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Epicurius posted:I took a classical and medieval political theory class in college, and the professor started the class with a great demonstration. First day, she walked in, and none of us were paying a lot of attention. She then had each of us write a paragraph describing how she walked in and what she did. Then, after she collected the papers, she just started throwing them out, one by one, saying "fire in the monastery, city sacked, mice ate the manuscript, and so on, until she had two pieces of paper left, neither of which agreed with each other and neither of which were accurate as to what she had actually done. That's amazing, I would follow her into battle.
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Jul 24, 2020 20:27
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Yeah, Perry's whole thing was going out of the way to force Japan to stop trying to pretend the rest of the world didn't exist, and well, it worked.
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Jul 24, 2020 20:55
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Qing China in the 19th century was a whole thing and its problems were definitely not from a lack of internecine conflict. Frankly Europe's role in the collapse of the Qing Empire was mostly economic. Territorial concessions and foreign military expeditions into the interior were embarrassing and costly for the regime but they were just a few chapters in the long saga of political, social, and economic upheaval in 19th century China. If some battles had gone differently we could easily be talking now about the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1852. China's domestic political situation was a disaster even without European military intervention.
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Jul 24, 2020 21:25
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Yeah the Europeans were a fairly minor push factor on an already tottering and decaying empire. The Qing might've lasted longer without that, but the rot was well in place before Europeans showed up in force. Would've been interesting to see what replaced the Qing without that external threat though. A new monarchy, the CCP again, the republic?
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Jul 24, 2020 21:32
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China becomes North North Vietnam
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Jul 24, 2020 21:34
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Grand Fromage posted:Yeah the Europeans were a fairly minor push factor on an already tottering and decaying empire. The Qing might've lasted longer without that, but the rot was well in place before Europeans showed up in force. Would've been interesting to see what replaced the Qing without that external threat though. A new monarchy, the CCP again, the republic? An alt-history where the Taiping rebellion wins, and they spend the next century exporting Christo-socialist revolution abroad. 
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Jul 24, 2020 22:16
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Since y’all were talking about pederasty on the last page: 1) in the classical period (sorry for the broad overgeneralization) I understand that homosexual relationships were common/accepted when one man was older and one was younger, or still a teen even. How common/accepted were homosexual relationships between men of the same age? 2) when did homosexuality gain the stigma it had/has in western society? I was reading John Chrysostom’s Wikipedia page which implied he had a lot to do with it but I imagine that’s not the whole story.
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Jul 24, 2020 22:50
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Badger of Basra posted:Since y’all were talking about pederasty on the last page: 1) The general Roman attitude was that a man penetrating another person, male or female, was good and cool, but an adult male allowing himself to be penetrated was shameful. But perhaps by "the classical period" you mean classical-era Greece in the strict sense (a period of only 160 or so years). I think that attitudes varied by city-state, but in general I don't think a sexual relationship between men of the same age was taboo, just unusual. Though I believe that to be a male prostitute was still considered shameful. 2) There was definitely some ambivalence about it even before the rise of Christianity. I think there's a passage in Philo of Alexandria's writings that discusses the Jewish law's condemnation of homosexuality in a way that implies that many Greek readers would be sympathetic to the Jewish position. And it's worth noting that positive views of homosexuality in the ancient world generally involve male homosexuality. There are certainly pro-lesbian writings from antiquity; Sappho is of course the best known, but there are also occasional approving comments from male writers (e.g., Plutarch's claim that "the best Spartan women loved girls"). But the general attitude of male writers in Roman times, at least, is that lesbianism (or perhaps I should say tribadism, to avoid anachronism) is fundamentally ridiculous because there's no penis involved. Lots of jokes about how tribades must penetrate each other with comically oversized clitorises. There wasn't any legal persecution of lesbians back then, just ridicule, though I imagine there were constraints on them due to the general patriarchal structure of society; for instance, an upper-class girl was likely to get married off to a man and wouldn't have much say in the matter in practice. There was a poorly-documented Roman law called the Lex Scantinia that made certain homosexual acts involving males a crime, although what exactly that included is unclear; possibly it only banned the rape of freeborn males. Cicero's letters suggest that the law's scope was broader than that, but that the Lex Scantinia in his day was mainly a weapon people tried to use against their political opponents, rather than a meaningful regulation of everyday behavior. In any case, it seems to have gone almost completely unenforced in the Imperial period until the time of Domitian. Someone else can probably pick up the story from there.
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Jul 24, 2020 23:40
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Fly Molo posted:An alt-history where the Taiping rebellion wins, and they spend the next century exporting Christo-socialist revolution abroad. [Desire to know more increases]
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Jul 25, 2020 00:11
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Like so many weird Christian cults they were extremely anti sex so boo
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Jul 25, 2020 00:19
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Arglebargle III posted:Like so many weird Christian cults they were extremely anti sex so boo They thought the world was ending. It’s not dissimilar to people not wanting to have kids right now.
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Jul 25, 2020 00:23
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Schadenboner posted:[Desire to know more increases] The Taipings are super interesting. The classic double feature is God's Chinese Son by Jonathan Spence and Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen Platt.
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Jul 25, 2020 00:25
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Arglebargle III posted:Like so many weird Christian cults they were extremely anti sex so boo Only for their followers, the leaders all had multiple wives and concubines, IIRC.
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Jul 25, 2020 00:38
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Like, I try to avoid reading too much into even what history is written into the various Flashmans but the Taiping one was interesting.
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Jul 25, 2020 00:40
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I always got the sense that any powerful family that sought to maintain its power through hereditary means would get extremely frustrated at heirs that wouldn't go and create their own heirs.Dalael posted:Then one day, over 100 years later, us dirty Canadians invade the US and manage to conquer the entirety of the Eastern US and keep it. Does that mean anyone remaining on the west coast are no longer Americans? No. Is this after the Canadians had become part of American politics for multiple generations and only overthrew the vice president with the help of Californian support, and even long after the fact, styled themselves as presidents themselves? And then what are the Eastern Americans supposed to do when they have to start reconstructing their own administrative structure out of the remains of the US government and need finagle a premise uniting the whole system after the Californian rump bogarted the entire continental identity but also refuses to return New York's calls? You're darn right they'll proclaim another president for pragmatic reasons and barter with warlords, offering them legitimacy over their lands and titles, even if they conquered them from California. Maybe they'll send an expedition to help against the encroaching Mexican Empire, but it'll be sidetracked by a series of personal interests and a relatively short-lived conquest of Texas as some kind of tourism gone awry. And then Japan proclaims itself the third America after accepting the Californian refugees when the invincible walls of San Francisco are finally breached, but also British Columbia has somehow become culturally dominated by East Coasters and becomes known as Nyarkia. There's also a brief period when most of Southern California has fallen to Mexican domination that would also itself go independent and call itself Estados Unidos, but I don't know where that fits in.
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Jul 25, 2020 01:09
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SlothfulCobra posted:I always got the sense that any powerful family that sought to maintain its power through hereditary means would get extremely frustrated at heirs that wouldn't go and create their own heirs. I liked the sequel to A Canticle for Leibowitz, too!
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Jul 25, 2020 01:13
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SlothfulCobra posted:And then Japan proclaims itself the third America after accepting the Californian refugees when the invincible walls of San Francisco are finally breached, but also British Columbia has somehow become culturally dominated by East Coasters and becomes known as Nyarkia. I get the analogy up till after the fall of Constantinople, can you spell it out please 
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Jul 25, 2020 05:20
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I spent 25 years reading and loving alternate histories and now I loving despise them. Counterfactuals are stupid.
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Jul 25, 2020 05:23
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The reasons are A: So many things hinge on events that were unrecorded. Somebody choosing to go to the bathroom at a different time might have changed history more than your big event of divergence. B: Once you get off the track of "known" history, which in itself is so full of unknown stuff and argued over details that it is barely known, literally anything can happen. Even the most realistic alternate history is fantasy bullshit C: Most alternate histories are just authors pushing their views on what should have happened, or certain kind of readers getting to hear what they want to hear. It's wish fulfillment. Lastly, if it's an alternate history that doesn't involve aliens or portals or something, it always clothes itself in a bullshit layer of seriousness. Alternate history is Serious Fiction for Serious People. gently caress you!
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Jul 25, 2020 05:30
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Kevin DuBrow posted:I get the analogy up till after the fall of Constantinople, can you spell it out please Nyarkia is Romania, Estados Unidos is the Sultanate of Rum.
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Jul 25, 2020 06:13
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You forgot Canada fracturing into individual states but keeping together in a very complicated structure, losing nearly all the east coast but keeping a sliver of Maine and Vermont and calling this new body "The True United States under god" because the host of SNL agreed they were the real United States.
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Jul 25, 2020 07:16
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:You forgot Canada fracturing into individual states but keeping together in a very complicated structure, losing nearly all the east coast but keeping a sliver of Maine and Vermont and calling this new body "The True United States under god" because the host of SNL agreed they were the real United States. You say this but it just sounds more plausible
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Jul 25, 2020 08:35
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:and calling this new body "The True United States under god" because the host of SNL agreed they were the real United States. ...what are gradiators? That's that thing where you take 2020 graduates who didn't get a formal ceremony, clear the dance floor and make them fight an ostrich.
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Jul 25, 2020 09:26
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Can I befriend the ostrich instead? Also, this was a couple pages back, but I'd be interested to hear more about the "Romans made Sparta into a theme park" thing.
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Jul 25, 2020 10:13
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Silver2195 posted:The current Emperor has outright said that the Japanese imperial family is probably Korean if you trace them far back enough, IIRC. Obviously some far-right types are upset about any suggestion that there isn't a continuous line of Emperors going back to Amaterasu herself, and the Imperial Household Agency probably doesn't like to talk about the break in the line of succession, but there isn't the kind of pressure on scholarship that there is in China. The Imperial Household Agency has specifically tried to prevent archeological excavations at imperial burial mounds in the past, by claiming that it's akin to desecration. Of course, the only way to know whether or not those big mounds are actually the grave sites of emperors is to excavate them, which you can't do because it's desecration. They've never physically wanted for anything, so they're privileged in that regard, but it does seem like being a Japanese royal really loving sucks.
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Jul 25, 2020 10:16
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Japan is not so much a democracy, as an actual bureaucracy, where policies and decisions are made by a vast unelected and unaccountable civil service. The closest thing to a deep state. The LDP governs at their sufferance, and the DJP could never govern properly due to their lack of support. The IHA is one of the oldest such bureaucracies, and their irrelevance and obsolescence causes them to exert maximal control on the lives of the royal family. The IHA makes decisions to empower the IHA, no more, no less.
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Jul 25, 2020 11:06
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Scarodactyl posted:Rome's hottest successor state is Trizantium. Located in the subbasement of Turkey's last operational bathhouse, this state has everything: triumvirates, Theban legions, Cato the Younger. And hang around later for the gradiators! I did not expect a Stefon bit in this thread, but 
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Jul 25, 2020 13:54
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SerialKilldeer posted:Can I befriend the ostrich instead? So basically, if you want a brief history of Sparta after the Peloponesian War thing, after they won, they threw their weight around a lot and upset a lot of people. After a bunch of unnecessary conflicts and interventions, they ultimately declared war against Thebes, and lost really badly at the battle of Leuctra, the helots of Messenia, with the help of the Thebans, revolted and set up their own state, and Sparta ended up, while still a fairly important regional power, not anywhere near as important as it was. Philip of Macedon then beat them pretty badly and their power was weakened even further. When Rome started expanding into Greece, they allied with Rome, and didn't participate in the alliance of Greek states that fought the Romans, so to reward them, after Rome took over Greece, the Spartans kept their status as a free city that could govern itself, and the people there had a bunch of civil rights that some of the conquered cities did't get. While all this was happening, the "classical Spartan" culture was breaking down. There weren't enough Spartaiates left anymore to really keep it up, and the helots kept successfully revolting. The Perioeci gradually accumulated more and more rights, The agoge was abolished, and then brought back, and then abolished again, and so on. After the Romans came along, the agoge was reinstated, but it was different from the original, and a lot less severe. It started at 14 instead of 7, the kids were better fed and a lot of the more brutal and nastier stuff was gotten rid of. Scholarships were instituted for boys who couldn't afford the agoge, and so on, and Sparta became a popular tourist destination for Romans to watch agoge ceremonies and be impressed by "Spartan tradition". At one point during the Roman period, the city built an amphitheater for a lot of the agoge teaching and ceremonial stuff The same thing happened with a bunch of the other old Spartan traditions that had largely died off earlier. They were brought back in the Roman period, but changed to be more spectator friendly and stripped of a lot of the old meaning..
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Jul 25, 2020 15:57
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I was under the impression Phillip never fought a pitched battle with Sparta. "If" was a well founded reply to Philip's threat to invade.
Weka fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Jul 25, 2020 |
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Jul 25, 2020 16:51
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Weka posted:I was under the impression Phillip never fought a pitched battle with Sparta. "If" was a well founded reply to Philip's threat to invade. You're right. I thought Spartan troops were at the Battle of the Crocus Fields alongside the Phocans during the Third Sacred War, but I was wrong. They were beaten by Alexander's forces under Antipater at the battle of Megalopolis, though, and maybe I had that stuck in my head.
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Jul 25, 2020 17:14
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Was Cleopatra a Macedonian or Pan-Greek name? Can anyone think of an instance of it's use outside of a Macedonian or related northern Greek context before the hellenic age / Macedonian hegemony?
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Jul 25, 2020 17:23
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Wikipedia says it’s proto Greek
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Jul 25, 2020 17:28
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Epicurius posted:Sparta became a popular tourist destination for Romans to watch agoge ceremonies and be impressed by "Spartan tradition". At one point during the Roman period, the city built an amphitheater for a lot of the agoge teaching and ceremonial stuff Specifically, Wikipedia posted:Subsequently, Sparta became a free city under Roman rule, some of the institutions of Lycurgus were restored, and the city became a tourist attraction for the Roman elite who came to observe exotic Spartan customs.[n 3] One can't help but suspect that the Roman tourists who watched the whippings were motivated by something more than innocent anthropological curiosity...although, in a sentence added since I last read the article, Wikipedia assures us that the Roman observers were disgusted by the whipping; perhaps they weren't expecting the whipping to be quite so brutal. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Sep 6, 2023 |
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Jul 25, 2020 17:42
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Spartan culture really suffered after the Romans started using instagram
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Jul 25, 2020 17:48
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Cleopatra is a Greek compund which means "glory of the father". Not sure if it would have been the same in Macedonian but I think so. I know Berenike is the Macedonian version of Pherenike, both meaning "carry victory". Actually it's in the Iliad so the Ptolemids probably took it from there. Grevling fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Jul 25, 2020 |
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Jul 25, 2020 17:48
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Schadenboner posted:[Desire to know more increases] If you’re feeling lazy and not wanting to read the book recs, someone (blanking on their name) did a great series of effort posts on it in the previous milhist thread. I’m sure you’d get a link to ‘em if you inquired in the current iteration.
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Jul 25, 2020 19:42
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Grevling posted:Cleopatra is a Greek compund which means "glory of the father". Not sure if it would have been the same in Macedonian but I think so. I know Berenike is the Macedonian version of Pherenike, both meaning "carry victory". One of Phillip II's wives and Alexander's sister bore the name, so it presumably had some popularity then. I did completely miss all the mythic / mycenean era Cleopatras though, so thanks.
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Jul 25, 2020 20:32
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I read somewhere that apparently Romans considered the colour azure blue to be cursed, but I can't find any source to back this up. Was this just some weird invention?
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Jul 26, 2020 14:40
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I read somewhere that apparently Romans considered the colour azure blue to be cursed, but I can't find any source to back this up. Was this just some weird invention? IIRC blue pigment is super-duper toxic (even by the standards of pigments) so it's possible this is a folkway developed around it or some poo poo?
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Jul 26, 2020 14:47
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Weka posted:One of Phillip II's wives and Alexander's sister bore the name, so it presumably had some popularity then. I did completely miss all the mythic / mycenean era Cleopatras though, so thanks. I had a look at https://logeion.uchicago.edu to see when Cleopatra was first attested, it's a great resource if you want to look up a Greek word and you don't even need a Greek keyboard, you can just type the transcription in Latin and it gives you the Greek.
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Jul 26, 2020 15:03
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