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INTJ Mastermind posted:I think the first season of Rome shows Caesar publicly executing Vercingetorix using a similar device. Yup, it's in the finale during the triumph. http://youtu.be/RGYI1UHK5jM?t=4m7s
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Jan 19, 2013 06:26
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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. Not to be a dick, but I think you mean winch, although now I can't stop picturing a young woman holding the ends of a rope around someone's neck while she does the Twist. For some reason I'm finding this ceaselessly amusing. I'm probably just tired.
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Jan 19, 2013 08:47
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Besesoth posted: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.) One more point to add. Greek theos is actually related to Latin festus and not to deus at all. The development of Proto-Indo-European *dh- in Latin is actually to f- as the word festus shows.
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Jan 19, 2013 08:58
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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. Oh, and Commodus! Strangled by a wrestler in his bath, definitely one of the most homoerotic murders in history.
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Jan 22, 2013 21:21
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Speaking of Commodus, how the gently caress did Marcus Aurelius have a son like that? I can hardly imagine two more different people. Was he just a horrible father or something?
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Jan 22, 2013 22:13
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DarkCrawler posted:Speaking of Commodus, how the gently caress did Marcus Aurelius have a son like that? I can hardly imagine two more different people. Was he just a horrible father or something? In most cases, any teenager/young adult to don the purple toga was basically an unmitigated disaster at Emperor. See Caligula, Nero, Commodus, Elagabalus.
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Jan 22, 2013 22:48
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DarkCrawler posted:Speaking of Commodus, how the gently caress did Marcus Aurelius have a son like that? I can hardly imagine two more different people. Was he just a horrible father or something? Maybe virtue is a thing that can't be taught. One of Plato's dialogues (Meno) is about that question, and Socrates uses the fact that virtuous fathers can have bad sons comes up as evidence that virtue might not be teachable. So I think your question about how Commodus could have turned out so bad is a philosophical one, even if you might not have intended it to be. (For instance, if virtue can't be taught, consider what that would mean for the various parts of society that claim that they do, in fact, teach or build character.) Plato posted:[...]
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Jan 22, 2013 22:53
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I have an arguably less philosophical theory: Imagine that when you are 18, your father--who has raised you in an environment of austerity, duty, propriety, and intellectualism--has died, leaving you the most powerful man in known civilization at an age when a lot of young men are still going through their "gently caress you, Dad" phase.
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Jan 22, 2013 23:27
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not to mention all the opportunistic hangers on whispering in your ear about how its your right, nay duty, to throw a bitch'in party for your loyal supporters.
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Jan 22, 2013 23:39
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Xguard86 posted:not to mention all the opportunistic hangers on whispering in your ear about how its your right, nay duty, to throw a bitch'in party for your loyal supporters. And that you should clear out the Empire's coffers, and gladiate against cripples and invalids for sport 
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Jan 23, 2013 00:45
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Cervixalot posted:And that you should clear out the Empire's coffers, and gladiate against cripples and invalids for sport Wwhd what would heracles do?
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Jan 23, 2013 00:47
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And some people are just assholes at a fundamental level and can't be fixed. There is definitely a trend that the emperors who assume power at a very young age tend to be bad. Which makes sense when you imagine yourself being granted limitless power when you were like 16.
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Jan 23, 2013 03:55
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Grand Fromage posted:There is definitely a trend that the emperors who assume power at a very young age tend to be bad. Which makes sense when you imagine yourself being granted limitless power when you were like 16. I don't have to imagine, I've played on game servers with powertripping admins often enough. 
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Jan 23, 2013 03:58
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Was Nero really that horrible though? Why would the Praetorian Guard wait fourteen years before killing him if he was a horrible incestous monster?
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Jan 23, 2013 04:29
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I don't remember where we had Nerochat but it's in the thread somewhere. Nero was not that bad. He was a power-hungry dickass, to be sure--not a nice guy by any stretch. But his reputation has been trashed by two main groups. A) The rich and powerful. Nero, like Caligula, introduced reforms that were meant to strip power from the patricians. The patricians, naturally, weren't big fans of this. And they wrote the history. B) Christians. Nero didn't like them and killed a bunch as scapegoats for the great fire of Rome. Christians, unsurprisingly, spent a lot of time writing poo poo about Nero for this. You end up with a pretty skewed picture of him after that. He was not a great emperor, but there is enough evidence to say he wasn't that bad and the people liked him in general. His statues were all pulled down, and there are recorded instances of people going out in the middle of the night to put them back up, a crime punishable by death. You don't do that for a hated emperor. Another big one is the great fire. Anti-Nero writers tell us several things, most famously that he played his lute while Rome burned. Well, maybe he did. He was a musician. What the gently caress else is he supposed to be doing? Wizarding the fire out? Second, that he started the fire. There is zero evidence for this. There are stories of soldiers going around the city tearing down buildings and starting fires, but this is actually completely sensible. The only way to battle a fire on this scale in a city is to create a firebreak by tearing down/controlled burning a ring of buildings, so the fire will stop spreading. That's what the soldiers were doing. Third, he bought up a bunch of now cleared land to build a ridiculous palace. Yeah, he did that. He was definitely an rear end. But the idea that he burned down his own capitol to do it is absurd. I mean, he's the emperor. If he really wanted to do that he could just take the land. Why risk destroying Rome?
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Jan 23, 2013 04:40
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This is a long shot, but does anyone know of any resources to find out what legions would have recruited from/been based around the region that is now Trieste, Italy and Koper, Slovenia? And an even longer shot, but are there resources to find what the emblem of those legions would have been?
DJ_Ferret fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Jan 23, 2013 |
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Jan 23, 2013 23:19
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It looks like that region was called Noricum in ancient times. Legio II Italia (Second Italian Legion), also called Legio II Italia Pia (Faithful Second Italian Legion), was stationed there long-term starting around 200, and it was eventually augmented by Legio I Noricorum (First Norican Legion) which lasted until the fifth century. Legio II Italia's emblem was a she-wolf. I got this information from http://www.livius.org/le-lh/legio/ii_italica.html which is a historian's site about the Roman Legions - you might be able to find more information there. edit: was reminded that the author of the Livius site isn't an amateur fantastic in plastic fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Jan 24, 2013 |
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Jan 24, 2013 02:47
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Tao Jones posted:It looks like that region was called Noricum in ancient times. Legio II Italia (Second Italian Legion), also called Legio II Italia Pia (Faithful Second Italian Legion), was stationed there long-term starting around 200, and it was eventually augmented by Legio I Noricorum (First Norican Legion) which lasted until the fifth century. Legio II Italia's emblem was a she-wolf. Jona Lendering is quite knowledgable.
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Jan 24, 2013 04:33
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hobbyists are into the Roman legions) - you might be able to find more information there.
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Oh, yeah - the name didn't immediately ring a bell, which is why I thought it was an amateur.
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Jan 24, 2013 04:36
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Tao Jones posted:It looks like that region was called Noricum in ancient times. Legio II Italia (Second Italian Legion), also called Legio II Italia Pia (Faithful Second Italian Legion), was stationed there long-term starting around 200, and it was eventually augmented by Legio I Noricorum (First Norican Legion) which lasted until the fifth century. Legio II Italia's emblem was a she-wolf. Excellent! Thank you for the help. Trieste and Koper are south of Noricum on nearly the northmost point of the Adriatic sea, and according to the maps of the regions/provinces they fall in the Italia province... But the Legio II Italia would have recruited from those areas in order to move north and perform operations in Noricum it seems to me. I'll have to do some more reading on this, but you've given me an awesome starting point!
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Jan 24, 2013 07:04
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So since this has kind of branched into a general ancient history thread, I'm curious: there's been some discussion on the Roman legal system, but what kind of legal systems existed in say Greece, Egypt, Persia, and other contemporary powers? Did they have their own developed law codes or was it mostly DIY Vigilanteism as long as you didn't cross the powers that be?
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Jan 24, 2013 18:40
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The Athenian system is pretty well documented ('cause those fuckers loved to write poo poo down). Basically they had massive juries of up to a thousand plus. Prosecutors were private citizens with grudges, not agents of the state, I think there was a fine for bringing up spurious charges. I don't think there was a 'defense' lawyer position, most people defended themselves. This is the end result of a slow drift towards less familial/clan based blood-for-blood and towards a all crimes are the purvey of the polis. The Athenians did end up retaining some... Scythians, I think, as a peacekeeping force. Not really a legal body, but a semi-impartial force tasked with knocking heads and, you know, disincentivizing daylight robbery. Hammurabi's Code is sort of the ur-example (arharharhar) of a formal state dispensed justice. I wanna say there's some legal records in the Persepolis tablets, but that may be wrong... dunno. Egypt, well, that covers a huuuuuuuuuge timespan, but I think at points at very least they had a pretty robust bureaucracy to deal with that stuff. Not my area of expertise.
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Jan 24, 2013 18:57
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Tao Jones posted:Maybe virtue is a thing that can't be taught. One of Plato's dialogues (Meno) is about that question, and Socrates uses the fact that virtuous fathers can have bad sons comes up as evidence that virtue might not be teachable. So I think your question about how Commodus could have turned out so bad is a philosophical one, even if you might not have intended it to be. (For instance, if virtue can't be taught, consider what that would mean for the various parts of society that claim that they do, in fact, teach or build character.) That last line of Socrates must be the first recorded instance of "U MAD BRO?" in history. I suppose you could make a case for Socrates as history's first troll. As for all the emperors who went bad young, I think the old quote about absolute power corrupting absolutely is probably the ultimate explanation. A lot of emperors, young or old, were corrupted by power. Gabriel Pope posted:Greek, Egyptian etc. justice I suspect that DIY "justice" would have been part of all of these cultures, and indeed of Ancient Rome, especially outside the cities. It wouldn't necessarily have been pure vigilatism; more like the village elders resolving the community's disputes. A lot of that would have gone on whichever empire was nominally in charge at the time. It's just a feature of all peasant cultures.
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Jan 24, 2013 22:10
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General Panic posted:I suspect that DIY "justice" would have been part of all of these cultures, and indeed of Ancient Rome, especially outside the cities. It wouldn't necessarily have been pure vigilatism; more like the village elders resolving the community's disputes. A lot of that would have gone on whichever empire was nominally in charge at the time. It's just a feature of all peasant cultures. I guess I hadn't thought about this much, but I always considered Egypt to be much more centralised than other empires, since everybody would literally be within a few miles of the main route for traveling. Although I guess considering they reached all the way to the Levant at points that doesn't really hold out. How would the Egyptians go about wrangling the peasants during monument-building season? Could they only reach out to a fraction of the total population, or were people much more dutiful or something? Or is that a dumb question since they had four thousand years of history so obviously it's going to vary.
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Jan 24, 2013 22:19
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Koramei posted:How would the Egyptians go about wrangling the peasants during monument-building season? Could they only reach out to a fraction of the total population, or were people much more dutiful or something? Or is that a dumb question since they had four thousand years of history so obviously it's going to vary. Because monuments were built in times when there was nothing to do in the fields, and the wages for participating in their construction were quite decent by ancient Egyptian standards.
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Jan 24, 2013 22:24
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Yeah, all that work went on during the off-season when there wasn't much work to do for the peasants. You could go spend your time digging canals and drinking beer, or you could sit in your hovel and starve. Pretty easy choice. In really ancient times, silver and copper was far too rare and valuable to be used as mere currency, so workers were paid in useful supplies; they would be given a stipend of grain, beer, oil, meat and clothes. sullat fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Jan 24, 2013 |
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Jan 24, 2013 22:27
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We have this image of a pre-modern society being 24/7 drudgery but it isn't true. Once the fields were planted, there was very little for peasants to do until harvest time. Planting/harvest were a ridiculous amount of work, to be sure. Other than that the fields just required some minor maintenance. Peasants spent that time making clothes, fixing up the house, that sort of thing. In Egypt many spent it building pyramids and stuff. In societies without professional standing armies, many spent it in the army fightin' dudes. That's a lot of why campaign season is the summer, when there's nothing for farmers to do.
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Jan 25, 2013 03:18
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Grand Fromage posted:In societies without professional standing armies, many spent it in the army fightin' dudes. That's a lot of why campaign season is the summer, when there's nothing for farmers to do. This was also a large part of the power of professional armies like Rome: They could keep campaigning right through harvest and planting season, straight from spring to winter. It left citizen armies with the impossible choice of either marching right at the professionals to force a decisive battle (and make sure to not lose it), or letting their crops rot in the fields and/or starving the next year. The Romans were especially potent because they had the logistical power to keep campaigning right through winter if they had to. Their roads, supply trains and fortifications gave them staying power when few others were prepared to fight. In the modern-day, Americans like to say "We own the night" because of our special technology that gives us a strong relative advantage over those without night vision. I would expect that the Romans felt similarly about their ability to fight during harvest season. Kaal fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Jan 26, 2013 |
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Jan 25, 2013 09:53
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Yup. As long as the cash kept flowing to pay wages the Roman army wasn't going anywhere. Big advantage, especially in areas where winter didn't get all that cold and they could stay in the field more or less permanently. In the north they'd retreat to fortifications for winter, but they'd build those right on your doorstep and be out as soon as it warmed up.
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Jan 25, 2013 09:56
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Then of course when the cash stopped flowing by mid third century, the empire crumbled.
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Jan 26, 2013 18:09
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Did the Gallic Empire have any chance of surviving longer than it did? The way Wikipedia presents them, Gaul was doing a good job of fending off the Romans, but the moment Postumus dies things go to hell and they are quickly subsumed.
QuoProQuid fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Jan 27, 2013 |
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Jan 27, 2013 23:36
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QuoProQuid posted:Did the Gallic Empire have any chance of surviving longer than it did? The way Wikipedia presents them, Gaul was doing a good job of fending off the Romans, but the moment Postumus dies things go to hell and they are quickly subsumed. Was it ever really an empire rather than just a loose coalition of tribes? While it could have probably survived longer than it did, its fall was likely inevitable. The reason Germania wasn't taken is because the land was not valuable enough and the border not defensible enough to offset the cost; the same is not true for Gaul. Koramei fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Jan 27, 2013 |
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Jan 27, 2013 23:45
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Koramei posted:Was it ever really an empire rather than just a loose coalition of tribes? While it could have probably survived longer than it did, its fall was likely inevitable. The reason Germania wasn't taken is because the land was not valuable enough and the border not defensible enough to offset the cost; the same is not true for Gaul. He's not talking about the Gauls as in the Celtic people. He's talking about the Gallic Empire that broke off from the Roman Empire during the Crisis of the Third Century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallic_Empire @QuoProQuid, I think that if the Gallic Empire got its act together before Rome did, they could last for quite a while - in any case, Rome is likely to go after the Palmyrene Empire first for its wealth and Egypt's fertility before they turn their attention to the relatively poorer Gallic Empire. As in, the problems the Gallic Empire faced were largely the same as those the Romans were facing at the same time with regards to legions just up and deposing their Emperor if they felt like it. I'm... not exactly sure really how Aurelian and Domitian managed to counteract that, actually. AdjectiveNoun fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Jan 28, 2013 |
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Jan 27, 2013 23:59
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AdjectiveNoun posted:He's not talking about the Gauls as in the Celtic people.  I was thinking Postumus sounded far too Roman a name, completely forgot about that Gallic Empire. I'm not sure I agree with you on Palmyra going first though; if we're dealing in hypotheticals here, there's no reason Odaenathus had to have died when he did, and had he not then there's no reason for Rome to go after Palmyra first since they were still ostensibly supporting Rome at the time (and for a while under Zenobia too, no?). But Rome getting its act together was far from a given, so had so many things not happened the Gallic Empire could well have survived for a long time. That's what I think at least, although I suppose I've lost all credibility on my knowledge of the period. Koramei fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Jan 28, 2013 |
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Jan 28, 2013 00:10
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During the reign of Postumus, economic conditions may have been slightly better in the Gallic Empire than Roman Empire proper. Analyses of coins indicated that very early on in his reign he attempted to curb out of control inflation by increasing the silver content of coins. During the 260s, the silver content of Gallic coins was a few percentage points higher than those issued by Gallienus, but inflation once again ran out of control over Postumus was assassinated. The writing was on the wall by the time Septimius Severus died that the Roman Empire's days were numbered. Territorial expansion of more than a century before was now starting to take its toll. The military was stretched so thin with such a long border, from Britain to Syria, that the mines of the empire could no longer produce enough silver to pay the military. Gradually, "silver" coins became less and less silver until they were little more than a light silver wash over a base of worthless metal. Once a coin drops below 50% silver, the public starts to take notice and they lose faith in their currency and their government. By 260, silver-valued coins were comprised of only about 5% of the metal. Inflation was rampant and the Roman Empire had nowhere to go but down.
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Jan 28, 2013 02:17
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Two questions: -Why was the Eastern half of the Roman empire wealthier? -On Byzantium: I've read that the reason why Manzikert was such a disaster for the Eastern Romans was because they lost most of Anatolia, the empire's breadbasket to the Turks. But isn't that region mostly parched, arid plains?
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Jan 28, 2013 03:10
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Contingency Plan posted:Two questions: Trade, primarily. In the west, there's really no one to trade with outside the empire. Ireland, Scotland, Germania, and... that's about it. In the east you have all the markets of the rest of the world at your fingertips. India, China and all points between, plus trade down the coast of Africa. Central Asia had goods too, it wasn't just a pathway through to China. The east was also much older and more established. Places like Egypt were as ancient to the Romans as the Romans are to us. By the time Rome rolls in the east had been a thriving urban landscape for thousands of years. The west didn't have that kind of history. The Gauls were a legitimate civilization in their own right, not a bunch of shirtless dudes living in huts, but there was still no comparison between their history and a place like Persia or the Levant or Mesopotamia. So, Rome wasn't building a brand new civilization so much as taking the benefits of thousands of years of pre-built civilization and exploiting it. Contingency Plan posted:-On Byzantium: I've read that the reason why Manzikert was such a disaster for the Eastern Romans was because they lost most of Anatolia, the empire's breadbasket to the Turks. But isn't that region mostly parched, arid plains? Anatolia was the central province of the Roman Empire at the time. It'd be like losing most of Italy in the classical period. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Jan 28, 2013 |
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Jan 28, 2013 03:43
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Contingency Plan posted:Two questions: And I would say it wasn't so much as the grain (that came across the black sea) but the manpower; Anatolia was the heartland of the empire, full of (mostly) loyal Greek Christians who could be summoned up to fight for the empire. When they were under control of the Turks, the Doukas emperors (who hated the military anyway) decided to rely on mercenaries instead of a standing army. Bit of a mistake. The Komnennos dynasty pushed back and managed to recover big swathes of Anatolia and rebuilt the army into something that worked, but when they fell apart due to civil war and the Fourth Crusade, there was no recovery.
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Jan 28, 2013 04:59
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Contingency Plan posted:Two questions: Everything GF said is pretty on the money, I just wanted to chime in and say that the West wasn't exactly poor. There was less trade to be had, but there was an enormous amount of mineral wealth that was previously untapped. The amount of gold and silver the Romans pulled out of Hispania is pretty staggering, while saying nothing about the iron, tin, and copper that was also being extracted.
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Jan 28, 2013 18:48
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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I don't know if this question is really stupid or what but when did gold and silver become so important and why is used for currency? How did this come about?
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