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Grand Prize Winner posted:And the impression that I'm getting was that it didn't spread because of lack of necessity and not-quite-there materials science. Is that correct? I believe large scale water powered factories appeared in times and places where the population of slaves plummeted for whatever reason. Generally slaves were cheaper than machines. Koramei posted:I'm sure there are some higher mathematical concepts that they were lacking, but linear algebra at least had been around since ancient egypt- I'm pretty sure there's an example of it in the Rhind Mathematical Papyruses. Higher mathematical concepts like the number 0. They weren't going to make any real progress until that was imported from India.
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May 13, 2013 12:40
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Captain Postal posted:Higher mathematical concepts like the number 0. They weren't going to make any real progress until that was imported from India. The Greeks and the Romans had the number zero, though it wasn't fully developed since they didn't have a proper cardinal numeral system like Arabic numerals. The famous mathematician Ptolemy used a base 60 system in his landmark work known as the Almagest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almagest It's a good example of how the Romans came very close to the key elements of the Renaissance, but never quite made it. If they had not succumbed to instability and foreign invasion, it's very possible that they might have begun that iterative process that catapulted Europe into the industrial age. But they never had that opportunity. Kaal fucked around with this message at 14:30 on May 13, 2013 |
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May 13, 2013 14:23
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If by cardinal system you mean a blank in the tens or ones column, I thought that had been around since cuneiform. What the Romans didn't have was a number A with the properties that A+B = B and A*B = A
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May 13, 2013 14:28
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Captain Postal posted:If by cardinal system you mean a blank in the tens or ones column, I thought that had been around since cuneiform. What the Romans didn't have was a number A with the properties that A+B = B and A*B = A A cardinal system is one where the symbols for numbers are dedicated and independent. Arabic numerals are great because they represent the entire base (0-9) and aren't being used as letters (like Greek or Latin numeral systems). Ptolemy needed a conception of zero in order to conduct his astronomy. The symbol for zero was a small 'o' with a bar over it. Over time, that bar eventually shortened and disappeared, leaving us with our modern depiction of 0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_numerals#Hellenistic_zero
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May 13, 2013 14:40
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its also possible that the peace and uniformity of the Empire would have led to stagnation as you didn't have all those small states desperately competing with each other with the overall result of Europe throwing all kinds of things in technology and government to see what worked and eventually producing all those innovations.
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May 13, 2013 15:59
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Grand Fromage posted:My pet theory has always been that slave societies have little incentive to work on labor-saving devices so they tend not to industrialize. Suetonius has an anecdote about Vespasian being offered a machine that would transport heavy columns and declining it because "I must always ensure that the working classes earn enough money to buy themselves food." So it would seem that the availability of a lot of cheap labour had something to do with this, whether slaves or the free poor. It's also fair to say that the education of upper class Romans gave practically no space to science and that they tended not to respect any profession that involved working with your hands, except maybe farming or the military. It's a stark contrast to the Victorians, who tended to turn engineers and scientists into hero-figures and made major efforts to improve scientific education. The culture, as people have said, just wasn't ready for it yet. Cicero posted:All mechanics are engaged in vulgar trades; for no workshop can have anything liberal about it.
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May 13, 2013 19:10
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Did either Greeks or Romans utilize organized sporting events as a means of dispute resolution between nations/cities/individuals as an alternative to outright war? The Greeks literally invented the Olympic games and Rome had the Coliseum and the stadium at Pompeii. Could these venues serve a purpose other than entertainment? Sort of on the man-to-man level "I challenge you to a duel" or a larger scale "Let us decide (issue) in the arena - your best warriors vs. mine"
Nerdfest X fucked around with this message at 00:37 on May 15, 2013 |
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May 15, 2013 00:34
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Nerdfest X posted:Did either Greeks or Romans utilize organized sporting events as a means of dispute resolution between nations/cities/individuals as an alternative to outright war? The Greeks literally invented the Olympic games and Rome had the Coliseum and the stadium at Pompeii. Could these venues serve a purpose other than entertainment? Sort of on the man-to-man level "I challenge you to a duel" or a larger scale "Let us decide (issue) in the arena - your best warriors vs. mine" That being said, there are a number of cases where Greek states decided to have their champions fight it out instead of having wars - the case that comes up a lot is the Battle of 300 Champions, where Argos and Sparta each brought 300 guys and fought it out (although this lead to real war, because both sides declared victory). As for the Romans, I really can't imagine them using a sporting event to resolve a political conflict or war and I definitely can't imagine them abiding by it's results if they didn't like it.
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May 15, 2013 00:50
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Yeah, fighting seems to have been just about the only sport the Romans really respected. That and chariot racing I guess, which isn't that far removed from fighting.
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May 15, 2013 01:03
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Slantedfloors posted:That being said, there are a number of cases where Greek states decided to have their champions fight it out instead of having wars - the case that comes up a lot is the Battle of 300 Champions, where Argos and Sparta each brought 300 guys and fought it out (although this lead to real war, because both sides declared victory). This kind of summarizes the problem with the idea of having some champions fight it out as an alternative to war. It's a nice story and idea but when there are real war goals at stake, an army is going to show up and gently caress somebody up. I can't imagine why the Romans would. If you think about it, the idea of having a champion fight is basically designed so a state that has a smaller, less powerful army could claim a victory over a more powerful one. In most situations, the Romans were the more powerful state, so there was literally no advantage whatsoever to them. They're not going to intentionally do anything to give someone a chance to stop them. They were also loving masters at legal weaselry and breaking treaties while technically (at least to Roman eyes) still following them so even if they did do it, you couldn't trust them. You would absolutely get backstabbed later.
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May 15, 2013 02:26
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Come to think of it, I seem to remember a story about a Gaulish (IIRC?) champion challenging anyone in the Roman army to meet him in single combat, and when someone took him up on his offer and lost the rest of the Romans just javelined the poo poo out of him.
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May 15, 2013 02:58
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Grand Fromage posted:This kind of summarizes the problem with the idea of having some champions fight it out as an alternative to war. On the other hand Roman legend is full of single combats! The legend of the Horatii was terribly important as an example for Roman aristocrats (particularly of that gens), so whether or not it was ever actually done, wars decided through duel by champion was certainly something that was part of Roman culture. Short version for those that don't know, before Rome controlled the majority of Italy, they were fighting against the neighboring people of Alba Longa. According to Livy, as a way to avoid all out war and to settle their dispute, three brothers were chosen from Rome (the Horatii) to fight three brothers from Alba Long (the Curatii). It looked like the Romans were going to lose, since two of the brothers fell without causing a single casualty... but the remaining brother then makes a comeback and kills all three enemies. Later he killed his sister for weeping. Livy gives another example when, before a big battle, a super swole Gaul stands on a bridge challenging the Romans to single combat. The rather small Titus Manlius accepts, wins, and as a result the whole army of Gauls turns tail and runs. Further, as reference to Roman virtue, Polybius in book IV says "Many Romans have volunteered to engage in single combat so as to decide a whole battle" although it is unclear whether he is citing historical precedent or relying on Roman legend... either way, again showing how important it was as a cultural value (with the proviso again that it probably never 'really' happened). Also, as a strange addendum -- one of the fables of Phaedrus (1.10 I think) has an odd story(probably written under the reign of Tiberius but possibly under Caligula) where Pompey stops his army because an enemy soldier challenges the best of the Romans to a fight... and Pompey agrees. A particularly effeminate Roman soldier steps up (who had previously robbed from his own army) and easily beheads the enemy, much to Pompey's surprise. Although oddly, it doesn't seem that anything was wagered on the fight (no win or loss conditions). One way to deal with all of these accounts is that duels between 'champions' might sometimes happened prior to battles as a way of bolstering or breaking troop morale (if your guy proves to be stronger...). It also might be classified alongside the extensive augury and religious work done before a battle (as another way to test the will of the gods -- that is why Tacitus says that the Germans do it). Incidentally, the moral of Phaedrus' fable was apparently 'it is very difficult to fully know a person.' Regarding the Greeks, I have heard it claimed (although perhaps not by the most reputable scholars) that battle between hoplites was basically a ritualized athletics competition. The arguments advanced for that are:
DirkGently fucked around with this message at 05:06 on May 15, 2013 |
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May 15, 2013 05:00
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DirkGently posted:[*]there were never mass conscriptions -- fighting in the army was a 'privilege' only of the very wealthy If Greek warfare was always as civil as these "claims" say, their pantheon wouldn't divide warfare between Athena, goddess of just warfare, and Ares, god of slaughter and horror.
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May 15, 2013 05:29
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Halloween Jack posted:I can tell you right off the bat that that isn't true; hoplites had to provide their own equipment, but many free Greeks who weren't wealthy could afford it. Well, it depends on the city-state and the era. In Athens, you had the traditional four social classes... rowers, hoplites, guys with horses, and the ultrarich who paid for it all. In Sparta, every Spartan fought, using his slave-worked land to afford is military gear. Dunno how the other major cities worked, since their writers weren't famous enough to make it into my classics classes.
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May 15, 2013 05:57
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Halloween Jack posted:I can tell you right off the bat that that isn't true; hoplites had to provide their own equipment, but many free Greeks who weren't wealthy could afford it. That is a totally fair critique -- to play devil's advocate, calling them 'very rich' was probably a misrepresentation on my part, the argument stands just as well (or not) if you translate my poor phrasing to 'few and elite' -- because, although we could argue about the term 'wealthy', in Athens owning a farm of 15-20 acres was something a pretty small percentage of people could claim. If we estimate the population of Athens at around 150,000, it is generally estimated that the citizen population was around 20-30,000. Of those, we have to eliminate the (presumably largest) fourth property class who were citizens did not have enough money to field the hoplite arms and armor... maybe as many as 10,000. So, we are probably talking around 10-15 percent of the population, at best, with the potential to serve as hoplites. As a very silly argument then, since the highest population qualification was a little more than double the zeugitai qualification... around 2 to 3 of these guys equaled someone who was super wealthy. As Sullat points out, these numbers are even worse for the Spartans: capturing even 120ish Spartan hoplites at Pylos was a huge turning point in the Peloponessian War and brought them to the bargaining table. All of this leaves out the light skirmishers and ranged troops, who we know significantly less about. Although hilariously, thinking this through, that means that even small losses in battle (of 10 percent or whatever) would be pretty terrible on such a small segment of the population. Anyway, the real problem with the 'ritualized sports' line of argumentation (which I should have mentioned) is that it is primarily conjecturing about the way that hoplite battles worked among the Greeks prior to the Persian Wars... and... unfortunately that also predates writing culture and thus predates pretty much any form of evidence. So, with the exception of some very thin archaeological evidence, it is just idle speculation based on what the Greeks said about themselves in later periods (for instance, that '10% casualty rate' thing is, as far as I can tell, pulled out of thin air). It also completely ignores that in a lot of Greek legends, if you could get into the city (fellow Greek or not) you totally destroyed the city in a pretty 'unsportsmanlike' way and that, sport or not, the experience on the front line was so terrifying and horrible and violent that people pooped their pants (and were made fun of for it later). None of this completely undermine the idea that the Greeks could have valorized hoplite combat in this way... and there are some arguments for it (notably that it explains why they fought all the time when so little territory changed hands)... but yeah, it is, at best, an oversimplification and, at worst, completely wrong. I just thought that it was an interesting point for discussion in light of the Olympics question  ,Also don't be so quick to call Athena the goddess of 'just warfare'... the Homeric Hymn to Athena puts her in exactly the same boat as Ares: "Of Pallas Athena, guardian of the city, I begin to sing. Dread is she, and with Ares she loves the deeds of war, the sack of cities and the shouting and the battle." Rather than the symmetrical split that is so appealing to scholars (just war versus bloodshed) I suspect that what we actually have is overlapping spheres... some cities (like Athens) just stress one over the other. Although Ares certainly comes off pretty poorly in Homer! DirkGently fucked around with this message at 07:55 on May 15, 2013 |
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May 15, 2013 07:10
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DirkGently posted:That is a totally fair critique -- to play devil's advocate, calling them 'very rich' was probably a misrepresentation on my part, the argument stands just as well (or not) if you translate my poor phrasing to 'few and elite' -- because, although we could argue about the term 'wealthy', in Athens owning a farm of 15-20 acres was something a pretty small percentage of people could claim. Yeah, remember that half the reason the lower classes weren't armed for fighting was that if you could afford arms the upper classes were generally unwilling to trust the lower classes with arms. Even in democratic Athens the freemen and slaves represented a huge portion of the population mostly untapped for war. And Sparta did end up tapping its lower classes as time went by. In the Peloponnesian War/post-Peloponnesian War period there was a gradual concentration of land in the hands of a few as well as a rise in the amount of land owned by women (widows and daughters mostly) thus leading to fewer man able to pay for their barracks dues and thus fewer 'true Spartans.' By the end of their wars with Thebes they were recruiting helots with promises of freedom, though not before slaughtering the first 2000 or so volunteers for being too eager for freedom, and thus too dangerous to be allowed arms.  Anyway, yeah, as far as the 10% casualty rates goes, that's actually pretty high. That's, after all, a decimation of both forces right there. Assume that the winner took less casualties and, well, yeah, that's what a battle looks like. There were slaughters for sure, but if one force could retreat in good order, or protected by cavalry, well, that's hardly a sporting event. As far as the meetings on level ground at pre arranged times, well, campaigning happened in a very constrained 'fighting season' not due to consent but rather agricultural needs and foraging/logistical concerns. And one side or another would often choose to take advantageous ground, and the other force would seek to force them from it somehow rather than charge up hill for the funnsies. So yeah, a lot of battles happened at relatively 'even ground' since neither side was willing to meet on unequal terms and yet neither able to force the other to a disadvantageous position. Finally, siege warfare was totally a thing. Athens building the long walls, Corinth doing the same, the fortifications at Pylos, the siege of Syracuse involved walls built around the walls, then counter walls built, and then counter walls to counter walls... It's just that assaulting the walls was generally, well, considered a bad idea. As with the meetings on level ground, forcing the fight to better terms was preferable to putting yourself in a bad spot for the hell of it. That's not 'politeness' or 'ritualization.' Let's see, I really should have answered these point by point. Ambushes were a thing but hard to pull of without overexposing your men and the Greek terrain doesn't lend itself terribly well to it. Foreshortened pursuits were often caused by nightfall, or the presence of a cavalry or rearguard action by some element of the losers. If a general ever ordered the halt a of a pursuit it was generally because he was afraid of his men losing their cohesion while the enemy reformed and counterattacked (remember that good order was key to hoplite warfare, and about the only thing that prevented cavalry from wrecking poo poo). Often as not generals lamented that their cavalry over pursued their enemy counterparts and so were unable to join the fight/finish routing the enemy infantry. The whole recovering the dead was certainly a thing, and I think it's an absolutely fascinating, part of the culture, but it certainly never stopped anyone from getting their killing in. Then the winners would set up, strip the enemy dead, build a monument, and the losers would send an emissary and request permission to take their dead. Interesting, but no more formalized or ritualistic than the conceits of embassies, ambassadors, and diplomatic immunity in any day or age. If you wanted to recover your dead it would happen after the winner was done killing as many as they could have. There's an amusing story of an Athenian raid during the Peloponnesian Wars (I think) where the Athenians won, more or less, but in the scramble to get to their boats with the booty, they realized they were missing two men. The Athenian general had to return to the beach and forfeit the right to erect a trophy to recover just two men. Still, the battle had been fought and each side had achieved its objectives as best as it was able before that truce. (Incidentally, this is sort of how the apocryphal battle of the Champions started, the Spartans thought they'd won and, being Spartans, buggered off without much pomp or ceremony, leaving one wounded enemy behind to share the tale/whatever. That last man stripped a spartan, put up a trophy, and said he'd won. So even in that story you see the conflict between the 'ritual' winners and those who actually won (those with more men standing or the men who hold the field?) and those who won the 'ritual.') Anyway, yeah, retrieving the dead from the field was a thing but it wasn't a matter of keeping things civil or reducing casualties. It was just A Done loving Thing. I can think of three times that this didn't happen, each remarkable in their own right. The first, Achielles and Hector, A Big loving Deal, another, the Spartans had, (a but fuzzy on the details here) defiled a temple of Apollo(?) and after a battle a city connected to that temple held Spartan bodies until the Spartans apologised and paid reparations which, if I'm remembering right, they did and got their bodies back. Sort of a tit-for-tat taboo violation. Lastly, the Argonausi Affair in which the Athenian public ordered several of their own generals executed in part for their failure to go back and recover damaged ships (and thus save lives that could have been saved) but also for their failure to recover the dead men on those ships, and thus denying their own country men a proper burial. (The whole things sort of confusing, and part of the problem, certainly, was that the generals had also failed to destroy the enemy they'd been pursuing, thus 'wasting' the lives of the men on the damaged boats. Still, it was the men and bodies left behind that led to the executions.) e: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitched_battle This may be helpful.
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May 15, 2013 11:55
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Azar Gat, "War in Human Civilization" posted:Warfare for the Archaic Greek city-states meant raiding the countryside or, if the enemy came out to defend his fields and orchards, a fierce but short faceto- face encounter. The encounter ended either in the attackers’ withdrawal, as seems to have happened in most cases, or, if it was the defenders who withdrew, in a resumption of ravaging. Tellingly, the cities themselves appear to have been rarely attacked. Experts on Greek warfare have recognized that occupying another city-state by force was simply beyond the capability of a seventh- or sixth-century bc polis. Generally, however, this fact has been ascribed to rudimentary siege-craft before the late fifth century bc and to the short staying power of the citizen militia, both factors being valid for most of the fifth century. Curiously, however, the fact that the poleis of the Archaic period still had no circuit walls has somehow not sunk in. I'm not sure about those numbers for hoplites, either--Gat estimates that hoplites would have been a third to a half of the adult male able-bodied population. I'm not sure that all hoplites need have been citizens, and hoplite estimates leave out the skirmishing troops, men who couldn't afford heavy arms and also need not have been citizens.
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May 15, 2013 15:21
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We know that the Romans had contact with Chinese, but did the Ancient Greeks?
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May 15, 2013 17:33
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That depends on how you define Ancient Greeks! The Greek kingdoms that existed in the north-west of India after Alexander the Great's conquests do appear to have engaged in direct trade with China, although the historical sources aren't great here, and certainly Chinese goods would have passed through the other Hellenistic kingdoms on their way west. I don't know if the Greeks had any dealings with the Chinese before then, however. The Persian Empire was in the way.
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May 15, 2013 19:38
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm not sure about those numbers for hoplites, either--Gat estimates that hoplites would have been a third to a half of the adult male able-bodied population. I'm not sure that all hoplites need have been citizens, and hoplite estimates leave out the skirmishing troops, men who couldn't afford heavy arms and also need not have been citizens. Gat's general point seems to be that the Greeks didn't like to fight in dangerous terrain or unequal situations and so only fought in fair places and didn't attack cities-- which is fine, while still completely failing to explain why that would be true of the Greeks and not every army in history (most armies still seem to manage to make it work, unequal terrain be damned -- and we know that the sacking of cities WAS a big element of Greek war, just not when they fought each other). The ritual hypothesis is one way of understanding how they could reach that agreement -- the expediencies of terrain and logistics (as the JJ discusses) is probably a better one -- and Gat touches on this as well with comment about the lack of 'organizational stamina'. It is worth considering that although my original summation of the argument certainly implied 'ritualized = civil' (Gat seems to be making this case as well) - that is certainly not something that needs to be true. I can think of many 'ritual' events which are far from civil (the idea that ritual means divorced from emotion or brutality is really a 19th century thing). Take the stereotypical football (soccer) match... the style of play is highly ritualized and according to very formal rules (this applies to spectators as well) but the emotions that it summons are so wild and primal that occasionally riots break out leading to widescale injury and property destruction. If we postulate a 'ritaulized' war, where, in addition to the 'team feeling', actual people are dying I can only imagine that it would frequently get out of control... which, is probably a good argument against it. Regarding the hoplite estimate, it really depends on what time period we are talking about (Gat is condensing over 4 centuries in this discussion alone, each one of which saw enormous changes in the way that the Greeks did war -- and my estimates all comes from the 4th century when we have better epigraphical records). With that being said, Gat can estimate all he wants, but we have pretty decent period records -- both written and epigraphical (that is to say, burial lists and records of deme expenditures)-- and according to all the evidence that can be presented -- one universal is that, to be an infantry man (even including the skirmishers, who were the lowest property class -- or in some cities the youths or inexperienced warriors, as sort of a training thing) in classical Greece, you had to be a citizen and you had to have a set amount of land. That was doubly true of hoplite status -- and this goes for all of the big poleis for which we have records. This certainly changed a bit as time went on and the Peloponnesian war/the War against Philip definitely called on most cities to be a lot 'looser' with their recruitment policy -- so he may be talking about that. It is also entirely possibly that Gat's estimate of 50% of able bodied males comment is leaving out slaves and resident foreigners (that is a pretty common thing to do) which may knock out as many as 100,000 of the 150,000 (this is the estimated maximum capacity for Athens based on how much food that they were importing, which is not indisputable but only decently firm ground) -- which would mean 50,000 total residents remaining... a third to a half of which certainly takes us close to the higher end of the estimate that I banged up of 10-20,000 possible hoplites (which, I now realize is almost certainly too high because I haven't factored in that 50% of the population would be women -- a better estimate then being even lower, perhaps between 6-10,000 with the total possible military strength, including skirmishers, being somewhere around 15-25,000). edit: I take back some of my certainty about the upper bound of my numbers-- there do appear to be some scholars, including at least one pretty respected scholar, who believe that the hoplite qualification was actually separate from standing in the zeugitai class (although most sources suggest that it is about right). In other words, they would still have to be citizens, but it is possible that some of the thete class did serve as hoplites in Athens (on a voluntary rather than mandatory basis)... which pushes my numbers up a bit on the higher end... maybe with an upwards bound of as many as 15,000 (although the burial records and such suggest that it is lower) DirkGently fucked around with this message at 20:58 on May 15, 2013 |
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May 15, 2013 19:46
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DarkCrawler posted:We know that the Romans had contact with Chinese, but did the Ancient Greeks? The Greco-Bactrian kingdom definitely did. China was their neighbor. If you're talking mainland Greece, nothing we're aware of. Sadly there are virtually no surviving records from Bactria. I have read there is a Chinese royal tomb from the Greco-Bactrian period that has very clear carvings of hoplites in it, like a gallery of all the foreigners that had come to pay tribute over the emperor's reign, but I've never found a picture.
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May 16, 2013 01:37
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Grand Fromage posted:The Greco-Bactrian kingdom definitely did. China was their neighbor. If you're talking mainland Greece, nothing we're aware of. Sadly there are virtually no surviving records from Bactria. Do you have the name of the ruler or period? That sounds really cool, I'd like to look for it.
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May 16, 2013 01:45
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Barto posted:Do you have the name of the ruler or period? That sounds really cool, I'd like to look for it. No, I don't. That's part of the problem finding it.  It was one of those off-hand things in a book that I didn't think to properly research at the time and now it haunts me.
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May 16, 2013 01:47
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Grand Fromage posted:No, I don't. That's part of the problem finding it. If it makes you feel better, the timing is such that the only Chinese emperor with a notable tomb complex who lived during the Greco-Bactrian Era was Qin Shi Huang - the first ruler of the Qin (or Ch'in) Dynasty. Unfortunately for you, he was also the one who built the massive city-sized tomb complex with the terracotta army, so knowing whose tomb it was doesn't really narrow it down much.
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May 16, 2013 02:02
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Well the Bactrian Kingdom only lasted a couple of centuries, mostly overlapping with the Han Dynasty, I thought? There can't have been that many rulers during that time. And according to Wikipedia the first proper Chinese contact with Central Asia was under Zhan Qian:quote:He was the first official diplomat to bring back reliable information about Central Asia to the Chinese imperial court, then under Emperor Wu of Han How long did Greco-Bactrian culture persist in Central Asia? I have a vague recollection that it didn't get overwritten until the Muslim conquests like a thousand years later but that sounds like far too long?
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May 16, 2013 02:09
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If it was Qin Shi Huang then the book was probably full of poo poo, his tomb's never been excavated and they're not going to until they can preserve it properly. Which I both appreciate and am sad about because I really really want to see what's in there. Bactria became independent from Seleucia in the 250s and ended around 100 BC, but there was also an Indian Greek kingdom that continued for another century or so. And we have mentions of culturally Greek populations out there for centuries after they stop having any political power.
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May 16, 2013 02:11
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Grand Fromage posted:If it was Qin Shi Huang then the book was probably full of poo poo, his tomb's never been excavated and they're not going to until they can preserve it properly. Which I both appreciate and am sad about because I really really want to see what's in there. Bactria became independent from Seleucia in the 250s and ended around 100 BC, but there was also an Indian Greek kingdom that continued for another century or so. And we have mentions of culturally Greek populations out there for centuries after they stop having any political power. It's also possible that you're misremembering, and that it was a tomb of a royal family member rather than one of the actual emperors. There's tons of those from the Han Dynasty, of which a number have been excavated to one degree or another.
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May 16, 2013 02:16
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Kaal posted:It's also possible that you're misremembering, and that it was a tomb of a royal family member rather than one of the actual emperors. There's tons of those from the Han Dynasty, of which a number have been excavated to one degree or another. Entirely possible. It was someone who was in a position to have been meeting with foreign emissaries, anyway. The claim was the tomb had like this wall with carvings of all the peoples who had paid tribute to the Glorious Empire of China and one of them was obviously a Greek hoplite. In any case Bactria and the Indo-Greek kingdom were right next to China and China dominated East Asia's trade network, so there's no question the Greeks living way out there had dealings with the Chinese. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 02:20 on May 16, 2013 |
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May 16, 2013 02:17
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DirkGently posted:Gat's general point seems to be that the Greeks didn't like to fight in dangerous terrain or unequal situations and so only fought in fair places and didn't attack cities-- which is fine, while still completely failing to explain why that would be true of the Greeks and not every army in history (most armies still seem to manage to make it work, unequal terrain be damned -- and we know that the sacking of cities WAS a big element of Greek war, just not when they fought each other). I dunno about that. I think our first example of of Greek warfare is the siege of Troy, which for all its ritual glory, started with the raiding of temples for slave girls to be fought over later and ended with trickery and the subsequent sack of the city. After that we get the Spartans, who I think are a very instructive example of why Greek states wouldn't want to sack cities. They basically depopulated the major cities in their conquered territories, split the helots into 'manageable' (ahahahaha) chunks, and then converted their society into a wholesale constant state of militarization in order to maintain that status quo. Much as the Greeks admired the Spartans, they took one look at that and thought 'gently caress no.' Cities weren't targets in 'typical' Greek warfare (that is, the nebulous post Homer, pre-Herodotus prehistory we're sort of talking about, barring, presumably, the constant roll between Theban hegemony and Boeotian confederacy, Spartan conquest of Messenia, etc. etc.), walled and generally stocked well enough to last a single fighting season. Even during the 'serious' fighting of the Peloponnesian War, Potidaea was not taken by assault but by siege (not an unfamiliar task in theory, it seemed) and the protocol seemed quite set. The poor little Melian's of dialogue fame held out for a good while even though Athens had total dominance and Sparta was unable to send help. Attacking walls was a poo poo proposition and sieging a city just to... what exactly? was rather pointless. In a medieval context where a castle might command countryside and peasants worked for whoever put a sword to their throat, siege warfare makes sense. A Roman army backing the empire or salting the Earth of its enemies, yes, a sack makes sense. Sparta carving out a helot class, Athens delivering punitive measures to a lesser power that had refused it to keep its tributaries and allies in check, that all makes the bother of sacking a city so you can really do what you will with the populace. I don't think you can call city on city warfare an aspect of ritualized Greek warfare when every city save Sparta had walls, that Sparta was exceptional for having walls. It wasn't politeness that lead to these fights being where they were, it was an intersection of cost benefit; the aggressors threatened the crops of the defenders. The defenders were obliged to respond. By acting as a compact group and deploying their own cavalry and skirmishes they could oblige the aggressor to bundle up into a big blob (lest they be defeated in detail by men more familiar with the terrain) and they fought. And if one side won well enough, they could and did certainly press that victory for all it was worth, but the defenders were able to negotiate. This, at least, explains the phenomena of the so called 'ritual fight,' but even that proves fragile. Where the above conditions were not met, the Greeks were more than happy to take cities and so on as armies have the world over.
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May 16, 2013 14:09
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Grand Fromage posted:No, I don't. That's part of the problem finding it. I think that's one of those internet... not urban legends, but commonly said/assumed things that turn out to be false.
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May 17, 2013 12:17
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Grand Fromage posted:Bactria became independent from Seleucia in the 250s and ended around 100 BC, but there was also an Indian Greek kingdom that continued for another century or so. And we have mentions of culturally Greek populations out there for centuries after they stop having any political power. Some of the Kalash, who live in in the far north of Pakistan, claim to be descendants of the Greeks. No genetic link to Greece has ever been proved, although they're certainly ethnically distinct from all other Pakistanis. Also, apparently the mitochondrial DNA sequence that I share with about 0.8% of other Britons is most common among the Kalash.
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May 17, 2013 19:25
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I understand the Senate still existed in some form after the fall of the Roman Republic, but are there any accounts of nostalgia of the days before the emperors? Or were the emperors seen as a stabilizing and needed influence on a growing empire? (a deliberative body is going to take forever to come to a decision rather than one man, after all, especially in an empire where wars would have been fought hundreds of miles away) What I mean is, Romans knew of the Athenian model of democracy, were there any wishes for a change of system to a more democratic system, at least within Rome proper? Or at the very least, a return to the king/emperor-less model? It just seems strange to me that as much as Republican-era Rome despised the idea of kings, to the point of near-paranoia with the Senate vs. the Grachii, that the transition to empire was a relatively quick one for an ancient culture, and I've never heard of an ancient historian or any other account wishing for the old days.
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May 17, 2013 23:54
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General Panic posted:Some of the Kalash, who live in in the far north of Pakistan, claim to be descendants of the Greeks. No genetic link to Greece has ever been proved, although they're certainly ethnically distinct from all other Pakistanis. Genealogically speaking, I wonder what the chances are you and the other 0.8% are (assuming not recent, in a historical context, immigrants) all descended from the wife of some Roman trader who liked to put it about a bit, or some other random quirk of history.
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May 18, 2013 00:33
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dinoputz posted:I understand the Senate still existed in some form after the fall of the Roman Republic, but are there any accounts of nostalgia of the days before the emperors? Or were the emperors seen as a stabilizing and needed influence on a growing empire? (a deliberative body is going to take forever to come to a decision rather than one man, after all, especially in an empire where wars would have been fought hundreds of miles away) What I mean is, Romans knew of the Athenian model of democracy, were there any wishes for a change of system to a more democratic system, at least within Rome proper? Or at the very least, a return to the king/emperor-less model? It just seems strange to me that as much as Republican-era Rome despised the idea of kings, to the point of near-paranoia with the Senate vs. the Grachii, that the transition to empire was a relatively quick one for an ancient culture, and I've never heard of an ancient historian or any other account wishing for the old days. I don't know if you'd call it nostalgia, particularly, but many Roman historians were from the Senatorial classes and felt marginalized by the imperial system. There's definite traces of "well, in the old days, men were men, society was better, there was dignity and respect, not like today... in fact, this whole rotten mess started somewhere around the reign of Augustus, I wonder why that could be..." in writers like Tacitus and Livy, even if they don't say "gently caress all this emperor poo poo" so directly.
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May 18, 2013 00:40
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Tao Jones posted:I don't know if you'd call it nostalgia, particularly, but many Roman historians were from the Senatorial classes and felt marginalized by the imperial system. There's definite traces of "well, in the old days, men were men, society was better, there was dignity and respect, not like today... in fact, this whole rotten mess started somewhere around the reign of Augustus, I wonder why that could be..." in writers like Tacitus and Livy, even if they don't say "gently caress all this emperor poo poo" so directly. What about after the fall of the Western half?
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May 18, 2013 01:14
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General Panic posted:Some of the Kalash, who live in in the far north of Pakistan, claim to be descendants of the Greeks. No genetic link to Greece has ever been proved, although they're certainly ethnically distinct from all other Pakistanis. I doubt anyone there can make a specific claim to being of Greek descent but there are absolutely people all over that region that would have Greek ancestors. Maybe even a majority, statistically speaking, considering the timeframe involved. Which is pretty cool.
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May 18, 2013 15:54
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On Thursday I saw the Pompeii exhibit at the British Museum. It was pretty interesting - though the best bit was probably when I got to the display case containing one metal lampstand and one eight-inch veiny cock-lamp. Two elderly women walked up next to me, stood there silently for about twenty seconds, until one said "Gosh, isn't that lampstand modern-looking?". I also hadn't quite understood one thing beforehand - the plaster casts of the dead aren't just plaster casts, they have actual skeletons inside them. It took until I saw the Resin Lady and could actually see the bones through the casts. I don't know how I missed that crucial bit of information before, but it all felt a lot more macabre when I saw that bit. One thing that I want to ask about - at the beginning of the exhibit, they showed a film overview of the eruption and the context of the artifacts/people dug up. Every time they talked about Roman habits and life they showed a corresponding clip from modern-day Italian households and towns. It's an interesting contrast, but I wondered how accurate this was? Is there a meaningful link between the lives and cultures of first-century Pompeiians and twenty-first century Neapolitans?
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May 18, 2013 16:35
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I wouldn't stretch too far connecting Roman and Italian culture but there are some similarities. Roman culture survived in the Catholic Church, which obviously influenced Italy heavily. I think some of the family focus might come back to Rome. And I've always felt patricians and the Italian mafia had a lot in common. There's probably something to it. Roman culture didn't die out, it continued into the Middle Ages and morphed into Italian cultures, and has continued to do so. There are still small pockets of Greek language and culture in southern Italy, after all, and that's absolutely straight from Magna Graecia.
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May 18, 2013 16:43
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Tao Jones posted:I don't know if you'd call it nostalgia, particularly, but many Roman historians were from the Senatorial classes and felt marginalized by the imperial system. There's definite traces of "well, in the old days, men were men, society was better, there was dignity and respect, not like today... in fact, this whole rotten mess started somewhere around the reign of Augustus, I wonder why that could be..." in writers like Tacitus and Livy, even if they don't say "gently caress all this emperor poo poo" so directly. I suppose your answer does make a lot of sense, given that even Republican Rome was completely controlled by elites, even after the installment of tribunes (like the Senate using a ringer to marginalize Gaius Gracchus). Not many records really exist of opinions of regular Romans, but I suppose they might have thought it would have been a choice between one set of elites, or one elite. The "rotten mess" quote reminds me of every codger's complaint since the time of the Greeks to now, though. I was looking for something more explicit written in records with a historian explicitly stating the Republican era was better off due to the style of government, but given that elites often paid historians to write history to make themselves look better, what I'm looking for may not exist. edit: especially since a piece of papyrus declaring something like "No gods no emperors" would have been enough to drat anyone to a crucifix. Bastaman Vibration fucked around with this message at 16:52 on May 18, 2013 |
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May 18, 2013 16:50
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I've finally caught up on this excellent thread! I never realised the Assyrians were such dicks. I guess that's where the whole 'the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold' thing came from. A while back there was a post about how the papacy/bishoprics were at risk of becoming hereditary, and so the celibate priests rule was instituted. How did eastern Rome deal with the problem after the Great Schism, seeing as Orthdox priests don't have to be celibate if they're married before they become priests. Were there ever any succession disputes for the Ecumenical Patriarchy or similar?
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May 18, 2013 18:11
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