|
Khalid ibn al-Walid was also a total badass. Looking at a map of the conquests is unbelievable how much rear end he kicked that quickly and how fast the Muslim armies expanded their empire. E: That said they definitely had good circumstances. If the Romans and Persians hadn't spent the last few decades beating the living gently caress out of each other I'm sure the Muslim armies would've been less successful. But that's how this poo poo works. Right people, right time, right place, and suddenly you have an empire stretching across half the known world in a decade. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Jun 15, 2013 |
#
?
Jun 15, 2013 05:55
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 23:13 |
|
|
I haven't reread the relevant works on the Arab Conquest in a while but wasn't the Roman command structure at Yarmuk totally fouled up with a bunch of guys who were working, to put it mildly, at cross purposes?
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2013 06:11
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:E: That said they definitely had good circumstances. If the Romans and Persians hadn't spent the last few decades beating the living gently caress out of each other I'm sure the Muslim armies would've been less successful. Personally I blame Khosrau II. Definitely a badass in most respects, but the dude just had to try and make that Achaemenid lightning strike twice. Someone really should have pulled him aside and pointed out that the Persians had never successfully held even Antioch, much less loving Egypt. paranoid randroid fucked around with this message at 09:16 on Jun 15, 2013 |
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2013 09:12
|
|
|
AdjectiveNoun posted:Were the Arabs nomadic? I thought they were based around oasis-cities, but still largely sedentary. Would explain a lot if that was the case, though. I have to admit, I can't give you a source on the nomadic v. sedentary point so I may be wrong there. The conversion point was really just another way of making Durokar's point that there were lots of Arab tribes in the area. None of them had any particular reason to be loyal to the Romans or Persians and if you're culturally similar to people who've adopted a new religion it makes it that much easier to adopt it yourself.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2013 09:27
|
|
|
Seoinin posted:Someone really should have pulled him aside and pointed out that the Persians had never successfully held even Antioch, much less loving Egypt.  Actually, the Achaemenids did, for a little more than a century. But it had certainly been a while.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2013 23:05
|
|
Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
|
Can any of you explain why Rome split into East and West? I've had it explained to me in school, but I never really understood.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2013 23:24
|
|
|
It was too big for one person to rule effectively, especially as the overall vitality of the empire waned over time; from the third century on (and maybe even earlier) emperors tried various schemes to make the administration function, including splitting the empire into eastern and western halves.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2013 23:33
|
|
|
Giodo! posted:It was too big for one person to rule effectively, especially as the overall vitality of the empire waned over time; from the third century on (and maybe even earlier) emperors tried various schemes to make the administration function, including splitting the empire into eastern and western halves. Partly this, but also because the 3rd century was the century of "how many asses can we put in the emperor's chair?". The Roman Empire just barely survived the 3rd century, but the result was that it was an incredibly decentralized states. Provincial governors/cities basically ruled almost completely independent of Rome/Ravenna, and this decentralization helped to contribute to the fall of the Roman Empire - the central government simply couldn't exercise the kind of control it could earlier on.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2013 23:55
|
|
|
Smoking Crow posted:Can any of you explain why Rome split into East and West? I've had it explained to me in school, but I never really understood. Basically, in the third century AD, Rome couldn't keep its poo poo together. Emperors were being assassinated at an astonishing rate, the army was mutinous, there was hyperinflation, constant barbarian raids, throughout the entire empire -- just not a good time all around. It got so bad that Gaul and Britain broke off and tried to do their own thing, and then Syria, Palestine, and Egypt followed suit, creating basically three pseudo-empires that lasted a decade or so before coming back into Rome. There was a feeling that "Rome was wherever the Emperor was"; that is to say, the idea of central authority was just the person of the Emperor and not any state bureaucratic institutions. Eventually a dude named Diocletian came to power, and he was smart enough to figure out that an autocratic ruler couldn't effectively handle ruling such vast territory. So he came up with various schemes to try to delegate imperial power, eventually settling on the idea of a tetrarchy, or dividing the empire into four bits and giving each bit to someone. The tertrarchs ruled from places convenient to their piece of the empire, and not from Rome, and were basically seen as being "one emperor" despite being, you know, four different guys. At first this worked out pretty well for everyone concerned; since supreme military power was concentrated in the person of the Emperor and that was now four people, the chaotic military situation got put back under control because each sector had a supreme commander. But after 20 years or so of this, Diocletian and his friend Maximian (who had been a co-emperor before Diocletian came up with the Tetrarchy) decided to retire. They picked out replacements for their posts in the Tetrarchy, but the story ends pretty much like you'd imagine. The Empire was stable enough that the Romans could go back to killing each other over politics. Diocletian was really retired; Maximian was kind of retired but still meddling in politics; none of the other dudes involved got along, there was violence, and at the end of it, it happened that there was one of these emperor-types alive in the East (Licinius) and one of these emperor-types alive in the West (Constantine). The idea of one empire/two emperors stuck around for another hundred years or so until the death of Theodosius I, where it was formally split into halves.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 00:05
|
|
|
Tao Jones posted:There was a feeling that "Rome was wherever the Emperor was"; that is to say, the idea of central authority was just the person of the Emperor and not any state bureaucratic institutions. I'm still catching up on history post the 1st century, but am I right in thinking that this concept started with Hadrian constantly touring the Empire but continuing to micromanage everything (unlike Tiberius who essentially just abandoned his post for long stretches of time and left other people to run things) no matter where he was? Or was he just an aberration and things went back to being Rome-focused for the next couple hundred years?
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 00:43
|
|
|
Going to switch it up and ask a Greek question here. I know that ancient Greece treated religion rather seriously, most people actually did believe in the Olympian gods and how everything is actually actually their fault. When did this change? Because it's well known that the Romans worshiped their gods out of tradition, not out of fear or awe like the Greeks.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 00:56
|
|
|
What did people in antiquity think the future would be like? Did they even have some sort of conception that things would change, or was the rate of technological progress too slow? Did they realize that they came from earlier peoples that they themselves would consider barbarians?
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 01:00
|
|
|
karl fungus posted:What did people in antiquity think the future would be like? Did they even have some sort of conception that things would change, or was the rate of technological progress too slow? Did they realize that they came from earlier peoples that they themselves would consider barbarians? I can't necessarily answer all the questions, but I will address a few. Technology actually progressed at a somewhat rapid speed. The Romans utilized Hellenic architecture and engineering and actually made and utilized incredibly advanced machines for their time period - working sewers, city planning, water pressure, pipes, central heating, structured mining. The reality is that had the Roman Empire continued uninterrupted, I think we may have actually been well ahead of where we currently are. The fall of the Roman Empire set Europe and the world back at least three centuries - the exchange of information and technology that the vast Roman Empire (and the Silk Road) had allowed disappeared with it, and so humanity lost a lot of the information that would only be partly recovered later on by the Islamic world. As for the what they thought of the future, I can't really answer that question. As for what they thought of the past, well. The Japanese of the Sengoku Period made a point of calling upon history - indeed, many post-Sengoku authors talked about the Samurai of old (ie, the Gempei war) as the true samurai, and the samurai of that period as sad facsimilies. It's really kind of interesting. As for the what the Romans thought of their past is a somewhat different question. I know this has nothing to do with Rome/Greece, but peoples of the past were as interested in the past as we are.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 01:27
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:
Agh yeah bad phrasing on my part. The Sassanids never successfully held Antioch, much less Egypt.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 01:43
|
|
|
Cetea posted:Because it's well known that the Romans worshiped their gods out of tradition, not out of fear or awe like the Greeks. This is false. The Romans were as serious about their religion as anyone else is about their religion. There were doubters and people who were more or less pious than others, but the idea that ancient people weren't serious about their religions the way modern people are is the product of our biases and the fact that ancient religion looks kinda silly and weird to us. Most Romans absolutely believed the gods were real and controlled everything. Not only that, but it was standard for Romans to also believe everyone else's gods were real. Especially more ancient civilizations like Egypt.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 03:44
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:Not only that, but it was standard for Romans to also believe everyone else's gods were real. Especially more ancient civilizations like Egypt. So how did they think about this? Were they like "Heh, our gods can beat up your gods  ", or did they go "Uh oh, this other country is these other gods' turf, tread carefully!", or maybe see other gods as just variations on their own ("oh, that local war god must be what those people think Mars is like")?
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 03:54
|
|
|
Yes to all three.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 03:58
|
|
|
Would people that were traveling make sacrifices to/worship/whatever others' gods if they were in their land?
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 04:01
|
|
|
I've read about that happening in Egypt, yes. The Egyptian gods were seen as equal, maybe even more powerful because of how ancient Egypt was, which made Romans assume they knew more. I'm not sure about everywhere else, but I think it happened.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 04:04
|
|
|
I do know that they equated the head of any polytheistic religion with Zeus, which is why they were very religiously tolerant. But they do seem to make less military decisions based on what they thought the gods wanted, as opposed to the Greeks, where animal sacrifices before battles were believed to be vital. It makes sense that the lower classes would pay more attention to their gods, but what did the upper classes think? I'm sure that the further up the social ladder you got, the less pious the believers become. After all, they did deify their Emperors after they died, and no Greek would have ever dared to deify any of their leaders (Alexander the Great being the sole exception, and even then people weren't too happy about it). If the cream of society really feared the gods, wouldn't they be too afraid to deify anyone in case it was hubris and the gods decided to punish the Empire for it?
Cetea fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Jun 16, 2013 |
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 05:03
|
|
|
Cetea posted:But they do seem to make less military decisions based on what they thought the gods wanted, as opposed to the Greeks, where animal sacrifices before battles were believed to be vital. The Romans consulted omens before every battle. One famous example is Claudius Pulcher at the naval battle of Drepana during the first Punic War. quote:Meanwhile, on the flagship, some sources claim that Pulcher performed the inspection of the omens before battle, according to Roman religious tradition. The prescribed method was observing the feeding behavior of the sacred chickens, on board for that purpose. If the chickens accepted the offered grain, then the Roman gods would be favorable to the battle. However, on that particular morning of 249 BC, the chickens refused to eat – a horrific omen. Confronted with the unexpected and having to deal with the superstitious and now terrified crews, Pulcher quickly devised an alternative interpretation. He threw the sacred chickens overboard, saying, "Let them drink, since they don't wish to eat." The Roman fleet was absolutely demolished in the ensuing battle. Pulcher was tried for treason and sacrilege for ignoring the omens, and spent the rest of his life in exile.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 05:47
|
|
|
canuckanese posted:The Romans consulted omens before every battle. One famous example is Claudius Pulcher at the naval battle of Drepana during the first Punic War. That's fascinating, thanks for that. Though I think it was obvious there that Pulcher tried to use the common soldier's superstitions to boost the morale of his men (while not actually believing in them himself, because if he did, he wouldn't have thrown the chickens overboard). Then when it backfired, he tried to correct it, but it was already far too late and his men probably already believed they were going to lose anyway. Of course, Pulcher ignoring the omens made him a perfect scapegoat too. After all, saying "we lost the battle because the commander ignored the omens from the gods" is much better for troop morale than saying "the Carthaginians outsmarted and outplayed us". Personally I think this event hints that the upper classes not really believing in the gods or omens, while the lower classes absolutely believed in them as much as the Greeks ever did, and so religion was a very useful social tool to get people to do what you wanted. Cetea fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Jun 16, 2013 |
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 06:22
|
|
|
I've always found that sort of not just polytheism, but polytheism involving other pantheons to be very interesting. Are there any good/funny examples of this that stand out? I've heard (Wikipedia) that Judaism used to be more like this, hence the First Commandment, but it's a very sharp contrast to modern Christianity's not only are other gods are not to be worshiped, but they don't exist.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 06:27
|
|
|
cheerfullydrab posted:What the hell? Tell this to the Sassanids. You know Iran is just as mountainous as Anatolia, right? Yes, but do recall the aforementioned war between the Byzantines and the Sassanids (between 602 and 628, goddamn). Also, the economical and political center of the Sassanids were in Mesopotamia/Iraq which the Muslims could capture relatively quickly (although they got pushed back from their first attempt briefly). So it wasn't like the Sassanids had a Constantinople + Greece sitting on the rear end end of Persia (or much in the way of water to seperate them from their enemies). Taking hold of Persia proper took a while longer, yet once Umar set his mind to it... dude was pretty bad rear end.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 11:39
|
|
|
karl fungus posted:What did people in antiquity think the future would be like? Did they even have some sort of conception that things would change, or was the rate of technological progress too slow? Did they realize that they came from earlier peoples that they themselves would consider barbarians? Some people argued, and I think this was more or less the mainstream view, that time was a big cycle that would endlessly repeat itself. (Not in a literal "every moment will literally repeat its literal self" case like Nietzsche's eternal return -- but like how the seasons come and go every year, the sun rises and falls every day, the stars rotate around the earth in regular motions, etc, so too are there eras to human history.) One of the things that Christianity does, at least from a philosophical standpoint, is at least begin to short-circuit that kind of view. At the very least, time can't be circular if there's a final reckoning at the end -- so once you start thinking there might be an endpoint to human history, or that there's a final break with the cycles of the world in the form of salvation, you might start thinking of time in a different way. But even still, I don't think you find a notion like "the future" as an abstract thing that can be meaningfully different than "the present" until Rousseau starts arguing about the idea of human perfectibility in the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, which also dovetails with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. That's not to say there was no idea of the future - of course people might say things like "maybe there won't be soldiers burning my town tomorrow" or "maybe the next king will be nice to us", but I think that's a different order of claim than the kinds of claims made about 'the future' in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 13:48
|
|
|
Cetea posted:That's fascinating, thanks for that. Though I think it was obvious there that Pulcher tried to use the common soldier's superstitions to boost the morale of his men (while not actually believing in them himself, because if he did, he wouldn't have thrown the chickens overboard). Then when it backfired, he tried to correct it, but it was already far too late and his men probably already believed they were going to lose anyway. Of course, Pulcher ignoring the omens made him a perfect scapegoat too. After all, saying "we lost the battle because the commander ignored the omens from the gods" is much better for troop morale than saying "the Carthaginians outsmarted and outplayed us". Personally I think this event hints that the upper classes not really believing in the gods or omens, while the lower classes absolutely believed in them as much as the Greeks ever did, and so religion was a very useful social tool to get people to do what you wanted. Yeah, Pulcher was clearly not as pious as a lot of other Romans. The fact that it terrified the crews though should tell you a bit about how seriously Romans took the gods. I think the ritual itself was kind of rigged to be a morale boost. 999 out of 1000 times, the chickens are going to eat grain if you throw it on the ground, because they're chickens and that's about all they do anyway.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 13:55
|
|
|
Rockopolis posted:I've heard (Wikipedia) that Judaism used to be more like this, hence the First Commandment, but it's a very sharp contrast to modern Christianity's not only are other gods are not to be worshiped, but they don't exist. Yep. That's a thing that happens later, when you read what's in the Old Testament it's pretty clear that the way it's written there are other gods, you're just not supposed to acknowledge them. So it's sort of transitional. Romans didn't have an issue with worshiping foreign gods--see the popularity of the cults of Isis and Mithras. If Christianity hadn't been pretty insistent on the One True God thing, Jesus likely could/would have simply been incorporated into the pantheon, somewhat like how he's treated in Hinduism.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 15:05
|
|
|
From what I've read the change in Judaism's view on other gods coincides with their escape from Egypt and it looks like either the Jewish people there underwent a general transformation or the ruling priestly class changes from believing in worshipping one God that's better than any others to worshipping the only God. Actually I only know about early Israelite history from the Ancient World podcast but it sounds really interesting in terms of competition between the kingdoms of Judea and Israel and the switching up of traditional polytheism and worship of Yahweh. I'd never really realised that there had been two Jewish kingdoms in competition or that Judaism had had that sort of competition. Does anyone here know much more about that sort of super early history?
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 15:23
|
|
|
Tao Jones posted:But even still, I don't think you find a notion like "the future" as an abstract thing that can be meaningfully different than "the present" until Rousseau starts arguing about the idea of human perfectibility in the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, which also dovetails with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. This isn't right. Rousseau wasn't even original in his time (there's similar material in book three of Hume's "Treatise", which we know Rousseau was familiar with before he wrote his Discourses), and if all you want is the idea of a "future" that can be different from the "present" in a meaningful way: why doesn't Joachim of Fiore count? Or in antiquity, Jewish messianism? Why is Christianity supposed to be an important shift here, when the Pharisees already had the idea that there would be a final resurrection of all the dead at the coming of the messiah, and the Essenes clearly believed that the world as she is known is about to end? Or if you want specifically the narrow idea that progress in technology can lead to a future that is meaningfully different from the present, why doesn't John Dee's preface to Euclid's "Elements" count? It's all about the many benefits "mathematical"/mechanical arts promise to humanity, but it's two centuries earlier than Rousseau. (Dee also believes he's reclaiming knowledge originally had by Adam, which shows that the opposition between "progressive" and "cyclical" views of history is bogus: lots of thinkers have clearly thought of it in both ways. There's no contradiction in thinking that "the wheel of history" will eventually stop turning at the final judgement, and in a purely cyclical view of history there can still be a meaningful contrast between the relative past and the relative future which manifests clear progress along various axes, even over the course of long ages -- so long as those ages are still only a part of an even longer cycle.)
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 15:36
|
|
|
Touching upon the religious aspect/Judaism/Christianity/Roman It seems as if Rome and Christianity both offered alternative, competing world views. Both wanted to create one world, but Rome wanted one empire and Christ's followers wanted quite a different union. Imperium v ekklesia. Imperial theology kept everything in order, made everyone want the gifts of empire, everyone wanted to be Roman. The worldview of Octavian is peace through victory. Victory is predicated upon (Roman) piety. Prudentius, writing in late antiquity, wrote "God taught the nations everywhere to bow their heads under the same laws and become Romans." Accept Rome, it's how it must be. Christ's vision is peace through justice. The grace of God versus the grace of Caesar, the peace of Rome vs the peace of God. A subsequent question to these musings is this: who were the converts to Christianity? Christianity has its roots in Judaism. Jews were relatively widespread as a result of the diaspora, not just limited to Judaea. To pagans, Jews are strange. Very restrictive, genital mutilation, etc. Yet with the diaspora, Greeks and other Gentiles are quite familiar with Judaism, some maybe half-Jews; that is, not Jewish, but effectively practicing the faith anyhow. I summarized this information from In Search of Paul by Crossan and Reed.
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 15:40
|
|
|
MrNemo posted:From what I've read the change in Judaism's view on other gods coincides with their escape from Egypt and it looks like either the Jewish people there underwent a general transformation or the ruling priestly class changes from believing in worshipping one God that's better than any others to worshipping the only God. The escape from Egypt probably never happened, the switch from a looser henotheism to strict monotheism happened during the Babylonian exile. It was mostly about court politics, a monotheist faction came to dominate the exiled Jews, they prevailed and edited the scriptures according to their theology etc.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 15:49
|
|
|
MrNemo posted:From what I've read the change in Judaism's view on other gods coincides with their escape from Egypt and it looks like either the Jewish people there underwent a general transformation or the ruling priestly class changes from believing in worshipping one God that's better than any others to worshipping the only God. Actually I only know about early Israelite history from the Ancient World podcast but it sounds really interesting in terms of competition between the kingdoms of Judea and Israel and the switching up of traditional polytheism and worship of Yahweh. The history bits of the Old Testament talk about it, and the general scope of it is pretty accurate. Basically Solomon was a real douche and his son (Rheobaum) was even worse. "My father beat you with whips, I shall beat you with scorpions!" was his response to questions about whether his rule was going to be an improvement on Solomon's. So after that, there was a civil war with the end result being that the rebels under Jerobaum controlled Israel, in the north, and Rheobaum controlled Judah in the south. There were decades of instability, feuding, more civil wars, assassinations, the usual good times. And then the Assyrians came. Many of the nations of the Levant allied together to hold them off and it worked! Briefly. But King Ahab of Israel married Princess Jezebel of Tyre as part of the alliance, and agree to let her build temples to her gods in Israeli cities. This... was not popular. The end result, the alliance falls apart, the rebel who seized power in Israel ends up submitting to Assyria, and after a few years, a revolt against the Assyrians prompts them to ship off the people of Israel to points unknown. Maybe "ship off", if you know what I mean. Judah manages to hang on for another century after a plague wipes out an invading Assyrian army, and survives to be conquered by the Babylonians. They smash up the first temple real good and ship the residents of Judah to "the Babylonian captivity", which lasts until Cyrus captures Babylon and lets them go back home.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 17:55
|
|
|
How did the East react to the West's fall in the fifth century? Before Justinian, were there any attempts to reclaim Western territory?
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 18:49
|
|
|
canuckanese posted:The Romans consulted omens before every battle. One famous example is Claudius Pulcher at the naval battle of Drepana during the first Punic War. Hey now, don't quote that and not quote the next part: quote:However, it is not entirely clear if this actually occurred. The contemporary historian Polybius fails to mention it, instead crediting the victory to the superior maneuverability of the Carthaginian warships, making this incident at least dubious. The Romans took their omens seriously, but they were also just super pissed at people who lost battles in general.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 19:46
|
|
|
sbaldrick posted:My favorite world shaking archaeology at the moment in Indus Valley Stuff which seems to have stalled. The Indus Valley Culture really is interesting, I've read about lots of mysterious stuff being found there over the years. Stuff like a windowless tower that maybe was and maybe wasn't actually an rear end-old well (there was some kind of argument about it sadly I can't remember what it was) or a large network of metallic tubes running through a mountain. The latter one was apparently used to drain a saltwater sea, but it was unknown why they did it or how or who they actually were. (The Indus Culture was just the geographically and historically closest possibility.) Also, I like all these strange sounding city names like Lothal and Mehenjo Daro. Veeta posted:Other things I know about Antioch: That actually explains to me why it was such a big deal that King Lionheart conquered the city during the 3rd Crusade. PittTheElder posted:The Romans took their omens seriously, but they were also just super pissed at people who lost battles in general. Regarding Polybios (Or Polybius in English, but he was Greek, why the wrong suffix in English?), most of what he wrote is considered lost and some of his works were only passed on in fragments. So there is a sizable chance he did mention it somewhere but the book it was in was one of the many lost ones. And something from farther back: Grand Fromage posted:Yes, different groups. Teutoburg was a defeat but it was an ambush and betrayal. The Romans came back a few years later and exacted terrible revenge, killing unbelievable numbers of Germans in a massive campaign of destruction across Germany as retaliation. The German forces were annihilated this go around, without the advantages Arminius supplied. The tribes who show up in late antiquity are different peoples than the ones being fought against at this time. This kind of interests me, I remember reading an article in one of our local archaeology magazines talking about new archaeological evidence found in Germany. By following up on old battle reports or something and digging up old battle sites, several of these battles were shown in a new light. Also there was much about how Arminius was living most of his life as a hostage in Rome and subsequently used his knowledge of Roman warfare to train his people in a more disciplined way of fighting. Since I can't find the source anymore, I'll try to recite the entire sordid story from memory: At first, there was apparently a time during Arminius childhood when Rome suddenly decided to bring the light of civilization across those pesky rivers and marched a small army (something about three legions, I think -don't quote me on that, though) through what later would become middle/northern Germany. The local German tribes put up a hilariously bad defense and after several small-scale engagements every resistance was crushed and the Romans started to colonize the new territory, incorporating it into the empire as a full province. Now it gets interesting: Only one of the local chieftains was progressive enough to at least get a small alliance of tribes going, resulting in a "major" battle with something like 800 - 3000 Germanic tribesmen against several Roman legions. The Romans crushed them as easily as everyone else in that campaign, of course. This chieftain was Arminius' father and Arminius was taken back to Rome as a hostage. According to Roman customs, he was trained and educated in the Roman way of thinking, including Roman warfare. Years later he was send back and here my memories get kind of hazy, so bear with me. Arminius somehow engineered a new tribal federation an order of magnitude larger then the old one his father had lead, while pretending to uphold Roman law the entire time. Also he tried his best to get those fierce Germanic warriors acting like Roman soldiers, with sadly lacking results. So he instead tried (succesfully as you know) to lure the Roman forces into an ambush, since he wasn't sure his army of fake Romans could take on the real Roman legions. The battle of Teutoburg happened, but not actually anywhere near Teutoburg and an uprising following in the wake of the eradication of the local Roman military destroyed about twenty years of efforts by Roman engineers. The people of Arminius new Germanic federation gladly took control of the new silver mines and streets the Romans had build, pissing Rome of to no end. The Romans reacted by sending out an even larger army and indeed there were at least two major battles with Arminius new federated army of copycat Romans. Both battles were technically Roman victories, but thanks to Arminius copying Roman tactics closely, also extremely bloody. So bloody in fact the Roman legions simply went home after just achieving a token victory. Then the Romans used diplomacy to turn the Germanic kingdom to the south of the federation against it. (The king went with it out of fear of the newly-formed tribal federation to the north.) Also they somehow turned one of Arminius' trusted allies against him. Arminius got stabbed and his tribal federation disintegrated. Everything went back to the way it was before this twenty-year episode of Roman embarrassment. The end. The article then went on on some tangent about how Rome did its best to cover up the full extent of what went wrong. Also there was some war going on in the east, which was deemed vastly more important. If it weren't for Arminius' betrayal and the stinging loss of those newly-build silver mines no-one in Rome would have given a poo poo. And after the assassination of Arminius Roman honor was considered restored and Rome did indeed stop giving a poo poo about those weirdos in the north afterwards. Well, that mad rambling is everything I can still remember. So now you can correct me on everything obviously wrong while I'm searching for my source. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 22:42
|
|
|
Going back to the East/West split, how did that work for the common person. For instance (and I don't know much about Roman slavery, especially in the later Empire, this is purely as an example) if you were a freed slave in the West, would that status carry over in the East? Did you need an equivalent of a passport to travel between the two to prove you were a citizen?
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2013 23:37
|
|
|
brozozo posted:How did the East react to the West's fall in the fifth century? Before Justinian, were there any attempts to reclaim Western territory? Generally, the East didn't do too much with the West, mainly because they couldn't afford to (the Emperors from 476 to Justinian had civil and foreign wars to worry about) and that there was no point - the West still acknowledged vaguely the supremacy of Constantinople. Odoacer in Italy, the Franks and Vandals all engaged in friendly relations with the East and took on Roman titles, though obviously direct control was out of the question. But even then, that's not really that much of a difference, since these barbarians had de facto control over those territories for a while anyway. There are some records of minor raids and the East using other tribes to influence western politics, such as sending Theodoric the Amal of the Ostrogoths to Italy to conquer it in the name of Constantinople. But even then they were rare and in this case, it was mostly to get the Ostrogoths out of the East so that they won't cause trouble there. So overall, there wasn't that much of a big difference politically, since the same barbarian kings ruled over the same territories as they did before the Western Empire collapsed finally. Before the official 'fall' of course the East did help out a lot if they could, such as financing the massive invasion of Africa under Anthemius, but generally the number of interventions were declining anyway, so much so that the East couldn't do anything to restore Julius Nepos after he was deposed. So basically because of the political instability of the East at the same time, there was just no will or resources to retake the West until Justinian inherited a large treasury and the Persians wanted peace.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2013 00:56
|
|
|
Why didn't the Goths go after the Byzantines too?
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2013 01:16
|
|
|
karl fungus posted:Why didn't the Goths go after the Byzantines too? Short answer: They did, but the Byzantines were a lot more successful at fighting them off. They still did some damage but the Eastern half of the empire was wealthier, better defended, and had the strongest navy in the world, so they were able to limit them pretty effectively. The Byzantines also did stuff like settling other groups in between them and the Goths, the Sarmatians for example, as a buffer.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2013 03:12
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 23:13 |
|
|
Libluini posted:Regarding Polybios (Or Polybius in English, but he was Greek, why the wrong suffix in English?), most of what he wrote is considered lost and some of his works were only passed on in fragments. So there is a sizable chance he did mention it somewhere but the book it was in was one of the many lost ones. Because English is weird and us European-types love us some Latin. And yeah, there's a good chance his account is just lost to us, I just couldn't abide such selective wiki quoting. karl fungus posted:Why didn't the Goths go after the Byzantines too? That's where the Goths started. They arrived on the Danube in 376, fleeing the expanding Hunnic confederacy. The Romans agreed to settle them somewhere in the Balkans, but treated them pretty terribly, famine broke out, the Goths took up arms and raided the countryside for food, wrecked a (Eastern) Roman army at the Battle of Adrianople in 378, and killed the Emperor Valens to boot. They then ran amok in the Balkans for a while, until they were smacked down by a (Western) Roman army, and they negotiated some sort of peace settlement in 382, the exact nature of which is deeply disputed by academics at the moment. Some maintain they were given some sort of local autonomous standing within the Roman Empire, others that this was more of a legal formality and they didn't really have much of a special status. The events are known as the Gothic Crisis or the Gothic Wars should you want to read more. Whatever it was, some ten years later, you see Alaric at the head of a 'Gothic' army (exactly what that means is similarly disputed) first serving with the Romans (under Stilicho), then revolting against them and pillaging in Greece, having a few run-ins against Stilicho (another "barbarian" who was in charge of the Roman armies and later winds up basically running the Western Empire), and then winning a Roman command in Illyricum (which was what these revolting "barbarian" commanders usually wanted, legitimacy within the Roman system). At some point he invades Italy, gets beaten in battle by Stilicho, then becomes pals with Stilicho, and gets sent to invade the East to enforce the West's claim on certain disputed provinces. While he's doing that, Stilicho gets murdered by pals of the Emperor Honorius, most of Stilicho's army defects to Alaric, and for a handful of reasons, they all invade the Western Empire again, which is how Alaric and the Goths wind up sacking Rome in 410. Alaric dies shortly afterwards, and for the next 50 years these "Goths" get used as an army first in Aquitaine, then later in Spain. These are who you call the Visigoths. Later you have the Ostrogoths under Theodoric (who had himself been educated in Constantinople), who had been becoming a nuisance in the East, and were basically invited to invade Italy by the (now sole) Roman Emperor Emperor, Zeno. Zeno was having a feud with Odoacer, who you may know as the guy who deposed the child commonly named as the last Western Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, in 476. Of course, there was still the de jure last Western Emperor, Julius Nepos, around until 480, but the popular narrative has seen fit to ignore him, so we need not concern ourselves with him. The Ostrogoths were pretty successful in their invasion (in 489), and deposed Odoacer. Theodoric killed him personally at a banquet, chopping him in half with sword, and apparently quipping to the effect of "there wasn't a bone in him", which I find pretty damned hilarious. The Ostrogoths ran Italy for something like fifty years, and had their share of tangled with the East, before their state was pretty roundly obliterated by a Roman force sent by Justinian in the 530s and 40s. The same force had similarly destroyed the Vandal state in North Africa shortly before that. And you may have noticed I've been pretty liberal with throwing quotes around "Goth" and "barbarian". That's because the definition of these terms is super blurry, and it would be quite incorrect to think of the Goths as a functioning ministate within the Empire. It would be more accurate to say that they were a fairly Romanized armed body serving within the Roman Army, which had adopted more and more of a "barbarian" identity since the Crisis of the Third Century. There's no easy lines to draw sadly.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2013 06:03
|
|