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There's still a big gap between getting messages out and actually knowing and influencing what's going on. Governor Billy Bob of Bumblefucknowhere Province is probably skimping on how much money he's sending you, and could only be selectively implementing your orders... and unless you go out there yourself you'll never know unless he completely fucks it up.
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Jan 7, 2015 18:17
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dupersaurus posted:There's still a big gap between getting messages out and actually knowing and influencing what's going on. Governor Billy Bob of Bumblefucknowhere Province is probably skimping on how much money he's sending you, and could only be selectively implementing your orders... and unless you go out there yourself you'll never know unless he completely fucks it up. This, incidentally, is one of the reasons itinerant monarchy became A Thing for a while in Europe after Rome (the other is to make the locals pay for you and your absurd entourage).
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Jan 7, 2015 18:20
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dupersaurus posted:There's still a big gap between getting messages out and actually knowing and influencing what's going on. Governor Billy Bob of Bumblefucknowhere Province is probably skimping on how much money he's sending you, and could only be selectively implementing your orders... and unless you go out there yourself you'll never know unless he completely fucks it up. Well, you're expecting Billy Bob to skimp on the money. Billy Bob and his predecessors have been doing so since the creation of the office. The office is, in fact, a reward and not generally a part of actual day to day governance because that's for bureaucrats. No, not a reward of social prestige or honor, silly, it's a straight-up money reward. A certain level of graft is the whole point. If Billy Bob goes beyond that point he's probably literally starving the peasants and since the Roman economy was hugely interdependent this is hard to disguise though he can probably get away with it occasionally and blame it on greedy tax farmers. Whether the powers that be actually care is another thing, but often they do. Additionally, you can probably count on Billy Bob to implement your orders because you've handed him a golden ticket by putting him in office to begin with.
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Jan 8, 2015 00:07
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Disinterested posted:This, incidentally, is one of the reasons itinerant monarchy became A Thing for a while in Europe after Rome (the other is to make the locals pay for you and your absurd entourage).
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Jan 8, 2015 01:25
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cheerfullydrab posted:Itinerant monarchy is the greatest thing. It's like the carnival came to your town and it both administered justice and emptied out your food stocks and now you're going to eat barley porridge for a whole season and your daughter is going to have the bastard son of some knight who won't send you any money but seriously that was the most spectacle you ever saw in your whole stupid life. This is totally off topic, but I actually read a medieval account once from the Avignon Papacy of a cardinal who threw a lavish party in the city with expensive wines, and constructed a large fake bridge across the river. He proceeded to laugh with his party guests at unsuspecting townspeople who fell in the river. Royal and princely courts were ridiculous.
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Jan 8, 2015 01:42
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Speaking of which, I loved that it was just an accepted (and expected!) thing for a young man to bankrupt himself to put on a giant party/show for everybody to go to so they'd like his dead dad.
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Jan 8, 2015 02:03
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They were pretty much like touring rock bands from the 70's-90's. You can't tell me Charlemagne didn't have a "backstage" with passes.
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Jan 8, 2015 02:04
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It's not called the Order of the Garter for nothing.
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Jan 8, 2015 10:20
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cheerfullydrab posted:They were pretty much like touring rock bands from the 70's-90's. You can't tell me Charlemagne didn't have a "backstage" with passes. He couldn't read, but he sure knew how to party.
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Jan 8, 2015 12:37
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Have you ever dreamed of crossing the Roman Empire in an Ox cart? Do you wonder how long it would take to do so? Or how much such a travel might cost you if you were a 2nd century Roman? ORBIS is the tool for you! http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/how-across-the-roman-empire-in-real-time-with-orbis/ NB: I have not used this tool myself, I just know it exists.
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Jan 9, 2015 04:54
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Dalael posted:Have you ever dreamed of crossing the Roman Empire in an Ox cart? Do you wonder how long it would take to do so? Or how much such a travel might cost you if you were a 2nd century Roman? This thread is so huge now that it's totally understandable, but it always make me laugh when this gets posted, as a thread about it is what spawned this one.
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Jan 9, 2015 16:48
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And may it get continually posted every year or so for everyone new to the thread its an awesome little widget.
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Jan 9, 2015 18:07
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I know we know all the Roman swears. Do we know any Ancient Greek swears?
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Jan 9, 2015 20:05
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Disinterested posted:This, incidentally, is one of the reasons itinerant monarchy became A Thing for a while in Europe after Rome (the other is to make the locals pay for you and your absurd entourage). Not really that absurd when it's literally the entire central government, though. Imagine half of Whitehall or Washington DC stopping by Bumfuck, Whereveryouare for a month.
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Jan 9, 2015 21:53
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feedmegin posted:Not really that absurd when it's literally the entire central government, though. Imagine half of Whitehall or Washington DC stopping by Bumfuck, Whereveryouare for a month. My understanding was that they also did that because most of the goods they could collect from their subjects was perishable. Many areas didn't have coins so you'd have to give the guy a step up from you X bushels of wheat or X number of pigs, then when the king came around he'd (he being the one up guy) have to throw a big feast and provide a certain amount of food and drink. Fork of Unknown Origins fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Jan 9, 2015 |
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Jan 9, 2015 21:59
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Any good recommendations on documentaries surrounding this large period? Not looking for anything specific really. Just love well done informative documentaries. Netflix, amazon, youtube... I really liked Meet the Romans. Really enjoy seeing the "other side" of history or rather less known https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rggk_H3jEgw
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Jan 9, 2015 23:18
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feedmegin posted:Not really that absurd when it's literally the entire central government, though. Imagine half of Whitehall or Washington DC stopping by Bumfuck, Whereveryouare for a month. It's also a bunch of hangers on, etc. Paying for the people who are going to give justice is one thing, paying for elaborate banquets and for scroungers is another, particularly when your king is mostly doing it to be cheap, as was the case sometimes. My favourite books about this kind of thing are Karl Leyser's. Classics.
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Jan 10, 2015 13:18
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WoodrowSkillson posted:This thread is so huge now that it's totally understandable, but it always make me laugh when this gets posted, as a thread about it is what spawned this one. I've read this whole thread and didn't know that. cheerfullydrab posted:Itinerant monarchy is the greatest thing. It's like the carnival came to your town and it both administered justice and emptied out your food stocks and now you're going to eat barley porridge for a whole season and your daughter is going to have the bastard son of some knight who won't send you any money but seriously that was the most spectacle you ever saw in your whole stupid life. feedmegin posted:Not really that absurd when it's literally the entire central government, though. Imagine half of Whitehall or Washington DC stopping by Bumfuck, Whereveryouare for a month. So was part of the reason for itinerant monarchy just that infrastructure wasn't good enough to get sufficient food to a static court, and improvements in state power and transportation made that less important? That's neat.
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Jan 10, 2015 16:14
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House Louse posted:So was part of the reason for itinerant monarchy just that infrastructure wasn't good enough to get sufficient food to a static court, and improvements in state power and transportation made that less important? That's neat. Oh, you can totally get food to a static court, but it reduces the breadth of the goods that you can tax because medieval objects of taxation are often perishable. Hosting an itinerant court is just something every magnate has to deal with in places like Germany. It's like an occasional very heavy tax that you live with once in a while, and it's a way for the itinerant king to impose his authority in that locality while saving money for having to pay for his apparatus himself. Given the occasional HR Emperor would have been poorer than some of his subjects, it's not an irrelevant considerations. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Jan 10, 2015 |
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Jan 10, 2015 16:19
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Disinterested posted:Oh, you can totally get food to a static court, but it reduces the breadth of the goods that you can tax because medieval objects of taxation are often perishable. It was also away of inflicting punishment on disfavored nobles. Good friends would get a brief visit, while for those on the outs the monarchs may stay a month or more. Bankrupting your enemies was often more effective than beheading them.
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Jan 10, 2015 18:23
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Deteriorata posted:It was also away of inflicting punishment on disfavored nobles. Good friends would get a brief visit, while for those on the outs the monarchs may stay a month or more. Bankrupting your enemies was often more effective than beheading them. The Tokugawa Shogunate basically pulled this in reverse; everyone had to visit Edo, with their retainers, plus leave hostages. So the various daimyo are basically paying upkeep on two mansion, have to pay travel expenses, and are always having to keep up with the Jones because you have to be in Edo and rub elbows. Basically leave everyone too poor to wage war. (Plus keep their wives and kids in Edo plus keep the city stocked full of booze and prostitutes so everyone is getting more decadent and less belligerent.)
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Jan 10, 2015 18:48
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Smoking Crow posted:I know we know all the Roman swears. Do we know any Ancient Greek swears? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlZIVAacnNg
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Jan 10, 2015 18:54
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House Louse posted:I've read this whole thread and didn't know that. Nah, you could usually tax in grains and such even if you were taxing mainly in kind. Itinerant monarchy is sort of an arbitrary and personally-administered taxation by the monarch to support their court, which weakens the lesser nobility while allowing the monarch to reserve all of their resources for other stuff, like extra soldiers to beat up rebellious nobles. That was kind of a thing for a long, long time in Europe even as itinerant monarchy specifically went out of style. the JJ posted:The Tokugawa Shogunate basically pulled this in reverse; everyone had to visit Edo, with their retainers, plus leave hostages. So the various daimyo are basically paying upkeep on two mansion, have to pay travel expenses, and are always having to keep up with the Jones because you have to be in Edo and rub elbows. Basically leave everyone too poor to wage war. (Plus keep their wives and kids in Edo plus keep the city stocked full of booze and prostitutes so everyone is getting more decadent and less belligerent.) As a side note, the daimyo spent so much money traveling the main roads to and from Edo that this system basically single-handedly upended class relations in Japan and placed the burgeoning proto-capitalist class above the samurai in de facto power once and for all, as well as leading to tremendous urban development and infrastructure improvements.
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Jan 10, 2015 19:33
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Jazerus posted:Nah, you could usually tax in grains and such even if you were taxing mainly in kind. Itinerant monarchy is sort of an arbitrary and personally-administered taxation by the monarch to support their court, which weakens the lesser nobility while allowing the monarch to reserve all of their resources for other stuff, like extra soldiers to beat up rebellious nobles. That was kind of a thing for a long, long time in Europe even as itinerant monarchy specifically went out of style. Which is really funny because another part of the Tokugawa reforms was supposed to be preventing social upheaval by firmly locking all the social classes as they were, with merchants firmly at the bottom. Yuk yuk yuk. (This, not the more exciting warring states period is where the whole honorable samurai and his legendary swords became a big deal. Swords being both restricted to the samurai class and required of them.)
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Jan 11, 2015 03:59
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Christoff posted:Any good recommendations on documentaries surrounding this large period? Not looking for anything specific really. Just love well done informative documentaries. Netflix, amazon, youtube... I can't believe this has never showed up on my feed before. I started watching it and it is awesome. Thank you very much for posting. Watching the first episode, I had never realized just how much inscriptions are left all over the city. This may be a ridiculous question but, out of the people living in Rome currently, I wonder what percentage of the population bothered to learn to how read Latin so they could read all of those inscriptions.
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Jan 11, 2015 06:36
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Deteriorata posted:It was also away of inflicting punishment on disfavored nobles. Good friends would get a brief visit, while for those on the outs the monarchs may stay a month or more. Bankrupting your enemies was often more effective than beheading them. Indeed, I believe Queen Elizabeth I spent much of her reign travelling around the country staying at the estates of her nobles.
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Jan 11, 2015 06:54
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I just finished Anthony Everitt's Cicero and thought it was a really drat good read, I very much recommend it though it doesn't really cover anything "new" about him. But getting to read excerpts from his own private letters, or those between others concerning him etc, really brought him to life for me - it probably helps that he was a fascinating man who was alive at a fascinating time. I'll have to get hold of his Augustus, given that Cicero's death overlaps with Octavian's early political life, and the two had a lot to do with each other, it feels like a natural "sequel".
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Jan 11, 2015 08:32
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Deteriorata posted:It was also away of inflicting punishment on disfavored nobles. Good friends would get a brief visit, while for those on the outs the monarchs may stay a month or more. Bankrupting your enemies was often more effective than beheading them. I'm pretty amused that this implies that the best way to rule is to spend only passing moments with people you like, while settling down and putting down roots with people you hate.
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Jan 11, 2015 10:40
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Tomn posted:I'm pretty amused that this implies that the best way to rule is to spend only passing moments with people you like, while settling down and putting down roots with people you hate. Those are the ones that need watching the most. Although, I believe that Henry VIII first met the Boleyn girls while crashing at their father's place. So there were other reasons to go visit the countryside.
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Jan 11, 2015 11:27
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the JJ posted:Which is really funny because another part of the Tokugawa reforms was supposed to be preventing social upheaval by firmly locking all the social classes as they were, with merchants firmly at the bottom. Yuk yuk yuk. (This, not the more exciting warring states period is where the whole honorable samurai and his legendary swords became a big deal. Swords being both restricted to the samurai class and required of them.) This is funny because I looked at old undergrad notes/essays of mine (with the resultant lovely writing) about itinerant monarchy in 11th century Germany: quote:This problem [of instability in 10th century Germany / ex Frankish kingdoms] was solved in great part by what Leyser refers to as 'Itinerant kingship'. He sees this as 'the most essential...institution of the Ottonian and Salian Reich.' [13] This tool was most heavily utilised by Henry I and also Otto III, who visited Aachen often, though all of the Ottonian and Salian kings used it. Henry needed the royal iter most of all because he was both an elected king and the first of his dynasty to be king of East Francia. Itinerant kingship had demonstrable advantages: Otto I, the strongest and probably the most autocratic of the Ottonian kings, was travelling through Franconia when he heard of a plot by his his son and brother to betray him, according to Thietmar, who refers to Otto's perambulations as 'fulfilling his office as ruler'. [14] (A. Warner, The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseberg, Manchester University Press,, p.95 B.2 Ch.6.)
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Jan 11, 2015 11:54
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What were Roman prisons like? I assume that there was a huge difference between accomodations based on wealth and importance, but did the Romans have things like drunk tanks?
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Jan 11, 2015 15:12
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Tomn posted:I'm pretty amused that this implies that the best way to rule is to spend only passing moments with people you like, while settling down and putting down roots with people you hate. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer 
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Jan 11, 2015 15:47
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Tunicate posted:What were Roman prisons like? I assume that there was a huge difference between accomodations based on wealth and importance, but did the Romans have things like drunk tanks? They didn't really have them. Crimes that we would imprison people for were handled with corporal punishment or if you were someone important, exile, loss of property, or house arrest. The Romans had a prison, but it was made as temporary holding for people who had been condemned to death.
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Jan 11, 2015 22:18
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Wasn't one of their punishments just straight up dropping a guy down a hole and leaving him to starve to death? 
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Jan 11, 2015 22:29
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Jerusalem posted:Wasn't one of their punishments just straight up dropping a guy down a hole and leaving him to starve to death? Yes, that's how they killed vestal virgins who broke their vows.
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Jan 11, 2015 22:37
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euphronius posted:Yes, that's how they killed vestal virgins who broke their vows. And the guys who slept with them were meant to be whipped to death I believe, which lead to the amazing story of Crassus being accused of trying to seduce a Vestal Virgin, admitting that he did it but proclaiming with complete sincerity that he was only doing it to get his hands on her property, and since it was Crassus everybody went,"Oh yeah that makes sense, not guilty!"
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Jan 11, 2015 22:50
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I think parricides were thrown into the Tiber River in a sack with a dog, cat, chicken, and rat. On the assumption that the animals would freak out and make the drowning process extremely unpleasant.
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Jan 12, 2015 00:05
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sullat posted:I think parricides were thrown into the Tiber River in a sack with a dog, cat, chicken, and rat. On the assumption that the animals would freak out and make the drowning process extremely unpleasant. I feel like at that point it's really all pretty minimal compared to the mere fact of drowning, but you never know.
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Jan 12, 2015 01:09
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If I recall correctly, Vestal virgins were considered "sisters" of everyone in Rome in the strictest sense of the term, so loving them wasn't just sacrilege, it was considered incest in the strictest sense of the term.
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Jan 12, 2015 01:14
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Halloween Jack posted:If I recall correctly, Vestal virgins were considered "sisters" of everyone in Rome in the strictest sense of the term, so loving them wasn't just sacrilege, it was considered incest in the strictest sense of the term. Also because nobody was supposed to be buried in Rome, burying them alive was also sacrilege, so they'd give them food to take with them and pretend like they'd just moved them into a new room.... underground with no doors or windows or light.
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Jan 12, 2015 02:30
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