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Well since we all know that farm labor requirements skyrockets during planting and harvesting seasons, is there any evidence that Roman soldiers were used as a farm labor force as well? I mean it makes perfect sense to do so. And since these are professionals, they may as well be of use around the location in which they are garrisoned. It's not a normal army that demobilizes during the harvest as they return to their family's lands.
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Nov 7, 2023 12:42
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That's what people had slaves and/or children for.
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Nov 7, 2023 12:45
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Yes, it happened. The practice is called frumentatio (literally “graining”—there’s equally specific words for gathering fodder, water and firewood, which were everyday practices). Frumentatio was done infrequently but at a large scale (multiple thousands of soldiers working at a time), as needed to supplement supplies requisitioned by forced purchase from local allies/subjects. Soldiers carried falces (sickles) for the purpose as part of their equipment—you can see some on Trajan’s column. There is a catch. Growing season is campaign season. A good commander leaves camp when the local grain is just coming ripe. If your soldiers are harvesting, it’s hopefully a significant military operation involving their enemy’s crops. All the same it was not a popular duty. One imagines a lot of soldiers complaining that this is what they signed up to get away from. A much, much easier thing for the soldiers to do if you can manage it is to find your enemy’s granaries and stealing their contents by force or threat. Under the stabilized Augustan frontiers where this kind of aggressive action isn’t happening constantly, a major responsibility of provincial governors was maintaining the supply chain that kept their local frontier army from starving. Source is Jonathan Roth’s “Logistics of the Roman Army at War” ch 3 and 4. Really good book  Trajans column bit I was thinking of (guy at bottom left). Note the armor! Hard work. skasion fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Nov 7, 2023 |
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Nov 7, 2023 13:58
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Could just be a farmer in LEGIO VI replica lorica.
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Nov 7, 2023 17:11
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Latin was not standard so do whatever you want imho. If people understand you then it’s fine
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Nov 7, 2023 17:26
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I think that if a meme needs historically exact grammar that's probably trying too hard
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Nov 7, 2023 18:59
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Noli oblivisci undecimum Septembrem
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Nov 7, 2023 19:14
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FreudianSlippers posted:Noli oblivisci ante diem tertium Ides Septembres 
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Nov 7, 2023 20:23
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICZww0DtQKk I don't know if y'all have watched Tasting History, but I admire the comittment to ferment your own Garum, and to redo the recipe once you have your own house to smell up.
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Nov 7, 2023 20:26
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I. M. Gei posted:On my way to the gym tonight, I remembered a family friend of ours is a Latin teacher (not sure whether retired or still teaching) and so I showed him the phrase to get his thoughts on it. He's a professional, go with his version.
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Nov 7, 2023 21:11
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Triskelli posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICZww0DtQKk Tasting History is such an incredible channel. On a related note I'm very sad that the World That Was seems to be dead. Not nearly as involved of videos but honestly I appreciated the brisker pace https://www.youtube.com/@TheWorldThatWas
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Nov 7, 2023 22:36
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Zopotantor posted:He's a professional, go with his version. This is what I did. Now I'm looking at my order and wondering if I should've spelled "Kal" with a 'C'. Apparently 'K' was super rare in ancient Rome but "Kalendae" was one of the few words that used it somewhat often; it was pretty much interchangeable with the 'C' spelling.
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Nov 8, 2023 00:10
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Which Emperor was it that proposed to abolish the letter C on the grounds that it was redundant? Sounds like something Claudius would do.
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Nov 8, 2023 02:00
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I think you mean Klaudius
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Nov 8, 2023 02:23
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Claudius invented the letter half G
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Nov 8, 2023 02:27
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Cool Dad posted:I think you mean Klaudius MORTAL SENAT
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Nov 8, 2023 03:28
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skasion posted:Under the stabilized Augustan frontiers where this kind of aggressive action isn’t happening constantly, a major responsibility of provincial governors was maintaining the supply chain that kept their local frontier army from starving. This was specifically what I was thinking of. During the stabilized empire, where legions were garrisoned in frontier provinces and fed by local grains and produce, would legionairies have gone out in harvest and planting season, if it was deemed low risk? Or would legionary labor be a mere drop in the bucket in comparison to the local farm labor, and too politically destabilizing as it would take employment away from landless farm labor? Could it be open to abuse by local large land owners? Or would it be deemed "lesser" work for the soldiers and bad for morale? And what was the column commemorating, an instance of this foraging out on campaign?
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Nov 8, 2023 06:58
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Elden Lord Godfrey posted:And what was the column commemorating, an instance of this foraging out on campaign? So the rest of those questions are big and I think a more specialized answer might be good (and I am pretty sure that the answer to all of those is "it depends," the roman empire was not an empire with uniform governance, a lot of Roman governance was less "Roman governance" and more "tributary peace treaties that have stood for hundreds of years and vary down to the level of individual towns") But Trajan's Column is, as historic artefacts go, insanely important. The column commemorates the victory of the Dacian Wars, which were massive, bloody wars that ultimately secured much of Rome's gold and iron sources for the rest of its history. Anyway, Trajan's Column is enormous and by itself constitutes a significant percentage of all of our representative sourcebase for the Roman military. It has 155 different scenes on it, several of which to my knowledge do not seem to have any similar representation in our surviving sourcebase, and every single time I've seen a historian talk about Roman equipment and what the Roman military just physically looked and operated like, they've at some point or another used an image from Trajan's Column.
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Nov 8, 2023 07:17
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My copy of "The Context of Scripture" is one of the greatest things I own now. The whole thing is just incredibly interesting. The Caesar thing we were talking about, I think that's muddied by people having a bunch of opinions on Caesar separate from the war crimes. So here's someone I found from Volume 3 of The Context of Scripture in the Sumerian section  Do we judge Zanka for being a monster and selling her daughter into slavery, knowing only that about her? Or does 4000 years of history between her and us make it more conflicting? Yeah slavery was common but your own daughter, that seems cold. I'm going to get Before the Muses next and read through every single word of this poo poo, it's great.
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Nov 8, 2023 10:55
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BrainDance posted:My copy of "The Context of Scripture" is one of the greatest things I own now. The whole thing is just incredibly interesting. It seems plausible that there was a mitigating circumstance of extreme poverty here.
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Nov 8, 2023 14:05
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Elden Lord Godfrey posted:This was specifically what I was thinking of. During the stabilized empire, where legions were garrisoned in frontier provinces and fed by local grains and produce, would legionairies have gone out in harvest and planting season, if it was deemed low risk? I’d think of it like this. An army needs food. It can either be given that food or take it. If you’re a landowner whose dependents’ labor produces food, you’d much rather give than have them come take possession. Soldiers on your land is not a good thing. For common farmers or even wealthy landowners, frumentatio would have been daylight robbery—you’d be completely dependent on the goodwill of thousands of proverbially malevolent armed men—you would be lucky if all you lost was your harvest. And since the grain has to be harvested anyway, why bother involving the soldiers if you have the option of harvesting yourself, and sending some far-off army base on the Rhine however many sacks of pre-threshed grain the government wants? In addition to what Tulip says about the column, this scene specifically (panel 110) represents final preparations for the siege of the Dacian capital of Sarmizegetusa Regia during the Second Dacian War (or anyway this seems to be the case in context, where the next panels show the defense of Sarmizegetusa; it’s hard to be too precise since the commentary that went with the column originally has now been lost). The soldiers are in the vicinity of a walled army camp (visible behind them) within Dacia. So yeah, it’s a depiction of forage on campaign in a hostile country (also a country which, by the time of the column’s completion, had been reorganized and resettled as a Roman province).
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Nov 8, 2023 15:16
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BrainDance posted:My copy of "The Context of Scripture" is one of the greatest things I own now. The whole thing is just incredibly interesting. I'd think it would depend on the circumstances. Was the daughter sold because there was a famine and they couldn't feed everyone? Was she going to serve in a wealthy household or a brothel? Knowing any of that would certainly color how I saw Mom's actions.
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Nov 8, 2023 15:26
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The Roman Twelve Tables (constitution of the early republic, now fragmentary) say that if a father sells his son three times, the son becomes legally emancipated from his father. Would love to have the details of whatever racket that law was trying to stop.
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Nov 8, 2023 17:58
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skasion posted:The Roman Twelve Tables (constitution of the early republic, now fragmentary) say that if a father sells his son three times, the son becomes legally emancipated from his father. Would love to have the details of whatever racket that law was trying to stop. My guess is child pawning. After a certain point just let em go.
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Nov 8, 2023 18:25
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Even the Romans detested child pawn.
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Nov 8, 2023 18:29
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zoux posted:Even the Romans detested child pawn. post hock, ergo
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Nov 8, 2023 18:45
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As expected my genius 21st century idea of "we have 10 thousand bored men sitting around during harvest season, let's send them out to help the local land owners bring in the harvest" is not feasible for the simple expedience that it's too politically and socially destabilizing.
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Nov 9, 2023 01:44
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Elden Lord Godfrey posted:As expected my genius 21st century idea of "we have 10 thousand bored men sitting around during harvest season, let's send them out to help the local land owners bring in the harvest" is not feasible for the simple expedience that it's too politically and socially destabilizing. Well, I mean I forgot about Roman roads, of all drat things, when I asked what the Legionaries did, so eh. That does make me think of another question though, when Rome founded new colonies, were they seen like the American West? I may be some poor jerk in Rome, but if I roll the dice on the edge of the territories I might strike it rich?
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Nov 9, 2023 02:03
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Just to clarify are you talking about colonies or provinces? Cuz there's a technical and legal distinction but in terms of common parlance and 19th-century onwards understanding of "colonialization" in broader context, the provinces were colonized regions, even if they were not at all "colonia" in the Roman sense. For the colonies, I've never gotten the sense that they had much of a Gold Rush atmosphere. Being a Roman and moving to a newly made colony could very much be a valuable form of economic advancement, but not so much rags-to-riches as lower-income-to-lower-middle-income. In the case of the provinces, people got fantastically rich off of the provinces, but also not so much a rags-to-riches story so much as a rich-guy-to-politically-destabilizingly-rich-guy story.
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Nov 9, 2023 02:10
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Yeah, I meant colonies specifically. I just sort of figured war profiteering and the like after getting a new province was a given no matter who you were.
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Nov 9, 2023 02:31
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sleepy.eyes posted:That does make me think of another question though, when Rome founded new colonies, were they seen like the American West? I may be some poor jerk in Rome, but if I roll the dice on the edge of the territories I might strike it rich? Kind of. They didn’t have a “go west young man” type ethos exactly. Roman coloniae weren’t private business ventures trying to sign up warm bodies. They were government settlements established to pension people off out of the army, the settlers are middle-aged military veterans and their dependents. At the same time, it was in the state’s (and/or political patron’s) interest for the colonies to succeed, and the shape of that must have been that a bunch of Roman guys who grew up with little became well-off colonial citizens after a bunch of military service. Sometimes this looked like “we’ll set a bunch of you up in/around an existing city”. Other times (particularly in the west of Europe which largely didn’t have thriving cities before the Romans) they were established as garrison towns to defend against/civilize the barbarians, which is pretty American West. There were also definitely mining “boomtowns” in the provinces. Pliny alludes to them. Not all the labor was enslaved either, so maybe there were some antique forty-niner types among them? can’t think of a source that discusses them in any detail.
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Nov 9, 2023 03:05
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In the meme era it sure seems more plausible that iron age societies didn't need literacy per se for simple mass communication. In Times of History he's been talking about Persians using imagery to communicate across their huge empire.
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Nov 12, 2023 21:28
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Arglebargle III posted:In the meme era it sure seems more plausible that iron age societies didn't need literacy per se for simple mass communication. In Times of History he's been talking about Persians using imagery to communicate across their huge empire. The best method of mass communication in antiquity is coinage, which requires a little bit of literacy, but the kind you don’t need formal education beaten into you for, you can pick it up. It’s like a tiny little no-nuance propaganda token. Every time you buy groceries or pay rent the little metal face of king/god/CAESAR (AVG, DIVI F, IMP COS LXIX P P, or whatever) is there doing his thing. They aren’t even looking at you.
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Nov 12, 2023 22:02
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They also painted signs all over walls all over the place
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Nov 12, 2023 23:10
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skasion posted:The best method of mass communication in antiquity is coinage, which requires a little bit of literacy, but the kind you don’t need formal education beaten into you for, you can pick it up. It’s like a tiny little no-nuance propaganda token. Every time you buy groceries or pay rent the little metal face of king/god/CAESAR (AVG, DIVI F, IMP COS LXIX P P, or whatever) is there doing his thing. They aren’t even looking at you. *AD 69 and some schlub out in Spain pays for his bread and milk with a Galba gold coin and gets his change in Vespasian silver. "Seriously?"
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Nov 13, 2023 00:39
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skasion posted:The best method of mass communication in antiquity is coinage, which requires a little bit of literacy, but the kind you don’t need formal education beaten into you for, you can pick it up. It’s like a tiny little no-nuance propaganda token. Every time you buy groceries or pay rent the little metal face of king/god/CAESAR (AVG, DIVI F, IMP COS LXIX P P, or whatever) is there doing his thing. They aren’t even looking at you. I'm of the opinion that this is a form of parasocial relationship.
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Nov 13, 2023 00:47
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Tulip posted:I'm of the opinion that this is a form of parasocial relationship. The relationship is purely transactional.
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Nov 13, 2023 01:24
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Tulip posted:I'm of the opinion that this is a form of parasocial relationship. It totally is. Or is at the least a clumsy attempt at one by people who didn’t have the centuries of academic evolution to allow them to articulate what they were doing. Making people feel like the guy in charge cares about you, personally, and your well-being is usually the cornerstone of any monarchies PR campaign. That coin that you just used to buy bread so your family doesn’t starve literally only exists because Caesar had it minted. Caesar has just personally saved you family and now you naturally want to repay the favor. Without his face being on that coin it’s not a personal favor he made for you, it’s just currency. See also the constant use of familial language like “father” in the official narrative. He’s not a distant administrator, he’s the dad you fantasize about having.
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Nov 13, 2023 04:29
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Elissimpark posted:*AD 69 and some schlub out in Spain pays for his bread and milk with a Galba gold coin and gets his change in Vespasian silver. people who are not like, serious corporate entities or states or parastate things or otherwise institutions in themselves do not pay for things in gold coins. they used the unit of account, sure 1 gold aureus was priced at 8 grams of gold, rough actual gold content 7 grams so seignorage was a seventhish. the focus of the intense debasement was mainly the silver denarius so they would have been pissed off for not getting enough change, mostly original denarius : aureus exchange rate was 25 to 1. constantine put out a solidus that replaced the denarius by 312 ad, which for reference was 4.5 grams of gold and worth 275000 denarii, for how fuckin debased they got the denarius prolly the most used-qua-used gold currency was millennia later in england, the angel and the noble coins, and they were still like, for buying cows or land or something of that nobleman-only nature bob dobbs is dead fucked around with this message at 07:09 on Nov 13, 2023 |
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Nov 13, 2023 06:45
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Admittedly interesting, but let's face it: anything smaller than a Rai stone is just piddling change.
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Nov 13, 2023 12:42
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