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Thanks to recommendations in this thread, I just received the latest edition of Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars (James B. Rives' revision of Robert Graves' translation) and Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I knew the latter was going to be pretty big, but Jesus Christ that thing is huge. I'm so looking forward to reading through both of them though, thanks to this thread for giving me the itch.
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Jul 10, 2013 00:42
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While reading, keep in mind that Gibbon is pretty out of date. Worth reading but it's as much a historical artifact itself as it is history.
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Jul 10, 2013 01:17
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Grand Fromage posted:While reading, keep in mind that Gibbon is pretty out of date. Worth reading but it's as much a historical artifact itself as it is history. Yeah, I was always under the impression that you read Gibbon to understand 18th century British thought, not Rome.
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Jul 10, 2013 01:21
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How much of Rome did they even understand in prior centuries, anyway? Like, what did they know about Rome in the Middle Ages? Also, did the Byzantine Empire keep records of its lost western half?
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Jul 10, 2013 01:36
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Grand Fromage posted:While reading, keep in mind that Gibbon is pretty out of date. Worth reading but it's as much a historical artifact itself as it is history. The copy I have seems to come with extremely extensive footnotes, which is good, but I definitely knew going in that it was a 200+ year old history. Kind of a head trip to consider that there were roughly 300 years between the fall of Constantinople and Gibbon writing his history of the Roman Empire, and that there has been roughly 200 years between Gibbon writing it and the present day. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Jul 10, 2013 |
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Jul 10, 2013 11:23
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karl fungus posted:How much of Rome did they even understand in prior centuries, anyway? Like, what did they know about Rome in the Middle Ages? Also, did the Byzantine Empire keep records of its lost western half? Also, what did the ancient Romans know of history prior to their own ascendance, like the Achemenid empire and the various Egyptian dynasties?
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Jul 10, 2013 12:49
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Thanks for this thread by the way, it really is the best thread on SA. I've been slowly working my way through it (on page 67 right now so a fair way to go). I have a question that may have already been answered. I've been working my way through The History of Rome podcasts and am up to Theodosius so almost done really. Does anyone know of a History of the Greeks podcast or Egypt or something similar in scale and scope? I feel like I actually know the Romans now through this thread and the podcasts. Back to page 67 I go..
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Jul 10, 2013 16:57
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Kopijeger posted:Also, what did the ancient Romans know of history prior to their own ascendance, like the Achemenid empire and the various Egyptian dynasties? I doubt they knew or cared much about Persian history, other than stories of the greeks beating them up, but Egyptian history was pretty well studied by the ptlomies so the info was there if they cared to look..
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Jul 10, 2013 18:47
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karl fungus posted:How much of Rome did they even understand in prior centuries, anyway? Like, what did they know about Rome in the Middle Ages? Also, did the Byzantine Empire keep records of its lost western half? There was continuity of language, at least among the elite, so some people could become quite familiar with the literature of ancient Rome. The poster child for this might be Montaigne, whose father forbade anyone to speak to the young Montaigne in French, even going so far as to hire a German Latin teacher to make sure Montaigne acquired Latin as his first language. Montaigne eventually learned French when he went to school, but his famous Essays are stuffed with quotations from Roman authors. Machiavelli clearly had access to a wide variety of Roman sources from his examples and quotations in The Prince and the Discourses on Livy, and the Discourses can be understood as being in part a revolutionary program drawing inspiration from the model of ancient Rome. (That's not to say they're an argument for literally restoring the literal Roman laws, but instead a call to take the example of Roman institutions and use them to find new modes of political organization.) Even in earlier times than that, plenty of early Christian writers were Roman, so priests and theologians might have had access to what it might have been like to be a Christian under Roman rule. That said, though, I don't think even a Montaigne or Machiavelli would have had much access to what daily life was like in Rome. Access was limited by the sources available, which was limited to high literature. As for
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Jul 11, 2013 00:55
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Starting at least in the 12th century, many European courts began to establish collections of Greek and Roman coins as objects of artistic and mystical intrigue, so the elites at least had some knowledge of the ancient world, if only antiquarian. Most coins were likely from hoards, but it is plausible that some of passed from collection to collection from the late antique period. By the 14th century, the study of the ancient world became a bit more scientific with early humanists such as Petrarch. So by this period, scholars had a rudimentary understanding of Rome, and they were at least able to put coins in chronological order and write blurbs about Caesar and Pompey.
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Jul 12, 2013 15:58
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Did people living in the ruins of Rome maintain traditions about the old empire? Also, did the papacy keep records of it?
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Jul 12, 2013 17:46
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karl fungus posted:Did people living in the ruins of Rome maintain traditions about the old empire? Yeah, they did. And basically all the states that emerged out of the Roman West made claims to legitimacy based on Roman authority (which was long gone). This continued until the 6th or 7th century, at which point they had enough self confidence to let the claim die away.
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Jul 12, 2013 21:14
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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So I started reading Inheritance of Rome picking it up on a whim (I have no clue if it's actually supposed to be good or bad but I'm liking the more micro look at the end of the Western empire and such so whatever) and Wickham mentions, in regards the spread of Christianity, that traditionally in Greco-Roman religious beliefs that the dead were seen as "dangerous" and "polluting" leading to burials being done on the edges of cities instead of in the cities proper. Due to the Christianity veneration of saints and martyrs however, that view began to change and eventually burials started taking place in the cities proper and the danger and "polluting" belief of the dead/death mostly faded. Is that true at all? Likewise, how did other ancient cultures view death and the dead; not necessarily in terms of "you die and go to Tartarus" afterlife beliefs but more was that apparently dangerous and polluting idea common elsewhere, what were burial practices and views regarding the dead, etc.?
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Jul 13, 2013 04:19
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Suben posted:So I started reading Inheritance of Rome picking it up on a whim (I have no clue if it's actually supposed to be good or bad but I'm liking the more micro look at the end of the Western empire and such so whatever) and Wickham mentions, in regards the spread of Christianity, that traditionally in Greco-Roman religious beliefs that the dead were seen as "dangerous" and "polluting" leading to burials being done on the edges of cities instead of in the cities proper. Due to the Christianity veneration of saints and martyrs however, that view began to change and eventually burials started taking place in the cities proper and the danger and "polluting" belief of the dead/death mostly faded. The Greeks were hella weird about the dead. After a fight it was customary to call a time out to collect your dead. If you were the one asking for permission to take the dead (as opposed to giving it) then clearly you lost the fight. There's one story of an Athenian raid during the Peloponnesian War were the raiders won pretty handily, raced back to their ships and hurriedly launched off. Just before they started celebrating, they realized that they'd left a body (or a few, I can't remember) on the beach. These lightning raiders, turned around and came back to shore to ask for truce to recover their man, and the general in charge thus lost the right to raise a trophy. 7 Athenian generals were executed in the middle of a war after winning a battle but not, supposedly, doing enough to recover the dead. Remember how Achilles dragged Hector's body around the Troy by the ankles? That's, like, a Big loving Deal. Past a certain point, letting dead people just stick around is kinda polluting and dangerous. That's how you get cholera. Even the Christians had clearly demarcated spaces that were for the dead and only the dead, and most cultures have some way of commemorating the dead that also just so happens to remove them from the community. I know at least two "untouchable" castes (Indian and Japanese) were, among other things, responsible for handling death and the dead, though that's maybe a little chicken and egg. (Where they untouchable because they handled the dead or may to handle the dead because they were already untouchable?) Anyway, I know there are several shines, Miyajima for sure, in Japan that you're not supposed to visit if you are sick or elderly lest your death pollute the sacred space. Miyajima is pretty interesting in that it's a whole island where killing is not okay, so there's a bunch of deer running around the island that haven't had predators in, well, a very long time.
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Jul 13, 2013 05:41
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It's certainly true for the Greeks. Death was a source of pollution and had its own set of rituals to go with it. They varied from polis to polis, with the Spartans having a more pragmatic approach and the Athenians and others having a more complex set of rituals. According to Plutarch, the Spartan king Lycurgus was annoyed by the superstition surrounding dead bodies and so ordered that the dead could be buried inside the city or near holy sites. The burial customs were to be a simple shroud for the dead guy, a grave of approved size, and a simple headstone. The headstone could be inscribed with the dead guy's name only if he'd been a soldier -- which, to be fair, was probably most free men in Sparta. Later lawmakers in Sparta decided that funerals were being used for political purposes, so they banned making political statements at a funeral. In Athens, the picture was quite different and probably more representative of what was commonly done. Dead guys were considered to be the source of ritual pollution, and so certain steps had to be taken to clear the contamination. The location where someone died was considered to be polluted - if it was indoors, the situation was confined to the building. If someone died in the street, the situation was more of a headache but was confined to the district where the guy died. If someone died in a temple, it was a huge metaphysical to-do, to the point where it was pretty much illegal to die in a temple because of the havoc it caused. If someone died in a house, the occupants had to get rid of all of the water and firewood in the house. (The fireplace was where offerings were commonly made.) Then, they had to conduct the funeral rites, which was one day of putting the dead guy in a bed, cleaning his body, anointing him with oil, and so forth. Then, there was a pre-dawn procession to the graveyard, which had a particular ritual associated with it that governed who had to go in the procession, what route it had to take, and so on. Then, there was the burial itself, which was a process that we don't have many records of. After that, there was an extended period of mourning. Then, the family's house had to be sprinkled with seawater and fresh soil, and on the dead guy's birthday the family was expected to go to the graveyard and visit. Entering into a dead person's house before it was purified contaminated the entrant, as well, who could spread it around. To ward that off, jugs of fresh water were placed outside the door, so that visitors could wash themselves clean. The jug also served as a warning to others that someone had died in the house and visiting was likely to be a huge headache. If someone died on a city street, the district was contaminated and various things had to be done to purify everything. There's a story that in one case, when a king of Sparta died unexpectedly, every family in the city had to designate one woman and one man as being polluted by the death and send them through the ritual purification process. Not every dead guy was equal in polluting power; children, slaves, and foreigners were less polluting than citizens. Miscarriages and abortions were apparently freebies, but stillborn children still had polluting power. Civic heroes and soldiers that died in battle caused no pollution, and whether or not executed criminals did was an ongoing question, as well as how to deal with suicides. Graveyards themselves weren't a pollutant in and of themselves, but if you were in a graveyard and misbehaved you could become polluted. As a result, graveyards tended to be outside the city walls, but right beside the road so that people could visit. (In Athens, for example, the graveyard was in the district called Kerameikos, or the potter's district. We think it was right outside the city walls there, but it's still something of a question exactly where the ancient city wall was located. So it may or may not have been inside the city. In any event, it was undiscovered until modern Athens was trying to build a subway and workmen uncovered this gigantic necropolis.) Grave visitation became a kind of chaotic affair, as you were supposed to go on the birthday of the deceased and at other specified times, so Athens eventually decided to replace that by making one specific festival day for all the dead. (Plutarch suggests this was also a political tactic as there was no ban on using funerals for political purposes as there was in Sparta.) Early graves were irregular in size and contents -- obviously the graves all had a dead guy in them, but the amount of grave goods varied, as did whether burial or cremation was in fashion. One mystery is that by the 4th century BC, miniature arms made out of clay were being commonly included as grave goods, with no explanation to be found. Over time the convention for marking a grave in Athens came to be a memorial column. These started out fairly modest, but became more and more ostentatious, as people started doing things like inscribing the occupant's name, his job, the names of his family members, his friends, his accomplishments, the name of his dog (seriously), and so on. In Plato's time, this was becoming so ridiculous that sumptuary laws were passed, establishing a certain official who was in charge of determining whether or not a grave was properly modest or a funeral procession too loud or political.
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Jul 13, 2013 06:36
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Whew, finally finished this thread after so many months - just want to be another voice saying "thank you" to those who made this thread awesome. As for content, I'm just about a kilometer from the Izmir/Smyrna agora and saw this on the news: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/rich-greek-graffiti-found-in-izmir-agora.aspx?pageID=238&nID=50572&NewsCatID=375 I'll see if there's anything else cool from this site to share with the thread!
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Jul 13, 2013 08:38
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Tao Jones posted:
Wait, do you mean 'arms' as in weapons or 'arms' as in miniature models of a person's arms?
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Jul 13, 2013 17:05
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PittTheElder posted:Yeah, they did. And basically all the states that emerged out of the Roman West made claims to legitimacy based on Roman authority (which was long gone). This continued until the 6th or 7th century, at which point they had enough self confidence to let the claim die away. Well, sort of. Charlemagne was crowned Roman Emperor (as in literally Augustus), after all, and the Holy Roman Empire was claiming legitimacy derived from that all the way until the 19th century; so in their own way were the Tsars.
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Jul 13, 2013 17:58
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Thanks for the death post Tao, I had no idea about any of that. I don't know much about funerary rituals in general so keep 'em coming. On the untouchable class thing, Korea had that as well in its caste system so that's at least three places. Their descendents aren't discriminated against as much as in Japan but it's out there.
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Jul 13, 2013 18:48
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feedmegin posted:Well, sort of. Charlemagne was crowned Roman Emperor (as in literally Augustus), after all, and the Holy Roman Empire was claiming legitimacy derived from that all the way until the 19th century; so in their own way were the Tsars. Ottoman monarchs also claimed the title "Kayser-i-Rum"--Caesar of Rome, though for them it was purely ceremonial.
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Jul 13, 2013 19:49
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feedmegin posted:Well, sort of. Charlemagne was crowned Roman Emperor (as in literally Augustus), after all, and the Holy Roman Empire was claiming legitimacy derived from that all the way until the 19th century; so in their own way were the Tsars. Yeah, by that point they were making claims to be the successors to Rome, usually as endorsed by the pope, and so on. Early after the fall you have the "barbarian" states actually claiming to have power within a Roman Empire that largely didn't exist in the west anymore. Roman military titles, claiming to act on behalf of the Emperor, etc.
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Jul 13, 2013 20:25
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What went on in Spain between the western collapse and the Muslim conquest?
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Jul 13, 2013 22:25
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It's interesting how some of those ideas have carried over into the modern day. For example, washing your hands in a fountain when leaving a Jewish cemetery, so as not to carry death with you.
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Jul 13, 2013 22:42
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Seems like the greeks actually had some... sense? In their handling of the dead. Washing your hands (& making all visitors do the same!) and cleaning the place up after a death is certainly a useful thing to prevent disease.
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Jul 14, 2013 00:39
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Wait, do you mean 'arms' as in weapons or 'arms' as in miniature models of a person's arms? Miniature models of human arms, not weaponry.
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Jul 14, 2013 00:57
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Pimpmust posted:Seems like the greeks actually had some... sense? In their handling of the dead. Washing your hands (& making all visitors do the same!) and cleaning the place up after a death is certainly a useful thing to prevent disease. I'm not saying that you're one of these people, but it's funny thinking about how much, today, we rely on scientific findings for our understanding of very simple things. For a long long time, we just observed other people doing things before they got sick or died and then didn't do those things. Most of our superstitions on the wrath of gods, plagues, etc. (as well as our rituals) are almost purely based on correlations and lovely logic. For example: We saw Jerry do Weird Thing, then Event happened. Obviously, Jerry's Weird Thing caused Event because there is no other acceptable explanation that we are aware of. Therefore, we should do Weird Thing if we want to bring about Event, or refrain from doing Weird Thing if we want to avoid bringing about Event. The latter can also be accomplished by killing Jerry. While this process might help us prevent things like infection and disease from handling the dead, it also causes us to do things like burn witches and stuff. It's also not gone, look at all the bullshit surrounding autism "treatments" and the gluten free fad.
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Jul 14, 2013 01:56
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karl fungus posted:What went on in Spain between the western collapse and the Muslim conquest? Vandals, Suevi, and Visigoths. Also Roman reconquest of the south coast under Justinian for a bit.
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Jul 14, 2013 02:29
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How far out into the Atlantic did the Romans go? Did they ever find the Azores or the Canary Islands?
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Jul 14, 2013 02:40
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karl fungus posted:How far out into the Atlantic did the Romans go? Did they ever find the Azores or the Canary Islands? Ya to the canary Islands, but the Carthaginians and Greeks got there first. When Hanno went on his big trip (according to Pliny the Elder) the island was uninhabited but filled with great ruins. Later, there were some folks called the Guanches hanging out there in Romans times. http://archive.archaeology.org/9705/newsbriefs/canaries.html
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Jul 14, 2013 03:54
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Ottoman monarchs also claimed the title "Kayser-i-Rum"--Caesar of Rome, though for them it was purely ceremonial. I actually read a book about the Ottomans recently and the Ottomans did not consider it ceremonial, they took it very seriously. Part of why they were so hell bent on specifically obliterating the Hapsburgs is that the sultan viewed the title of Roman Emperor as his by right of conquest, and the Hapsburgs were usurpers for claiming it as their own title as the rulers of the HRE, so they needed to be destroyed. I haven't read nearly enough about the Ottomans, but from this book they took it seriously and considered themselves to be the legitimate successor of the Roman Empire, carrying on the same imperial tradition. The Ottomans came out of nowhere kind of, so they used Rome as their ancient ancestor and source of legitimacy.
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Jul 14, 2013 04:16
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Barto posted:Ya to the canary Islands, but the Carthaginians and Greeks got there first. When Hanno went on his big trip (according to Pliny the Elder) the island was uninhabited but filled with great ruins. Later, there were some folks called the Guanches hanging out there in Romans times. Just to add to this, that's about as far as it's possible to suggest they got. There's a sprinkling of out-there theories about Roman ships maybe reaching South America, but that doesn't make much sense, and there's not even much circumstantial evidence to support it.
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Jul 14, 2013 04:18
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The Greek death stuff is fascinating, thanks. How did things work in Rome? I kind of had it in my head that the Flamen Dialis was supposed to be responsible for cleansing a home post-death (presumably only for the upper classes? So how did the common people "clean" a home?) but looking it up I didn't see much on that at all, other than the Dialis not being allowed in the military or to see a corpse - amongst other things like not being allowed to have knots in his clothing - as it would desecrate the office.
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Jul 14, 2013 04:26
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PittTheElder posted:Just to add to this, that's about as far as it's possible to suggest they got. There's a sprinkling of out-there theories about Roman ships maybe reaching South America, but that doesn't make much sense, and there's not even much circumstantial evidence to support it. Well it'd be easy enough for a storm-swept Roman ship or two to end up barely making it to South American coasts. The really important stuff would be if anyone had established continual contact, or even just managing to get back to Europe/Africa after unwittingly arriving in the Americas.
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Jul 14, 2013 04:26
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Install Gentoo posted:Well it'd be easy enough for a storm-swept Roman ship or two to end up barely making it to South American coasts. Ehh, really? I don't think those galleys made for the Mediterranean could take much of an ocean storm, and I don't think anyone would've survived that trip even with cannibalism.
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Jul 14, 2013 04:48
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Ras Het posted:Ehh, really? I don't think those galleys made for the Mediterranean could take much of an ocean storm, and I don't think anyone would've survived that trip even with cannibalism. Hey the Romans were around for a good thousand years, that's plenty of time for such a thing to happen. I certainly wouldn't bet on battered and starved Roman sailors barely struggling to some Brazilian shore being able to make much of a cultural contact though.
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Jul 14, 2013 04:57
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Install Gentoo posted:Hey the Romans were around for a good thousand years, that's plenty of time for such a thing to happen. I certainly wouldn't bet on battered and starved Roman sailors barely struggling to some Brazilian shore being able to make much of a cultural contact though. Those ships weren't really blue water navy material, they needed to be near coasts for supplies and maintenance pretty constantly. They normally didn't carry enough food for more than a week or two.
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Jul 14, 2013 05:24
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The lack of seaworthiness of ancient ships is overstated sometimes, but there's no way they'd survive crossing the Atlantic.
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Jul 14, 2013 05:27
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So how did the Vikings do it?
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Jul 14, 2013 05:30
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Grand Fromage posted:The lack of seaworthiness of ancient ships is overstated sometimes, but there's no way they'd survive crossing the Atlantic. What I had in mind wasn't some Roman sailor stepping off an intact boat in good health, but being the one guy in a thousand years who managed to stay on to his hulk of a damaged ship just long enough to wash up on a beach. karl fungus posted:So how did the Vikings do it? Well Newfoundland by way of Greenland (which really was much more green in those days), Iceland, the Shetlands, and originally Norway meant much shorter ocean crossing times, with significant time on land inbetween stocking up and repairing poo poo. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Jul 14, 2013 |
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Jul 14, 2013 05:31
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Install Gentoo posted:What I had in mind wasn't some Roman sailor stepping off an intact boat in good health, but being the one guy in a thousand years who managed to stay on to his hulk of a damaged ship just long enough to wash up on a beach. The Atlantic's not the Pacific but it's still a long rear end way. I guess it's possible but it's incredibly unlikely. Install Gentoo posted:Well Newfoundland by way of Greenland (which really was much more green in those days), Iceland, the Shetlands, and originally Norway meant much shorter ocean crossing times, with significant time on land inbetween stocking up and repairing poo poo. Also Viking ships were way better.
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Jul 14, 2013 05:41
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