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skasion posted:Modern scholars have made careers around trying to figure out what is truthful about the Historia Augusta, which is as big a book of nonsense as was ever written. Some choice bits: Firmus et al. 6.2 posted:For as to what Aurelius Festivus, Aurelian's freedman, has reported about him in detail, if you wish to learn it, you should read him yourself, most of all the passage which tells how this same Firmus went swimming among the crocodiles when rubbed with crocodiles' fat, how he drove an elephant and mounted a hippopotamus and rode about sitting upon huge ostriches, so that he seemed to be flying. Maximini duo 6.8 posted:He was of such size, so Cordus reports, that men said he was six inches over eight feet in height; and his thumb was so huge that he used his wife's bracelet for a ring. Neither Auelius Festivus nor Cordus is mentioned in any other ancient source, incidentally. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Aug 20, 2018 |
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Aug 20, 2018 17:19
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euphronius posted:I’d stay emperor’s constitutional powers were actually well defined and their constituency was also well defined. Each individual power the emperor possessed, yes; the very concept of the emperor, no. That’s what I mean when I say the purpose of the office is doubtful. Everyone knows what the emperor COULD do, but it was down to each individual emperor to decide what they SHOULD do. I think the idea that the emperor even had a constituency, apart from his soldiers, is hard to sustain. But the revelation that ultimately this was the only thing that emperors were beholden to eventually proved disastrous for the standard of imperial government.
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Aug 20, 2018 18:03
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The problem is that it's hard to tell how much of the Historia Augusta is garbage (though some of it definitely is) because in many cases there just aren't any other surviving sources from the period and the surviving text of the Historia itself is a badly-mangled copy of a copy of a copy of an etc full of accumulated scribal errors and revisions. It's entirely possible it was written as a satirical history but we have no way of knowing for sure.
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Aug 20, 2018 18:04
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Ok I agree with that distinction between could do and should do. That makes sense.
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Aug 20, 2018 18:04
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:The problem is that it's hard to tell how much of the Historia Augusta is garbage (though some of it definitely is) because in many cases there just aren't any other surviving sources from the period and the surviving text of the Historia itself is a badly-mangled copy of a copy of a copy of an etc full of accumulated scribal errors and revisions. Yeah, I think the best thing about it is that we know enough to know that a lot of it is bullshit, but we have no idea where (or if) the bullshit leaves off, or even why it’s bullshit at all. By a moron? Intended to flatter someone? 3rd century crisis edition of The Onion? Who the hell knows!
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Aug 20, 2018 18:08
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My Imaginary GF posted:Archeology question: Is there a methodology that uses river sediments to estimate population levels, or at least irregation and diversion rates? I know researchers have used Nile river sediments to make inferences about population and agriculture changes in the Ethiopian highlands. Historical flood records have also been related to deforestation in the Roman hinterland upstream on the Tiber. The problem is sedimentation rates have high year to year variation and are effected by several multi-decadal climate cycles so your inference is mostly constrained to trends across long time scales like a hundred years or more. It also won’t say anything about population specifically, but rather land use. If the amount of land in an area covered in forest within a region increases the result is usually less sediment volume, however can you infer then that population decreased? What if the people also developed a technology that made them more efficient at using the land still under cultivation? What if they switched to importing food from Egypt instead? If you want to estimate past populations without historical records you can dig up ruined houses, estimate persons per household, estimate settlement size and density at a given instant, and infer from there. This can be hard to do though along rivers like the Euphrates because river sediment deposition means much of the archeological remains will be underground. Deposition in these environments also makes it hard to study ancient canal and levee systems as they are inevitably buried. Since they are typically made from earth fancy stuff like ground penetrating radar are not going to be able to detect them easily. Edit: it seems implicit in your post migf that the primary human influence on sediment budgets is going to be through changes in flow through diversion. I don’t think this is true except maybe in a few places, although that is just my opinion, primarily because I think the volume of natural floods was very large compared to human diversion in premodern times. Human influence on sediment inputs is primarily driven by changes in the uplands, because that’s where the sediment comes from. Squalid fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Aug 20, 2018 |
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Aug 20, 2018 18:19
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skasion posted:Yeah, I think the best thing about it is that we know enough to know that a lot of it is bullshit, but we have no idea where (or if) the bullshit leaves off, or even why it’s bullshit at all. By a moron? Intended to flatter someone? 3rd century crisis edition of The Onion? Who the hell knows! I'd say there's some places where the author is obviously having a joke a the reader's expense. For example, a long section full of implausible anecdotes about Elagabalus's lavish lifestyle ends with this: Elagabalus 30.8 posted:However, these and some other things which surpass credence, I believe to have been fabricated by those who wished to vilify Elagabalus in order to curry favour with Alexander. Also, there are signs that the Historia Augusta was written after its supposed date of composition. Also a suspicious number of citations to otherwise unattested sources. On the whole, I think it's fair to say that it's deliberate bullshit.
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Aug 20, 2018 18:40
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I've read one book that in its citation section described the Historia as one of the most boring primary sources they've ever read
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Aug 20, 2018 18:42
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aphid_licker posted:Reading Tom Holland's Dynasty and the naming situation is a goddamn clusterfuck. It's apparently Julias and Drusus's all the way down. There was also a lot of Cleopatras: 
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Aug 20, 2018 18:48
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VII being the only previously clicked link just sums it up
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Aug 20, 2018 18:52
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cheetah7071 posted:I've read one book that in its citation section described the Historia as one of the most boring primary sources they've ever read Man that's a tough competition.
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Aug 21, 2018 03:47
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Commodus was sole ruler of his country as long as FDR was.
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Aug 21, 2018 05:22
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Commodus was sole ruler of his country as long as FDR was. George Will spotted.
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Aug 21, 2018 19:47
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Dadliest Worrier posted:George Will spotted. If you think about it, gladiatorial combat and fireside chats are the same thing.
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Aug 22, 2018 05:51
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My take on Commodus is 1. He became Emperor as a dumb teenager. 2. Everyone else in power was used to stoic Emperor Aurelius micromanaging rather than said dumb teenager pretending to be a gladiator. 3. People plot to murder Commodus because... he is kind of a little poo poo and not listening to them. 4. Plot fails, Commodus decides to clean house because a bunch of dads advisors tried to murder him. 5. Commodus replaces everyone, but is a terrible judge of character and competence. 6. People he puts in charge gently caress everything up, but he doesn't care enough to really deal with it. 7. People formerly in power who weren't really onboard with assassination plan 1 decide nevermind let's kill him and they succeed. Marcus Aurelius also had a couple entirely valid reasons to make Commodus Emperor beyond just "He's my boy"!!!
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Aug 22, 2018 06:05
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My Imaginary GF posted:Archeology question: Is there a methodology that uses river sediments to estimate population levels, or at least irregation and diversion rates? Short answer: Kinda sorta maybe Long answer: Part of my master research focuses on this. Pollen samples from sediments can be used to see when domesticates are introduced and a comparision of the percentage of domesticate pollen sources compared to nondomesticate pollen sources can be sorta used as a proxy for population size if you agree that more food = more people (It could also mean that the population was making more food for export or trade or several other reasons). As another poster mentioned above sediment depostion rates can also vary and events like hurricanes can really gently caress things up. I understand that having sediment samples from a long enough period of time helps but to be honest I need to look into this more. Rivers flood and change course, they erode the poo poo out of things too. I did settlement survey this past summer in Belize in a river valley and there is an extremeley clear line of elevation where everything under just gets flooded to poo poo and is flat because of it. Its super obvious if you ever see LiDAR data. There are two schools of thought for handling this. One is that no one lives in the flood zone because it floods every 5 years or so and they know better. I personally do not like this idea for several reasons. The other is that they did build in the flood zone but its eroded to gently caress or buried under a shitton of sediment so good luck finding it and figure out the extent of it. Both schools basically have the same conclusion which is that the extent of settlement located in the flood zone is difficult if not impossible to know, if it existed at all. Now with all that said the best way to answer your question, and in my opinion the most supportable way, would be to examine the houses or whatever you have along the flood zone. They are most likely close enough in proximity to any structures that might have appeared in the floodzone that they would be part of the same population. Because they are outside the floodzone they are likely more intact and if you know enough about the culture and the household lifecycle they have you can figure out a rough population count based on house number. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Aug 22, 2018 |
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Aug 22, 2018 08:06
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There a poo poo ton of things that make determing settlement density difficult and it basically drove me insane this summer.
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Aug 22, 2018 08:17
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I hope this question does not sound disrespectful but what would be an ancient civilization that we have a similar density of written sources on as the romans that I could read up on next? I love the little anecdotes and stuff about people from thousands of years ago having bad marriages or chronic flatulence or whatnot. Egyptians? Greek? Someone in Mesopotamia?
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Aug 22, 2018 10:02
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In English I'm not sure any ancient civilization is as well documented. Greeks would be next, Egyptians have a fair amount. Sumeria. Ancient Chinese states have a large amount of written documentation, but next to none of it is in English. Even Chinese fluency won't help you since it's in various forms of classical Chinese. There's also not nearly as much of the everyday people's writing you get from Rome since literacy was vastly more restricted and record keeping was tightly controlled.
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Aug 22, 2018 10:10
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aphid_licker posted:I hope this question does not sound disrespectful but what would be an ancient civilization that we have a similar density of written sources on as the romans that I could read up on next? I love the little anecdotes and stuff about people from thousands of years ago having bad marriages or chronic flatulence or whatnot. Egyptians? Greek? Someone in Mesopotamia? What's your cutoff point on ancient? GF mentioned Chinese and as someone who is fluent in modern Chinese I can confirm that it doesn't help with reading primary sources before the mass adoption of written vernacular Chinese in the early 20th century, and there is so much stuff out there compared to the people who actually speak classical Chinese that it's really hard to find information, despite the fact they practically wrote everything down. Off the top of my head the only other source that is similar to the Vindolanda tablets is ONFIM, THE MIGHTY WARRIOR OF NOVGOROD! because he wrote notes to his friend and also doodled himself as a mighty warrior. Not sure if that's what you're looking for since it's almost the 1300s by the time he's writing stuff down, but I will take any opportunity to talk about Onfim, I think it's kind of adorable that a 7 year olds doodles survived almost 800 years and are now a valuable archeological source.
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Aug 22, 2018 10:28
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I don't have a cutoff, I just meant "relatively old" or "in the wheelhouse of this thread" because the range of things I have read about drops off rapidly as we go back in time past like the 18th century. I read about Onfim a while ago, crazy and really touching  Grand Fromage posted:In English I'm not sure any ancient civilization is as well documented. Greeks would be next, Egyptians have a fair amount. Sumeria. Out of the things you two have mentioned Egypt and Sumeria tickle my fancy the most at first glance so I'll start out with those. Thank you very much!
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Aug 22, 2018 11:37
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I can't see routine flooding as an absolute deterrant to urbanization. In modern times, people still build neighborhoods next to the Mississippi River, to the point where the Federal government has to subsidize property insurance.
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Aug 22, 2018 12:47
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A close source of water that occasionally kill everyone seems like a small price to pay to not have your wife constantly bitch about how heavy the water is to move for washing and cooking.
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Aug 22, 2018 12:50
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Yeah its my opinion that people likely lived in the flood zones because the soil there is just as bitchin as the ones juuuust outside the regular floodzones. It would be interesting to see when exactly those areas get settled in comparision to the nonflooded areas though.
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Aug 22, 2018 14:25
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I can imagine there's gonna always be at least one dude with cognitive dissonance as well. "No, this time it wont flood because the augurs have foretold a twenty year dry spell, you see..." Occasionally they'll even be right.
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Aug 22, 2018 15:20
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In matters involving food and taking high risks, it's a good rule of thumb to assume there was an "or risk starvation" involved somewhere.
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Aug 22, 2018 15:32
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aphid_licker posted:I don't have a cutoff, I just meant "relatively old" or "in the wheelhouse of this thread" because the range of things I have read about drops off rapidly as we go back in time past like the 18th century. I read about Onfim a while ago, crazy and really touching I haven't been able to resist posting them itt before, but Tang Dynasty poetry is incredible, super relatable and really evocative of everyday life. Like here's one example from the Eighth century: Many People Come to Visit and Bring Wine After I Fell Off My Horse, Drunk posted:I, Du Fu, the duke’s elderly guest, I love this poem because one the one hand its extremely evocative of what everyday life was like twelve-hundred years ago, with great little details like the white-wash on the city walls, the implied ceremony with the halberd, and the suggested geography. On the other hand, it remains extremely relatable. Substitute the horse for a car and this exact story could have played out yesterday. It crams so many emotions into so little text, the drunken joy of flying down steep mountain roads, how he's so ashamed to be seen after his accident he wants to hide from his guests, but ultimately how grateful he feels that his friend took they time to see him. The way the pov character gently chides his guest not to ride recklessly immediately after his own accident, it makes the character appear so human despite the huge gulf of time and culture between us. There's lots of his poems here, and there are several other Tang poets that are just as good too. http://www.chinese-poems.com/du.html
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Aug 22, 2018 16:30
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According to the engineer (and goon) who made this series of videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQzfa4iXxZ4 (the sound quality of which improves very quickly) people tend to live in flood plains and I trust his word in that.
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Aug 22, 2018 17:28
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Egypt is a notable exception though, they avoided building within the Nile flood area. Egyptian cities were in the deserts beyond the flood plain to avoid wasting their very valuable and limited arable land.
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Aug 22, 2018 17:40
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Grevling posted:According to the engineer (and goon) who made this series of videos: this guy is great, all of his videos are super interesting
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Aug 22, 2018 19:16
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Aug 22, 2018 19:27
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well it's sure driving me crazy
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Aug 22, 2018 19:30
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Governor, because the other three weren't actual positions in the Roman Republic unless you're playing gotcha games or being really creative with translating the original Latin office names.
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Aug 22, 2018 19:40
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I chose emperor knowing it was wrong and got 10/10 "right" answers.
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Aug 22, 2018 19:45
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I’m THE ROMAN REPUBLIC OF ANCIENT ROME
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Aug 22, 2018 19:46
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The Irish Republic of Republic of Ireland. The Congolese Democratic Republic of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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Aug 22, 2018 19:48
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It takes effort to get it this wrong lmao. Like, they acknowledge that it was a multi-century civilization that passed through multiple forms of state and gov't. They specify that they're looking for the highest office in the Republic. And they decide it's emperor what the christ.
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Aug 22, 2018 20:01
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The point of those clickbait quizzes is to find questions that seem like not everyone would know the answer but actually everyone does, so everyone gets the feel smart. The writer of this specific question was going for "what was the name of the highest office of the roman government?" and knew just enough to gently caress everything up trying to make the question sound smarter. (not that "emperor" is a particularly correct answer to the question they were trying to ask, but hey0
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Aug 22, 2018 20:04
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tribunicia potestas 
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Aug 22, 2018 20:16
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If we are to disregard the quiz itself, wouldn't the proper answer be Consul? Or co-Consul?
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Aug 22, 2018 20:20
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