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Well, officially the Roman Emperor wasn't even dynastic, that's the difference.
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Apr 18, 2013 01:38
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I see that there. posted:But Rome was like, "THE guy" when a lot of that kind of crap went down over centuries. Roman culture encouraged it. Everything was winner take all and when you put all the aspects together, it's a system tailor made to push ambitious people to go as far as they can. Which is, theoretically, a good system. When a truly talented guy (talented women? hahahahah you barbarian) appears, he is going to expect that those talents be used in service of the state. It's what he has been taught to want and what everyone else encourages. So, you're shoving all your talented individuals into service, and doing the best job they can so they can rise up. This system has its advantages during the time when state institutions are strong and the "state" itself exists as an entity outside of anyone's personal control. Once the institutions break and the state becomes a single man, well. You have the same formula, but now doing your duty of state service involves shanking the guy who's already doing it. And you've now brought personal greed for power fully into the equation. It's always there, but before the best you can hope for is a shared consulship. Now you don't have to share it with anybody.
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Apr 18, 2013 01:40
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OctaviusBeaver posted:I'm definitely just a layman here, but did the Romans really think about being "gay" like we would today? Today we think of a gay man as a man that is sexually attracted to other men and not women. When I think about Roman homosexuality I think more about something like Hadrian. Yeah he was probably boning Antinous but he was married and probably messed around with women too. And the sexual part, if any, of what he got up to with Antinous was kept on the dl from what I can tell. So yeah Hadrian probably slept with a dude, but I don't think that maps onto what we think of as "gay" very well . Penetration was male, being penetrated was feminine. Hadrian's a bad example because that dude was totally railing the hell out of Antinous in the 'gayest' way imaginable. There's no "on the dl" about what was going on there. I guess I don't follow the story you're laying down. Romans being gay wasn't really different than anyone who's gay today. Sometimes married men with children have gay relationships for any number of reasons, maybe they're closeted, maybe they're bi, maybe whatever. It's not like entirely different sexual roles have evolved between Roman times and now. Cultural mores, maybe, but not sexual roles. I see that there. fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Apr 18, 2013 |
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Apr 18, 2013 01:56
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Grand Fromage posted:Roman culture encouraged it. Everything was winner take all and when you put all the aspects together, it's a system tailor made to push ambitious people to go as far as they can. Which is, theoretically, a good system. When a truly talented guy (talented women? hahahahah you barbarian) appears, he is going to expect that those talents be used in service of the state. It's what he has been taught to want and what everyone else encourages. So, you're shoving all your talented individuals into service, and doing the best job they can so they can rise up. This system has its advantages during the time when state institutions are strong and the "state" itself exists as an entity outside of anyone's personal control.
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Apr 18, 2013 02:05
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It certainly was a perk. At least some of why Caesar was so hell bent on staying in power is he knew the moment he was out he was going to be prosecuted into oblivion.
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Apr 18, 2013 02:14
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sullat posted:Sort of. Mostly it's just weird how Roman emperors had a lot of trouble keeping dynasties going. Like the Chinese empires had plenty of unrest and coups and civil wars, yet the emperors there had better luck in keeping their male heirs alive. I'm curious about what seems to be a contradictory frame of mind regarding bloodlines. There was a lot of stock put in the value of coming from Patrician stock, and the purer the better, right? But Romans also had no problem whatsoever with adopting/making heir people from outside of their own direct bloodlines if they felt they were better suited to continuing the family line? There seemed to have been simultaneously a slavish devotion to nepotism AND a belief in meritocracy. Is this an accurate take on the situation, and if so how did the Romans reconcile themselves to the contradictory viewpoints?
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Apr 18, 2013 02:30
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Ras Het posted:That is correct, although I don't understand what your last sentence is about. Yeah, I was basically remarking that, due to the way languages intermixed between the non-Roman European peoples, Vercingetorix would have been pronounced "werking-getoreex".
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Apr 18, 2013 07:18
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CommissarMega posted:Yeah, I was basically remarking that, due to the way languages intermixed between the non-Roman European peoples, Vercingetorix would have been pronounced "werking-getoreex". What I don't understand is your comment distinguishing between Frankish and Germanics, since the Franks were a Germanic tribe.
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Apr 18, 2013 08:19
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Jerusalem posted:I'm curious about what seems to be a contradictory frame of mind regarding bloodlines. There was a lot of stock put in the value of coming from Patrician stock, and the purer the better, right? But Romans also had no problem whatsoever with adopting/making heir people from outside of their own direct bloodlines if they felt they were better suited to continuing the family line? There seemed to have been simultaneously a slavish devotion to nepotism AND a belief in meritocracy. Is this an accurate take on the situation, and if so how did the Romans reconcile themselves to the contradictory viewpoints? I believe it was discussed earlier that adoption did not carry the stigma it does today. Adopted children were part of the (Patrician) family, full members in everyone's eyes. You could theorize that our modern stigma may be a result of the time after Rome, when bloodlines in nobility became far more important. In Rome, the emperor was the strongest man at the top. This was recognized by the other Romans. In Medieval kingdoms, you needed a (blood)claim to the throne to get at the king, or else fabricate one (looking at you William) to get the legitimacy needed for everyone to actually obey you.
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Apr 18, 2013 08:25
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Something interesting to note about the letter X in Latin is that it's often used in place of the digraph "gs" or "cs" because Romans really hated consonant clusters in writing. It explains why you have an X in the third declension nominative singular word rex and its declensions all begin with reg-.
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Apr 18, 2013 08:26
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Those sounds are so close that regular use is very likely to conflate them anyway. And the same behaviour is very easily observed in other languages - as one example, Greek has many equivalents along the lines of φύλαξ, φύλακος.
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Apr 18, 2013 11:00
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Grand Fromage posted:Roman culture encouraged it. Everything was winner take all and when you put all the aspects together, it's a system tailor made to push ambitious people to go as far as they can. Which is, theoretically, a good system. When a truly talented guy (talented women? hahahahah you barbarian) appears, he is going to expect that those talents be used in service of the state. It's what he has been taught to want and what everyone else encourages. So, you're shoving all your talented individuals into service, and doing the best job they can so they can rise up. This system has its advantages during the time when state institutions are strong and the "state" itself exists as an entity outside of anyone's personal control. If someone walked up to an individual today and asked them how they'd feel about committing financial suicide to throw parties, just for a chance to be co-mayor for a whole year, it'd be like  But the Romans were all about it, no problem. When someone can wrap their head around that, they're ready to accept just how driven this culture was towards political and personal advancement. Death and money were meaningless compared to a chance for glory. Though it is kind of amusing that thousands of years later, the consular record has survived and is used as a touchstone for trying to figure out who was who, when things happened, family connections, etc. So in the long run, becoming consul really was a shot at some degree of immortality. Grand Fromage posted:Once the institutions break and the state becomes a single man, well. You have the same formula, but now doing your duty of state service involves shanking the guy who's already doing it. And you've now brought personal greed for power fully into the equation. It's always there, but before the best you can hope for is a shared consulship. Now you don't have to share it with anybody.
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Apr 18, 2013 15:03
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physeter posted:If someone walked up to an individual today and asked them how they'd feel about committing financial suicide to throw parties, just for a chance to be co-mayor for a whole year, it'd be like I dunno about that, I think a lot of people would gladly commit financial suicide if it gave them the chance to have the power and the ability to make money like the Roman Consuls had. Weren't most high ranking Roman politicians extremely rich and could afford it as well?
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Apr 18, 2013 16:19
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Also this isn't co-mayor of some 100k town. This was co-king of the known (relevant) world. I know not literally but come on. If you ask rich people now to commit financial suicide on a serious chance to become co-king of the Americas and Europe or something for a year you can be drat sure some will answer the call. Add to that we don't even have close to such a power- and status-obsessed culture.
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Apr 18, 2013 16:28
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Lord Tywin posted:Weren't most high ranking Roman politicians extremely rich and could afford it as well? Some were, many were not. Often, lack of access to money is what limited political aspirations. The majority of the pre-Imperial Senate at any given time is comprised of men who are relatively wealthy, but nowhere near wealthy enough to contemplate embarking on a mult-year run for the consulship. Namarrgon posted:Also this isn't co-mayor of some 100k town. This was co-king of the known (relevant) world.
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Apr 18, 2013 16:42
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physeter posted:No, because I'm addressing the approximately 500 year period of the Republic. The cursus honorum continues to exist in a modified form into the Principate but has more to do with gaining Imperial favor, and the consulships become largely honorific. The Republic doesn't even engage Carthage until nearly 200 years after its founding. Rome doesn't tie up the Med until Egypt, and that happens under Augustus. Modern mayors in most U.S. cities are hamstrung by regulation and limited powers, and largely play a back-seat to the state governor, the city manager, and the police and court system. This is particularly true for newer and smaller cities that use a so-called "weak-mayor" system which effectively removes all power from the mayor and makes them little more than the leader of the city council. A Roman censor or consul would have far, far more influence than a mayor.
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Apr 18, 2013 17:28
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What I don't really understand is why Western European nations believe they are the "descendants" of Greco-Roman civlization/culture more than, say, Turkey or Tunisia or, hell, modern Greece itself. It's a hallmark of Western European nations historically to claim this, when maybe asides from France and Italy, the Roman connection to the other nations is superfluous at best. What is up with that?
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Apr 19, 2013 00:09
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Because it's true. The ancient Germanic civilizations didn't leave us all that much other than language. European intellectual culture derives directly from Greece and political/legal culture from Rome (simplistic but this is basically the case). Some of it was natural descent in a number of successor states that modeled themselves directly on the Roman empire, some was a product of cultural institutions that remained, some was intentionally created later on in the Renaissance and later. North Africa is different because it was invaded by outsiders which destroyed the existing culture. The Muslim world did adapt many aspects of Rome, but they also consciously eliminated much of it as well. The Turks were also invasion, but they kept more Roman--though, still, they did eliminate some stuff. The difference is the Germanic peoples who invaded, almost as a rule, adopted the Roman culture they moved into and left their old cultures behind. Visigoth culture, for example, practically ceases to exist in a few generations after they take over Spain. It's indistinguishable from a Roman province. I would say that Turkey, North Africa, and Levantine nations could claim a descent as well. It's not as direct but it's there. That most of them don't (except Turkey) as much as Europeans do is a cultural difference I suspect comes more from the Crusades and other Christian/Muslim fighting than anything else. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Apr 19, 2013 |
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Apr 19, 2013 00:24
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I'd contend that the connection springs from Roman law and Roman jurisprudence, which did stick around in most of the places where the Western Empire had influence up through the 1800s and shaped Western European notions of private property, inheritance, liability, guilt, and so on. (Even in the US, it's not accidental that many terms are Latin.) In the East, there was Roman law too, of course, but there was also significant influence from Islam, which has different legal axioms and common notions.
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Apr 19, 2013 00:29
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Lord Tywin posted:I dunno about that, I think a lot of people would gladly commit financial suicide if it gave them the chance to have the power and the ability to make money like the Roman Consuls had. Weren't most high ranking Roman politicians extremely rich and could afford it as well? Yeah, just look at the US Presidential campaigns - every four years people spend an astonishing amount of money in order to get a job that lasts a maximum of 8 years and pays a comparatively small annual salary.
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Apr 19, 2013 02:01
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Jerusalem posted:Yeah, just look at the US Presidential campaigns - every four years people spend an astonishing amount of money in order to get a job that lasts a maximum of 8 years and pays a comparatively small annual salary. That's peanuts compared to what we're talking about here. The Aedile would literally bankrupt himself, borrow money from every friend, family member, acquaintance, etc that would lend it to him and put himself into absoutely massive amounts of debt. This is all just for the chance of becoming a Consul, for one year, which paid nothing. Part of the allure of being Consul, besides the glory and honor, was being allowed to command legions and go make back all that money you lost via plunder and slaves.
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Apr 19, 2013 14:16
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For those of you who have been to Pompeii and Herculanium, is a day per city enough to have a really good look around? Can you do both cities in a day or is that stretching things? I'm popping off to Rome for a few days in the not to distant future and decided to take an extra few more days looking around ancient ruins. I know we have a tourism sub forum, but I suspect this thread has better knowledge about those two particular sites. In return I'll take pictures of every graffiti phallus I see for the thread.
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Apr 19, 2013 15:13
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canuckanese posted:That's peanuts compared to what we're talking about here. The Aedile would literally bankrupt himself, borrow money from every friend, family member, acquaintance, etc that would lend it to him and put himself into absoutely massive amounts of debt. This is all just for the chance of becoming a Consul, for one year, which paid nothing. Part of the allure of being Consul, besides the glory and honor, was being allowed to command legions and go make back all that money you lost via plunder and slaves. And then becoming a proconsul, which meant farming a province for taxes for the foreseeable future.
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Apr 19, 2013 15:17
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JaggyJagJag posted:What I don't really understand is why Western European nations believe they are the "descendants" of Greco-Roman civlization/culture more than, say, Turkey or Tunisia or, hell, modern Greece itself. It's a hallmark of Western European nations historically to claim this, when maybe asides from France and Italy, the Roman connection to the other nations is superfluous at best. What is up with that? Like GF said, it's because they were. The states that formed in the wake of the western Roman empire were still extremely Roman, claimed legitimacy through Rome, spoke Latin, exercised power in the Roman way, appealed to the Emperor to recognize them as Roman authorities, etc. The popular culture image of a bunch of Germanic warriors that overran Roman territory and set up their own polities is pretty damned incorrect. To grossly oversimplify the evolution of polities in Western Europe, the Frankish state that eventually becomes France and the Holy Roman Empire began as the last 'Roman' army on the Loire that wound up carving out a state after Roman authority evaporated in the fifth century.
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Apr 19, 2013 20:12
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Dr Scoofles posted:For those of you who have been to Pompeii and Herculanium, is a day per city enough to have a really good look around? Can you do both cities in a day or is that stretching things? I'm popping off to Rome for a few days in the not to distant future and decided to take an extra few more days looking around ancient ruins. I know we have a tourism sub forum, but I suspect this thread has better knowledge about those two particular sites. In return I'll take pictures of every graffiti phallus I see for the thread. Herculaneum is fairly small and doable in a day. Pompeii I would take two days for. You also want time for the Naples archaeology museum, which is fantastic and has lots of stuff from both sites. I'd say three days at least, four would be better. Five would be even better since you could go to Paestum or Capua or something too.
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Apr 19, 2013 20:20
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Jerusalem posted:Yeah, just look at the US Presidential campaigns - every four years people spend an astonishing amount of money in order to get a job that lasts a maximum of 8 years and pays a comparatively small annual salary. I don't mean to over-hash what people have already said here, however I feel it is extremely important that you, or others with your question understand the point. There is literally no comparison. At all. Roman politicians would take on ludicrous amounts of debts just to throw a couple Games on the off chance they'd gain enough favors with the people to hold some tiny office. In Caesar's case (which was not necessarily out of order), imagine borrowing so much money that you had to lead the US Armed Forces on an assault on Fort Knox just to hang on to office long enough that you'd promise to make enough money in the oil fields of X to pay it off. This has nothing on "rich son of so and so wanting an office". edit: I should also add to clarify that this, to an extent, only applies to Aediles and Consuls in the late stages of the Republic. People with personal fortunes before and after jockeyed their way into political office just as we do now. The big shots, though, in the late Republic and early Empire really mortgaged WAAAAAY more than the farm to buy their shot. I see that there. fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Apr 19, 2013 |
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Apr 19, 2013 23:47
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I see that there. posted:I don't mean to over-hash what people have already said here, however I feel it is extremely important that you, or others with your question understand the point. Some random millionaire cannot gamble for the US president's office like that because of the party system, but within the parties it's not massively different. They spend absurd amounts of (other people's) money for the fame and wealth that the job will bring. And what the parties themselves do is receive massive donations from interest groups with the promise to fix things for them while in office. Look at who donates to whom and who benefits from what.
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Apr 20, 2013 00:26
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Ras Het posted:Some random millionaire cannot gamble for the US president's office like that because of the party system, but within the parties it's not massively different. They spend absurd amounts of (other people's) money for the fame and wealth that the job will bring. And what the parties themselves do is receive massive donations from interest groups with the promise to fix things for them while in office. Look at who donates to whom and who benefits from what. We're not talking about millionaires here, we're talking about Roman citizens from the very top of the chain. The wealthiest of the wealthy. It would be like if Bill Gates sold all his assets, used his entire fortune, and as much money as he could borrow in order to have a shot at office.
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Apr 20, 2013 01:10
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canuckanese posted:We're not talking about millionaires here, we're talking about Roman citizens from the very top of the chain. The wealthiest of the wealthy. It would be like if Bill Gates sold all his assets, used his entire fortune, and as much money as he could borrow in order to have a shot at office. Yeah, the Roman attitude and system is similar enough to be mistaken for the same as ours, but in so many vital ways it's 100% alien. That's the fun part!
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Apr 20, 2013 01:32
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The German tribesmen were more like Roman cosplayers than conquering barbarians.
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Apr 20, 2013 02:52
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This is perhaps a bit of an odd question, but are there examples, contemporary or otherwise, of Roman alt-history fiction? I felt so bad about Julius Caesar dying that I'm wondering if people have tried tackling the question of what could have happened had he survived, along with the myriad other what-ifs across the Republic and Empire's history.
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Apr 20, 2013 03:31
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Ras Het posted:Some random millionaire cannot gamble for the US president's office like that because of the party system, but within the parties it's not massively different. They spend absurd amounts of (other people's) money for the fame and wealth that the job will bring. And what the parties themselves do is receive massive donations from interest groups with the promise to fix things for them while in office. Look at who donates to whom and who benefits from what. There isn't a comparison. When civil war breaks out because the senate majority whip stiffed his financial backers, wants to loot the federal treasury to pay them and has the JCOS bringing troops into NY harbor to support it, call me. Because THAT's what we're talking about. edit: AND pretend that the politician in question was the guy personally financing the Super Bowl every 6 months to gain popular support. I see that there. fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Apr 20, 2013 |
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Apr 20, 2013 03:45
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gradenko_2000 posted:I felt so bad about Julius Caesar dying That's a ... really weird thing to say for someone happy with genocide. Don't conflate Caesar's bringing about the Empire with a good thing. Ever. It's interesting, and a pivotal point in history no doubt, but just be careful with it. I'm sure people will be along shortly to portray Caesar in a better light than my painting him of 'genocidal', but the man wasn't a great example of an enlightened despot, despite his kid-gloves handling of the peninsula during his march on Rome and stuff. I see that there. fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Apr 20, 2013 |
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Apr 20, 2013 03:59
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I suppose part of it is the Rome series playing him up as a sympathetic character, but even in the histories that I've read he came off a guy who was really going to fix things. I acknowledge that my wording was perhaps unfortunate and does not reflect any sort of fondness for his more brutal acts.
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Apr 20, 2013 04:25
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It's hard to write factual histories when the people paying you to do so are financed by the principate system that he founded. He was going to 'fix things', in as much as 'fixing' meant making things ok for he and his friends. That isn't to say the republic wasn't fundamentally fractured at the time, and he certainly was trying to right the boat, as it were, but only so much as that meant making what he was doing legal. To over simplify it - he was spinning too many plates and just wanted to get rid of a few of them, he wasn't looking to make plate-spinning illegal.
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Apr 20, 2013 04:37
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Roman influence was rather wiped out in Britain, and English people did/do have all sort of ideas about their culture being part of the whole Greco-Roman Western European continuity. Just the fact of being conquered by French people six hundred years after the legions left Britain doesn't make up for the fact that after the withdrawal of Roman forces there was a significant degree of depopulation, breakdown of the legal and economic system, etc. There was less of a continuity as in France where latifundia become manorial estates and such. Yet British people, most specifically English people, have claimed and still do claim the same heritage as other Western Europeans. I'm trying to say people who do that are full of poo poo.
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Apr 20, 2013 04:50
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Post-Roman/Sub-Roman Britain question: I've been fiddling with a Fall of Rome mod for Crusader Kings 2, and as part of that Sub-Roman Britain in 475's got to be addressed. I've seen a couple of depictions of Britain around this period, but I don't know enough about Sub-Roman Britain independent of that stuff to make a judgment as to what's a better set of data, guesses and baseless assertions to work with for the purposes of a CK2 mod. I know that Sub-Roman Britain is not the best-documented region of Late Antiquity Europe, but if any of you guys could at least point me in the right direction of what to look for where, you guys would have my eternal thanks. Ofaloaf fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Apr 20, 2013 |
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Apr 20, 2013 06:09
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cheerfullydrab posted:Roman influence was rather wiped out in Britain, and English people did/do have all sort of ideas about their culture being part of the whole Greco-Roman Western European continuity. Just the fact of being conquered by French people six hundred years after the legions left Britain doesn't make up for the fact that after the withdrawal of Roman forces there was a significant degree of depopulation, breakdown of the legal and economic system, etc. There was less of a continuity as in France where latifundia become manorial estates and such. Yet British people, most specifically English people, have claimed and still do claim the same heritage as other Western Europeans. I'm trying to say people who do that are full of poo poo. Speaking as an East Anglian, people round here identify more with the pre-Roman tribes such as the Iceni, and will balk at the idea of being descended from a conquering nation such as the Romans or, horror of horrors, the French! Of course your point still stands about being being full of poo poo when it comes to heritage. Personally I have no idea who my ancestors are, I mean, how the hell do you even begin to guess? Oh, and thanks for your advice GF! I am totally making space to do these ancient sites properly.
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Apr 20, 2013 07:33
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How would you compare the daily living conditions of people before and after the Imperium? I know the Roman Republic was always an empire. That, and Roman citizens were privileged over the other subjects of the empire, and that wealth tended to flow from the periphery towards the capital.
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Apr 20, 2013 07:53
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Dr Scoofles posted:Oh, and thanks for your advice GF! I am totally making space to do these ancient sites properly. No problem. I would say your minimum is two days Pompeii, one for Herculaneum. You could go to the museum on Herculaneum day if you get a good early start. There is a ton around Naples so you can easily fill more time if you have it. Cumae, Paestum, Capua are all neat. Oplontis is a nice preserved villa in Naples, for a little extra time to fill if you have it.
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Apr 20, 2013 09:24
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