|
Has anyone here been on/is anyone here going to go on the History of Rome tour? I'd really love to go one day, but I just don't have that kind of cash or time lying around, and probably won't for years, which makes me think I'll probably miss out.
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2013 13:07
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 13, 2024 19:26 |
|
|
Anyone watching the new Spartacus season? I know I know, this might not be the place for it but I would love to see some deconstruction on it
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2013 13:59
|
|
|
Alan Smithee posted:Anyone watching the new Spartacus season? I know I know, this might not be the place for it but I would love to see some deconstruction on it
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2013 15:11
|
|
|
I only saw the first season and the mini season. Gladiator fights weren't nearly as deadly. Everything else looked reasonably accurate. Except for the gorgeousness of the actors and actresses.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2013 15:14
|
|
|
Not My Leg posted:Since the thread was recently talking about personal combat. Is there any truth to the idea that during the Marcomannic Wars, Marcus Valerius Maximianus defeated one of the German tribes by killing their leader in personal combat? I heard it suggested, probably in the History of Rome podcast, that this was a case of defeating the enemy tribe through personal combat, but some Googling seems to indicate that he personally killed the chieftain in the context of a broader battle, and that likely broke the German tribe, rather than as a one-on-one loser goes home type battle. physeter fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Feb 22, 2013 |
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2013 15:22
|
|
|
I like to think that if you showed some Romans our TV shows about them, they'd loving love spartacus and watch every episode twice. I dont think women's tits were falling out in the arena every five minutes though.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2013 16:27
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Silicone and bikini waxing weren't invented until the 20th century. Really? Did Roman cosmetics not take any notice of the crotch? Serious question. edit: and hopefully that's the most disturbing thing I'll ever type.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2013 19:05
|
|
|
I definitely remember picking up a collection of articles in the college library and finding a published paper trying to work out from Aristophanes whether Greek women typically shaved their crotches (the answer seemed to be a fairly well-backed-up yes), so there was certainly precedent of a sort.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2013 19:26
|
|
|
Grand Prize Winner posted:Really? Did Roman cosmetics not take any notice of the crotch? Serious question. The Egyptians removed body hair with sugaring, which is similar to waxing. So the technology was there, at least.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2013 19:31
|
|
|
There was definitely lots of body hair grooming, including depilatories, sugaring, waxing with resin, and lots and lots of tedious plucking--I was just joking that Roman women probably didn't look like Lucy Lawless or Polly Walker coming out of the bath. I remember reading an account of a Roman men's bath that included mention of the gasps and complaints that accompanied the professional hair-plucker plying his trade.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2013 19:52
|
|
|
What kind of rogue hairs were the men getting rid of? Actually, can anyone spare a few words about ancient standards of beauty and grooming, just like generally? Is it true that Greeks were all about beautiful necks? Did men wear any makeup? What about clothing? You see a lot of pictures of kilted Pharaonic Egyptians: did they maintain this style under the Ptolemies? What about the Ptolemies themselves? Or the other Diadochi? Grand Prize Winner fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Feb 21, 2013 |
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2013 21:01
|
|
|
I think it was Caesar that had his whole body plucked below the chin.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2013 21:30
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:I remember reading an account of a Roman men's bath that included mention of the gasps and complaints that accompanied the professional hair-plucker plying his trade. That's written by Seneca (unless there's another one I don't know about), using the persona of someone who lives above the public baths. I wouldn't do that personally, but then some people live above takeaways, and I wouldn't do that either. It's not clear from the passage exactly what part of the body the hair is being plucked from. Grand Prize Winner posted:Ancient standards of beauty and grooming. Going to the barber for a shave was a big ritual for Roman men, but it took ages and could be as uncomfortable as hell. I don't think they'd developed modern scissors yet, so they used to rely on bronze cut throat razors of varying degrees of sharpness wielded by guys with varying degrees of skill but without shaving foam. It's not surprising that Roman men often grew their beards (although they went in and out of style, too) and even when "clean-shaven" they probably wouldn't be as clean-shaven as we manage today. Apart from the practical side, the barbers' was also something of a social hang-out for men, although to be honest that's still true in parts of the world today.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2013 21:34
|
|
|
General Panic posted:I don't think they'd developed modern scissors yet, so they used to rely on bronze cut throat razors of varying degrees of sharpness wielded by guys with varying degrees of skill but without shaving foam.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2013 21:36
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Did they use oil? Probably. They used it as a soap thing (cover in oil, scrape off with bronze stick thingy called a strigil) so I would be surprised if they didn't use it as a lubricant for shaving too. General Panic posted:That's written by Seneca (unless there's another one I don't know about), using the persona of someone who lives above the public baths. I wouldn't do that personally, but then some people live above takeaways, and I wouldn't do that either. It's not clear from the passage exactly what part of the body the hair is being plucked from. Clean shaven was the norm from about 2nd century BC to the first half of 2nd century AD. It became fashionable after Alexander the Great, until Hadrian brought in beards again because he was a big fan of Greek stuff (and Greeks tended to keep beards). Early ancestors in the time before the late 300's are often referred to as being bearded. Cicero refers to Appius Claudius Caecus as "prickly" with a big beard, and states clearly that he means a big beard, not like the "barbulae" (oft translated as goatee) of some of his contemporaries. e: Also, upon their coming of age, young men would shave & dedicate the shavings. I think to the Lares but I can't find a source other than wikipedia specifically on who they dedicated it to. Razors are found in men's graves in Italy from basically as early as we have grave goods, so shaving to some degree must have been A Thing. (Actually, often razors are what is used to decide if a grave belonged to a man. Mirrors and cosmetics things for women. It's a bit circular). Large parts of this may be untrue for the non-elite classes, especially outside of cities. Eggplant Wizard fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Feb 21, 2013 |
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2013 22:11
|
|
|
Is there much information about how Romans would preform their equivalent of the modern morning shave? I mean apart from the lack of an electric razor (which I use because I suck at every other method), Did they have dedicated knives for shaving and did they use oil or shaving cream to prepare/soothe the skin afterwards?
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2013 23:02
|
|
|
Did you read the posts above yours or just skip em?
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2013 23:05
|
|
|
Eggplant Wizard posted:Did you read the posts above yours or just skip em? I somehow managed to do both at the same time. As a follow-up, what's the classical world's version of  ?
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2013 11:42
|
|
|
Vincent Van Goatse posted:As a follow-up, what's the classical world's version of
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2013 17:45
|
|
|
WoodrowSkillson posted:Sieging Constantinople before 1453. I assume we all decide to ignore the Crazy Crusade?
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2013 17:55
|
|
|
The People's Crusade was pretty ridiculously dumb: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Crusade
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2013 23:39
|
|
|
Assuming it actually happened, the Children's Crusade is my favorite  event of the medieval period.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 01:10
|
|
|
Honestly, during the whole Crusaders scene the Muslims must have had the most period of their lives. "Hey Kilij, you're not going to loving believe what they sent here this time." "WHY ARE THEY DOING THHHISSSS?!"
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 12:12
|
|
|
DarkCrawler posted:Honestly, during the whole Crusaders scene the Muslims must have had the most And then they made me watch as they ATE Hannad right in front of me!
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 12:24
|
|
|
my dad posted:And then they made me watch as they ATE Hannad right in front of me! Albert of Aix posted:"The Christians did not shrink from eating not only killed Turks or Saracens, but even dogs..." Yeah...I think eating dogs would be more preferable, dude... 
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 19:00
|
|
|
I was reading a book about Caesar and the author mentioned that both Suetonius and Livy's accounts of his early life are lost. When historians use the word lost in that sort of context do they mean 'probably destroyed' or 'we might still find it one day'? How does something like that get lost in the first place, we have all the rest so why not those chapters?
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2013 00:40
|
|
|
"Lost" means, obviously, that there's no known copy of a text surviving today, either because none exist at all or those that do are undiscovered or are sitting in archival collections awaiting (re)-discovery. Note that generally speaking when works are termed "lost" it can basically be assumed to mean "gone forever". As for how it happens? Well between the lack of mass printing until the 1400s, and two millenia of wars, civilizational collapse, neglect, and horrific library fires it's a wonder we have as much historical material from the period as we do. It's not like this is confined to the Classical era either. Writing my Ph.D thesis has been a long extended headache because there's huge piles of official documents and reports relating to my thesis topic that are gone because all the copies were tossed into furnaces or pulped during the 1950s.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2013 00:50
|
|
|
Are there any diseases that affected ancient Romans that no longer exist today?
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2013 00:57
|
|
|
QuoProQuid posted:Are there any diseases that affected ancient Romans that no longer exist today? Smallpox.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2013 00:58
|
|
|
Bubonic plague as well. Isolated cases still happen, but it's exceedingly rare, and very treatable if you have access to antibiotics. This compared to when it'd occasionally wipe out 1/4 to a 1/3 of the population in just a year or two.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2013 02:01
|
|
|
Vincent Van Goatse posted:"Lost" means, obviously, that there's no known copy of a text surviving today, either because none exist at all or those that do are undiscovered or are sitting in archival collections awaiting (re)-discovery. Note that generally speaking when works are termed "lost" it can basically be assumed to mean "gone forever". When's the last time we actually found a manuscript that we didn't previously have a copy of? I know the Dead Sea Scrolls is probably the most famous (semi?) recent example, but are there any others? How often do we find "lost" texts anyway?
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2013 02:18
|
|
|
I don't know the last time but it does happen on rare occasions. The vast majority of what we have is preserved because it was copied and maintained somewhere or another. Currently, the most promising site is the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, where large numbers of books were preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius. They were turned into charcoal by the heat, but it is possible to read them still. Work is ongoing on figuring out some sort of CT scan or whatever that can read the text without trying to unroll it, which is incredibly difficult and often destroys it. There may also be a second library in the villa that is as yet undiscovered, since villas of this type usually had two libraries and only one has been excavated. If we're going to discover wholly lost texts, that's the likely spot to do it at the moment. Smallpox is the only disease that affected Romans that we don't have at all today, but there are lots that were deadly then that are minor now. Bubonic plague being the biggest example. Polio is mostly gone too, and stuff like leprosy was a big deal then but completely treatable now. Tuberculosis was always a big deal, though with the increasing antibiotic resistance we might get the TB plague back again! 
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2013 03:21
|
|
|
Kill Dozed posted:When's the last time we actually found a manuscript that we didn't previously have a copy of? I know the Dead Sea Scrolls is probably the most famous (semi?) recent example, but are there any others? How often do we find "lost" texts anyway? In large part it depends on how you define "texts". Old records and letters (like the Vinolanda tablets) turn up on occasion, but lost works like plays and treatises are pretty rare discoveries outside of fragments from places like Oxyrhynchus.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2013 03:28
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:I don't know the last time but it does happen on rare occasions. The vast majority of what we have is preserved because it was copied and maintained somewhere or another. Currently, the most promising site is the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, where large numbers of books were preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius. They were turned into charcoal by the heat, but it is possible to read them still. Work is ongoing on figuring out some sort of CT scan or whatever that can read the text without trying to unroll it, which is incredibly difficult and often destroys it. There may also be a second library in the villa that is as yet undiscovered, since villas of this type usually had two libraries and only one has been excavated. If we're going to discover wholly lost texts, that's the likely spot to do it at the moment. There are people actively working on reading them yeah. I know a lot of it seems to be Philodemus, an Epicurean philosopher, but I've also heard there's more of Ennius' Annales that someone is busy editing and oh boy oh boy oh boy 
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2013 17:04
|
|
|
malaria was a huge deal in Italy until the 20th century thanks to the Pontine marshes. We dont think about malaria above the tropics but it made a large part of the peninsula unlivable and killed or sickened a ton of people. The Romans tried to drain them over and over and always failed. It was a big deal when the fascists did it because they could claim to have surpassed the Romans and it was actually not a lie or exaggeration for once. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontine_Marshes
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2013 18:00
|
|
|
Those were all interesting answers. Thank you. What was medical care like in ancient Rome? I think leeching arose later during the early medieval period, but I would be interested in hearing any completely bizarre treatments that ancient Roman physicians would prescribe.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2013 22:29
|
|
|
QuoProQuid posted:Those were all interesting answers. Thank you. Roman physicians actually had a fairly sophisticated (for the time) knowledge of surgery and anti-infectious precautions despite having no knowledge of microbes or antibiotics.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2013 22:39
|
|
|
I believe the general consensus earlier in the thread was that until the rise of modern medicine, your best bet for survival throughout the history of Europe as a Roman physician.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2013 22:53
|
|
|
Namarrgon posted:I believe the general consensus earlier in the thread was that until the rise of modern medicine, your best bet for survival throughout the history of Europe as a Roman physician. Yeah here's where we were talking about it previously: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3486446&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=39 Roman trauma surgery was the best available until the American Civil War. And they had excellent palliative care as well - they knew to pay attention to cleanliness and prevent disease and infection, though they lacked the physiological theory to understand why it worked. I could have sworn that I wrote up a larger post about it where I talked about African and Eastern medicines as well, but I couldn't find it. India had some truly innovative doctors and therapists, though the knowledge was poorly disseminated, and Egypt and China provided the basis for modern medicine. And really by Roman doctors we're talking about Grecian Romans, because nearly all the medicos were incorporated Greeks.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2013 23:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 13, 2024 19:26 |
|
|
Namarrgon posted:I believe the general consensus earlier in the thread was that until the rise of modern medicine, your best bet for survival throughout the history of Europe as a Roman physician. Muslim Iberia was pretty good in that regard as well.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2013 23:36
|
|
