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You put any stock into the theory that the volcanic rock used to make the aqueducts slowly leached arsenic into the water, deadening the Romans' taste buds so their desire for spices to remedy that drove some of their conquests. Or have I been watching the cooking channel way too much?
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Jun 13, 2020 14:48
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Scooter_McCabe posted:You put any stock into the theory that the volcanic rock used to make the aqueducts slowly leached arsenic into the water, deadening the Romans' taste buds so their desire for spices to remedy that drove some of their conquests. Or have I been watching the cooking channel way too much? There's no such thing as "watching the cooking channel too much", but I doubt that a bad palette lead to Imperial collapse? To begin with: British cuisine has gotten way spicier since empire but they show no indication of resurgence?
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Jun 13, 2020 14:53
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Scooter_McCabe posted:You put any stock into the theory that the volcanic rock used to make the aqueducts slowly leached arsenic into the water, deadening the Romans' taste buds so their desire for spices to remedy that drove some of their conquests. Or have I been watching the cooking channel way too much? people want spices even if they aren't getting poisoned by their water supply, which they probably weren't tbh, and romans didn't conquer for spices anyway; that's a much later european obsession
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Jun 13, 2020 15:01
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Romans had a really good spice route from the time they conquered Egypt on, from Sri Lanka up through the Red Sea. Their repeated attempts and failures to conquer and hold Mesopotamia were about neutralizing their biggest enemy (and the rep and loot for the general who managed to do it) not economic gain in a trade-political sense.
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Jun 13, 2020 15:07
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See also their repeated attempts to play footsie with the kushan empire
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Jun 13, 2020 15:41
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Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the whole spice-driven european exploration wave partially caused by the decline and fall of the christian Basically all of us jews should've stayed jewish or just made sacrifices to the imperial cult, and then we'd all be roman today, but probably eating way better food than the actual romans.
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Jun 13, 2020 15:43
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the whole spice-driven european exploration wave partially caused by the decline and fall of the christian Don't worry, the uprising in Israel was really irrelevant in the larger scheme of things for the Roman Empire, so what your ancestors did or didn't do wouldn't have changed much.
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Jun 13, 2020 16:06
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the whole spice-driven european exploration wave partially caused by the decline and fall of the christian No. The Ottomans never stopped the spice trade, they just taxed it. Why not make money off your religious enemies? Anyway, the late medieval spice trade mostly went through Alexandria and Beirut not Constantinople. The Ottomans didn’t take direct control of those markets until after the Portuguese were already busy in the Indian Ocean.
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Jun 13, 2020 16:30
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Weren't they bypassing Venetian monopolies rather than the Ottomans?
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Jun 13, 2020 16:35
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the whole spice-driven european exploration wave partially caused by the decline and fall of the christian No, the spice trade went on without interruption. Really, the Portuguese were just trying to compete with the Venetians, who were spice trading all day and really rich for it. They fought for the trade control back-and-forth during the early modern period, until spices fell out of fashion sometime around the 1750s. The Muslims were completely uninterested in cutting off the spice trade, the spice blockade narrative is one of pop history's silliest. If the spice trade is lucrative in Europe, it's definitely also lucrative for the people selling spices to Europe. Spices are also purely a luxury consumer good, they don't give a strategic advantage to its wielders so why would their trade be blockaded?
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Jun 13, 2020 16:50
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:No, the spice trade went on without interruption. Really, the Portuguese were just trying to compete with the Venetians, who were spice trading all day and really rich for it. They fought for the trade control back-and-forth during the early modern period, until spices fell out of fashion sometime around the 1750s. So what your saying is not only must the spice flow but that it did, in fact, continue to flow?
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Jun 13, 2020 17:03
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Scooter_McCabe posted:You put any stock into the theory that the volcanic rock used to make the aqueducts slowly leached arsenic into the water, deadening the Romans' taste buds so their desire for spices to remedy that drove some of their conquests. Or have I been watching the cooking channel way too much? Nope. Terrible Opinions posted:Weren't they bypassing Venetian monopolies rather than the Ottomans? Yep. Though even without the Venetians, I'm sure European traders would have gone looking for their own spices anyway. The Ottomans were still going to charge middleman fees and you'd make more money going to the source and picking them up yourself.
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Jun 13, 2020 17:12
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The lead thing is probably true though because the same thing happened again.
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Jun 13, 2020 17:15
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Grevling posted:The lead thing is probably true though because the same thing happened again. My understanding is that modern testing has indicated that lead contamination due to aqueducts and amphorae was detectable but at levels too low to have a significant effect. In particular, Rome's aqueducts used mineral-heavy water that quickly developed a sediment seal inside the piping and minimizing contact with any lead used in construction. There's some research going on looking at Roman settlement in Vagnari, Italy to see if lead poisoning became an issue in other watersheds with different water content. I'm not sure where they are in their findings though. Kaal fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Jun 13, 2020 |
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Jun 13, 2020 17:54
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The general consensus is there probably was some lead getting into things but not much. The Romans were fully aware lead was toxic, but it was also useful so the risk/reward calculations were done. Lead pipe makes more sense than the lead-based makeups, but hey.
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Jun 13, 2020 18:09
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lead acetate as a sweetener tho
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Jun 13, 2020 18:33
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Tunicate posted:lead acetate as a sweetener tho If Patrick O'Brian can be believed (so, probably) that went on at least into the time of the Napoleonic wars (to adulterate cheap, sour wine).
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Jun 13, 2020 18:36
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Tunicate posted:lead acetate as a sweetener tho Yeah, they knew about it and that it was toxic. People still put known poisons in food to adulterate it today though, no surprise the Romans did.
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Jun 13, 2020 18:37
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I just wanted to make a joke joke about the boomer lead poisoning meme but unfortunately I learned something. 
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Jun 13, 2020 18:50
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:No, the spice trade went on without interruption. Really, the Portuguese were just trying to compete with the Venetians, who were spice trading all day and really rich for it. They fought for the trade control back-and-forth during the early modern period, until spices fell out of fashion sometime around the 1750s. Going off to the East Indies to get spices and junk at the source was a long-term result, but from what I've read, what started the Portuguese on their path was trying to undercut Moroccan prices for slaves from further south in Africa. That and a whole lot of fishing.
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Jun 13, 2020 20:03
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Great literature is always topical: https://twitter.com/GilgameshTweets/status/1271872936924897281
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Jun 13, 2020 22:17
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Grand Fromage posted:Yeah, they knew about it and that it was toxic. People still put known poisons in food to adulterate it today though, no surprise the Romans did. they knew that lead pipes were generally less healthy than terracotta pipes (or at least, tasted worse), I haven't seen evidence that they knew that boiling grape juice in lead vessels produced toxic byproducts (since sources indicate they preferred using lead to copper or bronze vessels for that purpose).
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Jun 14, 2020 00:16
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Tunicate posted:they knew that lead pipes were generally less healthy than terracotta pipes (or at least, tasted worse), I haven't seen evidence that they knew that boiling grape juice in lead vessels produced toxic byproducts (since sources indicate they preferred using lead to copper or bronze vessels for that purpose).
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Jun 14, 2020 00:29
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Grand Fromage posted:Yeah, they knew about it and that it was toxic. People still put known poisons in food to adulterate it today though, no surprise the Romans did. Yeah, since you lived in China your probably talking about the Formula Scandals, but Austria still was adulterating wines until a few decades ago and this guy made at least for me who never heard about this before interesting video on it. https://youtu.be/qhN-o2ame-4 Also for modern times there is the whole theory a few generations had brain damage from leaded gas contamination that lead to the crime waves that have been in continuous decline in the decades since it was banned. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Jun 14, 2020 |
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Jun 14, 2020 04:49
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I think you can find a case like that in every country, I dunno if anyone actually remembers this scandal because I never anyone talk about it but https://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/24/magazine/into-the-mouths-of-babes.html was a big deal. I'm kind of amazed that company even still exists.
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Jun 14, 2020 05:18
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Nessus posted:I imagine the Romans were not aware of the effects of low levels of lead poisoning but were well aware that of the effects of high levels Yeah it would be fairly impossible for them not to have known, if only because they would be able to observe first hand the guys mining and processing it.
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Jun 14, 2020 05:48
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Jack2142 posted:Yeah, since you lived in China your probably talking about the Formula Scandals, but Austria still was adulterating wines until a few decades ago and this guy made at least for me who never heard about this before interesting video on it.
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Jun 14, 2020 06:16
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Nessus posted:Is this where that Simpsons joke about antifreeze in the wine came from? Yes.
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Jun 14, 2020 06:35
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PittTheElder posted:Yeah it would be fairly impossible for them not to have known, if only because they would be able to observe first hand the guys mining and processing it. Would most Romans have seen slaves that served a long time in the mines? Seems like the sort of thing that most of them would consider out of sight out of mind. It seems like every time this thread goes into the "ancient slavery wasn't as bad as 18th century slavery" conversation, it's just offhandedly mentioned that slaves working in mines was a barbaric human grinder.
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Jun 14, 2020 07:16
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Why did Romans consider acting to be such a lovely/shameful job to have? What kind of people ended up becoming actors - poor people with no other choice?
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Jun 14, 2020 07:33
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SlothfulCobra posted:Would most Romans have seen slaves that served a long time in the mines? Seems like the sort of thing that most of them would consider out of sight out of mind. Looking it up, Nicander in 2nd century BCE wrote about it, and Vitruvius spoke in favor of ceramic pipe instead of lead pipe due to reports that water coming out of lead pipes was much less wholesome.
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Jun 14, 2020 07:33
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Badger of Basra posted:Why did Romans consider acting to be such a lovely/shameful job to have? bottoms, essentially
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Jun 14, 2020 08:31
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https://youtu.be/qhN-o2ame-4 Second the recommendation for this video, I didn't know some of the poo poo that was going on (and for how long) even though it dominated the news here for a long time.
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Jun 14, 2020 09:25
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SlothfulCobra posted:Would most Romans have seen slaves that served a long time in the mines? Generally speaking you didn't serve a long time as a slave in the mines.
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Jun 14, 2020 10:26
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How does late republic roman slavery compare to slavery in ottoman times?
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Jun 14, 2020 12:08
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Power Khan posted:How does late republic roman slavery compare to slavery in ottoman times? Romans didn’t do anything like the devshirme and they didn’t use galley slaves, but on the other hand I don’t think the Ottomans had anything like the huge slave farms the Romans did.
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Jun 14, 2020 12:13
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Reformulation: I meant the social aspects. From what I gather, it sounds vaguely familiar in terms of social mobility.
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Jun 14, 2020 13:45
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Jack2142 posted:Yeah, since you lived in China your probably talking about the Formula Scandals, but Austria still was adulterating wines until a few decades ago and this guy made at least for me who never heard about this before interesting video on it. Barbera, an Italian wine grape, used to be very popular until 1985 when Piedmont producers killed over 30 people and blinded more by adding methanol to their wine. People will just do crazy harmful things on a massive scale that are obviously bad. Romans not giving a poo poo about small amounts of lead poisoning in the entire population is completely in character.
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Jun 14, 2020 15:28
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chitoryu12 posted:Barbera, an Italian wine grape, used to be very popular until 1985 when Piedmont producers killed over 30 people and blinded more by adding methanol to their wine. People will just do crazy harmful things on a massive scale that are obviously bad. Romans not giving a poo poo about small amounts of lead poisoning in the entire population is completely in character. I don't think cases of people illicitly adulterating food are a very good analogy here. People really did give a poo poo about this, that's why it was a scandal!
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Jun 14, 2020 16:25
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Badger of Basra posted:Why did Romans consider acting to be such a lovely/shameful job to have? We don't obviously know for sure why becoming an actor made you infamaia. But there is one theory that a lot of the professions that made you that way (gladiator, prostitute, actor) were related to selling your body to someone else. The actor took money in exchange for being told what to do, what to say, how to act...the same way a gladiator or prostitute did. And since, as a profession, you're selling your freedom, you can't be trusted with a lot of the rights of citizenship, like voting or testifying in court.
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Jun 14, 2020 16:35
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