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The Lone Badger posted:Something that came up in a different thread: Surely if you have wood you can make charcoal? Or is the assumption that the person doing the smelting doesn't know how to make it?
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May 31, 2018 11:26
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MikeCrotch posted:Surely if you have wood you can make charcoal? Or is the assumption that the person doing the smelting doesn't know how to make it? In this case charcoal making hasn't been discovered for complicated reasons.
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May 31, 2018 11:39
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Vaginal Vagrant posted:So could you have say a black Greek dude in ancient Greek thought? Are there any recorded examples? In principle I don't see why not, but I know of no examples. It would also be complicated by the polis identity, each one has its own way of looking at things. I do not know Greek stuff as well, though. You could and did absolutely have black Romans. I don't know any specific examples because a Roman wouldn't think to write "oh btw it's a black dude" when talking about someone, but have zero doubt there were plenty. Especially once Caracalla extended citizenship to all free males. Like today North Africans were not what we would consider black, but at the very least there were a bunch of Nubian Egyptians who would've been citizens. And immigrants.
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May 31, 2018 13:59
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The Lone Badger posted:In this case charcoal making hasn't been discovered for complicated reasons. It's possible to fire porcelain with seasoned wood, that's well above what's needed for bronze, so yes it's is easily within the realm of possibility.
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May 31, 2018 14:12
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Grand Fromage posted:In principle I don't see why not, but I know of no examples. It would also be complicated by the polis identity, each one has its own way of looking at things. I do not know Greek stuff as well, though. Plenty might be a stretch. It’s not as if there were none, but I can’t think of an unambiguously black Roman by name either. They surely never achieved the ubiquity within the empire that Germanics did, for example. Most Nubians in the empire would probably have been slaves/slave-descended or traders, and since the Romans never really prosecuted any very successful wars up the Nile I don’t think there were many of the former by any means (and if there were, the near-total lack among Romans of color-based taboo would probably have bred them into the general population pretty quickly; there was no “black community” in the Roman Empire). I would think of them as being to Romans something slightly less exotic than Indians, not completely surprising to see but also not something you’d see every day in most of the empire — and probably in Egypt and Syria a good bit less uncommon. In the Acts of the Apostles when Philip meets the eunuch from Meroë (in Palestine) he’s quite unperturbed. Here’s an interesting article I found about Roman perceptions of Aethiopes, with frowning reference to some deeply cringeworthy modern hot takes.
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May 31, 2018 16:06
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Grand Fromage posted:
I thought it was relatively well established that Caracalla and Septimus Severus were, well, dark skinned? It's just that our modern concepts of "race" or "blackness" didn't really exist in the same way at the time, so it's a somewhat nonsensical question?
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May 31, 2018 16:17
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I thought it was relatively well established that Caracalla and Septimus Severus were, well, dark skinned? It's just that our modern concepts of "race" or "blackness" didn't really exist in the same way at the time, so it's a somewhat nonsensical question? Septimius Severus was from an ethnically Roman + Carthaginian family, so he may have been on the swarthy side but wasn't black. He was from Africa though (Leptis Magna) and I believe was the first African emperor. There was also the brief emperor Macrinus, who was Berber.
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May 31, 2018 16:19
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Grand Fromage posted:he may have been on the swarthy side but wasn't black Indeed, he was noticeably darker than his wife Julia Domna, a Syrian:  But clearly not subsaharan African.
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May 31, 2018 16:25
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skasion posted:Indeed, he was noticeably darker than his wife Julia Domna, a Syrian: Lol poor Geta.
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May 31, 2018 16:44
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Grand Fromage posted:Septimius Severus was from an ethnically Roman + Carthaginian family, so he may have been on the swarthy side but wasn't black. He was from Africa though (Leptis Magna) and I believe was the first African emperor. There was also the brief emperor Macrinus, who was Berber. On the topic of this, did the Romans ever comment much on mediterranean peoples, such as the North African Libyans, Carthaginians and the Numidians looking very much different from themselves? Because I can think of having read plenty of times that the Romans comment on how strange (firghtening and impressive seems to have been the general impression) the Germans and sometimes the Gauls look compared to the Romans, but can't really think of anything for say North Africans or Syrians (well you might as well not I guess, considering Italians, Syrians and say Tunisians don't look that much different from each other today in any case). skasion posted:Indeed, he was noticeably darker than his wife Julia Domna, a Syrian: Reminds one a bit of Manuel Komnenos and Maria of Antioch. 
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May 31, 2018 16:46
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Although the primary way that Romans are interested in Germans looking different is their size and not their colouring.
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May 31, 2018 16:48
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Disinterested posted:Although the primary way that Romans are interested in Germans looking different is their size and not their colouring. If I remember correctly they were pretty amazed by blond hair. Roman women went crazy for wigs made from the hair of German women. I also think there was an early remark about the Gauls that to the Romans they almost seemed to age backwards, beginning life with grey hair (blond hair) that went dark as they aged.
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May 31, 2018 16:53
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Syrians were effeminate and wore their hair in ringlets like a bunch of goddamn sissies, but otherwise did not look much different to other Hellenized easterners in Roman eyes. I’m not aware of any visual stereotypes of Moors or Carthaginians really, there was a lot of character-based stereotyping but it’s hard to avoid the impression that, as you mention, Romans simply didn’t think they looked all that different from the other Mediterranean coastal peoples.
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May 31, 2018 16:54
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Randarkman posted:On the topic of this, did the Romans ever comment much on mediterranean peoples, such as the North African Libyans, Carthaginians and the Numidians looking very much different from themselves? Because I can think of having read plenty of times that the Romans comment on how strange (firghtening and impressive seems to have been the general impression) the Germans and sometimes the Gauls look compared to the Romans, but can't really think of anything for say North Africans or Syrians (well you might as well not I guess, considering Italians, Syrians and say Tunisians don't look that much different from each other today in any case). They had a very specific stereotype about northern barbarians being giant beast men. I can't remember anything specific about North Africans. They had a real thing about Gauls/Germans that doesn't show up with other cultures. That's often attributed to the 390 BCE sack of Rome and a never again mentality about those filthy northern barbarians. I would like to say it's a stretch to imagine the Romans still being pissed off about that hundreds of years later, but I've spent enough time in countries that are actively enraged about thousand year old fights that it seems far more plausible than it once did.
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May 31, 2018 16:57
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Did they have any ideas about sub-saharan Africa, or did they just assume that the desert went forever on and on?
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May 31, 2018 17:01
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There were regular trade caravans going across the Sahara.
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May 31, 2018 17:02
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SlothfulCobra posted:Did they have any ideas about sub-saharan Africa, or did they just assume that the desert went forever on and on? At the eastern end, the Egyptians traded with and occasionally conquered/ruled the Nubians and Kush (roughly modern Sudan/Ethiopia). There was regular trade down the Red Sea around the Horn. Around 700 BC the Nubians briefly conquered Lower Egypt and ruled as Pharaohs, making statues of themselves as native Egyptians. 
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May 31, 2018 17:08
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SlothfulCobra posted:Did they have any ideas about sub-saharan Africa, or did they just assume that the desert went forever on and on? It's a bit unclear. Romans had regular contact with Nubia and Axum, and Roman trade went down the east coast of Africa at least to Zanzibar, so they were aware that at least on the eastern side Africa had plenty of cultures along the coastal routes. There is no real evidence the Romans traveled down west Africa any further than the Canary Islands. There's a bit of text evidence the Carthaginians may have circumnavigated Africa, and if so the Romans likely knew about it. There are great gold mines right across the Sahara, and the Berbers were crossing the desert. Roman geography gets pretty confused once you get too far past the edges of the empire. I don't think they believed the Sahara went on forever, but they were aware it was big enough to not be worth their time to bother with. They were quite aware of Sahara nomads and set up defensive walls along the southern border to deal with it. From what I've seen of Roman maps they did not understand the geography south of the desert. There was also a belief by at least some ancient geographers that only part of the world was habitable. As you continued south, it got hotter and hotter until it was impossible to live there, same with the north and cold. There were others who asserted this was true, but once you got to the other side of the globe there would be another habitable zone and it was simply impossible to cross between the two because of the heat.
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May 31, 2018 17:13
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Grand Fromage posted:Roman geography gets pretty confused once you get too far past the edges of the empire. I don't think they believed the Sahara went on forever, but they were aware it was big enough to not be worth their time to bother with. They were quite aware of Sahara nomads and set up defensive walls along the southern border to deal with it.
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May 31, 2018 17:16
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SlothfulCobra posted:Did they have any ideas about sub-saharan Africa, or did they just assume that the desert went forever on and on? There were four or five Roman expeditionary forces sent across the Sahara in the first century AD. Along various routes, some made it at least as far as the River Niger. One got to somewhere called Agisymba, possibly around Lake Chad, and brought back a rhino.
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May 31, 2018 17:17
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:I thought it was less "walls" and more....guard outposts at mountain passes and known oases (oasises?)? It's a long border, depends where you are. There's a segment of several hundred kilometers of the typical ditch with a wall behind it type of fortification, as well as looser segments.
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May 31, 2018 17:19
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skasion posted:There were four or five Roman expeditionary forces sent across the Sahara in the first century AD. Along various routes, some made it at least as far as the River Niger. One got to somewhere called Agisymba, possibly around Lake Chad, and brought back a rhino. Huh, I had never read about these. Looks like they were mostly trade expeditions since military conquest across the Sahara was unfeasible even with Roman logistics. Trade beyond the empire is one of those topics that makes me really irritated at the sources, there are all these little hints that show up of poo poo like Romans running around in Vietnam but it's hard to find anything detailed.
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May 31, 2018 17:26
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skasion posted:There were four or five Roman expeditionary forces sent across the Sahara in the first century AD. Along various routes, some made it at least as far as the River Niger. One got to somewhere called Agisymba, possibly around Lake Chad, and brought back a rhino.
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May 31, 2018 17:32
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Grand Fromage posted:Romans running around in Vietnam but it's hard to find anything detailed. Wait what. I know there are no details beyond that but I'm just gonna pretend they're part of the same group that sold the Roman glass that keeps ending up in ancient Japanese graves.
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May 31, 2018 18:27
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Don Gato posted:Wait what. Ptolemy, relying on information from Greek sailors, says that the Indian Ocean trade mostly ends up in Burma. But if you go overland from there you cross an isthmus and come to the Perimulic Gulf. From there you can sail for twenty days to cross the gulf and then up the opposing coast to find an entrepôt called Kattigara. The isthmus is the Malay Peninsula, the gulf the Gulf of Thailand, and Kattigara is probably Oc Eo in the Mekong delta. There have indeed been Roman coins found there, though Roman coins can be found lots of places, some of which no Roman ever went to. The supposed embassy of Marcus Aurelius to the emperor Huan came from the south, so presumably took a Vietnamese coastal route. Roman trade in the Indian sea was prodigious and some of what was traded definitely made it to China. Whether actual Romans did, and if so how often, is quite another matter.
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May 31, 2018 18:55
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Kinda depends on your definition of Roman I guess. Almost definitely nobody with imperial authority. Unless transit times start to get larger than a lifetime, it's not impossible a person from somewhere in the empire could've gotten out that far, although whether they'd want to or if they'd be able to return is another matter.
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May 31, 2018 19:09
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Grand Fromage posted:They had a very specific stereotype about northern barbarians being giant beast men. I can't remember anything specific about North Africans. They had a real thing about Gauls/Germans that doesn't show up with other cultures. That's often attributed to the 390 BCE sack of Rome and a never again mentality about those filthy northern barbarians. I would like to say it's a stretch to imagine the Romans still being pissed off about that hundreds of years later, but I've spent enough time in countries that are actively enraged about thousand year old fights that it seems far more plausible than it once did.
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May 31, 2018 19:41
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So this is semi tangential but: I don’t suppose any of you know of any good history podcasts? Doesn’t need to be roman history, and I’m aware of drunk history, but my commute just got a lot longer and I figured this thread would probably know of something 
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May 31, 2018 19:58
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Captain Oblivious posted:So this is semi tangential but: I don’t suppose any of you know of any good history podcasts? Doesn’t need to be roman history, and I’m aware of drunk history, but my commute just got a lot longer and I figured this thread would probably know of something I like The History of Rome by Mike Duncan and someone recommended The Hellenistic Age podcast in this thread recently. The podcast started recently and is only at episode 6 atm.
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May 31, 2018 20:04
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Revolutions
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May 31, 2018 20:06
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skasion posted:Roman trade in the Indian sea was prodigious and some of what was traded definitely made it to China. Whether actual Romans did, and if so how often, is quite another matter. Seems inevitable that at least a few Roman merchants made the trek, but there is no way to actually state that factually without finding a record of it. Some merchant in weird clothes that never amounted to much is not getting recorded in Chinese or Roman records. There are probably amazing stories lost to history about people from both empires managing to find their way all the way across the world.
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May 31, 2018 20:11
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Not ancient history but I find the Pirate History podcast very good.
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May 31, 2018 20:18
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Captain Oblivious posted:So this is semi tangential but: I don’t suppose any of you know of any good history podcasts? Doesn’t need to be roman history, and I’m aware of drunk history, but my commute just got a lot longer and I figured this thread would probably know of something History of Rome, History of Byzantium, Bulgarian History Podcast, Life of Caesar if you like dick jokes, Revolutions, History of Egypt, British History Podcast and these are just the ones I'm currently listening to  ...
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May 31, 2018 20:19
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Seems inevitable that at least a few Roman merchants made the trek, but there is no way to actually state that factually without finding a record of it. Some merchant in weird clothes that never amounted to much is not getting recorded in Chinese or Roman records. There are probably amazing stories lost to history about people from both empires managing to find their way all the way across the world. There are Chinese records that talk about the arrival of merchants from Daqin, which was the name used by Chinese chronicles for Rome, and also from Faqin (Constantinople).
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May 31, 2018 20:22
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Captain Oblivious posted:So this is semi tangential but: I don’t suppose any of you know of any good history podcasts? Doesn’t need to be roman history, and I’m aware of drunk history, but my commute just got a lot longer and I figured this thread would probably know of something In our time on the BBC is the best I know of since it's the only one that I know of that routinely puts together a panel of respected academics for each subject it covers. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09xnl51 A recent one on Roman slavery with: Neville Morley Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter Ulrike Roth Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Edinburgh Myles Lavan Senior lecturer in Ancient History at the University of St Andrews Mary Beard is a routine contributor, as in this one on the destruction of Carthage: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hdd5x Disinterested fucked around with this message at 20:29 on May 31, 2018 |
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May 31, 2018 20:25
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Yes and the online catalog goes back like 20 years.
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May 31, 2018 20:27
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Dalael posted:I like The History of Rome by Mike Duncan and someone recommended The Hellenistic Age podcast in this thread recently. The podcast started recently and is only at episode 6 atm. I liked The History of Rome as far as it went, but I think a more accurate title would be "The Military and Political History of Rome" since that's all he really touches on. You get a list of emperors, some court intrigue and a description of where the legions marched. But you get almost nothing about Roman literature, art, philosophy, science, economics or religion. I really liked Will Durant's Caesar and Christ which you can pick up pretty cheap as an audio book. I'm sure it won't be popular in this thread since it's kind of old and I'm sure some of his analysis is either outdated or no longer in vogue, but he spends a lot of time covering all of the stuff that the History of Rome podcast ignores completely.
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May 31, 2018 20:28
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Duncan does tons of focused episodes on culture and the last 100 episodes deal (necessarily) with religion. Not sure if I agree with that.
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May 31, 2018 20:32
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OctaviusBeaver posted:I liked The History of Rome as far as it went, but I think a more accurate title would be "The Military and Political History of Rome" since that's all he really touches on. You get a list of emperors, some court intrigue and a description of where the legions marched. But you get almost nothing about Roman literature, art, philosophy, science, economics or religion. I really liked Will Durant's Caesar and Christ which you can pick up pretty cheap as an audio book. I'm sure it won't be popular in this thread since it's kind of old and I'm sure some of his analysis is either outdated or no longer in vogue, but he spends a lot of time covering all of the stuff that the History of Rome podcast ignores completely. I bought a few audio books in order to compliment the podcast. Rubicon The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland, SPQR A History of Ancient Rome (Unabridged) by Mary Beard and The Works of Julius Caesar: The Gallic Wars (Unabridged) and last but not least, Lost to the West: The Forgotten (Please don't start a debate) Byzantine Empire that rescued Western Civilization by Lars Brownworth. I figured this should give me a solid base.
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May 31, 2018 20:34
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It's older, but check out "A History of the World in 100 Objects" by Neil McGregor. He was the Director of the British Museum at the time, and he looked at 100 different objects from the museum's collection, from prehistory to today, and looked at what each object told us about the culture that produced it.
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May 31, 2018 20:42
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