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They're putting up the Saturnalia lights earlier every year. I don't think I can stand letting the house slaves get cheeky for so long.
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Nov 13, 2013 11:16
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MrNemo posted:So in the spirit of doubling down on history nerd credentials (which I really don't have) I'm looking for some light, cheap reading about ancient history. I've just got a free copy of Suetonius' complete works on my Kindle and wondering if anyone has any similar recommendations or cheap and engaging titles. I'd almost rather spend the extra on picking up some well written modern accounts but currently don't have much of a budget and don't have a vast amount of reading time. ShadowCatboy posted:They're putting up the Saturnalia lights earlier every year. I don't think I can stand letting the house slaves get cheeky for so long.
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Nov 13, 2013 14:53
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MrNemo posted:So in the spirit of doubling down on history nerd credentials (which I really don't have) I'm looking for some light, cheap reading about ancient history. I've just got a free copy of Suetonius' complete works on my Kindle and wondering if anyone has any similar recommendations or cheap and engaging titles. I'd almost rather spend the extra on picking up some well written modern accounts but currently don't have much of a budget and don't have a vast amount of reading time. I've been reading Philip Freeman's Alexander the Great biography and it's been very accessible and enjoyable (I've been reading it on my iphone during my morning and evening commutes to work, and even in that depleted mental state it's engaging, so take that as you will). I think it was $13 on ibooks though, so not exactly cheap I guess, but still fun to read, I have no regrets.
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Nov 13, 2013 16:26
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MrNemo posted:So in the spirit of doubling down on history nerd credentials (which I really don't have) I'm looking for some light, cheap reading about ancient history. I've just got a free copy of Suetonius' complete works on my Kindle and wondering if anyone has any similar recommendations or cheap and engaging titles. I'd almost rather spend the extra on picking up some well written modern accounts but currently don't have much of a budget and don't have a vast amount of reading time. Everyone here seems to love the Landmarks, though I dunno if they're cheaply digitized. Thanks the joy of public domain, you can find translations of most any ancient work in free or cheap e-book format, though quality control is a bit... not there at all?
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Nov 13, 2013 16:58
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MrNemo posted:So in the spirit of doubling down on history nerd credentials (which I really don't have) I'm looking for some light, cheap reading about ancient history. I've just got a free copy of Suetonius' complete works on my Kindle and wondering if anyone has any similar recommendations or cheap and engaging titles. I'd almost rather spend the extra on picking up some well written modern accounts but currently don't have much of a budget and don't have a vast amount of reading time. I think Caesar is fantastic read when you consider the circumstances. The Commentaries are supposedly just notes, written with the assumption that a real historian will dress it up properly...but nobody ever did, in part because they're so good as-is. Even Cicero, who isn't a fan of Caesar, regards his work highly. The prose is clear and without a lot of the ornament and padding that makes Livy a struggle. The fun is figuring out what Caesar's really doing -- these were written "in the field", and sent back to Rome to represent him and his actions at a time when a lot of people were hostile to him. What he chooses to say (victories, descriptions of battles and tactics, negotiations with Gauls and Germans) and what he chooses to gloss over (plunder, losses, and often Caesar himself) have resulted in gallons of ink spilled over his "propaganda" or "truthfulness". The text is easy and the complexity of the scenario a challenge.
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Nov 13, 2013 17:13
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MrNemo posted:So in the spirit of doubling down on history nerd credentials (which I really don't have) I'm looking for some light, cheap reading about ancient history. I've just got a free copy of Suetonius' complete works on my Kindle and wondering if anyone has any similar recommendations or cheap and engaging titles. I'd almost rather spend the extra on picking up some well written modern accounts but currently don't have much of a budget and don't have a vast amount of reading time. I'd suggest Plutarch's Parallel Lives. Like Suetonius, he's writing about personalities, which makes him a bit more approachable; and since his works are biographies, you can read them in more or less any order you like, pick and choose which seem interesting, and so on. Like pretty much every other ancient author, there's a lot of stuff that couldn't possibly be independently confirmed and is factually suspect.
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Nov 14, 2013 00:07
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Thanks for the suggestions guys! Had almost forgotten about Plutarch's Lives and Caesar's works weren't something I'd ever considered before. Public domain stuff is great though may have to trawl through a few translations to find something easily readable. I'll also look into the Alexander bio.
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Nov 14, 2013 02:41
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Continuing off of Big Beef City, were any legions considered more 'elite' than the other? I know there's the whole connection between Caesar and the 13th, but were they objectively better/more elite/prestigious? Rather than being his favorites / rubicon crossing. If I had to pick one legio that stood out in history it would probably be Legio X, sometimes debatably called X Fretensis, Caesar's other favorite. But if you read a list of the known legions you'll see some leftover nicknames from other legions' respective fifty years of fame. IV Flavia Felix (Flavian Lucky Fourth) and VII Claudia Pia Fidelis (Claudius' Always Faithful Seventh) are two legions that obviously impressed at one point and were probably regarded quite highly.
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Nov 14, 2013 03:33
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Don't forget The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Definitely worth a read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations
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Nov 14, 2013 08:17
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rzeszowianin 44 posted:Don't forget The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Definitely worth a read.
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Nov 14, 2013 09:54
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rzeszowianin 44 posted:Don't forget The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Definitely worth a read. I almost mentioned this in my post about Caesar, but decided it was too different for the same post. Marcus Aurelius' Big Book of Notes to Self is also a great read (especially if you too are a reflective person), but I feel it is much less useful for "ancient history." I would put The Meditations in the same category as Lucretius' De Rerum Natura: something a student of the Classical world really needs to read and will likely enjoy reading, but that is undeservedly on the fringes of Classics' classics.
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Nov 14, 2013 15:09
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Marcus Aurelius was awesome. Pity his son turned out to be such a knob.
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Nov 15, 2013 04:32
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Marcus Aurelius was awesome. Pity his son turned out to be such a knob. Kind of his fault, especially because he was hell-bent on his son succeeding him. A colossal flaw for an otherwise very competent and wise emperor.
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Nov 15, 2013 11:55
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the jizz taxi posted:Kind of his fault, especially because he was hell-bent on his son succeeding him. A colossal flaw for an otherwise very competent and wise emperor. It always sounded like a damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of situation. Who knows if someone, jockeying for more power, decides that Commodus would be a great puppet to rule the empire with, and uses him as a claim to legitimacy to wear the purple. If anything, leaving the only son of the Emperor out in the cold sounds like an even worse idea than leaving him in power. Hindsight tells us that him being sent off to Britain would probably be best for the empire, but Marcus Aurelius couldn't have known that. Or he was willfully ignoring it because Commodus was still his son, for whatever that counted for.
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Nov 16, 2013 23:28
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the jizz taxi posted:Kind of his fault, especially because he was hell-bent on his son succeeding him. A colossal flaw for an otherwise very competent and wise emperor. Yeah, if only that General Maximus guy had succeeded him instead.
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Nov 17, 2013 01:20
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Octy posted:Yeah, if only that General Maximus guy had succeeded him instead. Or had been able to restore the republic like Marcus Aurelius wanted.
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Nov 17, 2013 05:40
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So as a minor question guys, how much do you all dislike Cato? On a scale of one to ten?
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Nov 19, 2013 18:47
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Josef bugman posted:So as a minor question guys, how much do you all dislike Cato? On a scale of one to ten? Which one?
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Nov 19, 2013 18:49
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Great cabbage recipes, complete dick.
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Nov 19, 2013 18:50
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The Younger, I thought that was the only one you even had the possibility of liking, everyone agrees Cato the Elder is a poo poo right?
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Nov 19, 2013 19:02
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VanSandman posted:Which one? I think both "Cato the __" qualify for that question.
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Nov 19, 2013 19:03
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Josef bugman posted:The Younger, I thought that was the only one you even had the possibility of liking, everyone agrees Cato the Elder is a poo poo right? I don't know, the Elder at least had (as mentioned) great recipes. Cato the Younger, on the other hand, ran entirely on spite.
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Nov 19, 2013 21:44
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Speaking of which, I remember some Roman food experiments upthread, any more of those?
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Nov 19, 2013 21:54
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Jazerus posted:I don't know, the Elder at least had (as mentioned) great recipes. Cato the Younger, on the other hand, ran entirely on spite. But it seems to be a magnificent sort of spite.
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Nov 19, 2013 22:26
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Josef bugman posted:But it seems to be a magnificent sort of spite. It was a pure and deep spite, unassuaged by human emotion.
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Nov 19, 2013 22:36
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veekie posted:Speaking of which, I remember some Roman food experiments upthread, any more of those? Groceries + slaves = lunch. edit: The experiment might not have been performed with actual slaves. my dad fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Nov 19, 2013 |
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Nov 19, 2013 22:46
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Cato's a dick.
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Nov 20, 2013 01:31
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Can somebody point me to a manageable article or something about social structure/mobility in Classical Greece (preferably not just Athens)?
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Nov 20, 2013 03:13
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Furthermore, it is my opinion that Cato is an rear end (that's literally all I know about Cato)
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Nov 20, 2013 03:43
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I can't really help admiring Cato. He was a spite driven rear end in a top hat but the dude was so far into Great Roman Values that I just can't see him as one of the only really principled figures in the whole thing. Everyone else is out for personal power, survival or just trying to keep everything together. We spend our time arguing about to what extent Casear really wanted basic reforms or was a power hungry rear end in a top hat but with Cato it's pretty clear. Dude might have been fuelled by spite and anger but it was all driven towards his values. Of course admiring isn't the same as liking, dude was an rear end in a top hat and most of his values involved a horrible system. But dude loving lived those values a bit like meeting a Libertarian that actually doesn't take social security even if it's loving him personally not doing that.
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Nov 20, 2013 04:03
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Josef bugman posted:So as a minor question guys, how much do you all dislike Cato? On a scale of one to ten? I feel like I would personally dislike Cato (the Younger) a great deal, but I can't help but admire just how stubborn and committed he was to his course of action once it was set. I think a lot of his contemporaries felt similarly, they couldn't stand him personally but respected his dedication. Though gently caress him for that hypocritical bullshit about allowing bribes for votes for the guys standing against Caesar 
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Nov 20, 2013 07:48
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Jerusalem posted:I feel like I would personally dislike Cato (the Younger) a great deal, but I can't help but admire just how stubborn and committed he was to his course of action once it was set. I think a lot of his contemporaries felt similarly, they couldn't stand him personally but respected his dedication. I agree, there's something uniquely committed about Cato the Younger that is a little bit captivating. On the other hand, what you mentioned ruins that - he put hurting Caesar above following his values pretty consistently when the two were in conflict.
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Nov 20, 2013 14:57
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MrNemo posted:I can't really help admiring Cato. He was a spite driven rear end in a top hat but the dude was so far into Great Roman Values that I just can't see him as one of the only really principled figures in the whole thing. Everyone else is out for personal power, survival or just trying to keep everything together. We spend our time arguing about to what extent Casear really wanted basic reforms or was a power hungry rear end in a top hat but with Cato it's pretty clear. Dude might have been fuelled by spite and anger but it was all driven towards his values. He purposely whored out his wife to get an old guy's estate. He wasn't peaches and cream.
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Nov 20, 2013 15:06
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Was it Cato the Younger who would wear archaic clothing, etc. in public as a dramatic tool?
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Nov 20, 2013 15:17
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veekie posted:Speaking of which, I remember some Roman food experiments upthread, any more of those? That was me! I made some of Cato's sweet rear end buns. At the moment I'm in the middle of writing a dissertation on medieval poetry so I'm pretty much chained to my desk and am barred from partaking in any activities that are not reading or writing. I did get myself a book called Cooking Apicius, which pretty much demystifies a lot of the recipes by providing weights, measures and more detailed methods of cooking. As soon I'm freed from my academic prison I'm totally going to get back into Roman cooking. If the thread is still going I'll certainly pass on my trip reports. As for Cato, from what little knowledge I have of the guy he comes across as hilariously dickish. I would love it if there was a 'Big Book of Cato's Dick Moves' out there, it would make a fine addition to my coffee table.
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Nov 20, 2013 15:18
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MothraAttack posted:Was it Cato the Younger who would wear archaic clothing, etc. in public as a dramatic tool? Earlier in the thread someone else put it best. Cato the Younger is like a major league US senator today, dressing like George Washington, speaking like George Washington and doing pretty much everything like George Washington and doing it really in your face, constantly.
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Nov 20, 2013 17:17
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Cato is the Tea Party I mean if you were alive at the time you probably find Cato was as obnoxious as most of us here probably find the Tea Party.
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Nov 20, 2013 17:39
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Amused to Death posted:Cato is the Tea Party Yeah, only he didn't go home and change into jeans and a t-shirt.
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Nov 20, 2013 18:01
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Amused to Death posted:Cato is the Tea Party The institute named after him certainly doesn't help matters. On a different topic, is there any explanation for why Carthage practiced child sacrifice? It just seems like such a bizarre ritual for a religion to pick up, The Carthaginians had to have known how much it was used against them for propaganda purposes, so why'd they keep doing it? Surely someone somewhere made the case that this was a waste of potential conscripts, at least? If it was done as a means of population control, wasn't silphium grown in the region? Why couldn't've they just taken that instead? Hedera Helix fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Nov 20, 2013 |
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Nov 20, 2013 18:10
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Hedera Helix posted:The institute named after him certainly doesn't help matters. Holy poo poo, I never realized that, I always thought it was CATO institute and not Cato institute. This changes everything.(well it changes nothing but it's pretty funny)
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Nov 20, 2013 18:20
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