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Wouldn't laws tend to indicate the reverse, because there's no point in making something illegal if nobody is doing it?
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Jun 5, 2017 21:48
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cheetah7071 posted:Wouldn't laws tend to indicate the reverse, because there's no point in making something illegal if nobody is doing it? There is (allegedly) a law in Atlanta which states you are not allowed to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole. I wonder what future people would think about that one.
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Jun 5, 2017 21:55
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Dalael posted:There is (allegedly) a law in Atlanta which states you are not allowed to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole. That one seems to be apocryphal. I don't see anything in either the Atlanta ordinances or Georgia code that even mentions giraffes specifically.
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Jun 5, 2017 22:12
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Maybe you didn't check the Atlantean Ordinances?
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Jun 5, 2017 22:14
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Dalael posted:There is (allegedly) a law in Atlanta which states you are not allowed to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole. "what was a giraffe?"
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Jun 5, 2017 22:22
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ulmont posted:That one seems to be apocryphal. I don't see anything in either the Atlanta ordinances or Georgia code that even mentions giraffes specifically. I always suspected its not true, but have never verified myself. There's a bunch of site with dumb laws and i think thats where i originally read it. Ainsley McTree posted:"what was a giraffe?" Probably yeah. BravestOfTheLamps posted:Maybe you didn't check the Atlantean Ordinances? 
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Jun 5, 2017 22:24
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Ainsley McTree posted:"what was a giraffe?" some kind of cross between a camel and a leopard
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Jun 5, 2017 22:30
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Arglebargle III posted:some kind of cross between a camel and a leopard That's literally what the Greeks call giraffes: kamelopardali.
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Jun 5, 2017 22:39
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Arglebargle III posted:some kind of cross between a camel and a leopard "yeah but what were those?"
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Jun 5, 2017 22:46
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ulmont posted:That one seems to be apocryphal. I don't see anything in either the Atlanta ordinances or Georgia code that even mentions giraffes specifically.
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Jun 5, 2017 22:46
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This is why A Crime A Day is the best source for stupid laws: they cite everything.
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Jun 6, 2017 00:11
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echopapa posted:This is why A Crime A Day is the best source for stupid laws: they cite everything. Google most of the laws and they point to really mundane poo poo. There's one that says it's a crime to take a hunting spear into CIA headquarters but all it does is point to it being illegal to take a weapon into secure government facilities and then another law which lists a poo poo ton of stuff to create a legal definition of "weapon." Those aren't stupid laws so much as they are creatively crafting scenarios that violate mundane laws.
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Jun 6, 2017 00:18
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Grevling posted:That's literally what the Greeks call giraffes: kamelopardali. 
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Jun 6, 2017 01:32
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cheetah7071 posted:Wouldn't laws tend to indicate the reverse, because there's no point in making something illegal if nobody is doing it? No one is trying to implement Sharia law in the US.
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Jun 6, 2017 01:36
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Chichevache posted:No one is trying to implement Sharia law in the US. 
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Jun 6, 2017 08:56
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cheetah7071 posted:Wouldn't laws tend to indicate the reverse, because there's no point in making something illegal if nobody is doing it? Sometimes laws persist for much too long, like how Iceland has one that you could kill Turkish people scot free, that was abolished in the 1970s. Given that Iceland had a problem with their entire population being pillaged and kidnapped as slaves by the Ottoman Empire when the law was written, it made sense at the time, but then it just stuck around because no one noticed or cared. Who's to say our society can't collapse with horribly obsolete laws like inheritance deregulation or workplace discrimination on the books? We are talking about the historical perspective, after all.
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Jun 6, 2017 12:06
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Were Romans specific for how frequently they changed rulers due to assassination, civil war, etc? I don't remember so many such stories from Persians or Egyptians or Greeks. I suppose Greek city states were too small to have many internal competitors and Egypt worshiped their pharaohs more than Romans their emperors?
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Jun 7, 2017 09:43
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I think Romans are exceptional. The sheer number of assassinations, revolts, and coups was probably due to that the Empire never really solidified itself as a monarchical, dynastic state. It had likely more in common with modern dictatorships than its contemporary dynastic powers - rulership ultimately relied on a professional military outside the control of civil society. You could even argue that Rome's imperial dynasties were essentially political dynasties.
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Jun 7, 2017 09:57
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Egypt is a huge outlier in how (relatively) stable its government was. The Romans really only went through emperors like crazy in the Crisis of the Third Century, but you can make a good argument that the empire collapsed in the 200s and was rebuilt at the end of the century, so that also was an outlier. It is funny going through the list of emperors and trying to find ones that died of natural causes. Civil war and assassination and political chaos is more normal than stability, in general. In nearly all premodern societies you see a ton of political violence, and even in modern ones there are plenty of places like Thailand that have a coup every few years. I don't think the Romans were particularly unusual, but it can seem that way since most of us have grown up in western societies and have had remarkably little of it in living memory. Greeks had plenty of political issues in the individual cities. Sparta was fairly stable. The Athenian method of exiling possible troublemakers worked other than the times when the exiles would try to come back and become tyrants. With Persia the problem is the records are so spotty, and virtually everything we have was written by Greeks or Romans so you have to assume all of it is suspect. The alternate argument is the Romans had an exceptionally competitive system, with all the elites raised to be at each other's throats in the belief that the best would rise to the top, and once the taboos and societal norms broke down to permit open political violence the place went nuts. Roman civil wars also had a different character from many other places, as the army would raise commanders to be imperial challengers and then attack other legions. Imagine American generals being proclaimed president and the US armed forces fighting each other. Other civil wars tended to be rebellions that had to raise forces and fight an asymmetric war. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Jun 7, 2017 |
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Jun 7, 2017 10:03
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The Romans did have an unusual number of coups/civil wars where the new emperor was just some dude with an army, rather than the nephew/uncle/cousin/third cousin twice removed of the current emperor. This stands in stark contrast to places like France and England where every new king claimed dynastic legitimacy from 987 in France (until Napoleon) and 1066 in England (right up to the present day). My understanding is that to some extent, being the better general with the larger army was legitimacy to the Romans, so they didn't need to try to derive legitimacy from any other sources.
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Jun 7, 2017 10:18
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My opinion on stable vs unstable. There are assassinations in the "stable" periods but the state isn't in serious trouble. 27 BC -> 68 AD, stable. 68 -> 69, chaos. 69 -> 180, stable. 180 -> 193, chaos. 193 -> 235, stable. 235 -> 285, bugfuck nuts. 285 -> 456, stable. 456 -> 476, chaos in west. Now for emperors up to 476 who died of natural causes! I'm going to count the disputed ones as natural. Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, Vespasian, Titus, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus, Septimius Severus, Hostilian, Claudius Gothicus, Tacitus, Diocletian, Constantius I, Galerius, Constantine, Constantius II, Vetranio, Jovian, Valentinian I, Theodosius I, Arcadius, Honorius, Theodosius II, Constantius III (apparently if you want to survive, be named Constantius), Marcian, Olybrius, Glycerius.
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Jun 7, 2017 10:22
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Romulus Augustulus probably died of natural causes in his retirementGrand Fromage posted:285 -> 456, stable. Good breakdown over all but this makes no sense to me. Surely the collapse of the tetrarchy and accession of Constantine to sole power does not constitute stability. The guy was simply a usurper acclaimed by the army for his familiarity with them, who rebelled against Galerius, the most legitimate ruler that existed at the time, had to fight two years of civil war to take Rome from Maxentius, and then fought two more civil wars against the eastern empire under Licinius to consolidate the whole shebang under his rule. If this constitutes stability, I'd hate to see what instability looks like. Even then this is ignoring the civil wars between his sons, Constantius' war against Magnentius (possibly one of the bloodiest battles in any Roman civil war), the Gothic War (six to ten years during which the Balkan provinces were a war zone), Theodosius' civil wars against Magnus Maximus and Eugenius (another really big battle in the latter which damaged the military force of the west to an extent never made good), Stilicho's wars with Alaric and Radagaisus, the revolt of Britain and Spain under Constantine III, Alaric's sack of Rome, more revolts in Gaul and Africa, civil wars between Felix, Boniface and Aetius, Genseric's conquest of Africa (i.e. the actual death blow to the western empire), the invasions of Attila, and Genseric's sack of Rome (though I guess this could fall as the endpoint of your period). I'd say that all of these constitute situations in which the state was in extremely serious trouble. Each constituted either a threat that the acting government would be toppled and replaced, or the actual loss of the government's ability to exert civil and military control over its territory. The fact that this kind of poo poo was de rigueur under the dominate doesn't mean that the dominate was stable, it means that it loving sucked rear end as a type of government.
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Jun 7, 2017 12:58
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Yeah I literally just listened to the Fall of Rome podcast on that period after posting and I'm totally wrong, showing my ignorance of the period there. He makes the case that the reign of Theodoric sets up everything that goes wrong later. I'd revise to like 400-410ish. It's a real good podcast everybody should listen. He is making a convincing case that the western empire went from declining but still fundamentally sound to wrecked beyond hope of repair in one (long) lifetime in the 400s.
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Jun 7, 2017 13:15
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cheetah7071 posted:The Romans did have an unusual number of coups/civil wars where the new emperor was just some dude with an army, rather than the nephew/uncle/cousin/third cousin twice removed of the current emperor. This stands in stark contrast to places like France and England where every new king claimed dynastic legitimacy from 987 in France (until Napoleon) and 1066 in England (right up to the present day). My understanding is that to some extent, being the better general with the larger army was legitimacy to the Romans, so they didn't need to try to derive legitimacy from any other sources. Well, also, emperors were very specifically not kings. The Romans were v clear on that. Therefore there's not even the theoretical idea that it's an inherited office passed down to one's oldest natural-born son or whatever. (Goes further back than 1066, btw; William didn't just waltz in and grab England with a naked 'try and stop me punks', he did claim he was legitimately the heir to the throne)
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Jun 7, 2017 13:32
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Grand Fromage posted:Imagine American generals being proclaimed president Also, this one did actually happen once!
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Jun 7, 2017 13:33
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feedmegin posted:Also, this one did actually happen once! Who? Unless this is a clever joke about the elected generals. William Walker?
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Jun 7, 2017 13:41
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Washington wasn't really elected in what we think of elections.
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Jun 7, 2017 13:42
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Gibbon makes an amusing snide remark at some point about how usurpers being acclaimed by their troops was a more democratic process than the elections of the Roman republic. It's important to remember when talking about this thing that up until Diocletian really there was no firm single office of emperor. The word imperator isn't any legally defined single office, it just means "victorious general", and that's ultimately what the office and the role meant: the guy with the biggest army who killed the other competitors. As the Julio-Claudian line burnt out and the senate took a slightly bigger role in governance in the first and second centuries, a dynastic principle occasionally asserted itself, and even into the third century this was still taking place: although realistically no one could challenge Septimius Severus for military might and control over the state, he claimed descent from the Antonines to the point of rehabilitating the memory of Commodus. Diocletian attempted to kind of formalize this by creating a pipeline of military and bureaucratic leaders who could control the state, but his system was a total failure that began to collapse as soon as he stepped down from it and was given the heave-ho as soon as another equally dominant military leader arose. Constantine was quick to ground his authority by claiming his own descent from Claudius Gothicus. From then on it's all dynasts, being intermittently toppled by enterprising military leaders who then become new dynasts -- which is pretty much the model for all of subroman Europe up to the French Revolution.
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Jun 7, 2017 14:25
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That was the other thing that made Roman political succession so violent. There was never an actual, legal system of power transfer until Diocletian's attempt with the tetrarchy because of the intense need to pretend they weren't a monarch. It was all ad hoc, and a challenger could very well say that he had every right to be the emperor unless the current one wants to declare himself a monarch and his son his heir. They maintained the republican fiction a very long time.
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Jun 7, 2017 15:40
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Don't forget that the 3rd century conflict was also fueled by conflict between the Senate and the Army.
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Jun 7, 2017 16:14
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The third century was fueled by everything. It's a loving miracle the empire managed another thousand years after that. The 300s had competent emperors. One of the big issues in the 400s was just that everyone on the throne was worthless.
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Jun 7, 2017 16:16
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euphronius posted:Washington wasn't really elected in what we think of elections. Yeah, I was going for Washington.
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Jun 7, 2017 16:19
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Welp that's me looking stupid. I just found out that in Greek ostriches are called strouthokamelos, "sparrow camel". The Ancient Greeks had a weird obessions with naming unusual animals X+camel. Grevling fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Jun 7, 2017 |
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Jun 7, 2017 16:49
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Grand Fromage posted:One of the big issues in the 400s was just that everyone on the throne was worthless.
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Jun 7, 2017 17:19
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Grand Fromage posted:That was the other thing that made Roman political succession so violent. There was never an actual, legal system of power transfer until Diocletian's attempt with the tetrarchy because of the intense need to pretend they weren't a monarch. It was all ad hoc, and a challenger could very well say that he had every right to be the emperor unless the current one wants to declare himself a monarch and his son his heir. They maintained the republican fiction a very long time. Didn't the senate proclaim one.
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Jun 7, 2017 17:22
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Well I guess it gets messy because imperator was indeed a military title but the actual legal power of emperor was titles and power nominally granted by the senate.
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Jun 7, 2017 17:24
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Grevling posted:Welp that's me looking stupid. it's a sad testimony to the shortage of examples of long-necked animals known to the ancient greeks
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Jun 7, 2017 17:28
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Ofaloaf posted:A competent emperor would've just gotten in the way of Ricimer! Majorian was the best.
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Jun 7, 2017 18:09
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euphronius posted:Didn't the senate proclaim one. Notionally under the principate they proclaimed all emperors. But in practice they had no power to resist the nomination of whoever the sitting emperor drat well pleased. This meant the only circumstance in which senatorial approval actually mattered was when an emperor died without a recognized successor -- and in such circumstances the advantage lay not with them but with the provincial generals. Among the emperors the senate (rather than the army) made were Nerva, who was rapidly compelled to adopt Trajan since he had the army's backing; Maximus and Balbinus, who could not get along with each other and were murdered by the praetorian guards within three months; Gordian III, who successfully won the loyalty of the army and promptly died in an unsuccessful Persian war; and Petronius Maximus, who unsuccessfully begged the Visigoths for help against Genseric, ran away bare assed when Genseric proceeded to take Rome, and was stoned to death by his fellow refugees.
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Jun 7, 2017 18:30
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Even in the byzantine period the only legal means for succession was for the current emperor to name his heir co-emperor, which meant that there was literally nobody to turn to if the emperor didn't name an heir. This arrangement resulted in civil wars 100% of the time when there wasn't an obvious emperor, but to be fair even in kingdoms with dynastic rules encoded in law you still got civil wars plenty when their were multiple plausible heirs
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Jun 7, 2017 18:42
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