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Bongo Bill posted:when did the Empire of Theseus fall 404 BC
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Aug 3, 2020 06:24
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Jazerus posted:there was complete continuity of the state (setting aside the occasional internal struggle for the office of emperor, which can't be considered a break in the context of roman history or else the part of their history that absolutely everyone agrees is roman would be full of breaks) until the fall of constantinople. the "byzantine" emperors weren't legitimizing themselves as roman - they simply were roman. the idea that they were selling themselves as roman to legitimize their new state is ridiculous because the state was not new. Arguably the sheer lack of direct continuity from regime to regime could be taken to mean that there wasn't really much of a Roman state to have continuity with in the first place.  By the continuity standards of other states it seems like there's a lacking throughline. The state is supposedly embodied in the emperor, but they swapped royal families on a regular basis, unlike other monarchies. The civil institutions that supported the emperor came and went too, or even stuck around after the nebulous specter of "Rome" supposedly left, just how a lot of the people who formerly constituted the "Roman" identity were left behind, and this whole argument is predicated on the geography being mostly meaningless. The only thing that does seem particularly consistent is control of the army being instrumental in taking power, but that's basically ad-hoc every time, and then Odoacer doesn't count for reasons. The continuity of Rome seems more like a philosophical principle applied from afar rather than something that particularly mattered to the actual functioning of whatever state.
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Aug 3, 2020 07:04
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The frequency at which the Romans swapped out the guy at the top is the throughline.
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Aug 3, 2020 08:20
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Imma settle this fellas. I'm the Emperor. Rome still stands. First hundred guys to get to my new capital in the Bronx get to be praetorians. (Don't kill me and sell or usurp my title, please and thanks)
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Aug 3, 2020 13:00
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SlothfulCobra posted:By the continuity standards of other states it seems like there's a lacking throughline. The state is supposedly embodied in the emperor, but they swapped royal families on a regular basis, unlike other monarchies. But the Roman Empire explicitly was not a monarchy, they were very touchy about that. It did not operate on the hereditary principle, even nominally. And I do mean nominally - England is a monarchy and it swaps royal families every couple of hundred years. It is not currently Plantagenet, for example.
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Aug 3, 2020 13:18
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feedmegin posted:But the Roman Empire explicitly was not a monarchy, they were very touchy about that. It did not operate on the hereditary principle, even nominally. And I do mean nominally - England is a monarchy and it swaps royal families every couple of hundred years. It is not currently Plantagenet, for example. So it was just coincidental that the four emperors after Augustus were all related to him? Or, after Vespasian took power, his sons were both emperor after him? Or that each of the five "Good Emperors" all adopted their successor, until Marcus Aurelius who was the only one to have a kid, who then became emperor himself? Or that four of the five emperors after Septimus Severus were related to him, including somebody who became emperor at 14? What I'm saying was, there was a lot of hereditary principle for a state that didn't have succession by hereditary principle.
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Aug 3, 2020 14:21
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There was never a formal succession system in the empire. Of course people did hand it down to their son quite often because they could, but there wasn't a rule about it. You became emperor because you could make a legitimate claim and had the support of the senate and people. That could but was not necessarily someone in your own family. It's not unique that the Romans had many different families over the centuries, but there are monarchies where the successor must be a family member, even if you're doing that by adoption. Japan, for example. On names I do wish the modern country of Romania had chosen something else, since Romania was one of the more common names the Romans used for their own state and it'd be easy to just call it what they called it. Of course, Roman Empire is the other name they used and that is available. We could go hard and call it Basileía Rhōmaíōn tho. 
Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Aug 3, 2020 |
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Aug 3, 2020 17:52
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How about Daqin?
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Aug 3, 2020 18:00
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Grand Fromage posted:Of course, Roman Empire is the other name they used and that is available. The other day I was watching Rise of Empires: Ottoman, and at one point Constantine talks about how the Empire cannot fall and i asked myself a question.. By that point, the ERE was just a few cities spread out on the greek coast, or so I understand. At what point can we be confident to say that The Empire of the Romans was in fact, just a kingdom and no longer an Empire? Do we define empire by the land conquered? by the people still under them? What makes an Empire an Empire and when can we say this status was lost?
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Aug 3, 2020 18:29
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Dalael posted:The other day I was watching Rise of Empires: Ottoman, and at one point Constantine talks about how the Empire cannot fall and i asked myself a question.. By that point, the ERE was just a few cities spread out on the greek coast, or so I understand. The usual definition for empire that I see is a state that rules over some physically distant group(s) that are not the same group as the ruling class, but it's real squishy. The only person in the world still using the title emperor is the Emperor of Japan, which is clearly not what we'd consider an empire. But then you could argue the Roman Empire stops being an empire under Caracalla once everyone in the borders becomes a Roman citizen, and I don't think anyone would consider that valid. I'd say somewhere around the late 11th century the Romans spend the rest of their existence white-knuckling their own territory, not ruling anyone who isn't Roman and gradually losing power, so it's hard to call them an "empire" at that point. But even when it's just Constantinople and a couple outposts in Greece and Crimea they're still calling it the empire, the name doesn't change.
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Aug 3, 2020 18:39
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The usual political science definition of empire is something like a state that extracts wealth from its conquered provinces for the benefit of the heartland. At some point it stopped being that as the Italian wealthy other than the emperor himself stopped having any particular advantage compared to their provincial equivalents The formal admission of this is under Diocletian, when Italy lost its special legal status and started being administered like any other region
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Aug 3, 2020 18:41
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Kaal posted:As far as "Byzantine" goes, I generally think about it the same way I do about "Octavian" or "Caligula". The words weren't typically used historically, but they're a very convenient way for modern historians to avoid calling everyone "Gaius Julius Caesar". There's some similarities there to how modern historians are fairly comfortable with defining the end of the Roman Republic with the rise of Augustus, even though this was actively disputed throughout the Principate. This is absolutely not true. (OK Octavian is an anglicization of "Octavianus" but no one seriously balks at "Mark Antony".) The nicknames were actively in use to refer to these people during their lifetimes for the same reason they are today: people needed ways to differentiate between others when every Roman had one of the same few dozen praenomina (and then by the Principate, the same dozen) and everyone in a family shared the same nomen.
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Aug 3, 2020 18:42
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Is it: -Large -Multicultural -Has a sphere of influence outside it's actual borders -Expansionist If yes to most it's an empire FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Aug 3, 2020 |
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Aug 3, 2020 18:44
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Fuschia tude posted:This is absolutely not true. (OK Octavian is an anglicization of "Octavianus" but no one seriously balks at "Mark Antony".) The nicknames were actively in use to refer to these people during their lifetimes for the same reason they are today: people needed ways to differentiate between others when every Roman had one of the same few dozen praenomina (and then by the Principate, the same dozen) and everyone in a family shared the same nomen. Both of those emperors had many names in the course of their lives, but they absolutely did not like being called Octavian or Caligula respectively, were never addressed as such to their face, and would have hated that modern historians refer to them by those names.
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Aug 3, 2020 20:04
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Lol if you don't always use Marcus Antonius
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Aug 3, 2020 20:06
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Grand Fromage posted:The only person in the world still using the title emperor is the Emperor of Japan, which is clearly not what we'd consider an empire. In East Asia it had a very different connotation, it was all about showing symbolic equality with China, since in the sinocentric world order the Chinese emperor was very emphatically the only emperor in the world. The Japanese (and at times Koreans and Vietnamese too) declaring their king an emperor wasn't really about them actually thinking of themselves as comparably powerful (the Japanese were pretty terrified of Chinese invasion not long after their infamous "from the sovereign of the land of the rising sun to the sovereign of the land of the setting sun" letter to Sui's Yangdi that professed that symbolic equality for the first time), just that they were equally as important as rulers of their people for legitimacy purposes. All three non-Chinese East Asian nations would at times declare their rulers as kings to the Chinese to not piss them off, but act as emperors to their own people. Vietnam was particularly notorious for that, and pre-Joseon Korea as well--Japan was far enough away that most of the time they didn't have to care, but since being symbolically inferior to China was a prerequisite to trading with them, their diplomats would have to go to extra lengths to work around the topic in official discussion.
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Aug 3, 2020 21:05
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Grand Fromage posted:There was never a formal succession system in the empire. Of course people did hand it down to their son quite often because they could, but there wasn't a rule about it. You became emperor because you could make a legitimate claim and had the support of the senate and people. That could but was not necessarily someone in your own family. It's not unique that the Romans had many different families over the centuries, but there are monarchies where the successor must be a family member, even if you're doing that by adoption. Japan, for example. Just call it the SPQR
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Aug 3, 2020 21:13
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of course, to become a archhistorian, you must first discover the secret truename of Rome No it isn't rome spelled backwards, that's dracula poo poo
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Aug 3, 2020 21:19
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It's "ROMA"
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Aug 3, 2020 21:23
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Koramei posted:In East Asia it had a very different connotation, it was all about showing symbolic equality with China, since in the sinocentric world order the Chinese emperor was very emphatically the only emperor in the world. The Japanese (and at times Koreans and Vietnamese too) declaring their king an emperor wasn't really about them actually thinking of themselves as comparably powerful (the Japanese were pretty terrified of Chinese invasion not long after their infamous "from the sovereign of the land of the rising sun to the sovereign of the land of the setting sun" letter to Sui's Yangdi that professed that symbolic equality for the first time), just that they were equally as important as rulers of their people for legitimacy purposes. All three non-Chinese East Asian nations would at times declare their rulers as kings to the Chinese to not piss them off, but act as emperors to their own people. Vietnam was particularly notorious for that, and pre-Joseon Korea as well--Japan was far enough away that most of the time they didn't have to care, but since being symbolically inferior to China was a prerequisite to trading with them, their diplomats would have to go to extra lengths to work around the topic in official discussion. Yeah that's true. But I do think it works to show that what we call an empire/emperor isn't consistent. There are multiple modern imperial states and none of them are called empires, the common phrasing for Rome presents empire and republic as oppositional states when the Romans had an empire for a huge stretch of time before Augustus. Any definition you make is going to leave out something, especially since there are different types of empire.
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Aug 3, 2020 21:31
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Grand Fromage posted:Yeah that's true. But I do think it works to show that what we call an empire/emperor isn't consistent. You could say it's because they're different types of emperors too. When we call a Chinese (and by extension, Japanese or Vietnamese since they styled themselves as equals to the Chinese rulers) monarch "emperor", it's because the Roman emperors were the closest equivalent in European history in terms of power. But Chinese dynasties worked nothing like the Roman empire.
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Aug 3, 2020 22:30
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FreudianSlippers posted:Lol if you don't always use Marcus Antonius lol if you don't always use Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus Augustus Herculeus Romanus Exsuperatorius Amazonius Invictus Felix Pius, what a scrub
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Aug 3, 2020 22:32
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:It's "ROMA"
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Aug 3, 2020 22:39
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Nessus posted:And Roma spelled backwards is -- By Hercules! That's one theory, at least. It strikes me as far too obvious, though. Other proposals I've seen (mostly from amateur enthusiasts; I don't think it's a question academic historians take much interest in):
Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Aug 4, 2020 |
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Aug 3, 2020 23:52
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By the way, I love that JSTOR article's summary of the sensationalist explanations that have been proposed for Ovid's exile: Peter Green posted:We no longer need to wonder, e.g., whether the praeceptor amoris gatecrashed a neo-Pythagorean seance, saw Livia nude in her bath, surprised Augustus in the act of pederasty, or caught Julia II committing incest...In this category we should also place the various editions of L. Herrmann's dotty-ritualistic theory...The most recent version...has Ovid spying on Livia's mature naked charms while improperly observing the rites of the Bona Dea, not for lascivious or political motives but in a spirit of disinterested anthropological research (he was doing fieldwork for Book XII of the Fasti).
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Aug 4, 2020 00:55
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Nessus posted:And Roma spelled backwards is -- By Hercules! When you're stabbed in the chest By the friend you loved best That's amor(ae)
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Aug 4, 2020 06:28
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I feel like you should make a distinction between empire as a modern technical term for a certain kind of state that rules of disparate nations, like the British Empire, the Russian Empire, even the US Empire (although I guess my point is weakened by the former two being self-described empires, but even if they weren't I think the term would still apply), and ancient claims to empire. Didn't even Bulgarians and Serb monarchs call themselves tsars?
Grevling fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Aug 4, 2020 |
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Aug 4, 2020 06:33
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CleverHans posted:When you're stabbed in the chest
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Aug 4, 2020 12:13
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All the name “tsar” means is “guy who is boss like how the Romans have/had a boss. you know, the guy in Tsarigrad with the funny hat”. The same could be said about “empire”, at root it’s a term of comparison to Rome.
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Aug 4, 2020 12:16
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NOOOO, YOU CAN'T JUST LABEL A STATE WITH TENUOUS CONTINUITY AND NO GEOGRAPHIC CONTROL OVER ROME-THE-CITY AS ROME!!!! Ah ha ha, Greek Fire go WOOOSSSSHHHHH E: If they wanted to be called Romans they should have called it "Roman Fire", that they didn't shows their own recognition that they were not, in fact, "Rome". Checkmate atheists. 
Schadenboner fucked around with this message at 13:45 on Aug 4, 2020 |
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Aug 4, 2020 13:40
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They did call it Roman fire bro
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Aug 4, 2020 15:11
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Silver2195 posted:That's one theory, at least. It strikes me as far too obvious, though. Other proposals I've seen (mostly from amateur enthusiasts; I don't think it's a question academic historians take much interest in): If Rome's secret name was Maia, does that mean they somehow ended up in precolumbian america?
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Aug 4, 2020 15:29
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SlothfulCobra posted:If Rome's secret name was Maia, does that mean they somehow ended up in precolumbian america? Only to suffer state collapse again, smh
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Aug 4, 2020 15:30
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Rome's secret name is actually COVFEFE.
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Aug 4, 2020 15:40
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True Rome was a casualty of the Finno-Korean Hyperwar, pay no attention to the successor states.
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Aug 4, 2020 15:49
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Gaius Marius posted:They did call it Roman fire bro I think that's just clap?
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Aug 4, 2020 16:05
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Relatedly, how did Romans get anything done in the evening with their candles shooting exploding balls of fire everywhere? Seems unnecessarily chaotic.
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Aug 4, 2020 18:02
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CleverHans posted:Relatedly, how did Romans get anything done in the evening with their candles shooting exploding balls of fire everywhere? Look, the monks didn't just bring back silkworms, ok? 
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Aug 4, 2020 18:06
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CleverHans posted:Relatedly, how did Romans get anything done in the evening with their candles shooting exploding balls of fire everywhere? Yeah, and wait til you hear about their showers
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Aug 4, 2020 19:15
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Came up before, but the Roman habit of appropriating, importing and renaming gods is endlessly interesting to me. The whole thing with the Romans basically importing Greek gods wholesale is pretty well known. Probably contributed to Christianity becoming so widespread and eventually dominant. Any particularly interesting aspects to Roman religions and imported gods that come to mind? The household and family gods are particularly interesting. Reminded of that Doctor Who episode (which is almost basically a crossover with Rome) where the Doctor and Donna become the household gods for a family- rather fitting for the personal experience they've had.
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Aug 4, 2020 19:20
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