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Hedera Helix posted: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, especially since they were originally a Greek colony, and the Greeks didn't sacrifice their children. At least, I don't think they did, and technically exposure at birth is different. Carthage was a Phoenician colony, not a Greek one.
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# ? Nov 20, 2013 18:20 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 22:45 |
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Hedera Helix posted:The institute named after him certainly doesn't help matters. Why did the Greeks waste so much good meat taking omens and divining signs? Or, for that matter, take the advise of drugged out virgins and livers so highly? Why did the Minoans risk their best and brightest by making them jump over bulls? Why did Christian priests practice celibacy when they could have had more conscripts drat it! But yeah dead kids and strange religious rituals weren't anything particularly unusual at the time, and while I think the archeology has turned up a few remains that look like sacrificed kids, I think the extent of the practice may have been exaggerated in Roman sources. Also they were Phoenician, not Greek.
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# ? Nov 20, 2013 18:25 |
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Hedera Helix posted:The institute named after him certainly doesn't help matters. Technically the institute is named after the pseudonym used by a more contemporary rear end in a top hat to inveigh against whatever social ills they saw in democracy. However, the reason the pseudonym was used at the time was because Cato was such a shitheel in his pursuit of the noble Roman values of wealth concentration and locking the general public out of state affairs.
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# ? Nov 20, 2013 18:25 |
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Gah, it was Neapolis (later Naples) that was the big Greek colony in the western Mediterranean, not Carthage.
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# ? Nov 20, 2013 18:27 |
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Cato Institute is named more directly after Cato's Letters, a collection of 18th century liberal essays.
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# ? Nov 20, 2013 18:32 |
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Holy poo poo, I finished the thread .... I mean, great thread, really interesting and informative. Anyway, I've heard that works like Aesop's Fables and The Odyssey were supposed to be studied seriously and I've been wondering what ancient Romans would have read for fun? What was the classical version of the 1001 Nights or Grimms Fairy Tales?
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 01:13 |
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I'm not sure if this has been covered elsewhere in the thread, but would anyone be able to give me a rundown on who exactly the Etruscans were. Also, are there any new updates on the origin of the Etruscan language? I've heard everything from a connection to Linear B to Armenian, but I was wondering what explanations this thread could come up with.
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 05:06 |
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Comic poetry would have been one, I suppose. I can definitely see people reading Herodotus' history for fun: whether you believe it or not, and plenty of the Greeks disbelieved even true parts of it, it's entertaining. And laughing at weird barbarians is always fun even if Herodotus is trying to take them kind of seriously. Lucian writes one of the first 'fiction which is there just to be fiction' novels in his True Story where the entire introduction is him explaining that his title is ironic because apparently it had confused test audiences. Scifi and space wars all up in that, it's some pretty crazy poo poo. Think my girlfriend did some translation on her blog if you want me to dig it up.
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 05:07 |
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I really need to read True History, I've only read summaries before but it sounds fun. Parodying the piles of bullshit in histories (Herodotus specifically was a Lucian target but there were others) and what's basically the first known science fiction story. Like literally, much of it is about a wars between aliens on the Moon/Sun/Venus/stars.
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 05:14 |
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the JJ posted:But yeah dead kids and strange religious rituals weren't anything particularly unusual at the time, and while I think the archeology has turned up a few remains that look like sacrificed kids, I think the extent of the practice may have been exaggerated in Roman sources. There's basically nothing contemporary written about it, which is fairly suspicious given that at the time everyone loving loved to rag on about how the Carthaginians were massive pieces of poo poo and probably wouldn't have missed an opportunity like that. The idea that the Carthaginians sacrificed to Baal-Haamon by burning children alive is really only found in writings after Carthage's destruction, and are usually part of Roman justification about how it was a good thing they had been genocided. About as much that can be said is that the Carthaginians had some kind of sacrifice or religious ceremony called the Molk/MLK*, and that children were part of it. On the other hand the graveyards of the children that went through the MLK contain a large number children suspected of having been miscarried or possessing birth defects, as well as animals also identified as being part of a MLK. It's been suggested that rather than a sacrifice, the MLK was basically a religious rite for children if they died for whatever unspecified reason before adulthood. The ages and number of the children vary year by year and increase during times of war or famine. So basically anything beyond "There was a religious practice called MLK that was a thing, and sometimes involved children" is guesswork because we have no idea what MLK was or what it was intended to do, and everything written about it is from guys who absolutely despised Carthage. *And from MLK and the related LMLK we get Moloch, a bull-headed Phoenician god that there is no evidence of every being an actual thing. Similarly, the Tophet (graveyard) became the massive bronze bull-oven the children were supposed to have been burned in Slantedfloors fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Nov 21, 2013 |
# ? Nov 21, 2013 07:20 |
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The Romans apparently went in for human sacrifice too, after the Battle of Cannae. Apologies for the Wiki link but the original source is Polybius. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae Wiki posted:As the story goes, Rome declared a national day of mourning as there was not a single person who was not either related to or acquainted with a person who had died. The Romans became so desperate that they resorted to human sacrifice, twice burying people alive at the Forum of Rome and abandoning an oversized baby in the Adriatic Sea (perhaps one of the last instances of human sacrifices by the Romans, apart from public executions of defeated enemies dedicated to Mars). I like to imagine their attitude was something like "The only moral human sacrifice is our human sacrifice."
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 09:02 |
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the JJ posted:Why did the Greeks waste so much good meat taking omens and divining signs? I know this is part of a facetious post, but the Greeks actually didn't really do this. They kept the best bits for themselves and sacrificed stuff like hip bones and tendons to the gods.
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 09:15 |
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Maybe you could make your altar an oven and then 'sacrifice' every time you cook.
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 09:23 |
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the jizz taxi posted:I know this is part of a facetious post, but the Greeks actually didn't really do this. They kept the best bits for themselves and sacrificed stuff like hip bones and tendons to the gods. I was referring to the livery bits actually, which is supposed to be one of the best bits. Not sure if they actually ate them after they checked it for the right number of lobes.
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 09:53 |
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PBJ posted:I'm not sure if this has been covered elsewhere in the thread, but would anyone be able to give me a rundown on who exactly the Etruscans were. I'm rather partial to the theory that its an offshoot of Luwian, which was the language spoken in Troy. Think about that would mean about the Aeneid. My opinion is worth less than dirt however since I'm not a linguist and know practically nothing about linguistics.
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 10:04 |
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I have a dumb question. I read that Romans, supposedly, hated dogs although surviving mosaics suggest they kept them domestically. Are there any records of what sorts of relationship Romans had with dogs? Did they use dogs only for guarding/fighting/symbolic executions or did they have them as lapdogs and companions too?
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 11:34 |
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PBJ posted:Also, are there any new updates on the origin of the Etruscan language? I've heard everything from a connection to Linear B to Armenian, but I was wondering what explanations this thread could come up with. There's not much to say about its "origins": presumably it was Pre-Indo-European (that is, in Europe before the IE migrations), since there are no sensible hypotheses connecting it to any IE languages. The Luwian theory isn't particularly strong by any means. What we know for certain is that Etruscan was related to Raetic, spoken north of it in the Alps, and to Lemnian, which was written down on the island of Lemnos near the Bosporus roughly in the sixth century BC, before the island became Greek-speaking. Now, that connection is certainly interesting and opens a door for a whole lot of strange theories: were the Tyrrhenian languages (as the mini-family is called) widespread across the Mediterranean before Indo-European languages took over? Or are Etruscan and Raetic originally from Anatolia, which would corroborate one of Herodotus' strange migration stories? Or did it go the other way around, did the Etruscans colonise Lemnos at some point? Besides the Anatolian hypothesis, many have tried to connect the Tyrrhenian languages to Minoan/Linear A (not Linear B: that's Greek), but that's well loving fanciful since it's not been deciphered...
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 13:16 |
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General warning about Carthage material is that we have no surviving Carthaginian writing. There might be some inscriptions around but there is nothing extensive. It's very strange, really, but the working hypothesis is they used papyrus and other perishable material that was all destroyed by time/the Romans. So everything you know about Carthage comes from foreign sources, largely Roman. That said, the Phoenicians seem to have practiced child sacrifice, as many other cultures did, and the child graveyards that are part of the evidence of this exist in Carthaginian cities long after the rest of the Phoenicians seem to have stopped it. The graveyards absolutely exist, but it's hard to say for sure whether they were sacrificial victims or there was just some sort of thing about burying dead children separately from adults. Without Carthaginian sources there's no way to say for sure. I kinda suspect they did it because it's not as if human sacrifice is bizarre. The Romans had a serious taboo against it (except the occasional times they did it ) but before then I think it was reasonably widespread. The Romans talked about it, they usually left native religions alone where they conquered but human sacrifice was one thing they stopped when they found it, which apparently happened frequently enough that it was worth mention.
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 14:12 |
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Dr Scoofles posted:I have a dumb question. I read that Romans, supposedly, hated dogs although surviving mosaics suggest they kept them domestically. Are there any records of what sorts of relationship Romans had with dogs? Did they use dogs only for guarding/fighting/symbolic executions or did they have them as lapdogs and companions too? Dogs were chthonic and unholy. Sulla famously had an epic freak out when a dog interrupted an important religious ceremony. Also they crucified dogs on occasion due to the whole Juno Moneta fiasco.... But they didn't hate dogs.
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 14:14 |
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Dr Scoofles posted:The Romans apparently went in for human sacrifice too, after the Battle of Cannae. Apologies for the Wiki link but the original source is Polybius. "abandoning an oversized baby in the Adriatic Sea"?
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 16:28 |
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Ainsley McTree posted:"abandoning an oversized baby in the Adriatic Sea"? Look you shoulda seen this baby.
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 16:32 |
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Maybe it was a manbaby.
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 17:18 |
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Hedera Helix posted: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, Hedera Helix posted:The Carthaginians had to have known how much it was used against them for propaganda purposes, so why'd they keep doing it? Sitting there reading this, we can largely conceptualize the difference, though we'd be hard pressed to objectively explain it, and at the end of the day, we will largely have to admit it's a 2,000 year old cultural artifact and a mostly arbitrary distinction. Hedera Helix posted: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? E: Child remains have been excavated at Carthaginian religious sites called "tophets", where they were apparently burned. Carthage apologists (yes, these actually exist, don't ask) claim the kids were burned after they died. 2nd Ed: I'm a little behind, here's a recent paper on it. http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0009177&representation=PDF Not apologia per se but I would be happier if they'd been able to actually determine that the remains in question showed signs of actual disease. Probably a lot to ask since they're thousands of years old and got set on fire. physeter fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Nov 21, 2013 |
# ? Nov 21, 2013 17:26 |
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Hedera Helix posted:The Carthaginians had to have known how much it was used against them for propaganda purposes, so why'd they keep doing it? You mean like Americans letting women drive and do whatever? Or Saudis prosecuting rape victims? Or the Japanese abusing POWs? Or China's one-child policy? Or any of a billion other things states do because they DGAF what the other side thinks?
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 18:04 |
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Plus sacrifices are religiously motivated. It might piss their gods off, not something to risk if it can be avoided.
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 18:15 |
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Ainsley McTree posted:"abandoning an oversized baby in the Adriatic Sea"? Not surprising, there were a lot of weird superstitions surrounding infant birth. Pliny for example tells us that... Natural History, Book 7 Chapter 7 posted:It is contrary to nature for children to come into the world with the feet first, for which reason such children are called Agrippæ, meaning that they are born with difficulty.1 In this manner, M. Agrippa2 is said to have been born; the only instance, almost, of good fortune, out of the number of all those who have come into the world under these circumstances. And yet, even he may be considered to have paid the penalty of the unfavourable omen produced by the unnatural mode of his birth, in the unfortunate weakness of his legs, the misfortunes of his youth, a life spent in the very midst of arms and slaughter, and ever exposed to the approaches of death; in his children, too, who have all proved a very curse to the earth, and more especially, the two Agrippinas, who were the mothers respectively of Caius and of Domitius Nero,3 so many firebrands hurled among the human race. In addition to all this, we may add the shortness of his life, he being cut off in his fifty-first year, the distress which he experienced from the adulteries of his wife,4 and the grievous tyranny to which he was subjected by his father-in-law. Agrippina, too, the mother of Nero, who was lately Emperor, and who proved himself, throughout the whole of his reign, the enemy of the human race, has left it recorded in writing, that he was born with his feet first. It is in the due order of nature that man should enter the world with the head first, and be carried to the tomb in a contrary fashion. And also multiple births made things a bit odd... Natural History Book 7, Chapter 3 posted:That three children are sometimes produced at one birth, is a well-known fact; the case, for instance, of the Horatii and the Curiatii. Where a greater number of children than this is produced at one birth, it is looked upon as portentous, except, indeed, in Egypt, where the water of the river Nile, which is used for drink, is a promoter of fecundity.1 Very recently, towards the close of the reign of the Emperor Augustus, now deified, a certain woman of the lower orders, at Ostia, whose name was Fausta, brought into the world, at one birth, two male children and two females, a presage, no doubt, of the famine which shortly after took place. So 3 children at once as fine, but any more than that and it gets problematic. Given how superstitious Romans were about child birth, an over sized infant being use in a ritual like that becomes less surprising.
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 18:32 |
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Agrippa had leg problems?
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 19:49 |
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Halloween Jack posted:Agrippa had leg problems? Apparently so! That's the only source I can think of that mentions it (someone else may know of one?), so I wouldn't take it as necessarily being true.
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 20:24 |
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On Romans and dogs, we have Cato, Varro, and Columella talking about working dogs -- hunting dogs, sheepdogs, and guard dogs. They did think of the breeds as distinct. You can't ignore Homer, though. Everything's already there in Homer, as they say (whole thing is Odyssey 17, 290-335): ὣς οἱ μὲν τοιαῦτα πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἀγόρευον: ἂν δὲ κύων κεφαλήν τε καὶ οὔατα κείμενος ἔσχεν, Ἄργος, Ὀδυσσῆος ταλασίφρονος, ὅν ῥά ποτ᾽ αὐτὸς θρέψε μέν, οὐδ᾽ ἀπόνητο, πάρος δ᾽ εἰς Ἴλιον ἱρὴν ᾤχετο. τὸν δὲ πάροιθεν ἀγίνεσκον νέοι ἄνδρες αἶγας ἐπ᾽ ἀγροτέρας ἠδὲ πρόκας ἠδὲ λαγωούς: δὴ τότε κεῖτ᾽ ἀπόθεστος ἀποιχομένοιο ἄνακτος, ἐν πολλῇ κόπρῳ, ἥ οἱ προπάροιθε θυράων ἡμιόνων τε βοῶν τε ἅλις κέχυτ᾽, ὄφρ᾽ ἂν ἄγοιεν δμῶες Ὀδυσσῆος τέμενος μέγα κοπρήσοντες: ἔνθα κύων κεῖτ᾽ Ἄργος, ἐνίπλειος κυνοραιστέων. δὴ τότε γ᾽, ὡς ἐνόησεν Ὀδυσσέα ἐγγὺς ἐόντα, οὐρῇ μέν ῥ᾽ ὅ γ᾽ ἔσηνε καὶ οὔατα κάββαλεν ἄμφω, ἆσσον δ᾽ οὐκέτ᾽ ἔπειτα δυνήσατο οἷο ἄνακτος ἐλθέμεν: αὐτὰρ ὁ νόσφιν ἰδὼν ἀπομόρξατο δάκρυ, ῥεῖα λαθὼν Εὔμαιον, ἄφαρ δ᾽ ἐρεείνετο μύθῳ: ... Ἄργον δ᾽ αὖ κατὰ μοῖρ᾽ ἔλαβεν μέλανος θανάτοιο, αὐτίκ᾽ ἰδόντ᾽ Ὀδυσῆα ἐεικοστῷ ἐνιαυτῷ. Thus they spoke to one another. And a hound that lay there raised his head and pricked up his ears, Argos, the hound of Odysseus, of the steadfast heart, whom of old he had himself bred, but had no joy of him, for ere that he went to sacred Ilios. In days past the young men were wont to take the hound to hunt the wild goats, and deer, and hares; but now he lay neglected, his master gone, in the deep dung of mules and cattle, which lay in heaps before the doors, till the slaves of Odysseus should take it away to dung his wide lands. There lay the hound Argos, full of vermin; yet even now, when he marked Odysseus standing near, he wagged his tail and dropped both his ears, but nearer to his master he had no longer strength to move. Then Odysseus looked aside and wiped away a tear, easily hiding from Eumaeus what he did; and straightway he questioned him, and said ... But as for Argos, the fate of black death seized him straightway when he had seen Odysseus in the twentieth year. Edit: Don't forget this poor doggie at Pompeii. homullus fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Nov 21, 2013 |
# ? Nov 21, 2013 20:26 |
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Reminder: The Romans were so superstitious they had people who's job it was to remember the superstitions.
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 20:30 |
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Xenophon discusses appropriate names for your ancient dogge: Xenophon posted:Τὰ δ' ὀνόματα αὐταῖς τίθεσθαι βραχέα, ἵνα εὐανάκλητα ᾖ. εἶναι δὲ χρὴ τοιάδε: Ψυχή, Θυμός, Πόρπαξ, Στύραξ, Λογχή, Λόχος, Φρουρά, Φύλαξ, Τάξις, Ξίφων, Φόναξ, Φλέγων, Ἀλκή, Τεύχων, Ὑλεύς, Μήδας, Πόρθων, Σπέρχων, Ὀργή, Βρέμων, Ὕβρις, Θάλλων, Ῥώμη, Ἀνθεύς, Ἥβα, Γηθεύς, Χαρά, Λεύσσων, Αὐγώ, Πολύς, Βία, Στίχων, Σπουδή, Βρύας, Οἰνάς, Στέρρος, Κραύγη, Καίνων, Τύρβας, Σθένων, Αἰθήρ, Ἀκτίς, Αἰχμή, Νόης, Γνώμη, Στίβων, Ὁρμή. "Give your dog a short name, so that you can call him easily. The following are of the right sort: Psyche, Thymus, Porpax, Styrax, Lonché, Lochus, Phrura, Phylax, Taxis, Xiphon, Phonax, Phlegon, Alcé, Teuchon, Hyleus, Medas, Porthon, Sperchon, Orgé, Bremon, Hybris, Thallon, Rhomé, Antheus, Hebe, Getheus, Chara, Leusson, Augo, Polys, Bia, Stichon, Spudé, Bryas, Oenas, Sterrus, Craugé, Caenon, Tyrbas, Sthenon, Aether, Actis, Aechmé, Noës, Gnomé, Stibon, Hormé." Some of the names have obvious associations with words, like Soul (Psyche), Enthusiasm (Thymus), Spear-Shaft (Styrax), Duty (Taxis), Sunbeam (Aktis), Pure Air (Aether), Intensity (Polys), Pride (Hybris) and the like. The Roman poet Ovid also discusses dog names in the context of naming Actaeon's hounds: Ovid posted:But while he [Actaeon] stands perplexed he sees his hounds. And first come Melampus and keen-scented Ichnobates, baying loud on the trail -- Ichnobates a Cretan dog, Melampus a Spartan; then others come rushing on swifter than the wind; Pamphagus, Dorceus, and Oribasos, Arcadians all; staunch Nebrophonos, fierce Theron and Laelaps; Pterelas, the swift of foot, and keen-scented Agre; savage Hylaeus, but lately ripped up by a boar; the wolf-dog Nape and the trusty shepherd Poemenis; Harpyia with her two pups; Sicyonian Ladon, thin in the flanks; Dromas, Canache, Sticte, Tigris, Alce; white-haired Leucon, black Astobolos; Lacon, renowned for strength, and fleet Aëllo; Thoos and swift Lycisce with her brother Cyprius; Harpalos, with a white spot in the middle of his black forehead; Melaneus and shaggy Lachne; two dogs from a Cretan father and a Spartan mother, Labros and Argiodus; shrill-tongued Hylactor, and others whom it were too long to name. According to the translator's note: "The English names of these hounds in their order would be: Black-foot, Trail-follower, Voracious, Gazelle, Mountain-ranger, Fawn-killer, Hurricane, Hunter, Winged, Hunter, Sylvan, Glen, Shepherd, Seizer, Catcher, Runner, Gnasher, Spot, Tigress, Might, White, Soot, Spartan, Whirlwind, Swift, Cyprian, Wolf, Grasper, Black, Shag, Fury, White-tooth, Barker, Black-hair, Beast-killer, Mountaineer." Greeks also liked to make cups in the shape of a dog's head, like so:
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# ? Nov 21, 2013 21:14 |
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homullus posted:
My dog was doing this pose a couple of days ago, but for reasons far less understood (and far less unfortunate).
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# ? Nov 22, 2013 01:44 |
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Hogge Wild posted:Maybe it was a manbaby. Maybe it was an idol. Maybe it was a golden manbaby.
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# ? Nov 22, 2013 06:25 |
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I may have to change my dog's names to something from that badass list! Although one of them is called Rufus so I guess he can keep his suitably Roman name.
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# ? Nov 22, 2013 09:27 |
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I seem to recall hearing about a dog dated from the ice age who was found buried in a resting position, with a mammoth bone in its mouth. People loving their dogs is nothing new.
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# ? Nov 22, 2013 14:42 |
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People are people, the average Roman who had a dog would have treated them near identically to how we do now. Upper class Romans indulged in crazy (to us) beliefs and behaviors like not loving your wife and stuff, but the dude on a small farm in Gaul would have been out there tossing sticks for his dog like we do now.
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# ? Nov 22, 2013 14:51 |
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WoodrowSkillson posted:People are people, the average Roman who had a dog would have treated them near identically to how we do now. Upper class Romans indulged in crazy (to us) beliefs and behaviors like not loving your wife and stuff, but the dude on a small farm in Gaul would have been out there tossing sticks for his dog like we do now. Its a worrying facet of human behaviour that no matter how repugnant a culture it always knows the answer to "whose a good boy!", the answer is always "you are, yes you are!" obviously.
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# ? Nov 22, 2013 15:38 |
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It really is weird to me that despite my hobby of ancient history, I still stop and get flabbergasted that ancient people really were exactly like us in all ways but obvious cultural differences. Its such a simple concept that somehow always gets pushed away, only to reappear as a seeming revelation.
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# ? Nov 22, 2013 15:47 |
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The real ancients were completely unfathomable and left no traces. Scholars from Harvard and Oxford made up the entire corpus of antiquity starting in 1926.
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# ? Nov 22, 2013 15:59 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 22:45 |
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Tao Jones posted:The real ancients were completely unfathomable and left no traces. Scholars from Harvard and Oxford made up the entire corpus of antiquity starting in 1926. Ahhh BPRD, how I have missed you and the talk of the lizard people of Mu. WoodrowSkillson posted:It really is weird to me that despite my hobby of ancient history, I still stop and get flabbergasted that ancient people really were exactly like us in all ways but obvious cultural differences. Its such a simple concept that somehow always gets pushed away, only to reappear as a seeming revelation. Its kind of terrifying in its own way, you look at all the stuff you do and look back in history and think "thank god I am not an arse like back then!" and then suddenly realising that a lot of the stuff that we call horrifying is so only from a cultural context. Its kind of scary really.
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# ? Nov 22, 2013 16:37 |