|
Arglebargle III posted:You can't really drive any conclusions about Japanese culture prior to the 20th century, because everybody above the petty nobility was out of their minds with protein deficiency. let's never do any cultural history at all then
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 01:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 24, 2024 05:55 |
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:You can't really drive any conclusions about Japanese culture prior to the 20th century, because everybody above the petty nobility was out of their minds with protein deficiency. What this about?
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 02:04
|
|
|
You can't really drive any conclusions about Japanese culture prior to the 20th century, because there was no anime yet.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 03:56
|
|
|
Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:This was an Empire where you didn't mean poo poo unless you were born in the Magic Bedroom. I think that's just a Paradox thing. Plenty of emperors weren't "Born in the Purple". It was just a byproduct of that one Emperor who had so much trouble getting a heir that he insisted that he have the nickname "born in the purple" to shut up all the people who said he wasn't legitimate because his mom was the Emperor's fourth wife. Jack2142 posted:Nah, but the entire Macedonian "Dynasty" is pretty... interesting The final decades of the Macedonian Dynasty were pretty interesting. Constantine II mostly just wanted to drink himself to death, so John "The Orphan-Master", a eunuch, ruled the empire for Constantine II and Zoe. He was forced out by the Senate, so he got Zoe to marry his nephew, "Michael the Forger" who was like twenty years younger than Zoe. It went well enough, although he was suffering from some weird illness that made him die young. So John the Orphanmaster introduced Zoe to another nephew, "Michael the Caulker" who was like 30 years her junior. Michael started murdering people and threw Zoe and Theodora in jail, so he got murdered by a mob, who then restored Zoe and Theodora. The reason why Zoe didn't have any kids was that Constantine II kept her and her sisters locked up in the palace until he died, and they were well in their 40s. Well, Theodora wanted to be a nun, too, so she was happy enough not getting married. Zoe apparently really wanted kids.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 05:41
|
|
|
sullat posted:I think that's just a Paradox thing. Plenty of emperors weren't "Born in the Purple". It was just a byproduct of that one Emperor who had so much trouble getting a heir that he insisted that he have the nickname "born in the purple" to shut up all the people who said he wasn't legitimate because his mom was the Emperor's fourth wife. Yeah the end of the Dynasty was pretty crazy, it kinda makes you wonder what would have happened if Basil actually had his own kids, the same thing kinda happened with Augustus, he ruled solely for multiple generations that by the end pretty much the politics of the Empire revolved on a a single man, that when he died it just left a massive power vacuum with no any one person able to pick up the pieces, so things just kinda steadily fell apart until the system imploded and Alexios put things back together differently. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Mar 4, 2018 |
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 06:09
|
|
|
sullat posted:I think that's just a Paradox thing. Plenty of emperors weren't "Born in the Purple". It was just a byproduct of that one Emperor who had so much trouble getting a heir that he insisted that he have the nickname "born in the purple" to shut up all the people who said he wasn't legitimate because his mom was the Emperor's fourth wife. I mean, they tried their best to make it an actual Thing. Anna Komnena was pretty proud of being born in the Magic Bedroom way after the guy you're talking about
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 06:31
|
|
|
Jack2142 posted:Yeah the end of the Dynasty was pretty crazy, it kinda makes you wonder what would have happened if Basil actually had his own kids, the same thing kinda happened with Augustus, he ruled solely for multiple generations that by the end pretty much the politics of the Empire revolved on a a single man, that when he died it just left a massive power vacuum with no any one person able to pick up the pieces, so things just kinda steadily fell apart until the system imploded and Alexios put things back together differently. The other big "what if" was that Zoe was supposed to marry the holy Roman Emperor while Basil was still alive. She had made it as far as Venice when Otto III dropped dead. If he had survived, he might have ruled both halves of the Roman Empire. A CK 2 player's wet dream (although having a promising ruler die really young is pretty traditional CK 2 as well).
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 06:39
|
|
|
The eastern empire had no trouble with a female heir ruling in their own name but I think the HRE would have. Her son if any might have ruled an empire worthy of the name Roman if circumstances didn't rip it apart first.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 06:42
|
|
|
cheetah7071 posted:The eastern empire had no trouble with a female heir ruling in their own name but I think the HRE would have.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 06:56
|
|
|
HEY GUNS posted:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_of_Athens#Relationship_with_the_Carolingian_Empire If it makes it better her successor got his head turned into a drinking cup.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 07:00
|
|
|
sullat posted:The other big "what if" was that Zoe was supposed to marry the holy Roman Emperor while Basil was still alive. She had made it as far as Venice when Otto III dropped dead. If he had survived, he might have ruled both halves of the Roman Empire. A CK 2 player's wet dream (although having a promising ruler die really young is pretty traditional CK 2 as well). There weren't two halves of the Empire, the disunion that erupted after the death of Theodosius had been repaired in the fifth century with a union of the crowns. The Bishop of Rome crowned a usurper who was on the same level as the 2nd century upstart Clodius Albinus.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 07:02
|
|
|
Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:The Bishop of Rome crowned a usurper who was on the same level as the 2nd century upstart Clodius Albinus.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 07:03
|
|
|
My bullshit nonsense notwithstanding, that's actually a really important point. There wasn't some vacant "Western Emperor" position that had been sitting around on the organization chart waiting for Charlemagne to step in. There was one Roman Emperor that even the West knew about.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 07:04
|
|
|
fantastic in plastic posted:You can't really drive any conclusions about Japanese culture prior to the 20th century, because there was no anime yet. They had those octopus woodcarvings 
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 07:19
|
|
|
The Belgian posted:What this about? It's about 300 years ago
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 07:25
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:It's about 300 years ago Great, now I'm early for work.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 07:54
|
|
|
HEY GUNS posted:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_of_Athens#Relationship_with_the_Carolingian_Empire I was aware the Carolingian Franks often had de facto female rulers/female regents but I didn't realize any of them ruled in their own name. I think that became less common by the Ottonians though?
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 08:01
|
|
|
cheetah7071 posted:I was aware the Carolingian Franks often had de facto female rulers/female regents but I didn't realize any of them ruled in their own name. I think that became less common by the Ottonians though? I think you'll find, on closer inspection, that Irene of Athens (Greek: Εἰρήνη ἡ Ἀθηναία; c. 752 – 9 August 803 AD), also known as Irene Sarantapechaina (Greek: Εἰρήνη Σαρανταπήχαινα), did not rule the franks.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 10:44
|
|
|
Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:My bullshit nonsense notwithstanding, that's actually a really important point. There wasn't some vacant "Western Emperor" position that had been sitting around on the organization chart waiting for Charlemagne to step in. There was one Roman Emperor that even the West knew about. Wasn't the title of "Roman Emperor" vacant, since the only claimant was... gasp, shudder, scowl... a 'woman'? The heir to Caesar, to Constantine can't be a woman. There needs to be an emperor, and if those Greeks wouldn't step up, the Pope had no choice but to turn to the Franks.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 16:03
|
|
|
HEY GUNS posted:let's never do any cultural history at all then Hey, at least the guys you study got more meat than everyone else by stealing it from everyone else and at the expense of crippling lice infestations and constant sinus infections
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 16:24
|
|
|
Edgar Allen Ho posted:I think you'll find, on closer inspection, that Irene of Athens (Greek: Εἰρήνη ἡ Ἀθηναία; c. 752 – 9 August 803 AD), also known as Irene Sarantapechaina (Greek: Εἰρήνη Σαρανταπήχαινα), did not rule the franks. Wow yeah I completely misread that article, I assumed it was correcting me instead of agreeing with me and only briefly skimmed it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 19:32
|
|
|
The more I learn about later Rome, the less remarkable it is to me that it lasted so long. It seems like it doesn't matter what happens with the internal politics of the empire. No matter how power shifts, it still counts as "Rome" and the old institutions manage to limp onward into the future in one way or another, regardless of how decayed or corrupt they get. If it hadn't been for a series of mass migrations where entirely new and unrelated people came in to physically replace the Romans as rulers of territory, then the dumb ol' empire would've never given up the ghost. Last time I read up on the Ostrogoths, it turned out even their rule wasn't exactly a clear end point for the west, because apparently Theodoric was brought in by the Byzantines and despite basically ruling on his own, he was nominally under the eastern emperor, and it wasn't until he was dead and his successors deposed that it became an issue. Then there was Jusinian's last hurrah, and it takes the Lombards for the empire to be dead in the west. Except when the Lombards were gone, the pope got the bright idea to revive the imperial name for the nice man who kicked them out, and we get a thousand more years of the name going on, just like how the Ottomans kept the imperial name when they kicked in the gate of Kostantiniyye.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2018 21:22
|
|
|
MikeCrotch posted:Hey, at least the guys you study got more meat than everyone else
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2018 00:34
|
|
|
SlothfulCobra posted:The more I learn about later Rome, the less remarkable it is to me that it lasted so long. It seems like it doesn't matter what happens with the internal politics of the empire. No matter how power shifts, it still counts as "Rome" and the old institutions manage to limp onward into the future in one way or another, regardless of how decayed or corrupt they get. If it hadn't been for a series of mass migrations where entirely new and unrelated people came in to physically replace the Romans as rulers of territory, then the dumb ol' empire would've never given up the ghost. I'm glad you posted this I've had a question forming in the back of my mind about this that I wanted to ask the thread. To what extent was the empire just the institutions and mindset of the republic grinding on somewhat independent of the emperors? I guess the imperial appointments of regional governors and such had a pretty big effect on things, but overall how much of the empire, especially in the west, just sort of left over momentum from the height of the republic?
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2018 03:23
|
|
|
Stringent posted:I'm glad you posted this I've had a question forming in the back of my mind about this that I wanted to ask the thread. Most of the West, as well as most of the East, weren't even really ruled directly during the republic. Power was usually exerted through regional allies and dependents.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2018 03:33
|
|
|
There's a whole recent school of revisionists arguing that the Roman belief that the republic never died was valid since what the Romans meant by res publica and what we mean by republic aren't the same thing at all (extremely short version: res publica just means the public function of state things, rather than the state being a secret/private thing, and has nothing to do with voting or representative government), and that the emperors weren't actually all that important. The emperors were essentially the top patron in the patron-client relationships and had control through that patronage, but there wasn't much change in government institutions given the lack of a formal state bureaucracy until much later. I think the people arguing the emperors weren't important at all and should be ignored are going too far, as historians seem to constantly do, but it's true that the function of the state changes a lot when the republic starts gaining provinces outside Italy and have to come up with a system to manage them and that the later alterations to that are not nearly as big of a deal. I'm not sure what you mean by momentum, they'd eliminated all their real opponents and so the empire was simply the way things worked for quite a while. It's pretty common for political situations like that to seem strong and eternal until one day they aren't anymore, and then everyone gets to argue what changed. After Carthage was eliminated the Romans didn't have a serious external threat until the assorted hordes of late antiquity. The Parthians/Persians were strong opponents in the east but never posed any real danger of conquering the eastern empire or anything.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2018 03:42
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:I'm not sure what you mean by momentum, they'd eliminated all their real opponents and so the empire was simply the way things worked for quite a while. It's pretty common for political situations like that to seem strong and eternal until one day they aren't anymore, and then everyone gets to argue what changed. After Carthage was eliminated the Romans didn't have a serious external threat until the assorted hordes of late antiquity. The Parthians/Persians were strong opponents in the east but never posed any real danger of conquering the eastern empire or anything. Right, that's what I meant, that the empire mainly consisted of institutions and infrastructure put in place by the republic that kinda just kept trucking after the civil wars. It seems like the biggest function of the emperors, at least up until the crisis was military rather than administrative, but I'm not sure if that's accurate?
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2018 03:56
|
|
|
Stringent posted:Right, that's what I meant, that the empire mainly consisted of institutions and infrastructure put in place by the republic that kinda just kept trucking after the civil wars. It seems like the biggest function of the emperors, at least up until the crisis was military rather than administrative, but I'm not sure if that's accurate? Sorry, I misunderstood what you meant at first. Yeah a lot of the original institutions came out of the Republican era, such as the patronage system, but things changed over time gradually and then broke down badly in the civil wars. Diocletian was a big deal because he set out to rearrange the administrative and military sides, to varying degrees of success, one of the things he did was to change appointed seats from the senate to the equestrians. Ithle01 fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Mar 5, 2018 |
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2018 04:06
|
|
|
Stringent posted:Right, that's what I meant, that the empire mainly consisted of institutions and infrastructure put in place by the republic that kinda just kept trucking after the civil wars. It seems like the biggest function of the emperors, at least up until the crisis was military rather than administrative, but I'm not sure if that's accurate? the emperors varied widely. certainly emperors that rose from the military were more military-focused, others were all about the administration (or partying or pretending to be a giant in the colosseum), some were balanced between the two. the republican and augustan institutions were the core of the state until the crisis, but the augustan institutions included a lot of people who reported straight to the emperor, so it's hard to say that it ran itself without the emperor, unless the emperor was just flat-out uninterested in governance. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 06:00 on Mar 5, 2018 |
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2018 04:13
|
|
|
Stringent posted:Right, that's what I meant, that the empire mainly consisted of institutions and infrastructure put in place by the republic that kinda just kept trucking after the civil wars. It seems like the biggest function of the emperors, at least up until the crisis was military rather than administrative, but I'm not sure if that's accurate? It was both but the empire was very decentralized. I'd point you towards reading Pliny the Younger's letters, specifically we have a lot of the ones exchanged between him and Trajan when he was governor of Bithynia et Pontus. Local affairs are largely in Pliny's hands but Trajan answers questions and offers suggestions when asked. It's the best record available. Unfortunately it's for Trajan, who was considered a singularly fantastic emperor even by the Romans at the time, so it's unclear how much you can generalize it. The major reforms in government of the classical empire (keeping in mind that Roman government was never formally laid out and relied almost entirely on tradition and precedent) would be Sulla's reorganizations, Augustus laying out the imperial system, and then Diocletian changing everything. Augustus' role was largely to put together the system where the "emperor" is granted all the appropriate powers, but it is notable he doesn't create any new powers. The princeps is simply granted a whole range of already extant republican authority, like those of the tribunes. The change is that a single man is given all these different positions simultaneously, and for life. Then these powers are inherited by his son/adopted successor, the same way that client relationships transfer from father to son. So yeah, in a lot of ways it's continuing republican institutions. There aren't any truly new things until Diocletian, and there's no formal office of emperor until like... Heraclius I think is the first to use the title basileus? There's never a special Latin title, just reuse of imperator/augustus/caesar.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2018 04:22
|
|
|
Trying to formulate questions about this is making it increasingly clear to me that I don't understand the crisis very well. Anyone know a good book on it that doesn't read like a dissertation?
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2018 04:29
|
|
|
Stringent posted:Trying to formulate questions about this is making it increasingly clear to me that I don't understand the crisis very well. Anyone know a good book on it that doesn't read like a dissertation? Goldsworthy’s book on the fall of Rome spends the entire first third on the crisis and is very accessible.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2018 05:55
|
|
|
I feel like there must be some kind of ontological inertia to the administrative side of the empire, just like there is to the military, but I'm not sure where I would look to judge that for certain. They don't do coups or assassinations as much or as blatantly as the military does, so they don't get as much press, but there must be something. It'd also give more perspective to the purges some emperors were so into. I know that the senate has a lot of administrative power, but only in some provinces apparently? In the History of Rome podcast, Mike Duncan mentioned some kind of yearly ritual in which Gallic chieftains regularly pledged their loyalty to the empire, but when I looked for more information online I couldn't find anything more about that, so maybe there was still some kind of local self-organization underneath the governors? There must've also been some kind of migration between provinces and Rome and vice versa, but I have no idea to what degree.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2018 06:02
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:There's a whole recent school of revisionists arguing that the Roman belief that the republic never died was valid since what the Romans meant by res publica and what we mean by republic aren't the same thing at all (extremely short version: res publica just means the public function of state things, rather than the state being a secret/private thing, and has nothing to do with voting or representative government), and that the emperors weren't actually all that important. The emperors were essentially the top patron in the patron-client relationships and had control through that patronage, but there wasn't much change in government institutions given the lack of a formal state bureaucracy until much later. Hey the Seleucid's and Macedonians were totally legitimate threats to Roman Hegemony! SlothfulCobra posted:I feel like there must be some kind of ontological inertia to the administrative side of the empire, just like there is to the military, but I'm not sure where I would look to judge that for certain. They don't do coups or assassinations as much or as blatantly as the military does, so they don't get as much press, but there must be something. It'd also give more perspective to the purges some emperors were so into. Speaking of Administrative things, I think you see this more once the Empire shifts to the East & Constantinople, where the administration sort of consolidates in Constantinople and forms an incredibly powerful... well power block capable of resisting military forces & usurpers. The aforementioned Irene for instance ended up deposed in favor of one of her bureaucrats Nikephoros I. Even back in the 400's, following the fall of the west the Emperor Anastasius had his background as a Finance Minister before succeeding the military minded "barbarian" Zeno. He also apparently was pretty good and amassed the giant stockpile of wealth that let Justinian do his stuff. Before Diocletian there never seems to be an established central bureaucracy, the court seems to follow the Emperors around like the courts of Medieval Monarchs, so when Trajan goes off to conquer Mesopotamia everyone important who isn't tied to a province follows him. I think when Diocletian was setting up the Tetrarchy was also partially to just designate points of the Empire into administrative centers with Trier/Milan/ Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Mar 5, 2018 |
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2018 06:14
|
|
|
skasion posted:Goldsworthy’s book on the fall of Rome spends the entire first third on the crisis and is very accessible. Is the Pax Romana one good as well?
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2018 07:09
|
|
|
Stringent posted:Is the Pax Romana one good as well? Yes very, although it of course overlaps a lot with "The Fall of Rome" of course, although looking at the same events from a bit different perspective.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2018 09:41
|
|
|
Patrick Wyman's been insisting that what really defines the Roman empire was a constant movement of goods and people. So good innovations of the empire, like local specialization of production, infrastructure and public works, legal courts, all those things spread throughout the empire, without having to require direct intervention by the state as defined by the Imperial court. Once the movement broke down, and local regions had too much autonomy without the overarching structure of the Roman state to resolve disputes, the regions turned into kingdoms and went to war with one another, leading to the dissolution of the state. I'm sorta paraphrasing and extrapolating from his podcast work.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2018 10:04
|
|
|
I don't know his podcast and his exact argument, but the way you summed it up I find it unconvincing: Local parts of the empire had wars with one another long (centuries) before the time we set "The Fall of the West" (5th century) - we had three different Empires at times and it recovered back to one for a period. The movements of goods and people between the parts lasted far longer than what generally is still called the "Western Empire" - people and goods still moved from West to East, from Vandal controlled territory to Gothic controlled territory. All these local rulers tried very hard to fit themselves into the Roman administrative system, with Roman titles and Roman authority. Even taxing and controlling these movements locally wouldn't really be an argument for dissolution - this happened during Republican and Augustan times too. Decius fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Mar 5, 2018 |
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2018 10:47
|
|
|
SlothfulCobra posted:I know that the senate has a lot of administrative power, but only in some provinces apparently? In the History of Rome podcast, Mike Duncan mentioned some kind of yearly ritual in which Gallic chieftains regularly pledged their loyalty to the empire, but when I looked for more information online I couldn't find anything more about that, so maybe there was still some kind of local self-organization underneath the governors? There must've also been some kind of migration between provinces and Rome and vice versa, but I have no idea to what degree. Provinces with legions were under direct imperial control for obvious reasons, as was Egypt because of its unique strategic importance. Egypt is different than all the other territory because it's the personal property of the emperor. The other provinces were under the control of governors who could be appointed by the senate. How much of the empire's territory is Roman administered and how much is controlled by local chiefs who are Roman clients varies widely depending on region and what time period you're talking about, so there's no way to generalize. Stringent posted:Is the Pax Romana one good as well? All the Goldsworthy I've read has been worthwhile. Pax Romana was particularly good since the whole thing was interrogating what exactly "peace" meant in that context.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2018 11:52
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 24, 2024 05:55 |
|
|
Which ancient civilisation would have the dankest memes if given access to the internet? I can't help but feel that the majority of Roman ones would be TPUSA style "SUPPORT THE LEGIONARIES" or complaining about how soft the youth of today is
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2018 11:58
|
|