|
euphronius posted:Yeah the home fire was incredibly important in Roman ideas . Vesta was the goddess of the hearth and we all know how important she is She doesn't feature in the legends a lot but that's mostly because she's the only halfway sensible one.
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 17:30
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 14:49 |
|
|
Tulip posted:This...doesn't really work for the vast majority of premodern humans. For a small minority that lived in cities there would be communal ovens etc, but nearly everyone lived in rural areas where such a thing would be logistically unfeasible. And even in fairly urban areas going back very long we think families cooked as families - like Çatalhöyük houses have ovens, for example. Entirely likely that this was bullshit or only applies to very specific (urbanized?) times and places.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 17:31
|
|
|
euphronius posted:Tavern is a Roman word Taberna isn’t strictly synonymous with tavern, it just means a shop and doesn’t by itself suggest that there is a kitchen/drinks/whatever. The fact that it came to mean (especially in post-Latin use) specifically a place for hanging out/boozing/gaming is interesting and probably predictable. But it didn’t always have this sense. Legally speaking (Justinian’s Digests again) it seems like the term “taberna” was even vaguer than that, meaning any building with an open front that could be covered up with boards (tabula) when not open for business. Possibly dubious etymology from the Romans there, but you can see the kind of thing they are talking about in Pompeii: https://www.pompeiiinpictures.com/pompeiiinpictures/R6/6%2014%2028.htm At a traditional elite guy’s domus, there would have been taberna spaces usually flanking the front door where his freedmen/clients could live and sell poo poo. When Romans started living in apartment buildings, the ground floor of these would usually be a taberna as well. This is probably where the “tavern” meaning began to become dominant since it would have been a common space for everyone living in the insula.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 17:31
|
|
|
Omnomnomnivore posted:Entirely likely that this was bullshit or only applies to very specific (urbanized?) times and places.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 17:38
|
|
|
Beard calls them taverns (in Pompeii). She’s a vile anti communist but pretty good on archeology. I was going with what she said.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 17:43
|
|
|
euphronius posted:Beard calls them taverns (in Pompeii). She’s a vile anti communist but pretty good on archeology. I was going with what she said. Yeah she’s right, just a terminology/translation thing. Dealers choice i guess. Pompeii absolutely had many taverns in the modern sense of a place you go to get food and drink and socialize. One of these could be called a “taberna caupona” (“barwoman’s shop”) or just caupona, or popina, or whatever. Idk. Moderns have plenty of somewhat vaguely defined words for various types of places to eat too, probably future historians will tear their hair about what exactly the difference is between a bistro and a cafe
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 18:45
|
|
|
Cracker Barrel will be sui generis
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 18:47
|
|
|
euphronius posted:Cracker Barrel will be sui generis ”Young Cybershell Primer Funbook on Early Modern Tellus” posted:did you know? Branding was very important to Amerikans! Many of the ruling caste were named after a branded refectory called “Cracker Barrel”!
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 18:55
|
|
|
In Gil Scott Heron voice:euphronius posted:Cracker Barrel will be sui generis
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 19:03
|
|
|
How exactly did hearths work in multi-story Roman apartments?Tulip posted:This...doesn't really work for the vast majority of premodern humans. For a small minority that lived in cities there would be communal ovens etc, but nearly everyone lived in rural areas where such a thing would be logistically unfeasible. And even in fairly urban areas going back very long we think families cooked as families - like Çatalhöyük houses have ovens, for example. Wouldn't that be heavily dependent on your definition of "rural"? I thought that in most times and places in history people tended to live more in clusters if they could as opposed to being a single household on its own in the middle of nowhere. So rural living could still mean that your house is part of a little village that could have specialized communal services.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 19:19
|
|
|
SlothfulCobra posted:How exactly did hearths work in multi-story Roman apartments?
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 19:31
|
|
|
They did not have hearths. That’s why there was so many taverns But the ancient ideas Romans had about themselves is that they came from rural farmers who had hearths in their family farmhouse . Even when they were mostly urban people living in thousands of cities like Pompeii This is my interpretation. Interpretatio me
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 20:12
|
|
|
SlothfulCobra posted:How exactly did hearths work in multi-story Roman apartments? They didn't. The wealthier household living on the ground floor may have had something but if you were on the upper floors, poo poo out of luck. Either deal with it or get a pot or something to light a small fire in and hope for the best.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 21:53
|
|
|
one sort of surprising datapoint on indoor fires is that the chimney was invented in the 12th century, and weren't common/universal for another 500 years after that
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 21:58
|
|
|
Wait, did they not have any method of heating at all? I know Rome's in a warm-temperate climate but winter still exists; a bunch of Texans die every time it freezes there and I don't think Texas is that much colder than Rome.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 22:01
|
|
|
the holy poopacy posted:Wait, did they not have any method of heating at all? I know Rome's in a warm-temperate climate but winter still exists; a bunch of Texans die every time it freezes there and I don't think Texas is that much colder than Rome. If you wanted heating you should be a better class of person rather than a disgusting poor who has to live in a tenth story shoebox apartment.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 22:07
|
|
|
cheetah7071 posted:one sort of surprising datapoint on indoor fires is that the chimney was invented in the 12th century, and weren't common/universal for another 500 years after that Hole in the roof worked for my father, his father, and his father before him. I'm not one to put on airs
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 22:09
|
|
|
the holy poopacy posted:Wait, did they not have any method of heating at all? I know Rome's in a warm-temperate climate but winter still exists; a bunch of Texans die every time it freezes there and I don't think Texas is that much colder than Rome. Can't answer the heating question, but looking at climate data for Rome vs. Houston, Rome has lower average lows than Houston in the winter, but Houston has significantly lower record lows. May be colder on average in Rome but it gets really loving cold in Texas from time to time.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 22:10
|
|
|
 -17C in Rome that year 
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 22:19
|
|
|
zoux posted:Yeah, that was the dynamic within the roman cities, since you had huge populations living in insulae - basically apartments - and like many SROs today, not very many facilities. Plus, you think a hotplate is a fire hazard, well there's a reason Crassus was the richest man in Rome Yeah because he could kill rich people and take their stuff.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 22:27
|
|
|
SlothfulCobra posted:How exactly did hearths work in multi-story Roman apartments? While "rural" is a moving target that is somewhat socially defined and I have lived in areas of America that most Americans would consider "rural as gently caress" but in the bronze age would be considered "significant cities" (e.g. town of 10,000), I have not run into a definition of "rural" that is so restrictive on population density that "subsistence farming commune" would fail. And just b/c I personally find this slightly confusing, I am not using "Roman" here to mean "resident of the city of Rome" but "subject or citizen of the Roman Republic/Empire." The vast majority of Romans under this definition would be considered rural by any definition of rural I've ever run into.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 22:30
|
|
|
zoux posted:Hole in the roof worked for my father, his father, and his father before him. I'm not one to put on airs 
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 22:30
|
|
|
SlothfulCobra posted:Wouldn't that be heavily dependent on your definition of "rural"? I thought that in most times and places in history people tended to live more in clusters if they could as opposed to being a single household on its own in the middle of nowhere. So rural living could still mean that your house is part of a little village that could have specialized communal services. Also yes, you're right here. Villages were relatively dense, people lived close together then were surrounded by farms. Widely spread out housing didn't make much sense when everyone is walking everywhere. That said, people still cooked at home. The one communal food service would be a bakery since having a bread oven at home is a pretty huge capital investment that doesn't make a lot of sense, most likely (in the period we're discussing and later through the middle ages) there was one bakery in the village. A pot of soup on the fire is much different. There were other services too, villages would likely have a smith, a stonemason, a carpenter, that sort of thing. People did some things on their own but you needed a specialist for others. Making clothes was mostly done in-house. Brewing was a mix but very common for people to be homebrewing instead of buying it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 22:33
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 22:34
|
|
|
Tulip posted:And just b/c I personally find this slightly confusing, I am not using "Roman" here to mean "resident of the city of Rome" but "subject or citizen of the Roman Republic/Empire." The vast majority of Romans under this definition would be considered rural by any definition of rural I've ever run into. For sure. The empire was very urban by premodern standards but we're still talking about 70-80% of the population living in little farming villages. E: Though if you want to be complicated, some Romans talked about the idea that living in cities was a defining Roman trait and whatever their citizenship, a lot of those rural people would not have been considered "real" Romans. Just people under Roman dominion. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Dec 14, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 22:35
|
|
|
the holy poopacy posted:Wait, did they not have any method of heating at all? I know Rome's in a warm-temperate climate but winter still exists; a bunch of Texans die every time it freezes there and I don't think Texas is that much colder than Rome. Past the treeline around the Himalayas you had livestock live in the bottom floor if you wanted a nice warm second floor. Residual heat traps well depending on how the roof and walls are constructed and having the buildings face the sun (I don't know the specifics, but a layered construction of mud, slate and wooden beams kept heat during sunlight trapped enough that the indoors during evenings were relatively warm) . You don't necessarily need a chimney to maintain heat on a two to three story building (by maintain heat, I mean not have indoors be life threateningly cold). ughhhh fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Dec 14, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 22:53
|
|
|
75% of the whole empire maybe But in Campania in 100 CE?
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 23:01
|
|
|
the holy poopacy posted:Wait, did they not have any method of heating at all? I know Rome's in a warm-temperate climate but winter still exists; a bunch of Texans die every time it freezes there and I don't think Texas is that much colder than Rome. There are references to braziers (emperor Jovian is supposed to have been stifled by the fumes from one) and portable ovens (the name of the late Roman heavy cavalryman, the clibanarius, was supposed to derive from the name of the camp bread oven, the clibanus—imagine something like a tagine). So you could have tried to keep warm, if you could find something like that. Just keeping warm would have been only part of your worries though: winter in ancient Rome was Tiber-flooding season and you had every chance of being hella drowned and becoming an anonymous part of one of those “destructions of property and life” that Tacitus will find a way of blaming on Tiberius.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 23:20
|
|
|
It amuses me that Romans, living in the Mediterranean where most winters are about as cold as a mild spring in the far north of Europe, didn't bother to count the days for the deepest winter because it was too dark and cold to bother. By that logic over here we should maybe count 10 days a year.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 23:29
|
|
|
ughhhh posted:Past the treeline around the Himalayas you had livestock live in the bottom floor if you wanted a nice warm second floor. Residual heat traps well depending on how the roof and walls are constructed and having the buildings face the sun (I don't know the specifics, but a layered construction of mud, slate and wooden beams kept heat during sunlight trapped enough that the indoors during evenings were relatively warm) . You don't necessarily need a chimney to maintain heat on a two to three story building (by maintain heat, I mean not have indoors be life threateningly cold). I often wonder how much of this kind of knowledge has been 'lost' because of industrialisation. Why does it matter which way your house faces when you can just press a button to warm or cool it? Modern architecture is more likely to use these principles NOW, but you can see heaps of houses built between, say, 1900-2000 that are badly situated or built inappropriately to take advantage of the sun.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 23:33
|
|
|
Elissimpark posted:I often wonder how much of this kind of knowledge has been 'lost' because of industrialisation. Why does it matter which way your house faces when you can just press a button to warm or cool it? Depends on where in the world. I visited rural Thailand a few years ago, during the peak of summer, and everything was built to offer lots of shade and cross breezes so it never once felt oppressively hot even though the sun was literally directly above and the thermometer said that it was literally lethally hot. People just stay under the shade during the hottest part of the day if they can and the heat disappates right away when the sun passes. Meanwhile when I went to London a few years later, I happened to catch a heat wave which was actually not as hot on the thermometer as Thailand had been, but because so much of London is made entirely out of stone and cement it's effectively one gigantic thermal mass which never cools off, and being outside was loving terrible.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 23:51
|
|
|
Elissimpark posted:I often wonder how much of this kind of knowledge has been 'lost' because of industrialisation. Why does it matter which way your house faces when you can just press a button to warm or cool it? Some of it has stuck around in interesting ways. Real estate values in Kathmandu valley and Pokhara valley is affected by things that are no longer really applicable to modern homes. Things such as north facing, south facing, location on a hill (crest or slope or foot) that are important in building in villages and older homes still drastically affect prices even though with modern heating and road access etc, it doesn't really matter.
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2022 02:59
|
|
|
Even then those things are useful for how much you have to use heating and cooling.
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2022 05:50
|
|
|
Elissimpark posted:I often wonder how much of this kind of knowledge has been 'lost' because of industrialisation. Why does it matter which way your house faces when you can just press a button to warm or cool it? Having also spent time in Nepal, the knowledge is very much not lost. And though most anthropologists will not cast themselves as trying to preserve any sort of practical knowledge, that is an effect of ethnographic research. A weird thing in Nepal specifically when I was there (about 10 years ago) is that development indices, which affected the government's prestige and international financing, included statistics about %of houses with thatch vs tin roofs. The theory was tin > thatch, so the more houses with tin roofs the better Nepal was developing. This theory is pretty contestable though: tin roofs have a couple of advantages (less labor, less maintenance, better waterproofing) but also some disadvantages (mostly what we've just been talking about - temperature regulation). As much as this was touted by the gov as evidence of their success, the people who were actually affected by this tended to grumble a bit about how they preferred their thatch roofs. Ghost Leviathan posted:Even then those things are useful for how much you have to use heating and cooling. I spent my afternoon putting more weatherproofing in my apartment's doorways to try and get my bills down a bit so yeah unless you're rich to the point of not needing to think about your utility bills then this kind of stuff does matter.
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2022 06:44
|
|
|
skasion posted:There are references to braziers (emperor Jovian is supposed to have been stifled by the fumes from one) and portable ovens (the name of the late Roman heavy cavalryman, the clibanarius, was supposed to derive from the name of the camp bread oven, the clibanus—imagine something like a tagine). So you could have tried to keep warm, if you could find something like that. Just keeping warm would have been only part of your worries though: winter in ancient Rome was Tiber-flooding season and you had every chance of being hella drowned and becoming an anonymous part of one of those “destructions of property and life” that Tacitus will find a way of blaming on Tiberius. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. It probably wouldn't take much to keep it livable (and obviously not everyone in the slums would make it) but that little bit could go a long way.
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2022 06:52
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:Brewing was a mix but very common for people to be homebrewing instead of buying it. Something something alewives. Brewing at home is actually quite easy to do (especially cider, I might add - take apple juice, add yeast, that's it) so if you're buying it it's probably because you're travelling instead of being at home, hence the existence of inns. Or you live in a city, of course. feedmegin fucked around with this message at 12:35 on Dec 15, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2022 12:32
|
|
|
zoux posted:Kind of did for food what Napoleon did for field artillery, and in fact it was Escoffier's experience the the French army that inspired him to militarize the kitchen. Napoleon? Earlier than that, try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gribeauval_system
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2022 12:57
|
|
|
Doing some reading wikipedia last night about the Mauryan rock edicts, and it mentioned a few in the western regions of the Empire were written in Greek. I know of the Hellenistic states succeeding Alexander in what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc., but had always assumed that the "Greek" nature of these states was largely limited to a very small ruling elite. Understanding literacy rates in general would be quite low, my question is: how prevalent was Greek in these areas, both as a spoken language and as a literate one? I find it difficult to believe that these edicts would be written in a language that, even as far as the literate class would go, only a small handful of people could read. I know the influence of Greek culture was quite strong regarding aesthetics and architecture. What about language?
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2022 15:09
|
|
|
Judgy Fucker posted:Doing some reading wikipedia last night about the Mauryan rock edicts, and it mentioned a few in the western regions of the Empire were written in Greek. I know of the Hellenistic states succeeding Alexander in what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc., but had always assumed that the "Greek" nature of these states was largely limited to a very small ruling elite. why wouldn't they have written the edicts in the rulers' language?
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2022 15:11
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 14:49 |
|
|
Judgy Fucker posted:Doing some reading wikipedia last night about the Mauryan rock edicts, and it mentioned a few in the western regions of the Empire were written in Greek. I know of the Hellenistic states succeeding Alexander in what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc., but had always assumed that the "Greek" nature of these states was largely limited to a very small ruling elite. Invaders typically coopt the local elites, imposing the conqueror's culture and language on them. These gradually filter down to lower levels of society. Just how far depends on how long the new rule lasts. Peasants tend to stick to their own language and culture regardless of what the big shots are doing for a long time.
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2022 15:49
|
|
