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The reason that purple was so expensive was because it requires both red and blue, both which were not cheap.
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Dec 30, 2012 13:04
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Namarrgon posted:The reason that purple was so expensive was because it requires both red and blue, both which were not cheap. Tyrian purple was expensive because it had to be extracted from a particular sea snail; it was a pain in the rear end to get and to make (anecdotally, it took thousands of snails to dye a single toga). But it came out purple, and didn't have to be mixed with anything to create the characteristic brilliant purple hue. A related sea snail produced an indigo dye, and the Romans considered the darker color created by dyeing cloth with both Tyrian purple and indigo to be superior to the more reddish color of Tyrian purple on its own, which may be what you're thinking of. Reds were created either using a climbing herb called madder (very, very cheap, but not bright and prone to fading) or the shells of a particular variety of insect (more expensive, but a better color).
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Dec 30, 2012 14:57
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Besesoth posted:Tyrian purple was expensive because it had to be extracted from a particular sea snail; it was a pain in the rear end to get and to make (anecdotally, it took thousands of snails to dye a single toga). But it came out purple, and didn't have to be mixed with anything to create the characteristic brilliant purple hue. Is it the same insect we tend to use for red food dye today?
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Dec 30, 2012 15:16
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There was also a highly prized red dye that comes from trees that only grow on Socotra.
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Dec 30, 2012 15:44
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Masonity posted:Is it the same insect we tend to use for red food dye today? No; they're both scale insects, but the Romans got their crimson dye from female kermes insects, and we get our red dye from the Latin American cochineal. GF, how could I have forgotten Socotra? Especially when the name of the tree is so poetic. 
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Dec 30, 2012 16:20
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I recently watched a series of lectures in which three roman houses were poured over in real detail, and there were so many beautiful pictures to go with the lectures of interior design and landscape gardening that I was desperate to get some books that satisfy my need to look at more beautiful photographs. Are there any good books out there people can recommend that focus on stuff like houses, fashion, jewelry and the day to day visual culture of Rome? Type 'Roman houses' into amazon and you get overwhelmed with no way to tell good from bad. Also, any good books that go into detail abut the day to day lives of everyday shlubs in Ancient Rome? Reading about the 12 Caesars is fascinating, but I like to read about what life would have been like for some poor everyday bum like me too.
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Dec 30, 2012 17:54
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When you're talking about dyes, you don't mix red, green, and blue - that's for mixing light. If you mix dyes or inks you mix the complement colors: cyan, magenta, and yellow. So you need an inherently purple dye (magenta, at least; fancy purple I'm guessing is bluish enough to be magenta with some cyan in it). Of course natural dyes aren't primary colors or their complements, but they're still going to obey the same mixing rules. If you had natural red and blue dyes, you couldn't mix them to get a good purple, you'd get a purple tinted brown mess. Red mixes as magenta plus yellow, while blue would mix as cyan and magenta. Cochineal is the natural red food dye from insects.
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Dec 30, 2012 18:34
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Base Emitter posted:When you're talking about dyes, you don't mix red, green, and blue - that's for mixing light. If you mix dyes or inks you mix the complement colors: cyan, magenta, and yellow. So you need an inherently purple dye (magenta, at least; fancy purple I'm guessing is bluish enough to be magenta with some cyan in it). Pretty sure you got that exactly backwards, inks and dies mix well along RGB. Also this thread has been amazing, and helped me through many a boring work day, saying thanks to all the experts.
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Dec 31, 2012 03:58
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You might be thinking of RYB, which is a pre-modern approximation to CMY. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtractive_color
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Dec 31, 2012 04:11
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I know he was gone over earlier in the thread, but if anyone has any more anecdotes, stories, whatever about Agrippa I'd love to read them. He's a fascinating character, and though Great Man history is a bit weird I have a soft spot for it around that period because it all fits together so well and is filled with so many fascinating people.
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Dec 31, 2012 08:20
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kind of fluffy but fun to consider: There have only been a few points in history where you had two hugely influential figures like Augustus and Agrippa who actually got along personally and worked together their entire lives. Agrippa never made the power grab you often see from talented and respected generals after a civil war and Augustus never had Agrippa executed or exiled out of paranoia over his popularity, which is what dictators tend to do if their generals don't overthrow them first. Obviously, no one can really say why it worked out like that but its neat when the most cynical possible scenario doesn't happen.
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Jan 2, 2013 17:39
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Agrippa was exiled to Syria at one point, but came back.
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Jan 2, 2013 18:37
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I'm curious about the circumstances of Agrippa's divorce from Claudia--did they have personal problems? Was he completely under Caesar's sway? Was he a ruthless careerist in his own right?
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Jan 2, 2013 18:44
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euphronius posted:Agrippa was exiled to Syria at one point, but came back. I'm not even close to an expert but I'm sure earlier in this thread someone said this was a political / strategic move rather than a genuine exile?
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Jan 2, 2013 18:59
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He was gone a year and had nominal control over the entire East. He stayed in Lesbos and never actually went to Syria. If it was an exile it was the wussiest one ever. He basically took a year long vacation to a Greek island and then came back like nothing had changed. He was in control of a large number of troops during his "exile" and that also would make no sense if Augustus and him had a falling out.
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Jan 2, 2013 19:22
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Is there any academic support for the "Livia killed everybody" theory. Basically that Livia arranged the assassinations of Gaius Caesar, Lucius Caesar, Agrippa Posthumous, maybe Augustus himself and anyone else who potentially stood in the way of Tiberius ascending to the throne. I have been listening to the History of Rome podcast, and he treats it with quite a bit of skepticism, but I'm wondering if anyone actually believes it.
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Jan 3, 2013 01:28
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Xguard86 posted:Obviously, no one can really say why it worked out like that but its neat when the most cynical possible scenario doesn't happen. Yeah, it's pretty amazing and was very good for the empire. Augustus and Agrippa were a dream team and Augustus was incredibly lucky to have his best friend be one of the most competent people in history AND someone who had no apparent capacity for treason or ambition to power. Augustus couldn't have achieved anything near what he did without Agrippa, and the principate would've rested on much shakier foundations. It may never have gone anywhere at all. Not My Leg posted:Is there any academic support for the "Livia killed everybody" theory. Basically that Livia arranged the assassinations of Gaius Caesar, Lucius Caesar, Agrippa Posthumous, maybe Augustus himself and anyone else who potentially stood in the way of Tiberius ascending to the throne. I have been listening to the History of Rome podcast, and he treats it with quite a bit of skepticism, but I'm wondering if anyone actually believes it. Not really. Livia is one of the quintessential examples of the evil stepmother trope that appears so often in Roman histories. She may have done some of the things she's accused of but there's no real evidence and it fits so neatly into Roman stereotypes and common narratives that it doesn't ring true.
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Jan 3, 2013 04:32
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Grand Fromage posted:Not really. Livia is one of the quintessential examples of the evil stepmother trope that appears so often in Roman histories. She may have done some of the things she's accused of but there's no real evidence and it fits so neatly into Roman stereotypes and common narratives that it doesn't ring true. But it makes for really good TV.
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Jan 3, 2013 05:38
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Grand Fromage posted:Yeah, it's pretty amazing and was very good for the empire. Augustus and Agrippa were a dream team and Augustus was incredibly lucky to have his best friend be one of the most competent people in history AND someone who had no apparent capacity for treason or ambition to power. Augustus couldn't have achieved anything near what he did without Agrippa, and the principate would've rested on much shakier foundations. It may never have gone anywhere at all. It may have never even happened, Agrippa pretty much won Augustus's wars for him, including the two most crucial battles for Augustus' rise, Naulochus and Actium. He's basically the wet dream associate for every aspiring dictator in the world. They really must have had an amazing friendship for Agrippa to be pretty much good at anything he set his mind to but always stay that loyal. One must have only imagined how Antony and everyone who wanted to off Octavian must have felt at the time, with the perfect soldier looming around the sickly weak dude all the time.
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Jan 3, 2013 17:35
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It kinda sucks that Agrippa is made out to be a bit of a weiner in the HBO Rome series.
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Jan 3, 2013 17:46
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Agrippa had good reasons not to rebel other than undying friendship. Augustus always remained loyal to Agrippa, including making him consul three times--twice as his co-consul--and having Agrippa buried in Augustus's mausoleum. In 23BC, Agrippa was Augustus's heir in the event he died in an illness. After Augustus recovered, Agrippa was made Augustus's son-in-law, and Augustus adopted Agrippa's sons. Agrippa had every reason to believe he would be number one should he survive Augustus, and died believing that in any case his sons would rule after Augustus. Augustus was the senior partner, sure, but it seems like Agrippa was treated as a partner rather than a subordinate.
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Jan 3, 2013 18:42
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No, they were definitely partners, it's just that in history whenever there are two (or more) guys at the top, 99 times out of 100 they turn on each other one way or another. More equal they are the more likely this is. Humans are dicks. On top of my head I can't even name a similar historical relationship then Augustus and Agrippa.
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Jan 3, 2013 19:03
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Closest I am coming up with from memory is Caesar and Antony, but that is hardly the equal pairing of Augustus and Agrippa.
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Jan 3, 2013 19:36
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Justinian and Belisarius were close to the Augustus Agrippa relationship but Justinian did lose faith in him for a while and had some kangaroo court send him into exile (or something). He was recalled when the poo poo hit the fan and I think they made up before their deaths.
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Jan 3, 2013 20:10
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Closest I am coming up with from memory is Caesar and Antony, but that is hardly the equal pairing of Augustus and Agrippa. Antony was an unreliable rear end in a top hat, a terrible administator, they had a bunch of arguments and while he was not exactly complicit in Caesar's assassination it's implied in some works that he kind of knew about it. And Caesar left him out of his will at the end. It was more of an older cousin/younger cousin friendship then a true, loyal bond. Xguard86 posted:Justinian and Belisarius were close to the Augustus Agrippa relationship but Justinian did lose faith in him for a while and had some kangaroo court send him into exile (or something). He was recalled when the poo poo hit the fan and I think they made up before their deaths. They could have definitely been that but Justinian was way too paranoid. Besides, I'm was referring to all history, not just Roman...Ho Chi Minh and Vo Ngyen Giap, maybe? I'm not sure how close they were. Dictators
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Jan 3, 2013 20:59
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Chandragupta Maurya and Kautilya comes to mind for me - even had a feigned falling out similar to Augustus and Agrippa in order to confound their political enemies. Sadly, I can't find much good information on Classical India (or Persia for that matter) - does anyone have any recommendations, since this is a general Ancient History thread now? The only substantial book I've been able to find is 'The Gem and the Lotus' (which I would heartily recommend, it covers India from the Indus Valley Civilization to the fall of the Mauryan Empire, with a focus on its religious history)
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Jan 3, 2013 21:31
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TracyFentonHS posted:A friend told me a story about a guy who essentially made up a god, conned a bunch of people, and got famous for it. So I'm curious if that's true or not. What do you know about Glykon, and the guy behind it? I think that was the name anyway. Sorry, this is a pretty old post, but I think I mentioned the guy behind Glykon earlier in the thread. He was called Eunus and led a successful slave revolt in 135 BC in Sicily, successful enough that he ended up having to issue his own coins, on which was Glykon - a snake. I think the use of the snake was connected to Aesculapius, the god of healing and medicine, who was a well-established Greek god that the Romans imported into their religion. Aesulapius' symbol was the snake coiled around a branch that you still sometimes see as a symbol of the medical profession. The "conman" aspect of Eunus wasn't so much using this divine symbol as that he used to claim magical powers to inspire his troops and use various tricks to "prove" his powers (e.g. hide a nut full of sulphur in his mouth so he could breathe fire). It worked pretty well for him. The Romans eventually crushed the revolt, but unlike Spartacus later on, Eunus was allowed to die in captivity and the slaves were returned to their owners rather than crucified.
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Jan 3, 2013 22:11
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DarkCrawler posted:Besides, I'm was referring to all history, not just Roman...Ho Chi Minh and Vo Ngyen Giap, maybe? I'm not sure how close they were. Dictators Maybe like Jobs and Wozniak? Balmer and Gates?
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Jan 3, 2013 23:44
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Xguard86 posted:Maybe like Jobs and Wozniak? Balmer and Gates? Which countries where they dictators over? Stalin kept Beria quite close and didn't kill him off in any of his purges.
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Jan 4, 2013 07:13
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Let's see, there's Gilgamesh and Enkidu, they were best buddies up until Inanna kills Enkidu. More recently, wasn't Marshall Ney loyal to Napoleon until the end? Unlike that snake Tallyrand? And of course, surprisingly few of Hitler's cronies betrayed him, they all went down with the ship, so to speak. Mao and Zhou Enlai come to mind as well. Because dictators tend to be villians, we like hearing about how villanious they are, not about how they had that one true friend who stuck with them.
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Jan 4, 2013 15:53
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Lord Tywin posted:Which countries where they dictators over? Stalin kept Beria quite close and didn't kill him off in any of his purges. Microsoft and Apple which have the net worth of small countries I suppose haha.
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Jan 4, 2013 17:29
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Xguard86 posted:Microsoft and Apple which have the net worth of small countries I suppose haha. Well the chances that Gates would launch a military coup with his loyal soldiers and kill Balmer is still quite small.
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Jan 4, 2013 17:38
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Lord Tywin posted:Well the chances that Gates would launch a military coup with his loyal soldiers and kill Balmer is still quite small. Would be fun to watch though.
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Jan 4, 2013 18:01
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Lord Tywin posted:Well the chances that Gates would launch a military coup with his loyal soldiers and kill Balmer is still quite small. We would have images on wikileaks showing Ballmer fending off a squad of loyalists by throwing chairs at them.
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Jan 4, 2013 18:57
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sullat posted:More recently, wasn't Marshall Ney loyal to Napoleon until the end? Unlike that snake Tallyrand? Yes and no. Ney was one of several marshals who told Napoleon, when he had his back to the wall in early 1814 - "That's it, we're not fighting anymore, this is over." Napoleon was then packed off to Elba and Ney took up employment with the restored Bourbons, only to defect back to Napoleon when he made his comeback in the Hundred Days. He had actually been sent by Louis XVIII with an army to suppress Napoleon's landing in southern France. After Waterloo, the Bourbons decided they'd had enough of this and Ney was executed. He died for his Emperor, I suppose, but by then he didn't have much choice.
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Jan 4, 2013 21:07
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How much of the final death of the Roman Republic and its permanent replacement with the Roman Empire can be attributed to the fact that the first emperor, Augustus, simply ruled for a really long loving time. I know that the Republic was in disarray for a long time before Augustus, as far back as Marius there are probably clear signs it wouldn't last, but at the same time, there was reason to believe it would not simply collapse forever and be replaced. It is reasonable to think that Rome would go through repeated periods of: Emperor dies/is murdered by Republicans - some form of Republic is formed - general gets cocky - civil war - general becomes Emperor - repeat. Had this happened, it is possible that the constant instability and infighting would have led to the relatively rapid collapse of Rome (or at least withdrawal to the Western Med/Italy). Instead, Augustus dies of natural causes, Tiberius (not even close to Augustus' first choice) takes over, and, aside from some legionary revolts that are easily dealt with, not much threatens the Principate. It seems reasonable to chalk this up largely to the fact that Augustus ruled as Emperor for more than 40 years (no other Western emperor even came close to ruling for that long). At the time he died, anyone who truly remembered a time before his rule would be well into their 50s or 60s. Most of the fighting age citizens of Rome would have lived their entire lives under Augustus and had little if any Republican sentiment. Sure, there were older people, maybe even politically influential people, who remembered a time before Augustus, but most would not have been in a position militarily to do anything about it. Even then, their memories wouldn't have been of the true Republican era, but of the transitional civil wars and the reign of Julius Caesar, who crossed the Rubicon some 63 years before Augustus died. It looks, to me at least, that the final death of the Republic, and its permanent replacement with the Principate/Dominate, may have resulted from Augustus simply outliving any Republican sentiment in Rome. Is that correct?
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Jan 4, 2013 21:33
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Augustus was the greatest emperor because he managed to not die longer than his peers. George Washington was the choice for commander of the US army and first president because he was the tallest guy in the room. Does anyone know any other "great man reduced to simple biological advantage" sayings? His longevity certainly helped pave the way for the empire but considering the fate of a lot of his predecessors it was his skill as a politician that kept him around long enough to exploit that biological advantage. J. Caesar could have had the potential to live 500 years and it wouldn't have changed anything. Xguard86 fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Jan 4, 2013 |
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Jan 4, 2013 22:14
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Xguard86 posted:Augustus was the greatest emperor because he managed to not die longer than his peers. George Washington was the choice for commander of the US army and first president because he was the tallest guy in the room. Does anyone know any other "great man reduced to simple biological advantage" sayings?
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Jan 4, 2013 22:33
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Lord Tywin posted:Well this is more of a disadvantage but Gustavus Adolphus who changed the course of the 30-years war died because he was a fat gently caress, when he lay wounded on the battlefield at Lützen he was simply shoot in the head instead of being taken as a captive since he was too heavy.Furthermore the reason that he was so separated from his troops was also because he led a cavalry charge right into heavy fog while being myopic. I read this in the voice of your UN and it was amazing.
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Jan 5, 2013 00:17
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Xguard86 posted:
This is absolutely true, and I didn't mean to make it sound like I was minimizing his accomplishments as Emperor. Plenty of people would have been killed or deposed much earlier in their reign, and plenty would have failed to ever make it to Emperor at all. It's just interesting that he was skilled, incredibly long lived, and he was first. You might have expected a few more false starts along the way before things either settled down or collapsed. That raises a question though. Why is Augustus considered the "first" Emperor of Rome? Why not Julius Caesar, who was emperor in all but name, or Sulla, who was dictator for life until he gave it up on his own? Looking at it that way the move from Republic to Principate perhaps looks more like what one might expect. Marius, Sulla, and Julius Caesar are all close calls (Marius) or false starts (Sulla because he retired and Caesar because he was killed) on the road to the Principate, with the Republic returning, in some form, in between each (or never quite falling in the case of Marius). Finally, things go completely to poo poo after Caesar's assassination, and a ruler arises who is both capable and biologically lucky, finally spelling the permanent death of the Republic.
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Jan 5, 2013 01:07
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