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veekie posted:Everyone loves a good gossip. Suetonius made a career out of it!
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Dec 1, 2013 23:48
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the JJ posted:That I'd disagree with. I'm more with Nenonen here, we can use text to explore the writer much more than we do the things that were written. Yeah, what it tells is is important. I mean the actual event itself isn't. The fact that it was written down as a thing is.
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Dec 2, 2013 00:38
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Jerusalem posted:Suetonius made a career out of it! Kind of silly, but I read a historical fiction novel where Domitian was the bad guy and it was a pretty crazy book. At the end was an authors note that said 'this may seem fantastical dear reader, but it was all entirely true, these things actually happened because Suetonius wrote it all down word for word.'
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Dec 2, 2013 10:36
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Dr Scoofles posted:Kind of silly, but I read a historical fiction novel where Domitian was the bad guy and it was a pretty crazy book. At the end was an authors note that said 'this may seem fantastical dear reader, but it was all entirely true, these things actually happened because Suetonius wrote it all down word for word.' Was it Suetonius' Life of Domitian?
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Dec 2, 2013 22:18
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What did the Greeks have to say about Carthage if anything?
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Dec 2, 2013 23:04
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On that note, how did the Greeks (city-states and successor kingdoms alike) view the Romans before they were subjugated, and how did they view them afterwards?
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Dec 2, 2013 23:15
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Otto Von Jizzmark posted:What did the Greeks have to say about Carthage if anything? Aristotle thought their political system was good and discusses it in the Politics. (His general argument is that the Carthaginians combine some of the virtues of aristocracy with some of the virtues of oligarchy in order to produce a stable republic, which he contrasts explicitly with Sparta and implicitly, I'd argue, with Athens.) Other than that, the record on Carthage is silent until the Roman period, as far as I know.
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Dec 2, 2013 23:37
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How did Romans or other ancient people deal with/what did they know about phobias?
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Dec 3, 2013 00:26
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Rincewind posted:That Roman joke book is pretty amazing. Thanks for linking it! There's a lot of jokes about dead children... My favourite is probably: A fellow approaches a stupid prophet and asks if his enemy will come to town. The prophet responds that he's not coming. But when the fellow learns a few days later that his enemy is actually in town now, the prophet remarks: "Yeah, the guy's outrageous, isn't he?"
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Dec 3, 2013 01:46
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The Romans didn't like the Kymeans and so they were often the butts of the jokes: A man visit a Kymean village where there's a funeral. He asks "who died?" the grievers says "the man in the casket." There was a doctor from Kyme who switched to a blunt scalpel because the patient on whom he was operating was screaming so much from the pain. They also had jokes about people from Abdera: A man from Abdera tries to hang himself. The rope snaps and he hurts his head. He then goes to a doctor to get an ointment for his head before he goes home to hang himself again. mediadave posted:There's a lot of jokes about dead children... Another joke about a bad prophet: An astrologer makes a horoscope for a child. He predicts that this child will grow up to be a successful lawyer. Then the child dies and the mother complains to the astrologer. The astrologer replies that if the child hadn't died he would indeed have been a successful lawyer. A slave joke: A furious slave owner complains to the seller that the slave he bought died, the seller replies astonished: "Really? He never did that when I owned him."
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Dec 3, 2013 21:44
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Alhazred posted:The Romans didn't like the Kymeans and so they were often the butts of the jokes:  quote:A man from Abdera tries to hang himself. The rope snaps and he hurts his head. He then goes to a doctor to get an ointment for his head before he goes home to hang himself again.  quote:A furious slave owner complains to the seller that the slave he bought died, the seller replies astonished: "Really? He never did that when I owned him." 
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Dec 4, 2013 02:52
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Suben posted:How did Romans or other ancient people deal with/what did they know about phobias? Hippocrates observed someone who was terrified by flute players, but didn't make any broader diagnosis or connection to anything else. Celsus, a Roman physician, coined the term hydrophobia as a symptom of a wound from a mad dog not being properly treated -- we still recognize it as a symptom of rabies today. The ancients understood that if you were bitten by a mad dog, you were hosed, but were a little iffy on the details. Celsus describes the mad dog as having "venom" and advises to bleed the patient immediately, stick them in a hot bathhouse, and give them the miracle antidote (undiluted wine). If hydrophobia develops, he advises the doctor to throw the patient into a disguised basin of water and hold their head under until they drink. My intuition tells me that this wasn't a very good treatment.
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Dec 4, 2013 05:38
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Alhazred posted:The Romans didn't like the Kymeans and so they were often the butts of the jokes: The Romans had pretty dark sense of humor.
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Dec 4, 2013 05:42
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Tao Jones posted:If hydrophobia develops, he advises the doctor to throw the patient into a disguised basin of water and hold their head under until they drink. My intuition tells me that this wasn't a very good treatment. He's surprisingly close to the modern treatment which is induced coma and hypothermia. In humans rabies causes a lethal fever. It's the immune response that actually kills you. The immediate cause of death is brain damage from sustained high fever. Throwing somebody in a tub of cold water and holding them down until they're half-drowned... almost certainly wouldn't work. But it might if you managed to keep them unconscious and hypothermic for three weeks. A near miss, anyway.
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Dec 4, 2013 06:43
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Might work sometimes I think, if you could keep them alive in that time.
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Dec 4, 2013 07:27
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Arglebargle III posted:He's surprisingly close to the modern treatment which is induced coma and hypothermia. In humans rabies causes a lethal fever. It's the immune response that actually kills you. The immediate cause of death is brain damage from sustained high fever. Throwing somebody in a tub of cold water and holding them down until they're half-drowned... almost certainly wouldn't work. But it might if you managed to keep them unconscious and hypothermic for three weeks. My dad used to be an army vet(erinarian) who did rabies research and about the only possible way for survival pre-Milwaukee protocol was by drilling holes in the skull to help alleviate swelling of the brain. This almost never worked. So... they should have been trepanning instead? What weren't the ancients good at?! Frostwerks fucked around with this message at 09:04 on Dec 4, 2013 |
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Dec 4, 2013 09:00
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Frostwerks posted:What weren't the ancients good at?! Anatomy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_four_humours
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Dec 4, 2013 18:03
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Frostwerks posted:My dad used to be an army vet(erinarian) who did rabies research and about the only possible way for survival pre-Milwaukee protocol was by drilling holes in the skull to help alleviate swelling of the brain. This almost never worked. So... they should have been trepanning instead? Ancient medicine is such a mixed bag. The ancient Egyptians figured out the antimicrobial and wound-healing of honey and had some ridiculously clever surgeries, but then would also put mouse droppings and dirt in things.
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Dec 4, 2013 18:06
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These things sort of make sense once you stop to consider that they just had no damned idea what germs were, or how chemistry works. If you realize that all of this stuff had just been figured out through trial, error and guessing, their methods really aren't that crazy.
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Dec 4, 2013 18:47
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:These things sort of make sense once you stop to consider that they just had no damned idea what germs were, or how chemistry works. If you realize that all of this stuff had just been figured out through trial, error and guessing, their methods really aren't that crazy. Trial and error ought to show that fecal matter in wounds is a bad idea, though.
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Dec 4, 2013 18:50
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When you add in "Welp, will of the gods v v" as an accepted cause of death it gets tricky.
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Dec 4, 2013 19:31
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I want to know how they came up with the idea that crocodile dung would be good for birth control.
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Dec 4, 2013 20:13
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The crocodile god Sobek was associated with both warding away bad luck, and getting your dick wet with no regard for consequences. That's all I got.
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Dec 4, 2013 20:19
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homullus posted:Trial and error ought to show that fecal matter in wounds is a bad idea, though. You would think so, but without a concept of germs, I imagine they didn't realize that sterilizing things was important, so there was probably fecal matter on everything else they put in the wound anyway. Besides, if jamming maggots into a wound sometimes works, who's to say that poop can't work either? The answer of course is a hundred years of modern medicine, but I can't fault Greeks and Romans for that. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Dec 4, 2013 |
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Dec 4, 2013 20:24
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PittTheElder posted:You would think so, but without a concept of germs, I imagine they didn't realize that sterilizing things was important, so there was probably fecal matter on everything else they put in the wound anyway. The Romans actually managed to figure out that cleanliness was important in wound care and would try hard to keep nasty stuff away from wounds, and clean their instruments.
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Dec 4, 2013 20:35
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WoodrowSkillson posted:The Romans actually managed to figure out that cleanliness was important in wound care and would try hard to keep nasty stuff away from wounds, and clean their instruments. Yeah didn't they even sterilize medical equipment by boiling it in either water or wine? Knockknees posted:I want to know how they came up with the idea that crocodile dung would be good for birth control. I think I remember reading something where they did a study showing crocodile dung does actually act as a moderate spermicide, but don't quote me on it. Also, more jokes! These two I liked greatly "A coward is asked which is safer, warships or merchant-ships. "Dry-docked ships" he replied. "A drunk is being railed at for losing touch with reality when he’s had a snnnotful. Barely able to see straight because of the wine, the drunk retorts, "Who’s the drunk here, you or me, you two-headed freak!"
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Dec 4, 2013 22:33
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PittTheElder posted:You would think so, but without a concept of germs, I imagine they didn't realize that sterilizing things was important, so there was probably fecal matter on everything else they put in the wound anyway. Hey, they've recently been able to cure Clostridium difficile by giving people poop to swallow!
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Dec 4, 2013 22:41
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homullus posted:Trial and error ought to show that fecal matter in wounds is a bad idea, though. The ancients had some idea of "clean/"sterile" things: good" but really without germ theory you're at a huge loss. Without some universal understanding of how things work there's always going to be some things which just are plain counter-intuitive.
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Dec 5, 2013 03:58
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Berke Negri posted:The ancients had some idea of "clean/"sterile" things: good" but really without germ theory you're at a huge loss. Without some universal understanding of how things work there's always going to be some things which just are plain counter-intuitive. I think they were pretty clear on poop being bad, by Roman times anyway.
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Dec 5, 2013 04:10
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God I'm gonna hate myself for this post when someone digs it up. Honey is a good antiseptic. It's bee puke. Urine is a good antiseptic. It's pee. To assume that poop, untouched, is antiseptic isn't a far reach if you're an ancient guy checking out stuff that comes from animals that is safe. Like obviously smoldering pits of doo and peepee are bad, but given the previous parameters...
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Dec 5, 2013 05:10
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Berke Negri posted:The ancients had some idea of "clean/"sterile" things: good" Yeah, this was generally the best it got. They were aware that cleanliness seemed to reduce disease and filth increased it, and that clean medical instruments didn't cause infections the way dirty ones did. And they knew poop was bad. Think of the massive public works in Roman cities dedicated to bringing in clean water and removing filth--you wouldn't do that if you weren't aware it was a good idea for public health. Roman cities didn't suffer the kind of disease that ravaged cities up to the modern era. Germ theory was actually first proposed by the Greeks, it just didn't gain any acceptance (there was no way to test it) and was forgotten about. Exactly like atomic theory, now that I'm thinking about it.
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Dec 5, 2013 05:27
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homullus posted:I think they were pretty clear on poop being bad, by Roman times anyway. Just because something is A Bad Thing, doesn't mean you may think it may not have some sort of medicinal qualities in certain circumstances. Knowing as a general rule "good to keep things clean/sterile" is one thing, understanding why is quite another. I think as moderns we're just going to struggle wrapping our minds around that because germ theory is such a huge leap (next to antibiotics) in medicine and we're all pretty much raised since being toddlers about it that trying to imagine a world dislocated from the understanding is going to be pretty tough.
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Dec 5, 2013 05:31
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Berke Negri posted:that trying to imagine a world dislocated from the understanding is going to be pretty tough. Just move to East Asia like me and you can experience it all the time. 
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Dec 5, 2013 05:34
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Oh god, is it really that bad?
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Dec 5, 2013 05:40
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No. It's not that they don't understand that poop is bad, it's that the world outside your front door does not exist for the purpose of moral calculus. An ethical free-fire (free-pooping) zone if you will.
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Dec 5, 2013 06:21
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Grand Fromage posted:Think of the massive public works in Roman cities dedicated to bringing in clean water and removing filth--you wouldn't do that if you weren't aware it was a good idea for public health. Roman cities didn't suffer the kind of disease that ravaged cities up to the modern era. Do we know that this was an actual motivation for them? I would have thought clean water and as-little-poop-as-possible would be near universal values even without worrying about medicine.
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Dec 5, 2013 07:02
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Berke Negri posted:Oh god, is it really that bad? Even the more "western" areas still have some very strange ideas about communicable diseases.
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Dec 5, 2013 08:06
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PittTheElder posted:Do we know that this was an actual motivation for them? I would have thought clean water and as-little-poop-as-possible would be near universal values even without worrying about medicine. Yes, it was an actual motivation. They knew cleanliness was healthy, beyond just being nice. You'd think clean water and minimal poop would be universal values, but I would cite basically any medieval European city as a counter-point. Berke Negri posted:Oh god, is it really that bad? In all the times I've been sick here and all the ensuing discussions, the idea that I was sick because I got infected by germs has never come up and been politely dismissed when I suggested it. More credible local reasons for getting sick included: the temperature, rain, fans, air conditioning, clothing choices, incorrect behavior, not eating enough rice, petting a cat, foreigners are a different species and incapable of handling the Korean environment, and a general vague I did something wrong/am a bad person and thus have a viral infection. Being stuck in a room with children that are sent to school sick and happily cough directly in your face and never wash themselves has no relationship to being sick. Thankfully there are actual doctors one can go to, these are just annoying workplace conversations. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 13:54 on Dec 5, 2013 |
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Dec 5, 2013 13:50
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To be fair, as Atlas Hugged noted, that stuff happens in the West too. The idea that being cold or going out on a rainy day can get you sick is still very common, and let's not get started with all the crazy ideas people have about "alternative" healing methods like homeopathy or whatever. I have no doubt that you could get people to submit to bleedings to balance their humours even today, if you marketed the idea well enough.
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Dec 5, 2013 16:40
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Sure (though he meant the westernized parts of Asia I think), and it's not like everyone here is an idiot. But the scale is different. Imagine if in the west 90% of conversations with people went directly to homeopathy and miasmas in the aether instead of penicillin and germs. Anyway, straying off topic a bit. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Dec 5, 2013 |
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Dec 5, 2013 16:44
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