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Hey, thanks. This is great, Byzantine history is way too much of an empty hole in my knowledge of Roman history.
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Mar 21, 2013 21:28
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Also to be clear, he spends the first couple episodes going back to about the 300s to clear up some info focused on the eastern empire that was glossed over in the History Of Rome's focus on the western part in those times. Which is handy.
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Mar 21, 2013 21:40
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It's page 100!  I had no idea the thread would be this popular. Ten months and still going. I love you nerds.
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Mar 22, 2013 01:28
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By far the best thread I follow! I haven't started the history of Rome podcast, but from it I found the Ancient World podcast that I'm going to start, then HoR and move into this Byzantine podcast. I'm happy as a pig in poo poo! So a little bit outside the scope of this thread, but not entirely unrelated... Are there any good podcasts on the Early Middle Ages? The rise of the Empire of the Franks through the HRE and so on for the west? Would be a good post-mortem for the HoR podcast and a nice complement to this Byzantine podcast, I think.
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Mar 22, 2013 03:03
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Dan Carlin who does Hardcore History has an episode entitled Thor's Angels that is literally exactly what you describe. It is 4 1/2 hours long and absolutely awesome. His recent Mongol series is also fantastic, as is his 7 part series on the death of the Roman Republic and the rise of Augustus.
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Mar 22, 2013 03:37
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Halloween Jack posted:I love how Sulla conquered Rome because his political enemies said "Hey everybody! Sulla's going to conquer Rome and declare himself king!" So they declared him an outlaw, whereupon Sulla marched his army into Rome, destroyed all his enemies, and said "What the gently caress are you talking about? Here, let's set the Republic in order and then I'm going to gently caress off to my farm." I think everybody was too flabbergasted to know what the gently caress. Dan Carlin made a very good point though that it was Sulla who set the stage for the utter destruction of the Republic largely because he showed that a strong enough figure could wrest control of the state and ignore the rule of law. In his case it was done pretty much in a, "I've got to burn the institutions to save them!" line of reasoning and he set everything back up but it clearly showed that the institutions weren't strong enough to stand up to a talented general with a good army. Combined with Rome's tendency to reward military success it made the civil war pretty inevitable as the top position for the generation that grew up when Sulla was on top of the world went from doing as well as possible within the system to controlling the system itself. From the standpoint of modern democratic nations it's probably the most useful lesson to take away from Roman history, as much as "gently caress this rule of law poo poo, do what's needed and clean the laws back up afterwards," is tempting, the damage to the whole system from that kind of thing can be fatal.
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Mar 23, 2013 04:38
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The taboo against using military power against other Romans (and god forbid, against Rome itself) was incredibly powerful. Sulla breaking it was the death knell of the Republic. Especially because nothing bad happened to him--quite the opposite--demonstrating that maybe the gods wouldn't smite you immediately for taking soldiers through the sacred barrier or whatever. It's not a coincidence that the generation that ended the Republic came right on his heels. Those taboos and restrictions were all that kept the unbelievably competitive Roman system from reaching its logical conclusion of emperors. I don't think Sulla realized what he did, though. I think he genuinely believed he was saving the Republic from itself and from Marius' depredations.
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Mar 23, 2013 04:46
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Dan Carlin who does Hardcore History has an episode entitled Thor's Angels that is literally exactly what you describe. It is 4 1/2 hours long and absolutely awesome. His recent Mongol series is also fantastic, as is his 7 part series on the death of the Roman Republic and the rise of Augustus. Seconding the recommendation for Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. His series on the Roman Republic is seriously great and what got me all interested into ancient history lately. After that, I started on The History of Rome podcast (about half-way done now) and discovering this new The History of Byzantium podcast is even better! I even have The History of England queued up too for the far future.
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Mar 23, 2013 07:22
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I am curious about the living space situation throughout history. I imagine the poorer people would all share a single bedroom with their children and extended family, but how about the more wealthy people? Would they have one room each, or would it be one room for the parents, and then a shared room between the children, and another for the extended family? Also, were there any notable ancient intellectual woman? I know of a few notable military leaders and rulers, but have never heard of philosophers/scientsts/etc. Medieval Medic fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Mar 23, 2013 |
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Mar 23, 2013 19:53
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Sappho or Hypatia of Alexandria are probably the first people that you'd get cited as female intellectuals in the ancient world.
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Mar 23, 2013 21:20
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I've been reading (on Wikipedia) about Chinese History, something I don't know much about. Came across the Empress Wu Zetian, she seems pretty cool. A woman leader of a powerful empire seems pretty unprecedented. I am unsure of the nature of gender in China during this period (or at all) so I would be interested in generally how the Empress was regarded by contemporaries, and also how she is regarded by modern historians. Also, the entry says she took over after her husband, Emperor Gaozong, had a stroke, but I can't find any references to a stroke other than things copied from Wikipedia. Any truth to this? Thanks!
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Mar 23, 2013 22:16
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e: double post
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Mar 23, 2013 22:16
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From what I learned in my East Asian history class (may not be accurate), she actually used the character for Emperor - Empress simply signified the (socially inferior) partner of an Emperor, so to make sure everyone knew she was in charge and ruling directly, not just indirectly through a son or whatever, she made sure everyone knew she was Emperor Wu Zetian. I'm not exactly certain of the vagaries of Chinese gender dynamics (I think they were relatively more progressive back then, then declined around the time of the Song Dynasty, where women were more often kept in the home and footbinding became commonplace), but I think Confucian morality did stress the superiority of men over women, so Wu Zetian's actions were pretty unheard of. Naturally, the Confucian scholar-gentry that recorded history were not particularly impressed with her (which also means take what they say with a grain of salt, there are probably some fabrications in their accounts of her.)
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Mar 23, 2013 22:55
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Yesterday, the topic of Lucius Cornelius Sulla came up in my Roman History class. The professor told me Sulla never implemented any kind of constitutional reforms to the Roman Constitution since the Romans had no such thing as a constitution, at least in the traditional sense of the word, since the first Constitution was the Magna Carta of John Lackland in 1215. Is he right? I swear I heard somewhere the Roman Republic had a Constitution, though unwritten and uncodified.
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Mar 23, 2013 22:58
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Well a constitution is just the set of laws and customs that compose a government, whether they were written down or not, right? If I'm not mistaken the Romans did not have a comprehensive written code of laws until late in the Empire. Law decisions and the workings of elections and whatnot were based on citing individual pieces of legislation. This resulted in many laws contradicting each other, unless new laws explicitly stated that they replaced and nullified old ones. Oh, there was also the twelve tables in the Republican period. I'll leave one of the experts to go into more detail on that, since my memory of them is pretty fuzzy.
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Mar 23, 2013 23:54
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Azran posted:Yesterday, the topic of Lucius Cornelius Sulla came up in my Roman History class. The professor told me Sulla never implemented any kind of constitutional reforms to the Roman Constitution since the Romans had no such thing as a constitution, at least in the traditional sense of the word, since the first Constitution was the Magna Carta of John Lackland in 1215. The Roman "constitution" was informal and not an official thing. It wasn't written down, as you said. It basically amounts to the same thing as British common law or statutory laws in the US. So no, they didn't have an actual constitution in the modern sense. Sulla did implement reforms to these customary/statutory laws though but his changes were only really in effect until Caesar won the civil war and changed everything around again.
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Mar 23, 2013 23:57
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canuckanese posted:The Roman "constitution" was informal and not an official thing. It wasn't written down, as you said. It basically amounts to the same thing as British common law or statutory laws in the US. So no, they didn't have an actual constitution in the modern sense. Sulla did implement reforms to these customary/statutory laws though but his changes were only really in effect until Caesar won the civil war and changed everything around again. British law full stop, really. Our constitution is still uncodified, which we share with only about three or four other countries around the world (two of which are our old colonies).
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Mar 24, 2013 00:10
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The use of the term "Roman Constitution", although confusing to people in modern times, is reflecting the older definition of the term as meaning the the basic and supreme body of law of a political entity. The concept of having a political entity's Constitution being a specific document dates to somewhere between 1600-1650 AD, with the use of that name or its equivalent in another languague dating to the early 1700s. Near as I can find, it seems the phrasing of "Roman Constitution" has been used to refer to the concept in English since the 18th century, probably earlier too. Honestly a lot of terms used to refer to things in Rome seem a bit confusing in current day English because they're phrasings and terms as they were used in the Roman history studies of centuries ago.
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Mar 24, 2013 00:11
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He could be referring to the mos maiorum which was sort of an unwritten cross between FAMILY VALUES and guide to governance
Headline fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Mar 24, 2013 |
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Mar 24, 2013 00:20
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Alright, I get it now. Thanks a lot! I love this freaking thread. 
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Mar 24, 2013 01:45
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AdjectiveNoun posted:From what I learned in my East Asian history class (may not be accurate), she actually used the character for Emperor - Empress simply signified the (socially inferior) partner of an Emperor, so to make sure everyone knew she was in charge and ruling directly, not just indirectly through a son or whatever, she made sure everyone knew she was Emperor Wu Zetian. Wu Zetian did think of herself in a masculine role and also invented some words specifically to refer to herself and her government. The reason for the decline in status is linked to changes in marriage customs. During the Tang, the great houses still held prestige but sometimes little else. The prestige was enough and men would spend a huge amount of money to obtain marriage with the scioness of a great house. In contrast, they usually avoided marriages with Tang princesses because the princesses could do whatever drat thing they pleased including divorce, which wasn't pleasant to the Tang dynasty male psyche. In any case, the great houses power is based on their name prestige. The Tang emperors were actually steppes barbarians so they didn't like that and eventually forced a link between status in government and "nobility" and this was eventually tied to the exam system. This changed the way kinship relationships worked and by the Song dynasty something had changed. Men no longer paid money to a women's family, rather they expected a dowry. In effect, women had lost their leverage. The Tang had also seen the introduction of legal concubines for the "common middle class man" further weakening the status of women. The status of concubines was in between a wife and a maid, but by the 17th century Qing the legal status between maid, concubine and wife had blurred significantly- which was a bit of a nadir for Chinese womenkind. Anyho, it was all the fault of that damned test or so some theorize.
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Mar 24, 2013 03:04
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Constitution does necessarily imply a written document. Even in the USA our constitution is more than he Constitution.
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Mar 24, 2013 03:15
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What's a good source for Byzantine/Medieval Roman history? Right now I'm reading John Julius Norwich's A Short History of Byzantium and listening to the Byzantine history podcasts, but I could use a bit more. Also, since we're on an East Asian history derail, can anyone recommend any good sources for pre-Qing/Manchu Chinese history? Both Byzantium and China are areas I know embarrassingly little about and want to get working on that.
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Mar 24, 2013 03:58
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NEED TOILET PAPER posted:What's a good source for Byzantine/Medieval Roman history? Right now I'm reading John Julius Norwich's A Short History of Byzantium and listening to the Byzantine history podcasts, but I could use a bit more. Also, since we're on an East Asian history derail, can anyone recommend any good sources for pre-Qing/Manchu Chinese history? Both Byzantium and China are areas I know embarrassingly little about and want to get working on that. Read the six-volume history of imperial China that starts with Mark Edward Lewis' "The Early Chinese Empires." http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674057340 Then you can check out the Burton Watson translation of the Shiji. Sima Qian remains China's best historian even a couple millenia later. http://www.amazon.com/Records-Grand-Historian-Qin-Dynasty/dp/0231081693
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Mar 24, 2013 04:13
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The China History Podcast is a good introduction too.
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Mar 24, 2013 04:17
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Barto posted:The reason for the decline in status is linked to changes in marriage customs. That's so interesting, do you have a link or more info?
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Mar 24, 2013 08:04
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NEED TOILET PAPER posted:What's a good source for Byzantine/Medieval Roman history? Right now I'm reading John Julius Norwich's A Short History of Byzantium and listening to the Byzantine history podcasts, but I could use a bit more. Also, since we're on an East Asian history derail, can anyone recommend any good sources for pre-Qing/Manchu Chinese history? Both Byzantium and China are areas I know embarrassingly little about and want to get working on that.
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Mar 24, 2013 08:37
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Why were actors and performers considered almost lower than prostitutes on the social scale in Roman society? This is brought up again and again as you read/hear about nobility slumming it up or wanting to actively participate in theatre or games. As someone raised during modern times it seems hard to understand how professional athletes and actors would be truly considered the scum's scum of society. Even allowing for different social standards, true acting, performance, and gladiatorial arts are a highly specialized and appreciated skillset, so why was there such a serious societal taboo regarding these professions?
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Mar 24, 2013 21:25
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Well at some point it became a chicken and egg problem. Because actors and performers were so looked down on, no "good" and upper class people would become one, and since "good" and upper class people wouldn't do it so they were looked down on, and because they were looked down on....
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Mar 24, 2013 21:50
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I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't have a similar reason to why merchants historically haven't been the most liked: because they're not seen as actually being "productive" towards society. You can survive without a performer; you can't survive without a farmer. There is some of this still directed at sports and movie stars today; consider the oft-quoted "if they got paid based on how much they helped society" comparing them to teachers. VVV Okay yeah, that makes sense, too. Axiem fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Mar 24, 2013 |
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Mar 24, 2013 22:05
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Performing was looked down on because it was associated with slavery. Both gladiators and actors were likely to be slaves (gladiators to a particular school, actors to an acting company) or freed slaves of the same. Since Rome was all about the status, lowering yourself to a job taken mostly by slaves was seen as a huge degradation, to the point that a free man who became a gladiator (an auctorati) was declared infami or "of no reputation" - stripped of all legal standing as a Roman citizen, and regulated to the same social class as prostitutes and pimps.
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Mar 24, 2013 22:10
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Taking a slave's job being seen as lowering yourself on social hierarchy, and combined with the 'what are you really producing here?' mind-set is basically what I thought. The conflict that I've had with it, is that you're a highly visible, respected, and well-paid member of society, and that seems to be something you could aspire to. Instead, immediately after the performance they're immediately reclassified as untouchable societal lepers. It just doesn't really seem logical to me that highly-prized members of society, and wanting to be one, is repeatedly and consistently made out to be worse than being a beastiality-porn star.
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Mar 24, 2013 22:29
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I don't know if this applied to Rome at all, but in later eras a large part of the stigma was due to the fact that actors were generally travelers who didn't have holdings, assets, family ties, etc., at least not that anybody can trace. People who live on the move are viewed dubiously today, and it was much, much moreso during the vast majority of history when censuses and bureaucracy were far less reliable, and the concept of "police" didn't even exist.
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Mar 24, 2013 22:43
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brozozo posted:I know you might be retreading the same ground for you, but I immensely enjoyed Norwich's three volume Byzantium.
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Mar 24, 2013 23:02
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thehoodie posted:I've been reading (on Wikipedia) about Chinese History, something I don't know much about. Came across the Empress Wu Zetian, she seems pretty cool. A woman leader of a powerful empire seems pretty unprecedented. Hatshepsut wasn't even the first female Pharaoh when she took power c.1479BC but she was the longest reigning (indigenous Egyptian) woman in Egypt's history and, importantly, she's remembered as one of the greatest Pharaohs in general, both male and female. She's responsible for this being built  Sidenote: she was Tutankhamun's Great-Great-Great-Great-Aunt
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Mar 25, 2013 00:40
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Tsaedje posted:Hatshepsut wasn't even the first female Pharaoh when she took power c.1479BC but she was the longest reigning (indigenous Egyptian) woman in Egypt's history and, importantly, she's remembered as one of the greatest Pharaohs in general, both male and female. That building is loving with my OCD too much
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Mar 25, 2013 01:36
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How much did Egyptian culture change over time? Egypt existed for a ridiculously long amount of time, and yet the impression I get from history shows is that it remained pretty much the same until the Persians and Alex the Great showed up. Is this true? If it is, how is it possible for a culture to remain in stasis for so long? If it's not, then what did change?
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Mar 25, 2013 01:50
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Sorry if this has already been covered in this thread, but I was wondering - One of the things in Dan Carlin's narrative of the Romans that really struck and shocked me, because I had already formed the image of this in my mind but wasn't aware of exactly what was happening was the fact that the Romans are one of, if not the only society prior to our own current global situation that was rich and affluent enough to have a counter-culture movement strong enough to shape the society. He mentions things from, I believe the Gracchi to the personal affectations of Caesar that indicate that they were punk brats with abrasive social habits, and that historical authors writing later missed these ideas because in the time that they were writing, no such counter-culture could exist, and could not exist again until completely modern times. I was wondering if that was a popularly accepted view, or something Carlin just tossed against the wall? edit: vv Yes, they do, and it seems somewhat obvious to us today given the depiction of unpopular hair cuts, styles of toga wearing, etc., I guess I was mostly interested in the fact that many writers after the fact would have missed that these figures were 'being cool', as Carlin puts it, instead of just being portrayed as strange, or miscreant vv I see that there. fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Mar 25, 2013 |
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Mar 25, 2013 01:57
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It's popularly accepted, the ancient writers portray them that way.
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Mar 25, 2013 02:33
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I see that there. posted:Taking a slave's job being seen as lowering yourself on social hierarchy, and combined with the 'what are you really producing here?' mind-set is basically what I thought. From a certain perspective actors, prostitutes and gladiators are all the same thing - people who entertain you using their voices and bodies. There have been plenty of high-class prostitutes in history who were very highly trained and well-paid but in few cultures would their profession have been considered something to aspire to by the upper classes. From that perspective it's not hard to see why actors were not treated any differently. It's also worth noting that in a lot of cultures theatre was not considered a particularly high form of art. Most of Shakespeare's plays, for instance, would probably have been enjoyed much as summer blockbusters are today rather than as great works of art. There is also something deeply transgressive about acting in general in that an actor makes their living by pretending to be someone else. If you come from a philosophical perspective where you don't think that there is any valid distinction between what you do on stage and what you do off the stage, then it would be very easy to conclude that actors must be untrustworthy people. In this case the the actor is a liar and their skills actually condemn them. More tenuously (this well outside anything I know much about) a lot of ancient societies seem to have had some connection between role-playing and religious rituals. Think about the festivals where masters and servants switched roles for a day. That could be seen as a sort of theatre and when done within its proper context would be fine. In a profane context, however, theatre - and thus actors - could possibly be sacrilegious.
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Mar 25, 2013 02:55
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