Roman/ancient history: Checkmate, Atenists

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Roman/ancient history: Checkmate, Atenists

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

I'm familiar with the "Mirror for Princes" genre, of which Machiavelli's "The Prince" is the most famous and probably least representative example. These were books written for rulers, and more, children of rulers to teach them how to rule and rule well. Most of them would include exemplars...stories from history and mythology that supported the moral lessons. So, for instance, a book might talk about how it's important for a ruler to keep their word, and then include an anecdote about how some historical figure or ruler kept their word when they were tempted to break it or how a ruler broke his word and the bad consequences that followed.

# ? Dec 6, 2018 16:00

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# ? Jun 1, 2024 03:34

CommonShore: Jun 6, 2014; A true renaissance man

fantastic in plastic posted:

I'm not sure I understand the science fiction part of your post. The element of Star Wars that seems more directly comparable to me than the story structure is that the aliens wear clothes and those clothes map onto audience expectations. What does the plot structure have to do with it?

Also, don't you have cause and effect reversed in your remark about Don Quixote? Quixote reads so many books about knights and obsesses over those stories to the point where he decides to act like one. He doesn't consciously decide "I want to be a hero" and then go looking for a way to do that.

Sorry - this is what I deserve for posting while drinking my first coffee of the day. My point is a bit confused but I'll try to sort out what I meant.

Re: Star Wars - it's genre markers. The Chivalric-Classical romances layer the recognizable and attractive genre markers of Chivalric romance on top of the Classical content in creating a product which appeals to readers. A similar thing happens in Star Wars in which SF genre markers get layered on top of a fantasy story. Roman D'Aeneas ends up a hodgepodge mix of The Aeneid and medieval Romance. A reader picks up something titled "The Romance of Aeneas" because of the classical attractions of "Aeneas" but that person still finds "Romance" more satisfying and familiar than proper classics; a viewer tunes into Star Wars because of the ostensible SF content offered by the title, but the blockbuster audience is more satisfied by the content of a Space Opera than A Space Odyssey, so to speak. In either case, more more familiar, popular content gets treated or packaged as something else. It's a strained analogy, admittedly.

Re: Don Quixote - chicken and egg. It's both. He decides to become a knight errant because of his aspirations for greatness and heroism, which he models on the stories he reads, which lead him to aspire to greatness and heroism. His aspiration isn't just to be a knight, he decides to be a knight to embody the traditions and values which knights symbolize. If you're still skeptical, if you like I can try to remember to seek textual evidence when I get home - there's a passage near the beginning and one near the end which lead me to read his madness in this way. (I don't want to seem combative in this, though)

# ? Dec 6, 2018 17:00

underage at the vape shop: May 11, 2011; by Cyrano4747

Grand Fromage posted:

Things that were repurposed survive in the best condition. The Pantheon in Rome is a good example, it's almost perfectly preserved because it was converted into a church and has therefore been in continuous use. Other structures survive well because the area was abandoned, or it was just left alone for whatever reason. Something like the Colosseum was stripped of its marble and statues to build the Vatican, but the concrete structure itself was just this huge thing that you couldn't get rid of without an enormous amount of effort, and why bother. Some ancient structures were protected for religious reasons, especially in the pre-Christian era. There are some temples and such that were so old the Romans forgot what they were even there for, but weren't going to risk the wrath of the gods by loving with them.

The later empire basically looted the west for sculpture, art, columns, etc, so you find all sorts of them ending up in Constantinople. The earliest valuation of the past I can think of is when Italian kings in the 1500s or so start to use ancient art as prestige objects, and send out the first official looters to pick up paintings and sculptures to bring back and decorate their palaces. It's not exactly protection, but they're not being broken up for construction materials or anything anymore. Legislated protection of historical structures is quite modern.

Really interesting, thanks

# ? Dec 7, 2018 00:02

Goatse James Bond: Mar 28, 2010; If you see me posting please remind me that I have Charlie Work in the reports forum to do instead

Epicurius posted:

I'm familiar with the "Mirror for Princes" genre, of which Machiavelli's "The Prince" is the most famous and probably least representative example. These were books written for rulers, and more, children of rulers to teach them how to rule and rule well. Most of them would include exemplars...stories from history and mythology that supported the moral lessons. So, for instance, a book might talk about how it's important for a ruler to keep their word, and then include an anecdote about how some historical figure or ruler kept their word when they were tempted to break it or how a ruler broke his word and the bad consequences that followed.

Ada Palmer has a really great series of essays on this and ethics, I will link it when I get home if I remember.

# ? Dec 7, 2018 04:14

packetmantis: Feb 26, 2013

Herodotus is in Assassin's Creed Odyssey and there are constant references to all the bullshit he made up. :allears:

# ? Dec 10, 2018 01:08

Dalael: Oct 14, 2014; Hello. Yep, I still think Atlantis is Bolivia, yep, I'm still a giant idiot, yep, I'm still a huge racist. Some things never change!

The key to cracking long-dead languages?

quote:

Broken and scorched black by fire, the dense, wedge-shaped marks etched into the ancient clay tablets are only just visible under the soft light at the British Museum. These tiny signs are the remains of the world�s oldest writing system: cuneiform.

Developed more than 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers where modern-day Iraq now lies, cuneiform captured life in a complex and fascinating civilisation for some three millennia. From furious letters between warring royal siblings to rituals for soothing a fractious baby, the tablets offer a unique insight into a society at the dawn of history.

They chronicle the rise of fall of Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia, the world�s first empires. An estimated half a million of them have been excavated, and more are still buried in the ground.

However, since cuneiform was first deciphered by scholars around 150 years ago, the script has only yielded its secrets to a small group of people who can read it. Some 90% of cuneiform texts remain untranslated.

That could change thanks to a very modern helper: machine translation.

�The influence that Mesopotamia has on our own culture is something that people don�t know much about,� says �milie Pag�-Perron, a researcher in Assyriology at the University of Toronto. Mesopotamia gave us the wheel, astronomy, the 60-minute hour, maps, the story of the flood and the ark, and the first work of literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh. But its texts are mainly written in Sumerian and Akkadian, languages that relatively few scholars can read.

Pag�-Perron is coordinating a project to machine translate 69,000 Mesopotamian administrative records from the 21st Century BC. One of the aims is to open up the past to new research.

�We have information about so many different aspects of the lives of Mesopotamian people, and we can�t really profit from the expertise of people in different fields like economics or politics, who if they had access to the sources, could help us tremendously to understand those societies better,� says Pag�-Perron.

Apart from the clay tablets, there are also more than 50,000 Mesopotamian engraved seals scattered in collections around the world. For millennia, the people of Mesopotamia used seals made of engraved stone that were pressed into wet clay to mark doors, jars, tablets and other objects. Only some 10% of these have even been catalogued, let alone translated.

�We have more sources from Mesopotamia than we have from Greece, Rome and ancient Egypt together,� says Jacob Dahl, a professor of Assyriology at the University of Oxford. The challenge is finding enough people who can read them.

Pag�-Perron and her team are training algorithms on a sample of 4,000 ancient administrative texts from a digitised database. Each records transactions or deliveries of sheep, reed bundles or beer to a temple or an individual. Originally impressed into the clay with a reed stylus, the texts have already been transliterated into our alphabet by modern scholars. The Sumerian word for big, for example, can be written in cuneiform signs, or it can be written in our alphabet as �gal�.

The wording in these administrative texts is simple: �11 nanny goats for the kitchen on the 15th day�, for example. This makes them particularly suitable for automation. Once these algorithms have learned to translate the sample texts into English, they will then automatically translate the other transliterated tablets.

�The texts we�re working on are not very interesting individually, but they�re extremely interesting if you take them as groups of texts,� says Pag�-Perron, who expects the English versions to be online within the next year. The records give us a picture of day to day life in ancient Mesopotamia, of power structures and trading networks, but also of other aspects of its social history, such as the role of female workers. Searchable translations would enable researchers from other areas to explore these rich facets of life in the ancient world.

�These people are so different and so remote from us, but at the same time, they have the same basic problems,� explains Pag�-Perron. �Understanding Mesopotamia is a way of understanding what it means to be human.�

She hopes machine analysis will also clarify certain features of Sumerian that still puzzle modern academics. This extinct language is not related to any modern language but has been preserved in inscriptions written in cuneiform. It may be our last remaining link to even older, unrecorded societies.

�Sumerian is probably the last member of what must have been a large family of languages that goes back thousands and thousands of years,� says Irving Finkel, the curator in charge of the 130,000 cuneiform tablets stored at the British Museum. �Writing appeared in the world just in time to rescue Sumerian� We�re just lucky that we had some �microphone� that picked it up before it went away with all the others.�

Finkel is one of the world�s leading cuneiform experts. In his book-filled office at the British Museum, he explains how the script was slowly deciphered thanks to a multi-lingual inscription about a king, just like the Rosetta Stone that helped researchers make sense of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

�It�s actually rather astonishing how interesting it is when you find a human mind across millennia, where it is like talking to them on the telephone,� he says. �It�s the most exciting thing in the world when you meet one of these people.�

Ancient access

Few of us will ever cradle a 5,000-year-old tablet in our palm. But thanks to advanced imaging techniques, anyone with an internet connection can now access treasures such as the world�s oldest surviving royal library, which is being digitised. It was built in Nineveh by Ashurbanipal, a powerful and book-loving Assyrian king. Some of the surviving tablets from his library are displayed at the British Museum as part of a special exhibition on Ashurbanipal. Although blackened and hardened by fire when Nineveh was sacked in 612 BC, the text they carry can still be read.

New imaging techniques are making the job of working with such ancient, often damaged texts easier. With highly detailed images, it is possible to pick out marks that may be too obscure to see with a human eye.

Dahl and his colleagues have been digitising tablets and seals stored in collections in Teheran, Paris and Oxford for a project known as the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. This vast online database already contains about a third of the world�s cuneiform texts, as well as some undeciphered written languages, such as Proto-Elamite from ancient Iran. Without sprawling digital resources like this, training machines to do translation would not even be possible.

Digitisation is also helping researchers to piece together links between texts scattered in collections around the world. Dahl, along with researchers at the University of Southampton and the University of Paris-Nanterre, has digitised 3D images of about 2,000 stone seals from Mesopotamia. In a pilot project, they then used AI algorithms to examine a group of six tablets and identify matching seal impressions found elsewhere in the world. The algorithm correctly selected a tablet that is currently stored in Italy, and another that is stored in the United States; both had been stamped by the same seal.

Matching seals and impressions has been notoriously difficult in the past, as many are stored thousands of miles apart. Dahl estimates that all seals could be digitised within about five years, which would then make it possible to trace other patterns. There is some indication, for example, that certain types of stone were favoured by women.

�That is the kind of question you could not answer unless you had large numbers of seals imaged in the way we�re doing, and applying techniques like algorithms or machine learning,� Dahl says. He hopes that as artificial intelligence evolves, it will help us unravel the full potential of the rich information contained in collections around the world.

�I want Assyriology, which covers half of human history and a very endangered cultural heritage, to be at the forefront of this.�

Cracking codes

Imaging is also changing research into undeciphered scripts. Humans tend to be better than machines at this type of decipherment, which typically involves small amounts of text, creative mental leaps, and an understanding of how people lived and organised themselves. It also involves a great deal of intellectual flexibility.

Early cuneiform signs, for example, were not even arranged in a linear text, but simply placed together with a box drawn around them. Proto-Elamite is three-dimensional: a shallow impression of a circle has a different meaning than a deeper one. However, technology has helped the decipherment process by providing detailed pictures that can be magnified, shared and compared.

�The crucial problem is first and foremost to get proper images,� says Dahl, who is working on deciphering the mysterious script. �That�s lacking for the first 100 years of study of Proto-Elamite.�

Such advances go beyond the field of Assyriology. Philippa Steele, a senior research fellow at Cambridge University, is an expert in the early writing systems of ancient Crete and Greece. These include �Linear A�, an undeciphered script, and �Linear B�, which was used to write an ancient form of Greek.

Thanks to techniques that take sophisticated images of ancient tablets that feature these scripts, Steele has discovered new details.

�You can make out features that are very difficult to make out with the naked eye,� she says. �And often those features might correspond to the ways in which the person writing the document interacted with the document. So for Linear B, for example� you can make out erasures. Sometimes you can tell when the person writing the document has worked something out and then written something over the top.�

Pag�-Perron hopes that machines will eventually be able to translate more complex Sumerian tablets, and other languages like Akkadian. �There�s a lot more to discover about ancient cultures,� she says.

Perhaps one day, we will be able to read all of our earliest texts in translation � though many of Mesopotamia�s riddles are likely to outlive us, not least because many missing cuneiform fragments are still in the ground, waiting to be excavated.

The kings of ancient Mesopotamia thought deeply about the past and the future. They revered cuneiform texts from previous eras, and buried special inscriptions recording their names and achievements, promising rewards for a later ruler who would honour them.

In some ways their wish came true. Their battles and conquests may be forgotten by most. But their most powerful invention, writing, has helped humanity develop ideas and technologies over millennia � and now, train machines to learn from the past.

Dalael fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Dec 10, 2018

# ? Dec 10, 2018 19:16

aphid_licker: Jan 7, 2009

Well that's easily the coolest thing I read about lately. Did not realize that we had so many texts to work with.

# ? Dec 10, 2018 21:13

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Yeah my big hope is that someday Big Computer will be able to crack Linear A.

# ? Dec 10, 2018 21:29

Telsa Cola: Aug 19, 2011; No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

Sidenote but I forget who it was and when it was (Maybe the hobby lobby poo poo) but they mentioned several crates of shattered tablets all mixed together and I know there is some intern somewhere they tasked to put it all back together.

Or they got a ceramicist I guess.

# ? Dec 11, 2018 06:00

underage at the vape shop: May 11, 2011; by Cyrano4747

Wanna hear what crazy sex laws predated hammurabis

underage at the vape shop fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Dec 11, 2018

# ? Dec 11, 2018 06:08

Elyv: Jun 14, 2013

that is cool as hell

# ? Dec 11, 2018 06:25

Grevling: Dec 18, 2016

I found this very interesting, finds of plague in Swedish neolithic farmers may provide an explanation for the spread of the Indo-European languages. According to these finds plague may have wiped out a large part of the old Neolithic population in Europe at a time when steppe peoples were moving in in large numbers. I find it very interesting how similar this is to what I've heard about Anatolia in the Middle Ages, plague running rampant in the Greek-speaking population centers while the Turkic-speaking nomads who were moving into the area were less affected. Maybe this could provide some sort of explanation for the spread of Indo-European languages into Europe? Maybe similar things might have happened in other places where Indo-European languages came to replace the older ones, in places like Iran and northern India?

https://videnskab.dk/naturvidenskab/pest-fundet-i-stenalderkvinde-forklarer-maaske-mystisk-mangel-paa-mennesker

google translate from Danish with some corrections by me posted:

Plague found in stone age women: May explain mysterious lack of people

Five thousand years ago, a young woman dies in the area today called Falbygden in Sweden north of J�nk�ping.
She is being buried in a burial chamber, also called a passage grave, where 78 different skeletons have since been found. But just this woman's skeleton tells a very special story.

New DNA analyses of blood from her teeth show that she was so unfortunate to be the first known victim of a disease that would later have countless lives on its conscience.
"She is now the first victim of plague we know of. The analyses of her blood show that she has been infected with Yersinia pestis, which is the bacterium of the great mortal eruptions we know from the Bronze Age, Roman times and the black medieval death, "says the lecturer in bioinformatics at the University of Copenhagen and the Technical University of Denmark Simon Rasmussen to Science.dk.

He has, together with researchers from Sweden, France and Denmark, analyzed the DNA of two skeletons in the Swedish tomb. Both had the pest bacteria, but only the young woman had so much that the researchers could study the genetic composition of the pest.

The discovery has just been published in the scientific journal Cell, and the find may have had major consequences for who you and I are today, but we will return to that later in the article.

Large camps are abandoned and burned down

In the Farmer Stone Age (about 3900-1700 BC), where farming was started with domestic animals and less concern for hygiene, it may not be so unusual that you could die of disease at the age of 20 years.
But the fact that it is just a matter of plague may prove to be an important part in explaining why large parts of the European population disappear at this time.
"There is a dramatic decline in the number of people in northern and central Europe. It's coolest, because in the period up to now you have had large settlements, where you could live between 10,000-20,000 people. But suddenly they are burned down and left, "says Simon Rasmussen.

The new find gives reason to believe that the plague may have had a finger in the game, he believes.
"There has been agriculture with grains, animals and poor sanitation in large urban communities with many people. It's a classic example of what is needed for an epidemic to evolve, and we know that just the plague can spread from animals to humans via fleas. "

Traders may have brought the plague to Scandinavia

The major settlements are found in the areas that we call Ukraine, Romania and Moldova today. That's a good ways from the place where the woman with pestilence was found in Sweden. (On the map further down, the place is called Trypilia)
But there is not only a big fall in the population in these areas, according to Simon Rasmussen. It is also happening in northern Europe. According to the researchers' hypothesis, diseases can be spread through trade routes.
"The DNA and the archaeological culture of the people in Sweden are very similar to those of the large settlements. Therefore, we think there has been a connection between them. It is at this point that you begin to transport goods with carts, and the plague can be brought by merchants, "he says.

Professor: Landmark for human history

Mikkel Heide Schierup, professor of bioinformatics at Aarhus University, is very excited about the new study.
"It is surprising that we have carried on plague for so long. It's super-exciting, because they capture something that has been a landmark for human history, and as we suddenly get insight into, "he says.
"It's good research because their new hypotheses can be tested, even if they are not yet proven. They get very much because they have found DNA sequences from plague in two individuals. It's a plausible story they build and everything really makes sense. "
The most interesting is, according to Mikkel Heide Schierup, that the find can explain our genetic origins even today.
"We are, in Scandinavia, very much descendants of these steppe peoples.
If it is true what the researchers propose here, the plague is partly responsible for the fact that we are the people we are today. Now they just have to look for traces of plague from several old human finds, and I think they're already doing that. "

Steppe peoples occupy Europeb

Shortly after large parts of the population fall into Europe, mass immigration takes place from the Russian Steps to the East. It is the so-called Yamnaya culture, which suddenly dominates the genetic profile in Europe.
"Based on DNA analyzes, we can see that the new immigrants will fill a lot in the genetic profile in Europe. Much more than you would normally expect. It is another sign that many of the traditional Europeans have died for some reason, "explains Simon Rasmussen.
However, it gives rise to another question, why are the steppe people not dead too?
"In principle, they should also be able to get the disease, but they may have had a different way of living with smaller, nomadic communities that have not been as vulnerable to disease," he says.

Mikkel Heide Schierup backs up that thought.
"In people living in small groups, the plague has bad conditions. It can live a quiet life where a few people get it occasionally, but if it is going to make real damage, it should be where there are many people close together that can infect each other, just like at the great settlements in the Stone Age or in the medieval cities, "he says.

Researcher: The steppe peoples were nomads who also came to Scandinavia
Rune Iversen, an assistant professor at the Saxo Institute at the University of Copenhagen, is currently researching migration patterns in the ages, and he also says that there is a large exchange of cultures in the 3rd. millennium f. also here in Denmark.
�The Yamnaya culture comes in especially to Jutland. Here they introduce, among other things, a single-grave culture. Where you used to have buried people gathered together in passage graves, just like in the tomb where the Swedish woman was found, you now see that people are buried individually, " he says.

He also says that the steppe peoples were very mobile.
"They were not agriculturalists. They were nomads - most likely with cattle. Typically, we do not really find any findings of their settlements because they move around. The problem is that digging in central and western jutland is washed away because the soil is very sandy, "he says.
He is not sure that the lack of findings that the researchers in the study interpret here as a decline in population is necessarily due to the disappearance of humans.
"It may also be that they simply have not left as clear marks. But I find it very exciting to follow the path of the pest, and there is no doubt that the study is valid and well-researched, "he says.

Plague: from harmless stomach pain to deadly epidemic

There is no doubt that the bacteria in the woman's teeth is Yersinia pestis. But it nevertheless differs from the plague we know from later periods.
Over time, the plague bacteria has evolved, and this form of the bacterium is, according to Simon Rasmussen, the 'most original'.
"Genetic profiles are a bit like trees. The branches that are from other findings of Y. pestis, which arise later in history, are further away from the root - ie. the origin of the pest. This means that this bacterium is closer to the very first plague, "says Simon Rasmussen.
The scientists also know that the bacterium has an ancestor named Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, but it gives only a little stomach pain in Simon Rasmussen's own words, and if you are hale and healthy, it'll soon pass."

That's why there are also other prospects in research than finding an explanation for the disappeared population, says Simon Rasmussen.
"We are interested in finding out what causes a bacterium to evolve from being quite harmless to becoming a super killer. That knowledge is also important for today to predict where it can happen again and how we can avoid it. "

Judging from this site (in English) it seems that researchers have thought for a while that plague had a large part in the spread of Indo-European languages into Europe, but what the new findings indicate is that the plague wasn't spread by the steppe peoples.
https://indo-european.eu/2018/12/spread-of-y-pestis-earlier-than-previously-thought-may-have-caused-neolithic-decline/

Grevling fucked around with this message at 08:25 on Dec 11, 2018

# ? Dec 11, 2018 08:18

Crab Dad: Dec 28, 2002; behold i have tempered and refined thee, but not as silver; as CRAB

Would it be so strange if the plague first developed in steppe people and they built up some defenses against it?
The traders then accidentally introduce it into a agrarian community and it then wipes them out due to the concentrated population.
Then the steppes people just kind of occupy the empty space and civilization hits a soft reset of sorts.

# ? Dec 11, 2018 16:28

Grevling: Dec 18, 2016

LingcodKilla posted:

Would it be so strange if the plague first developed in steppe people and they built up some defenses against it?
The traders then accidentally introduce it into a agrarian community and it then wipes them out due to the concentrated population.
Then the steppes people just kind of occupy the empty space and civilization hits a soft reset of sorts.

Apparently that's what many people have been thinking, but the new findings show something else. They're a little hard to parse, but the guy who wrote the piece in the second link says that's what it means and he appears to be a geneticist (among other things) so I assume he knows his stuff.

# ? Dec 11, 2018 16:52

sullat: Jan 9, 2012

underage at the vape shop posted:

Wanna hear what crazy sex laws predated hammurabis

Apparently Urukagina banned polyandry, so that must have been a thing at some point.

# ? Dec 11, 2018 19:38

Hogge Wild: Aug 21, 2012; by FactsAreUseless; Pillbug

# ? Dec 18, 2018 22:35

Jack2142: Jul 17, 2014; Shitposting in Seattle

So I decided to pick up the "Fate of Rome" by Kyle Harper and its been interesting, I think I am about halfway through and looking at climate change as a factor of what is usually portrayed as an ultimately human narrative fascinating.

# ? Dec 18, 2018 22:54

Omnomnomnivore: Nov 14, 2010; I'm swiftly moving toward a solution which pleases nobody! YEAGGH!

Why 536 was �the worst year to be alive�

quote:

Historians have long known that the middle of the sixth century was a dark hour in what used to be called the Dark Ages, but the source of the mysterious clouds has long been a puzzle. Now, an ultraprecise analysis of ice from a Swiss glacier by a team led by McCormick and glaciologist Paul Mayewski at the Climate Change Institute of The University of Maine (UM) in Orono has fingered a culprit. At a workshop at Harvard this week, the team reported that a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere early in 536. Two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged Europe into economic stagnation that lasted until 640, when another signal in the ice�a spike in airborne lead�marks a resurgence of silver mining, as the team reports in Antiquity this week.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 01:18

OctaviusBeaver: Apr 30, 2009; Say what now?

The History of Byzantium podcast reached the end of Basil II's reign and he put out hist list of 5 best and worst Byzantine emperors so far.

worst 5 (1 is the worst):
5. Irene
4. Justinian II
3. Phokas
2. Basiliscus
1. Justin II

best 5 (1 is the best)
5. Romanus Lekapenos
4. Leo III
3. Basil II
2. Heraclius
1. Anastasius

This was just a response to a listener question so he said he didn't put much thought into it but still interesting choices. I knew he thinks that Justinian was overrated but not even putting him in the top 5 was harsh.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 01:28

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

OctaviusBeaver posted:

The History of Byzantium podcast reached the end of Basil II's reign and he put out hist list of 5 best and worst Byzantine emperors so far.

worst 5 (1 is the worst):
5. Irene
4. Justinian II
3. Phokas
2. Basiliscus
1. Justin II

best 5 (1 is the best)
5. Romanus Lekapenos
4. Leo III
3. Basil II
2. Heraclius
1. Anastasius

This was just a response to a listener question so he said he didn't put much thought into it but still interesting choices. I knew he thinks that Justinian was overrated but not even putting him in the top 5 was harsh.

i'd put irene among the best five

# ? Dec 19, 2018 01:55

Jack2142: Jul 17, 2014; Shitposting in Seattle

HEY GUNS posted:

i'd put irene among the best five

Stupid Iconodules.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 02:25

Shimrra Jamaane: Aug 10, 2007; Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.

The dudes been on the year 1025 for like 6 months.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 03:04

Jack2142: Jul 17, 2014; Shitposting in Seattle

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

The dudes been on the year 1025 for like 6 months.

I think a lot of it has to do with him setting up some tours in Istanbul, and then his end of century* (well sort of because Basil's reign spans them) means there was a lot of miscellania stuff top write before picking back up.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 03:38

OctaviusBeaver: Apr 30, 2009; Say what now?

He's making some sort of documentary of Byzantine stuff you can still see in Istanbul. He still puts out episodes every week they just haven't moved the narrative forward in a while.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 04:01

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

I think the next episode is back to the narrative, if not it's the one after. I don't mind at all, this is the period of Roman history I know the least about so the more detail the better.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 04:03

Thwomp: Apr 10, 2003; BA-DUHHH; Grimey Drawer

Plus this is a major turning point for the empire. Best to wrap up everything happening in Roman society now because its going to be downhill and poo poo on for the next several hundred years.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 14:43

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Right, early 900s through mid 1000s is the peak of power for the medieval empire so there's a lot to talk about. Their brief moment of being a truly fearsome power again, all their enemies lying defeated.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 17:28

Shimrra Jamaane: Aug 10, 2007; Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.

So what happened between 1025 and everything going to absolute poo poo in 1077? I know that Basil II painted the map by reconquering Bulgaria and Eastern Anatolia but did that really translate to the Empire being as strong as it looks on a map in 1025? Or were the seeds of the disasters later in the century already planted?

Shimrra Jamaane fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Dec 19, 2018

# ? Dec 19, 2018 18:03

sullat: Jan 9, 2012

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

So what happened between 1025 and everything going to absolute poo poo in 1077? I know that Basil II painted the map by reconquering Bulgaria and Eastern Anatolia but did that really translate to the Empire being as strong as it looks on a map in 1025? Or were the seeds of the disasters later in the century already planted?

Fuckin' nobles, man. Give them an inch and they'll hollow the empire out from within.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 18:58

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

The dudes been on the year 1025 for like 6 months.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 18:59

Thwomp: Apr 10, 2003; BA-DUHHH; Grimey Drawer

It's mainly the infighting that crops up because Basil couldn't be bothered to groom a successor. How many emperors left the succession either unresolved? You'd think with a fair number in your history you'd be mindful of succession. Another one of those "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it" situations.

And then the Turks come in during a period of infighting and crush the Romans.

That, and as the podcast helpfully pointed out in a recent episode, the Roman military was built to fight a foe with fixed locations and a standing army. Not so great against a steppe people on horseback.

It was a one-two punch the empire would struggle (and ultimately fail) to recover from.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 19:00

sullat: Jan 9, 2012

Thwomp posted:

It's mainly the infighting that crops up because Basil couldn't be bothered to groom a successor. How many emperors left the succession either unresolved? You'd think with a fair number in your history you'd be mindful of succession. Another one of those "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it" situations.

At least we got to see such luminaries as "Michael the Forger" and "Michael the Caulker" ascend to the Imperial throne.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 19:07

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

The attitudes involved in seeking, taking, and maintaining ultimate power for a long time are a little opposed to things like sharing power, building up strong, stable institutions, and trying to do the best for your nation rather than yourself.

Just look at all the ones who just had to step up and take down big popular powerful people for fear that they would take power. It's rational for them, but if competence or popularity carries a death sentence, of course it's going to end up with a strongman at the center of everything so that it all collapses to poo poo when he kicks the bucket.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 19:18

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Thwomp posted:

It's mainly the infighting that crops up because Basil couldn't be bothered to groom a successor. How many emperors left the succession either unresolved? You'd think with a fair number in your history you'd be mindful of succession. Another one of those "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it" situations.

Yeah seriously. Set up a loving succession when you're a powerful emperor who can make it stick. Basil II just shrugging it off was idiotic.

Anyway this century of kicking rear end was also partly a confluence of lucky events. The empire had a string of pretty good rulers, the civil strife wasn't that bad, and all of their enemies were settled states with standing armies, aka the type of enemy the Roman military was designed to defeat. The army was taken care of decently, led well, and none of their enemies were coordinated. The days of Islamic unity were long gone and the Romans were able to trounce all their assorted Islamic neighbors and reduce them to tributaries. The Bulgarians had settled down into a state that Basil II could defeat and place under some measure of imperial control.

The Turks were a really tough enemy to deal with at the best of times, they were badass. Also my understanding is Manzikert wasn't actually that bad of a defeat, but the empire was too busy up its own rear end and infighting to deal with it. If there had been better leadership they could've dealt with it. It's not like the Turks immediately took over Anatolia after Manzikert, that's just where historians have placed the beginning of the end with hindsight since it was the first major Turkish victory. It was by no means guaranteed that battle was going to lead to anything. It's not as if the empire hasn't recovered after losing battles plenty of times before.

Also the Normans show up right about the same time as the Turks and start conquering the western reaches of the empire, making even more of a distraction.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 19:57

Imagined: Feb 2, 2007

You guys are thinking about what's best for the country. An autocrat thinks about what's best for themselves. What you see as a successor an autocrat sees a rival. Once you make it clear that Johnny boy here gets the job once you die, it's now in Johnny boy's interests to help you get there. Designating someone your successor is, in a significant way, giving them some of your power and authority.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 20:06

Shimrra Jamaane: Aug 10, 2007; Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.

It�s funny how the very first loving Emperor ran into succession problems and yet the Empire continued to deal with them for another 1400 years.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 20:10

Imagined: Feb 2, 2007

Because the only people you can really trust with that, if anyone, is your own children, and infant mortality and the length of the average reign being what they were, even if you had a son at hand he was usually too young to hold onto power.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 20:14

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Augustus had an unusually clean succession tbh. His favored and backup successors died before him but he was prepared with a backup backup. I can't imagine most other emperors going to those lengths

# ? Dec 19, 2018 20:14

Imagined: Feb 2, 2007

What I was saying earlier is also why so many left it to their deathbed before they designated a successor. It was too dangerous to do so even a day beforehand.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 20:15

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# ? Jun 1, 2024 03:34

skasion: Feb 13, 2012; Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Augustus� succession was clean because his power was so long-lasting and unquestionable that his chosen successor could neither reasonably rebel against him before death, nor reasonably be set aside by anyone else after his death. Most other emperors had nowhere near that level of security.

# ? Dec 19, 2018 20:21

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