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Squalid posted:I think it's also worth adding that Justinian's acquisitions weren't just held through sheer force and intimidation, most of the people in Italy, Spain, and Africa still thought of themselves as Roman, and supported the reassertion of Imperial authority I read a paper recently arguing that the non-goth inhabitants of Italy in the sixth century don't appear to have felt any particular kinship with Justinian's lot (nor with the goths), suggesting that they might not have considered themselves "roman" any longer (or at least that their immediate, physical need for safety and shelter from the war overrode any sense of shared cultural identity). I don't know enough about the period to critique the paper's conclusions, but I found it interesting v  v
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Dec 30, 2015 14:24
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Thwomp posted:I'm not sure how much the book goes into it but the Romans were never going to hold on to Africa and the Italian provinces for long. For some reason I didn't memorize every word of the book but I don't recall any argument that the empire was going to be fine. Simply that after going through all they did from the plague up to the Arab conquests, any chance of a full recovery was gone.
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Dec 30, 2015 14:33
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Cyrano4747 posted:Ehhhhhh. . . that depends on what "Roman institutions" you are talking about and in what form. Rome in 400AD looks very, VERY different as far as that stuff goes than Rome in 100AD and a lot of what made it kind of fade away in the west was the decay of a lot of those institutions, changes in the way taxation was handled, and a lot of pressures that made moving to the countryside (and thus away from the more immediate grasp of the government) attractive for wealthy elites. It's absolutely true that "Rome" doesn't just disappear from Italy in the 5th century, but it's also a bit hard to argue that by Justinian's time it was still there ready to be set back up again if only someone with authority would wander by and do so. peer posted:I read a paper recently arguing that the non-goth inhabitants of Italy in the sixth century don't appear to have felt any particular kinship with Justinian's lot (nor with the goths), suggesting that they might not have considered themselves "roman" any longer (or at least that their immediate, physical need for safety and shelter from the war overrode any sense of shared cultural identity). I don't know enough about the period to critique the paper's conclusions, but I found it interesting v I'm not arguing Italy was just going to easily slip back into the Emperors pocket, it's obvious differences were accumulating in this period that were increasingly dividing the Roman world. Not just in the West, Eastern divisions over Monophysitism were pretty serious and enduring too. I am arguing that there were enough unbroken links in the chain binding the Empire to Italy that it could have been reforged, as it was in Africa. This was all made moot once the arabs kicked the rotted foundation out from under the empire, but that was hardly inevitable in say 600 AD.
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Dec 30, 2015 19:43
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Again, it really depends on what you're defining as "The Empire." Western Rome in the 5th century is a LOT different than it was in the 1st, and a lot of what it seems that you're trying to say was still in place was disintegrating by the 5th. This wasn't an issue of foreign military occupation or some other major split that caused people who would like to be Roman not to be under Roman authority any more, it was a much more cultural and social shift than that. The best description I ever heard of that period was that Roman society was barbarized (as in adopted the practices and culture of the incoming tribes) in about equal measure to the Romanization of the barbarian tribes. What you have in the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century is already a very different society than what you see at the high point of the Empire, down to self identity and the local authorities that are both recognized and respected. Put another couple of hundred years on that process and you really aren't talking about "Romans" any more when you're looking at those areas. edit: If you're just claiming reassertion of authority that comes from someone with a cultural or linguistic tie to the old Empire then sure, I guess, but by that same logic Mussolini really was re-establishing Rome when he invaded Ethiopia and the Balkans. edit x2: to put things a bit in perspective, what you're arguing is kind of like saying that the US's recent adventures in Afghanistan represent the expansion of the Kingdom of Henry VIII into Central Asia. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Dec 30, 2015 |
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Dec 30, 2015 20:01
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Cyrano4747 posted:
The US inherited all the claims of the British Empire in the Peace of Paris. So we still have a CB on, say, India or or other lost members of the empire.
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Dec 30, 2015 20:15
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Cyrano4747 posted:Again, it really depends on what you're defining as "The Empire." Western Rome in the 5th century is a LOT different than it was in the 1st, and a lot of what it seems that you're trying to say was still in place was disintegrating by the 5th. This wasn't an issue of foreign military occupation or some other major split that caused people who would like to be Roman not to be under Roman authority any more, it was a much more cultural and social shift than that. The best description I ever heard of that period was that Roman society was barbarized (as in adopted the practices and culture of the incoming tribes) in about equal measure to the Romanization of the barbarian tribes. What you have in the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century is already a very different society than what you see at the high point of the Empire, down to self identity and the local authorities that are both recognized and respected. Put another couple of hundred years on that process and you really aren't talking about "Romans" any more when you're looking at those areas. I don't know why you keep making a comparison to Rome in the 1st century, cultures and institutions change. Just because Romans only adopted the Christian Church in the fourth century doesn't make it any less a Roman institution. I mean Americans absolutely do draw a straight line between America in 1715 and America today, even though these societies have very little in common, arguably less than two people living in Naples in the first and fifth centuries. If the Romans were barbarized it makes no difference, so long as they didn't notice. In this case the meaningful comparison is between the "Roman" people of Italy and the Romans in the Empire. As peer pointed out, people in Italy were beginning to notice the differences. Still there were a lot of institutional and social connections left between the Empire and Italy in the sixth century, enough at least that powerful Italians could conceive of backing the Emperor over the Goths. In the case of Africa, after 100 years of true independence (as opposed to the de facto independence of Gothic Italy) it falls right back into the Empire and remains a stable part until the Arab conquest. I know it's hard to wrap your head around the protean and amorphous nature of identity but like look at this picture of a Quecha speaking lady in the traditional dress of the indigenous people of the Andes:  Is she any less Indian because the hat is derived from English bowlers and was only adopted in the 1920s? No, that's absurd. And Romans didn't become any less Roman when they started wearing pants.
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Dec 30, 2015 21:31
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Indian Cuisine is inauthentic because it uses hot peppers, a New World cultivar  Ditto for Italian Cuisine, with all those phony tomato-based dishes.
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Dec 30, 2015 21:35
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It also doesn't help clarify things when "Rome" was basically the Mayberry, NC of Europe through like the Napoleonic Wars.
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Dec 31, 2015 00:41
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camden new jersey fourth rome
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Dec 31, 2015 16:04
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Squalid posted:And Romans didn't become any less Roman when they started wearing pants. Nope this is the very thing that broke the true line of Roman succession. Pants are barbaric and nothing can change that.
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Dec 31, 2015 16:32
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Terrible Opinions posted:Nope this is the very thing that broke the true line of Roman succession. Pants are barbaric and nothing can change that. What if you wear a toga over pants?
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Dec 31, 2015 16:36
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Tunicate posted:Indian Cuisine is inauthentic because it uses hot peppers, a New World cultivar The Old World really did suck prior to their discovery of the New World.
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Dec 31, 2015 16:37
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FAUXTON posted:What if you wear a toga over pants? If you put a dress on a pig does that make it a proper lady?
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Dec 31, 2015 16:43
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Thump! posted:The Old World really did suck prior to their discovery of the New World. They didn't even have potatoes, which is something that blew my mind when I first learned it. Potatoes were exciting. Terrible Opinions posted:If you put a dress on a pig does that make it a proper lady? I heard if you put a toga on a horse it makes it a senator.
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Dec 31, 2015 16:44
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Ainsley McTree posted:They didn't even have potatoes, which is something that blew my mind when I first learned it. Makes you wonder what the Irish and Latvians were living on that whole time.
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Dec 31, 2015 16:46
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Dairy, in the case of Ireland. The Irish cattle industry was the foundation of their economy and continued to be even after the British colonized them. The only difference was that after the 17th century all the cattle and pasture land were appropriated by the English aristocracy and all that beef was shipped to England for consumption. Ireland was a net food exporter even through the worst years of famine. Distribution has been the main problem with famine for a long long time. During the Great Chinese Famine, possibly the worst famine in history, the granaries of the central provinces were full. (Was there ever a worse famine by death toll? The Great Chinese Famine killed 30 million people.) I just read 1491 on Grand Fromage's advice finally and it was good. If you haven't read it, read it. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 16:56
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Terrible Opinions posted:Nope this is the very thing that broke the true line of Roman succession. Pants are barbaric and nothing can change that. En Romanos, rerum dominos, gentemque togatam!
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Dec 31, 2015 17:06
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Terrible Opinions posted:If you put a dress on a pig does that make it a proper lady? David Cameron wishes he thought of that.
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Dec 31, 2015 19:15
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Terrible Opinions posted:If you put a dress on a pig does that make it a proper lady? Hell in North Carolina it makes it a congressperson.
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Dec 31, 2015 20:09
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Terrible Opinions posted:If you put a dress on a pig does that make it a proper lady? excuse me it's lipstick that goes on a pig as decreed by emperor obama lord of the ninth roman empire 
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Dec 31, 2015 20:48
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FAUXTON posted:Hell in North Carolina it makes it a congressperson. Only in the western part of the state. Eastern NC would insist upon dousing said candidate in vinegar during the primaries.
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Dec 31, 2015 20:58
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I did some slow day-wiki'ing today and got onto Octavian/Augustus. Reading the article got me a little confused about Roman names (and I'm particularly talking about higher-level Romans, I imagine your average citizen wouldn't have this problem) - how the gently caress did they work? According to the article he was know by 5 different names throughout his life, and by the end of it there were no common names: -Gaius Octavius -Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (Octavian) -Gaius Julius Caesar Divi Filius -Imperator Caesar Divi Filius -Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus Really I have two questions - a) what would an average person (say his best friend) call him (and would that change throughout his life)? and b) how would they handle the name changes? Would he leave the senate one day going by Octavian and the next day come back as Julius? Out of everything I've ever read or studied about Roman life this is the part that's always seemed most alien.
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Dec 31, 2015 21:37
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EvilHawk posted:I did some slow day-wiki'ing today and got onto Octavian/Augustus. Reading the article got me a little confused about Roman names (and I'm particularly talking about higher-level Romans, I imagine your average citizen wouldn't have this problem) - how the gently caress did they work? A woman starts with one name, then gets married and hyphenates her name. She sometimes gets referred to as "Mrs.[Husband's last name]." She has a famous mom, so sometimes people refer to her with reference to her mother. She also gets a job that has a title, like "Doctor". It's not the same, but that's approximately what you're seeing there.
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Dec 31, 2015 23:05
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homullus posted:A woman starts with one name, then gets married and hyphenates her name. She sometimes gets referred to as "Mrs.[Husband's last name]." She has a famous mom, so sometimes people refer to her with reference to her mother. She also gets a job that has a title, like "Doctor".
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Dec 31, 2015 23:11
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His intimates (the few of them that he had) probably just called him Gaius throughout, when a public setting didn't make a more formal address necessary. Perhaps Gaius Julius when a distinction needed to be made between the multiple Gaii in his inner circle.
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Jan 1, 2016 03:18
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HEY GAL posted:European history is full of the Duke of X and the Countess of Y, each of which might also have family names. Saxe Coburg Gotha, yo.
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Jan 1, 2016 03:59
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Thump! posted:The Old World really did suck prior to their discovery of the New World. The old world provided like 99% of the smug dickbags the new world would need
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Jan 1, 2016 04:17
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EvilHawk posted:I did some slow day-wiki'ing today and got onto Octavian/Augustus. Reading the article got me a little confused about Roman names (and I'm particularly talking about higher-level Romans, I imagine your average citizen wouldn't have this problem) - how the gently caress did they work? Imagine if English only had the names John, Mike, Rich, Bill, Chris, Steve, Tom, Mark, Dave, and Adam. Women aren't people and don't need names so don't worry about that. You also have family names. Over time, the number of family names in any society will decrease. If you think about it a second this makes sense. This is why in places like Japan there are a poo poo ton of family names, because they only started having them for everyone in the 1800s. Compare to Korea, which has had the same group of family names more or less for a couple thousand years, and also people would change their names to match the current royal family. This is how you get a country where the majority of the population has the same three family names. Okay, so. At first you have Mike Julius and Mike Vespasianus and Mike Aulus and it's fine. But these families are getting mixed, so the total number of names eventually will decrease. Also, they're getting bigger. The Julius family has more than ten important male figures in it, so now we have two Mike Juliuses running around. Well, let's add another name. One of the Mikes has a weird divot in his nose and the other Mike is bald, and we're assholes. Divot Mike is now Mike Julius Cicero since his nose looks like a chickpea. Bald Mike is now Mike Julius Caesar because we want to remind him he has no hair literally every time we say his name because, again, assholes. These start getting passed down too, so now your family history has two Mike Julius Caesars in it. Well, add another name. If he did something impressive, he can stick that on his name to remind everyone. One of the Mikes conquered a bunch of Germans, so let's call him Mike Julius Caesar Germanicus. This is where we stop because it's unique enough. You can also change your name if you want to. As for women, well, who gives a gently caress. Just name them First, Second, Third, Fourth etc.
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Jan 1, 2016 05:28
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Speaking of North Africa, I was reading about the later Western Empire and it felt like the loss of Africa to the Vandals was the real death knell of the Empire. While you can argue how "Roman" it was at that point, the trade loop between Italy & North Africa is the reason urban areas were able to supported in Italy and throughout Southwestern Europe. Carthage and North Africa was the breadbasket of the western med, just as Egypt did for the East. The fighting with the Vandals seemed to have destroyed alot of the irrigation infrastructure that wasn't really repaired, without African grain it seemed like the population of cities in Italy and the western med started shrinking as people abandoned them for subsistence farming in the countryside. While it seems strange to think of North Africa being a breadbasket, we also have examples of destruction of irrigation works in Mesopotamia under the Mongols which just utterly torpedoed food production and population, to the point that they feel equivalent food tonnage wasn't being produced until modern times. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Jan 2, 2016 |
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Jan 2, 2016 05:52
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This is attributed to one of the russian czars, but I forgot which: Apparently in an attempt to mock parliamentarism, he called in his advisors, they all got drunk, and cosplayed a version of parliament. I think it was called "the drunken assembly"? Anyway I tried googling it a while ago, but failed.
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Jan 2, 2016 10:04
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mike12345 posted:This is attributed to one of the russian czars, but I forgot which: Apparently in an attempt to mock parliamentarism, he called in his advisors, they all got drunk, and cosplayed a version of parliament. I think it was called "the drunken assembly"? Anyway I tried googling it a while ago, but failed. That's where they decided Crimea and Donetsk didn't have to be held to the democracy of their countrymen, I think.
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Jan 2, 2016 10:14
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mike12345 posted:This is attributed to one of the russian czars, but I forgot which: Apparently in an attempt to mock parliamentarism, he called in his advisors, they all got drunk, and cosplayed a version of parliament. I think it was called "the drunken assembly"? Anyway I tried googling it a while ago, but failed. Are you thinking of Peter the Great? I don't think that was specifically about mocking parliamentarianism though.
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Jan 2, 2016 16:54
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Jack2142 posted:Speaking of North Africa, I was reading about the later Western Empire and it felt like the loss of Africa to the Vandals was the real death knell of the Empire. While you can argue how "Roman" it was at that point, the trade loop between Italy & North Africa is the reason urban areas were able to supported in Italy and throughout Southwestern Europe. Carthage and North Africa was the breadbasket of the western med, just as Egypt did for the East. The fighting with the Vandals seemed to have destroyed alot of the irrigation infrastructure that wasn't really repaired, without African grain it seemed like the population of cities in Italy and the western med started shrinking as people abandoned them for subsistence farming in the countryside. Guy Halsall makes a very similar argument about the loss of North Africa, but on different grounds. The decline in the grain trade was important, but perhaps more important was the presence of a foreign power in the Mediterranean. Vandal raids required leaving military formations in Italy, rather than keeping them all nearish to the frontier where the Emperor was far more likely to be. The independent command then fosters multiple claimants to the Imperial office, since 'guy who leads the army' was basically the whole thing at that point.
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Jan 3, 2016 10:06
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:Are you thinking of Peter the Great? I don't think that was specifically about mocking parliamentarianism though. Yeah that's it. "Getting drunk, and mocking power structures" is probably more apt.
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Jan 3, 2016 10:12
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Even for me sometimes it's weird thinking about what parts of the empire actually mattered. You could make a very strong argument that Turkey was the center of the Roman world and Italy wasn't all that important for the majority of Roman history. Similarly North Africa you rarely hear about after the end of Carthage but was incredibly important. I guess it's like how ancient Greek history always focuses on Greece proper despite the fact that there were more Greeks in Italy/Sicily than actual Greece.
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Jan 3, 2016 10:14
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Grand Fromage posted:I guess it's like how ancient Greek history always focuses on Greece proper despite the fact that there were more Greeks in Italy/Sicily than actual Greece. This I want to know more about.
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Jan 3, 2016 10:28
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There's not much to know. Greece is lovely farmland, Magna Graecia is better. That's why they settled there. Greeks were all over the loving place, there was also a substantial population way up in Crimea. And all the way out into India and Central Asia to the Chinese borderlands, of course. The only real crazy thing is there is still a small but robust population of Greek speaking Greeks in southern Italy who are the modern remains of the initial Greek settlers almost 3000 years ago.
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Jan 3, 2016 10:34
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Grand Fromage posted:There's not much to know. Greece is lovely farmland, Magna Graecia is better. That's why they settled there. Greeks were all over the loving place, there was also a substantial population way up in Crimea. And all the way out into India and Central Asia to the Chinese borderlands, of course. But what about the Roman colonisation of New Jersey
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Jan 3, 2016 10:50
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Grand Fromage posted:There's not much to know. Greece is lovely farmland, Magna Graecia is better. That's why they settled there. Greeks were all over the loving place, there was also a substantial population way up in Crimea. And all the way out into India and Central Asia to the Chinese borderlands, of course. Come to think of it, I know that Greeks and Carthaginians established colonies as far west as the southern coast of Spain and the area around Gibraltar. Why did they never attempt to do the same on the Atlantic side of Iberia? After all, mediterranean trade ships would regularily sail to Britain for tin, so it can't have been that the area was difficult to navigate. Kopijeger fucked around with this message at 13:21 on Jan 3, 2016 |
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Jan 3, 2016 11:17
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Kopijeger posted:Come to think of it, I know that Greeks and Carthaginians established colonies as far west as the southern coast of Spain and the area around Gibraltar. Why did they never attempt to do the same on the Atlantic side of Iberia. After all, mediterranean trade ships would regularily sail to Britain for tin, so it can't have been that the area was difficult to navigate. It was a real shithole
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Jan 3, 2016 11:31
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