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Whorelord posted:Not sure I buy that the Romans were less "racist" (as applicable as that term is to the ancient world) than the Carthaginians. There are surely many, presumably unrecorded, cases of Celts or other peoples who fought for the Romans and would have been looked down upon by their own commanders. Just seems more like a case where some guy felt under appreciated and switched sides, like an ancient Benedict Arnold. Opportunistically racist, maybe After all, this was the country of "Yo these guys wear trousers, we can't have that in the Senate" but it was mostly because they were Caesar's guys
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Jan 3, 2024 14:40
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Some elite Romans of Livy’s day did have a fairly tolerant attitude towards foreign nobility. at least to hear Livy tell it, this went back a long long way. half the Roman kings are supposed to have been of foreign extraction. the Sabine origins of the Claudii are told without any sense that that might offend the imperial family. There was a long proud mediterranean tradition of hospitality to foreign elites—think of Homeric xenia, the kind of institutional guest-friendship where after battering each other with swords, spears and pointy rocks for hours the heroes realize their dads helped each other out once and decide to trade armor instead of fighting. or Odysseus just washing up butt naked on Phaeacia and being welcomed as soon as it can be established in a socially proper way that he’s a man of consequence. Anyway yeah racism isn’t the right way to talk about it really since the important thing to remember is that this hospitality/xenia only applies to the better sort. It’s a class thing. If you can be an elite at one place in the Med, you can probably fit in somewhere else as well. Hannibal flees to Seleucus, etc. It doesn’t really matter if you aren’t the same “race” as the commoners because ancient elites fancied they were descended from this god or that hero and so weren’t really related to the poors anyway. But I think the guy is just joking. There may also have been a specific Augustan-age political dimension to this which we aren’t especially well equipped to see. Augustus was big on bringing Italian and even non-Italian gentry into Roman government in a way that would have been unthinkable even a couple generations before. Two of his earliest supporters were the Cornelii Balbi, who started out Spanish Phoenician money-men in Pompey’s day and ended up reaching the consulship under the principate. There was conservative backlash too. Livy (another Italian gentleman, in this case from Patavium) was criticized by his contemporary Pollio for an unspecified “Patavinity”. Edited because Pollio’s Romanness is more peccable than I remembered. skasion fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 14:42
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So I'd say its a little hard to talk specifically about the Carthaginians given the dearth of literary sources, but we do have a pretty good selection of literary sources from other Mediterranean contemporaries of the Romans and we can say with pretty good confidence that relative to the Ptolemies etc, the Romans were much less ethnically discriminating. Which isn't to say that the Romans had no discriminatory attitudes or policies (e.g. the socii), but its pretty clear that being ethnically Egyptian under the Romans was much better than being ethnically Egyptian under the Ptolemies, and a lot of that comes down to the Romans having a more permissive sense, culturally and legally, of what it meant to be Roman. I'm not into using the term "racism" to describe attitudes/behaviors before 1500 mostly because when you do so, people tend to import a lot of 20th century notions of what "race" is and how it was enforced that obfuscate more than they clarify.
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Jan 3, 2024 14:57
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Societies can also have racist attitudes that the leadership overrides because they have a goal to accomplish. It certainly happens the other way around.
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Jan 3, 2024 15:26
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yeah we have covered this before and the main point is while prejudice, bias, etc all were alive and well in the ancient world, the concept of "race" as it is known today is very much a european invention from the colonial period. Romans absolutely looked down on Gauls and Celts for instance, but Caesar was able to pack the Senate with them while he was alive. the type of racial discrimination we associate with Jim Crow just was not a thing to the Romans. Obviously an Ethiopian merchant that just walks into Londinium in 200AD is going to attract looks and attention and potentially distrust since they are an obvious foreigner but the whole set of racial stereotypes modern people are culturally impregnated with wasn't present. As a result there was much less resistance to acceptance if that merchant also spoke latin and went by Marcus so the people realize he's a Roman from Africa.
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Jan 3, 2024 15:36
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"Romans were racist like this but The French are racist like thiiiiiissss" "A person being considered suspicious because of their skin color" hasn't changed, they just started using guns.
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Jan 3, 2024 15:46
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FAUXTON posted:"Romans were racist like this but The French are racist like thiiiiiissss" Nuance still existed in the Roman period.
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Jan 3, 2024 15:47
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FAUXTON posted:"Romans were racist like this but The French are racist like thiiiiiissss" colonial and now modern racism are significantly more insidious than "those people look different." chattel slavery required an entire rework of european morality in order to square the circle of prior treatment of slaves and other cultures and the outright horrors and atrocities they were now committing daily to the native americans and africans. that's why the entire concept of being "white " was invented.
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Jan 3, 2024 15:56
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Gaius Marius posted:Nuance still existed in the Roman period. It's true. Cato complained about it.
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Jan 3, 2024 15:57
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I think modern audiences just sort of struggle to imagine a world where skin color was less important than the town you were born in or whether your family has historically been blessed by the right priests. This reflects a contemporary world where there’s been lots of ethnic conflicts, but society is now highly mobile and relatively secular.
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Jan 3, 2024 15:58
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Kaal posted:I think modern audiences just sort of struggle to imagine a world where skin color was less important than the town you were born in or whether your family has historically been blessed by the right priests. This reflects a contemporary world where there’s been lots of ethnic conflicts, but society is now highly mobile and relatively secular. I think they are just framing it wrong. I can assure you I feel much more hatred towards the loving worthless Iowegians infesting my roads than anyone of differing color of skin or creed.
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Jan 3, 2024 16:07
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Gaius Marius posted:I think they are just framing it wrong. I can assure you I feel much more hatred towards the loving worthless Iowegians infesting my roads than anyone of differing color of skin or creed. *Googles 'Iowegian,' reads first Urban Dictionary entry* lol
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Jan 3, 2024 16:20
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Look it's simple. You had Romans, you had Roman client states/trade partners especially once you get into trade with the Indian sub-continent/Sri Lanka and the like, and then you had filthy barbarians/rivals.
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Jan 3, 2024 16:21
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ChaseSP posted:Look it's simple. You had Romans, you had Roman client states, and then you had filthy barbarians/rivals. yes but the key thing is one could stop being a barbarian/rival and become Roman. one cannot stop being black or white. that's an extremely important distinction.
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Jan 3, 2024 16:23
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Agreed, the ability to fully integrate conquered people into the empire was a factor in why it managed to last for so long. You still had Senate members upset/look down but you also have the factor of bringing in foreigners in a clear power play/not liking the prospect of more political rivals to deal with. E: If anyone thinks the argument is your average person would welcome open arms, this obviously isn't the case but seeing someone with different skin you'd probably just think of them either as a foreigner, or from a distant part of the Empire rather than outright inferior. ChaseSP fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 16:26
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People have always been prejudiced but the modern system we (especially in America) think of as racism is a local phenomenon
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Jan 3, 2024 16:32
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Nessus posted:People have always been prejudiced but the modern system we (especially in America) think of as racism is a local phenomenon There is something genuinely interesting about the types of skepticism people have about history. "The modern racism system is modern" is almost tautologically true but frequently disbelieved, but "Athens was radically egalitarian" requires almost no proof.
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Jan 3, 2024 16:46
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Tulip posted:There is something genuinely interesting about the types of skepticism people have about history. "The modern racism system is modern" is almost tautologically true but frequently disbelieved, but "Athens was radically egalitarian" requires almost no proof. wait what? people believe the latter?
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Jan 3, 2024 16:47
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If you barely know anything about Ancient Greece, you may have heard about Athens or Sparta. You may even have the luck to remember the former was a democracy.
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Jan 3, 2024 16:49
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:wait what? people believe the latter? It's usually what's taught in American public schools. Sparta were the militarist bad guys, Athens invented democracy. No discussion about the fact that the only ones who could vote were free males, making up what, 20-30% of the population or so?
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Jan 3, 2024 16:49
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WoodrowSkillson posted:colonial and now modern racism are significantly more insidious than "those people look different." chattel slavery required an entire rework of european morality in order to square the circle of prior treatment of slaves and other cultures and the outright horrors and atrocities they were now committing daily to the native americans and africans. that's why the entire concept of being "white " was invented. This seems to be framing a spontaneous moment where Europe Invented Whiteness And Went Racist, which that entire rework of morality was needed to justify. Was there anything, say, technology-wise, which would have logistically facilitated or necessitated a shift from prior client-state models of colonialism to the modern eliminationist and racist versions?
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Jan 3, 2024 16:52
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FAUXTON posted:This seems to be framing a spontaneous moment where Europe Invented Whiteness And Went Racist, which that entire rework of morality was needed to justify. Was there anything, say, technology-wise, which would have logistically facilitated or necessitated a shift from prior client-state models of colonialism to the modern eliminationist and racist versions? Don't be cute and say what you want to say I'm not going to play whatever game this is.
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Jan 3, 2024 16:53
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:wait what? people believe the latter? Just removed that exact sentiment from a non fiction article I was editing.
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Jan 3, 2024 16:56
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FAUXTON posted:This seems to be framing a spontaneous moment where Europe Invented Whiteness And Went Racist, which that entire rework of morality was needed to justify. Was there anything, say, technology-wise, which would have logistically facilitated or necessitated a shift from prior client-state models of colonialism to the modern eliminationist and racist versions? E: they were scared of poor whites and poor blacks teaming up in large part I believe
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Jan 3, 2024 17:06
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Judgy Fucker posted:It's usually what's taught in American public schools. Sparta were the militarist bad guys, Athens invented democracy. No discussion about the fact that the only ones who could vote were free males, making up what, 20-30% of the population or so?
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Jan 3, 2024 17:08
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Sparta had good propaganda even in its time That is the myth of Sparta was contemporary with Sparta
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Jan 3, 2024 17:15
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Sparta was Chad and Athens was Virgin, sorry to say
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Jan 3, 2024 17:20
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Sparta's goddess was Aphrodite and Athens was Athena, checks out
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Jan 3, 2024 17:25
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What's even wilder than people thinking of Athens as wildly egalitarian is that you can find people, notional liberals even, that thought Sparta was an egalitarian society. https://newrepublic.com/article/154685/defense-sparta
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Jan 3, 2024 17:25
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Seems about right for a liberal tbh
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Jan 3, 2024 17:26
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Jan 3, 2024 17:38
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Tulip posted:What's even wilder than people thinking of Athens as wildly egalitarian is that you can find people, notional liberals even, that thought Sparta was an egalitarian society. https://newrepublic.com/article/154685/defense-sparta I think this partly comes from a combination of 1) not realizing how large a portion of the people in Sparta were helots and 2) people reading sources’ claims about social equality within the Spartiate class uncritically. There’s also sometimes an element of non-intersectional feminism; upper class women, specifically, were less oppressed in Sparta than in Athens. There’s also something of a tradition (going back to Aristotle) of seeing Sparta as radically egalitarian in a bad way. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 17:44
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Silver2195 posted:I think this partly comes from a combination of 1) not realizing how large a portion of the people in Sparta were helots and 2) people reading sources’ claims about social equality within the Spartiate class uncritically. There’s also sometimes an element of non-intersectional feminism; upper class women, specifically, were less oppressed in Sparta than in Athens. I'd say these are the most charitable explanations. If you want to be less charitable you would point to the part where the Total War games and Zach Snyder's 300 are the main places people learn about Sparta from, and if you wanted to be very uncharitable you would criticize them for being too incurious to resolve the conflict between "egalitarianism" and "slaver society." I guess where I'm going with this is that its very, very easy to overestimate the public understanding of the ancient past. Until a few years ago I thought the Marian reforms were a thing despite them being very obviously silly, because I learned about them in Rome: Total War when I was 15 and never really dug into it.
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Jan 3, 2024 17:51
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:wait what? people believe the latter? I've encountered people who think Athens was a democracy therefore it must've been inclusive and good, Romans were imperialist so must've been racist and bad (throw in lurid Christian persecution stories here too). I get how someone who knows little to nothing about history arrives there. The idea that the imperial hyper-militarist guys were also far and away the most tolerant society of the era seems odd, though when you think about it more it does make sense that being tolerant would make maintaining an empire easier. When you spend all your time oppressing people you end up like Sparta.
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Jan 3, 2024 18:21
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Sparta was basically stuck that way. I guess there was that vibe of “at least I’m not a helot”
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Jan 3, 2024 18:24
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Sparta turning into a glorified vacation spot for Roman nobles to marvel at their old ways is truly the best fate that happened.
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Jan 3, 2024 18:30
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Weirdly while people contrast Sparta's nominal authoritarianism with Athens's nominal democracy, they're a lot more similar in structure than you'd expect. Sparta had two kings, but they didn't really have a lot of independent power. Aside from the natural counterbalancing you'd get from having two kings, a lot of important duties went to groups of elected officials, or sometimes posed as a general vote to the citizens. Athens had the general assembly of citizens as more of the important body with a special extra assembly, 3-9 archons in a similar position as kings, and a court system. I think Sparta had generally less people overall active in government at any given time, but in practice Athens leaving the door open to everyone generally meant more that the people who could afford to hang out in the assembly all day instead of working would have a lot more sway than the poorer Athenian citizens. Maybe it'd even discourage people from going too far from the main city in times when politics were hotter? I think Sparta leaving things to an elected body was probably better for looking after the needs of the rural population [of citizens]. Both states had a lot of slavery, and I'm not really sure of all the ways you'd compare the ways they treated their slaves. Both states had a significant amount of non-citizens in their societies who had less legal rights to any of the vaunted privileges afforded the citizenry. Pretty famously, Athens was a lot worse about women than Sparta. I also get the impression that Sparta was probably a better hegemon over other city-states in the Peloponnesian League than Athens was over the Delian League. None of the vaunted principles of Athenian democracy extended to letting the voices of non-athenian governments be heard, whereas Sparta listened a lot more to other members of its league, sometimes didn't get its way, and apparently didn't try obliterating cities for daring to leave the league like Athens did.
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Jan 3, 2024 18:35
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Don't be cute and say what you want to say I'm not going to play whatever game this is. I'm not being cute and couldn't if I tried, and no game is being played. You seemed to be carving a very unique narrative through history there and I wanted to know your thoughts on the role of industry or technology (or even mass literacy) on the whole process, since I don't want to go off assuming I know exactly what you meant by chattel slavery.
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Jan 3, 2024 18:41
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Grand Fromage posted:I've encountered people who think Athens was a democracy therefore it must've been inclusive and good, Romans were imperialist so must've been racist and bad (throw in lurid Christian persecution stories here too). I get how someone who knows little to nothing about history arrives there. The idea that the imperial hyper-militarist guys were also far and away the most tolerant society of the era seems odd, though when you think about it more it does make sense that being tolerant would make maintaining an empire easier. When you spend all your time oppressing people you end up like Sparta. There's definitely a pattern of the most successful expansionist empires being relatively tolerant for their era/area. The Achaemenids, Romans, Umayyads, and Mongols were all pretty good at flattering local elites and incorporating them into their systems and were pretty tolerant of cultural and religious differences. Problems start to arise after empires stop expanding and tend to calcify their identity, if succession crises don't get to them first.
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Jan 3, 2024 18:50
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FAUXTON posted:I'm not being cute and couldn't if I tried, and no game is being played. You seemed to be carving a very unique narrative through history there and I wanted to know your thoughts on the role of industry or technology (or even mass literacy) on the whole process, since I don't want to go off assuming I know exactly what you meant by chattel slavery. What they posted is more or less the standard narrative and well supported by sources. The term chattel slavery gets somewhat misused, it means the slave was considered property so Roman slavery would also fit. I don't know if there's a specific term for the American form of slavery, where being a slave was a category you were more or less permanently in with manumission being very rare, and also there was a specific type of people who were slaves. The Roman system was not that. There was no "racial" category, being a slave was a condition you could move in and out of, the majority were not manumitted but it wasn't some impossible dream either, and while freedmen were never considered fully Roman their children could be.
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Jan 3, 2024 19:00
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