|
I'm currently reading The Fall of the Roman Empire by Peter Heather. He's apparently a professor at Oxford and teaches about Romans/Barbarians. Have any of yall read it / would recommend I continue reading it? In the first 10 pages or so he has referenced a few events, events which yall have said aren't real (e.g. salting of Carthage), keeps mislabeling events/places/names and seems to have a poor grasp on English.
|
#
?
May 9, 2013 04:09
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 23:02 |
|
|
It's been a few years since I read it but I loved it. I more skipped around in it than read it straight through but my recollection was reading a lot of interesting stuff and great footnotes. I'll reread the first chapter over breakfast and get back to you.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2013 07:32
|
|
|
Troubadour posted:It's been a few years since I read it but I loved it. I more skipped around in it than read it straight through but my recollection was reading a lot of interesting stuff and great footnotes. I'll reread the first chapter over breakfast and get back to you. Guess I'm reading the rest of it then, thanks! It does contain a lot of interesting information, e.g. the prologue about the baggage guards.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2013 08:44
|
|
|
sbaldrick posted:The last people that we know worship the old Greek/Roman gods in any real way where in the hills in Peloponnese in the 11th century and even then it was more like a local cult. This came out of a recent (couple of years old) study in the area. Don't suppose you've got a link/ name of the study?
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2013 10:05
|
|
|
I read it recently, it's a good overview of a period I didn't know much about. There are some writers who will repeat common myths as a way of bringing in the audience. I think it's stupid but it happens a lot. Also academics often know less than nothing about things outside their field. If he focuses on late antiquity it is entirely possible he is good at that and knows gently caress all about Republic era stuff. I know very little about later Rome, myself.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2013 11:26
|
|
|
So I read through the start of Heather's book again and I found the Carthage quote. It is disappointing to see an old saw like that in such a good book, but I would point out that the very first pages are on a whole much more sweeping and general than the rest. There's some other stuff at the beginning that is questionable: take the whole anecdote about Cotta and the ambush of the legion. If the legion was eradicated almost to a man, the entire leadership was annihilated, and only a few runaways survived, that we could have any real idea of the true course of the battle. Obviously, it was propaganda written for the consumption of the senate, and Heather uses it to make a broader point about the type of soldier who made up the Roman army as it was conquering the Mediterranean. I see the point about salting the grounds of Carthage the same way - if one thinks a little about the course of the three Punic wars, the fact that they happened like they did and ended as they did makes the same argument Heather makes about the implacability of the rising power. But at any rate, Heather writes in the same section that his specialty is late antiquity on both the Roman and non-Roman side. So I would just agree with Fromage there. I also came across a section in the chapter on Roman education that I think might be interesting, because I wrote a little about it (and unwittingly plagiarized it, sorry Peter Heather) a few posts ago. It's fairly long, but I think it's worth quoting (nearly) in full: Peter Heather posted:Symmachus and his peers were acutely conscious of the weight of history [...] Symmachus refers to the Senate of Rome as 'the better part of humankind', pars melior humani generis. And by this he didnt just mean that he and his peers were richer than anyone else, rather that they were 'better human beings in a moral sense as well: greater in virtue. In the past, it was much more usual to claim that one had more because one's greater moral worth entitled one to it. [...] Virtues of one kind or another are bandied about : 'integrity', 'rectitude', 'honesty' and 'purity of manners' all recur at regular intervals. This is no random collection of attributes: for Symmachus and his peers, their possession was explicitly linked to a particular type of education.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2013 14:46
|
|
|
Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:I'm currently reading The Fall of the Roman Empire by Peter Heather. He's apparently a professor at Oxford and teaches about Romans/Barbarians. Have any of yall read it / would recommend I continue reading it? In the first 10 pages or so he has referenced a few events, events which yall have said aren't real (e.g. salting of Carthage), keeps mislabeling events/places/names and seems to have a poor grasp on English. If you've read that, you absolutely need to read Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West afterwards. Written by Guy Halsall, another British professor of history. I haven't actually read Heather's work, but there's a lot of places where Halsall points out (what he sees as) flaws and shortcomings in Heather's work. The chapter towards the end about ethnogenesis is among the driest, most terrible things I've ever read, but the vast majority is fantastic. Tons of insights into how Rome-in-the-West was governed, how the local elites demonstrated their status, exactly how a bunch of barbarians wound up running the show, how those barbarians adopted very Roman identities in order to demonstrate their legitimacy, and then later moved away from those identities as they became more established in their locales. Halsall also runs a blog called Historian on the Edge.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2013 18:17
|
|
Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
|
Lobster God posted:Don't suppose you've got a link/ name of the study? I would have to sit down and find it, but I will take a shot at it.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2013 18:45
|
|
|
Grand Prize Winner posted:Someone who knows more will probably go into detail (please do!), but the impression that I've got is that red was a dye that was affordable for an officer, but not cheap. Nah, red's pretty easy. Madder is one obvious solution, known to have been used in Rome. Wiki's article on Roman dyes comments "while madder, a dicotyledon angiosperm, produced a shade of red and was one of the cheapest dyes available. " Will fade over time, but so does (almost) everything else vegetable-based. Tyrian purple was a bear because it was shellfish-based and you had to (A) have access to the right snails and (B) know how to prepare it.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2013 03:38
|
|
|
The expensive red was dragon's blood, which comes only from a unique species of tree that grows on Socotra.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2013 03:45
|
|
|
I'm not sure if there's a real answer for this, but how/why was the chariot invented first before the saddle/cavalry?
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2013 04:42
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:I'm not sure if there's a real answer for this, but how/why was the chariot invented first before the saddle/cavalry? The short answer is horses in 3000BC were more like ponies. Riding them would not exactly make you look like a fearsome warrior. It made way more sense to hitch a couple of them to chariot and stand in that as opposed to nearly having your feet touch the ground and not moving all that fast.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2013 04:49
|
|
|
This dude elaborates on that slightly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-TCIamyYCo Incidentally despite how our first thought these days at the sight of every large animal is "to sit on it", the transition from a pack animal to a war animal is not a smooth one anywhere. Chariotry wasn't some universal idea, it was invented only in a single place (Iranian nomads, I think?) and spread from there. Although oxen-drawn war wagons were utilized before horse chariots, but I think they sort of fit a different role.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2013 05:07
|
|
|
WoodrowSkillson posted:The short answer is horses in 3000BC were more like ponies. Riding them would not exactly make you look like a fearsome warrior. It made way more sense to hitch a couple of them to chariot and stand in that as opposed to nearly having your feet touch the ground and not moving all that fast. Also, before the invention of the stirrup it was a very difficult to ride a horse and fight at the same time.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2013 05:08
|
|
|
The stirrup's role is greatly overstated. There are many centuries of incredibly effective cavalry prior to it. Even ones armored and charging with lances. The stirrup definitely helps in a lance charge but it's not a requirement. Prior to the stirrup, the saddles were often larger and had serious support, kind of cup shaped. They'd come up your back and front way more than a modern saddle. There are also ones with four big horns, one at each corner, that do the same thing. That's what held you in place. Horses were smaller then. The big warhorses we think of are entirely the product of human genetic engineering.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2013 05:13
|
|
|
If i recall correctly the biggest horses during the classical era were either from Arabia and from Galia, although i could be mistaken. The compaion cavalry of Alexander was composed of imported horses, not from local ones. When did the transition from ox to horse\donkey happened in agriculture? Grand Fromage posted:The expensive red was dragon's blood, which comes only from a unique species of tree that grows on Socotra.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2013 10:17
|
|
|
Mans posted:When did the transition from ox to horse\donkey happened in agriculture? When the horse collar was developed circa ~500 AD. It allowed horses to pull the plow (and wagons and other stuff) without choking. Like most world-changing inventions of that era, it apparently was developed in China and spread across to Europe over a few centuries. It wasn't so much that they weren't used before that, it was more that they were more of a luxury since they couldn't pull their own weight in agricultural work until the more efficient system was developed.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2013 15:07
|
|
|
Mans posted:If i recall correctly the biggest horses during the classical era were either from Arabia and from Galia, although i could be mistaken. The compaion cavalry of Alexander was composed of imported horses, not from local ones. The most celebrated breeds in the classical era came from Central Asia. The Nisaean horses used by the Parthians probably weren't the biggest, but they were large and powerful and made quite an impression on their enemies. They were the horses used by cataphracts, so you can imagine the sort of animal that can carry a giant load of man and armour and still manage a gallop. They were imported by nearly everybody, but the breed eventually died out. Arabian horses today aren't known for being hefty, and I can't imagine there was a large demand for it. A large horse eats and drinks more, which isn't great for a desert. An Arabian warrior isn't fighting in a suit decked out in armour either, it's too hot, so there's no need for the horse to be bigger. They probably favoured horses that were hardy and light, which still shows in the modern Arabian.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2013 18:06
|
|
|
Did anti-war movements exist in ancient Rome?
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 04:56
|
|
|
It's not recorded, but I'd bet there were. There are people who argue against one particular war or another, or agitate that Rome is being warmongering and should stop provoking someone. Those are political arguments made between people in power, I personally wouldn't count that as an anti-war movement in the sense we mean it but I suppose you could. Certainly the idea that war is bad and peace is good is not a new thing. The philosophy attributed to Jesus does come out of this world, after all. The Greeks had mixed feelings too, as the dichotomy between Athena's military attributes and Ares shows. Certainly the common people in regions being ravaged by war were probably not big fans of it.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 05:02
|
|
|
I came across a passage a while back by Tacitus and this thread may be think of it. Its from the annals and is a record of persecution of christians. But I thought the most interesting part was something he says about his countrymen.quote:Such indeed were the precautions of human wisdom. The next thing was to seek means of propitiating the gods, and recourse was had to the Sibylline books, by the direction of which prayers were offered to Vulcanus, Ceres, and Proserpina. Juno, too, was entreated by the matrons, first, in the Capitol, then on the nearest part of the coast, whence water was procured to sprinkle the fane and image of the goddess. And there were sacred banquets and nightly vigils celebrated by married women. But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. The bolded part made me laugh out loud. I can just see some angry old guy sitting with his equally old friends in togas, saying that exact sentence about whatever terrible thing he's mad about. Anyway, I've never read anything of Tacitus before this, but I would have thought that he wouldn't have been so harsh on Rome. I mean with all that roman pride as a cultural value and stuff. Or it this self-deprecating humor? Or was Tacitus just not a fan of the empire when he was alive? Does Tacitus have any other gems like that?
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 07:49
|
|
|
Tacitus is really grumpy, that sort of thing seems pretty typical for him, especially when he's expounding on the reign of whichever princeps he's decided to perform character assassination of today. You can put passages like that together with parts of the Agricola and Germania to make Tacitus seem like he just despises anything to do with Rome under the Principate. I'd describe such a reading to be anything from 'cursory' to 'deceitfully cherry-picked' but the fact that you can construct it all shows something about him.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 08:08
|
|
|
Dedhed posted:I came across a passage a while back by Tacitus and this thread may be think of it. Its from the annals and is a record of persecution of christians. But I thought the most interesting part was something he says about his countrymen. Tacitus was not a fan of the empire in some ways, and Rome was famous for attracting the "dregs" of the entire empire because of the grain dole. He wasn't being anti-Roman, just commenting on the state of the city itself.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 14:36
|
|
|
It's been talked about a couple of times here that people in antiquity and the middle ages actually had a pretty good life expectancy- could I get a source for it? I was talking about it with a friend and they want numbers  .
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 18:36
|
|
|
I don't have a source handy to show your friend. But the thing is the average is low because it's factoring in infant/childhood mortality. You had maybe a 50/50 chance of getting to adulthood if you were lucky. But if you did get to adulthood, reaching your 60s was perfectly normal barring the usual disease/injury. 70s wasn't uncommon. For one source you could use, the ruling council of Sparta was only open to men over 60, and if getting old was rare that kind of institution couldn't exist.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 18:41
|
|
|
The Cursus Honorum is another example: You started as a Quaestor at 30 years old and could only become a Consul at 42 (40 for Patricians), and then you were still obliged to serve a term as Propraetor or Proconsul, not to mention you'd be even older if you didn't hit your positions "in your year".
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 19:16
|
|
|
Yep, can't believe I went Greek instead of Roman for an example.  There are studies about this too somewhere, but the minimum age requirements are good enough evidence I'd think. You can't build a society on institutions that require you to be in your 40s and 50s if people are dying as early as pop culture would have you believe.Modern medicine has extended the human lifespan, but not as much as commonly believed. The real revolution is that in developed countries, child mortality has gone from an accepted part of life to extremely rare.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 19:21
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:Modern medicine has extended the human lifespan, but not as much as commonly believed. The real revolution is that in developed countries, child mortality has gone from an accepted part of life to extremely rare. Also, the industrial revolution was accompanied by a stark decline in life expectancy that we built back from, which gives us a skewed perspective on how long people lived in "the past". Romans weren't packed into fetid smog-choked cities and working their fingers to the bone on assembly lines from age 8.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 19:39
|
|
|
What was the average life expectancy for a Roman slave, if that information is known/available?
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 19:44
|
|
|
I dunno. Not very long if you were in the mines. Educated slaves probably the same as anyone else. Plantation slaves... I dunno what that work does to your body. I would guess they might've died earlier but not significantly.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 19:45
|
|
|
Dedhed posted:I came across a passage a while back by Tacitus and this thread may be think of it. Its from the annals and is a record of persecution of christians. But I thought the most interesting part was something he says about his countrymen. I wanted to chime in here to give a little bit of extra context. First of all, it is part of the Roman historical tradition to depict the 'current' state of Rome (meaning the time period you are writing in) as utterly debased and removed from the glory of 'old Rome' -- especially after large transitions. For instance, Livy (writing in the era of Augustus a century or so earlier) says "Then as the standard of morality gradually lowers, let him follow the decay of the national character, observing how at first it slowly sinks, then slips downward more and more rapidly, and finally begins to plunge into headlong ruin, until he reaches these days, in which we can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies." This is sort of a trope allowing you tom comment on 'the way that things should be -- it doesn't mean that he didn't have pride in Rome... just that he thought the current state of Rome didn't hold up to its former glory (you could compare the way that hardcore conservatives in America frequently talk about the Founding Fathers). Second, Tacitus specifically is writing the Annals from the perspective of a wealthy, senatorial aristocrat, after a time of major transition. The passage that you are specifically referencing is, relative to Tacitus' perspective, from a corrupt past -- and so shouldn't be taken as referring to the Rome of Tacitus' own day. The old ruling dynasty, the Flavians, had recently fallen in disgrace and the Senate condemned the memory of the last emperor -- who, along with the Julio-Claudians (the first dynasty, which included Nero) had savagely attacked the traditional privileges of Tacitus' class. The new emperors though, starting with Nerva and followed by Trajan were specifically favorable to the wealthy elites of Rome and so, when he writes about them, it is in more glowing terms ("You scratch my back..."). One way to 'justify' the power of the new regime (in power at the time of his writing) and to show how much better they were than the previous emperors, was to basically make the claim that Rome had hit rock bottom before they came to power -- and depict that depravity in full and gritty detail-- and to show that it is only through the glory of the new rulers that things have been made great again (especially for Tacitus and his aristocratic buddies). Also, Tacitus is full of awesome little tidbits (although his Latin is quite difficult) and the occasional ice-burn -- it is a bit dense, but I really recommend reading the Annals just for Tacitus' angry old man wit. Although not quite the same as the passage you have, I have always liked this bit from early on (the first emperor has just died) describing the difficulty of needing to mourn one emperor while celebrating the ascension of another: "Meanwhile at Rome people plunged into slavery - consuls, senators, knights. The higher a man's rank, the more eager his hypocrisy, and his looks the more carefully studied, so as neither to betray joy at the decease of one emperor nor sorrow at the rise of another, while he mingled delight and lamentations with his flattery."
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 20:14
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:I don't have a source handy to show your friend. But the thing is the average is low because it's factoring in infant/childhood mortality. You had maybe a 50/50 chance of getting to adulthood if you were lucky. But if you did get to adulthood, reaching your 60s was perfectly normal barring the usual disease/injury. 70s wasn't uncommon. If you were a man. The mortality rate for women was much higher because of the dangers involved with being pregnant and childbirth.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 20:25
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:Yep, can't believe I went Greek instead of Roman for an example. That's interesting. What about people born with mild congenital defects? For example, I was born with a mildly bent leg that was corrected with a brace within the first 18 months of my life. Would I be consigned to become a beggar in an alley or dashed against the rocks as an infant?
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 21:21
|
|
|
Mach5 posted:That's interesting. What about people born with mild congenital defects? For example, I was born with a mildly bent leg that was corrected with a brace within the first 18 months of my life. Would I be consigned to become a beggar in an alley or dashed against the rocks as an infant? In Sparta you would have been thrown off a mountain 
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 21:26
|
|
|
Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:In Sparta you would have been thrown off a mountain poo poo. Mach5 fucked around with this message at 21:54 on May 11, 2013 |
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 21:33
|
|
|
I'm pretty sure only the aristocrats exposed less than perfect babies. You probably would have been a slightly inefficient Helot.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 21:35
|
|
|
Star Man posted:If you were a man. The mortality rate for women was much higher because of the dangers involved with being pregnant and childbirth. The mortality rate was indeed higher for women, but not significantly so. Much as the life expectancy of modern women is longer than that of men, but only by a handful of years. It's true that the danger of infection during childbirth was significant, but it should be noted that our current idea of childbirth being a dangerous and traumatic event that needs to be conducted in a medical ward with the aid of medication and surgery is very much a modern fiction. There are plenty of midwives conducting homebirths throughout the modern-world, and their success rates are essentially identical to those conducted in a hospital. Roman medicos were quite excellent, and the Roman population was fairly well-fed and healthy - the key elements of a successful birth. As a result, a Roman woman wasn't considered old until after menopause. Kaal fucked around with this message at 21:40 on May 11, 2013 |
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 21:36
|
|
|
Kaal posted:There are plenty of midwives conducting homebirths throughout the modern-world, and their success rates are essentially identical to those conducted in a hospital. Which actually reflects poorly on them, because hospital births have a much higher rate of at risk mothers involved yet achieve equal success rates despite that.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 21:38
|
|
|
Install Gentoo posted:Which actually reflects poorly on them, because hospital births have a much higher rate of at risk mothers involved yet achieve equal success rates despite that. "Much higher" is a fairly relative term, as the vast majority of births are low risk. The handful of non-maternal age mothers and preemie triplets are statistically insignificant compared to the overwhelming number of standard and successful births. High-risk complications account for only 6-8 percent of all modern pregnancies - a number that can be further decreased with the use of abortifacients (Romans used a number of them) when risk symptoms manifest. And it should be noted that some of our modern technologies serve to increase those risk factors in ways that the Romans would not have had to deal with - for example infertility treatments allow for older mothers to have children, and make multiple births more common. Kaal fucked around with this message at 21:53 on May 11, 2013 |
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 21:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 23:02 |
|
|
Kaal posted:"Much higher" is a fairly relative term, as the vast majority of births are low risk. The handful of non-maternal age mothers and preemie triplets are statistically insignificant compared to the overwhelming number of standard and successful births. High-risk complications account for only 6-8 percent of all pregnancies - a number that can be further decreased with the use of abortifacients (Romans used a number of them) when risk symptoms manifest. You rarely see women using midwives when they're already got other high risk factors for pregnancy, such as various diseases, or when the fetus was diagnosed in the womb as having various risk factors. Thus, yes, in developed nations we have high risk pregnancies handled with hospital births much more often than with midwives.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2013 21:55
|
|