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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. That's not really a question that has one acceptable answer. 476 is probably the best one, particularly since even contemporaries realizes the deposition of Augustulus and his replacement with nobody was something of a big deal. Also, I take issue with you calling them Germanic or Germans. Odoacer probably was one of the rougher lot, but a lot of these guys had been born within the Empire, spoke Latin from an early age, received Roman educations, and often behaved in Roman ways. Their barbarian identity is often related to their closeness with the army, which had been adopting a barbarian identity even when it was made up of definitely Roman soldiers. the JJ posted: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? The reason I like RitE's claim is because it's a continuous political entity dating back to a time when it was clearly The Roman Empire, in the 3rd or 4th Century. There's no real point where you can say Rome stopped existing, and a Byzantine Empire began. The fact that the people within it also self-identified as Romans goes a long ways. The Papacy has a pretty good claim to the Roman legacy as well, since it's a fundamentally Roman institution, but as a primarily ecclesiastical regime, it's also fundamentally different from what the Roman empire was. As for why Mehmed's usurpation, it's not quite the same thing. The Ottomans had been a completely separate polity for more than a century before the fall of Constantinople, with a completely different origin story as it were. Had the Ottomans been a Roman breakaway state (similar to the Empire of Trebizond), that then conquered the former Empire and adopted all it's trappings, I might be willing to call them the continuation of Rome until 1918 or so. But they weren't. They were a rival polity, and despite the adoption of the Roman title after the Fall of Constantinople, the people within still didn't really self-identify as Roman, at least to my knowledge. Then there's the issue of Islam. While it seems politically incorrect to say it, Christianity had been pretty fundamental to the Roman identity for a thousand years. quote:I'll disagree on a coupla of accounts. The Sultanate of Rum and Romania are, well, ROME with a funny accent. True. But they're different in English, so no worries.  quote: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.' My willingness to call the Byzantines the one true Roman Empire is because I don't think they're successors to Rome. They were Rome. They never stopped being Rome in the first place. Clearly this was not the case for the HRE or the Ottomans. quote:Also, the HRE is obscure? Charlemagne is obscure? THe Habsburgs are obscure? I'd wager the HRE is, at least to people who don't really care about history, which is the metric I'm using. Charlemagne is a pretty famous dude even now, at least to the extent that people recognize the name, but if you asked random people about it, I doubt many of them could tell you anything about him, or knew that he laid the groundwork for an empire that lasted nearly a thousand years. At least that's my North American perspective. Might be completely different in Europe. Certainly just about anyone who has even a passing interest in European history will know all of those topics. quote:
Yeah, I know. I swear I'm not trying to be a huge rear end in a top hat about it either, it's just what I like. Makes them sound less like two completely separate entities. I might be tired of it in 6 months too. I'm perfectly OK with ERE and WRE, at least for the periods where they both exist. quote: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. Yeah, I don't like Eastern Roman Empire for that same reason. But I still think calling them Byzantine has all sorts of connotations that involve them not being Roman at all. I'd rather just leave it at Roman Empire and call it a day. quote: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. I don't think it gets that complicated though. Despite their claim to Imperial authority through the church, I'm confident in saying that Charlemagne's empire and the HRE are distinctly different things. Maybe I'm wrong to do so, but those few hundred years where they clearly weren't very Roman at all make the difference. quote: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. The Empire of 1400AD certainly was very different than the one of 600AD, 50AD, or the Republic. Having a different term for it certainly wouldn't be a bad idea, I'd just want to be drat sure that the word Roman is in there somewhere; Medieval Roman Empire seems perfectly acceptable to me. But whatever you call them, at the end of the day, they were far more Roman than they were not-Roman, which isn't really the case for all the other claimants named. e: ah, that's sure a mess of terrible and pointless text.
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Aug 15, 2013 01:30
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
(I kid, I kid, but yeah, ERE WRE is the same thing only more readily accepted and less 
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PittTheElder posted:e: ah, that's sure a mess of terrible and pointless text. Intuitively, I'd go with Berke Negri's idea that to me, history would be more interesting when explaining why people chose to call themselves something, rather than trying to figure out how legitimate that claim was, but the debate is interesting nonetheless.
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Aug 15, 2013 01:45
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My issue with the "It was different in 1200 than it was in 400 therefore it's not the same state" argument is that you can make literally the exact same statement, "Rome was way different in 300 AD than it was in 600 BC", and no one would accept or seriously offer that argument. And they'd be right to reject it. Of course it was different, it was a thousand years. The claim of Constantinople and that of Moscow or the HRE or whoever are not even remotely comparable, is it really confusing? The eastern government exists continuously from its foundation in the 300s to 1453. Everyone else is trying to claim imperial legitimacy through various means, some of which are much more of a stretch than others.
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Aug 15, 2013 01:55
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PittTheElder posted:Yeah, I don't like Eastern Roman Empire for that same reason. But I still think calling them Byzantine has all sorts of connotations that involve them not being Roman at all. I'd rather just leave it at Roman Empire and call it a day. I think this whole discussion is a pretty illustrative example of why we shouldn't be calling them the Byzantines. They were not successors like the HRE, Papacy, and Ottomans, they were a continuation.
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Aug 15, 2013 02:04
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PittTheElder posted:That's not really a question that has one acceptable answer. 476 is probably the best one, particularly since even contemporaries realizes the deposition of Augustulus and his replacement with nobody was something of a big deal. Sorry, I was just being lazy by referring to them as Germans. I know that identity at this period is fairly hazy and that was kind of my point that even after Rome "fell" on the ground it seems like you were just switching out strongmen and doing away with puppet emperors who weren't even in Rome by this point. But you are right that when Rome "fell" it was definitely a big deal. Some Church Father that I'm blanking on right now was basically like "Ah, gently caress." when it happened.
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Aug 15, 2013 02:18
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As for when society in the west changed, the archaeology and what little written material we have suggests that life continued more or less the same everywhere except Britain until into the 600s. Around the time of the Muslim conquests, the archaeological evidence suggests that international trade collapses. Exotic goods not found locally stop showing up in the pits at this time. Gold coinage disappears as well, which is suggestive of an economic collapse. We know the Roman Senate continues to meet into the 600s, though sadly that is literally all we know about it. So I would say your average person in Gaul's life is probably about the same in 600 as it was in 400 or 200. But in 800, things are different--though as has been mentioned, the life of a dirt farmer doesn't change that much whether it's 1500 BCE or 1500 CE.
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Aug 15, 2013 02:30
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InspectorBloor posted:It's quite obvious that the author is a fan of popular racial bar-room theories of that time. "Negroid tribes become a serious social problem" or other gems like when he goes on to talk about proportions of heads and colour of hair. I'm quite sure Himmler would have opened a wonderful career opportunity for this guy. Anyway, this is a wonderful example for the popular racist "science" talk of the 30s. It's surprisingly short on the jews though. I was asking if the reference to blood-mixing is based on some war or restructuring of Europe's ethnic boundaries. I know that it's a racist theory, I'm just baffled where the reasoning that the Renaissance was caused by the intermarriage of those particular ethnicities came from.
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Aug 15, 2013 02:35
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Grand Fromage posted:My issue with the "It was different in 1200 than it was in 400 therefore it's not the same state" argument is that you can make literally the exact same statement, "Rome was way different in 300 AD than it was in 600 BC", and no one would accept or seriously offer that argument. And they'd be right to reject it. Of course it was different, it was a thousand years. Just quoting you as a stand in. I guess I disagree. Diocletian splitting the Empire into two Augustuses and two Caesars was kinda a big deal and even before the West fell you got a real separation. There's you separate polity. Especially with Constantine going Christian (as Mehmet to Islam) this coincides with a real big shake up in religious and linguistic/cultural shifts. You definitely did get all sorts of people 'identifying' as Roman, especially people living in Rome and actually speaking Latin, or at least a derivative thereof. I mean, all those loving Dukes were claiming legitimacy through the Roman office of Dux. I don't think you can say 'they called themselves Roman and claimed to trace through blah' ergo they're the one true Romans because other people could do the same thing, arguably with better cultural, linguistic, and geographical backing. Such that 'identifying' with a central government is really a thing before the 18th century. I'm not saying the ERE wasn't Roman, just that the Empire had clearly splintered and there were lots of post-unified Roman 'Romes' roaming around. Calling the ERE 'Byzantine Rome' is as good a place as any, mostly because Constantinople-ian Rome sounds silly but we all agree that calling it the ERE is dumb because it's not always East of anything we'd call a Western Roman Empire. Greek Rome is okay, certainly helps that at times the western bits of Europe started going by the Latins (e.g. 'the Latin Empire' that, you know, got set up in Constantinople), medieval Rome would fit with the Ancient->Republican->Imperial dynamic only when you say that my first thought is Pope's using indulgences to build mistresses and gently caress cathedrals because, you know, there's this other thing also called Rome. Yeah, it's still Rome, but you call Rome different things even when there's unambiguously only one of them. Ancient/Mythical Rome vs. Monarchical Rome vs. Republican Rome vs. Imperial Rome vs. Medieval Rome. My only beef is you do get a few different polities/pseudo polities (looking at the Pope here) that 'identified' as Roman or Romantic or Latin in the Medieval period. One of these was the entity formerly known as the Byzantine Empire, which is pretty inaccurate, but I think calling it just the Roman Empire is silly when you also have the HRE and the Pope in Rome and the Sultanate of Rum running around. It's not like Japan where you've got this unbroken blood line or anything, the legitimate 'continuation' of Imperial power in Byzantium did include a few cases of 'I have a gently caress off big army, I'm the Emperor now' which ain't all that different than the Ottoman's claiming the title. You had these entities coming in, sacking the seat of power, holding it, and only having 'legitimate successors' come in down the line. How is the interruption provided by the Imperium Romaniae (aka a bunch of Venetians in Constantinople) and restored under Michael VIII Palaiologos that much less of an interruption than Charlemagne 'restoring' the WRE after the interruption of the barbarian sackings?
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Aug 15, 2013 05:44
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The Romans definitely never put two and two together like the Japanese did and let the emperor be a gently caress-off fop and had other people running poo poo for him, I guess.
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Aug 15, 2013 05:48
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Berke Negri posted:The Romans definitely never put two and two together like the Japanese did and let the emperor be a gently caress-off fop and had other people running poo poo for him, I guess. Yeah, but there's definitely macro sized periods in Roman history that transcend dynastic stuff. Japanese history can kinda sorta be classed along the whateverth shogunate or the xth imperial restoration. (e.g. Kamakura Shogunate, Ashikaga Shogunate, Kenmmu Restoration, Meiji Restoration.) China's a bit of both. There's definately a serious classification along dynasties, but there's also a Mandate of Heaven sorta mystique to the Imperial position beyond the mere dynasty that is much more like Roman purple that you don't quite see in the position of the shogun.
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Aug 15, 2013 06:09
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Personally, I think we should consider the Byzantine Empire to be the Roman Empire, but keep calling it the Byzantine Empire because it sounds hella cool.
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Aug 15, 2013 08:18
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If we're going to base legitimacy on awesomeness of name, then the Exarchate of Ravenna is clearly the legitimate successor.
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Aug 15, 2013 08:23
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QCIC posted:I was asking if the reference to blood-mixing is based on some war or restructuring of Europe's ethnic boundaries. I know that it's a racist theory, I'm just baffled where the reasoning that the Renaissance was caused by the intermarriage of those particular ethnicities came from. To give a broad answer: german nationalist literature of the late 19th century. Fichte for example talks about "blood" and all that to no end. Don't burden yourself with this bogus, much of that material is so outlandish today, that you could get a good laugh off it, if the implications weren't so tragic. We're in the wrong thread anyway. It's probably best to look at these thing with the curiosity that you look at old movies of failed aeroplanes and guys testing parachutes by jumping off the Eifeltower.
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Aug 15, 2013 08:32
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InspectorBloor posted:To give a broad answer: german nationalist literature of the late 19th century. Fichte for example talks about "blood" and all that to no end. Don't burden yourself with this bogus, much of that material is so outlandish today, that you could get a good laugh off it, if the implications weren't so tragic. We're in the wrong thread anyway. It's probably best to look at these thing with the curiosity that you look at old movies of failed aeroplanes and guys testing parachutes by jumping off the Eifeltower. You're misunderstanding my question. I understand that the analysis is completely incorrect. I'm asking what historical event is being referenced by the "absorption of new Alpine blood". Like the Swiss and the Florentines started cohabitating? I don't have any knowledge of this period of European history beyond "The plague happened, then the Renaissance happened."
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Aug 15, 2013 09:46
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Cato the Younger was pretty badass in his own way, with his stoic refusal to indulge in the corruption of the period. "In 52 BC, Cato ran for the office of consul for the following year, unsuccessfully. In a time of rampant bribery and electoral fraud, he ran a scrupulously honest campaign and lost to his less conscientious opponents." His suicide was a final defiance of Caeser, refusing him the opportunity to pardon him as he had done with other enemies.
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Aug 15, 2013 10:15
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Koramei posted:I think this whole discussion is a pretty illustrative example of why we shouldn't be calling them the Byzantines. They were not successors like the HRE, Papacy, and Ottomans, they were a continuation. We can refer to Persia/Iran or China with the same word spanning thousands of years of civilization and many periods of disunity or foreign rule because they maintained coherent geography and culture, but there's always been a fairly serious distinction between the Latin West and Greek East. There's 2 countries calling themselves "China" and claiming sovereignty over each other but we call one of them Taiwan because that's stupid. Names are only worthwhile when they're descriptively helpful, not because we like the cool associations it has, and I think there are more than enough unique aspects to the civilization centered around Constantinople for it to be allowed to have its own name, while acknowledging that a culture and a civilization emanating from Rome was still existing, and not cooperatively either.
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Aug 15, 2013 10:23
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Dave Angel posted:Cato the Younger was pretty badass in his own way, with his stoic refusal to indulge in the corruption of the period. I always found it peculiar that he was apparently willing to endorse (privately) bribery by the Optimates in order to try and negate Caesar's first Consulship. I understand that he deeply, genuinely believed that Caesar HAD to be stopped or it would destroy the Republic, but he was usually so adamant about not bending his morals that it still strikes me as odd that he ever did so.
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Aug 15, 2013 10:36
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The thing I like about Cato the younger is he was a massive, straight edge prude who lived the cleanest life imaginable... and he was also a raging drunk. He was willing to sacrifice his own life for his principles, but not the booze.
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Aug 15, 2013 12:39
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Dr Scoofles posted:The thing I like about Cato the younger is he was a massive, straight edge prude who lived the cleanest life imaginable... and he was also a raging drunk. He was willing to sacrifice his own life for his principles, but not the booze. Yeah, I always liked Cato. That's why I was confused as to why someone before said that they liked he died painfully. I mean, I like it too, but I like it because it's badass.
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Aug 15, 2013 13:59
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the JJ posted:Just quoting you as a stand in. I guess I disagree. Diocletian splitting the Empire into two Augustuses and two Caesars was kinda a big deal and even before the West fell you got a real separation. There's you separate polity. Especially with Constantine going Christian (as Mehmet to Islam) this coincides with a real big shake up in religious and linguistic/cultural shifts. You definitely did get all sorts of people 'identifying' as Roman, especially people living in Rome and actually speaking Latin, or at least a derivative thereof. I mean, all those loving Dukes were claiming legitimacy through the Roman office of Dux. I don't think you can say 'they called themselves Roman and claimed to trace through blah' ergo they're the one true Romans because other people could do the same thing, arguably with better cultural, linguistic, and geographical backing. Such that 'identifying' with a central government is really a thing before the 18th century. I'm not saying the ERE wasn't Roman, just that the Empire had clearly splintered and there were lots of post-unified Roman 'Romes' roaming around. Calling the ERE 'Byzantine Rome' is as good a place as any, mostly because Constantinople-ian Rome sounds silly but we all agree that calling it the ERE is dumb because it's not always East of anything we'd call a Western Roman Empire. Greek Rome is okay, certainly helps that at times the western bits of Europe started going by the Latins (e.g. 'the Latin Empire' that, you know, got set up in Constantinople), medieval Rome would fit with the Ancient->Republican->Imperial dynamic only when you say that my first thought is Pope's using indulgences to build mistresses and gently caress cathedrals because, you know, there's this other thing also called Rome. By your logic, if a general in Bolivia carries out a coup d'etat, I can then decide, on my own, whether or not I believe that Bolivia should really be called 'Bolivia' any more. Also by your logic, I'm going to stop learning about the kingdom of Cilician Armenia. There was already an Armenia way to the north, an older Armenia, so calling a certain state 'Cilician Armenia' is just silly!
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Aug 15, 2013 14:37
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"When did the western Roman Empire fall?" is really unanswerable with any precision. Institutions of it exists to this day and its cultural impact is still strong. Cato the Younger was an rear end in a top hat, drunk, aristocratic, anti-democratic, pompous, prude, optimate piece of poo poo. His death was too good for him. also, as a nibble, I don't think in the Tetrarchy the Empire was split into two polities. IIRC each emperor had power everywhere, they just tended to stay in their "half". euphronius fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Aug 15, 2013 |
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Aug 15, 2013 14:59
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cheerfullydrab posted:Let me see if I have your points straight here. Essentially you believe that a pure and undiluted "ROME" splintered into many states, some of which started hundreds of years after the others, none of which have any 'true' claim to the legitimacy of ROME. Also that you believe any time a state undergoes a large change, it can't legitimately be called by its name any more. Also that you think that calling one state "Rome" and another city "Rome" sounds silly because you think so, so there. No, I think that Rome, as an entity, had a time in which there was just one Rome. Even in that time, it is useful to demark the difference between, say, Republican Rome, Imperial Rome, these sorts of things. After a certain point, you get multiple entities calling themselves Rome. Or Rum. Or Imperium Romaniae. Or Basileia Rhōmaiōn. As a historian it is not you loving job to wave a wand and say you're the true Rome and then say you're not the true Rome! There was a polity. It claimed legitimacy through historical connections to Rome. Here's why. Bam. Here's how that affected them and how they went forward. Bam. If two people do the same, you talk about why each side thought it was more right (if, indeed, they thought that at all.) But there is no loving reason you should be wading into thousand year old pseudo-nationalistic bullshit and letting that get in the way of objectivity. That is not what your job is. Would you look at the Korean Peninsula and say 'hey, those dirty commies don't count, we should call South Korea Korea and those dirty commies are just... umm... the Not Koreans that are in Korea!' Which is a thing that a lot of partisans on both sides do, but as a historian, you don't want to be partisan. So I think Byzantine Rome/ Eastern Rome/ Basileia Rhōmaiōn is an important term because it distinguished the wholly separate entity of Basileia Rhōmaiōn from, say, The Holy Roman Empire. It's a bit Peoples Republic of China vs. the Republic of China vs. the Empire of China. PRC is, by most standards here, the usurper, but colloquially when you say 'China' everyone nods and thinks of the PRC. If you see some guy ranting and raving about how the RoC has a much better, more legitimate claim, and is the real China you know he's too attached to the issue. On the other hand, using China colloquially in that way is okay, but it is silly to say 'and then the Romans went to Rome and then tricked the Romans into invading Rome instead of Rome, after which they founded Rome which was overthrown by the Romans who re-founded Rome.' So we use descriptions like the city of Rome and the Latins and Byzantine Rome so it can all make more sense. Calling a state Cilician Armenia isn't silly, insisting that Cilician Armenia the real Armenia and we should call it just Armenia and other would be Armenias can be called 'Old Armenia' because they're not the real Armenia is silly.
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Aug 15, 2013 15:16
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euphronius posted:"When did the western Roman Empire fall?" is really unanswerable with any precision. Institutions of it exists to this day and its cultural impact is still strong. I also recall reading that Cato the Younger was so unbending that he refused to help any of the other guys that were also trying to stop Caesar (like Cicero) because they were "all the same". So he was kind of like the Ralph Nader of his day. Besides, Cicero's "suicide by Mark Anthony" was also pretty cool.
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Aug 15, 2013 15:17
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The thing which complicates the "true Rome" line of thought is that Rome was not the capital of the Roman Empire starting in about 286 or so. But that kind of supports the whole "the empire ended with the Tetrarchy" line of thought which is pretty persuasive. So, the western Roman empire ended somewhere between 250 ce and 500 ce. There. euphronius fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Aug 15, 2013 |
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Aug 15, 2013 15:22
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euphronius posted:Cato the Younger was an rear end in a top hat, drunk, aristocratic, anti-democratic, pompous, prude, optimate piece of poo poo. His death was too good for him. Pfft, somebody's been drinking the the Gracchian cool-aid. "BOY MARIUS AND CAESAR REALLY UNDERSTAND ME, UNLIKE THAT MEAN OL SENATE" *dies in purge*
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Aug 15, 2013 15:33
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Drunkboxer posted:What did Cato do that was assholish? I mean, more than any other Roman politician in those day. Touted himself as some paragon of incorruptibility while lambasting reformers of the horrendously graft-infested system within which he flourished. It may not have been "his signature on the checks" so to speak, but he knew that the entire structure of vote-buying, bribery, and shady-rear end dealings was what kept him high on the hog, and his schtick was giving some milquetoast acting critique of it without any effort to reform. On top of that he gave the most saccharine lip service to the idea of the republic, acting as though poo poo like the dueling purges of Marius and Sulla weren't the putrefaction of the corpse of the republic. Sulla's "gently caress all of you, maybe you should have chosen another vagina to come from" neutering of plebian power turned that poo poo into an unabashed oligarchy and Cato, ever the dusty sycophant, called it the republic and guarded it viciously. He was like goddamn Rand Paul. Always the sanctimonious prick acting all holier-than-thou while neck-deep in the shitpile all the same.
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Aug 15, 2013 18:12
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The Entire Universe posted:Touted himself as some paragon of incorruptibility while lambasting reformers of the horrendously graft-infested system within which he flourished. It may not have been "his signature on the checks" so to speak, but he knew that the entire structure of vote-buying, bribery, and shady-rear end dealings was what kept him high on the hog, and his schtick was giving some milquetoast acting critique of it without any effort to reform. I have always thought it was the actions of the so called Populares that killed the republic when the Gracchi introduced mob violence as a political tool, and Marius turned the armies into defenders of individual politician/generals and not Rome. If anyone was hypocritical, it was people like them who just used the poors as stepping stones to kill kill kill all their enemies and consolidate power for themselves. I can't really fault Cato for touting a return to a time when Rome wasn't in the center of a tug of war between like 9 different assholes, even if it was impossible by his day.
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Aug 15, 2013 18:31
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Class war was endemic to Rome and did not start with the Gracchi. What made Caesar especially hated by the oligarchs was that during his consulship he redistributed land to the poor.
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Aug 15, 2013 18:37
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I guess I just have hard time seeing any of that as anything but calculated ambition. He was out to be king of the world.
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Aug 15, 2013 18:42
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How cynical of you. You sound like an optimate.
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Aug 15, 2013 18:43
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Drunkboxer posted:Pfft, somebody's been drinking the the Gracchian cool-aid. "BOY MARIUS AND CAESAR REALLY UNDERSTAND ME, UNLIKE THAT MEAN OL SENATE" This is a good answer, I think. I'm American, and I know how hard enough it is following other countries' politics, and trying to root for another country's political party from afar. If political divides exist in other countries, they exist for a reason out of your control and true understanding (unless you've lived there long enough, I guess). Going through this thread and doing my own reading, I'm pulling for Caesar all the drat time--gently caress the optimates. But then again, using my own "political compass" on other countries is hard enough, let alone a Marxist cheering Caesar or a von Mises guy cheering on the republic (because bribery is the free market don't you know). That's a huge exaggeration, but we have to resist using modern morals when looking at history, and also remembering that's the only history left remaining to us currently. As for content, how did guys like Herodotus and other ancient historians get around so much? It's not a question I've ever heard answered. I know merchants could get around moving their stock, but if you're an intellectual you probably know nothing of trade routes, and if you do it's only second-hand at best; nothing to rely on. It seems like a dangerous venture. If you're a poor farmer or grocer, then you're tied to your land or store anyway. If you're rich enough to travel, hopefully you can afford enough bodyguards to take you the whole way. At which point some will defect, and you will have to hire more, less reliable ones. And keep in mind if you're not carrying nice goods to sell you're carrying a huge chunk of gold the whole way to fund your trip; I'm sure word gets out somehow. If Herodotus is telling even half-truths, and was at least in the places he said he was, how would one go about doing that? This doesn't go so much for up to mid-Imperial Roman historians quite as much as I hear roads were at least a little safer then, and also by that time they were using older historians like Herodotus as a primary source (or at least to rip him apart as in Plutarch's case). I know people took vacations to spas and resort towns and such, but how did relatively extremely long travels work in the ancient world if you weren't part of a giant army no one would gently caress with? Bastaman Vibration fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Aug 15, 2013 |
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Aug 15, 2013 18:52
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Mob violence was endemic to the Republic since the beginning, but it still seems a little crass to accuse the Gracchi of introducing it. Weren't they lynched by a senate-backed mob?
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Aug 15, 2013 18:53
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dinoputz posted:This is a good answer, I think. I'm American, and I know how hard enough it is following other countries' politics, and trying to root for another country's political party from afar. If political divides exist in other countries, they exist for a reason out of your control and true understanding (unless you've lived there long enough, I guess). Going through this thread and doing my own reading, I'm pulling for Caesar all the drat time--gently caress the optimates. But then again, using my own "political compass" on other countries is hard enough, let alone a Marxist cheering Caesar or a von Mises guy cheering on the republic (because bribery is the free market don't you know). That's a huge exaggeration, but we have to resist using modern morals when looking at history, and also remembering that's the only history left remaining to us currently. It's hard not to pull for Caesar since he's was such a winner, I just like guys like Cato and Cicero as well. But to cast JC as some sort of altruistic marxist would just require so many mental gymnastics my brain would break. He was a political genius, a lucky general, and a pragmatic dictator but I can't read about him without seeing the power-loving ambition driven Roman that he was before all that. euphronius posted:How cynical of you. You sound like an optimate.
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Aug 15, 2013 19:55
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QCIC posted:You're misunderstanding my question. I understand that the analysis is completely incorrect. I'm asking what historical event is being referenced by the "absorption of new Alpine blood". Like the Swiss and the Florentines started cohabitating? I don't have any knowledge of this period of European history beyond "The plague happened, then the Renaissance happened." There is no "event". It's just some made up bullshit to explain why suddenly the Rennaissance is supposed to happen. The venetians were active in mining operations up to Corinthia and all over the alps, traders going back and forth. Just the usual stuff that's been going on since about thousand years by then. No big migrations. Guys from the mountains looking for work as mercenaries.
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Aug 15, 2013 19:59
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dinoputz posted:As for content, how did guys like Herodotus and other ancient historians get around so much? It's not a question I've ever heard answered. I know merchants could get around moving their stock, but if you're an intellectual you probably know nothing of trade routes, and if you do it's only second-hand at best; nothing to rely on. It seems like a dangerous venture. If you're a poor farmer or grocer, then you're tied to your land or store anyway. If you're rich enough to travel, hopefully you can afford enough bodyguards to take you the whole way. At which point some will defect, and you will have to hire more, less reliable ones. And keep in mind if you're not carrying nice goods to sell you're carrying a huge chunk of gold the whole way to fund your trip; I'm sure word gets out somehow. If Herodotus is telling even half-truths, and was at least in the places he said he was, how would one go about doing that? This doesn't go so much for up to mid-Imperial Roman historians quite as much as I hear roads were at least a little safer then, and also by that time they were using older historians like Herodotus as a primary source (or at least to rip him apart as in Plutarch's case). I know people took vacations to spas and resort towns and such, but how did relatively extremely long travels work in the ancient world if you weren't part of a giant army no one would gently caress with? There were a lot of guest right/hospitality things going on that made travel in certain areas actually pretty easy. Also, the Grecian upper classes (Herodotus, Thucy, Xenophon) almost felt more in common with each other as with the plebs, and you had a whole system of sort of early 'ambassadors' only the ambassador was from the polis he was living, only acting in/speaking for the interests of another city. You also had maritime trade, and while piracy was a thing, it was no more a threat to lone travellers than it was merchant goods so there's that. You also did get people travelling around in huge armies, Xenophon most famously became a bit of an expert on Persia after his little vacation. Overall, a lot of the land was no more lawless for foreigners than it was for locals, and everyone's got an incentive to tamp down on banditry. Overall, it probably wasn't that hard. Unprofitable, certainly, but the some of the eccentric upper classes could afford to faf about for a few years.
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Aug 15, 2013 20:10
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Why do people know Caesar? How did he become such an important figure, such a household name? For all I can tell, the main thing he did was end the Republic and conquer a lot of Europe.
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Aug 15, 2013 20:19
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Cingulate posted:Why do people know Caesar? How did he become such an important figure, such a household name? For all I can tell, the main thing he did was end the Republic and conquer a lot of Europe. Not sure if that was sarcasm but I bolded the important parts. Dude brought about the end of the Roman Republic, which had been the major player in Europe for centuries. That's ignoring the fact that, for the two thousand years since, the title of Caesar has been used for supreme rulers in more states than I care to count. It's pretty easy to see why he's been so important.
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Aug 15, 2013 20:26
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Drunkboxer posted:We are all optimates, we are all populare (because they are really just identical, murderous, power driven aristocrats the lot of them). Yeah anyone who knows anything could tell you that if you want to be heard, you gotta go with the demes. I mean, unless you're one of those poo poo for brains blues.
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Aug 15, 2013 20:29
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EvilHawk posted:Not sure if that was sarcasm but I bolded the important parts. Dude brought about the end of the Roman Republic, which had been the major player in Europe for centuries. That's ignoring the fact that, for the two thousand years since, the title of Caesar has been used for supreme rulers in more states than I care to count. It's pretty easy to see why he's been so important. He also makes a mean salad and some pizza too.
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Aug 15, 2013 20:34
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One time I saw a play about him that was pretty good.
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Aug 15, 2013 20:36
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