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March 1st was the beginning of the year, then January 1st. I am almost sure consuls were inaugurated on that day. If a consul dies a consul suffectus was elected to serve out the term, but didn't get his name on the year. This all changes later in the principate when the consulship is split up into multiple different consulships and is just a honorific thing. But there are still "official" consuls, which are typically the emperor and his chosen successor.
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Jan 13, 2013 08:13
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drat, that sounds like a pain in the rear end to keep track of.
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Jan 13, 2013 20:49
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Retarded Pimp posted:drat, that sounds like a pain in the rear end to keep track of. I read somewhere that the Athenians had like 3 different calendars they used at the same time. Religious, "official", and the actual one.
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Jan 13, 2013 20:50
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sullat posted:I read somewhere that the Athenians had like 3 different calendars they used at the same time. Religious, "official", and the actual one. That's really not that different from modern-day people; most of us have experience using more than one calender. You have your regular Jan. 1st to Dec. 31st calender, when you went to school you used a different calender for that, at work you might have a fiscal calendar, your religion might use a different calendar, etc.
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Jan 14, 2013 05:04
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What was the Romans best fighting technique and how did it compare to all the surrounding barbarians?
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Jan 14, 2013 07:31
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CoolZCBD posted:What was the Romans best fighting technique and how did it compare to all the surrounding barbarians? There was a relatively-detailed discussion of this a couple months ago; I believe it starts here.
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Jan 14, 2013 12:33
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CoolZCBD posted:What was the Romans best fighting technique and how did it compare to all the surrounding barbarians? Surrounding barbarians? The Romans didn't even invent soap, so clearly, it is no wonder they lost against superior civilizations  You should use correct terms to describe the Roman neighbours, such as "Well groomed gentlemen of distinct taste in (-00)80ies hair fashion". Pimpmust fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Jan 14, 2013 |
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Jan 14, 2013 18:50
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QuoProQuid posted: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. The population was maybe 10,000 people when the city fell. It was to the point where most of the city's food needs where meet inside the city walls. It was the Emperor of Trebizond that was offered basically to become a vassal of the Sultan's, but he refused based on the whole "I'm the real Emperor thing". It's a little known Empire so not a lot is written about it.
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Jan 14, 2013 18:57
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Pimpmust posted:Surrounding barbarians? The Romans didn't even invent soap, so clearly, it is no wonder they lost against superior civilizations "Our misunderstood hirsute friends"
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Jan 14, 2013 18:57
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Grand Fromage posted: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. Weren't a number of Romans also pretty worried that finally stamping out the Carthaginians would somehow make them decadent and useless? In that, without being able to struggle against what they saw as a foil to their valued fides, they'd never be the good old Rome they loved? I can't remember if that was contemporary with the destruction of Carthage, or reconstructed after the fact.
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Jan 16, 2013 01:10
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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I'm not sure when that appears, but there was definitely a "greatest generation" type of nostalgia for the figures of the Punic War. Your memory is right though, there was some writing about fears that Rome would collapse without a worthy opponent.
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Jan 16, 2013 01:18
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CoolZCBD posted:What was the Romans best fighting technique and how did it compare to all the surrounding barbarians? On a long drive I was skimming through XM radio and landed on the catholic station, of all things, because they were discussing legionary training. One of the guests had gone to Rome and gone through a faux-training camp for legionaries. Of course, the primary focus was marching and groups stuff but they talked about the individual stuff as well. They did a lot of work with the shield, especially developing the shoulder strength to keep it in the correct place along with punching with that metal boss. obviously in just a week no one was a shield master but the trainers could move pretty well and put some force on their swings. The sword part was based on thrusting from behind the shield with some slashing cuts targeted at the legs if possible, which was apparently very effective because it was fairly unexpected. They only had a few sword swings and tagets but drilled them in various combinations, very similar to boxing. At the end, they gave them some padded stuff and had them go at it. The premier strategy was slamming into people with a shield followed by a quick thrust or slash at the legs/arms. Obviously no one knows what the Romans really did but it all sounded pretty plausible.
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Jan 16, 2013 15:50
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I don't want to just reference the TV show, but the guys choreographing Rome said that the legionary fighting style was conservative so as not to waste energy; besides thrusts, they would also try to slip their blade around the unprotected leg and slice. Since a shallow thrust is enough to kill someone (eventually), it makes it seem like the battlefields would have been horrific with casualties who were out of the fight but very much still able to crawl around wailing in agony. Maybe an actual historian here knows something about ratios of wounded to outright dead in the aftermath of major battles?
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Jan 16, 2013 17:43
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sullat posted:I read somewhere that the Athenians had like 3 different calendars they used at the same time. Religious, "official", and the actual one. Sounds like Iran.
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Jan 16, 2013 19:25
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Halloween Jack posted:I don't want to just reference the TV show, but the guys choreographing Rome said that the legionary fighting style was conservative so as not to waste energy; besides thrusts, they would also try to slip their blade around the unprotected leg and slice. Since a shallow thrust is enough to kill someone (eventually), it makes it seem like the battlefields would have been horrific with casualties who were out of the fight but very much still able to crawl around wailing in agony. Maybe an actual historian here knows something about ratios of wounded to outright dead in the aftermath of major battles? Not a historian, but the general pattern of casualties was that they were surprisingly low during the initial portions of a battle, with the worst ratios being when one side gets cornered or routs and is chased down. During the actual fighting at the front, people were primarily making sure they did not die, and opportunistically killing or wounding their opponents. It's when other dudes come in from the sides, or you are running away while cavalry chases you that things get horrific. The oter time being when one side is totally outmatched, which the Romans were on the winning side of for the majority of the empire's reign.
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Jan 16, 2013 21:49
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Not a historian, but the general pattern of casualties was that they were surprisingly low during the initial portions of a battle, with the worst ratios being when one side gets cornered or routs and is chased down. During the actual fighting at the front, people were primarily making sure they did not die, and opportunistically killing or wounding their opponents. It's when other dudes come in from the sides, or you are running away while cavalry chases you that things get horrific. The oter time being when one side is totally outmatched, which the Romans were on the winning side of for the majority of the empire's reign. I think this is a surprise to generations that have been raised on video games, where you can casually order units to fight to the last man, and there are no mechanics for surrender. Really, a commander can order someone to fight, and they'll mostly do it, but they're also trying to keep themselves alive even if it jeopardises the mission of "killing as many dudes as possible".
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Jan 17, 2013 03:23
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Halloween Jack posted:I don't want to just reference the TV show, but the guys choreographing Rome said that the legionary fighting style was conservative so as not to waste energy; besides thrusts, they would also try to slip their blade around the unprotected leg and slice. Since a shallow thrust is enough to kill someone (eventually), it makes it seem like the battlefields would have been horrific with casualties who were out of the fight but very much still able to crawl around wailing in agony. Maybe an actual historian here knows something about ratios of wounded to outright dead in the aftermath of major battles? Generally the majority of the deaths came when one side broke and routed, and were chased down and murdered while fleeing. The belief that legionaries fought conservatively is likely true; as long as the soldiers maintain discipline and rest up a legion is incredibly tough for anyone to break, so it's more likely the enemy will break and lose. You don't have to get a killing blow, either. Think about it yourself, if you get stabbed at all you're probably out of the fight. Soldiers generally aren't going to give a poo poo if you're in agony, they are there to kill you after all. If they can make decent contact it's as good as a kill as far as the course of the battle is concerned. A glancing blow might not get you out but an inch of blade in your side probably will. Since the gladius was small it was quite maneuverable in a tight shield wall formation, but it wasn't the kind of weapon that lops limbs off. Short stabbing thrusts were the main way it was used, and given anatomy and the way guys would be against each other most of those blows are going to be in the belly/side. Those aren't instant death places.
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Jan 17, 2013 03:47
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There's this restaurant downtown in my city that has a couple statues out front. That is all.
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Jan 18, 2013 01:26
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Is the menu written in pig latin? 
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Jan 18, 2013 02:55
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Grand Fromage posted:There's this restaurant downtown in my city that has a couple statues out front. That's 豬八戒, ain't it
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Jan 18, 2013 03:48
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Phobophilia posted:I think this is a surprise to generations that have been raised on video games, where you can casually order units to fight to the last man, and there are no mechanics for surrender. Really, a commander can order someone to fight, and they'll mostly do it, but they're also trying to keep themselves alive even if it jeopardises the mission of "killing as many dudes as possible". I'd also attribute this sort of disconnect to the fact that modern armies developed pretty sophisticated means of enforcing discipline in the face of the enemy. Do we have any idea of how the legions regarded retreat/rout during battle? I'd imagine there's a bit of a spectrum between "throw shield to the mud and scream wildly towards the trees" and "orderly tactical retreat." Surely it would be fairly common for mid-level leaders to defend their rout as a rational command decision after the fact. Were there investigations or anything of the like? Where did the legions draw the line between prudence and cowardice?
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Jan 18, 2013 03:50
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I am not sure if this has been posted yet, but Stanford University launched ORBIS a while back. The website allows you to calculate the time and monetary costs of travel through the Empire in 200 AD. It's pretty cool! Now you too can plan a Roman hitchhiking trip.
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Jan 18, 2013 03:52
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Mr Havafap posted:And vaguely related, Jupiter is from 'Zeus Pater' (Father Zeus) if you ever wondered. Not quite. The classical Latin words deus and Iovis and the classical Greek words theos and Zeus are all descendants of the same root word from Proto-Indo-European. All of them mean essentially the same thing--god or sky. The Latin word for day, dei, is related. The Latin word Iuppiter does descend from the archaic Latin Diespiter and it is a compound word that combines deus and pater, meaning father god or father sky. The word Iovis descends from the archaic Latin word Diovis. Either way it's spelled, the word Iuppiter is really meant to be used in the vocative case, "o father Jove". Otherwise, it's normally Iovis and its set of declensions. Interestingly enough, the word deus never really shows up in Roman writing until the translation of the New Testament from Greek to Latin. They seem to have used all of the word forms but the masculine nominative singular. Because the declensions of deus all follow the same rules for second declension masculine nouns, it wasn't a hard solution to come to. My guess is that in the Roman worldview, Jove was God and that's how you referred to him, similarly to how Islam prefers to call God by the name Allah.
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Jan 18, 2013 04:01
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benem posted:I'd also attribute this sort of disconnect to the fact that modern armies developed pretty sophisticated means of enforcing discipline in the face of the enemy. Wasn't it routing that decimation was for? One person in your unit routs, one tenth of that entire unit is executed. In any case I think anything less than the full army routing would be met in a similarly draconian way, or at least with the leader of that group being killed. I think this got less brutal over time though. It's practices like that that made the Roman army so unbeatable though; while their comrades are dying around them the Roman soldiers wouldn't so much as flinch, they'd just keep moving on mechanically and unstoppably, at least to a level far beyond their contemporaries. The Roman army's discipline in its hay day was one of its greatest strengths.
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Jan 18, 2013 04:10
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My understanding of decimation is that it was used when an entire unit was mutinous or cowardly - that is, situations where large groups of soldiers were guilty or where there was no way to identify who was guilty. That is to say, where the whole unit would deserve the death penalty, but actually executing everyone is unfeasible or undesirable. If there were just one or two cowards or easily identified mutineers, I seriously doubt the Romans would waste good men and undermine the morale of a unit by ordering decimation. (One of the most famous stories of decimation is in Plutarch's Life of Antony, where Antony decimates elements of his army after a defeat in which he feels they underperformed. It's important to remember that Plutarch is explicitly using Antony as the model of a villain.)
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Jan 18, 2013 04:54
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Yes, it was used for serious cowardice that could have hosed up an entire battle. And it wasn't used very often, especially later. I don't remember which general it was but at some point it hadn't been used for at least a century, and when he decimated a few units after a battle it was a bit of a scandal. There were other punishments, shunning especially. The survivors of Cannae were treated like poo poo and kept in a separate unit until they redeemed themselves later in the war, if I'm remembering right. I feel like my brain is made of oatmeal today.
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Jan 18, 2013 04:57
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Star Man posted:Not quite. Two points of minor clarification: first, the Latin word for day is dies; dei is gen.s. of deus. They do all come from the same place, though, PIE *dyew- (although deus comes through its derivative *deywos). Second: Iuppiter is, like almost all Latin nouns, both the nominative and vocative form of the word, although you're probably right that it's chiefly used in the vocative sense. Iov- is the oblique root. (Since Iuppiter is third-declension, it gets to do crazy things like have a different root for the oblique cases.) Fun fact: *dyew- has an astonishing range of children and grandchildren, including Germanic Tiw/Týr (the god), Sanskrit diva ("deity" or "heaven"), and Persian div/dev ("demon" or "evil spirit" - which has nothing to do with the English word "devil"; that comes from a Greek word, διάβολος, meaning "slanderer").
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Jan 18, 2013 06:04
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Could anybody talk about how Roman dice games were played? I know WHAT they played with, but not the rules. Does anybody know? I would love to play me some Roman-style dice games. And did the Emperor Claudius really write a book about dice playing or was that just an invention by Robert Graves?
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Jan 18, 2013 15:31
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bean_shadow posted:Could anybody talk about how Roman dice games were played? I know WHAT they played with, but not the rules. Does anybody know? I would love to play me some Roman-style dice games. I don't know much about their dice games, but the Romans also played a strategy board game called Merelles or Nine Men's Morris. The game has remained relatively popular to this day in Western Europe, and you can sometimes find engraved boards for playing it in historic areas (like how here in the US you can sometimes find a cafe tabletop with a checkerboard tiled on the surface). It was recently featured in Assassins Creed 3 as a minigame (and was an absolute bitch for the folks trying to beat it on expert - I eventually reenacted Deep Blue Versus Kasparov and just used a computer to play for me). You can actually play it here: http://merrelles.com/English.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Men%27s_Morris Kaal fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Jan 18, 2013 |
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Jan 18, 2013 16:09
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It's amazing how long games survive. I had no idea about that one, Romans had all kinds of games but I didn't think any of them were still around. They did have backgammon, but it didn't originate with them--earliest record of it is from 3000 BCE. Which is ridiculous that we're still playing it. E: Haha what the gently caress happened to my avatar.
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Jan 18, 2013 17:08
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After Rome pulled out of its holdings in Gaul and other places was their pressure for princes and kings to establish links to old Roman families as a means to assert power? I remember that Italian city states did a little bit of this but how much power did old Roman families manage to keep and did they start any ruling dynasties?
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Jan 18, 2013 17:41
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Roman trials were touched on early in the thread but I'm really curious as to what was required to convict a man of a crime? Was it all witness testimony? Was it common for charges to be trumped up so to get rid of a rival?
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Jan 18, 2013 18:12
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In the early period and through the Republic, witness testimony was preferred over documentary evidence, such that if a witness contradicted a document, the witness's account prevailed. Also in that period, the process was purely adversarial, relying on the skill of the lawyers in making a persuasive case to the judge. So, basically, you'd need a witness whose testimony couldn't be contradicted, and a rousing speech about how big a shithead the other guy is. Also in this period, punishments tended to be prescribed by the Twelve Tables, and it was the responsibility of the plaintiff to enforce it. So if the punishment was a fine, you'd basically have to get your crew together and go loot the defendant's property. (This differed from simple robbery because it was authorized by the law, but in this period the state didn't execute sentence except in cases of treason. So a metaphor might be how in a mob movie, a guy who's been wronged will go to the Don and ask for permission to take vengeance. If he agrees, it's still up to the guy to go do it.) In the Imperial period, this process evolved to a more inquisitorial trial system, where the judge was given the power to admit or refuse to consider evidence as he saw fit, interrogate witnesses, and so on. The role of documents and witnesses switched, with documents became more important than witness testimony, Lawyers went from being orators to fussing and fighting over words and definitions, like in many modern justice systems. The state also took a role in executing sentence. As for the other question, political prosecutions were very common by the end of the Republic. In the Empire I think they'd largely be redundant, since assassination was more the rule of the day in political matters.
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Jan 18, 2013 18:48
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Grand Fromage posted:It's amazing how long games survive. I had no idea about that one, Romans had all kinds of games but I didn't think any of them were still around. They did have backgammon, but it didn't originate with them--earliest record of it is from 3000 BCE. Which is ridiculous that we're still playing it. E: Haha what the gently caress happened to my avatar. Well it's just funny how cultural traditions can just get carried along. For example, while Americans don't really play Merelles, we do play it's simplified variant as children: Tic-Tac-Toe. Kids have been playing that game, and teaching it to their younger siblings, for 2,000 years or more. That blew my mind when I first read that. edit: Oh and avatars are so 2004. I turned them off years ago. There's so many angry D&D goons with more money than sense that I never know what I have anymore 
Kaal fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Jan 18, 2013 |
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Jan 18, 2013 20:20
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Tao Jones posted:As for the other question, political prosecutions were very common by the end of the Republic. In the Empire I think they'd largely be redundant, since assassination was more the rule of the day in political matters. I think the emperors still had a tendency to get rid of people they didn't like by formally accusing them of treason though. IIRC, however, a lot of that was done through having them condemned by the Senate rather than tried by the regular court system, presumably because the outcome was more certain. The Romans tended to regard a trial as an opportunity to judge someone's character and actions generally, rather than just whether they were guilty of a specific offence. Nowadays, (in theory anyway) you can be the biggest arsehole imaginable and still walk out of the courtroom if the prosecution can't prove all of the elements of the offence you're charged with. In Ancient Rome, they were often less fussed with the technicalities if they thought you were a prick anyway. In that sense, all trials were more politicised - it was the community's verdict on you, the accused. As has been said, that was more in the Republican period and during the Empire, things became more legalisitic in the modern sense. A lot of what is now known as "Roman law" comes from the 100s-200s AD and the writings of the jurists, who were a cross between academic lawyers and legal advisers to the emperor. That's the law that went on to be the basis for the modern law codes that are regarded as Roman law systems, like the continental European ones or the Scottish system.
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Jan 18, 2013 20:39
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The history of Rome podcast repeatedly refers to people being executed by strangulation. This was apparently a common form of execution, but what was it actually. Did an executioner just strangle people, was there some kind of strangling device, or was it hanging?
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Jan 19, 2013 00:14
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I like to imagine they brought out some some big burly guy who just throttled the convicted, Homer Simpson-style, but if I am remembering correctly, they had a device- the garrote. It was like a board with a rope looped through two holes and some kind of wench on the back, and the executioner twists the wench after the convicted's head is placed through the loop. I think this method of execution continued to the 20th century in some spanish-speaking countries.
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Jan 19, 2013 02:44
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Yeah, I think you're right. I do like the image of Strong Belwas just choking a bitch but that was a little barbarian for the enlightened Romans, don't you think?  We are superior people, we throw you down stairs and off rocks.
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Jan 19, 2013 03:58
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Since conservatives are kind of making GBS threads on Obama for having those kids on stage for his speech on gun control (despite Bush doing basically the same thing a few times) it reminded me of the famous trial in which Cicero brought out crying children to win a case. Was this a common tactic back then?
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Jan 19, 2013 05:08
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I.W.W. ATTITUDE posted:I like to imagine they brought out some some big burly guy who just throttled the convicted, Homer Simpson-style, but if I am remembering correctly, they had a device- the garrote. It was like a board with a rope looped through two holes and some kind of wench on the back, and the executioner twists the wench after the convicted's head is placed through the loop. I think this method of execution continued to the 20th century in some spanish-speaking countries. I think the first season of Rome shows Caesar publicly executing Vercingetorix using a similar device.
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