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Which fall?
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 15:14 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 01:58 |
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How close were the Russian Grand Duchies / Scandinavian Countries and the Byzantines? Between the Russians & Byzantines I"m wondering more about their Orthodox-connections, was there any real support of the byzantines from them due to that connection? From the Scandinavians, I'm wondering more about the Varangian Guard and that arrangement. Was there any real distinction between Byzantine & Western European armies between 1k C.E. and 1453? Let me know if this should go in the Medieval Thread instead, thanks.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 15:24 |
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BlueGrot posted:Which fall? I only care about the period where Asterix & Obelix is set, and the fall of Troy. Don't give me "which of the 14 falls of Troy", I'm talking about the Iliad! But really - just anything you think is well-known and wrong.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 15:27 |
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:How close were the Russian Grand Duchies / Scandinavian Countries and the Byzantines? Between the Russians & Byzantines I"m wondering more about their Orthodox-connections, was there any real support of the byzantines from them due to that connection? From the Scandinavians, I'm wondering more about the Varangian Guard and that arrangement. Was there any real distinction between Byzantine & Western European armies between 1k C.E. and 1453? Well, both the pope and the patriarch sponsored missions to convert the heathens of northern and eastern Europe. It was a Byzantine monk/scholar (St. Cyril, who also supposedly invented the Cyrillic alphabet) that had the most success with the Slavs of the region, meaning they went Orthodox. Before their conversion, the Rus attacked several times, and were repulsed in a variety of amusing ways. After their conversion, they didn't attack quite so much, but they had their own poo poo to deal with (norse invasions, infighting, norse infighting) that they never really lent too much military support to the Byzantines. Even though they did swap princesses every once in a while.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 15:50 |
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The blanket misconception that covers a lot of other things is that ancient people were stupid. All sorts of other bullshit falls under this umbrella. Ancient people were exactly the same as us, they just didn't have the benefit of all the knowledge and experience we do. And they could do incredible things even so.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 16:05 |
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Grand Fromage posted:Ancient people were exactly the same as us, they just didn't have the benefit of all the knowledge and experience we do. Also they liked stabbing a lot more than us.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 16:08 |
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Drunkboxer posted:Also they liked stabbing a lot more than us. Well, if they could kill their enemies witn flying robots without having to get up from the couch to put on armor (or even pants) i'm sure they would have preferred that. But they didn't have the accumulated technology to do so.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 16:44 |
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sullat posted:Well, if they could kill their enemies witn flying robots without having to get up from the couch to put on armor (or even pants) i'm sure they would have preferred that. But they didn't have the accumulated technology to do so. I dunno. The Romans could have just drank poison when they wanted to off themselves, but they opted for the stabbing most times. I think they just liked it.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 16:47 |
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Drunkboxer posted:I dunno. The Romans could have just drank poison when they wanted to off themselves, but they opted for the stabbing most times. I think they just liked it. And where would your average person get poison? Everyone had access to knives or maybe even swords, it'd just be more convenient. Kind of like how many people today commit suicide with guns.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 16:53 |
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canuckanese posted:And where would your average person get poison? Everyone had access to knives or maybe even swords, it'd just be more convenient. Kind of like how many people today commit suicide with guns. Cato the Younger wasn't average, and he just stabbed his guts out. I'm telling you guys they loved it.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 17:00 |
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canuckanese posted:And where would your average person get poison? Everyone had access to knives or maybe even swords, it'd just be more convenient. Kind of like how many people today commit suicide with guns. Probably from the forest in the backyard with the witch living in it
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 17:15 |
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Drunkboxer posted:Cato the Younger wasn't average, and he just stabbed his guts out. I'm telling you guys they loved it. Probably because it was the MANLY thing to do, and Roman upper class society was all about MANLINESS.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 17:15 |
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The true* story of Cato's death revealed by Plutarch!quote:Cato did not immediately die of the wound; but struggling, fell off the bed, and throwing down a little mathematical table that stood by, made such a noise that the servants, hearing it, cried out. And immediately his son and all his friends came into the chamber, where, seeing him lie weltering in his own blood, great part of his bowels out of his body, but himself still alive and able to look at them, they all stood in horror. The physician went to him, and would have put in his bowels, which were not pierced, and sewed up the wound; but Cato, recovering himself, and understanding the intention, thrust away the physician, plucked out his own bowels, and tearing open the wound, immediately expired. * not true.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 17:18 |
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euphronius posted:The true* story of Cato's death revealed by Plutarch! Yeah I guess it probably isn't. But I always liked that story.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 17:25 |
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The Cato story always makes me feel good because of what an rear end in a top hat he and his family were. Motherfucker didn't get to go easily and (as the story goes) had to rip himself open a second time. Even as a tall tale it's still nice to think it happened that way. Crassus is another one of those characters that got the death they deserved - chased down in the desert, taken prisoner, beheaded, and the head (allegedly) filled with gold because of what a greedy fuckface he was.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 18:27 |
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The Entire Universe posted:The Cato story always makes me feel good because of what an rear end in a top hat he and his family were. Motherfucker didn't get to go easily and (as the story goes) had to rip himself open a second time. Even as a tall tale it's still nice to think it happened that way. What did Cato do that was assholish? I mean, more than any other Roman politician in those day.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 18:30 |
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Cato aggressively campaigned for the destruction of Carthage when it was already down and out, and also hated Greek culture. Later Romans were often sentimental about him because of his folksy appeal as an aristocratic farmer, but it's clear he was a boorish and uncultured gently caress. Unless I'm mistaking him here for the other Cato.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 18:47 |
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the jizz taxi posted:Cato aggressively campaigned for the destruction of Carthage when it was already down and out, and also hated Greek culture. Later Romans were often sentimental about him because of his folksy appeal as an aristocratic farmer, but it's clear he was a boorish and uncultured gently caress. That's Cato the Elder. Cato the Younger, who opposed Caesar, was kind of just a conservative dude who wanted to end corruption in Roman politics.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 18:50 |
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Not enough stink-eye though.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 18:54 |
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Jazerus posted:The real divide, though, was class-based. Vulgar Latin, the language of the masses, diverged quite early from the formal upper-class Latin we tend to read today. Regarding Vulgar Latin, here's something I posted on another forum: quote:I was watching some video in portuguese today and some words that were very similar/identical to romanian ones made me think how romanian is in some ways like a mix of all other romance languages. I really wish Vulgar Latin and it's dialects would have been well documented, maybe that way we'd get some answers to stuff like those weird Romanian/Portuguese similarities.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 20:03 |
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Cingulate posted:As an outsider, if any of you feel like going over the most important or your favourite common misconceptions regarding ancient history, that would be interesting. My biggest one is the idea that Rome-in-the-West collapsed suddenly after getting invaded by vast numbers of people that were definitely German (ie. not Roman). That's at least the impression I get about the common narrative about what happened. In reality, the decline of Rome-in-the-West was a rather slow thing, and more characterized by various factions within the Empire fighting over who got to call the shots, rather than peoples wanting to carve chunks out of the Empire. If anything, those people really wanted to live in the Empire; it was the coolest place around, and the standard of living tended to be noticeably higher within it (at least for the elite types). These guy adopted Roman habits, spoke Latin, and were pretty drat Roman, if provincial Romans. But they definitely wanted a piece of the political power pie, and were more than willing to fight for it. The carving off of different areas from the Empire tended to happen mostly when the local power brokers failed in a bid for power, or were noticeably excluded, at which point they tend to declare one of their own leaders as a King. Many of the big names we think of as the 'barbarians' who destroyed the Empire certainly didn't have that as their intention. Bound up in that is also the idea that Rome stopped at the Rhine and Danube, and everyone beyond that was distinctly Germanic. All the evidence we have shows that those local areas regularly interacted with Rome, Roman goods were common there, and often local legitimacy was derived through association with Rome, and subsequent access to prestige goods from the Empire. Grand Fromage posted:The blanket misconception that covers a lot of other things is that ancient people were stupid. All sorts of other bullshit falls under this umbrella. Ancient people were exactly the same as us, they just didn't have the benefit of all the knowledge and experience we do. And they could do incredible things even so. This is a great point. Similarly the more I read about how ancient Rome was organized, the more our political systems don't really look that different. Obviously the version of liberal democracy that exists in the west now would be foreign to them, but it's still shaped by the same influences cast by local elites. Although that might say more about my jaded political philosophy than anything.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 20:20 |
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PittTheElder posted:My biggest one is the idea that Rome-in-the-West collapsed suddenly after getting invaded by vast numbers of people that were definitely German (ie. not Roman). That's at least the impression I get about the common narrative about what happened. I'm a history noob, but this is also my impression. I used to teach english social studies for EFL-learners, and the book stated that the decline of western rome was a gradual and complex thing, even stating CE497 as the year it ended (don't remember why). I was baffled to find out that the history book by the same publisher is alot more conservative.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 20:23 |
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BlueGrot posted:I'm a history noob, but this is also my impression. I used to teach english social studies for EFL-learners, and the book stated that the decline of western rome was a gradual and complex thing, even stating CE497 as the year it ended (don't remember why). I was baffled to find out that the history book by the same publisher is alot more conservative. From a quick google, that is the year Anastatius I from the East recognized the Ostrogothic kingdom in Rome as legitimate. That's kind of an odd date to put for the end of the WRE, since the last Emperor had been deposed in 476, and the last people with any actual claims to Roman legitimacy were killed off before then. WoodrowSkillson fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Aug 14, 2013 |
# ? Aug 14, 2013 20:27 |
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BlueGrot posted:I'm a history noob, but this is also my impression. I used to teach english social studies for EFL-learners, and the book stated that the decline of western rome was a gradual and complex thing, even stating CE497 as the year it ended (don't remember why). I was baffled to find out that the history book by the same publisher is alot more conservative. 497 is the year that Emperor Anastasius officially recognized Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, as his representative in Rome. He was a token servant of the Roman Emperor, but in reality they had absolutely no authority over him. Essentially, it's the year that Italy/the western half of the empire was officially ceded to non-Roman power. 497 is when Rome loses control of Italy. WoodrowSkillson posted:From a quick google, that is the year Anastatius I from the East recognized the Ostrogothic kingdom in Rome as legitimate. That's kind of an odd date to put for the end of the WRE, since the last Emperor had been deposed in 476, and the last people with any actual claims to Roman legitimacy were killed off before then. 476 is when Rome "fell" and that's when Odoacer took control, but the difference is that he asked the Eastern Emperor (Zeno) to rule both halves of the empire, which Zeno agreed to. Odoacer and Theodoric fought each other for control of the Ostrogoth Kingdom, with Theodoric winning by 493, and being fully independent and essentially free of Roman control by 497 as mentioned above. Jamwad Hilder fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Aug 14, 2013 |
# ? Aug 14, 2013 20:29 |
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Edit: should have refreshed the page before posting
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 21:18 |
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3peat posted:Regarding Vulgar Latin, here's something I posted on another forum: That's not really any weirder than Portuguese, Italian and Swedish all having roughly the same word for "is": "e". There's only a limited number of directions sound change can take.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 21:47 |
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canuckanese posted:497 is the year that Emperor Anastasius officially recognized Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, as his representative in Rome. He was a token servant of the Roman Emperor, but in reality they had absolutely no authority over him. Essentially, it's the year that Italy/the western half of the empire was officially ceded to non-Roman power. 497 is when Rome loses control of Italy.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 21:56 |
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sullat posted:Well, if they could kill their enemies witn flying robots without having to get up from the couch to put on armor (or even pants) i'm sure they would have preferred that. But they didn't have the accumulated technology to do so. They didn't need robots. According to Sam Kean's "The Disappearing Spoon," arsenic spread on figs was the Roman assassin's method of choice. Arsenic was found readily in sulfur mines. AdjectiveNoun posted:Probably because it was the MANLY thing to do, and Roman upper class society was all about MANLINESS. They probably liked arsenic so much because the name itself was MANLY. Wikipedia/Arsenic posted:The word arsenic (...) is also related to the similar Greek word arsenikos (Αρσενικός), meaning "masculine" or "potent". The word was adopted in Latin arsenicum. PittTheElder posted:Bound up in that is also the idea that Rome stopped at the Rhine and Danube, and everyone beyond that was distinctly Germanic. All the evidence we have shows that those local areas regularly interacted with Rome, Roman goods were common there, and often local legitimacy was derived through association with Rome, and subsequent access to prestige goods from the Empire. Rome's chief source of amber was the Baltic, all the more reason for trade routes to exist into Central Europe.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 22:34 |
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Drunkboxer posted:Cato the Younger wasn't average, and he just stabbed his guts out. I'm telling you guys they loved it. Given what I understand about Cato the Younger's philosophy on life, he wouldn't have done it if he loved it!
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 22:42 |
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WoodrowSkillson posted:From a quick google, that is the year Anastatius I from the East recognized the Ostrogothic kingdom in Rome as legitimate. That's kind of an odd date to put for the end of the WRE, since the last Emperor had been deposed in 476, and the last people with any actual claims to Roman legitimacy were killed off before then. Pfft, the real last Western Emperor, Julius Nepos, didn't die until 480.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 22:43 |
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Who wrote about Nepos and Augustulus? Like, what are our sources on them?
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 22:48 |
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canuckanese posted:497 is the year that Emperor Anastasius officially recognized Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, as his representative in Rome. He was a token servant of the Roman Emperor, but in reality they had absolutely no authority over him. Essentially, it's the year that Italy/the western half of the empire was officially ceded to non-Roman power. 497 is when Rome loses control of Italy. That's... actually not a bad way to put it. The West fell at this date because that's when the East just stopped caring about it. (For a while...) For the record, we've had this argument before, but I do like drawing a distinction between the Roman Empire under, say, Constantine, and the entity know as the Eastern Roman Empire simply because there were a lot of claims to the Imperial legitimacy, if we go about privileging the ERE as the true Roman Empire (as in, the one and only) then what about the Holy Roman Empire, Tsarist Russia or the Sultanate of Rum or hell, even the Papacy. Sure, treating the Byzantines as some sort of red headed stepchild ala Gibbons is silly, but so I think declaring them the one and only Roman Empire is maybe pushing the pendulum too far the other way. I also don't have a lot of problems with the term Byzantine. Maybe it's because I read Thucydides right before I got into my (abridged) Rise and Fall, but Byzantium was a pretty drat important location long before Constantine put his capital there. Eastern Roman, is, I think, a better term, but then when there's no Western Empire to be East of... well, Byzantine works fine for me. It's not inherently Orientalist or anything.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 23:10 |
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the JJ posted:For the record, we've had this argument before, but I do like drawing a distinction between the Roman Empire under, say, Constantine, and the entity know as the Eastern Roman Empire simply because there were a lot of claims to the Imperial legitimacy, if we go about privileging the ERE as the true Roman Empire (as in, the one and only) then what about the Holy Roman Empire, Tsarist Russia or the Sultanate of Rum or hell, even the Papacy. Usurpers the lot of them. Pithiness aside, Rome-in-the-East has a claim to being the true Roman Empire that's far stronger than any of those other guys. The Papacy probably comes closest to them, but it's still Constantinople by miles and miles. They were the Roman government that had been in basically continuous operation since the early Imperial era. Those other polities also have the advantage of different names that you can't really confuse with Roman Empire. The HRE would be the one exception, but it's so often abbreviated, and it's obscure enough that would get them confused often haven't heard of it at all. quote:Sure, treating the Byzantines as some sort of red headed stepchild ala Gibbons is silly, but so I think declaring them the one and only Roman Empire is maybe pushing the pendulum too far the other way. I also don't have a lot of problems with the term Byzantine. Maybe it's because I read Thucydides right before I got into my (abridged) Rise and Fall, but Byzantium was a pretty drat important location long before Constantine put his capital there. Eastern Roman, is, I think, a better term, but then when there's no Western Empire to be East of... well, Byzantine works fine for me. It's not inherently Orientalist or anything. I think Eastern Roman is a reasonable compromise when Rome-in-the-West (-in-the-East/West being my personal favorite term that as far as I know only I use) is starting to come apart, and you really do have a Western Empire to contrast the East to. By, say 600, Rome-in-the-West is so long in the grave that using the word Roman Empire is pretty much completely unambiguous unless you're talking to someone who doesn't really know anything about history. Byzantine really plays into the idea that it was a different entity than it had been in centuries past, which is simply incorrect. They just switched to speaking Greek. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Aug 14, 2013 |
# ? Aug 14, 2013 23:20 |
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The East never stopped caring about the West. Especially not about Italy. The reason your "Byzantine" Empire gets called Roman is because there was a direct continuity between it and all the other Roman states before it. You can't slap an artificial name on a state just because it feels right to you. The HRE, Tsarist Russia, etc. made certain claims on the idea of Rome. The state with its capital at Constantinople actually was Rome, with an unbroken continuity going back to Romulus and Remus.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 23:25 |
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PittTheElder posted:Pfft, the real last Western Emperor, Julius Nepos, didn't die until 480. Don't you mean Francis II in 18- ah crap I can't say this with a straight face. In seriousness, the great crime of Gibbon's byzantine historiography is that the actual last emperor of the Roman empire went out with a bang that Romans two thousand years earlier would have appreciated: quote:Before the beginning of the siege, Mehmed II made an offer to Constantine XI. In exchange for the surrender of Constantinople, the emperor's life would be spared and he would continue to rule in Mistra, to which, as preserved by G. Sphrantzes, Constantine replied:
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 23:33 |
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There's another point. Which story do you like better: the last Emperor of Rome was a teenage puppet of a German general who retired to live in complete obscurity in a lavish villa on the Bay of Naples. Empire, over. OR the last Emperor died beside his soldiers and his citizens fighting against impossible odds on the walls of his capital city. Even better if you know that Constantine XI could have totally escaped to the Morea and saved himself, for at least a little while, leaving everyone to die with no leadership whatsoever. He didn't.
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# ? Aug 14, 2013 23:41 |
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While on the issue, while it is sort of an ambiguous thing, at what point did the West really "fall"? Even the Germanic take over seemed to be more the Roman Empire letting Germans kind of oversee what by this point was a crappy part of the Empire. When the East and West didn't see eye to eye, I've always had the impression that the Romans figured they could ~someday~ roll back in and set up their own rulers if they needed to. Things only seemed to really change after the Arab Conquests. At that point it started to sink in that the Romans weren't going to be coming back to help retake Gaul or Hispania and people in the West started to look after themselves.
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# ? Aug 15, 2013 00:00 |
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While on the topic, who's read Mika Waltari's The Dark Angel [Johannes Angelos]? A novel on the fall of Constantinople. It was published in 1952, how accurate was it?
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# ? Aug 15, 2013 00:12 |
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PittTheElder posted:Usurpers the lot of them. Pithiness aside, Rome-in-the-East has a claim to being the true Roman Empire that's far stronger than any of those other guys. The Papacy probably comes closest to them, but it's still Constantinople by miles and miles. They were the Roman government that had been in basically continuous operation since the early Imperial era. What makes the RitE claim stronger than the Papacy's, or by that token, the HRE et. al.? What makes Mehmed's usurpation any different than Constantine's victory over his rivals in the East and his subsequent shift over? Leo the Syrian and Basil the Macedonian kicked out the reigning Emperor's, but they're more legitimate because... ? Is the shift to Greek and Christian a smaller shift than Turkish and Islam? Is the shift to themes less radical than the shift to the millet system? quote:Those other polities also have the advantage of different names that you can't really confuse with Roman Empire. The HRE would be the one exception, but it's so often abbreviated, and it's obscure enough that would get them confused often haven't heard of it at all. I'll disagree on a coupla of accounts. The Sultanate of Rum and Romania are, well, ROME with a funny accent. If we translated it the way we do Basileia Rhōmaiōn we'd start running into confusion. But if we pick the one ERE as the one true Rome which we shall call Rome, we privilege the ERE as the one and only legitimate successor because... why? It's really sloppy historiography. Obviously, the ERE Emperors thought of themselves as the legitimate sucessors to Rome, but so did the Ottomans, so did the Hapsburgs, it's not a historian's place to go in and say 'you were right and you are wrong.' Also, the HRE is obscure? Charlemagne is obscure? THe Habsburgs are obscure? quote:I think Eastern Roman is a reasonable compromise when Rome-in-the-West (-in-the-East/West being my personal favorite term that as far as I know only I use) quote:is starting to come apart, and you really do have a Western Empire to contrast the East to. As I mentioned, and why I do actually like Byzantine as a term. There are long stretches where it isn't really East of anything recognizable as a Roman Empire just Roman Empire-ish bits and an upjumped Bishop so, until Chaz rolls around, it's sorta a silly term. quote:By, say 600, Rome-in-the-West is so long in the grave that using the word Roman Empire is pretty much completely unambiguous unless you're talking to someone who doesn't really know anything about history. Except in a few hundred years it does get really complicated and then there's this post-Byzantine bit where there's still a few 'Roman Empires' bouncing around. quote:Byzantine really plays into the idea that it was a different entity than it had been in centuries past, which is simply incorrect. They just switched to speaking Greek. Just and just. The ERE and the, say Empire circa Augustinian are radically different. You get themes and Greek and a totally new and very important religious system. The Empire was 'just' like the Republic only all the offices were concentrated into one man's hands. And then they just happened to start passing those along by inheritance. Some transitions are fast, some are slow, but I think it's good to have a different term for the Republic and the Empire. Likewise the post fall in the West, Christian, Greek, thing that is the ERE. I'd buy Medieval Roman Empire (as in, Republican -> Imperial -> Medieval) only you do have these competing claims. As a historian, it's not your job to go into a historical pissing contest, roll out the measuring tape and say 'yes, indeed, Basil made it out to 5 feet, Charlemagne only managed 4!' It's your job to say 'there was a pissing contest. Let's see what that says about these people and how they acted, and let's see how this contest affected what they did and why they did it.' Sometimes, that means no one gets to be the one-and-only true successor to Rome. tl;dr: Either everyone is Rome, or no one is.
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# ? Aug 15, 2013 00:13 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 01:58 |
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Berke Negri posted:While on the issue, while it is sort of an ambiguous thing, at what point did the West really "fall"? Even the Germanic take over seemed to be more the Roman Empire letting Germans kind of oversee what by this point was a crappy part of the Empire. When the East and West didn't see eye to eye, I've always had the impression that the Romans figured they could ~someday~ roll back in and set up their own rulers if they needed to. Sorta what we were talking about above, about BlueGrot's textbook putting it at 497. I'd say putting the 'fall' of Western Rome at the death of the last Western Emperor until Charlemagne's not a bad way to do it. I mean, the East was still going to scrap for the West, but they and the Germanic peps were done pretending that an Emperor in the West was a meaningful title. Alternatively, I'd put it at the Pope crowning Charlemagne, basically the culmination of the West going 'gently caress you dad!' to the East and really going their own way. Alt. alt. when the dirty muslims came, alt. alt. alt. death of the Tsars alt. alt. alt. alt. Young Turks abolish the Ottoman Empire, alt. alt. alt. alt. alt. whenever the reddit atheists man up and nuke the Vatican. Alt. alt. alt. alt. alt. however many we're at now, Napoleon abolishes the HRE.
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# ? Aug 15, 2013 00:21 |