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Slim Jim Pickens posted:You can call her Greek. You could probably say she was dangerously Greek. Cleopatra's mother is unknown, so there is wriggle room there.
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Sep 21, 2014 16:35
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:You can call her Greek. You could probably say she was dangerously Greek. It's like the ancient Hapsburgs.
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Sep 21, 2014 16:37
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I've also heard it's likely they just recorded the brother/sister marriages having been consummated even when in reality the kid was from a concubine?
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Sep 21, 2014 16:37
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Koramei posted:I've also heard it's likely they just recorded the brother/sister marriages having been consummated even when in reality the kid was from a concubine? The concubines being largely from greek and greek-egyptian heritage, and definite generations where brother sister marriages did produce offspring that "reset" the heritage back to majority greek and inbred. It's all really really gross and weird.
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Sep 21, 2014 16:41
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Koramei posted:It's a bit unfair to say Korean 'culture' was replaced, it was more just the bureaucracy. That would in turn eventually have an impact on the culture since the scholars and artists overlap but Korean art remained mostly distinct. And I know you don't have much love for the place but wholly dismissing a culture like that is a pretty contentious thing to say It's not being dismissive, Silla actively tried to make themselves as much of a copy of Tang China as they could. That was a long time ago, though. It's not reflective of Korea today, though it helps explain why so much "traditional Korean" stuff is so very Chinese. Look at a Korean and and a Chinese palace--they're identical. Modern Korea comes out of Joseon, I don't think there's much left in the culture that dates from before then. Joseon was quite horrifying but not ancient. We don't know how much this affected culture in the lower classes since like everywhere else, we have the missing documentation problem. The Korean ruling class absolutely copied China throughout its whole history. But then you have the caste system and bone ranks and stuff that have nothing to do with China as far as I know. And I do like Korea! I just hated working there, living there is nice. Fortunately I no longer have that problem. Koramei posted:Really? I hadn't heard that, can you elaborate a bit? I've heard North Korea likes tying themselves to the Goguryeo legacy so that would be a bit weird for them. I assume what he's referencing is that modern Koreans are a relatively recent ethnic group, which may or may not be related to whoever was living there 2500 years ago. Also the history lover's tragedy of the North/South divide. North Korea was the center of the country for most of its history, all the cool historical stuff is across the DMZ. The south was largely farmland to feed the north. Seoul has a long history, but Gaeseong and Pyeongyang were more prominent most of the time. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Sep 21, 2014 |
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Sep 21, 2014 16:42
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There's something interesting on the mural that Squalid posted. Check out the heavy cavalry: Below is a Sogdian fighting scene from a bone plaque found in Orlat, Uzbekistan  I don't know what you think, but these long lamellar armour coats and the neck guards in the Korean mural reminded me of that plaque.
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Sep 21, 2014 16:52
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not to derail from Korea here, but I'm on a bit of a Carthage spree lately I bought a bank note on Hannibal, Missouri, I just picked up a coin from Carthage with Tanit on the obverse and from reading her wiki article I recalled reading something in this thread about the whole child sacrificing thing to be nonsense... The one source is Tertullian and as the guy is Christian I am not surprised to see him bad mouthing something who's origins competed with Jewish mythology of that area (Ba'al mention in the bible and all that) Care to go into all this a bit?
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Sep 21, 2014 16:52
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JaucheCharly posted:I don't know what you think, but these long lamellar armour coats and the neck guards in the Korean mural reminded me of that plaque. They kind of look like medieval depictions of Roman Cataphracts too. I imagine there's only so many ways to armor a horse without screwing up its mobility.
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Sep 21, 2014 16:54
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Koramei posted:Really? I hadn't heard that, can you elaborate a bit? I've heard North Korea likes tying themselves to the Goguryeo legacy so that would be a bit weird for them. I don't have my Korean history book on me at the moment but the ethnicity of Goguryeo's inhabitants is somewhat disputed. Korean historiography was also biased against them for a long time because scholars writing during the Silla dynasty, which willingly submitted to Tang suzerainty during the overthrow of Goguryeo in exchange for military support, felt the need to emphasize their state's status as the one true Korean nation, in opposition to those Definitely Not Korean Barbarians in the north. Nintendo Kid posted:The concubines being largely from greek and greek-egyptian heritage, and definite generations where brother sister marriages did produce offspring that "reset" the heritage back to majority greek and inbred. Why were the concubines largely of Greek heritage? Also what does largely mean in this context?
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Sep 21, 2014 16:56
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There's also yet another nationalist slapfight, with many Chinese scholars claiming Goguryeo was a Chinese state and Koreans claiming it as Korean. From what I've read, it probably wasn't really either but was an ethnic group that isn't around anymore. Possibly ancestors of one of those steppe groups like the Jurchen.
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Sep 21, 2014 16:59
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Squalid posted:Why were the concubines largely of Greek heritage? Also what does largely mean in this context? It is my understanding that a lot of the concubines ended up being descended from offspring of previous concubines and Ptolemaic monarchs.
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Sep 21, 2014 17:21
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Nintendo Kid posted:It is my understanding that a lot of the concubines ended up being descended from offspring of previous concubines and Ptolemaic monarchs. It's Ptolemy all the way down. 
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Sep 21, 2014 17:46
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Nintendo Kid posted:It is my understanding that a lot of the concubines ended up being descended from offspring of previous concubines and Ptolemaic monarchs. That, and the Ptolemaics were Hellenic supremacists, so racism might factor into it. Cleopatra VII was the only Ptolemaic ruler to speak Egyptian.
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Sep 21, 2014 19:09
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I have some gladiator questions! If they are too basic or annoying feel free to point me to a good book or something instead. A friend and I were talking about pro wrestling and he happened to mention gladiator battles. We were wondering how much the two have in common, mainly: - Were all/most fights to the death, or just first blood or something? - Were fights fixed? For example, I've heard certain gladiators would become really popular with the crowd who would come back every week to see that guy. From a entertainment standpoint you can't risk that guy getting randomly killed and screwing your ticket sales - do you feed him weak fighters or book the other guys to lose to keep sales up? Or blunt or weaken their weapons to give them less of a chance? - On the flip side, were some fighters set up to be booed/hated, like would you dress them as enemies of Rome or claim they were from some hated country and get the crowd really turned against them?
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Sep 21, 2014 19:24
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fuzzy_logic posted:I have some gladiator questions! If they are too basic or annoying feel free to point me to a good book or something instead. A friend and I were talking about pro wrestling and he happened to mention gladiator battles. We were wondering how much the two have in common, mainly: We've done gladiatorchat a bunch in the thread, so if you're looking for more details you can try to find previous posts about it. But in short, the comparison to pro wrestling or boxing is pretty good. Most fights weren't to the death. Gladiators were the main stars in the entertainment world of Rome and would sell out the Coliseum, so wasting them on death matches just didn't make sense. They were often well-paid (even the ones that were slaves; in Roman slavery, slaves could accumulate their own money) and had access to very good doctors to keep them in good condition. I'd be shocked if many fights weren't fixed or scripted, for the reason you mentioned. The one obvious exception to this would be when gladiators fought animals, since you can't tell a starving cougar to pull his punches or take a fall after three minutes. Gladiator "styles" were supposedly from all over the Empire and their costumes/armor were outlandish to give them a "foreign" feel. Part of the allure of gladiator games was probably an element of "come look at the foreigners and marvel at how foreign they are" in the same way that some pro wrestlers have adopted outlandishly foreign personalities as part of their gig. (I don't know if any were explicitly set up to be the enemies of Rome, like in Gladiator where they're supposed to be Carthaginians.)
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Sep 21, 2014 19:42
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Tao Jones posted:We've done gladiatorchat a bunch in the thread, so if you're looking for more details you can try to find previous posts about it. But in short, the comparison to pro wrestling or boxing is pretty good. Thanks! It's a very long thread, I'll sift through for the earlier answers. Tao Jones posted:
This makes WAY more sense to me, thanks. People kept insisting they were all deathmatches and from a business point of view that would just be ridiculous.
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Sep 21, 2014 20:17
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All I've learned about Gladiators I've learned from the movie Gladiator (duh) and Spartacus (the series)  Some points I remember from previous discussions: 1) There's a lot to those various fighting "styles" (well armor, weapons, the whole kit), like spears being considered a little  2) Gladiatrices and Midgets, all the way down. Apparently it was popular enough that they had to forbid senators daughters and female relatives from training as Gladiatrices. quote:The Larinum decree under Tiberius banned senators' daughters,granddaughters and great-granddaughters, and "any female whose husband or father or grandfather, whether paternal or maternal or brother had ever possessed the right of sitting in the seats reserved for the equites" from training or making paid appearances as gladiators quote:The Emperor Domitian liked to stage torch-lit fights between dwarves and women, according to Suetonius in The Twelve Caesars. From depictions it appears they fought bare-chested and rarely wore helmets, no matter what type of gladiator they fought as. Women apparently fought at night, and the fact that this coincided with the main events of a Games indicates the possible importance or rarity of female gladiators. Most modern scholars consider female gladiators a novelty act due to the sparse writings about them, but writer Amy Zoll notes that the fact that those ancient historians that do mention them do so casually may suggest that they were "more widespread than direct evidence might otherwise indicate." The author of an inscription found in Pompeii boasts of being the first editor (promoter or sponsor) to bring female gladiators to the town. 3) If they wanted someone chopped up to provide the blood in bloodsport they'd bring in some lovely slaves/War captives for the Gladiators to "fight". These may or may not actually come from one of the abovementioned films/series 
Pimpmust fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Sep 21, 2014 |
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Sep 21, 2014 20:21
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It's not just the gate that the gladiators brought in: training people (and especially the ones who were unwilling slaves) to be halfway decent and entertaining fighters was a notable expense which you don't want wiped out by a stray stab. The guys who ran gladiator schools in Italy were seriously rich.
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Sep 21, 2014 20:30
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Bum the Sad posted:You haven't. Nope, I have, but I don't want to go off-topic so we'll leave it at that.
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Sep 21, 2014 23:02
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Tao Jones posted:(I don't know if any were explicitly set up to be the enemies of Rome, like in Gladiator where they're supposed to be Carthaginians.) Yep, this happened. If you had a lot of prisoners to execute, one way to make it more fun was to make them dress up as some foreign army and have the noble Romans defeat them. Prisoner executions were typically held around lunchtime as an intermission--the games were an all-day affair. Animal hunts and races in the morning, prisoner execution at lunch, gladiators as the main event in the afternoon.
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Sep 22, 2014 01:32
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Grand Fromage posted:Yep, this happened. If you had a lot of prisoners to execute, one way to make it more fun was to make them dress up as some foreign army and have the noble Romans defeat them. Prisoner executions were typically held around lunchtime as an intermission--the games were an all-day affair. Animal hunts and races in the morning, prisoner execution at lunch, gladiators as the main event in the afternoon. Gotta ask, were chariot races also who day affairs? Because in my head chariot racing is pretty much ancient NASCAR, only with less guns and instead of being sponsored by Sprint, they're sponsored by True Roman Bread For True Romans. Please tell me that's pretty much exactly how it went, it would make me so happy.
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Sep 22, 2014 01:48
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e: Whoop double post.
the JJ fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Sep 22, 2014 |
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Sep 22, 2014 03:19
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Don Gato posted:Gotta ask, were chariot races also who day affairs? Because in my head chariot racing is pretty much ancient NASCAR, only with less guns and instead of being sponsored by Sprint, they're sponsored by True Roman Bread For True Romans. Kinda, only they were also divided into teams and the teams were like modern ultra's on steroids. Post-race riots nearly toppled a few Emperors. P. sure there was a Greek war (re)started (or nearly started) over a chariot race too. One Sparta had been banned from the games for violating a religious taboo, but Richy McLacedemonia passed his team off to a driver from another city and had them race anyway. When they won he (the Spartan) stepped out to get the laurels and the crowd promptly threw a shitfit. (Incidentally, the laurels going to the owner of the horses and chariot is the only way that women ever won in the origional Olympics.) Found it! Thucy posted:Still the Eleans were afraid of the Lacedaemonians sacrificing by force, [because they'd been accused of breaking the Olympic truce] and kept guard with a heavy-armed company of their young men; being also joined by a thousand Argives, the same number of Mantineans, and by some Athenian cavalry who stayed at Harpina during the feast. Great fears were felt in the assembly of the Lacedaemonians coming in arms, especially after Lichas, son of Arcesilaus, a Lacedaemonian, had been scourged on the course by the umpires; because, upon his horses being the winners, and the Boeotian people being proclaimed the victor on account of his having no right to enter, he came forward on the course and crowned the charioteer, in order to show that the chariot was his. There's a more modern translation that unfucks the chronology of that but I can't be arsed.
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Sep 22, 2014 03:26
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What was that word that i've seen mentioned in this thread for "coin" style armor. It's a pretty neat word from what little I remember and I'd remember it in an instant if I see it.
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Sep 22, 2014 03:30
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Frostwerks posted:What was that word that i've seen mentioned in this thread for "coin" style armor. It's a pretty neat word from what little I remember and I'd remember it in an instant if I see it. Was it the armor used by the Tlingit?
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Sep 22, 2014 04:36
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For some reason I'm leaning towards bezanted, which is I think the currency of the MRE, but I can't find poo poo about it on google. I know I read it first in either this or maybe the other war threads.
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Sep 22, 2014 06:49
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Don Gato posted:Gotta ask, were chariot races also who day affairs? Because in my head chariot racing is pretty much ancient NASCAR, only with less guns and instead of being sponsored by Sprint, they're sponsored by True Roman Bread For True Romans. I'm... not sure. The course I took on Roman entertainment was focused on amphitheater things so we didn't talk about chariot racing all that much. I would expect they were, especially later in like the 500s when chariot racing is starting revolutions and poo poo.
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Sep 22, 2014 10:31
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Don Gato posted:Gotta ask, were chariot races also who day affairs? Because in my head chariot racing is pretty much ancient NASCAR, only with less guns and instead of being sponsored by Sprint, they're sponsored by True Roman Bread For True Romans. Yes, except the day was divided into 24 races instead of one long one. And yeah there were totally endorsements and sponsorships and poo poo. The most successful chariot racer was Gaius Appuleius Diocles, who retired after 24 years of racing and over 4000 races with the equivalent of $15 billion in sesterces from prizes and endorsements, which is totally nuts.
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Sep 22, 2014 11:52
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Jazerus posted:Yes, except the day was divided into 24 races instead of one long one. What did he do with his money, did he marry anyone, what did his kids do?
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Sep 22, 2014 12:20
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According to this he retired to the country and lived out the rest of his years peacefully with his family. I kept waiting to read about his surely loving up somewhere along the line or getting the attention/jealousy of the wrong people.... but nope, he spent quarter of a century in a hugely dangerous job and walked away with enough money to pay for the grain supply for the ENTIRE city of Rome for a whole year, bought a place in the country, had a family, and enjoyed his golden years in peace and prosperity. I wonder if he grew cabbages....
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Sep 22, 2014 13:03
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Hogge Wild posted:What did he do with his money, did he marry anyone, what did his kids do? He retired to an Italian villa and lived in obscurity with his anonymous-to-history wife, son, and daughter. Records of his family's use of his ridiculous fortune didn't survive.
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Sep 22, 2014 13:23
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What the gently caress is a happy ending doing in Classical antiquity?
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Sep 22, 2014 13:28
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Hahaha, good for him. I'd thought that at least his kids or grandchildren would have gotten involved in politics or wars etc. with his money.
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Sep 22, 2014 13:42
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e: whoops. Gotta learn to read.
Power Khan fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Sep 22, 2014 |
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Sep 22, 2014 14:17
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Couple of fun Antiquity related news stories on BBC today. Greeks captivated by Alexander-era tomb at Amphipolis. Whose tomb is it?  It's bigger than Philip's tomb in any case!Temple of Mithras: How do you put London's Roman shrine back together? Bloomberg are reconstructing a mithraeum underneath their new offices in London. They also put out a call for anyone who looted stuff from the 1950s excavation to return it so they can put it back into place.
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Sep 22, 2014 21:55
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Ofaloaf posted:What the gently caress is a happy ending doing in Classical antiquity? Diocletian had a semi-happy ending, although the Wikipedia page makes it sound depressing. quote:He lived on for three more years, spending his days in his palace gardens. He saw his tetrarchic system fail, torn by the selfish ambitions of his successors. He heard of Maximian's third claim to the throne, his forced suicide, his damnatio memoriae. In his own palace, statues and portraits of his former companion emperor were torn down and destroyed. Deep in despair and illness, Diocletian may have committed suicide. He died on 3 December 311. He did grow cabbages, though.
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Sep 22, 2014 23:50
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I just don't think Diocletian committed suicide. It's certainly not impossible...it's just, when they keep trying to pull him out of retirement to settle this or that, he seemingly REALLY does NOT give a gently caress at all. After he went through the hell that was his last few years as senior augustus himself, he (to me) simply appears ready to just tell the entire world to gently caress off. Now, whether he did that because that's what he wanted/needed, or because it was the only way he could conceivably get out with his head in tact, and remaining steadfastly impartial('ish) was the only way to keep keeping THAT up, is another debate. I'd be willing to bet it was his heart/stress/cancer that got him.
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Sep 23, 2014 00:35
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His wife and daughter were kidnapped and held hostage, and he begged the current Emperor to release them and the guy just laughed and replied,"Dio-who?" 
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Sep 23, 2014 01:37
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Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this amazing thread. I've been reading it over the past few weeks and I'm almost caught up. Now, for my question. What was going on in Scandinavia/Russia/Ukraine during antiquity (say, 400 BC-500 AD, from the Roman Republic to roughly the "fall" of the Western Roman Empire)? Did they have agriculture and cities or were they mostly hunter-gatherers? I remember reading in this thread about a new plough that was invented in the late antiquity/early medieval period that allowed people to farm tougher soils which let people farm 'harder' land. Did the people in those areas have contact with traders from other civilizations? Did the Romans think it was a land of eternal snow where giants lived? If anyone could shed some light on this for me, I'd appreciate it.
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Sep 23, 2014 02:00
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A little later but you'd like this http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vrx8g
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Sep 23, 2014 02:02
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