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the JJ posted:[color="red"]Haha you guys don't get it haha soon im going to be published in a peer received journal for my insight into the history of Sicilian city-states and haha Florentine camorra.[/color] 
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Mar 16, 2015 00:51
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Captain Postal posted:I find that it is these days. "!" means surprise, "?" means a question and raising inflection, "haha" means the author is a lightweight, an idiot, and shouldn't be taken seriously. ¡Yikes!
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Mar 16, 2015 00:52
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Grand Fromage posted:He is the villain in a Confucian cultural context (he's not being filial!), but westerners usually like him. No joke, Mao Zedong considered himself a modern day Cao Cao and so the communist party has been rehabilitating Cao Cao for the last 50 years. I like Cao Cao but history moves in strange ways.
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Mar 16, 2015 01:27
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Lord Hydronium posted:What would the Romans have considered a war crime? I assumed they had a bit of an "anything goes" attitude towards conquest. Or was it more that Caesar did things that would have fine under other circumstances, but they wanted to make an example of him in particular? Didn't Cato the Elder try and have Scopio Africanus prosecuted for war crimes, like paying soldiers bonuses out of plunder designated for the Senate, and failing to provide a proper accounting of the plunder? And I think they considered the zealots to be war criminals, for their tendency to commit suicide rather than be taken prisoner for the triumphs in Rome.
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Mar 16, 2015 03:34
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Mar 16, 2015 04:55
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Just popping in here to say that I would dearly want one of these  Where can I get it?EDIT: Wait, is it a photoshop? Dammit!
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Mar 16, 2015 05:30
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golden bubble posted:Speaking of which, I'm still waiting on Arglebargle's "Liu Bei's adventures in treachery part II". I'll get to it one of these days if I can incorporate it into the "procrastinating about applications" part of my job and school application workflow. First I need to cover Red Cliffs, which I can't decide if I want to do in detail or in about four paragraphs.
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Mar 16, 2015 05:48
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If you weren't bribed you shook a rival down with threats of legal action using any excuse on the books. There's nothing else to it. Real reformers concerned over ethics and veteran assistance or welfare used other seats of power to do any real policy like the tribunes, who got offed for the trouble. Emperors took those offices as their own to consolidate constitutional powers and actually pass laws ever and bypass the petty grudges paralyzing the government. Julius Caesar never even broke any meaningful laws for example, he acted under his constitution very carefully. The war crime was leaving anyone out of the cut from slaves and loot. Sometimes one guy hosed another's wife and then it took double the bribe to halt legal proceedings and investigation. I'm figuring that's how Caesar got offed. He had a tyrannical sex drive for his colleagues wives and sisters like a true boss.
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Mar 16, 2015 05:54
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Smoothrich posted:Julius Caesar never even broke any meaningful laws for example, he acted under his constitution very carefully. You can argue whether it was "meaningful" or not, but most of his consulship with Bibulus was completely illegal. Yes Bibulus was being a petulant little poo poo about it, but he was acting completely within the legal framework of his powers, and Caesar ignoring that and just going ahead and passing laws anyway was a pretty blatantly illegal move, even if it was a sensible one and most people seemed to treat the whole thing with bemusement rather than outrage.
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Mar 16, 2015 06:07
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CommissarMega posted:Just popping in here to say that I would dearly want one of these It looks fake to me because the knives aren't proportional to Caesar and it looks like the blades should be running through him. But it's a grand idea and if some woodworking dude made an attractive looking Julius Caesar knife block I'd buy one.
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Mar 16, 2015 06:30
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http://www.amazon.com/Attakus-Asterix-Julius-Version-Mini-Bust/dp/B0051NM1YO Too small and too expensive to make knife blocks out of  Find me a source for wooden Ceasars and I will make knife blocks out of them. I'm good at woodworking but rubbish at art. I can turn out any kind of furniture but I can't do figurines unless I work from a plan.
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Mar 16, 2015 08:51
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Thank you to my anonymous patronus for my title. No one will question my posting bona fides on SA again. Keldoclock, I actually looked into 3D modeling just now for fun but it's too in depth to learn quickly so I can't help. Maybe check out the 3D Design Thread or just poke around in the Creative Convention forum to find a willing collaborator and ask for a 3d woodworking plan based on the original Caesar knife block's photoshop. Someone might say why not and draw up a model for you, bored probably unemployed designers always need something to distract themselves from crippling depression. Then sell them to kitschy goons here or on SA-Mart for some profit! Smoothrich fucked around with this message at 11:34 on Mar 16, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 11:24
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Sorry about your thread, Grand Fromage.
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Mar 16, 2015 11:34
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A question about the Roman conquest of Greece. Was it more a result of the Romans being that much stronger than the Greeks or had the Greek military's quality degraded from its height?
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Mar 16, 2015 11:51
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Here's a question that occurred to me - we talk a fair bit in this thread about Rome and China, but around the same time period (say roughly 200 BC to 200 AD), what was happening in India? India and Southeast Asia in general are some pretty weak links in my knowledge, so even the most basic, general overview would be appreciated.
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Mar 16, 2015 11:57
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Oberleutnant posted:Sorry about your thread, Grand Fromage. I've always found our breed of threadshitters to be entertaining.
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Mar 16, 2015 12:32
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Armyman25 posted:A question about the Roman conquest of Greece. Was it more a result of the Romans being that much stronger than the Greeks or had the Greek military's quality degraded from its height? Rome went crazy and nuked Carthage out of existence and slaughtered a capital city of innocent Greeks to conquer both the same year. Their imperial drive just came online when they felt big after the Second Punic War and it became their right to take poo poo from anyone they saw as weak. Greece was politically divided and Rome played various kingdoms and cities off each other to their advantage for years. The actual battles always sounded very close with equal discipline and good generals but Romans had the edge with more efficient divisions of units and initiative taking professional officers, a more modern army.
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Mar 16, 2015 12:47
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Tomn posted:Here's a question that occurred to me - we talk a fair bit in this thread about Rome and China, but around the same time period (say roughly 200 BC to 200 AD), what was happening in India? India and Southeast Asia in general are some pretty weak links in my knowledge, so even the most basic, general overview would be appreciated. Slightly before your stipulated time period (roughly 300-200BC) but the Indian ruler Ashoka is really interesting. I'm by no means an expert, so I won't attempt to go into it in huge detail other than to suggest his reign as a good thing to read up on. It's possibly/probably apocryphal but supposedly he was an extremely cruel ruler who violently conquered much of India before converting to Buddhism and renouncing violence, war, conquest etc. and apologising for his past warmongering. I believe he is meant to be quite a central figure in Buddhism because of this, so there are a lot of stories about him preserved in Buddhist texts. The downside is that this makes it pretty difficult to discern the historical facts from the fables. There was an excellent In Our Time episode about him fairly recently which is worth checking out. I'd also love to read someone who actually knew something more substantial talk about it too. Captain Mediocre fucked around with this message at 13:02 on Mar 16, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 13:00
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One a these days, Lucy, I'm Ashoka you good! 
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Mar 16, 2015 13:07
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Did Caesar knew about China?
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Mar 16, 2015 13:24
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Probably. First contact was the silk trade, which was in the... what do you even call the century of like 90 BCE? It's not the 100s. The 0s? Anyway around 100 BCE somewhere, they started getting silk from China. First in-person contact (as far as we know; merchants may have done it already) was 166 CE. I don't know if anyone in Europe would've known of China prior to the silk trade.
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Mar 16, 2015 13:56
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Since somebody posted that video of Mary Beard and Pompeii above, she presents an Indian statuette among the finds. Oh, btw, something else that I saw yesterday. Roman shooting aids. Gemini rings they're called.   This is how they're used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZAuSJ1G4nk Power Khan fucked around with this message at 14:15 on Mar 16, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 14:06
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Yeah, there's a statue of Lakshmi that was found in Pompeii, it's in the Naples museum now. The material isn't intrinsically valuable, so it's either a souvenir or there was a Hindu, presumably Indian, living in Pompeii.
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Mar 16, 2015 14:14
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Armyman25 posted:A question about the Roman conquest of Greece. Was it more a result of the Romans being that much stronger than the Greeks or had the Greek military's quality degraded from its height? I'm not a real expert on this myself by any stretch of the imagination, but it was mentioned up-thread that Roman legions were more flexible than phalanxes, allowing them to maneuver more easily and take the phalanxes in the rear where they were most vulnerable. In a head-to-head fight the phalanxes generally seemed to have held their own, so in any given battle Roman victory seems to have depended on whether or not their unit commanders or overall generals were good enough to maneuver and flank, as in the end apparently they were. It doesn't seem like the Greek military as a whole had "degraded" as such (not being led by Alexander certainly bought them a step down, but you can hardly hold that against them), it's just that legions were built in a way that allowed them to exploit the weaknesses of the phalanx. Of course, there's also the fact that at that stage in history Rome was effectively an empire with territory in three landmasses, while Greece was a collection of feuding city-states, some of which had actually invited the Romans in to fight as their allies. That doesn't necessarily mean the Greeks were doomed from the start - they'd beaten the Persians in the past, after all - but it certainly wasn't an advantage for them.
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Mar 16, 2015 14:50
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It was both. The Roman army was better, and Greece was very weak by the time Rome rolled up and took them apart piece by piece.
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Mar 16, 2015 15:10
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ITT I have learned:
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Mar 16, 2015 15:30
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Grand Fromage posted:I've always found our breed of threadshitters to be entertaining. I think  will forever be the best of them though.
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Mar 16, 2015 15:56
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the JJ posted:I think How can you not love someone who thinks the Spartans were the best everything ever and never considers the option of ending up a Helot in the case their perfect society is recreated?
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Mar 16, 2015 16:01
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I missed that dude. Is there a best of?
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Mar 16, 2015 16:51
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JaucheCharly posted:I missed that dude. Is there a best of? Enjoy: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3486446&userid=183787 A good summary would be: Agesilaus posted:My life is great now, and it would be great in a better world, too. I get to read the Classics and apply them either way, living the life of a noble gentleman. If your strongest objection to what I'm saying is "well you would be at the bottom of society in your ideal world!", then surely you have to stop defending the instant world given that you're probably low class nobodies right now.
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Mar 16, 2015 16:59
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A bit of an odd question here, but are there any modern Muslim authors, or Muslim scholars of ancient (preferably Roman) history that you guys know of? I had a rather heated argument with my dad (you may proceed to roll your eyes at me now) about Roman and Islamic history, in which his arguments boiled down to "If it's by Western scholars, it's a pack of anti-islamic, Orientalist lies!" I'm hoping he's not a lost cause, but it's pretty obvious that he's not willing to look at anything 'written by palefaces' (his words, not mine); anyone willing and able to help out? Also, I've heard that the Ottoman rulers were pretty big on Rome and being known as 'Roman'; any sources for this?
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Mar 16, 2015 17:24
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Tomn posted:Here's a question that occurred to me - we talk a fair bit in this thread about Rome and China, but around the same time period (say roughly 200 BC to 200 AD), what was happening in India? India and Southeast Asia in general are some pretty weak links in my knowledge, so even the most basic, general overview would be appreciated. From about 300 BC to about 200 BC India is united into a single empire by Chandragupta Mauryan. It's pretty well administered and at its height covers just about all of India and Pakistan plus some of Afghanistan too. No comment as to whether it was tyrannical or not, but two of its most famous rulers converted to 'peaceful' religions in their old age. Chandragupta to Jainism and, as mentioned, Ashoka to Buddhism. Both of these rulers expanded the empire through lots of conquest and both are mentioned as feeling remorse over the slaughter of their enemies during said conquest. Chandragupta starts his empire in North India and threw down with the Greeks shortly after Alexander dies. He eventually ended up making a trade with one of the Seleucid diadochi, land for war elephants, just to make sure that they would stay out of India for good - they came back, but not until after the empire fell apart. Chandragupta's mentor was Kautilya or Chanakya (I'm not sure which name to use here) and was instrumental in getting Chandragupta into power, supposedly because the previous dynasty, the Nanda, had in some way insulted Kautilya so he vowed revenge and overthrew the Nanda just to get back at them. Kautilya supposedly also wrote the Arthasastra, a guide to governance, which I've been reading lately and let me tell you it is very boring (this could just be because the copy I'm reading is not very well translated), but gives you a good idea of what kind of things people back then worried about and what was valued in a ruler. From what I've read so far the main point is that effective management of resources is necessary for your kingdom to survive and so you should have a full treasury and stay well-informed with a large network of spies. I really don't know much else about this time in India history so if someone else can talk about the next part or correct any of the stuff I said please go ahead and do so. Ithle01 fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Mar 16, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 18:05
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Jamwad Hilder posted:Enjoy: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3486446&userid=183787 Yeah, Smoothrich has a ways to go before being made into a smilie. Don't go there, please. In other news, I may need to stop watching Three Kingdoms; I saw that bow video and immediately thought, "hey, it's Guan Yu!"
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Mar 16, 2015 18:24
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Jamwad Hilder posted:Enjoy: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3486446&userid=183787 That dude deserved to be sent to the sulphur mines. Smoothy is probably 14 or something. Bow video? Three kingdoms? Guan Yu?
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Mar 16, 2015 19:29
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CommissarMega posted:A bit of an odd question here, but are there any modern Muslim authors, or Muslim scholars of ancient (preferably Roman) history that you guys know of? I had a rather heated argument with my dad (you may proceed to roll your eyes at me now) about Roman and Islamic history, in which his arguments boiled down to "If it's by Western scholars, it's a pack of anti-islamic, Orientalist lies!" I'm hoping he's not a lost cause, but it's pretty obvious that he's not willing to look at anything 'written by palefaces' (his words, not mine); anyone willing and able to help out? Was there a particular subject you guys were talking about, like the Sultanate of Rum or something with direct Roman-Islamic conceptual overlap?
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Mar 16, 2015 19:33
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JaucheCharly posted:Bow video? Three kingdoms? Guan Yu? This video: Guan Yu is a character in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," which is a partly fictitious account of the eponymous period of Chinese history. He's usually pictured with a "ruddy" complexion, e.g., in a recent Chinese TV series I was asking about earlier.
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Mar 16, 2015 19:55
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CommissarMega posted:A bit of an odd question here, but are there any modern Muslim authors, or Muslim scholars of ancient (preferably Roman) history that you guys know of? I had a rather heated argument with my dad (you may proceed to roll your eyes at me now) about Roman and Islamic history, in which his arguments boiled down to "If it's by Western scholars, it's a pack of anti-islamic, Orientalist lies!" I'm hoping he's not a lost cause, but it's pretty obvious that he's not willing to look at anything 'written by palefaces' (his words, not mine); anyone willing and able to help out? I've asked somebody who might know, and he said that the ERE is often discussed for obvious reasons, e.g. in Al Tabari's world history. That dude also knows a few turks that might know. You can look at the individual Sultans on wikipedia and there's usually some info on their wives and mothers. They often had greek wives and mothers.
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Mar 16, 2015 20:03
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JaucheCharly posted:Smoothy is probably 14 or something. I was gonna say, he reminds me of 16 year old me. on the other hand was an rear end in a top hat of the highest calibre.
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Mar 16, 2015 20:56
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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CommissarMega posted:A bit of an odd question here, but are there any modern Muslim authors, or Muslim scholars of ancient (preferably Roman) history that you guys know of? I had a rather heated argument with my dad (you may proceed to roll your eyes at me now) about Roman and Islamic history, in which his arguments boiled down to "If it's by Western scholars, it's a pack of anti-islamic, Orientalist lies!" I'm hoping he's not a lost cause, but it's pretty obvious that he's not willing to look at anything 'written by palefaces' (his words, not mine); anyone willing and able to help out? They adopted the title Kaizar-im-Rum, less, I think, because they were all about Rome more  about taking Constantinople. The Sultanate of Rum (Rome) was called that not because they saw themselves as reinstating the empire or something, just that that's what they knew Anatolia as.That said, when the Arabs rolled out of deserts they picked up a lot of Roman* and Persian culture along the way. Architecture, ideas and forms of rule, philosophy, a lot of that got picked up. For a very long while the Islamic world was much more into studying Roman medicine and philosophy, and when the Renaissance happens the Italians start nicking poo poo from Iberian and Levantine scholars as much as they do the ERE. Philosophers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Kindi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Farabi Architecture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_Mosque http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosque%E2%80%93Cathedral_of_C%C3%B3rdoba The evolution of the mosque is pretty cool. The best example of this sort of back and forth is I think Cordoba, where you've got a mosque built on a church build on a temple to Janus, repurposed into a cathedral, with each new iteration drawing on the architectural traditions already being shaped by this really weird back and forth dialogue. E: You might find the sections of Shahnameh written about Iksander (Alexander) and his successors. It's not like 'history' history by any stretch of the imagination, but it's real cool. *as in, your Greek speaking, late-Eastern Roman the JJ fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Mar 16, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 22:44
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One day Janus shall have his revenge. Any interesting neopagan Greco-Roman movements?
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Mar 16, 2015 22:47
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