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The Emperors of Japan claimed descent from the goddess Amaterasu until Hirohoto was forced to say otherwise at the end of the Second World War.
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Dec 4, 2022 15:56
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Mad Hamish posted:The Emperors of Japan claimed descent from the goddess Amaterasu until Hirohoto was forced to say otherwise at the end of the Second World War. Technically he never even did that. The Humanity Declaration was the emperor’s denial that he himself was a living god, it doesn’t say anything about his divine descent.
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Dec 4, 2022 16:02
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ChubbyChecker posted:most royals did this kind of poo poo The Aeneid is basically pro-Caesar propaganda.
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Dec 4, 2022 17:14
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CrypticFox posted:https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abq3766 New paper on the tin from the Uluburun shipwreck (an enormous late bronze age shipwreck from near the Aegean carrying about one metric ton of tin, among many other things) finds that one third of it came from Uzbekistan. Long distance trade in tin was already known to be a thing, but its still pretty wild to see exactly how much tin was moving long distances. This is crazy, I took a class that talked about this shipwreck just last year.
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Dec 4, 2022 17:17
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Alhazred posted:The Aeneid is basically pro-Caesar propaganda. Aeneid is court art. Real pro-Caesar propaganda is the totalitarian bleating of late antique panegyric. poo poo like Claudian is unbelievably distressing to read, just in terms of what it implies about the society that produced it. If you want you can see Aeneid as the thin end of the wedge, but really it goes back a lot further. Divus Iulius claimed descent from Venus, Romanness itself had at one point implied some kind of descent from Romulus-Quirinus-Mars, son of Iuppiter. Rule number 1, it all goes back to who your daddy was
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Dec 4, 2022 18:25
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skasion posted:Yeah the Aeneas thing is comparatively grounded and realistic if anything. The Merovingians were descended from a sea monster I was just bringing it up as an example of Medieval Europeans caring about Greek mytho-history, although that didn't quite answer the initial question
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Dec 5, 2022 02:01
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skasion posted:Real pro-Caesar propaganda is the totalitarian bleating of late antique panegyric. poo poo like Claudian is unbelievably distressing to read, just in terms of what it implies about the society that produced it. Speaking as someone who has not read his Claudian, can you go into more detail about this or show an example of what you mean?
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Dec 5, 2022 02:16
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Tomn posted:Speaking as someone who has not read his Claudian, can you go into more detail about this or show an example of what you mean? He was a court poet at the court of Honorius. I don't find his poems particularly distressing, just really court poet. Here's the English translation of one of his poems. http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Claudian/De_III_Consulatu_Honorii*.html#P1
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Dec 5, 2022 02:24
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quote:. Power which was thine by birth received thee, a precious pledge, amid the purple; soldiers bearing victorious standards inaugurated thy birth and set thy cradle in the midst of arms. When thou wast born fierce Germany trembled along p273 the Rhine's full course, Caucasus shook his forests in fear, and the people of Meroë, confessing thy divinity, laid aside their quivers and drew the useless arrows from their hair. As a child thou didst crawl among shields, fresh-won spoils of monarchs were thy playthings, and thou wert ever the first to embrace thy stern father on his return from rude battles, when that, reeking with the blood of northern savages, he came home victorious from his conquest over the tribes of the Danube. Then wouldst thou demand thy share of the spoils, a Scythian bow or a belt won from the Geloni, a Dacian spear or a Suabian bridle. Often would he smile on thee and uplift thee, eager for the honour, on his shining shield, and clasp thee to his still panting bosom. Thou fearedst not his coat of mail nor the dread gleam of his helmet but stretchedst out thy hands to grasp its lofty plumes. Then in his joy thy father cried: "King of starry Olympus, may this my son return in like manner from the lands of conquered foes, rich with the spoils of Hyrcania or proud with the slaughter of the Assyrians; his sword thus red with blood, his countenance thus roughened by the constant blasts and stained with the welcome dust of heroic combat, may he bring back to his happy father the arms of his conquered foes." Seems legit, this Honorius guy seems real badass, I'm sure the Roman empire reaches unparalleled heights under his rule.
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Dec 5, 2022 17:23
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Epicurius posted:He was a court poet at the court of Honorius. I don't find his poems particularly distressing, just really court poet. Looks pretty dire to me, honestly. Bear in mind that Honorius was 11-12 at the time this was written. Claudian tries to spin this by claiming, "so did thy soul out-range thy youth that all complained that to thee empire was granted late," which is surely worth an eye-roll. Edit: And yeah, Honorius turned out to be, uh, not a very successful emperor.
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Dec 5, 2022 17:23
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sullat posted:Seems legit, this Honorius guy seems real badass, I'm sure the Roman empire reaches unparalleled heights under his rule. So badass he's bored to death of the unparalleled heights.  Someone give this emperor a real challenge, he's almost falling asleep over here!
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Dec 5, 2022 19:07
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Silver2195 posted:Looks pretty dire to me, honestly. Bear in mind that Honorius was 11-12 at the time this was written. Claudian tries to spin this by claiming, "so did thy soul out-range thy youth that all complained that to thee empire was granted late," which is surely worth an eye-roll. Oh, i'm not saying Honorius wasn't a terrible emperor or that this isn't fairly sickening flattery. But it's what you expect of a court poet and i've read worse. Like, here's a line about Domitian from Statius quote:“With visage calm, its radiance tempered And Martial quote:"If two messengers were to invite me to dine in different heavens, the one in that of Caesar, the other in that of Jupiter, I should, even if the stars were nearer, and the palace at the greater distance, return this answer: "Seek some other who would prefer to be the guest of the Thunderer; my own Jupiter detains me upon earth."
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Dec 5, 2022 19:50
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Yeah the panegyrics are just at an extreme end of a long tradition of brown-nosing literati. The biggest suck-rear end of all is probably Seneca, who was only a couple decades younger than Augustus. What makes the Claudian stuff stand out from the tradition is that he’s talking up an effectively powerless child (even more so than Seneca does Nero) and his generalissimo/minder (Stilicho was Claudian’s patron, not Honorius himself) in ludicrously glowing terms that bear no relevance to reality, at a time of ongoing political and military crisis. It’s impossible to take it as anything better than wishful thinking—with hindsight, which admittedly Claudian never had the chance to get (he probably predeceased his subjects) it’s hard to avoid feeling like it’s just utter cynicism. Claudian, Gothic War XXVI posted:Thou and thou alone, Stilicho, hast dispersed the darkness that enshrouded our empire and hast restored its glory; thanks to thee civilization, all but vanished, has been freed from the gloomy prison and can again advance. The old order of justice now makes distinction between magistracies which fear had made equal in a common gloom. Thy right hand has snatched us from impending death and restored to their homes and lands peoples whom fate sentenced and thy valour saved. No longer, herded together like sheep by a scare-crow, do we watch from the ramparts our fields ablaze with the enemy's fire, no longer measure the depth of rivers which we feebly hope will retard our destruction nor ask the streams and flying clouds to keep the promise of their waters or complain that the sunshine conspires against us with its splendour. Within five years of this, Stilicho was couped and executed; within ten, Alaric sacked Rome. Maybe they should have talked to Lachesis about it.
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Dec 5, 2022 21:02
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skasion posted:Yeah the panegyrics are just at an extreme end of a long tradition of brown-nosing literati. The biggest suck-rear end of all is probably Seneca, who was only a couple decades younger than Augustus. What makes the Claudian stuff stand out from the tradition is that he’s talking up an effectively powerless child (even more so than Seneca does Nero) and his generalissimo/minder (Stilicho was Claudian’s patron, not Honorius himself) in ludicrously glowing terms that bear no relevance to reality, at a time of ongoing political and military crisis. It’s impossible to take it as anything better than wishful thinking—with hindsight, which admittedly Claudian never had the chance to get (he probably predeceased his subjects) it’s hard to avoid feeling like it’s just utter cynicism. Hey, if somebody wants to pay me for over the top flattery, it's better than working.
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Dec 5, 2022 22:09
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So this kind of stuff is what  thinks actually happened in history, huh? That explains a lot.
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Dec 5, 2022 22:19
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Halloween Jack posted:So this kind of stuff is what I suspect the people of the time would have taken it with a few granums of salarium.
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Dec 5, 2022 22:23
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Epicurius posted:Hey, if somebody wants to pay me for over the top flattery, it's better than working. He was made vir illustris for his trouble (same degree of dignity as, say, a praetorian prefect or magister militum)—so not only did they pay him, they pretty much moved him to easy street. Nice gig if you can get it. God knows I’m not trying to bury the guy—we know a lot of stuff because he was famous that we might not otherwise, and we also have some poems of his trashing one Curetius (otherwise unknown to history) for eating pussy. I’d post them but LacusCurtius translation of these is hopelessly vague. “Filthy delights”, yeah right. I bet they believe the Pompeiian graffitist was talking about “wondrous femininity” too. skasion fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Dec 5, 2022 |
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Dec 5, 2022 22:24
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Wasn’t the empire or at least the people who “mattered” fully christianized during Honorius’ time? A lot of that language seems awfully pagan. Praises to Olympus, mentioning Honorius’ divinity.
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Dec 6, 2022 08:32
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galagazombie posted:Wasn’t the empire or at least the people who “mattered” fully christianized during Honorius’ time? A lot of that language seems awfully pagan. Praises to Olympus, mentioning Honorius’ divinity. "Fully christianized" doesn't mean a lot during Roman times, the belief itself was still young and missing many pieces you'd expect today. Hell, until the Council of Nicäa unfucked early Christianity, Eastern was put in the wrong part of the calendar and the Pre-Julian calendar itself was a mess. And apart from a far more loose organization of the Church, the old religions weren't dead yet, just not officially supported by the state anymore. (And most of Northern/Eastern Europe would remain Pagan until long after West Rome croaking it)
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Dec 6, 2022 11:22
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Fully Christianised and loving it (jesus)
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Dec 6, 2022 12:08
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Here’s another fun example of late Roman political rhetoric going gently off the deep end: what the senators said at the meeting (on Christmas, AD 438) in which they were presented the complete Theodosian Code (a book of law, essentially the precursor of the Digests of Justinian I was posting the other month). I found this one in Peter Heather’s The Fall of the Roman Empire:quote:The Praetorian Prefect of Italy, Glabrio Faustus, who presided, and in whose palatial home the senators had gathered, opened the meeting by formally introducing the text to the assembly. After reminding his audience of the original edict that had established the law commission, he presented the Code to them. In response, the assembled senators let rip at the tops of their voices: There might be more, that’s all he quotes and I don’t know anywhere to find the text he’s referencing since it’s a preface to a specific edition of the Code surviving in one 11th-century manuscript only. To Heather this kind of theatrical/liturgical political culture is not a sign of big problems but an indication of a successful ideology of elite unity lasting into the mid 5th century. Then again, he also likens it to the party congresses of the USSR.
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Dec 6, 2022 14:19
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galagazombie posted:Wasn’t the empire or at least the people who “mattered” fully christianized during Honorius’ time? A lot of that language seems awfully pagan. Praises to Olympus, mentioning Honorius’ divinity. Claudian may have been a pagan; both Orosius and Augustine say he was one.
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Dec 6, 2022 14:29
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Halloween Jack posted:So this kind of stuff is what Wasn't Stilicho of "barbarian" descent: if so he would have been far to low-class to be respected by good-ole
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Dec 6, 2022 14:39
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Glabrio Faustus is an incredible name.
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Dec 6, 2022 14:50
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Silver2195 posted:Claudian may have been a pagan; both Orosius and Augustine say he was one. You can see why they would, too. But Honorius and Stilicho were both Christians, and Claudian was composing for their sake. So while we can’t be completely sure of Claudian’s own beliefs (might be pagan, might be he’s just getting purity-tested by professional rigorists), he was certainly writing for a Christian political culture. But, crucially, it was one in which the well-educated, Christian or not, were taught by grammarians and still had (or were supposed to have) this huge knowledge of the language of Homer and Virgil and so on. And You Should Too, if you want to do Rome proud, Claudian makes Theodosius say to Honorius: Panegyric on the Fourth Consulship of Honorius posted:Meanwhile cultivate the Muses whilst thou art yet young; read of deeds thou soon mayest rival; never may Greece's story, never may Rome's, cease to speak with thee. Study the lives of the heroes of old to accustom thee for wars that are to be. Go back to the Latin age. Admirest thou a fight for liberty? Thou wilt admire Brutus. Does treachery rouse thine indignation? The punishment of Mettius will fill thee with satisfaction. Dost thou hate undue severity? Abominate Torquatus' savagery. Is it a virtue to die for one's country? Honour the self-devotion of the Decii. Horatius Cocles, facing the foe on the broken bridge, Mucius holding his arm in the flames, these shall show thee what, single-handed, brave men can do. Fabius will show thee what overthrow delay can cause; Camillus and his slaughter of the Gauls what in face of odds a leader can effect. From history thou mayest learn that no ill fortune can master worth; Punic savagery extends thy fame, Regulus, to eternity; the failure of Cato outdoes success. From history thou mayest learn the power of frugal poverty; Curius was a poor man when he conquered kings in battle; Fabricius was poor when he spurned the gold of Pyrrhus; Serranus, for all he was dictator, drove the muddy plough. In those days the lictors kept watch at a cottage door, the fasces were hung upon a gateway of wood; consuls helped to gather in the harvest, and for long years the fields were ploughed by husbandmen who wore the consular robe." This passage is basically Claudian’s idiom writ large, he’s drawing on centuries of established imagery from myth-history to allude to the politics of the day. You notice he doesn’t tell him to read the Bible, although it could provide just as many salutary examples—that was for the relatively emergent class of theological literati to say, not for traditionally grammarian-trained guys like Claudian. Within a couple of generations, however, the former group had stuck around, while the ability or inclination to do the kind of hyper-allusive panegyric we see here would largely drop out of the elite political culture of the Latin world.
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Dec 6, 2022 14:59
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Glabrio Faustus is an incredible name. I’m pretty sure I killed this guy somewhere in Morrowind
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Dec 6, 2022 14:59
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galagazombie posted:Wasn’t the empire or at least the people who “mattered” fully christianized during Honorius’ time? A lot of that language seems awfully pagan. Praises to Olympus, mentioning Honorius’ divinity. No it wasn't, not even among "people who mattered." It may have been in Constantinople by the late 4th century, but that certainly was not the case in the Western Empire. Quintus Symmachus was almost exactly contemporary to Claudian, and he was a pagan his whole life. Symmachus was also consul, urban prefect of Rome, and held many other key posts during his life. Symmachus was an important political ally of Stilicho, and him being pagan does not seem to have impeded his power and influence. A lot of the people who appear in Symmachus's letters (we have hundreds of them preserved) are also important Roman noblemen that are pagans. It's clear that in the late 4th/early 5th century the Roman elite (in the West at least) still contained a large number of pagans.
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Dec 6, 2022 15:23
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skasion posted:And You Should Too, if you want to do Rome proud, Claudian makes Theodosius say to Honorius One bit that stuck out for me in that passage: "Admirest thou a fight for liberty? Thou wilt admire Brutus." What exactly does "liberty" mean in the context of a late Roman emperor? I'm assuming it's not exactly a Mel Gibson cry for FREEEEEEDOM and the overthrow of autocrats.
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Dec 6, 2022 15:50
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skasion posted:[...] Is the (# times) supposed to mean that "there were 8 people saying this" or does it mean that the entire gang of them went "Augustuses of Augustuses, the greatest of Augustuses!" "Augustuses of Augustuses, the greatest of Augustuses!" "Augustuses of Augustuses, the greatest of Augustuses!" "Augustuses of Augustuses, the greatest of Augustuses!" "Augustuses of Augustuses, the greatest of Augustuses!" "Augustuses of Augustuses, the greatest of Augustuses!" "Augustuses of Augustuses, the greatest of Augustuses!" "Augustuses of Augustuses, the greatest of Augustuses!" and so on and so on?
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Dec 6, 2022 17:29
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MuffiTuffiWuffi posted:Is the (# times) supposed to mean that "there were 8 people saying this" or does it mean that the entire gang of them went The latter, dumb as it sounds. Presumably all this was choreographed or rehearsed.
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Dec 6, 2022 17:47
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The 'everybody now!'s are implied.
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Dec 6, 2022 17:53
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Scarodactyl posted:The 'everybody now!'s are implied. And key changes!
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Dec 6, 2022 17:53
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I wonder if there's any significance to how often a given line gets repeated, given that there's such variation in the exact number of repetitions.
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Dec 6, 2022 17:57
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CrypticFox posted:Symmachus was an important political ally of Stilicho, and him being pagan does not seem to have impeded his power and influence. A lot of the people who appear in Symmachus's letters (we have hundreds of them preserved) are also important Roman noblemen that are pagans. It's clear that in the late 4th/early 5th century the Roman elite (in the West at least) still contained a large number of pagans. In fact, if you read James O'Donnell's Pagans. he argues that, with the exception of some fanatics like Ambrose, the Christian/Pagan distinction among the elite was largely unimportant. They came from the same social class, were educated the same way, were trained in the same sorts of rhetoric, socialized with each other, married their children to each other, in in general, were willing to ignore their religious differences. O'Donnell also brings up Filocallus's calendar book for 354, which among other things, contains both a calendar with all the Pagan religious festivals listed and also a calculation of the dates of Easter and lists of Roman bishops and martyrs.. He mentions our friend Claudian too, who both writes a poem on the kidnapping of Prospertina by Pluto, and "On the Savior", which is a poem in praise of Jesus, and poems from the period, one an Alexandrian who wrote epic poems about both the god Dionysius and the Gospel of John.
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Dec 6, 2022 18:04
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Epicurius posted:In fact, if you read James O'Donnell's Pagans. he argues that, with the exception of some fanatics like Ambrose, the Christian/Pagan distinction among the elite was largely unimportant. They came from the same social class, were educated the same way, were trained in the same sorts of rhetoric, socialized with each other, married their children to each other, in in general, were willing to ignore their religious differences. Claudian’s authorship of De Salvatore is disputed, though. It may have been a different Claudian, Claudianus Mamertus.
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Dec 6, 2022 18:08
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MuffiTuffiWuffi posted:Is the (# times) supposed to mean that "there were 8 people saying this" or does it mean that the entire gang of them went I imagine it was handled like a Stalin era party congress, whoever stops shouting first can expect to lose his head in the near future.
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Dec 6, 2022 18:23
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Strategic Tea posted:Fully Christianised and loving it (jesus) Christianize my pagan hole
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Dec 6, 2022 22:05
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Epicurius posted:In fact, if you read James O'Donnell's Pagans. he argues that, with the exception of some fanatics like Ambrose, the Christian/Pagan distinction among the elite was largely unimportant. They came from the same social class, were educated the same way, were trained in the same sorts of rhetoric, socialized with each other, married their children to each other, in in general, were willing to ignore their religious differences. This isn't an exclusively Roman phenomenon. Even today the Mari, a Finno-ugric minority group in Russia, reportedly praise the Wind God and the Virgin Mary in the same breath. I'm told a similar syncretism was common with their cousins the Sami for a long time after most of them were nominally christianized. I've also read 20th century reports of rural Icelanders asking their ancestors in the nearby mountain and the various land wights to bless an event or marriage in addition to God. Also old grimoires where angels, pagan gods, saints, and the devil himself are invoked in the same incantation. See also a lot of the strange folk festivals and customs surrounding solstice all over Europe that involve big bonfires and strange outlandish costumes and customs that are usually just a thin excuse for young people to cause mischief. People like to pick and mix.
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Dec 6, 2022 22:14
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An absolute poo poo load of cultures in the America's have very obvious pagan overtones to whatever their local flavor of Christianity is which becomes incredibly obvious if you know about local beliefs and stuff.
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Dec 6, 2022 22:21
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I call that, to coin a term, syncretism.
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Dec 6, 2022 22:31
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