the dialogues played and the development of Plato's own views. Neither of these are exactly simple topics. There are little hints in the dialogues about what Socrates's own views might have been, like his denial that he ever had any interest in the study of nature and that he couldn't make any sense of Anaximander's books (I think both of these are in the Apology, but am too lazy/busy to check). This sort of thing is what makes people say the Timaeus is late and entirely "Platonic", and the more obviously ethical dialogues are "Socratic". But we only have the words of a character in Plato's dialogues for even these claims. FWIW, I have also heard the "works up to the Phaedo represent Socrates's own views" line; the professor I was a TA for last semester trotted it out when teaching the Phaedo. But as far as I can tell, there's very little backing it up, and I don't think most current ancients scholars would try to defend it. There's just too little evidence to claim anything about a historical Socrates's views.
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Jan 11, 2013 01:30
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Not My Leg posted:Since things have turned this way, I haven't engaged in Ancient Philosophy in quite a while. Is there a scholarly consensus about which of Plato's Socratic dialogs, if any, likely represent some version of actual dialogs involving Socrates as opposed to Plato simply using Socrates as an authoritative mouthpiece for his own views? I seem to recall someone saying that the dialogs up to (and perhaps including?) the Phaedo are generally considered to have some basis in history and at least be a reasonable approximation of Socrates' views, while the dialogs after the Phaedo are generally considered to be purely Plato's views told through the mouthpiece of Socrates. Consensus? Not really. There's some people who divide the dialogues into early period, middle period, and late period. Early period dialogues are more concerned with ethical problems and not metaphysical problems, and so might be closer to being a record of Socrates' exploits. (We have testimony from Aristotle that Socrates himself was concerned almost exclusively with ethical questions.) Middle period dialogues are said to be ones where Plato is working less on exposing the self-deceit inherent in particular ideas, and instead moving toward developing a philosophical method that will lead to Platonic metaphysics. The late period dialogues (Critias, Laws, Philebus, Sophist, Statesman, Timaeus) are classified according to their literary style, which is rather different than either early or middle period dialogues but common among the set of themselves. Other people criticize this kind of classification in various ways, pointing out that there's plenty of metaphysical theory-building in early dialogues and plenty of ethical arguments in middle dialogues. It also seems unlikely that Plato would have had no ideas of his own even at the beginning of his career as a writer. Thus it may not be fair to say he took his interests purely from his teacher and only later went off on his own. (I think it's equally unfair to say that Plato was merely using Socrates as an authority. Socrates was an executed criminal. I don't think his name had much cachet.)
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Jan 11, 2013 01:57
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the JJ posted:And, at some point during his stay with the Spartans, there was an earthquake and he ran out of the Spartan Queen's bedchambers. Later, Lysander used this to put I stated my question poorly. I didn't mean that the dialogs were actual transcriptions of conversations or anything like that. Rather that the dialogs up to the Phaedo (or some other dividing line) represented some kind of Socratic philosophy viewed through the eyes of Plato (and undoubtedly colored by his own philosophy) while the later dialogs likely represent purely Platonic philosophy unrelated to anything Socrates believed. Again, something I vaguely (and probably incorrectly) remember from Ancient Philosophy classes and was wondering about.
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Jan 11, 2013 03:07
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Not My Leg posted:I stated my question poorly. I didn't mean that the dialogs were actual transcriptions of conversations or anything like that. Rather that the dialogs up to the Phaedo (or some other dividing line) represented some kind of Socratic philosophy viewed through the eyes of Plato (and undoubtedly colored by his own philosophy) while the later dialogs likely represent purely Platonic philosophy unrelated to anything Socrates believed. Again, something I vaguely (and probably incorrectly) remember from Ancient Philosophy classes and was wondering about. For what it's worth, Stephen R.L. Clark in the Oxford History of Western Philosophy states that "The presently conventional account is that the early dialogues, typified by a relative simplicity of diction and uncertain outcome, may show us something of the "real" Socrates." But, as other people have said, the evidence for that is debatable and ultimately we don't know how far we can distinguish between Socrates' views and those of Plato. The quest for the Historical Socrates is as elusive as the one for the Historical Jesus that used to be popular with theologians.
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Jan 11, 2013 22:28
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What was the life of the average Roman citizen in Constantinople during the last decades of the Empire? Were there citizens preparing for the inevitable Ottoman invasion or did they think the walls would hold forever? How was Constantine XI viewed?
QuoProQuid fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Jan 11, 2013 |
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Jan 11, 2013 22:45
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QuoProQuid posted:What was the life of the average Roman citizen in Constantinople during the last decades of the Empire? Were there citizens preparing for the inevitable Ottoman invasion or did they think the walls would hold forever? How was Constantine XI viewed? As I understand it, Constantinople was kind of a mess by the mid 1400's. Plague had decimated the populace, earthquakes had damaged the walls and a lot of buildings, and even worse, they had to grant big chunks of the city for the exclusive use by Venetians and Genoese as tax-free enclaves. Who knows whether they thought the Ottomans would come or not; certainly the Venetians were prepared to make a deal with the Ottomans in the event of the city's fall. They weren't terribly fond of the last few emperors because they tried to re-unite the Orthodox church with the pope in exchange for support, but very little was forthcoming for all their concessions. I think Constantine XI was viewed more favorably posthumously; before the fall and his death he was just another emperor trying to scrabble out an empire in the ruins.
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Jan 12, 2013 07:13
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sullat posted:They weren't terribly fond of the last few emperors because they tried to re-unite the Orthodox church with the pope in exchange for support, but very little was forthcoming for all their concessions. I think Constantine XI was viewed more favorably posthumously; before the fall and his death he was just another emperor trying to scrabble out an empire in the ruins. QuoProQuid posted:What was the life of the average Roman citizen in Constantinople during the last decades of the Empire? Were there citizens preparing for the inevitable Ottoman invasion or did they think the walls would hold forever? How was Constantine XI viewed? While I'm not sure that this was true for most of his reign, during the siege and when defeat was inevitable he was looked on fairly favourably. The citizens of Constantinople were well aware that they didn't have much time left when he was coronated, so I don't think anybody would have considered him responsible for the woes they faced. His try to mend the schism would have certainly alienated some people, but only really the most hardline. Most people realised the necessity of western aid by this point, so they didn't object to it, unlike during an earlier emperor's attempt. He was extremely important during the siege proper, as any leader would be of course, but deciding to stay with his people rather than flee, greeting and inspiring his soldiers, and fighting alongside them and to his own death placed him above many leaders, and certainly most of those they had had recently. And of course posthumously he's something of a saint figure for Greeks even today. Koramei fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Jan 12, 2013 |
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Jan 12, 2013 07:39
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An interesting article about artifacts found from Roman bath drains. http://www.livescience.com/26202-drain-lost-items-roman-baths.html quote:A new study of objects lost down the drains in the bathhouses from the Roman Empire reveals that people got up to all sorts of things in these gathering places. They bathed, of course, but they also adorned themselves with trinkets, snacked on finger foods and even did needlework.
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Jan 12, 2013 17:54
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I wonder if the citizens of late Rome were cognizant of the idea that they lived in a "fallen age" and that this coloured their thinking. Of course, humanists felt the same way about the glory of Rome centuries later...
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Jan 12, 2013 19:38
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Not a Roman example per se (but seeing as they were big fans of the ol' Greeks...) just look at the Ages of Man ideas. "Hesiod finds himself in the Iron Age. During this age humans live an existence of toil and misery. Children dishonor their parents, brother fights with brother and the social contract between guest and host (xenia) is forgotten. During this age might makes right, and bad men use lies to be thought good. At the height of this age, humans no longer feel shame or indignation at wrongdoing; babies will be born with gray hair and the gods will have completely forsaken humanity: "there will be no help against evil."" - From around 700BC. It was always better back in the days 
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Jan 12, 2013 23:24
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Did the Romans know or care what time it was?
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Jan 13, 2013 00:08
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Pimpmust posted:Not a Roman example per se (but seeing as they were big fans of the ol' Greeks...) just look at the Ages of Man ideas. Here's an actual Roman example, from the poet Horace: Horace posted:
The idea that "it was better in the past" is very ancient. Baron Porkface posted:Romans and the time. They would not have had as precise an idea as we do or been quite so time-obsessed, but they did have sundials and (even more commonly) water clocks to tell the time with, they did divide the day up into hours and there were conventions that "at the X hour, you should be doing Y thing." In particular, the law courts were open at particular hours and it would basically have been impossible to run this system if the Romans had only had ever very vague ideas of what the time was.
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Jan 13, 2013 00:37
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They had sundials and water clocks, so they could tell what hour of the day it was. They had business hours, lunchtime, and afternoon breaks pretty much like we do today. The calendar was a little trickier. The Babylonians had done most of the astronomical heavy lifting in working one out, and the Romans (like the Greeks) converted it to their own uses. The main difficulties with it mathematically were that years aren't exactly 365 days and they used the phases of the moon to mark the passage of months, so before Caesar reformed the calendar it was functional but there was essentially no regularity in when particular months fell in terms of season. It was also possible for the Senate to screw with the calendar by statute, so if it were politically advantageous to add a day to this month, subtract a day from this other month, or so on, it could be done.
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Jan 13, 2013 00:43
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Baron Porkface posted:Did the Romans know or care what time it was? Does anybody really know what time it is? To add to what General Panic and Tao Jones said, two tidbits: First, the Tower of the Winds in Athens, built during the Roman occupation, was a clock tower in the forum, built to display both the time (determined by a water clock inside the building and displayed through windows high on the tower) and the wind direction (using what was functionally a weathervane in the shape of Triton). Everyone in the Athenian Forum would therefore have had a decent idea of what time it was. Second, Eratosthenes, working in the 3rd century BCE, would have at least had to know with some precision when noon was, since he used the shadow created by the midday sun in Alexandria to compute the circumference of the Earth. (In brief: he'd been told that in the city of Syene, at midday on the longest day of the year, the sun was directly overhead - it either didn't cast a shadow at the bottom of a deep well or could be completely blocked by the shadow of a person looking down into the well - and he knew that in Alexandria, the sun wasn't quite directly overhead - since it did cast a shadow at midday. So he used the distance between Syene and Alexandria, and the amount of shadow cast by the sun at midday on the longest day of the year, to calculate how big around the Earth was - and got it to within 2%.)
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Jan 13, 2013 01:18
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Another month oddity was that for a long time, winter wasn't considered part of the year. There was a 60 day winter period that had no months. Later on the calendar was reformed (I think this was prior to the Julian calendar) and January and February were invented to be the winter months. This is why September/October/November/December mean month 7/8/9/10 but are two months off--originally they were correctly named. All the month names are Roman names. The only Roman day name that survives (in English) is Saturday. Sunday and Monday are (likely) Germanic translations of the Roman days. E: Wikipedia says Tuesday and Wednesday are too, after a fashion. Tuesday is Tyr's Day, from Tyr and Mars being considered equivalent--the Roman name was Day of Mars. Wednesday is the same thing with Wodin and Mercury. Thursday and Friday retain their Roman names in Romance languages. Day of Jupiter and day of Venus. Giovedi, Venerdi for Italian. Welsh Friday is also Roman, oddly: dydd Gwener. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Jan 13, 2013 |
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Jan 13, 2013 02:35
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sullat posted:As I understand it, Constantinople was kind of a mess by the mid 1400's. Plague had decimated the populace, earthquakes had damaged the walls and a lot of buildings, and even worse, they had to grant big chunks of the city for the exclusive use by Venetians and Genoese as tax-free enclaves. Who knows whether they thought the Ottomans would come or not; certainly the Venetians were prepared to make a deal with the Ottomans in the event of the city's fall. Koramei posted:While I'm not sure that this was true for most of his reign, during the siege and when defeat was inevitable he was looked on fairly favourably. The citizens of Constantinople were well aware that they didn't have much time left when he was coronated, so I don't think anybody would have considered him responsible for the woes they faced. His try to mend the schism would have certainly alienated some people, but only really the most hardline. Most people realised the necessity of western aid by this point, so they didn't object to it, unlike during an earlier emperor's attempt. He was extremely important during the siege proper, as any leader would be of course, but deciding to stay with his people rather than flee, greeting and inspiring his soldiers, and fighting alongside them and to his own death placed him above many leaders, and certainly most of those they had had recently. Thanks for the responses. I knew the city was going downhill and the population had dwindled significantly but was trying to understand the mindset of those who remained behind. I imagine it would be a very strange time to live. While every generation believes that they represent the end of an era and the beginning of a decline, the last Byzantines would have almost indisputable evidence. It must have seemed almost apocalyptic. Constantine does seem like a sympathetic figure and I'm glad he enjoyed at least moderate popularity in life. For some reason I thought Mehmed II had offered Constantine survival of the Byzantine Empire in its Aegean and Propontis island territories in exchange for Constantinople. Looking back, however, I can't seem to find anything. I assume I am just confusing information. QuoProQuid fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Jan 13, 2013 |
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Jan 13, 2013 04:11
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Halloween Jack posted:I wonder if the citizens of late Rome were cognizant of the idea that they lived in a "fallen age" and that this coloured their thinking. Of course, humanists felt the same way about the glory of Rome centuries later... To expand on what others have said, I'd say yes. Many fourth and fifth century Romans thought themselves as living in a diminished era compared to the centuries when the emperors actually lived in Rome. Large parts of the land in Italy were uninhabited thanks to previous instabilities and, much like Renaissance times, the population was greatly reduced, so people could wander around a city that was just too large. A bit like modern Berlin. In what I've read, it was a time where wealth was absolutely flagrant in display, as if if you didn't flaunt it, what remained would simply vanish. Now, to finish the other half of Through the Eye of a Needle.
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Jan 13, 2013 04:15
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There's something of a current of "oh man everything has gone to hell since the days of Cicero" in western thought from the end of the 200s on to the Renaissance. It's not hard to imagine why, especially later when you and 30,000 other people are living in the vine-covered ruins of the million+ person city of Rome.
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Jan 13, 2013 04:18
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Sorry! I posted in the wrong thread.
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Jan 13, 2013 04:35
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What if anything did the Romans use for a year-numbering system?
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Jan 13, 2013 05:06
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Nothing. Years were named after the consuls. Year of the Consulship of Gaius and Gaius. As you can imagine this was rather confusing when the timeline was being figured out by later historians. At some point numbered years come into use but I'm not sure when. Not in the classical period.
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Jan 13, 2013 05:12
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Grand Fromage posted:Nothing. Years were named after the consuls. Year of the Consulship of Gaius and Gaius. As you can imagine this was rather confusing when the timeline was being figured out by later historians. The Romans did very rarely use Ab urbe condita (AUC), "from the founding of the City" - it was used to time the saecular games for every 110 years or so and the idea of a fixed, numbered-year calendar wasn't considered new when AD/BC was invented mostly because of this. 1001 AUC, 248 AD, became a symbolically important date in early Christianity, which made the introduction of AD/BC relatively smooth in the 500s.
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Jan 13, 2013 07:14
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It's interesting to note that Islam used a fixed-date calendar first. The BC/AD chronology didn't really come into use until the Venerable Bede "popularized" it, for lack of a better word. Until then regnal years or one of the many Indictions (a fifteen-year period that was associated with administration in East Rome) were used in Europe for dating.
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Jan 13, 2013 07:24
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Jazerus posted:The Romans did very rarely use Ab urbe condita (AUC), "from the founding of the City" - it was used to time the saecular games for every 110 years or so and the idea of a fixed, numbered-year calendar wasn't considered new when AD/BC was invented mostly because of this. 1001 AUC, 248 AD, became a symbolically important date in early Christianity, which made the introduction of AD/BC relatively smooth in the 500s. Ah yeah, you're right. But as you say, it was not used much. Year of ___ consul was by far the primary way.
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Jan 13, 2013 07:34
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When did a Roman "year" start? Was it on New Consul Inaguration day? Whatever day of the week Romulus laid the first brick? What happens if a Consul dies sometimes in the middle of the year and a new Consul replaces him? Does the rest of the year carry the old Consul's name or does everything get shifted around a lot?
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Jan 13, 2013 07:52
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