|
the JJ posted:We had Bolivian Atlantis. These and more are why I genuinely couldn't remember, which I guess is funny in itself.
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2016 01:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 11, 2024 22:04 |
|
|
Closest thread I could find for this. Reading William Cleveland's History of the Modern Middle East. Page 25, talking about Islamic scholarship:quote:During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Christian rulers of northern Spain encouraged the translation of the Arabic editions of the Greek philosophers into Latin. Through this channel of transmission, the Greek legacy entered the consciousness of Western Europe. The first European commentaries on Plato and Aristotle were not based on Greek texts but on Latin translations of earlier Arabic translations [...]
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2016 05:54
|
|
|
KICK BAMA KICK posted:Closest thread I could find for this. Reading William Cleveland's History of the Modern Middle East. Page 25, talking about Islamic scholarship: The Byzantines spoke Greek and a solid proportion of them were Greek. Why bother translating a bunch of stuff into Latin for the benefit of nobody but the barbarians squatting in the ruins of the other half of your empire? Stuff which used to exist over there but now doesn't because those barbarians blew it all up, and serves them right that they can't have the wisdom of Aristotle after squandering the heritage of the West to such an extent that they don't even have his works anymore. It's not quite that simple but Latin was nobody's first choice to be translating to once few people spoke it natively.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2016 06:35
|
|
|
KICK BAMA KICK posted:Closest thread I could find for this. Reading William Cleveland's History of the Modern Middle East. Page 25, talking about Islamic scholarship: Byzantium and Catholic Europe weren't on speaking terms at that point. The Great Schism was in 1054, which had been preceded by many centuries of increasing rancor. The Catholics probably could have gotten what Constantinople had to offer if they'd asked nicely, but were rather disinclined to do so. Part of the problem was that Latin-speaking Europe wasn't even aware of just what it was they were missing, so they didn't exactly know what to ask for. The fall of the kingdom of Toledo in 1085 put the city's enormous Arabic library in the hands of the West, so they could get what they wanted without having to kowtow to the Greeks.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2016 07:17
|
|
|
Any Roman who was literate enough to read more than a price list chalked on the side of a market stall could read Greek by 100 B.C, and eventually the language of Rome actually became Greek, so why translate things into a pointless dead language???* *Dead language may be spoken by barbarians who exist at the farthest western parts of the Empire. Certainly none of these dead language speakers will ever loot and burn our libraries.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2016 09:01
|
|
|
I took a class this semester on the history of the Muslim world and it blew my mind to find out that Muslim armies conquered as deep into Western Europe as the middle of France.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2016 11:29
|
|
|
It was more likely a raid rather than an actual attempt at conquest. I'm just saying because the importance of this battle tends to get played up by islamophobes here in France.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2016 13:48
|
|
|
Kassad posted:It was more likely a raid rather than an actual attempt at conquest. I'm just saying because the importance of this battle tends to get played up by islamophobes here in France. While it's unfortunate that modern events cause the history here to be so political, and there's a much longer and prouder tradition of exaggerating a poorly-attested battle into A Great Decisive Moment of the World Without Which We'd Be Speaking Mohammedanese Now, there's plenty of reason to suspect that the Umayyad forces had every intention of remaining in France if they felt it was possible and gainful, given that they were pretty much the most conquest-happy empire in the Mediterranean region since Rome itself. They had in that very century subdued the Gothic kingdom in Hispania as a consequence of a raid that exposed its extreme military weakness, and remained in charge of the majority of the peninsula until the Fitna three hundred years later. In the event the Umayyad push into Gaul looks more like a raid than a conquest, but I think that is largely because they suffered the reverse at Tours. By the time of the Battle of Tours, Umayyad armies had been based in Narbonne for more than a decade, raiding in Aquitaine, Septimania, and even Burgundy without facing strong resistance. The Franks didn't actually conquer southern Gaul from Andalusian rule until 759, when Narbonne surrendered to Pepin the Short. The Andalusian rulers never made another serious concerted attempt to assert power beyond the Pyrenees, but I don't think we can say it was likely that they had no plans to conquer northern Gaul - they had no problem staying in southern Gaul for 40+ years after all. Whatever the battle's world-historical importance, it was definitely watershed in the rise of Carolingian dynasty to hegemony over old Gaul.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2016 15:41
|
|
|
Jazerus posted:It's not quite that simple but Latin was nobody's first choice to be translating to once few people spoke it natively. I am not sure Latin was the go-to for translation even when lots of people spoke it natively. Latin lacks some of the structural features of Greek, so a translator would face greater challenges than just "vae victoribus, Latin doesn't have a word for this, or have that idiom." We often talk about Latin and Greek as if they shared a consulship, but even at Rome's peak, the Roman solution to Greek knowledge wasn't translate to Latin, it was learn Greek (and then sometimes write book in Latin using Greek examples and sources). There was also a Roman disdain, I guess, for literal translation; even as early as Livius Andronicus' Latin translation of the Odyssey, he didn't put it into hexameter, but rather Saturnian verse. The playwright Terence alludes to somebody who makes good Greek works into bad Latin ones by translating literally. And so on. Things Greek has that Latin doesn't: An additional tense/aspect An additional mood An additional voice An additional number A definite article
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2016 16:35
|
|
|
That all makes sense, thanks!
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2016 18:02
|
|
|
homullus posted:I am not sure Latin was the go-to for translation even when lots of people spoke it natively. Latin lacks some of the structural features of Greek, so a translator would face greater challenges than just "vae victoribus, Latin doesn't have a word for this, or have that idiom." We often talk about Latin and Greek as if they shared a consulship, but even at Rome's peak, the Roman solution to Greek knowledge wasn't translate to Latin, it was learn Greek (and then sometimes write book in Latin using Greek examples and sources). There was also a Roman disdain, I guess, for literal translation; even as early as Livius Andronicus' Latin translation of the Odyssey, he didn't put it into hexameter, but rather Saturnian verse. The playwright Terence alludes to somebody who makes good Greek works into bad Latin ones by translating literally. And so on. One of the prime bits of text to come out of the Roman Empire, the New Testament (which was written in Greek, as you know), wasn't even officially translated into Latin until Hieronymus had a go in the 5th century. That's how wide-spread Koine Greek was as a language.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2016 18:13
|
|
|
What's really stunning is that they didn't appear to have really any of the Greek texts, or surely they would have hired a Greek to read them or translate them at some point. When you consider how common the texts they were missing were in the ancient world, like the works of Aristotle and Plato, nobody having (or being able to identify, I suppose) a single copy really drives home the level of devastation which had occurred.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2016 22:57
|
|
|
FAUXTON posted:What I'd love to see, along these lines, is some writing on the discovery/development of tea and/or coffee as drinks. I imagine the whole caffeine thing caught on quickly even if it was just "drink this stuff, you get zippy" at first. Tea I can see since it was presumably dried leaves thrown in water and likely a situation where the leaves were just chewed before someone thought to just throw them in water, but with coffee you've got to process the cherries into usable beans beforehand and I'm not sure how someone got to that point. Somewhat lazy here as I'm not providing any links but Lazlo Montgomery at the China History Podcast actually did a few episodes on the history of tea. Super short version, a lot of the written history is obviously mythological but we can safely say that what we know today as tea is the result of a few thousand years of cultivation and development. What they started out with was largely regarded as unpleasant and bitter, advised as a medicinal drink rather than something for pleasure. If you get the chance to try Yerba Mate (South American drink made with dried leaves) it's kind of like some of the descriptions of early tea. It's got a powerfully bitter taste, like very strong cheap green tea, and it's not something I think people would really enjoy in and of itself but it gives a bit of zing and the flavour becomes habitual after a while. Apparently, I think it tastes like drinking whiteboard marker. The more modern history side of tea is equally fascinating (like why languages divide along the lines of referring to it as tea or cha) but not quite thread appropriate. If you check out the podcast episodes he has a short reading list as well which will give you at least background into tea. Coffee I'm only really familiar with when it was introduced into Europe as an already existing cultivar with established cultural and culinary norms. The Royal Society used to organise the equivalent of pub crawls but with coffee houses since instead of people getting insensible it excited conversation and thought well into the night.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2016 00:26
|
|
|
Mate isn't "powerfully bitter" or whatever. it's way milder than the junk tea everyone in the West drinks. wtf
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2016 00:51
|
|
|
Apologies if this has been brought up before, but how is Tom Holland's Persian Fire? I enjoyed Rubicon but I was largely familiar with the subject matter, and I know basically jack-poo poo about Persian history.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2016 01:58
|
|
|
He uses pretty outdated research, but as long as you know that going into it then it's an enjoyable book and as far as I know one of the only accessible history books on Achaemenid Persia there is. if someone has some other recommendations I'd be interested in hearing them, incidentally
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2016 06:02
|
|
|
Looking for a book recommendation, something like Switzerland: a Village History, aka focusing on the developments in everyday life. Particular civilization doesn't matter, but I'm asking here because I'd prefer something well researched.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2016 06:32
|
|
|
TheLawinator posted:Looking for a book recommendation, something like Switzerland: a Village History, aka focusing on the developments in everyday life. Particular civilization doesn't matter, but I'm asking here because I'd prefer something well researched. Does "Daily Life in Ancient Rome" fit the bill? I can't attest to its scholarship, but I would be interested to hear folks' thoughts on it here.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2016 07:25
|
|
|
Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:I can't remember: has this thread been host to anybody who believed in the Bosnian pyramids? Of course. That's where they stored the grain for their beer.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 14:50
|
|
|
I finished reading Richard Fidler's Ghost Empire on Byzantium and now I have a hankering for more of the same. Google points me to John Julius Norwich's history of the Byzantine Empire, but I thought it best to come here for recommendations as well.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2016 00:12
|
|
|
Sharkie posted:Of course. That's where they stored the grain for their beer. It's shocking how many people don't realize this. It's not exactly brain surgery 
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2016 00:37
|
|
|
homullus posted:An additional number I'm not sure the tiny remnants of the dual in Koine Greek were that much of an issue in translation to be fair. Homer is a special case.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2016 01:12
|
|
|
Octy posted:I finished reading Richard Fidler's Ghost Empire on Byzantium and now I have a hankering for more of the same. Google points me to John Julius Norwich's history of the Byzantine Empire, but I thought it best to come here for recommendations as well. That book's good. I have a bunch of others I haven't read yet and can't recommend. The only thing I disliked is I could only find the revised, single volume edition and not the old one that was three whole books.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2016 02:30
|
|
|
Octy posted:I finished reading Richard Fidler's Ghost Empire on Byzantium and now I have a hankering for more of the same. Google points me to John Julius Norwich's history of the Byzantine Empire, but I thought it best to come here for recommendations as well. Norwichs is very good
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2016 02:31
|
|
|
go to the medieval thread and ask rodrigo diaz, or PM him
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2016 02:33
|
|
|
Some people don't like Norwich but I think he's worth it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2016 03:45
|
|
|
I thought I would leave this link here for your enjoyment: http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/bristo...tail/story.html quote:Their extraordinary spat – which ended amicably but with Mr Banks being mercilessly mocked – began on Twitter when the UKIP donor agreed with an assessment from someone else that the Roman Empire had fallen because Rome had 'mishandled a migration crisis', which he compared with the EU mishandling the refugee crisis caused by the wars in Syria and east Africa. I don't know what the thread consensus on the downfall of the Western Empire is, and whether or not the migration of the Visigoths played a substantial part in it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2016 21:10
|
|
|
Yes, the migrations were a pretty big factor in the fall of the West. What's notable about the situation with the Goths and other Germanic groups that moved in later is, however, that Rome's uncharacteristically xenophobic response to them was the actual huge mistake - it prompted them to remain together as a roaming nation within a state instead of spreading to the four corners of the Empire as citizens. So yeah it's pretty funny for a fascist to use this bit of history as an argument piece.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2016 22:07
|
|
|
Jazerus posted:Yes, the migrations were a pretty big factor in the fall of the West. What's notable about the situation with the Goths and other Germanic groups that moved in later is, however, that Rome's uncharacteristically xenophobic response to them was the actual huge mistake - it prompted them to remain together as a roaming nation within a state instead of spreading to the four corners of the Empire as citizens. Rome had been pulling this poo poo basically since day one and was getting into revolts and wars with ally/client/vassal states over how frequently they were straight up assholes about everything. Oh you volunteered for service and fought to conquer this new province? Here's your land as promised, bit of an outlying areas, well more of a frontier plot as it were, well actually we haven't even really told the farmers that their land is your land now, but yep you're definitely Roman now all the way from your pants to your mustache which nobody in the interior will ever mistake as being anything other than Roman. BYEEEE!
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2016 23:19
|
|
|
FightingMongoose posted:I thought I would leave this link here for your enjoyment: It would be analogous if the EU allowed refugees into their country and then let them hang out together, but also starved them for a while and then offered to trade food for their children to use as slaves. And then after the inevitable revolt, they also decided to attack the enemy without waiting for reinforcements because you didn't want to share the glory with your co-emperor. Basically, how not to handle a refugee crisis.txt.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2016 23:51
|
|
|
Mr respected scholar man Niall Ferguson argued the migration issue in his newspaper column a few months ago. He focused on the fall of Rome (the city) and failed to mention that it wasn't the capital, that it wasn't butchered and burned to the ground as per the public consciousness, or that the Goths spent months in ransom negotiations. Or the part where many of the invading Goths were serving Rome until the western emperor had their families executed. It was shameful and basically played on public ignorance to make a questionable analogy to modern politics. Strategic Tea fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Dec 23, 2016 |
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2016 00:06
|
|
|
feedmegin posted:I'm not sure the tiny remnants of the dual in Koine Greek were that much of an issue in translation to be fair. Homer is a special case. I remember Plato using the dual but don't remember the context.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2016 00:14
|
|
|
Strategic Tea posted:Niall Ferguson argued Sounds about right.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2016 01:09
|
|
|
It sounds like Rome's collapse upon the induction of the Goth's is very similar to the problems Britain and America currently have: too many white people. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2016 01:12
|
|
|
Strategic Tea posted:It was shameful and basically played on public ignorance to make a questionable analogy to modern politics. NiallFerguson'sentirecareer.txt
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2016 01:13
|
|
|
FightingMongoose posted:I thought I would leave this link here for your enjoyment: "As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood." -some guy, I guess
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2016 01:49
|
|
|
fantastic in plastic posted:"As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood." -some guy, I guess Poor Enoch Powell. Should have stuck to teaching classics at my alma mater. But yes, I've only managed to find Norwich's single volume history which might be the way to go for now. Try it before I commit to a trilogy and all that.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2016 02:20
|
|
|
I love that argument since it's literally exactly the opposite of what they're trying to say, so you know they're idiots. If the Romans had not been xenophobic assholes and incorporated the Germanic peoples as they had hundreds of other cultures previously there probably would not have been an issue.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2016 02:27
|
|
|
It's amazing that the Gothic internment camps map directly onto modern refugee problems. It's also amazing that historian Niall Furgesson would side with Emperor Valentinian when even Roman historians criticized the government's handling of the refugee crisis.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2016 04:13
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 11, 2024 22:04 |
|
|
Comparison between the Greuthungi/Tervingi incursion over the Danube and modern European refugee crisis is absolutely colossally misplaced, whether the political point you're trying to make is "migrants are filthy subhuman scum, shut your ears to their piteous cries" or "truly Rome would still exist today if only they had realized the inestimable value of multicultural peace love and understanding" or whatever other dumb poo poo. There are desperate people trying to cross borders and that's where the resemblance terminates. You might as well say Trump is comparable to Julius Caesar because they're both self-obsessed rich debtors with a nice head of hair.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2016 06:12
|
|