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Angry Lobster posted:(ll. 373-375) Do not let a flaunting woman coax and cozen and deceive you: she is after your barn. The man who trusts womankind trust deceivers. What was the ancient Greek equivalent of a fedora?
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Sep 24, 2016 18:01
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A toga?
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Sep 24, 2016 18:06
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Ynglaur posted:What was the ancient Greek equivalent of a fedora? A barrel.
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Sep 24, 2016 18:13
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Ynglaur posted:What was the ancient Greek equivalent of a fedora? A red cloak and lambda.
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Sep 24, 2016 18:26
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Ynglaur posted:What was the ancient Greek equivalent of a fedora? 
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Sep 24, 2016 18:28
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Tunicate posted:A toga? The toga is the Roman (not Greek) equivalent of a business suit, so nah.
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Sep 24, 2016 18:34
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my dad posted:A barrel.
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Sep 24, 2016 19:18
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feedmegin posted:The toga is the Roman (not Greek) equivalent of a business suit, so nah. I meant the Cato-style olde fashioned Toga
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Sep 25, 2016 03:37
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Ancient Roman Coins found in Japan! The article is very clear that they don't think there was a direct link between Japan and Rome but rather the particular castle they're excavating had trade links in Asia in the 15th Century and probably picked up the coins (including the 3rd/4th century ones) that way, but I still think it's really goddamn cool!
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Sep 27, 2016 12:53
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Neat. They'd already found Roman glass beads but that was the only Roman find in Japan so far.
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Sep 27, 2016 12:55
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Arglebargle III posted:Any good resources on the history of agriculture? Eat More Cabbage
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Sep 27, 2016 14:59
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Now I'm wondering if Diocletian ever wrote anything about cabbage because I'm pretty sure I'd trust him more on that subject than Cato.
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Sep 27, 2016 16:08
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From a PYF thread I had to post this here. The dancing plague https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518?wprov=sfsi1
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Sep 29, 2016 09:14
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Arglebargle III posted:Any good resources on the history of agriculture? If you're looking for primary sources on ancient agriculture, Columella's "Res Rustica" is a book devoted entirely to running an agricultural estate (complete with instructions on how best to utilize slave labour). A few of my friends in the year ahead of mine during my undergraduate had to translate large sections of it for their Latin prose course, the teacher was a madman and checked out the only translations from the university library, so everyone was blind reading a 2nd century agricultural text and losing their minds.
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Sep 29, 2016 11:10
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feedmegin posted:The toga is the Roman (not Greek) equivalent of a business suit, so nah. So that would make a laurel wreath the Roman equivalent to the fedora? 
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Sep 29, 2016 11:48
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Julius wore it to cover his baldness, and to look cool. So, yes?
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Sep 29, 2016 13:32
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Tasteful Dickpic posted:Julius wore it to cover his baldness, and to look cool. "Today you are euphoric.... but remember you are mortal."
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Sep 29, 2016 20:57
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Is there robust study of Classical Chinese grafitti the way there is for Roman grafitti?
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Sep 30, 2016 00:06
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I'm not sure there is any classical Chinese graffiti. The Romans were really into writing on walls since they were considered public spaces for everyone to use, I don't know if China had that. Also like most of East Asia, Chinese construction was largely wood and didn't last very long. We have next to nothing original from that long ago. Last thing is I am pretty sure literacy in ancient China was quite rare, nowhere near as common as in the (urban) Roman Empire. Even today for native speakers learning to read and write Chinese takes several years of schooling, and that's with pinyin making it vastly easier to learn than it used to be. I teach in Chinese schools and have seen that they're still learning characters at least into seventh grade, and it stops somewhere before tenth.
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Sep 30, 2016 02:19
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Aren't most of our examples of roman graffiti things that were conveniently buried by volcanic activity? China doesn't have so much of that.
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Sep 30, 2016 02:33
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Even if literacy was widespread the only writing remaining from that era would be on metal or stone carvings. The Chinese built out of wood and wrote on silk and paper.
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Sep 30, 2016 02:34
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fishmech posted:Aren't most of our examples of roman graffiti things that were conveniently buried by volcanic activity? China doesn't have so much of that. The best examples are the ones preserved in Campania, yeah, but there are others. The ability to see ancient paint from analyzing microscopic bits left on surfaces helps. There's also two categories of graffiti. There's the "Lucius stop loving your sister" things scratched into them, and the more official stuff like painted advertisements and government notices and stuff that would've covered the outside walls of a lot of buildings.
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Sep 30, 2016 02:41
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Graffiti doesn't have to be written words, it can be any old bullshit. There's a pretty famous example of a board for a game of Ur or Senet or something scratched onto an old Mesopotamian gateway when presumably the guys guarding it got bored for a while. I'd be pretty surprised if there wasn't graffiti of some description in ancient China, even if none of it survived. I think the urge to make your mark by defacing a public building transcends culture and can be found anywhere in the world.
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Sep 30, 2016 02:53
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If some Wang draws a dick on a wall but the wall is gone, was there ever truly a dick?
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Sep 30, 2016 02:56
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Grand Fromage posted:The best examples are the ones preserved in Campania, yeah, but there are others. The ability to see ancient paint from analyzing microscopic bits left on surfaces helps. There's also two categories of graffiti. There's the "Lucius stop loving your sister" things scratched into them, and the more official stuff like painted advertisements and government notices and stuff that would've covered the outside walls of a lot of buildings. "Visit Lucius' bakery! Mention this advertisement and get 20% off on your first bread purchase!" 
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Sep 30, 2016 03:53
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I'm hoping for some incredible dick drawings when they finally excavate Qin Shi Huang's tomb.
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Sep 30, 2016 03:55
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GreyjoyBastard posted:"Visit Lucius' bakery! Mention this advertisement and get 20% off on your first bread purchase!" "Also, don't mention my sister"
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Sep 30, 2016 03:55
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Family oriented business values!
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Sep 30, 2016 03:59
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There's Chinese grafitti in that ancient Egyptian temple, surely that counts?
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Sep 30, 2016 04:25
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My favorite is the "Halfdan was here" carved on a wall in the Hagia Sophia
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Sep 30, 2016 06:14
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hailthefish posted:My favorite is the "Halfdan was here" carved on a wall in the Hagia Sophia That is the best one, because you know there was probably a bunch of people standing there mortified while a loving Viking drunkenly scrawled his name in a marble slab, but they weren't about to do poo poo about it.
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Sep 30, 2016 07:39
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FAUXTON posted:That is the best one, because you know there was probably a bunch of people standing there mortified while a loving Viking drunkenly scrawled his name in a marble slab, but they weren't about to do poo poo about it. I imagine it was an office story for decades. "Hey, dude, tell the new guy about the time that loving viking wrote his name in the wall!"
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Sep 30, 2016 07:57
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Speaking of which, the Norse wrote stuff everywhere. Let's talk about the Piraeus Lion, a lion statue that originally stood in Piraeus, but was looted by Venetians in 1687. It has two lindworm inscriptions in the shoulders and flanks, one on either side, from the second half of the 11th century. The one on the right is funnier, so I'll write that one. Varangian hardass posted:Asmund cut these runes with Asgeir and Thorleif, Thord and Ivar, at the request of Harold the Tall, though the Greeks considered about and forbade it. I just found it funny that they complained about the Greeks complaining about their vandalism, as part of their vandalism.
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Sep 30, 2016 08:48
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So, how literate were the Norse if they were carving their names into everything? For that matter, how literate were the Greeks at this point? As much as the classical Romans, or had there been a decline?
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Sep 30, 2016 10:38
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I would bet the Varangian Guard were all required to be literate, at the least. Not sure beyond that. I actually don't know anything about literacy in the medieval empire but my guess is it would be similar. Urban populations largely literate, rural not so much. If anyone knows more please post!
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Sep 30, 2016 10:53
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Angry Salami posted:So, how literate were the Norse if they were carving their names into everything? For that matter, how literate were the Greeks at this point? As much as the classical Romans, or had there been a decline? as far as i know, the byzantine empire saw a high rate of lay literacy, but rodrigo diaz would know more about that
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Sep 30, 2016 10:58
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Angry Salami posted:So, how literate were the Norse if they were carving their names into everything? For that matter, how literate were the Greeks at this point? As much as the classical Romans, or had there been a decline? Remember these are the high end exports, not a bargain bin throngs of trashy thralls.
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Sep 30, 2016 11:03
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Angry Salami posted:So, how literate were the Norse if they were carving their names into everything? For that matter, how literate were the Greeks at this point? As much as the classical Romans, or had there been a decline? As far as the Norse go, they wouldn't have the kind of common literacy that the Roman Empire had. You have to remember that, at least in the pagan era, they had a very different approach to writing - Latin and Greek writing was a tool of communication, but runes were one foot in the secular sphere and one foot in the sacred, what with all the magic-related runes going around. Early runes are usually either commemorations of important events and people or, less frequently, spells ranging from writing "STRENGTH" on your necklace to full-blown poems. As time goes on, this dissipates and we see a lot less of "these runes will grant calm seas and success in Olafr's raid" and a lot more mundane inscriptions like "this is Olafr's hammer do not steal". This also tells us that literacy probably got more common over time, especially with the arrival of Christianity when runes start to lose their magic powers. Around the time of Christianization, you also see a bunch of runestones that say Such-And-Such Family adopted Christianity - it's a religious event, so of course you'll have runes carved to strengthen your Christian magic! As far as we can tell, literacy was considered a respected craft - and the Norse were seriously big on craftsmanship as a virtue. Keep in mind that they didn't use parchment, and actually carving legible and visually attractive runes is much more difficult than writing with ink. A lot of runic inscriptions feature "X carved these runes on Y's orders", meaning that illiterate people considered it a good use of their money to pay a runecarver to decorate an item or, if you were rich, raise a runestone. Sure, whoever ordered the runes probably can't actually read them, but writing makes things special. Having your name written on your axe is  and all your viking bros will be jealous, if you give a girl a thing that says "Helga is pretty" it's super romantic. There's also a lot of inscriptions found in graves, both on dedicated stones and random burial poo poo like soup bowls and knives (there were probably more of these but they didn't survive). Usually they just contain the buried person's name, but with wealthy graves they also feature commemorations or spells.There's no "caste" of the literate like in Christian society, but it seems to be a fairly specialized skill nonetheless. You'd be more likely to be literate if you were a bigshot leader or very religious, or you might carve runes for a living. The Varangian Guard were indeed the cream of the crop, so it's no surprise a lot of them were literate. As regular farmer dude, it's very unlikely, although you'd be much more likely to know someone literate than a Christian peasant thanks to the generally more egalitarian social structure. As a woman you'd also probably be illiterate - I can't find anything about inscriptions signed by women, although there are some that were ordered by them. It's hard to tell if there was some ban on women learning to write or if it just wasn't the done thing. Edit: Also, my favorite thing is that there are a considerable number of inscriptions that are just complete gibberish, which is good proof that most people couldn't read. I like to imagine that some dudes went around saying they were professional runecarvers, put random symbols on people's stuff, took their money and skipped town
Guildencrantz fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Sep 30, 2016 |
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Sep 30, 2016 12:24
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Was that sort of X the Y title sort of a prestige thing among the norse, or was it just a unique identifier to differentiate people? Harold the Tall instead of Harold the Chubby or Harold the One With a Big Nose for instance.
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Sep 30, 2016 16:03
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SlothfulCobra posted:Was that sort of X the Y title sort of a prestige thing among the norse, or was it just a unique identifier to differentiate people? Harold the Tall instead of Harold the Chubby or Harold the One With a Big Nose for instance. Mostly an identifier, since otherwise they just had patronymics and place names. Nicknames would probably change over someone's life if major events changed them (getting scarred or maimed is a popular one) or you could get a new posthumous one if you had a memorable death. The Icelanders, bless their hearts, kept population records which show that plenty of people were identified by nicknames, some of which were ironic or insulting. Sure, you probably need to do something badass to become Erik the Wise or Torbjorn the Strong, but Olaf Bignose is just a dude. Or you might be remembered by posterity as Einar Foulfart, which is a real record and another reason to always make friends with the local rune guy.
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Sep 30, 2016 17:05
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