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Namarrgon posted:About the way to track years, with "year of consul1 and consul2", surely they must have some way to keep numerical track of them? Even for bookkeeping it would be incredibly efficient to only write names of consuls and just assume everyone remembered them in the right order. Yes, they used ab urbe condita (AUC) numerical years, with year 1 being the year Rome was founded (supposedly). This was, however, very rarely used. It was certainly tracked but tracking by consul names was by far the more common method. AUC was primarily used, as far as we can tell, to track centennial celebrations. It seems weird to us that they had the concept of a numerical calendar and didn't really use it, I admit, and it is possible that it was more common than we realize - but doubtful. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Aug 7, 2013 |
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Aug 7, 2013 02:16
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euphronius posted:Those age limits for magistrate office were more like guidelines. Well, they were not uniformly enforced across Roman history. Yeah but the point was that if you could do it "in your year" it was an extremely prestigious thing, almost like a sign of the Gods' favor I'd guess since you're getting into that important position exactly when you're supposed to, as if it was divine mandate. It was still a huge deal to attain all of those offices (particularly Consul) but getting there 5 or 10 years later than you were "supposed" to probably left more than a few feeling like they weren't all that they could have been.
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Aug 7, 2013 03:45
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How did legion recruitment work? Would each have their own recruiters that they would send around the province they were stationed in, or was there a form of centralized recruiting? And what social obligations did magistrates have? iirc Julius Caesar was a quaestor when he was fighting in Spain - shouldn't he have been off in Rome or somewhere managing public finances?
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Aug 7, 2013 16:14
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Gravedancing posted:How did legion recruitment work? Would each have their own recruiters that they would send around the province they were stationed in, or was there a form of centralized recruiting? During certain points of the year, the Legion(s) in the area set up what was essentially a recruitment booth. After applying, you got an examination that checked to see if you were physically fit, had no history of criminal behavior, weren't a slave, had good eyesight, and some other basic stuff. If possible, you'd also have a letter from as important a person you knew - a local magistrate, a retired Legionary Uncle (especially a veteran of one of the recruiting Legions), that recommended you for service. If you passed the exams and were accepted, you became a probatio (exactly what it sounds like). When there was a large enough number of probatios, the recruiter would line them up and have them recite the Military Oath to follow all orders, relinquish civil law, accept that you may be executed, to serve the full time, and so on (if there were enough probatios, you could also just say "me too" after the first guy said it). After saying the Oath, the probatio was considered to be in the army. At that point, the probatios got another full physical exam to get their signaculum (dog tags, basically) set up right and were issued advanced pay. Then they got picked up by a member of the Legion they have been allotted to and marched to wherever the Legion is currently based. Slantedfloors fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Aug 7, 2013 |
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Aug 7, 2013 18:59
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Gravedancing posted:And what social obligations did magistrates have? iirc Julius Caesar was a quaestor when he was fighting in Spain - shouldn't he have been off in Rome or somewhere managing public finances? He was a military financial officer when he was quaestor. He later returned as proconsul, which is the more famous of his expeditions in Spain.
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Aug 7, 2013 19:35
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Alchenar posted:I mean more when a dude comes home and he's all 'I served in the cavalry', are people impressed because he's a noble doing his military service or is he scoffed at a bit because the cavalry is poo poo? "Grats on not dying like a conehead and being smart enough to let the Numidians do all the work I guess?"
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Aug 8, 2013 00:21
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Seoinin posted:"Grats on not dying like a conehead and being smart enough to let the Numidians do all the work I guess?" I imagine it varied tremendously as the makeup of Rome's armies changed. From my limited knowledge, cavalry went for being a force composed of people wealthy enough to own horses to a primarily foreign auxiliary role to a core rapid reaction force, with I'm sure plenty of other transitions. So there wouldn't have been a single reaction throughout roman history.
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Aug 8, 2013 00:43
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Giodo! posted:I imagine it varied tremendously as the makeup of Rome's armies changed. From my limited knowledge, cavalry went for being a force composed of people wealthy enough to own horses to a primarily foreign auxiliary role to a core rapid reaction force, with I'm sure plenty of other transitions. So there wouldn't have been a single reaction throughout roman history. I'm guessing I'm asking about mid/late Republic, the point at which anyone wanting to do anything in politics has to go and do military service of some kind the moment they hit adulthood.
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Aug 8, 2013 01:01
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I've got a question about Roman architecture. How did they prevent buildings from sinking into the ground? How huge were Roman foundations?
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Aug 8, 2013 02:24
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Architecture isn't my field, so this is from half remembered conversations with tutors and therefore should probably be taken with a fair grain of salt. Right, now that's out of the way, Roman architectural 'fashion' wasn't the same as ours. The idea that it's elegant to work out all the aesthetic and functional needs of whatever you're constructing, plan for emergency cases, and then not go a drop further in materials/size/et cetera wasn't there. To some degree this is why so much of their stuff has managed to survive relatively intact - a lot of it is extraordinarily overengineered in a way that wouldn't happen today. So they would build very large foundations generally and also had some extra practical experience in dealing with buildings that were of greater than necessary size.
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Aug 8, 2013 05:01
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Dwarf posted:I've got a question about Roman architecture. How did they prevent buildings from sinking into the ground? How huge were Roman foundations? From what I've read, they would lay foundations of stone blocks up to ten feet below ground level. Some buildings had more stone in the foundations than in the rest of the building. In damp areas they would elevate the floor above the foundation to create a ventilation space. They would have clay pipes embedded in the walls to vent the dampness to the roof. Apparently some wealthy homes even had central heating, with pipes moving heated air to each room. I'm assuming it was by convection, as I don't know how they would force it. Anyway, if you had money you could get some pretty sophisticated stuff. The standard of living of a wealthy Roman wouldn't be all that different from the average person today, sans all the electronic stuff.
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Aug 8, 2013 05:52
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I got a question about Roman religion. I know that the Romans adopted a lot of the Greek pantheon and religious customs but do we know what they worshipped before that? Did they also have the the standard indo european bearded sky/all father with giant slaying and lightning? Fader Movitz fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Aug 8, 2013 |
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Aug 8, 2013 11:15
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One more question, did the Romans smoke weed?
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Aug 8, 2013 11:20
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Slantedfloors posted:signaculum I GIS'd these on a whim and they're pretty neat. 
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Aug 8, 2013 11:46
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Fader Movitz posted:One more question, did the Romans smoke weed? Well cannabis is from Central and South Asia so they probably had access to it and maybe they'd use it for rituals or something, but probably not in a recreational sense.
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Aug 8, 2013 14:30
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canuckanese posted:Well cannabis is from Central and South Asia so they probably had access to it and maybe they'd use it for rituals or something, but probably not in a recreational sense. quote:Jesus was almost certainly a cannabis user and an early proponent of the medicinal properties of the drug, according to a study of scriptural texts published this month. The study suggests that Jesus and his disciples used the drug to carry out miraculous healings. The source seems a little less than academic, but who knows..? check your scholarly priviledge! vvvv Nenonen fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Aug 8, 2013 |
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Aug 8, 2013 14:47
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I'm not sure High Times is the best source for classical history. However it was definitely used at the time; Herodotus mentions Scythians using it as part of the funeral ceremony. Whether the Romans did, I don't know but probably.
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Aug 8, 2013 14:53
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Fader Movitz posted:I got a question about Roman religion. I know that the Romans adopted a lot of the Greek pantheon and religious customs but do we know what they worshipped before that? Did they also have the the standard indo european bearded sky/all father with giant slaying and lightning? This is kind of inaccurate, the Romans had a similar polytheist pantheon as the Greeks, (Father God, God of war, Goddess of boning, etc.) but those were the archetypal Indo-European polytheist gods across the Mediterranean. There were plenty of gods unique to the Greeks and the Romans as they had their own ritual quirks. Roman religious customs (allegedly established by the second Roman king, Numa Pompillius), were derived from Rome's neighbors, the Etruscans and the other Latins. Later on, in the time of the Empire, you get Greek and Egyptian mystery cults popping up all over the place, even in Rome itself, in addition to the development of the Roman Imperial cult, and probably a little bit of merging between similar-seeming gods, but even still, you'll notice a lot of differences between Jupiter and Zeus. sullat fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Aug 8, 2013 |
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Aug 8, 2013 15:11
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Grand Prize Winner posted:I GIS'd these on a whim and they're pretty neat. This was branded on their shoulders, right? Like the SPQR Maximus has in Gladiator? What did Romans think, if anything, of piercings, tats & hair? I've always thought of Romans as being conservative in a no piercings, tattoos, clean shaven, no crazy haircuts, etc. way.
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Aug 8, 2013 17:37
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sullat posted:This is kind of inaccurate, the Romans had a similar polytheist pantheon as the Greeks, (Father God, God of war, Goddess of boning, etc.) but those were the archetypal Indo-European polytheist gods across the Mediterranean. There were plenty of gods unique to the Greeks and the Romans as they had their own ritual quirks. Roman religious customs (allegedly established by the second Roman king, Numa Pompillius), were derived from Rome's neighbors, the Etruscans and the other Latins. Wasn't the worship or devotion or whatever to the lares and penantes just as important as devotion to the bigger gods? Even though they were smaller in scale, obviously.
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Aug 8, 2013 17:44
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Grand Fromage posted:I'm not sure High Times is the best source for classical history. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0PJfUpaKu8&t=0m20s
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Aug 8, 2013 17:44
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Fader Movitz posted:One more question, did the Romans smoke weed? Absolutely. We've found Roman hashish paraphernalia with remaining residue quite recently in I think Albania, though I don't have the source at hand.
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Aug 8, 2013 19:12
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Alchenar posted:I'm guessing I'm asking about mid/late Republic, the point at which anyone wanting to do anything in politics has to go and do military service of some kind the moment they hit adulthood. Mid-Republic cavalry is a lot of non-Roman Italians. Ligurians and Campanians seem to have figured prominently. By this time the military implications of Roman equites and the Public Horse have drifted into formal honorifics, like calling Salman Rushdie a knight. Yeah, he's Sir Rushdie, just don't ask him to joust or anything. These were Italian auxiliae granted in service to the SPQR subject to whatever treaty their tribe had in place (Latin Rights, etc etc.), not exotics like Gauls and Numidians. By the late Republic, guys like Caesar are grabbing whoever they can get and are spending a lot of time overseas, so you see a lot more mercenaries showing up. Some of these mercenary groups (or their ethnic descendants at least) will eventually become the core of Imperial Aux units like the Batavian Horse, once their homelands are formally incorporated into the Empire.
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Aug 8, 2013 19:31
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Jazerus posted:Absolutely. We've found Roman hashish paraphernalia with remaining residue quite recently in I think Albania, though I don't have the source at hand. IV:XX every day
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Aug 8, 2013 21:24
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Alchenar posted:I'm guessing I'm asking about mid/late Republic, the point at which anyone wanting to do anything in politics has to go and do military service of some kind the moment they hit adulthood. Like physeter said, the cavalry in that period were all filthy non-romans, and being stuck with them was not something to brag about. It's been discussed but whilst there wasn't anything like modern racism (X-skin color is better at things), there was definitely a distinction between "Roman Citizens" and "Fuckin' Scum"; you were one or the other and auxilia republican cavalry were the other. But no-one who wanted a political career was a ranker in any force. They had family connections to get attached to a generals personal staff, or they were a loving nobody who would never have a forum career. There are very few exceptions to that, and they were the toss-pots you'd expect (Cato - no-one wanted to take him). Even most homo novus were from wealthy country squire families and had forum patrons who could get them some sort of aide-de-camp posting (Marius? Cicero).
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Aug 8, 2013 23:34
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Gravedancing posted:This was branded on their shoulders, right? Like the SPQR Maximus has in Gladiator? Well, the Latin word for 'tattoo' is 'stigma', so that should give you some idea of what they thought of tattoos. They were usually used to mark slaves and criminals. As for beards and hairstyles, they varied over time, the same as they do today. But yeah, for most of Roman history the men tended to stay clean shaven with short hair. As for women's hair, some of the hairstyles could be fairly elaborate, and up until fairly recently, most historians figured they were wearing wigs. A few years ago a historically interested hairdresser named Janet Stephens actually made waves by arguing that women's hair could be styled using the tools of the time, and has even published a few articles about it. Because it turns out professors of history don't know that much about women's hairstyling. Here is her Youtube page if you're interested in learning how to style a woman's hair like a Vestal virgin.
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Aug 9, 2013 00:23
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Gravedancing posted:What did Romans think, if anything, of piercings, tats & hair? I've always thought of Romans as being conservative in a no piercings, tattoos, clean shaven, no crazy haircuts, etc. way. Greek fashion was in favor of beards until the time of Alexander the Great, who is depicted as clean-shaven. Philosophers wore beards as signs of their profession even after Alexander's day, and there's a saying, πωγωνοτροφία φιλόσοφον οὐ ποιεῖ, (pogonotrophia philosophon ou poiei), "an extravagant beard does not make the philosopher", and another one, ἐκ πώγωνος σοφός, (ek pogonos sophos), which is like "his wisdom was only his beard". According to Pliny, the first Roman to shave every day was Scipio Africanus, and so shaving became fashionable among the upper classes and beards became a sign of being lower class. In Roman culture, beards could be a sign of mourning (ie, something like "I won't shave until I've mourned my friend"), whereas Greeks would shave their beards for the same purpose. fantastic in plastic fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Aug 9, 2013 |
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Aug 9, 2013 00:37
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So I finally started watching Spartacus, I remember some guys asked about it before. There's plenty of nonsense but two things that stand out as being in like every episode: Women were allowed to attend the games, but they had to stand at the top of the arena with the slaves and foreigners. They were not mixed into the regular crowd. Most gladiatorial matches did not end in death--matches that did were special and advertised as such. Gladiators are expensive, any school that was having as many killed as this one would be bankrupt quick.
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Aug 9, 2013 01:06
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However, Hadrian brought the philosopher's beard back into style. Also, a primary visual distinction between Romans and Gauls/Germans/etc. was that Romans did not under any circumstances wear only a mustache, while the "barbarian" style was to have the most baller mustache possible. This distinction existed for the entire imperial period even among, say, Romanized Gauls - they would often retain the mustache as the only real evidence of their heritage. Late in the empire when barbarians begin to be actively discriminated against there emerges a Roman youth counterculture that is totally into mustaches and pants.
Jazerus fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Aug 9, 2013 |
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Aug 9, 2013 01:08
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What do we know about tribal Europe and Asia from the period between the original settlements coming from Africa and the Middle East, and the rise of the first 'great' civilizations of their continents? There seems to be plenty of talk about the fertile crescent and whatnot, but not much about what was going on elsewhere.
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Aug 9, 2013 04:30
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Jazerus posted:However, Hadrian brought the philosopher's beard back into style. Also, a primary visual distinction between Romans and Gauls/Germans/etc. was that Romans did not under any circumstances wear only a mustache, while the "barbarian" style was to have the most baller mustache possible. This distinction existed for the entire imperial period even among, say, Romanized Gauls - they would often retain the mustache as the only real evidence of their heritage. Late in the empire when barbarians begin to be actively discriminated against there emerges a Roman youth counterculture that is totally into mustaches and pants. Oh, speaking of counterculture youth - back when Julius Caesar was a young man he apparently rolled with the hipsters of the day. Wore his belt loose, mocked the old fudds, the whole nine.
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Aug 9, 2013 04:40
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How old was he? After he lost his priesthood he probably wanted to let it all hang out, wearing belts with knots in them and rings with actual gemstones on them.
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Aug 9, 2013 06:05
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Medieval Medic posted:What do we know about tribal Europe and Asia from the period between the original settlements coming from Africa and the Middle East, and the rise of the first 'great' civilizations of their continents? That's because there really wasn't a lot going on elsewhere. Agriculture started spreading outward from the Middle East about 9000 BC, which allowed for some hamlets to form, but in most places the land wore out in a few years so they would be regularly packing up and moving to new land. This prevented much of any larger-scale organization from developing. There were some trade networks, but not much more. It took the regular annual flooding in Egypt and Mesopotamia to keep the ground fertile for extended periods and allow civilizations to grow. Large grain surpluses meant that a significant fraction of the population was freed from the land, allowing specialization of skills and trade. This led to government, laws, taxes, and all the rest.
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Aug 9, 2013 06:15
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They have nice Roman and Byzantine sections at the Metropolitan museum, maybe I'll go there this weekend and take some nice photos for this thread. I feel like going just to focus on those exhibits.
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Aug 9, 2013 06:36
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karl fungus posted:They have nice Roman and Byzantine sections at the Metropolitan museum, maybe I'll go there this weekend and take some nice photos for this thread. I feel like going just to focus on those exhibits. Please do, those of us who can't get out to wonderful exhibits like this would love to see them. By which I mean me. Please do it for me. 
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Aug 9, 2013 06:43
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Halloween Jack posted:How old was he? After he lost his priesthood he probably wanted to let it all hang out, wearing belts with knots in them and rings with actual gemstones on them. This was a few years after losing the priesthood, I believe - when he came back from his first bout of military service after hearing Sulla died he hung around and played Denny Crane for a while. It was his early 20's and he was trying to make a sort of comeback, I imagine, considering Sulla had initially wanted to purge him due to the fact that he was a) Marius' nephew and b) Cinna's son-in-law. E: My local art museum had an ancient Egyptian exhibit visiting for a bit, it was interesting to see how Egyptian sarcophagi were all nicely carved and painted, whereas after you get around to Greek/Ptolemy and Roman control they're just coffins with relatively flat covers, with the faces of what I assume are the dead guy/gal inside just painted on top. It was neat to see how detailed some of the art was for being several thousand years old. It's easy to forget that after humanity started settling into metropolitan existence art started looking really, really good. Like going from childhood clay sculpture to art study. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 12:52 on Aug 9, 2013 |
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Aug 9, 2013 12:45
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I think some of the archeology in Turkey and other places is showing some of the first cities were maybe based on religion (and trade) rather than on agriculture. Which is an interesting twist.
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Aug 9, 2013 14:17
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To reiterate a question I posed in passing: It's been my impression that Lares and penates were just as important, if not more important, to the religious lives of Romans as the big Olympian gods. Is this true? Was there any class distinction in religious worship? I mean, obviously they didn't think all people were equal before the gods, but I'm wondering about other ways class may have impacted religious worship.
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Aug 9, 2013 14:54
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I have another question about Roman fashion--I know it's not like you can show me photographs, so this is a tough one. If lots of Romans rigorously practiced hair-plucking, shaving, and other forms of depilation, how did they prevent rashes and ingrown hairs? Even with all kinds of modern grooming products, it took me a long time to find the regimen that doesn't irritate my skin.
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Aug 9, 2013 15:04
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Captain Postal posted:Like physeter said, the cavalry in that period were all filthy non-romans, and being stuck with them was not something to brag about. It's been discussed but whilst there wasn't anything like modern racism (X-skin color is better at things), there was definitely a distinction between "Roman Citizens" and "Fuckin' Scum"; you were one or the other and auxilia republican cavalry were the other.
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Aug 9, 2013 15:26
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