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etalian posted:The best piss story from ancient times how to be when vespasian's son Titus thought it crude to have a piss tax to raise money for empire. I hope Trump has been pre-paying his piss tax.
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Nov 1, 2020 05:23
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piss tax is royal
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Nov 1, 2020 08:53
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I need the good Egypt poo poo pleeeeease
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Nov 17, 2020 16:29
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Azathoth posted:urine collection in rome was big business for all the chemicals it could be turned into, wouldn't surprise me if there were some crazy hairstyles that required a ton of it for some godawful reason Urine collection has been big business for a long time. In 1515 a law passed in Britain that gave the state right to dig after urine wherever it wanted. Church urine was supposed to be the best urine because women peed on the benches. People actually started to rebell against the urine collectors because they could literally go into your home and dig after urine. In 1606 the politician Edward Coke said that "hey, maybe it's kinda hosed up that the state can enter your home and destroy it?" King James 1st replied with "hey, maybe it is kinda hosed up that you think you can have an opinion about what the state can and cannot do?"
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Nov 17, 2020 16:45
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Alhazred posted:Church urine was supposed to be the best urine because women peed on the benches. Mind going into more detail explaining this? I know at least one European royal courts had a "poo poo anywhere you want, the servants will clean it up" policy but that was hosed up power dynamics in action, but I can't imagine any reason to specifically piss on church benches.
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Nov 18, 2020 05:40
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ShallNoiseUpon posted:I need the good Egypt poo poo pleeeeease I know a guy with a good line on used pyramids.
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Nov 18, 2020 05:55
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Also, what exactly does it mean to "dig after" urine. Did people just piss on the floor so much in their dirt-floored hovels that people could just come and dig out the piss dirt and extract piss from it?
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Nov 18, 2020 05:57
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A Russian troll farm posted:Also, what exactly does it mean to "dig after" urine. Did people just piss on the floor so much in their dirt-floored hovels that people could just come and dig out the piss dirt and extract piss from it? the soil. the dirt filters the pee and leaves the urea closer to the surface. not sure how they'd process it but they realized it was a lot easier on everyone just to collect horse straw from stables
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Nov 18, 2020 06:48
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*in werner herzog voice* perhaps they have forgotten how to live in a world without piss
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Nov 20, 2020 13:45
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So friends, what are the most incompetent failed coups? Didius Julianus buying the empire, and only seemingly after realizing he spent a fortune to become the mortal enemies of very dangerous men, and nothing else, comes to mind I'm feeling a bit off today, I remember the emperor before Justinian (?) was a teenager who became emperor, and who was then told "everybody is backing this unbelievably awesome guy Justinian for Emperor, could you be a dear and just kill yourself?" And he did
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Nov 20, 2020 21:05
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Pupienus and Balbinus are my favorites. I don't know whether the story of each accusing the other of plotting to kill them and seize power at the very moment the Praetorian Guard burst in to kill them is accurate, but holy hell does it just perfectly encapsulate that whole section of imperial Roman history. Pupienus: You're plotting to kill me, admit it! Balbinus: No, you're plotting to kill me, admit it! Head of the Praetorian Guard: "Funny story..."
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Nov 20, 2020 21:36
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Nebakenezzer posted:
The emperor before Justinian was his uncle Justin, they came from a peasant family and rose to power via the military. You may be thinking of Otho, unless there was another imperial suicide I'm forgetting. Otho was a fairly young noble dude with insane ladder-climbing skills (he got his big leap in politics by scheming himself into a position to be on Nero's bro squad). Later on he was briefly emperor during time of civil war and killed himself after losing a battle to Vitellius, supposedly because he just wanted to get it over with and didn't see any point in having a bunch of soldiers die in more losing battles on his behalf. Vitellius turned out to be complete poo poo and a mob threw him down a long flight of stairs shortly thereafer. e: How could I forget that Nero himself committed suicide, partly because he was almost certainly to be murdered soon anyways, but largely because he was an overdramatic theater kid with dictatorial powers. Fuzzy McDoom has issued a correction as of 22:16 on Nov 20, 2020 |
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Nov 20, 2020 21:55
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Nebakenezzer posted:So friends, what are the most incompetent failed coups? Not ancient history, but surely it is is the Anglo-Zanzibar War? Khalid bin Barghash of Zanzibar only managed to be sultan for two days. Even Didius Julianus did better than that.
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Nov 20, 2020 22:00
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i say swears online posted:the soil. the dirt filters the pee and leaves the urea closer to the surface. not sure how they'd process it but they realized it was a lot easier on everyone just to collect horse straw from stables That absolutely owns. People pissed on their floors so much that the pissmen would come into their houses and dig up the floor for urea and saltpeter or whatever. What a time it must have been to be alive
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Nov 20, 2020 22:02
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Azathoth posted:Pupienus and Balbinus are my favorites. I don't know whether the story of each accusing the other of plotting to kill them and seize power at the very moment the Praetorian Guard burst in to kill them is accurate, but holy hell does it just perfectly encapsulate that whole section of imperial Roman history. poo pee anus  https://twitter.com/CSMFHT/status/1329865241816035328?s=20
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Nov 20, 2020 22:07
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Fuzzy McDoom posted:Vitellius turned out to be complete poo poo and a mob threw him down a long flight of stairs shortly thereafer. let's bring this back.
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Nov 20, 2020 22:09
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The An Lushan Rebellion is one of The Big Ones in Chinese history, basic summary if you don't know it is that the Tang Dynasty had increasingly been ceding authority to appointed local rulers and one, An Lushan, had managed to amass by far the largest army in the empire. The Prime Minister didn't like this and decided to try to figure out ways to reduce An Lushan's power, but he completely beefed it and An Lushan went "welp, now or never" and declared his ow rival Yan dynasty. This part isn't funny and leads to one of the worst civil wars. What is funny is that the Tang forces won through little fault of their own. An Lushan was a total dick to his subordinates, so they assassinated him to make his son, An Qingxu, the Emperor of Yan. However, he was kind of a boob and he got coup'd by one of his generals, Shi Siming. Shi Siming was also a total rear end in a top hat to his subordinates, and got killed by his own troops to put his son, Shi Caoyi, on the throne. At this point the generals are not feeling so great about the Yan empire and when Shi Caoyi fails to defend his capital, one of his generals tries to kill him (Shi Caoyi commits suicide first), and at this point the whole thing kind of fizzles out because nobody knows who's in charge or what's going on anymore, leading to a peace agreement where the Yan generals basically get whatever they want if they just shut up and formally rejoin the Tang.
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Nov 20, 2020 22:25
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This all killed at minimum 13 million people
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Nov 20, 2020 23:39
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Flavius Aetass posted:This all killed at minimum 13 million people Finding out that China had crazy massive armies while the big powers of Western Europe were struggling to field 50k troops at any given time was definitely a weebay_head_turn.gif moment.
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Nov 21, 2020 00:03
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Tulip posted:What is funny is that the Tang forces won through little fault of their own. An Lushan was a total dick to his subordinates, so they assassinated him to make his son, An Qingxu, the Emperor of Yan. However, he was kind of a boob and he got coup'd by one of his generals, Shi Siming. Shi Siming was also a total rear end in a top hat to his subordinates, and got killed by his own troops to put his son, Shi Caoyi, on the throne. At this point the generals are not feeling so great about the Yan empire and when Shi Caoyi fails to defend his capital, one of his generals tries to kill him (Shi Caoyi commits suicide first), and at this point the whole thing kind of fizzles out because nobody knows who's in charge or what's going on anymore, leading to a peace agreement where the Yan generals basically get whatever they want if they just shut up and formally rejoin the Tang. I listened to the Fall of Civillizations on the Han Dynasty and it seems this is a common theme throughout 3000 years of china lol i wonder if they ractually really had that many assasinations and usurping or if just the oral to written history poc hoc in books of latter han etc are just flawed the fact they had steam engines in like 200 BC is insane
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Nov 21, 2020 00:04
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Azathoth posted:Finding out that China had crazy massive armies while the big powers of Western Europe were struggling to field 50k troops at any given time was definitely a weebay_head_turn.gif moment. There's some variation but yeah Chinese armies tend to be outrageously large. The Battle of Fei River in the 383 CE had the Qin forces attempt to do a feigned withdrawal, gently caress up the feigned withdrawal and it turns into an unforced retreat, and then losing 700,000 troops. Xaris posted:I listened to the Fall of Civillizations on the Han Dynasty and it seems this is a common theme throughout 3000 years of china lol In fairness, we see one in Egypt by 100 CE. Way crazier to me is that China got blast furnaces and were casting iron by around that time. Bonkers. The crazy assassinations and such are usually well attested. The stuff I posted from An Lushan is well attested, the 3K stuff you're talking about is...largely well attested but there's a lot of poetry and religion mixed in there so it's a bit tougher.
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Nov 21, 2020 00:45
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Fuzzy McDoom posted:The emperor before Justinian was his uncle Justin, they came from a peasant family and rose to power via the military. Sorry, I was thinking of Aurilian and Quintillus Quintillus became Emperor when his brother Claudius Gothicus died of smallpox.
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Nov 21, 2020 01:00
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Tulip posted:There's some variation but yeah Chinese armies tend to be outrageously large. The Battle of Fei River in the 383 CE had the Qin forces attempt to do a feigned withdrawal, gently caress up the feigned withdrawal and it turns into an unforced retreat, and then losing 700,000 troops. Knowing very little about Chinese history, if I just came across that number elsewhere I'd assume the actual number was 70,000 because HOW DO YOU IN 383 CE EVEN FIELD 700,000 TROOPS
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Nov 21, 2020 01:05
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The Taiping Rebellion is loving nuts.
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Nov 21, 2020 01:35
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Nebakenezzer posted:Sorry, I was thinking of Aurilian and Quintillus Ahhh ok, but there is a pretty strong case that Quintillus's "suicide" was of the "line up my bodyguards' spare swords and fall onto all of them, backwards" variety
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Nov 21, 2020 01:38
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Fuzzy McDoom posted:e: How could I forget that Nero himself committed suicide, partly because he was almost certainly to be murdered soon anyways, but largely because he was an overdramatic theater kid with dictatorial powers. One of my favorite story from Nero's reign was how he abused his power to force generals and senators to listen to hundreds hipster harp concerts. Vespasian was caught dozing off at one of these concerts which is why he was sent into political exile and also got turned over for promotion opportunities. Some people believe this career limiting move might has kept him alive during the instability and purges that characterized the tail end of Nero's reign since due to being exile he was seen as a political nobody in the roman government.
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Nov 21, 2020 03:01
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Tulip posted:There's some variation but yeah Chinese armies tend to be outrageously large. The Battle of Fei River in the 383 CE had the Qin forces attempt to do a feigned withdrawal, gently caress up the feigned withdrawal and it turns into an unforced retreat, and then losing 700,000 troops. it is pretty widely agreed that ancient chinese sources wildly inflated troop numbers, but certainly their armies were very large Azathoth posted:Finding out that China had crazy massive armies while the big powers of Western Europe were struggling to field 50k troops at any given time was definitely a weebay_head_turn.gif moment. i mean, imperial rome at its peak had something like 300k-500k soldiers in its army, nowhere near half in one place obviously
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Nov 21, 2020 03:49
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Flavius Aetass posted:it is pretty widely agreed that ancient chinese sources wildly inflated troop numbers, but certainly their armies were very large Many historical sources exaggerate the size of the armies probably for dramatic reasons, like inflating the total size of the Persian army at Thermopylae.
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Nov 21, 2020 04:04
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correct, i didn't mean to imply it was unique to china
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Nov 21, 2020 04:08
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etalian posted:One of my favorite story from Nero's reign was how he abused his power to force generals and senators to listen to hundreds hipster harp concerts. I'm reading I, Claudius right now and it's fun to get to what seems to be a totally over-the-top plot point and look it up to see that it's usually historically accurate.
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Nov 21, 2020 04:40
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Nebakenezzer posted:So friends, what are the most incompetent failed coups? An Lushan tried to form his own dynasty set in motion the deaths of millions and the destruction of a lot of civilization
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Nov 21, 2020 04:55
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even if you do the old trick of knocking a zero off all given troop numbers the chinese still were fielding armies some 2000 years ago that wouldn't be equaled in europe until the french revolutionary wars
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Nov 21, 2020 05:08
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Bro Dad posted:An Lushan tried to form his own dynasty set in motion the deaths of millions and the destruction of a lot of civilization 
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Nov 21, 2020 05:11
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Li Zicheng started out as a peasant, overthrew the Ming dynasty, and was dead two years later as the Manchurians overran all of China
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Nov 21, 2020 05:13
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the 4th crusade tops my list deposed emperor requests western support to reclaim his throne, then once the crusader army arrives and restores his rule it turns out everyone hates him and he's deposed again and the next guy refuses to pay the crusaders oops they're gonna get paid one way or another
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Nov 21, 2020 05:19
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the biggest logistics nightmares to me were the big naval battles like salamis
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Nov 21, 2020 06:11
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Tulip posted:The An Lushan Rebellion is one of The Big Ones in Chinese history, basic summary if you don't know it is that the Tang Dynasty had increasingly been ceding authority to appointed local rulers and one, An Lushan, had managed to amass by far the largest army in the empire. The Prime Minister didn't like this and decided to try to figure out ways to reduce An Lushan's power, but he completely beefed it and An Lushan went "welp, now or never" and declared his ow rival Yan dynasty. This part isn't funny and leads to one of the worst civil wars. Don't forget that the An Lushan rebellion never would have got off the ground had not some idiot fail-brother been appointed prime minister. An Lushan was being controlled by the prime minister. After he died, the replacement prime minister was the Emperor's favorite concubine's brother. He immediately tried to strip An Lushan of all his power, which triggered the rebellion. But all of An Lushan's armies were on the other side of a mountain pass guarded by a major fortress. The general was like, "welp, time to hold the pass" but the prime minister was just like, no, coward, go out and fight like a man instead of hiding! So the general went out to fight, lost, and the gateway to the capital was open. The prime minister was eventually lynched by a mob of soldiers and the emperor forced to resign as they were fleeing the capital.
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Nov 21, 2020 06:20
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Aren't contemporary Roman casualty figures insanely marked-up in certain periods, which have been scaled down by modern historians? Why can't contemporary Chinese sources be likewise exaggerated?
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Nov 21, 2020 06:23
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ShallNoiseUpon posted:I need the good Egypt poo poo pleeeeease https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57gaB1VtJiQ
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Nov 21, 2020 08:30
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exmachina posted:Aren't contemporary Roman casualty figures insanely marked-up in certain periods, which have been scaled down by modern historians? Why can't contemporary Chinese sources be likewise exaggerated? Yeah, the romans didn’t include death from disease, so you have to add another 100 thousand or two dead to the Punic Wars
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Nov 21, 2020 08:46
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