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Would the shame still be the same on your family if you died in the battle?
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Jul 26, 2015 17:30
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Not as much. At least you weren't a coward. They didn't execute soldiers who survived disasters either. They had punishment units for them. You were treated like poo poo (not even allowed to be in the field camp, you had to have your own little one if I remember right) and given the most dangerous missions until you regained your honor or died.
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Jul 27, 2015 03:28
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So was there ever a case where you'd lose a battle, survive, and not be considered dishonorable? Or was it really just a winner-take-all kind of thing? Because nobody can win every single fight in the most badass way imaginable. There's a reason why people like Heracles are myth.
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Jul 27, 2015 04:25
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Star Man posted:So was there ever a case where you'd lose a battle, survive, and not be considered dishonorable? Or was it really just a winner-take-all kind of thing? Because nobody can win every single fight in the most badass way imaginable. There's a reason why people like Heracles are myth. Scipio Asina won a Consul election after losing a bad battle to Carthage. They did give him the name "Asina" which means female donkey so I guess that's bad.
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Jul 27, 2015 04:37
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Sure, you could fight well and lose. For the generals some of it was just politics. If you were popular and had lots of support you'd be fine, if people were out to get you anyway then losing a battle was a great wy for your enemies to get to work on you. For the soldiers, if you didn't run away you would probably be okay. If your unit withdrew in an organized retreat as commanded, there's no fault in you. If you broke and ran then you were hosed.
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Jul 27, 2015 04:37
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Can we talk about plebs more? I want to hear about famous/distinguished plebs, any philosopher plebs? Revolutionaries? Probably lots of prestigious plebs arising from the military, what glorious stories do we have? (lots of questions)
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Jul 27, 2015 09:15
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The problem with that is that the patrician/plebeian divide became increasingly meaningless during the lifespan of Rome. It was originally a more of an aristocratic/commoner divide, but simple economic development made the division nominal in terms of social class. It's how you have plebeian Marcus Tullius Cicero as member of the more aristocratic Optimates faction. Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus for example were plebeians and populist champions, but they were also old nobility. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 10:15 on Jul 27, 2015 |
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Jul 27, 2015 09:58
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Ooooh so like protestants and catholics in modern America?
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Jul 27, 2015 10:04
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I suppose. Originally nobility revolved around ancestry (Patricians/Plebeian), but when public offices and the like were opened up to plebeians, it became more and more a question of money and property. The Senatorial and Equestrian classes were based on property. Being a Patrician was still important, it's just being Plebeian was no longer a disadvantage. e: So plebeian success stories are with the early and middle Republic, and I'm more of a middle/late Imperial type.
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Jul 27, 2015 10:15
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Agrippa was a plebeian, was he not? MV Agrippa: Best Agrippa, best everything.
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Jul 27, 2015 13:44
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Agrippa's family was plebeian in origin but by the time he was around they were very wealthy landowners (equites), so you shouldn't have any ideas about him being a humble commoner or anything. They would have been just as wealthy as many patrician families. Agrippa was sent to the same school as Octavian, after all.
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Jul 27, 2015 13:59
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Could you make some comparison to 'aristocracy' in the US? The old families descended from ex-British aristocracy who had held land in the then US who gradually faded from importance as wealth became a more important factor in determining class than simply lineage? Or maybe comparisons to Europe where you still get German princes running around whose family hasn't owned anything of note in 100 years. They might be part of high society in the sense that their family friends are still well off and they get invited to parties and embassy functions but they're no-one of consequence while some wealthy CEO would be going to the same parties with a lot more social clout.
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Jul 28, 2015 03:10
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Nation posted:Can we talk about plebs more? Cicero and Marius were plebs, as were a lot of the political movers in the last generation of the Republic - Pompey, the Gracchi brothers, etc. As others have mentioned, it can be a little confusing since nobilis meant that someone in your family had, at some point, been Consul. That tends to get translated or talked about as "the nobles", but patricians also get characterized as "nobles" -- while almost all patricians were nobiles, not every nobilis was also a patrician after it became legal for plebeians to hold high office. So when you see an article or summary say something like "the Gracchi were Roman nobles," it kind of suggests aristocratic origins, some sort of ancient peerage, etc, that wasn't there, but those sorts of plebeians were undeniably people who had a lot of means. (Eventually the patrician/plebeian thing meant so little that there was a guy, I forget the name off of the top of my head, who wanted to hold a particular office which legally only plebeians could hold, but he was a patrician. So he underwent some kind of formal religious ritual to become a pleb so that he could hold the office.) Epictetus, whose manual for Stoic philosophy still survives, was a slave - I suppose not the same thing as a plebeian, but certainly an influential Roman philosopher with lovely social status.
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Jul 28, 2015 03:35
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Grand Fromage posted:Sure, you could fight well and lose. For the generals some of it was just politics. If you were popular and had lots of support you'd be fine, if people were out to get you anyway then losing a battle was a great wy for your enemies to get to work on you. The few Romans who survived Cannae did so because they cut their way out of the encirclement and IIRC were quite well regarded. They were the first over the walls to sack Carthage when it fell in the Third Punic War.
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Jul 28, 2015 11:23
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Tao Jones posted:(Eventually the patrician/plebeian thing meant so little that there was a guy, I forget the name off of the top of my head, who wanted to hold a particular office which legally only plebeians could hold, but he was a patrician. So he underwent some kind of formal religious ritual to become a pleb so that he could hold the office.) There may have been others but you're probably thinking of Publius Clodius Pulcher, a gangster tribune of the late republican era who banged Ceaser's wife.
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Jul 28, 2015 11:42
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MikeCrotch posted:The few Romans who survived Cannae did so because they cut their way out of the encirclement and IIRC were quite well regarded. They were the first over the walls to sack Carthage when it fell in the Third Punic War. I thought the Cannae survivors were that group that ended up in Sicily, and later rebelled against Rome and were annihilated.
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Jul 28, 2015 14:04
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Ynglaur posted:I thought the Cannae survivors were that group that ended up in Sicily, and later rebelled against Rome and were annihilated. They were sent to Sicily but they didn't rebel.
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Jul 28, 2015 14:05
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MrNemo posted:Could you make some comparison to 'aristocracy' in the US? The old families descended from ex-British aristocracy who had held land in the then US who gradually faded from importance as wealth became a more important factor in determining class than simply lineage? Or maybe comparisons to Europe where you still get German princes running around whose family hasn't owned anything of note in 100 years. They might be part of high society in the sense that their family friends are still well off and they get invited to parties and embassy functions but they're no-one of consequence while some wealthy CEO would be going to the same parties with a lot more social clout. Kind of. It's all still based on wealth for the most part. Patrician families, in addition to being "noble", were also fabulously wealthy, so really it's more of an old money vs new money type situation. The main difference is that a plebeian family would still be considered "new money" even if they had been wealthy and successful for generations. To use the US as an example, it's being an Astor, Roosevelt, Forbes, or Rockefeller vs being someone like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. The name and lineage is what makes you better. Even if Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg's descendants continued to run successful businesses for centuries, they still wouldn't be considered as good because their ancestors weren't founding families in the US. Does that make sense?
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Jul 28, 2015 15:01
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Jamwad Hilder posted:Kind of. It's all still based on wealth for the most part. Patrician families, in addition to being "noble", were also fabulously wealthy, so really it's more of an old money vs new money type situation. The main difference is that a plebeian family would still be considered "new money" even if they had been wealthy and successful for generations. And this is good old Boston, The home of the bean and the cod, Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots, And the Cabots talk only to God.
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Jul 28, 2015 17:30
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So I'm still lost on how the naming works. Gaius Julius Caesar is Gaius, of the clan Julius, of the family Caesar. How then do you have Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar? How can he be of a different clan but the same family? What would Clodia Mettella have been before marrying into the Mettelus family? If Cloudia is from the Claudius clan, then she would have been [given name] Clodia [What came before marriage?] When Julia Caesaris married Pompey, did she become Julia Caesaris Magnus?
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Jul 29, 2015 03:42
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LEFTENANT RIGHTIE posted:So I'm still lost on how the naming works. I'm sure someone can do a better job of this, but here's what the names you mentioned mean: Gaius (birth name) Julius (masculine version of the family name) Caesar (a sort of a nickname earned later in life, it means "hairy") = so you have Gaius, "The Hairy", of the Julii. Caesar is not a family name, it becomes something of an informal one later on as it becomes associated with being the first citizen (emperor) of Rome. Quintus (the fifth) Lutatius (masculine family name, female would be Lutatia) Catulus (birth name) Caesar ("hairy"/an honorific) = Catulus the Fifth, of the Lutatia, Caesar (honorific/nickname). This gets more confusing because sometimes names like Quintus, Sextus, or Decius, would be passed down regardless of birth order if your father, grandfather, or other ancestor had held the name and been a notable figure. You might not literally be the fifth, sixth, or tenth son, respectively. I'm not exactly clear on why some people did family name, given name and others did given name, family name. The naming conventions for women would literally be a feminine version of the name of the clan. Clodia means she's a daughter of the Claudii. The masculine version is Claudius. She would have simply been known as Clodia (family name) and maybe Clodia Major (the elder daughter) or Clodia Minor (the younger daughter) if she had a sister. Once you get into more than that they might have names like Clodia Quinta (the fifth). So Julia simply means she's the first daughter of that branch of the Julii, possibly with the added "Caesaris" to denote that she's the daughter of Gaius Julius Caesar. If there had been two daughters she'd be Julia Major and her younger sister would be Julia Minor. Magnus means "the great" - it's an honorific, not a name you would pass down. Pompey is the family name (Gnaeus was his given name). So if anything, she'd be Julia Caesaris Pompey. They might toss on Magnus at the end to make it clear she was the wife of Gnaeus Pompey Magnus and not some other Gnaeus Pompey. Jamwad Hilder fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Jul 29, 2015 |
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Jul 29, 2015 04:13
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You explained it perfectly, thank you so much. I've been trying to read up on Marius and Sulla and suddenly we have Caesar, father of Gaius Julius Caesar and grandfather of Gaius Lucius Caesar, and then Cattelus Caesar pops up who goes against Marius who is allied with Caesar and it just started getting unbelievably confusing. Then you jump ahead and have Cloudia and Cloudius of the Cloudian clan but then there was the Julio Claudian line... You have Marcus Antonius running about who either married a Caesar or was the child of Caesar but then you have Marcus Antonius who was the, well, the Marcus Antonius who we all know but didn't particularly seem to be married to Caesar, bromance be damned. It was getting confusing and then I came across a series of lectures that said the last last name wasn't a title at all like I heard but a family name (This was from The History of Ancient Rome with Dr. Garret G. Fagan, great for a general overview of the general periods before you start digging into the specifics,) That just made things infinitely more complicated. While I have you guys' attention, any book recommendations about either life in Roman politics (the scale through the courses honourum, what step was what, what was the function of each spot, the day to day life of a statesman) or the Gracchi? I've had some great luck with Marius and Sulla and the fall of the Republic, but I just can't seem to find anything on the Gracchi, which sucks because that seems like one hell of a story. Murdered consuls, senate conspiracy, bought off bands of thugs in the night? Where was that HBO show? I know this is a real stretch, but has anyone come across any books that focus on Juggurtha? His upbringing, his time in Rome, his wars, that sort of stuff. Lots of stuff on Mithradates, but so little on Jugurtha.
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Jul 29, 2015 06:21
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The best way to understand the pleb/patrician thing is to simply assume they were totally separate ethnic groups that came together early in the history of the city. There's plenty of circumstantial support for this, especially the gentes maiores, or Big Families: Cornelia, Fabia, Valeria, Manlia and Aemilia (iirc). Others, like Julia, may have been part of the same ethnic migration into Italy, but settled somewhere outside the city (Alba Longa in the case of the Julii) and were later reabsorbed. Or they might have been native Italians accorded patrician status for whatever reason (the Claudii were proud of their swarthy Sabine origins). In any event, the patrician order "closes" after the Claudii, as far as I know, around 6 years after the Republic is founded. After that, no one is making more patricians without making babies. So all patricians from the Republic's founding into the early Imperial history of the city were the legally recognized descendants of the original patrician ethnic group, regardless of economic status. A pleb was anyone else with citizenship, also regardless of economic status. Addendum: To be specific, a patrician baby only comes from a patrician father. Brutus, son of a pleb father and a Servilia, sits in the house of plebs. physeter fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Jul 29, 2015 |
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Jul 29, 2015 17:44
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What was the Roman attitude towards bastards? I haven't run into this.
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Jul 29, 2015 19:16
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I never thought about it but you're right, I can't remember it coming up either. My guess is that bastards are only important for succession issues, and in Roman law you could adopt literally anyone for basically any reason at any time so it didn't matter that much. Direct family inheritance wasn't nearly as strict as it was in most Middle Ages situations.
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Jul 30, 2015 03:22
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Based on the number of political adoptions and marriages, etc. it looks a lot like the Pater Familias' eldest son may have been the default but basically inheritance was divvied up in the will? And the new Pater Familias had pretty much full control over the family so I imagine he'd have doled out to others what he wanted to. Although such a situation does make me wonder if Romans divided households much in their wills? What usually happened to second or third (or first born) sons if they weren't chosen to inherit? I imagine in the early days the army was a decent choice for personal enrichment and advancement and later Imperial service?
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Jul 30, 2015 06:52
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MrNemo posted:Based on the number of political adoptions and marriages, etc. it looks a lot like the Pater Familias' eldest son may have been the default but basically inheritance was divvied up in the will? And the new Pater Familias had pretty much full control over the family so I imagine he'd have doled out to others what he wanted to. Yep, this is my understanding of it. Romans love their lawyerin' so the will is the primary document. If you wanted to confer family legitimacy on someone you could adopt him. A Roman on his deathbed could adopt someone older than him as his legal son and make him the inheritor if he wanted to.
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Jul 30, 2015 06:58
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They counted for something, Caesarion was assassinated.
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Jul 30, 2015 07:15
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I kind of have the impression that Romans recognised the importance of heredity, especially with regards to dynastic ideas. I think Augustus was relatively far sighted in those terms, despite the lack of obvious legal standing for Caesarion if Augustus claimed his position through being adopted by Caesar then there was clearly a connection between Caesarion and the throne as well. If Augustus wanted to establish a strong dynasty he had to make it beyond any doubt that he and he alone could confer legitimacy on his successor or risk another civil war after his death if not before it. This is bearing in mind that he also didn't know at the time if he'd live a long enough life to firmly establish himself. I'm not sure how ironclad the will was either naming him Caesar's heir, was there dispute regarding it? If so that would be double motivation for killing off potential competition. Like all things for humans it wasn't simply that there was a single social mechanism all Romans automatically subscribed to. Even if legally the will would entitle you to all the possessions and authority, if you're an unpopular adopted Equite in a Senatorial Patrician family (god knows how that could happen but bear with me) there's a very good chance that an eldest son could challenge you legally and win just because everyone thinks putting you in charge of this family was a bad decision and he deserves it.
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Jul 30, 2015 09:03
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MrNemo posted:I kind of have the impression that Romans recognised the importance of heredity, especially with regards to dynastic ideas. I think Augustus was relatively far sighted in those terms, despite the lack of obvious legal standing for Caesarion if Augustus claimed his position through being adopted by Caesar then there was clearly a connection between Caesarion and the throne as well. If Augustus wanted to establish a strong dynasty he had to make it beyond any doubt that he and he alone could confer legitimacy on his successor or risk another civil war after his death if not before it. This is bearing in mind that he also didn't know at the time if he'd live a long enough life to firmly establish himself. Caesarion was never recognized by Caesar and I don't think had the slightest shred of legal standing to inherit anything. Antony and Cleopatra both gave him stuff and Antony recognized him as Caesar's son, which is part of what made Octavian put Antony's death on his "to do" list. I'm guessing this is my answer to the bastardry question: if the bastard wasn't recognized, his parentage wasn't worth squat. If he was recognized, it was just like any other adoption, really.
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Jul 30, 2015 15:20
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When Imperial princesses had affairs Bad Things happened, so I think illegitimate children still would have had a political claim.
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Jul 30, 2015 17:08
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Well now we need to define time periods. I don't think bastardry mattered that much in the republic. Once the empire is Totally Not A Monarchy, Really then the rules change.
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Jul 30, 2015 17:11
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Ironically, Elagabalus' claim to the throne was that he was a bastard born of incest. Constantine the Great might have been born from a concubine, as well as his first son Crispus (the historical record is just very spotty). The point is that the soldiers aren't going to care. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Jul 30, 2015 |
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Jul 30, 2015 17:20
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Grand Fromage posted:Well now we need to define time periods. I don't think bastardry mattered that much in the republic. Once the empire is Totally Not A Monarchy, Really then the rules change. Yeah, once poo poo gets weird and it's mostly about who the legions are loyal to, lineage matters more.
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Jul 30, 2015 17:40
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I saw a personalized license plate that said "PRINCEPS" yesterday. It was on a great big Mercedes wandering in and out its lane, driver talking on a cell phone.
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Jul 30, 2015 18:29
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Last wills and testaments were a big deal in Rome and given great legal significance. In English, we still actually use the phrase "last will and testament" even though usually it's just a will. The "testament" part in Roman times was the dead person's chance to say everything he ever wanted to say when he was alive. So Roman testaments went as expected, approximately something like: "to my sluttish wife, I knew about you and the well-hung house slave all along and I hope Emperor Tiberius chokes on a gallon of horse semen". Reading Roman graffiti, it's not hard to imagine how most testaments probably sounded. Apparently, it was quite risqué to get shitfaced and read your testament to everyone before you actually died. But anyway, wills had tremendous legal power and usually given respect if authenticated. Sidenote, Roman obsession with what would happen after they died extended to "funeral clubs" that most people joined, putting a little money into a common fund every month to help cover the cost of a decent funeral. These were so common even slaves had their own little funereal mutual funds.
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Jul 30, 2015 18:33
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Testament is just the Latin word for will. Will is a Germanic word meaning . . .will. They are used both because lawyers are anal and there was a history and tradition of scrivening in England to include all synonymous words in a legal instrument for various reasons. This tradition has continued in American scrivening even though it is superfluous. euphronius fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Jul 30, 2015 |
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Jul 30, 2015 18:45
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euphronius posted:Testament is just the Latin word for will. Will is a Germanic word meaning . . .will. 
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Jul 30, 2015 18:55
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physeter posted:Last wills and testaments were a big deal in Rome and given great legal significance. In English, we still actually use the phrase "last will and testament" even though usually it's just a will. The "testament" part in Roman times was the dead person's chance to say everything he ever wanted to say when he was alive. So Roman testaments went as expected, approximately something like: "to my sluttish wife, I knew about you and the well-hung house slave all along and I hope Emperor Tiberius chokes on a gallon of horse semen". Reading Roman graffiti, it's not hard to imagine how most testaments probably sounded. Apparently, it was quite risqué to get shitfaced and read your testament to everyone before you actually died. But anyway, wills had tremendous legal power and usually given respect if authenticated. Didn't that tradition evolve into the medieval funeral fellowship society? I don't know the name in English, but I recal there was a tradition among the well-to-do to put aside a fund a feast for however many (usually poor) men to gather and... I dunno, pay their respect to their patron or something.
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Jul 30, 2015 18:58
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quote:TESTAMENTS are of very high antiquity. We find them in ufe among the antient Hebrews; though I hardly think the example ufually given c, of Abraham's complaining d that, unlefs he had fome children of his body, his fteward Eliezer of Damafcus would be his heir, is quite conclufive to fhew that he had made him fo by will. And indeed a learned writer e has adduced this very paffage to prove, that in the patriarchal age, on failure of children or kindred, the fervants born under their mafter's roof fucceeded to the inheritance as heirs at law f. But, (to omit what Eufebins and others have related of Noah's teftament, made in writing and witneffed under his feal, whereby he difpofed of the whole world g) I apprehend that a much more authentic inftance of the early ufe of teftaments may be found in the facred writings h, wherein Jacob bequeaths to his fon Jo-feph a portion of his inheritance double to that of his brethren: which will we find carried into execution many hundred years afterwards, when the pofterity of Jofeph were divided into two diftinct tribes, thofe of Ephraim and Manaffeh, and had two feveral inheritances affigned them; whereas the defcendents of each of the other patriarchs formed only one fingle tribe, and had only one lot of inheritance. Solon was the firft legiflator that introduced wills into Athens i; but in many other parts of Greece they were totally difcountenanced k. In Rome they were unknown, till the laws of the twelve tables were compiled, which firft gave the right of bequeathing l: and, among the northern nations, particularly among the Germans m, teftaments were not received into ufe. And this variety may ferve to evince, that the right of making wills, and difpofing of property after death, is merely a creature of the civil ftate n; which has permitted it in fome countries, and denied it in others: and, even where it is permitted by law, it is fubjected to different formalities and reftrictions in almoft every nation under heaven o.
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Jul 30, 2015 19:05
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