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SlothfulCobra posted:How was there still a major distinction after all Greek Greek territory and most foreign Greek territory had been united under Italian rule? Well, we’re over here and they’re over there... More seriously, the Hellenistic world was “united” only in the sense that its various poleis and principalities were annexed piecemeal by agents of the same state. There was no grassroots movement to unite all the Greek states, just a series of more or less effective tyrannies followed by standard Roman imperial practice of coopting those local elites who could be managed and deposing those who couldn’t. Centuries of local identity were not swept away in a spirit of general brotherhood-as-Romans — if they ever were, it was more likely to be because the Romans deported/enslaved/butchered everyone old enough to have a local identity in a particular locality and replaced them with Italian settlers, and this didn’t happen in Greece and Anatolia because of the strength and long-establishment of local political identities and the extended, relatively non-genocidal process by which the Romans annexed it. e: also it’s worth considering that Plutarch wrote a nasty essay about Herodotus. He didn’t like, march on Halicarnassus with fire and sword. American writers frequently accuse one another of holding political views that misrepresent states or regions because they come from different states or regions — you can still see modern writers grinding axes that historians from a couple centuries (or hell, decades) ago were vilely calumniating their noble ancestors. e2: on that note, a greater time elapsed between the writings of Herodotus and those of Plutarch than between the beginning of anglophone settlement in America and the present day. It’s like writing a savage takedown of idk, Captain John Smith or something skasion fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Sep 13, 2019 |
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Sep 13, 2019 17:49
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SlothfulCobra posted:How was there still a major distinction after all Greek Greek territory and most foreign Greek territory had been united under Italian rule? See: present day United States.
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Sep 13, 2019 17:59
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skasion posted:
Folks do that all the time though. See, e.g., any modern treatment of Columbus.
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Sep 13, 2019 18:01
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lol at thinking the passage of time or death would stop old academics from feuding with eachother
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Sep 13, 2019 18:16
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Folks do that all the time though. See, e.g., any modern treatment of Columbus. Yeah it’s not strictly comparable to moderns’ relation to late medieval/early modern people, which involves a much bigger gap than existed, or than that Plutarch thought existed, between Herodotus and Plutarch. In particular, moderns have an enormously swollen sense of moral progress which didn’t exist whatsoever in the first century AD. My point in bringing it up is just that Plutarch was aware of the historical time and place of Herodotus, which is at the root of his critique; he’s Asiatic and maligns the Achaeans of his day thanks to his philobarbarous ways, but I’m here to tell you that the Greeks of Greece back then were actually good guys who saved civilization from the oriental menace.
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Sep 13, 2019 18:26
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Agean90 posted:lol at thinking the passage of time or death would stop old academics from feuding with eachother Worse, it’s an old academic trashing a popular historian. poo poo, Herodotus lived before there even were academics.
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Sep 13, 2019 18:29
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SlothfulCobra posted:How was there still a major distinction after all Greek Greek territory and most foreign Greek territory had been united under Italian rule? They probably didn’t consider themselves Romans (yet). They were Roman subjects, but most of them weren’t actual citizens. (Paulus of Tarsus being the most famous exception.)
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Sep 13, 2019 22:54
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Squalid posted:huh i always wondered where that father of lies epithet came from. typical that Herodotus got it for some dumb nationalist bs rather than his stories of flying snakes or w/e i'm going to laugh when the march of academic progress continues to vindicate herodotus to the point that everyone has to acknowledge he never wrote a lie in his life
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Sep 13, 2019 23:02
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"buddy, the flying snakes are the real reputable part"
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Sep 13, 2019 23:12
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Is Herodotus an easy/entertaining read today? I tried reading Thucydides and he's boring as hell
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Sep 13, 2019 23:14
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cheetah7071 posted:Is Herodotus an easy/entertaining read today? I tried reading Thucydides and he's boring as hell Thucydides literally says in his introduction “I’m sorry my book isn’t fun and wacky like SOME PEOPLE’S, I just wanted to stick to the facts, posterity will favor me, suck it”
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Sep 13, 2019 23:17
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skasion posted:Thucydides literally says in his introduction “I’m sorry my book isn’t fun and wacky like SOME PEOPLE’S, I just wanted to stick to the facts, posterity will favor me, suck it” yeah he kinda ruled whenever he zoomed out a bit to the big picture but there was only so much I could take of "and then some polis I had never heard of had an inconclusive skirmish with another polis I had never heard of, and this failed to change the status quo of the war in any way whatsoever"
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Sep 13, 2019 23:19
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Thucydides and Herodotus need to be fairly heavily annotated for modern readers imo. They both assume you have a lot of background in the eastern Mediterranean because, I mean, you can read Ancient Greek, so why wouldn’t you? Assuming you can’t in fact read Ancient Greek, Herodotus is still much more fun, but you need to find a decent translation like Waterfield. Some of the older public-domain stuff is just turgid.
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Sep 13, 2019 23:23
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I used the Landmark version of Thucydides after Landmark Caesar was incredible and they had plenty of good footnotes and maps but ultimately Thucydides is just covering the war in more detail than I wanted to hear about it. My plan was to have the next primary source I read be Xenophon since he's always praised as engaging even by modern standards.
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Sep 13, 2019 23:25
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I don't mind Thucydides but The Histories end sort of abruptly. Presumably because he died.
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Sep 13, 2019 23:28
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cheetah7071 posted:I used the Landmark version of Thucydides after Landmark Caesar was incredible and they had plenty of good footnotes and maps but ultimately Thucydides is just covering the war in more detail than I wanted to hear about it. My plan was to have the next primary source I read be Xenophon since he's always praised as engaging even by modern standards. Xenophon I think is more engaging than Herodotus if only because his writing is more focused on a single well defined narrative. I found a lot of chapters of Herodotus kinda boring where he's just going through all the nations of the world and describing their customs or going through mostly fictional descriptions of the lives of Persian Kings. His narrative sections are the best though, like when he describes the Persian invasion of Scythia or the giants of Ethiopia loving with Cambyses messengers
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Sep 13, 2019 23:35
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cheetah7071 posted:I used the Landmark version of Thucydides after Landmark Caesar was incredible and they had plenty of good footnotes and maps but ultimately Thucydides is just covering the war in more detail than I wanted to hear about it. My plan was to have the next primary source I read be Xenophon since he's always praised as engaging even by modern standards. Landmark editions are great great great. I wish they'd get around to finally issuing one of Xenophon's Anabasis.
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Sep 14, 2019 01:14
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Just hit this passage in the book I'm reading (The Beginnings of Rome by T.J. Cornell, published 1995):quote:It is widely believed that the Tarquins ushered in a period of Etruscan rule, and that for a time Rome became an 'Etruscan city'. On this view it was to Etruscans who were responsible for all the political, economic, and cultural changes that Rome underwent during the last century of the monarchy; it was the Etruscans, in short, who made Rome into a city. This Etruscan hypothesis can be found, in one form or another, in virtually every recent book or article on the archaic age of Rome. In the opinion of the present writer, however, it has no warrant either in the written sources or in the archaeological record, and is one of the most pernicious errors currently obscuring the study of archaic Rome. I wanted to make this post before I forgot about it so I haven't read the followup sections where he makes his case yet, but this smells like an academic slapfight that has probably only gotten more intense in the last 25 years. Where's the consensus at now? Is there a consensus? Did additional archaeological finds sway it one way or the other?
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Sep 14, 2019 02:00
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cheetah7071 posted:I used the Landmark version of Thucydides after Landmark Caesar was incredible and they had plenty of good footnotes and maps but ultimately Thucydides is just covering the war in more detail than I wanted to hear about it. My plan was to have the next primary source I read be Xenophon since he's always praised as engaging even by modern standards. Anabasis is a lot of fun, especially the weird bits like quote:then some of the soldiers broke off and ate a shitload of honey, and then got seizures, and the natives were like yeah that happens Or his rant about how useless horses are.
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Sep 14, 2019 02:12
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Tunicate posted:Anabasis is a lot of fun, especially the weird bits like Uh, what? Xenophon was cavalry dude. I thought he wanted more horses so they could chase down those drat peltasts.
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Sep 14, 2019 02:55
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sullat posted:Uh, what? Xenophon was cavalry dude. I thought he wanted more horses so they could chase down those drat peltasts. It's a bit where a Greek general is trying to keep morale up just after Cyrus has died and the mercenaries are realizing that they're not getting a walk. Without Cyrus' allies they had no cav, so they're in the situation where any loss will be a slaughter but if they win they won't be able to capitalize. Sort of a 'we have to be lucky 100 times thwy only have to be lucky once.' Xenophon was indeed a cav dude, but ppinting out how good cav was in that moment a bit defeatist. IIRC the cav sucks speech is basically "well, you're right, if we lose we die, while the cav guys can ride off anytime BUT that just means we're way more incentivised to not lose!'
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Sep 14, 2019 07:41
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Ten thousand horse only equal ten thousand men upon their backs, no more, no less. Did anyone ever die in battle from the bite or kick of a horse? It is the men, the real swordsmen, who do whatever is done in battles. In fact, we, on our stout shanks, are better mounted than those cavalry fellows; there they hang on to their horses' necks in mortal dread, not only of us, but of falling off; while we, well planted upon earth, can deal far heavier blows to our assailants, and aim more steadily at who we will. There is one point, I admit, in which their cavalry have the whip-hand of us; it is safer for them to run away.
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Sep 14, 2019 15:00
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Cataphracts on +500kg horses? Lol, merely hanging on to their horses' necks in mortal dread of falling off
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Sep 15, 2019 12:00
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I dunno about y'all but I fear being kicked by a horse.
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Sep 15, 2019 19:38
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perhaps not THAT ancient, but they found Milton's annotated copy of the First Folio https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...ooks_b-gdnbooks
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Sep 16, 2019 22:57
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in the tradition of dumb rome questions: If Pertinax was respected by the legions--just not the Praetorians--why didn't he flee the city, or announce a grand tour Hadrian-style, or something to get out and into the hands of soldiers that could presumably march in and set the Praetorians straight? Did nobody at the time realize exactly how unstable and greedy they were? Would Pertinax not have been allowed to leave Italy due to some obscure superstition?
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Sep 17, 2019 06:22
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Power Khan posted:Cataphracts on +500kg horses? Lol, merely hanging on to their horses' necks in mortal dread of falling off Those ones are probably more keen on not falling off seeing as dismounted heavily armored cavalry will easily get clowned by a peasant mob. They even fastened their armor to their horses to prevent just that. A lighter mounted dude can probably just leg it if he gets dismounted and survives the fall/getting up.
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Sep 17, 2019 08:24
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Mister Olympus posted:in the tradition of dumb rome questions: Probably would have looked too much like running away and therefore been too serious a blow to his prestige. At this point Rome was still the political center of the empire in a way that wouldn’t be true even a generation later. An emperor was supposed to dominate the senate and rule from the city whenever he wasn’t on campaign. Also, remember what imperator actually means: it’s not the title they give to generals that run away. Had he fled to one of the great senatorial generals like Severus or Pescennius, it’s quite possible, even likely that they would have just killed him and claimed the purple. Also there was a proud Roman tradition of the bold senatorial general confronting his mutinous troops and cowing them with fearless disdain. Caesar had done this during his North African campaign, Augustus had done something similar in Sicily which essentially won him control of Lepidus’ whole army, there are probably other good examples. Pertinax took a big chance with his life and lost, but it was the kind of chance an emperor might well take. skasion fucked around with this message at 12:07 on Sep 17, 2019 |
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Sep 17, 2019 12:01
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skasion posted:Probably would have looked too much like running away and therefore been too serious a blow to his prestige. At this point Rome was still the political center of the empire in a way that wouldn’t be true even a generation later. An emperor was supposed to dominate the senate and rule from the city whenever he wasn’t on campaign. Also, remember what imperator actually means: it’s not the title they give to generals that run away. Had he fled to one of the great senatorial generals like Severus or Pescennius, it’s quite possible, even likely that they would have just killed him and claimed the purple. According to wikipedia, he'd already tried it once in Britain and got stabbed and left for dead. So maybe he shouldn't have been so reliant on his imposing disdain?
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Sep 17, 2019 17:11
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sullat posted:According to wikipedia, he'd already tried it once in Britain and got stabbed and left for dead. So maybe he shouldn't have been so reliant on his imposing disdain? Dio posted:he behaved in a manner that one will call noble, or senseless, or whatever one pleases.
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Sep 17, 2019 17:31
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holy poo poo that’s a great line
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Sep 17, 2019 17:44
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Cassius Dio tells us that provincial governors who received messengers bearing the news of Commodus' death threw those messengers in jail just in case it was some kind of hosed up test to see if you weren't loyal. That's some very standard behavior for scared people under the rule of a ruthless dictator up to the present.
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Sep 18, 2019 04:07
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there's probably a bit of hindsight is 20/20 here. it's just interesting why the whole "an augustus and a caesar" thing occurred to septimius as an easy method of consolidating support, but it wouldn't have occurred to pertinax to offer that sort of deal to septimius or to pescennius in exchange for saving him from the praetorians
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Sep 18, 2019 05:29
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Mister Olympus posted:there's probably a bit of hindsight is 20/20 here. it's just interesting why the whole "an augustus and a caesar" thing occurred to septimius as an easy method of consolidating support, but it wouldn't have occurred to pertinax to offer that sort of deal to septimius or to pescennius in exchange for saving him from the praetorians I wouldn't be surprised if Pertinax wasn't assassinated so quickly, his friend Severus would have ended up a Caesar or at least very high up.
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Sep 18, 2019 05:46
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I have two broad questions: 1. How democratic was Rome really? I understand that it is credited as being a democracy, but I wonder how true that is. 2. How far ahead technologically was Rome over the world? IIRC the Medieval era was actually technologically inferior to Rome with the world not catching up after its demise until the 1700s, or so I've heard.
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Sep 18, 2019 17:56
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punk rebel ecks posted:I have two broad questions: Both are extremely fuzzy questions but I'll do my best When the Roman republic was functioning, there were two forms of public vote. One gave extra weight to rich people, by explicit design, because votes were explicitly weighted by the amount you were expected to contribute to the war effort. The other public assembly had each geographic region count equally but tou had to be physically present in Rome to vote, so the rural regions would have tiny turnout and could easily be dominated by the voices of rural landowners who could afford to make the journey. Either of these assemblies could ratify any piece of legislation and the person bringing it forward got to choose which, so it was easy to game and these were basically rubber stamps for legislation. The real vote happened in the senate, which was comprised of the 300 or so men who had held public office before and thus was extremely weighted towards being a bunch of old aristocrats. The elections for public office which granted membership in the Senate (which wasnt all of them) were held by the assembly explicitly weighted by wealth, as I recall and many of the offices were at various points expressly limited to aristocrats, though those limitations got chipped away at over time Aristocratic domination was so strong that there was explicitly an office that they were forbidden to hold, intended to be used as a counterweight. This office did not grant membership in the senate. So my tl;dr answer is that yes, just about everything was up to a vote, but things were designed so the only voices that mattered were wealthy voices, with one exception. Whether you think that counts as a democracy or not is your call. As for technological advancement, I'll let someone else who knows better answer but I believe the short answer is "much was forgotten but also new things were invented so its unclear and asking whether one society is more advanced than another is misleading"
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Sep 18, 2019 18:13
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cheetah7071 posted:Aristocratic domination was so strong that there was explicitly an office that they were forbidden to hold, intended to be used as a counterweight. This office did not grant membership in the senate. This is broadly a correct characterization, with the exception that the plebeian tribunes were mostly also enormously wealthy and aristocrats in every sense that mattered — they just weren’t incredibly blue-blooded “I can trace my family back 500 years to before the republic” types. At least one historian has opined that the late empire, with its system of soldiers pressuring their generals into seizing the throne by force, was more democratic than the republic ever was.
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Sep 18, 2019 18:27
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Ah yes, the old system of "one sword, one vote".
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Sep 18, 2019 18:38
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sullat posted:Ah yes, the old system of "one sword, one vote". It was worse than that. Citizen were sorted into categories by property ownership and each categorie got a set, specified number of votes. The top category, probably 1% or so of the population, got about a third of the votes. The bottom category, probably 50%+ of the population, got 1 vote, out of 180 or so
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Sep 18, 2019 18:48
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punk rebel ecks posted:I have two broad questions: Rome was never a democracy and would have been offended at the implication. Rome is where we derive the modern idea of a republic (though, the Roman concept was quite different). During the Republican period, Roman government offices were apportioned based on votes. There were multiple parts of government and voting operated differently in each. It's pretty complicated and changes throughout the period, but in very simplified form: The Senate operated on majority vote. One vote per senator. Senate votes were taken to appoint various offices as well as on legislation. You did not become a senator through election, though some senators were appointed from magistrates who themselves had been elected previously, so there's a very indirect way to be elected to the senate through that. Those magistrates were elected by the people, generally. These are the positions you see the election posters in Pompeii about and hear stories of them lavishing money on the public to buy their votes. An example of an elected magistrate is the aedile, which was responsible for maintenance of roads and other public infrastructure in an area. Plebeians had two representative bodies sort of nested within one another, the tribal assembly and plebeian council. These were elected by tribe. Romans were divided into 35 tribes (tribe here is just a term and means nothing about family/clan/whatever relations), four for Rome and 31 rural ones. They voted in a set order and each tribe got a single collective vote which was theoretically decided on by the tribe members. The set order went from urban to more and more rural, and was kept that way to disenfranchise the poorest because nothing changes. But the plebs as a whole had a great deal of power. There was also a centuriate voting assembly, where each century in the army would get a single vote. All of these elected bodies had different responsibilities and could block acts from other ones. Ultimately, yes, male Roman citizens got to vote on lots of stuff. How much their vote counted varied widely. It's not very democratic based on modern ideals but for the period, it's certainly no authoritarian state. And real universal suffrage hasn't existed for very long, the Roman state wasn't that much different than the US in like 1800. Technology, you have to specify what you're talking about. In some ways Romans had superior technology to medieval people, in others they did not. You can't just make one blanket statement there. An example of Roman superiority would be medicine. Roman medical understanding and the ability to treat wounds or conduct major surgery was not surpassed until the 1800s. Any time prior to the discovery of antiseptics (and the Romans had a vague concept of them too), you're likely better off with a Roman doctor than anyone else in the world. There are specific subsets of this like anatomy where the Roman understanding was very good but then surpassed in the Renaissance, but I'd still take the Roman surgeon if I need something done. An example of inferiority would be metallurgy. Romans had access to some decent steel for the era, but even at the time it was inferior to imported steel and was trash compared to what high medieval arms and armor were made of. There's other specific inventions like windmills that the Romans lacked. And improvements on extant technologies like the English longbow which would utterly trash anything the Romans were using.
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