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That did happen to William the Conqueror. Everyone who was at his deathbed scattered to take care of their own affairs and the servants grabbed whatever they could carry, leaving the body naked on the floor of an empty room. It took so long to get everything settled and make arrangements for burial that the corpse had noticeably decomposed and was now bloated with gases. The sarcophagus was made too short, they tried to fit him anyway, and the body burst and released a godawful stench into the room.
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Apr 2, 2020 02:15
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The Lone Badger posted:I have read that the romans had access to a herbal contraceptive in the form of silphium, until they accidentally drove it extinct. Is this bullshit? If not, why was exposure neccesary to much of a degree? Romans used the term “silphium” or “laserpicium” pretty nonspecifically (as with a great many other biological terms that in modern times are quite specific). The story about it being wiped out comes from Pliny. He says that the good stuff used to come from Cyrene in Africa, but that it has been overgrazed to death by sheep, not made extinct to sell as medicine (he doesn’t mention its supposed abortifacient quality at all). Nowadays, Pliny says, you can only get crappy laserpicium from the east instead. Here’s the passage from Natural History if you want to read.
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Apr 2, 2020 02:47
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The Lone Badger posted:I have read that the romans had access to a herbal contraceptive in the form of silphium, until they accidentally drove it extinct. Is this bullshit? If not, why was exposure neccesary to much of a degree? That's a theory about its extinction, but there are others. And also, even if you have an abortifacient, it's not always safe, it doesn't always work, not everybody has access to it, and, in a situation like the ancient Romans, isn't going to stop infanticide/abandonment of people with birth defects or a daughter if the father wanted a boy.
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Apr 2, 2020 02:52
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Arglebargle III posted:That as Qin Shi Huangdi. Seems historically accurate that he was not interred in his tomb until about nine months after his death but I don't know if that means his corpse was rotting above ground. My recollection is that he died while he was touring the provinces. So the officials with him kept it secret so they could make it back to the capital, get rid of the current crown prince, appoint loyalists to important positions, and then announce that the emperor was dead. Although that may be apocryphal.
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Apr 2, 2020 05:10
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Gibbon challenged it on the grounds that the Imperial household would've had aromatics to hide the smell. I question how well whatever aromatics the conspirators might hypothetically have had would cover a sufficiently decayed corpse. It's such a bizarre, ridiculous incident in a period where emperors were regularly hacked to bits by their own troops (and it's not taken solely from the Historia Augusta) that I can't bring myself to be skeptical of it. if you remove the story about his death then numerian becomes a complete historical nonentity. we should just give him credit for being the rotting emperor regardless anyway it's not like you can't think of reasons why someone would want to cover up his death for a short time. his father, the previous emperor, had literally just died less than a year ago of, uh, "being struck by lightning" and then numerian comes down with a sudden case of the deads too - somebody, or more than one somebody, was clearly up to something. (it was diocletian  )covering up the manner of death by letting rot destroy evidence of poison? trying to wait until the army caravan had reached a specific city before revealing the corpse so as to obtain some kind of political advantage? sheer panic from the fact that the imperial household had just let two emperors die of assassination? there are any number of motivations for pretending that everything is just fine when the emperor keels over on the road. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Apr 2, 2020 |
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Apr 2, 2020 07:38
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Arglebargle III posted:That as Qin Shi Huangdi. Seems historically accurate that he was not interred in his tomb until about nine months after his death but I don't know if that means his corpse was rotting above ground. Supposedly, that happenee to Duke Huan of Qi from the warring states period. So far as can be believed I guess. Guy died and his court started infighting and forgot about his corpse until it was rotting and maggot-infested.
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Apr 2, 2020 08:18
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Epicurius posted:That's a theory about its extinction, but there are others. And also, even if you have an abortifacient, it's not always safe, it doesn't always work, not everybody has access to it, and, in a situation like the ancient Romans, isn't going to stop infanticide/abandonment of people with birth defects or a daughter if the father wanted a boy. I'm curious, do we have evidence of female children being abandoned because of their apparent sex in the ancient world? I know stuff like that has been endemic in some places in the last 500 years, and the Greeks and Romans were nothing if not patriarchal, but gender roles were still pretty different back then. Were dowries a big thing? I know that has been a factor in, uh, "selecting" male children so you don't bankrupt yourself/your family.l in the modern era.
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Apr 2, 2020 22:50
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FishFood posted:I'm curious, do we have evidence of female children being abandoned because of their apparent sex in the ancient world? I know stuff like that has been endemic in some places in the last 500 years, and the Greeks and Romans were nothing if not patriarchal, but gender roles were still pretty different back then. Were dowries a big thing? I know that has been a factor in, uh, "selecting" male children so you don't bankrupt yourself/your family.l in the modern era. This article suggests there's not, actually. https://www.livescience.com/42834-ancient-roman-infanticide.html It says the only documentary evidence that it happened was a letter from a soldier to his pregnant wife telling her to only bother keeping the baby if it was a boy.
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Apr 2, 2020 23:02
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So I was walking through the freezing rain downtown today and I got to wondering. Do we have any evidence of facemasks being worn by legionnaires to protect them from the cold. It was miserable walking through the weather for an hour I can't imagine the Romans hadn't found a way to plan for sudden bad weather on a campaign.
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Apr 3, 2020 01:08
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Gaius Marius posted:So I was walking through the freezing rain downtown today and I got to wondering. Do we have any evidence of facemasks being worn by legionnaires to protect them from the cold. It was miserable walking through the weather for an hour I can't imagine the Romans hadn't found a way to plan for sudden bad weather on a campaign. The Romans issued the focale, a wool or linen scarf to protect against chafing of the armor, which could theoretically be worn as an improvised face mask if necessary.
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Apr 3, 2020 01:19
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The only cold weather gear I can remember an explicit written reference to is socks, but I'm sure legionaries posted in cold places figured out the idea of scarves and gloves and such.
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Apr 3, 2020 01:20
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Gaius Marius posted:So I was walking through the freezing rain downtown today and I got to wondering. Do we have any evidence of facemasks being worn by legionnaires to protect them from the cold. It was miserable walking through the weather for an hour I can't imagine the Romans hadn't found a way to plan for sudden bad weather on a campaign. Legionaries all wore a focale (scarf/neckerchief) to prevent their armor from chafing. I can’t think offhand of a mention of it being used to cover the face, but I’m sure it happened.
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Apr 3, 2020 01:20
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Gaius Marius posted:So I was walking through the freezing rain downtown today and I got to wondering. Do we have any evidence of facemasks being worn by legionnaires to protect them from the cold. It was miserable walking through the weather for an hour I can't imagine the Romans hadn't found a way to plan for sudden bad weather on a campaign. Romans had a variety of cold weather clothing including heavy cloaks with hoods, scarfs, brimmed hats, leg wraps, boots, etc. The ones that spent time in colder regions like Germanica tended to wear trousers and multiple long sleeved tunics. http://www.romanarmy.net/coldweather.shtml
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Apr 3, 2020 01:24
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skasion posted:Legionaries all wore a focale (scarf/neckerchief) to prevent their armor from chafing. I can’t think offhand of a mention of it being used to cover the face, but I’m sure it happened.
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Apr 3, 2020 01:37
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HEY GUNS posted:is that the scarf that is represented in byzantine icons of soldiers, or is that a later development Got a picture handy? It could be but I don’t have great knowledge of Byzantine art to say for sure Here’s a pic from Trajan’s column where almost everyone is wearing focalia 
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Apr 3, 2020 01:57
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skasion posted:Got a picture handy? It could be but I don’t have great knowledge of Byzantine art to say for sure when i was looking for this all i found in period sources were capes, cloaks, and hats. my conclusion is the neck scarf i saw was probably a modern artist attempting to make it look like a shemagh, which future art historians will probably love
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Apr 3, 2020 02:25
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My roommate apparently stole a copy of Ecce Romani I from his high school and it's proving a great source of wisdom here during the end of days. Here's the passage where we learn the latin for "come down from there, Sextus, you douchebag" 
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Apr 3, 2020 19:12
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classic Sextus.
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Apr 3, 2020 19:42
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did/do other cultures number their children like the Romans did? also, did the Romans reuse names like I think Victorian culture at the very least sometimes did when the first kid died?
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Apr 3, 2020 19:45
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oystertoadfish posted:did/do other cultures number their children like the Romans did? also, did the Romans reuse names like I think Victorian culture at the very least sometimes did when the first kid died? Technically, all female children had the same name as their sisters, at least in some periods.
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Apr 3, 2020 20:08
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It is the convention in Bali, Indonesia to have a birth-order name and personal name. The most common are: First born: Wayan or Putu Second: Made, Kadek Third: Nyoman, Komang Fourth: Ketut These names are for either gender. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of Wayans and Putus and not as many Ketuts. I’m sure other cultures have names based on birth order as well. The Japanese name Ichiro most commonly means “first son”.
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Apr 3, 2020 20:10
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By the way, I read an article somewhere or other about the origin of names like Quintus that argued that they at least originally referred to birth month rather than birth order, which is why there were no Romans named Quartus. Edit: here: http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2018/04/why-no-romans-named-quartus.html
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Apr 3, 2020 20:14
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Kevin DuBrow posted:I’m sure other cultures have names based on birth order as well. The Japanese name Ichiro most commonly means “first son”. Japanese also uses Taro, Jiro & Saburo for first, second and third sons
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Apr 3, 2020 20:15
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oystertoadfish posted:did/do other cultures number their children like the Romans did? In Korea I had triplet girls at my school named First, Second, and Third.
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Apr 3, 2020 23:04
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Grand Fromage posted:In Korea I had triplet girls at my school named First, Second, and Third. That feels really sad to me although I guess that solves the who is oldest argument.
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Apr 3, 2020 23:23
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Reminder- Get your 5 FREE OSPREY BOOKS HERE. It took a week for the order to get processed, the first week took a few minutes, so you might need to be patient. No ancient history ones this week though.
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Apr 4, 2020 01:46
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:My roommate apparently stole a copy of Ecce Romani I from his high school and it's proving a great source of wisdom here during the end of days. Oh hey, it's the textbooks we used in 7th and 8th grade Latin. That takes me back. Sextus was basically Roman Goofus.
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Apr 4, 2020 03:42
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KiteAuraan posted:Oh hey, it's the textbooks we used in 7th and 8th grade Latin. That takes me back. Sextus was basically Roman Goofus. i don't remember much latin anymore but i definitely still remember Sextus was a dipshit
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Apr 4, 2020 05:08
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Jack2142 posted:That feels really sad to me although I guess that solves the who is oldest argument. This discussion reminds me of something I read once, don't know if it's actually true: a guy was saving a name for a hoped-for son and named all of his daughters number-names. He gave up when reaching Decima.
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Apr 4, 2020 06:41
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skasion posted:Japanese also uses Taro, Jiro & Saburo for first, second and third sons This is an anachronism, the only ppl who do this anymore belong to weird nationalist groups.
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Apr 4, 2020 12:06
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Squalid posted:i don't remember much latin anymore but i definitely still remember Sextus was a dipshit I remember that Gaius was an rear end. WTF, there are sequels. I never knew.
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Apr 4, 2020 12:25
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Stringent posted:This is an anachronism, the only ppl who do this anymore belong to weird nationalist groups.
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Apr 4, 2020 22:45
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Nessus posted:Are those names actually out of circulation now, like how you don't see many Adolfs or Benitos? Or are they just applied without concern to the birth orders etc.? They're not like, associated with war criminals, they're just dated. Grandparent names, like Otis or Mauve.
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Apr 5, 2020 04:18
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Apr 5, 2020 04:23
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It took me a minute to figure out the punchline and there's a litany of ways that this joke doesn't work.
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Apr 5, 2020 04:31
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Anyone who already hasn't read or listened to it, should check out Caesar's commentaries on the Gallic Wars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtO1uKKwK8Y It sounds like a current news report you'd hear on AM radio, yet its thousands of years old. Even though it's propaganda, and it's all about how drat noble Caesar is, it still takes you deep into what the poo poo was like.
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Apr 5, 2020 04:39
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What do you all think of Emperor Julian? I learned about him in the course of my study of Neoplatonism and what a fascinating figure he was. How our world might have been different if he hadn't died so soon. He became sort of a Romantic hero in the 19th Century when the yoke of Christianity was being thrown off.
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Apr 5, 2020 05:26
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NikkolasKing posted:What do you all think of Emperor Julian? I mean the battle of Strasbourg shows he was an excellent general, and his successful rebellion shows he was politically cagey too, even if he kinda won by default when his rival died. Like a lot of Romans he fell victim to Alexander the Great syndrome and just had to wander off into Persia to die pointlessly, but at least he didn't get his entire army destroyed with him. Personally I'm doubtful he could have rolled back the march of Christianity long term, but who knows. He wasn't Emperor long enough for us to really know how committed really was to his religious projects, or how much push back he was apt to receive. Of course since he died in his early thirties he could have potentially had decades to reshape the Empire's religious life, but trying to guess the long term implications of him never getting jabbed through the liver quickly gets so speculative that there's just not much you can say about the history. Maybe a good subject for historical fiction tho, imo.
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Apr 5, 2020 05:44
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Nessus posted:Are those names actually out of circulation now, like how you don't see many Adolfs or Benitos? Or are they just applied without concern to the birth orders etc.? Taro is still pretty common, and Jiro is still hanging in there, but Saburo is pretty rare for anyone under 70.
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Apr 5, 2020 09:01
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Huh, just realised that the three sons in Kurosawa's Ran are Taro, Jiro and Saburo. Duh.
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Apr 5, 2020 09:46
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