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Arglebargle III posted:Sure they did? The Rwandan Genocide was mostly accomplished by machete. The Rwandan genocide, although certainly a genocide, didn't kill every single Tutsi - which was the exact definition of genocide I was arguing against. To clarify: genocide doesn't mean "kill literally everyone" - I think that's generally agreed upon - whereas the guy in the post before mine said something to the effect of "the Romans weren't capable of genocide because they couldn't kill everyone before they fled to another territory". I sort of agreed with that in that I think it's highly unlikely that an ancient civilization would be able to murder literally every single member of an ethnicity (depending on how narrowly you define that obviously), but since that's not what genocide means in any case, it doesn't mean an ancient civilization would be incapable of genocide. Agean90 posted:So how many Iberian celts have you met? Or gaulish celts? Or Etruscans? Or sabines? or.... Do you seriously think we have no Iberian celts today because the Romans literally walked up and stabbed them all to death? Alekanderu fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Sep 19, 2013 |
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Sep 18, 2013 22:30
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:There's something that I've always been confused about regarding the Post-Marian Legions. During the late Republican period, especially during the Civil Wars, what did it mean to "raise a legion" for ones use? Meaning how did a general go about doing it? I can see how it worked in Pre-Marian days as you would basically recruit en-masse from the able-bodied population for the duration of a war and then let them return home once it was done. But after Marius this obviously all changed so I can't quite wrap my head around how in such a short span of years so many new legions were raised by all sides. Caesar personally raised a half dozen legions for his campaign in Gaul, Crassus raised a bunch for Parthia. And once Civil War broke out Augustus/Antony/Brutus were raising dozens of legions from all over the place. Did they hold huge recruiting drives from their own controlled territory each time they needed more troops? Was there always a huge pool of unused veterans just hanging around ready to rejoin whoever had the coin to hire them? Did the generals simply let standards slip in terms of training and deveotion just to get more men on their side? Since this was a 25 year commitment I can only imagine so many people being available to just join up at a moments notice. The History of Rome podcast gives a pretty good idea of how this happened. Land was being concentrated into fewer and fewer hands and slave labor was replacing free labor on the farms. As a result there were a lot of young disenfranchised men flocking to Rome with no education and no money. Basically, every army/criminal gang recruiter's dream. As Grand Fromage said, just hang around the ghetto and sell them some story about all the glory and loot waiting for them if they join the legions. After they sign up they're basically yours for life.
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Sep 19, 2013 00:14
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Ithle01 posted:The History of Rome podcast gives a pretty good idea of how this happened. Land was being concentrated into fewer and fewer hands and slave labor was replacing free labor on the farms. As a result there were a lot of young disenfranchised men flocking to Rome with no education and no money. Basically, every army/criminal gang recruiter's dream. As Grand Fromage said, just hang around the ghetto and sell them some story about all the glory and loot waiting for them if they join the legions. After they sign up they're basically yours for life. On a similar topic, what did it mean for an army to disband before it crossed the Rubicon or whatever boundary? Was it just a relinquishment of command? Were there armories where the troops had to hand in their weapons and armor?
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Sep 19, 2013 00:38
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Alekanderu posted:Do you seriously think we have no Iberian celts today because the Romans literally walked up and stabbed them all to death? This was a funny example because there actually are Iberian Celts still. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galicians Ithle01 posted:As Grand Fromage said, just hang around the ghetto and sell them some story about all the glory and loot waiting for them if they join the legions. After they sign up they're basically yours for life. If you think about it, tempting the urban poor with the promise of a solid career with steady pay and lifetime benefits isn't really different than how we raise armies today, at least in the US.
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Sep 19, 2013 02:36
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Gonkish posted:Definitely a combination of the Muslim conquests and the resulting cultural drift. Regions tend to take on the language of the dominant culture. For a comparable example, you can look at Britain after Rome abandoned it. The Anglo-Saxon culture basically deletes the Romano-British culture that existed during the Roman occupation, and as a consequence Latin disappears as a common tongue in the British isles. Hence, English is based on Germanic roots, not Latin ones. Grand Fromage posted:This was a funny example because there actually are Iberian Celts still. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galicians
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Sep 19, 2013 06:14
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Grand Fromage posted:This was a funny example because there actually are Iberian Celts still. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galicians Uh. I'm prepared to believe you but nothing in that link says those guys are actually in any distinctive way Celtic, any more than an Englishman is related to an ancient Briton.
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Sep 19, 2013 06:22
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They are likely the same general group of people though. Certainly there's been mixing, but it's been one of the most isolated portions of Iberia since Roman times.
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Sep 19, 2013 07:19
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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It is pretty incredible how few Celts are left around today considering they were everywhere from Iberia to Anatolia. And most modern Celts speak English rather than a Celtic language. Well other than Brittany I guess. I wonder why the Celts were so easily assimilated. Earlier contact with Rome? Having more wealth/cities worth controlling compared to the Germanic tribes?
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Sep 19, 2013 08:01
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Wolfgang Pauli posted:What about the Welsh? Weren't they the survivors of the remaining Romano-British? Does anyone else have one particular lost classical work that they really wish would turn up in someone's basement or a cave somewhere?
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Sep 19, 2013 08:08
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Thwomp posted:Just a side note to everyone who has been following this thread for a while, The History of Rome's follow up podcast, Revolutions, is finally up and running everywhere good podcasts are downloaded. It's done exactly like THOR (in tone at least, the format has changed). Oh awesome, thanks for the heads up, I've just gotten caught up on (ongoing) The History Of Byzantium so this is a great addition to my listening. Here is the link for anybody else interested: http://www.revolutionspodcast.com/
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Sep 19, 2013 08:16
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cheerfullydrab posted:Not especially related to this post, but I really wish we had Claudius' history of the Etruscans. Suetonius' Lives of Famous Whores.
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Sep 19, 2013 08:37
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cheerfullydrab posted:Not especially related to this post, but I really wish we had Claudius' history of the Etruscans. I'd like to have Caesar's Anti-Cato, which I'm fairly certain had the subtitle,"No seriously, gently caress that guy." Tao Jones posted:Suetonius' Lives of Famous Whores. Haha, but yeah, this probably more than anything. Suetonius is a hell of a gossip.
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Sep 19, 2013 08:51
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Does 'the rest of the Epic Cycle' count? Still tough choices after that. Lots of the Athenian plays - Phrynicus' Sack of Miletus to see how nasty it was, and the Phoenician Women to see a different take on the Persian invasions from Aeschylus; Euripedes' Bellerophon and the first Hippolytus. The rest of Apollodorus' Library, where it's only covered in epitome. Sleep of Bronze fucked around with this message at 10:43 on Sep 19, 2013 |
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Sep 19, 2013 10:37
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Grand Fromage posted:
Most of the soldiers in the US army come from more suburban and rural middle-class backgrounds, not the urban poor. http://www.defense.gov/news/Dec2005/d20051213mythfact.pdf http://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=soc
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Sep 19, 2013 11:32
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Sleep of Bronze posted:Lots of the Athenian plays - Phrynicus' Sack of Miletus to see how nasty it was, and the Phoenician Women to see a different take on the Persian invasions from Aeschylus; Euripedes' Bellerophon and the first Hippolytus. The rest of Apollodorus' Library, where it's only covered in epitome. Just because I'm a sucker for completing a set, Aeschylus' satyr-play Proteus would be nice just so we can say we have a complete tetralogy.
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Sep 19, 2013 12:21
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Plutarch's Life of Epaminondas.
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Sep 19, 2013 12:31
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Ennius, and the rest of Livy.
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Sep 19, 2013 14:19
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feedmegin posted:Uh. I'm prepared to believe you but nothing in that link says those guys are actually in any distinctive way Celtic, any more than an Englishman is related to an ancient Briton. Didn't really read it since I already knew. Basically, Celts survived on the western fringes of the empire in areas that were too remote to bother with, or weren't fully integrated. Galicia is the far end of Iberia, it's mountainous and there's really nothing there, so the Celtic peoples there were able to survive. It's one of of the major areas where they survived--Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and Galicia is the full list. Galicia didn't keep its Celtic language though. So if you're in the language = culture camp, you could argue the Celtic culture there was wiped out I suppose. All those other places maintained a Celtic language tradition.
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Sep 19, 2013 14:51
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Obdicut posted:Most of the soldiers in the US army come from more suburban and rural middle-class backgrounds, not the urban poor. It's a nice thought, but this analysis relies heavily on rather arbitrary definitions of poverty and urbanity. In short, the concepts of the suburb and the lower-middle class serve to mask the demographic realities. The vast majority of Americans live in urban areas (83% live in metropolitan or micropolitan counties), and a plurality of Americans are relatively poor (40% of households have an income of less than $45,000, i.e. "what it takes to get by" according to the American population). When these definitions are realigned, we see that while military recruiters aren't dragging the bottom of the barrel (educational requirements serve to bar access to the most impoverished) and do slightly prefer rural recruits, they are still pulling from a population that is fundamentally urban (80% of recruits) and poor (38% of recruits). http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/08/17/139699631/white-house-overstates-rural-role-in-military http://nationalpriorities.org/analysis/2011/military-recruitment-2010/ http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs...century-america http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#Household_income Kaal fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Sep 19, 2013 |
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Sep 19, 2013 15:32
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Kaal posted:It's a nice thought, but this analysis relies heavily on rather arbitrary definitions of poverty and urbanity. In short, the concepts of the suburb and the lower-middle class serve to mask the demographic realities. The vast majority of Americans live in urban areas (83% live in metropolitan or micropolitan counties), and a plurality of Americans are relatively poor (40% of households have an income of less than $45,000, i.e. "what it takes to get by" according to the American population). When these definitions are realigned, we see that while military recruiters aren't dragging the bottom of the barrel (educational requirements serve to bar access to the most impoverished) and do slightly prefer rural recruits, they are still pulling from a population that is fundamentally urban (80% of recruits) and poor (38% of recruits). I don't know these data very well, but didn't you just show in that paragraph that the pool of recruits almost perfectly reflects the makeup of the US at large, at least for the two statistics you cite? Which I guess means they're not primarily rural middle class, but (by those data) they're not primarily urban poor either. Ed: On 2nd read-through, I think you're just restating the statistics. But I'm not sure how this is relevant to Rome. To be on topic, for lost works to preserve, I would second the history of the Etruscans. With the alternate choice being something major from the early republican period. What an intriguing period, and most of what we have to go on about it are archaeology and hand-me-down stories that are almost folk tales.
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Sep 19, 2013 16:30
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Kaal posted:It's a nice thought, but this analysis relies heavily on rather arbitrary definitions of poverty and urbanity. In short, the concepts of the suburb and the lower-middle class serve to mask the demographic realities. The vast majority of Americans live in urban areas (83% live in metropolitan or micropolitan counties), and a plurality of Americans are relatively poor (40% of households have an income of less than $45,000, i.e. "what it takes to get by" according to the American population). When these definitions are realigned, we see that while military recruiters aren't dragging the bottom of the barrel (educational requirements serve to bar access to the most impoverished) and do slightly prefer rural recruits, they are still pulling from a population that is fundamentally urban (80% of recruits) and poor (38% of recruits). I agree with that, but comparative to what the Romans were recruiting, I don't think the populations are similar.
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Sep 19, 2013 16:32
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I'm now regretting the comparison. All I was trying to say is it's not a big mystery how to raise a legion, there are lots of people who are willing to risk their lives for a very competitive package of lifetime pay and benefits that the military provides. Whether it's now or 2000 years ago, it's the same principle.
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Sep 19, 2013 16:35
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cheerfullydrab posted:Does anyone else have one particular lost classical work that they really wish would turn up in someone's basement or a cave somewhere?
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Sep 19, 2013 18:49
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Mustang posted:I wonder why the Celts were so easily assimilated. Earlier contact with Rome? Having more wealth/cities worth controlling compared to the Germanic tribes? The fact that they were actually in the Empire in it's heyday. Adopting a Roman culture was basically required to participate in politics, so that's what all the upper classes did, along with anyone who wanted to become upper class. And I'm sure a lot of it does have to do with them being more urbanized, if only because that's the reason Rome bothered to conquer them in the first place. Then recall that Rome was running the show there for three or four centuries. That time scale is particularly mindboggling when you consider the extreme amount of upheaval we've seen in the world in the 20th century alone. The leaders of the Germanic tribes being outside the Empire, were profoundly influenced by it, but they still had to represent themselves to people who saw themselves as non-Roman. When these guy began moving into more Roman areas, they were doing it largely to be utilized by the army, which was already adopting more and more of a "barbarian" identity anyway. So I don't know if you can say that the Celts were assimilated easily. Both the Celtic and Germanic cultures interacted with and changed significantly due to their contact with Rome. Finally, it's also not really valid to talk about Celts and Germanics like they were two monolithic blocks, because they weren't.
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Sep 19, 2013 19:28
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Parity Bit posted:On a similar topic, what did it mean for an army to disband before it crossed the Rubicon or whatever boundary? Was it just a relinquishment of command? Were there armories where the troops had to hand in their weapons and armor? I have no idea how the army was disbanded, but I'm pretty sure the men just kept their gear since they had been the ones to buy it and bring it with them in the first place. edit: my mistake, was thinking of the pre-Marian Republican armies. Ithle01 fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Sep 19, 2013 |
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Sep 19, 2013 20:41
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That would have been the case in the Early Republic, but the Marian Reforms did away with the requirement for soldiers to supply their own arms, and had the state supply them instead. Not sure what the answer to the original question is though.
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Sep 19, 2013 20:56
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Ithle01 posted:I have no idea how the army was disbanded, but I'm pretty sure the men just kept their gear since they had been the ones to buy it and bring it with them in the first place. The army was not necessarily disbanded -- the imperator of the army relinquished his imperium (the highest executive authority) when he either A) left the province(s) in which he had been granted imperium, or B) crossed the Roman city limits, if he had imperium within Italy. Edit: this is one reason why Caesar stayed in Gaul for so long, and one reason he didn't want to give up his army. As long as he had proconsular imperium in Gaul, he was immune to prosecution back home; had he crossed the Rubicon without the army and without his imperium, he would have been hit with litigation from his massive number of enemies. He was also making his legions richer and richer (and more and more loyal to him) in Gaul, which obviously helped. homullus fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Sep 19, 2013 |
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Sep 19, 2013 21:00
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PittTheElder posted:When these guy began moving into more Roman areas, they were doing it largely to be utilized by the army, which was already adopting more and more of a "barbarian" identity anyway. quote:So I don't know if you can say that the Celts were assimilated easily. Both the Celtic and Germanic cultures interacted with and changed significantly due to their contact with Rome. Finally, it's also not really valid to talk about Celts and Germanics like they were two monolithic blocks, because they weren't. Ithle01 posted:I have no idea how the army was disbanded, but I'm pretty sure the men just kept their gear since they had been the ones to buy it and bring it with them in the first place.
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Sep 19, 2013 21:00
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Wolfgang Pauli posted:I don't understand what you mean by this. He's referring to the foederati. Later Roman armies used them extensively because the legions couldn't be maintained as easily. "Later, the sense of the term foederati and its usage and meaning was extended by the Roman practice of subsidizing entire barbarian tribes — which included the Franks, Vandals, Alans and, best known, the Visigoths — in exchange for providing warriors to fight in the Roman armies." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foederati
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Sep 19, 2013 21:08
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Not just that though; the use of "barbarian" manpower was a big reason why Germanic tribes were allowed to come and stay within the empire itself of course, but the "core" Roman part of the army itself was also adopting a more barbarian attitude over time. These were guys recruited from the thoroughly Romanized parts of the empire, and running around wearing pants, having beards, giving themselves sweet "barbarian" nicknames, etc. Yet they were still ethnically Roman, according to both our definitions and theirs.
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Sep 19, 2013 21:54
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Wolfgang Pauli posted:Plus Aristotle's lost companion to Poetics that addressed comedy. It's such a shame that the last known copy perished in a mysterious monastery library fire in 14th century Italy.
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Sep 20, 2013 00:26
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Wolfgang Pauli posted:What about the Welsh? Weren't they the survivors of the remaining Romano-British? Yes, and no. Wales was independent of the invading Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, although it often wasn't united. The problem here, though, is that, again, Welsh doesn't really show much influence from Latin (I mean, there's just so many random Ys!), and Welsh culture doesn't have much in the way of comparison to Rome. But really, Romano-British culture dies once the invasions happen. The Welsh didn't continue it, they presumably already had their own cultural traditions that were independent of Roman culture. With Rome gone, the impetus to continue practicing Roman customs dies off rather quickly. I guess a shitload of warfare will do that to a people.
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Sep 20, 2013 00:57
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How did the Roman currency system break down? I've heard references to talents of gold and silver, denarii and [?sestertii], but I'd be interested to learn how the denominations stood in reference to each other.
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Sep 20, 2013 02:06
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It's not as easily described as ours since the currency is a mixture of fiat and the value of the metal in the coins. It also changes over time. A talent is a certain weight of the metal in question. No one is entirely sure exactly how much a talent is, and there appear to have been multiple definitions of a talent. The Roman one was probably around 70 pounds. In any case it was a large weight, so when you read 200 talents of gold or something, that's a shitload of money. As for coins, I'm going to go with Augustus era because he set the values of the currency so we actually know what the hell was going on. The biggest coin was the aureus, which was gold as the name suggests (AU for gold is Latin). An aureus at this time was worth... I think 25 silver denarius. I don't have my book on this continent so I can't check. The denarius is the main coin we think of. In Augustus' time it contained about four grams of silver. All these coins are gradually debased, which is part of the economic crisis that arises in the third century and is why later you have the solidus, a new gold base coin for the system. But that's later. The denarius is your mid range standard coin. The name means ten of something, because it was worth ten asses. Asses are the funniest named of the coins. These are the copper/bronze ones and have the lowest value in the system. There's also a dupondius, which is worth two asses. The as is the bottom of the scale, nothing is smaller than one as. One useful thing later is Diocletian undertakes the insane task of trying to fix maximum prices for literally everything in the empire, and we have that list so we can get an idea of what things were worth. So in the time of Diocletian, your coins are these: "All coins in the Decrees and the Edict were valued according to the denarius, which Diocletian hoped to replace with a new system based on the silver argenteus and its fractions. The argenteus seems to have been set at 100 denarii, the silver-washed nummus at 25 denarii, and the bronze radiate at 4 or 5 denarii. The copper laureate was raised from 1 denarius to 2 denarii. The gold aureus, which by this time had risen to 833 denarii, was replaced with a solidus, worth 1,000 denarii (this was different from the solidus introduced by Constantine a few years later)." And some prices: Farm laborer monthly pay, with meals = 400 asses Teacher's monthly pay, per boy = 800 asses Barber's service price, per client = 32 asses 1 kg of pork = 380 asses 1 kg of grapes = 32 asses
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Sep 20, 2013 02:35
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drat, they certainly had grapes to spare.
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Sep 20, 2013 02:48
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cheerfullydrab posted:Does anyone else have one particular lost classical work that they really wish would turn up in someone's basement or a cave somewhere? Pretty much any of Aristotle's Exegoterics would be amazing. What we've got of his is already considered some of the most important philosophical works of the Ancient world but is... well dry and decidedly less than straightforward. Considering he's frequently credited with being one of the finest writers of his time it would be great to actually see the stuff people were reading. Bonus points if it provides some more context for the Esoteric works.
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Sep 20, 2013 02:56
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A history professor pointed out that if you wanted a table made, you'd pay more for the nails than the carpenter's time.
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Sep 20, 2013 03:01
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How much for an rear end? Or some rear end 
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Sep 20, 2013 03:04
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PittTheElder posted:drat, they certainly had grapes to spare. Well, they practically grow on trees.
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Sep 20, 2013 03:35
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Grand Fromage posted:One useful thing later is Diocletian undertakes the insane task of trying to fix maximum prices for literally everything in the empire, Literally everything, down to different grades of stuff. If you want a sextarius of honey, it's going to run you 40 denarii at most, but the good news is second quality honey will max out at only 24 denarii! This book has an impressive list. Also, rhetoric teachers are pulling in bank compared to arthritic and shorthand teachers. Gallic and Pannonian beer are also apparently held in higher regard than Egyptian.
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Sep 20, 2013 05:59
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