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Doctor Malaver posted:- One of the reasons for that was that they destroyed his sarcophagus and replaced it with Saint Domnius' bones so they needed an excuse for that.
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Mar 11, 2017 09:44
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The bones were moved a few hundred years after his death and who knows whose bones they were.
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Mar 11, 2017 11:41
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Terrible Opinions posted:How can both of these things be true. Whose bones are in there then? Start counting how many finger bones of St. Whoever are STILL in assorted reliquaries in museums and churches (ignoring all the ones that were lost or destroyed before now). You'll quickly come to the conclusion that holy men were easily identifiable by their dozen or so fingers on each hand.
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Mar 11, 2017 17:26
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Doctor Malaver posted:The bones were moved a few hundred years after his death and who knows whose bones they were.
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Mar 11, 2017 18:17
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Cyrano4747 posted:Start counting how many finger bones of St. Whoever are STILL in assorted reliquaries in museums and churches (ignoring all the ones that were lost or destroyed before now). You'll quickly come to the conclusion that holy men were easily identifiable by their dozen or so fingers on each hand. In the same vein, aren't there enough pieces of the True Cross to make a fairly large sailboat?
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Mar 11, 2017 18:25
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The best part about being a Roman veteran and getting your free land was that you could say no to farming for the rest of your life, immediately sell that land and go live in Rome off the proceeds, a plan which would have no negative consequences for either you or the Roman state ever.
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Mar 11, 2017 23:07
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Tasteful Dickpic posted:In the same vein, aren't there enough pieces of the True Cross to make a fairly large sailboat? That was something John Calvin said and it got into pop history for whatever reason. There actually weren't that many pieces of the "true cross" floating around in the medieval relic trade. St. Nicholas does have like six arms though; it was explained that holy relics could replicate themselves so that's how that happened. Fraud in the relic trade was, uh, kind of a problem.
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Mar 11, 2017 23:35
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Weren't there people who had body parts of Saints from different ages? Like "Here we have St Francis' arm from when he was a boy of 11, and here we have the same arm from when he was an adult."?
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Mar 12, 2017 02:23
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Jerusalem posted:Weren't there people who had body parts of Saints from different ages? Like "Here we have St Francis' arm from when he was a boy of 11, and here we have the same arm from when he was an adult."? Dude led a hard life.
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Mar 12, 2017 02:25
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Jerusalem posted:Weren't there people who had body parts of Saints from different ages? Like "Here we have St Francis' arm from when he was a boy of 11, and here we have the same arm from when he was an adult."? It makes a bit more sense when people didn't travel much. Like if you're backpacking through Europe you'll see all that stuff, but if you live and die within 20 miles of your hometown it doesn't become an issue.
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Mar 12, 2017 02:32
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There is also a fairly common occurrence for places to have relics of lesser known saints and pretend they're from more famous ones. Like we have a finger bone of Saint Matthew and they have all sorts of iconography of the apostle Matthew but the relic is actually of some guy names Matthew who lived in England in the 1200s.
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Mar 12, 2017 02:43
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Jerusalem posted:Weren't there people who had body parts of Saints from different ages? Like "Here we have St Francis' arm from when he was a boy of 11, and here we have the same arm from when he was an adult."? Proof of lizard people 
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Mar 12, 2017 04:20
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sullat posted:It makes a bit more sense when people didn't travel much. Like if you're backpacking through Europe you'll see all that stuff, but if you live and die within 20 miles of your hometown it doesn't become an issue. Except the whole point is to attract pilgrims from farther away than the nearest pigsty who will hopefully give to the church so competition for the best relics was fierce. Real funny stuff was done in this period
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Mar 12, 2017 10:59
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Eternal Darkness taught me that if you go on a pilgrimage to see a relic it'll turn out to be a trap to satisfy the flesh-hunger of a huge evil monster.
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Mar 12, 2017 11:23
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sullat posted:It makes a bit more sense when people didn't travel much. Like if you're backpacking through Europe you'll see all that stuff, but if you live and die within 20 miles of your hometown it doesn't become an issue. People did go backpacking through Europe to see this stuff. My favourite anecdote is about a village in the Alps that hired a guy to stand at a crossroads and persuade travellers to stay in this village, not the other one nearby. Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:The best part about being a Roman veteran and getting your free land was that you could say no to farming for the rest of your life, immediately sell that land and go live in Rome off the proceeds, a plan which would have no negative consequences for either you or the Roman state ever. What were the negative consequences it didn't have for you?
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Mar 12, 2017 11:50
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Safety Biscuits posted:What were the negative consequences it didn't have for you? It removed a heritable source of income from you to become a fraction of a percentage of some senator's latifundium. Maybe you'd have enough money to get on in Rome for a while, but would your kids? How about their kids? How about the kids of the other ten thousand legionaries who said the same thing you did? Give it a couple generations and that's a lot of kids. How are they all going to eat? The senators who bought your farm and thousands like it control all the grain supplies after all, they can charge whatever they want. Don't you think it would be better if the state just used some of the grain it collected as tax to sell to these unfortunate Romans at subsidized prices? Re-elect me, Gaius Gracchus, to the office of plebeian tribune, and I will do whatever is in my power to achieve this goal and obstruct those senators who want to take the very bread out of your mouths! The collapse of small farming made the relatively poor poorer, their descendants poorer still, and the rich (and their descendants) richer. It led to a bloating of the population of Rome with the unemployed, who still had to be fed, a massive problem for an ancient state to cope with. It also put senators in an antagonistic position to the masses, making populism seem like a good way to gain power for those who didn't love senatorial elites. It turned government against the people and individual members of government against one another in a vicious cycle of ambition, reaction, and political violence that culminated in decades of brutal civil wars that all but extirpated the old Roman nobility and god knows how many other people.
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Mar 12, 2017 14:36
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skasion posted:It removed a heritable source of income from you to become a fraction of a percentage of some senator's latifundium. Maybe you'd have enough money to get on in Rome for a while, but would your kids? How about their kids? How about the kids of the other ten thousand legionaries who said the same thing you did? Give it a couple generations and that's a lot of kids. How are they all going to eat? The senators who bought your farm and thousands like it control all the grain supplies after all, they can charge whatever they want. Don't you think it would be better if the state just used some of the grain it collected as tax to sell to these unfortunate Romans at subsidized prices? Re-elect me, Gaius Gracchus, to the office of plebeian tribune, and I will do whatever is in my power to achieve this goal and obstruct those senators who want to take the very bread out of your mouths! Yes, lol, it was the fault of the poor that the rich slave-estates grew so powerful and antagonistic to the needs of the populace. Thing about farming is that having some land isn't enough, you have to have some cash as well. Cash for seeds & equipment, cash to survive during the off-seasons. And where are you going to get it? Well, the local noble is offering favorable rates. And he's the one that buys most of the harvest anyway, so he sets the prices. Harvest was bad this year, can you front me some more cash? I see he just bought 1000 slaves, wonder what's that about. Oh, you're calling in the mortgage? I can't pay it and I don't want to be enslaved for debt, well, the only asset I have is this land...
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Mar 12, 2017 15:39
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It also may have been a bit much to expect the soldiers who had spent a lifetime in the Legion to want the life of a farmer and easily pick up the skills involved. Farming's hard work, and that land that you got granted is probably way away from the large groups of people that they had been accustomed to. Reminds me of professional athletes that burn all their savings after retirement partying.
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Mar 12, 2017 16:38
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skasion posted:It removed a heritable source of income from you to become a fraction of a percentage of some senator's latifundium. Maybe you'd have enough money to get on in Rome for a while, but would your kids? How about their kids? How about the kids of the other ten thousand legionaries who said the same thing you did? Give it a couple generations and that's a lot of kids. How are they all going to eat? The senators who bought your farm and thousands like it control all the grain supplies after all, they can charge whatever they want. Don't you think it would be better if the state just used some of the grain it collected as tax to sell to these unfortunate Romans at subsidized prices? Re-elect me, Gaius Gracchus, to the office of plebeian tribune, and I will do whatever is in my power to achieve this goal and obstruct those senators who want to take the very bread out of your mouths! This is very well-written.
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Mar 12, 2017 17:17
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skasion posted:It removed a heritable source of income from you to become a fraction of a percentage of some senator's latifundium. Maybe you'd have enough money to get on in Rome for a while, but would your kids? How about their kids? How about the kids of the other ten thousand legionaries who said the same thing you did? Give it a couple generations and that's a lot of kids. uh how were all those descendants going to live off your one-family-sized land plot anyway
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Mar 12, 2017 17:26
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sullat posted:Yes, lol, it was the fault of the poor that the rich slave-estates grew so powerful and antagonistic to the needs of the populace. Thing about farming is that having some land isn't enough, you have to have some cash as well. Cash for seeds & equipment, cash to survive during the off-seasons. And where are you going to get it? Well, the local noble is offering favorable rates. And he's the one that buys most of the harvest anyway, so he sets the prices. Harvest was bad this year, can you front me some more cash? I see he just bought 1000 slaves, wonder what's that about. Oh, you're calling in the mortgage? I can't pay it and I don't want to be enslaved for debt, well, the only asset I have is this land... This is very true, of course. Discharged soldiers didn't sell out because they were dumb and bad, but because major landowners incentivized it very strongly (and the government often turned blind eye to this because 1) it was made up of the major landowners and 2) "Big Agriculture" in the form of massive slave farming operations was more productive than a couple thousand little farms run by randoms). The whole system of land grants was atrociously broken and that's why so many Roman leaders attempted to fix it (invariably to suit themselves best) with so little success. Jeb Bush 2012 posted:uh how were all those descendants going to live off your one-family-sized land plot anyway Why, by joining the legions, doing their
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Mar 12, 2017 18:25
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Couldn't they learn trades or become soldiers themselves? Why are the only two options farming vs starvation?
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Mar 12, 2017 18:28
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Doctor Malaver posted:Couldn't they learn trades or become soldiers themselves? Why are the only two options farming vs starvation? When a large portion of how soldiers expect to be paid is grants of land when their service is up, all becoming soldiers is a problem. As far as learning trades, there doesn't seem to have been all that much demand for that out in the provinces, and it's a crowded market inside Rome proper and the various cities. Hell you kinda have the same dynamic in rural areas of the modern world, cities and suburbs are just big enough with enough jobs to absorb people now rather than collapsing. Small family farms have been going out of style in America for nearly a century now, as it's a hard life to do it and make enough to get by.
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Mar 12, 2017 20:31
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I hear being a brigand is a growing market. Turns out so is being a body guard.
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Mar 12, 2017 20:47
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skasion posted:2) "Big Agriculture" in the form of massive slave farming operations was more productive than a couple thousand little farms run by randoms) I'm just regurgitating the argument from this, but as I understand it the big farms didn't so much produce more as require fewer workers (because slaves could be made to work longer hours and produced a substantial surplus, whereas landed peasant farmers tended to own as much land as they needed for subsistence, which meant more farmers on the same area of land)
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Mar 12, 2017 20:52
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not strictly on topic, but I saw this on cracked tonight: 
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Mar 13, 2017 00:23
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I give it two weeks until that is unironically cited by turkish media as evidence of a new gulenist plot against the government
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Mar 13, 2017 00:34
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lol I was gonna say Gulenist spotted but too late 
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Mar 13, 2017 00:47
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:I give it two weeks until that is unironically cited by turkish media as evidence of a new gulenist plot against the government pity the fool who cites cracked as evidence, there's a water mark and everything
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Mar 13, 2017 00:49
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Tias posted:pity the fool who cites cracked as evidence, there's a water mark and everything Clearly cover to broadcast information to a disperse group of deep agents
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Mar 13, 2017 01:14
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Restore its rightful place as "The City", a name Istanbul is derived from.
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Mar 13, 2017 13:24
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A longer capital for Rome than that marsh by the Tiber. Better seafood, too.
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Mar 13, 2017 13:25
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:I'm just regurgitating the argument from this, but as I understand it the big farms didn't so much produce more as require fewer workers (because slaves could be made to work longer hours and produced a substantial surplus, whereas landed peasant farmers tended to own as much land as they needed for subsistence, which meant more farmers on the same area of land) That means exactly the same thing, though. Fewer workers through economies of scale means fewer mouths to feed means more surplus to sell.
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Mar 13, 2017 17:13
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feedmegin posted:That means exactly the same thing, though. Fewer workers through economies of scale means fewer mouths to feed means more surplus to sell. Well no, there's a big difference between getting more crops from a given piece of land and getting the same amount of crops but using fewer workers to do it. For one thing, the first implies a bigger population overall, whereas the second implies keeping the population about the same but shifting it from agriculture to something else
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Mar 13, 2017 17:17
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Ynglaur posted:The century fluctuated between 80 and 120 men, differing over time and by troop type, iirc That's still better than the Strategikon of late antiquity. That author specifically recommends making every unit a slightly different size to screw with enemy scouts.
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Mar 13, 2017 20:50
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golden bubble posted:That's still better than the Strategikon of late antiquity. That author specifically recommends making every unit a slightly different size to screw with enemy scouts. Speaking of, is it at all true that the reason why the first line was called hastati and the second line principes in (pre-Marian) Roman armies was in order to confuse the enemy? I've heard that somewhere but it sounds like a stretch.
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Mar 13, 2017 21:33
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Doubtful. Hastati just means spearmen, princips in context is probably 'first reserve'. Besides, anyone who knows that there were multiple divisions of Roman soldiery has probably seen them fight, and would know anyway. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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Mar 13, 2017 22:39
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Yeah, it doesn't really makes sense. I think it was also argued that hastati being called that whilst wielding the gladius would cause additional confusion, but then it's more likely they did use hastae in the beginning and the name stuck. If only I remember where I have this from, drat. I was under the impression that it's a fairly common myth. Grevling fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Mar 14, 2017 |
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Mar 14, 2017 17:05
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Grevling posted:Yeah, it doesn't really makes sense. I think it was also argued that hastati being called that whilst wielding the gladius would cause additional confusion, but then it's more likely they did use hastae in the beginning and the name stuck. Well, the Romans did use hoplites before the wars with the Samnites, and only switched to the scutum and gladius after getting their poo poo wrecked by them. I was always under the impression the word Hastati simply was carried over, same way the world cavalry is still sometimes used for mechanized/armor units.
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Mar 14, 2017 19:47
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packetmantis posted:Eternal Darkness taught me that if you go on a pilgrimage to see a relic it'll turn out to be a trap to satisfy the flesh-hunger of a huge evil monster. Happened to me in Czestochowa Monastery, Poland. I just wanted to see the pretty picture   
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