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I'd like to see a timeline when Romans came up with explosives early.
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Jan 1, 2017 22:45
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skasion posted:But every Calends was a holiday and sacred to something or other, and Romans had rather a lot of holidays. It seems to be a pretty common thing that our societies (particularly in North America) have way fewer holidays than most places have in the past. What I'm saying is I want more holidays.
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Jan 1, 2017 22:51
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:It seems to be a pretty common thing that our societies (particularly in North America) have way fewer holidays than most places have in the past. What I'm saying is I want more holidays. I blame capitalism.
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Jan 1, 2017 23:08
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PittTheElder posted:It seems to be a pretty common thing that our societies (particularly in North America) have way fewer holidays than most places have in the past. What I'm saying is I want more holidays. Bear in mind that Romans didn't have weekends off. They didn't have weeks or weekends at all, for that matter. Some professions seem to have taken every eighth day off, following the market-day cycle, but I seriously doubt that it was legally required to give your workers any time off at all except on ferial days.
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Jan 1, 2017 23:23
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I would assume the Romans also didn't have vacations in the same way we do nowadays. Well, not unless you were rich, anyway.
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Jan 1, 2017 23:59
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JaucheCharly posted:I'd like to see a timeline when Romans came up with explosives early. Gunnius Powderius: So you see, this invention will make our armies obsolete! Vespasian: Well I don't want a bunch of soldiers loitering around unemployed, throw your invention into the ocean!
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Jan 2, 2017 00:12
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Samuel Clemens posted:I would assume the Romans also didn't have vacations in the same way we do nowadays. Well, not unless you were rich, anyway. There definitely was a concept of tourism and taking time away from the city, it wasn't considered particularly unusual for Romans to visit Egypt or Greece for pleasure, or a "grand tour" type thing where you'd see the sights of the ancient world, or study in the academies of the Hellenic world. And it was known that the city of Rome wasn't necessarily a great place to be if you weren't in good health, so you have people moving out to their estate in the countryside for a while and so on. Obviously both things limited to those who could afford it but poo poo, it's not like poor people can afford to take overseas vacations today either.
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Jan 2, 2017 00:21
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I was using 'vacation' more in the sense of 'paid time off that isn't related to a specific holiday'. Although tourism in antiquity sounds like a fascinating subject. Did the Romans have anything similar to modern luxury cruises?
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Jan 2, 2017 02:39
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Samuel Clemens posted:I was using 'vacation' more in the sense of 'paid time off that isn't related to a specific holiday'. Although tourism in antiquity sounds like a fascinating subject. Did the Romans have anything similar to modern luxury cruises? Lionel Casson's book "Travel in the Ancient World" is the only good book I can recall that covers ancient "tourism." I don't think anybody got on a non-barge ship for fun, though, since sea travel was so risky. Travel in general was pretty risky, but sea travel especially so.
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Jan 2, 2017 02:46
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Samuel Clemens posted:I was using 'vacation' more in the sense of 'paid time off that isn't related to a specific holiday'. Although tourism in antiquity sounds like a fascinating subject. Did the Romans have anything similar to modern luxury cruises? You really didn't want to get on an ancient ship if you didn't have a good reason. The closest thing I can think of would be the pleasure barges, a giant boat with slaves and concubines for chilling out on, but that's basically just a floating dining room that would hang out on a lake or a river. Maybe anchored right offshore but you weren't crossing the Mediterranean unless you were going somewhere. Land travel within the empire seems to have been pretty safe. We have a lot of ancient souvenirs though, like purpose made to sell at souvenir shops. Doing a circuit of gladiatorial games around Italy seems to have been a normal thing. Games were scheduled in such a way as you could catch them in Rome and then head down to Pompeii to see theirs. If you had money, it was pretty expected to go to Greece or Egypt to get some culture.
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Jan 2, 2017 03:00
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after sparta declined they were a tourist attraction for a while, you could go watch them train the young boys/the way they lived and ate, etc. "Like it really was back in antiquity!" the romans would say to one another
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Jan 2, 2017 03:05
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Grand Fromage posted:You really didn't want to get on an ancient ship if you didn't have a good reason. The closest thing I can think of would be the pleasure barges, a giant boat with slaves and concubines for chilling out on, but that's basically just a floating dining room that would hang out on a lake or a river. Maybe anchored right offshore but you weren't crossing the Mediterranean unless you were going somewhere. Land travel within the empire seems to have been pretty safe. Were ancient ships really that unsafe in the Mediterranean? I always thought Roman suspicion of large bodies of water was more cultural than anything else.
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Jan 2, 2017 03:06
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Elyv posted:Were ancient ships really that unsafe in the Mediterranean? I always thought Roman suspicion of large bodies of water was more cultural than anything else. You can find arguments on both sides, I don't think there's a good answer. My opinion on it is they weren't that dangerous but there's a reason why they avoided ship travel when possible. For most of history getting on a ship to travel across the sea was rolling the dice, it wasn't that weird for a ship to depart and just vanish without a trace. That said the Phoenicians didn't seem to have any problem getting on a ship for a long journey so they couldn't have been like u-boat levels of danger. Ancient ships were not generally designed for long endurance. They liked to stay within sight of the coast when possible and regularly beached the ships at night for safety. The Mediterranean isn't that big so if that's where you're sailing you don't need to engineer a ship for super long hauls. We know Romans got on ships and went as far as China so it's doable if you have a reason. That journey would've been hugging the coast though, and I would guess in stages on different ships. Red Sea -> India, India -> Malacca or Vietnam, then up to China and inland to Chang'an. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Jan 2, 2017 |
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Jan 2, 2017 03:11
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Probably kinda like how a lot of people are scared to fly nowadays. Most of the time, a vast majority of the time really, it goes perfectly smoothly. But if something goes bad it can go really bad really quickly with little way to fix it. To a certain viewpoint, nothing's going to convince you it's fine.
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Jan 2, 2017 03:49
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fishmech posted:Probably kinda like how a lot of people are scared to fly nowadays. Most of the time, a vast majority of the time really, it goes perfectly smoothly. But if something goes bad it can go really bad really quickly with little way to fix it. To a certain viewpoint, nothing's going to convince you it's fine. Probably the danger was a lot more severe. Flight is regulated as gently caress and there's a high degree of standardization and control over how planes are built, how they're manned, how they communicate, how they're supplied, how they're scheduled, how they're protected from adverse conditions and human threat, etc that vastly exceeds what was even remotely possible in the ancient world. And Romans were generally less inclined as a society to worry about a bunch of people dying every now and again than moderns are.
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Jan 2, 2017 04:32
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Elyv posted:Were ancient ships really that unsafe in the Mediterranean? I always thought Roman suspicion of large bodies of water was more cultural than anything else. Also it was specifically Roman. Greeks for eg were way more OK with it.
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Jan 2, 2017 05:48
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skasion posted:Probably the danger was a lot more severe. Flight is regulated as gently caress and there's a high degree of standardization and control over how planes are built, how they're manned, how they communicate, how they're supplied, how they're scheduled, how they're protected from adverse conditions and human threat, etc that vastly exceeds what was even remotely possible in the ancient world. And Romans were generally less inclined as a society to worry about a bunch of people dying every now and again than moderns are. Also, pirates.
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Jan 2, 2017 06:55
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homullus posted:Also, pirates. That's one problem the Romans actually did solve, probably because their political systems were a lot more geared towards getting politicians to kill people than they were towards enforcing regulations for seaworthiness or whatever.
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Jan 2, 2017 06:56
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skasion posted:There definitely was a concept of tourism and taking time away from the city, it wasn't considered particularly unusual for Romans to visit Egypt or Greece for pleasure, or a "grand tour" type thing where you'd see the sights of the ancient world, or study in the academies of the Hellenic world. And it was known that the city of Rome wasn't necessarily a great place to be if you weren't in good health, so you have people moving out to their estate in the countryside for a while and so on. Obviously both things limited to those who could afford it but poo poo, it's not like poor people can afford to take overseas vacations today either. Why was Rome "a bad place to be if you weren't in good health"? My initial thought was "varying terrain", but Rome is a flat, coastal area, right?
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Jan 2, 2017 07:04
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Noctis Horrendae posted:Why was Rome "a bad place to be if you weren't in good health"? My initial thought was "varying terrain", but Rome is a flat, coastal area, right?
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Jan 2, 2017 07:05
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skasion posted:That's one problem the Romans actually did solve, probably because their political systems were a lot more geared towards getting politicians to kill people than they were towards enforcing regulations for seaworthiness or whatever. Could you say more about how you feel the Romans solved piracy? My understanding was that it was a serious threat until the end of the Republic, at which point they more regularly took it on themselves to wipe out pirate bases. They continued to need to do this because piracy never went away.
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Jan 2, 2017 07:15
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Noctis Horrendae posted:Why was Rome "a bad place to be if you weren't in good health"? My initial thought was "varying terrain", but Rome is a flat, coastal area, right? It was filthy as gently caress.
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Jan 2, 2017 07:19
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Noctis Horrendae posted:Why was Rome "a bad place to be if you weren't in good health"? My initial thought was "varying terrain", but Rome is a flat, coastal area, right? Disease. It's a malaria area, and also even with the fairly good sanitation and sewage systems it was 1-1.5 million people jammed into just a few square miles. Also Rome is hot as gently caress in summer. The city still empties out and everything shuts down in August because it's so awful. I was there in the end of July and beginning of August and it's amazing how like just loving everybody vanishes August 1st.
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Jan 2, 2017 07:34
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homullus posted:Could you say more about how you feel the Romans solved piracy? My understanding was that it was a serious threat until the end of the Republic, at which point they more regularly took it on themselves to wipe out pirate bases. They continued to need to do this because piracy never went away. It was a serious problem for the republic, much less so under the principate. For a while Roman governors of Cilicia were tasked with getting rid of pirate bases there: Mark Antony's grandfather had fought a campaign against piracy there with some success. Mark Antony's father later got a special commission to fight piracy in Crete, but did a pretty terrible job and by the sound of things just ripped off the provincials instead of actually fighting the pirates. The provincials promptly enlisted the pirates to defend them, Antony senior's fleet was sunk and he returned to Rome in some disgrace. A couple years after that Pompey received a special commission to stamp out piracy across the Mediterranean and conducted a large naval campaign where he pretty much swept across the whole sea from west to east. He did a good deal of killing pirates but he also made an effort to spare those who surrendered and resettle them, which suggests that he at least understood the pirate problem to be connected to poverty and the lack of a livelihood. After that point we don't really hear of much piracy in the empire until Goths began to conduct raids on the Black Sea coast, and Saxons on the coasts of Britannia and northern Gaul, in the third century. It's possible that piracy continued to occur before these things, but it seems to have been much less of a problem than before Pompey's campaign. It could definitely be argued that these later barbarian pirates were a pretty similar case to the republic-era epidemic of piracy: people not economically prospering on the fringes of Roman rule, but prosperous enough to build ports, launch boats, and arm themselves just decided to take advantage of endless civil wars over Roman power to cut themselves a bigger slice of the pie. e: Noctis Horrendae posted:Why was Rome "a bad place to be if you weren't in good health"? My initial thought was "varying terrain", but Rome is a flat, coastal area, right? As others have said it's a blazing hot, mosquito ridden pesthole, and was certainly a lot worse in times when the Cloaca Maxima was what passed for modern sanitation. It's not especially flat though. City of seven hills and all that skasion fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Jan 2, 2017 |
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Jan 2, 2017 07:56
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skasion posted:Mark Antony's father later got a special commission to fight piracy in Crete, but did a pretty terrible job and by the sound of things just ripped off the provincials instead of actually fighting the pirates. The provincials promptly enlisted the pirates to defend them, Antony senior's fleet was sunk and he returned to Rome in some disgrace.  that brokedick motherfucker. I hope the folks from Crete sent a messenger back to Rome to complain about this Antonius fucker before he stumbles back in to tell the Senate how the pirates sank his loving fleet.
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Jan 2, 2017 08:11
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Elyv posted:Were ancient ships really that unsafe in the Mediterranean? I always thought Roman suspicion of large bodies of water was more cultural than anything else. Travelling by ship in late fall to winter in the Mediterranean and especially around Greece is pretty unpleasant and in antiquity a one way ticket. It's notoriously stormy. If you read Herodot or Thuky, you come across things like "X set sail in November, everybody told him it's a poo poo idea. The ships were smashed on the rocks, consequently he and his men drowned" Other than that it's business as usual. Going by ship is always scary, especially if you lose sight of the coast.
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Jan 2, 2017 08:41
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I saw some suggestions once that destroying Carthage was partly a reason for an upsurge in piracy. I don't know if that's accurate beyond it making sense for the Carthaginians to go after pirates.
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Jan 2, 2017 09:53
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FAUXTON posted:
The Romans, being the original trolls, gave that particular Antony the honorific 'Creticus,' which can mean both '(Conqueror) of Crete' or 'Man of Chalk.'
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Jan 2, 2017 17:10
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VanSandman posted:The Romans, being the original trolls, gave that particular Antony the honorific 'Creticus,' which can mean both '(Conqueror) of Crete' or 'Man of Chalk.' Nice!
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Jan 2, 2017 17:13
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VanSandman posted:The Romans, being the original trolls, gave that particular Antony the honorific 'Creticus,' which can mean both '(Conqueror) of Crete' or 'Man of Chalk.' Any link to the noun "cretin" or just sound similar?
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Jan 2, 2017 17:49
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Late 18th century mortality on transatlantic voyages was about 3.8%, or 1.5% per month of travel time. It sounds like a lot to me, but it wasn't enough to dissuade people like George Washington from sailing to Barbados for nonessential reasons, and subsequently nearly dying from smallpox. I imagine ancient peoples faced a similar level risk, and to a certain extent you just have shrug your shoulders and get on with your life.
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Jan 2, 2017 17:55
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Cretin comes from the Latin word for christian tho French.
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Jan 2, 2017 18:24
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Kassad posted:I saw some suggestions once that destroying Carthage was partly a reason for an upsurge in piracy. I don't know if that's accurate beyond it making sense for the Carthaginians to go after pirates. Or for the already nautically-inclined Carthaginians to turn to piracy once their city was destroyed.
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Jan 2, 2017 18:49
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I don't know, it seems that piracy didn't become a huge problem until ~70 years after Carthage was destroyed and the pirates' main bases were on the cost of southern Turkey. I think it might have been that the Carthaginians kept piracy in check and the Romans didn't really start doing that effectively until Pompey.
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Jan 2, 2017 19:05
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Kassad posted:I don't know, it seems that piracy didn't become a huge problem until ~70 years after Carthage was destroyed and the pirates' main bases were on the cost of southern Turkey. I think it might have been that the Carthaginians kept piracy in check and the Romans didn't really start doing that effectively until Pompey. It also helps that for many years, Romans crushed enemy kingdoms, without bothering to keep the local bureaucratic infrastructure or effectively governing the province themsellves, taxes aside. That effectecively created many impoverished communities who found that piracy was a preferable/easier way of live when the old local law enforcement vanished.
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Jan 2, 2017 20:03
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Kassad posted:I don't know, it seems that piracy didn't become a huge problem until ~70 years after Carthage was destroyed and the pirates' main bases were on the cost of southern Turkey. I think it might have been that the Carthaginians kept piracy in check and the Romans didn't really start doing that effectively until Pompey. The Cilician pirates became a problem after Carthago deleta erat, but notable pirate problems before them were Illyrian pirates, Tyrrhenian pirates, and of course the Sea Peoples.
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Jan 2, 2017 20:03
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skasion posted:Probably the danger was a lot more severe. Flight is regulated as gently caress and there's a high degree of standardization and control over how planes are built, how they're manned, how they communicate, how they're supplied, how they're scheduled, how they're protected from adverse conditions and human threat, etc that vastly exceeds what was even remotely possible in the ancient world. And Romans were generally less inclined as a society to worry about a bunch of people dying every now and again than moderns are. Yes sure, air flight isn't really that dangerous, however, we still have a lot of people who are deathly afraid of it. To the point that they flat out refuse to travel that way, or only do it when absolutely necessary. (Not to mention general aviation, as opposed to airliners, is a quite a bit more dangerous). It's easy to see how the fear of a travel method among prominent people could turn into a cultural distrust of it. Note that cultural distrust is not going to mean everybody buys in, there were an awful lot of sailors after all.
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Jan 2, 2017 20:15
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There are areas where air travel isn't as safe as your average rich country English speaking internet poster is used to. Civil aviation in Africa is a better comparison. People are just willing to take small but significant risks of it means enough convince. Sure it's a poorly maintained Brezhnev era Tupolev but it beats traveling over poorly maintained roads that may or may not be interdicted by the neighboring country's insurgency. Travel could also be lucrative as gently caress. History is full of guys who did some serious social climbing based on what we would consider fairly small scale trade. See also: caravans to Central Asia.
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Jan 2, 2017 22:40
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Even if there aren't any pirates, there's still the possibility of storms, unfavorable winds or currents, your boat turning out to be shittily made, or just straight up getting lost, like one of the most famous epic heroes from antiquity. I also read that Romans were also just culturally landlubbers in general, but wouldn't the people over in the eastern side of the empire stay just as marine as they were before the empire?
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Jan 3, 2017 06:36
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Wasn't the expectation of a work week or day entirely different? If you're a dock worker, sure you're going to be unloading and loading all day every day, but in an era before the concept of mass production, wouldn't an artisan spend a lot of time waiting around for an order to come in?
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Jan 3, 2017 11:28
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