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The Lone Badger posted:Posca had honey and ground coriander (if you could get them) as well I think. The important part was sour wine, plus other flavourings as available. Switchel! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8sPaesPOiU e: beaten by skasion
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Mar 15, 2020 13:20
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For some reason I looked up Draco and I think he got a bad rap. I mean, on one hand he would execute you for stealing cabbage. But on the other he was the first to differ between intentional and unintentional homicide, feuds became illegal, made laws written and less arbitrary and made more people able to participate politically.
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Mar 19, 2020 18:54
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The man liked his cabbage
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Mar 20, 2020 12:49
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A bit late for the thread, but when and why did Sicily get politically and economically written off? During antiquity it was a breadbasket, Byzantine Sicily was prosperous and attractive target for the Arabs, Arab Sicily was likewise nice enough for Normans to go after it, and as late as Frederick II it seems like an active king of Sicily could be a serious political player in Europe on the strength of it (even if Frederick had a lot of other things going for him). What changed?
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Mar 20, 2020 13:00
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Mar 20, 2020 14:03
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skasion posted:A bit late for the thread, but when and why did Sicily get politically and economically written off? During antiquity it was a breadbasket, Byzantine Sicily was prosperous and attractive target for the Arabs, Arab Sicily was likewise nice enough for Normans to go after it, and as late as Frederick II it seems like an active king of Sicily could be a serious political player in Europe on the strength of it (even if Frederick had a lot of other things going for him). What changed? As far as I know the south of Italy never became as industrialised as the north and when the mass emigration to America it was primarily from the south. So southern areas like Sicily fell behind economically and the young people either moved to the bigger more developed cities further north or to other countries entirely I imagine unification also helped shift the center of power away from Sicily. FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 14:30 on Mar 20, 2020 |
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Mar 20, 2020 14:26
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The Papal States seem like they are sitting right where they would prevent Sicily from eating more Italian minors? Sicily + Rome seems like it could have been a decent player until they fail to industrialize but you can't really invade the Pope probably?
aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 15:02 on Mar 20, 2020 |
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Mar 20, 2020 15:00
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FreudianSlippers posted:As far as I know the south of Italy never became as industrialised as the north and when the mass emigration to America it was primarily from the south. In the first wave of Italian emigration, far more Northerners emigrated than Southerners. They just went to Latin America rather than the US for whatever reason. The numbers for North and South were equal during the second wave of Italian emigration, but I think the destinations followed the same trends. skasion posted:A bit late for the thread, but when and why did Sicily get politically and economically written off? During antiquity it was a breadbasket, Byzantine Sicily was prosperous and attractive target for the Arabs, Arab Sicily was likewise nice enough for Normans to go after it, and as late as Frederick II it seems like an active king of Sicily could be a serious political player in Europe on the strength of it (even if Frederick had a lot of other things going for him). What changed? Politically, when this happened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasci_Siciliani In general, the issue was that agricultural productivity stopped being a guarantor of economic stability, as around this time farming was getting industrialized everywhere and food prices were decreasing. Italy was also doing some stupid poo poo with tariffs and other economic policies that exacerbated the issue.
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Mar 20, 2020 16:12
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Yeah, the major turning point of the 19th century was how relative food prices fell and collectively all the old landlords who used to hold most of the power in Europe just from farming profits fell into decline with the rise of the new industrialists. I think there was also an aspect of the new technology that was helping food become plentiful also made farming much more competitive, as in the inherent advantages disadvantages within the land itself could be overcome.
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Mar 20, 2020 18:07
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skasion posted:A bit late for the thread, but when and why did Sicily get politically and economically written off? During antiquity it was a breadbasket, Byzantine Sicily was prosperous and attractive target for the Arabs, Arab Sicily was likewise nice enough for Normans to go after it, and as late as Frederick II it seems like an active king of Sicily could be a serious political player in Europe on the strength of it (even if Frederick had a lot of other things going for him). What changed? I wonder if part of it is just that it didn't change much, while northern Europe relatively speaking grew a lot in the late medieval and early modern. Sicily was still a major agricultural exporter as late as 1500, being one of the few christian realms that could grow sugar cane. I suspect the growth of the Caribbean plantations would have robbed them of a lot of revenue as the price of sugar fell. Then when it becomes part of the Hapsburg realm maybe it fell victim to the same problems as Spain, while also being hurt by the decline of Mediterranean trade? 
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Mar 20, 2020 19:51
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aphid_licker posted:you can't really invade the Pope probably?   
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Mar 21, 2020 15:56
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Should've mentioned this earlier, but Assassin's Creed Odyssey is doing a free weekend on all platforms. Its got its issues and its story is kinda dumb, but you can turn it off and just go tour around the game world if you want. It's probably the highest quality commercially available 3D depiction of Greece during the Peloponnesian War.
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Mar 21, 2020 23:36
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Libluini posted:German invasion. If he fought the Germanic invasion this would mean he would have needed to fight the Anglo-Saxons, too I mean Egypt was a British protectorate and I think the Desert Rats may have had something to say about Libya also Operation Torch sooo
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Mar 22, 2020 00:48
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Very random medieval question, but I figure you lot might know. Was throwing the content of poo poo/piss containers out the window a common thing in cities at one point? Also, would the thrower yell "pas latrin" as they did so, and does that mean "lookout piss" as I presume? I read about this in one of my childhood CYOAs and always wondered if that was a real thing.
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Mar 23, 2020 19:48
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Tias posted:Very random medieval question, but I figure you lot might know. Not usually. Remember that they still had working noses, so they'd still be able to smell whatever poo poo they threw out the window (especially if it piled up). There were laws against it as well. They would generally take their containers to a stream or cesspit to dump in, or use a public lavatory instead of a chamber pot.
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Mar 23, 2020 19:54
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In Edinburgh they just threw it out in the street but it was alright because the entire city was built on a series of steep hills so it all just flowed down to the Nor Loch eventually.
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Mar 23, 2020 22:20
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Lewd Mangabey posted:
Synapsids are not reptiles  edit: just realized this post is five years old. i'm leaving this as a monument to my foolishness
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Mar 24, 2020 00:59
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Watching Rome during the virus times makes me sad about the Antonine plague.
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Mar 24, 2020 02:33
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Hell without the Justinian Plague his conquests might have actually been sustainable and western history would talk about The Principate, The Dominate, and the "Justiniate" in the same way Chinese History talks about The Han, Tang, and Song.
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Mar 24, 2020 03:26
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I look forward to reading the pop histories of plagues that are being written right now
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Mar 24, 2020 03:31
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I don't know about you all but i think one of the things in life which peeked my interest in history, was Asterix et Obelix. Its definitely where i first learned of the Romans and Gauls. Im sad to report that Alberto Uderzo passed away. :-(
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Mar 24, 2020 16:45
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cheetah7071 posted:I look forward to reading the pop histories of plagues that are being written right now Future history podcast will say, "Much can be said of the years 2015 to 2020, none of it very plausible" as they discuss actual events.
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Mar 24, 2020 16:47
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Dalael posted:I don't know about you all but i think one of the things in life which peeked my interest in history, was Asterix et Obelix. Its definitely where i first learned of the Romans and Gauls. et nunc reges intelligite, erudimini qui iudicatis terram Vale.
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Mar 24, 2020 17:38
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So now I've got some questions from Assassin's Creed. -How much space was devoted to farmland relative to population? It's pretty standard for game worlds to only have token patches of farmland, but my inner expectations are probably skewed by the big huge tracts of farmland we have in modern day America that go on for longer than you could walk in a day, so I assume that in ancient days they wouldn't be able to utilize as much land. I just don't have a real frame of reference. -The city of Sparta was is pretty small compared to what I expected. Is that accurate? Is there even enough written about Sparta's buildings to know how accurate that is? I get that it doesn't need walls because Laconia is surrounded by mountains with only a fairly narrow pass into the region, and maybe the whole power structure with the Helots might work better for more rural population distributions, but it feels like maybe cities just aren't depicted to scale with eachother. It's much smaller than Athens, but it even feels dinky compared to Corinth and Argos. -What the hell is going on with the "eu" sound? I get that traditional pronunciation of classical greek doesn't line up with reproduced ancient pronunciation or modern greek pronunciation, but I swear that I heard "Eboa", "Emboa", "Elboa", and "ereboa" on Euboa. And how the hell does that line up with the continent of Yorp?
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Mar 24, 2020 17:50
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SlothfulCobra posted:-The city of Sparta was is pretty small compared to what I expected. Is that accurate? Is there even enough written about Sparta's buildings to know how accurate that is? I get that it doesn't need walls because Laconia is surrounded by mountains with only a fairly narrow pass into the region, and maybe the whole power structure with the Helots might work better for more rural population distributions, but it feels like maybe cities just aren't depicted to scale with eachother. It's much smaller than Athens, but it even feels dinky compared to Corinth and Argos. On that front yeah Sparta was a polis without being one city. It was I think three main towns but there wasn't anything to compare it to the others city wise.
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Mar 24, 2020 18:57
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I didn't play the game, but from what I've seen/heard from it they didn't actually bother with the ancient pronunciation of anything. The inconsistencies you hear are probably because there are both English and Greek speaking voice actors reading the lines. Ancient eu became ev or ef in Modern Greek and b became v so Euboia is pronounced Evvia in Modern Greek.
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Mar 24, 2020 19:09
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It's an interesting question, so I thought I'd do some quick calculations with the completely unsourced grab bag of statistics on wikipedia. According to the page on Roman agriculture, a family of six with work animals required 5 hectares to meet subsistence level provision in Roman North Africa. This dove tails nicely with the page on agriculture in classical Greece, which estimates most families of Hoplite rank in classical Athens owned about 5 hectares of land. During the 4th century BC Attica is estimated to have had roughly 250-300 thousand people. Putting aside the issue of imports and exports, this would have required 208-250 thousand hectares to meet subsistence level production. This includes pasturage for draft animals. Now the modern region of Attica is not identical to what Athens controlled in classical antiquity, but squinting at it on a map it isn't that different, and it has an area of 381 thousand hectares. So based on these figures, to meet its basic needs Athens would have had to cultivate at least 54% of its countryside, maybe as much as 66%. How much of Attica is arable I'm not sure, but while it may be one of the most fertile regions in Greece I wouldn't be surprised if 20-30% was too mountainous to be suitable for planting. How much land is necessary to produce the wood and fuel necessary locally and for the flocks of sheep and goats to forage I'm not sure. By comparison, the walls of Athens enclosed an area of about 400 hectares. There's lots of issues with these numbers, but its pretty clear from this superficial look at things that video games are terrible at depicting the scale agriculture in the real world, and for obvious reasons: If they were to depict it accurately, it would take up 99% of the space when all the interesting stuff get's crammed into the remaining 1%. In ancient Greece almost all land that could possibly sustain agriculture would have been worked. It wouldn't have necessarily looked like the expansive square tracts of the modern USA, but instead would have been an irregular patchwork of olive groves, row crops, pasturage, small stands of trees, and grapevines with little household compounds and small villages interspersed throughout. To get a sense of this you can look at places on Google Earth where people still mostly live a subsistence lifestyle and work the land by hand. Regarding Sparta, I've heard it described more as several neighboring villages than an actual city, so depicting it as so small might not be that far off base. Although eventually in the Hellenistic period it would get real walls, so I'm not sure what it would look like by then.
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Mar 24, 2020 19:21
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Squalid posted:Regarding Sparta, I've heard it described more as several neighboring villages than an actual city, so depicting it as so small might not be that far off base. Although eventually in the Hellenistic period it would get real walls, so I'm not sure what it would look like by then. Yeah, Sparta is always described as being extremely unimpressive. For farming, you'd imagine most of the land that could be cultivated was cultivated. The Romans didn't mass clear all the forests so it wasn't as extensive as in the middle ages, but if you were walking the length of Italy pretty much every area of flat land would be farms and all the hills would be growing poo poo like grapes and olives, with only the genuine mountain terrain being uncultivated. There wouldn't be wilderness other than a few small forests that were untouched because of assorted superstitions.
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Mar 24, 2020 22:55
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Randaconda posted:Synapsids are not reptiles I was going to correct your correction of a five year old posts but turns out you were right, reptiles are diapsids. I thought all amniotes were classed as reptiles but nope! The more you know Thread related, I've been listening to the Hellenistic Age podcast (which is pretty good, if a bit unpolished) and I'm back to wondering about the Ptolemies. They practiced sibling marriage for some stupid number of generations but any horrible genetic consequences don't appear in the records I'm familiar with. Are there any ideas what the hell was going on? Were those marriages just symbolic, and they passed off other kids from secondary wives as children of the first? Were they supremely lucky? Any reading on the subject would be appreciated.
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Mar 24, 2020 22:59
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My understanding is inbreeding like that is bad, but it usually takes quite a while for anything to crop up unless you have a specific genetic disorder in your family that is latent if only one parent carries it but happens if they both do. Ptolemy IV through XII all had kids with their sisters. I think it's commonly believed that inbreeding issues appear really fast, but it's very unlikely for it to be a problem for the first couple of generations at least. They may have gotten lucky, or some of those kids may have not actually been with the sibling.
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Mar 24, 2020 23:04
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I can't find it now, but I remember there's a quote from a classical era author who said that future generations, looking at Athens, would inevitably conclude it was more important than it was in reality, and, looking at Sparta, conclude it was less important than it really was. Because Athens used a larger than normal portion of its wealth on monuments, and Sparta used none of theirs on it.
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Mar 24, 2020 23:05
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Squalid posted:It's an interesting question, so I thought I'd do some quick calculations with the completely unsourced grab bag of statistics on wikipedia. According to the page on Roman agriculture, a family of six with work animals required 5 hectares to meet subsistence level provision in Roman North Africa. This dove tails nicely with the page on agriculture in classical Greece, which estimates most families of Hoplite rank in classical Athens owned about 5 hectares of land. That's definitely more than what's in the game, but less than my gut instinct would've expected. I suppose also "cultivated land" doesn't mean every square foot of ground has crops actively growing, since you have to let fields go fallow to keep from overusing the land, and there's also some pastoralism to factor in. Probably most battlefields could also be counted as normally cultivated lands? Of course, within the game's timeframe, Attica is largely occupied by Spartans seiging Athens, although the siege seems only halfassed, like either the Spartans didn't bother totally encircling the city or like it's amalgamating besieged Athens with normal Athens somehow. The other regions also seem like they're pretty under-cultivated too though. With Sparta, there were a couple of settlements within Laconia, but I just looked around the one labeled Sparta on the map before exploring . There were also big huge statues at the pass into Laconia, so it seems like that's probably not so accurate. The game has a real surplus of giant statues, and I feel like most of them are totally made up, like the giant statue of Zeus on top of a mountain on Cephalonia, but apparently the giant statue of Athena in Athens is real? Or at least, has a written record.
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Mar 25, 2020 00:28
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Grand Fromage posted:My understanding is inbreeding like that is bad, but it usually takes quite a while for anything to crop up unless you have a specific genetic disorder in your family that is latent if only one parent carries it but happens if they both do. Ptolemy IV through XII all had kids with their sisters. I think it's commonly believed that inbreeding issues appear really fast, but it's very unlikely for it to be a problem for the first couple of generations at least. They may have gotten lucky, or some of those kids may have not actually been with the sibling. Also, remember, the family wasn't entirely inbred. Cleopatra I (wife of Ptolemy V, mother of Ptolemy VI) was the daughter of Anitochus III of Syria and his wife, who was the daughter of the king of Pontus, and Ptolemy XII and maybe his wife Cleopatra V, were kids of Ptolemy X and a consort.
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Mar 25, 2020 00:29
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SlothfulCobra posted:
I assume the game is set during the Peloponnesian War? If that's the case Sparta shouldn't actually be besieging Athens, with like siege works and a permanent camp outside the city. Instead Sparta is systematically raiding the Attic countryside every year. The Spartan army isn't physically blocking Athenians from going out and farming, instead it just meanders around during the harvest and burns/loots everything it can get a hold of. Then the army just goes home to Sparta until the next year or off somewhere else to gently caress with Athenian allies.
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Mar 25, 2020 01:11
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Makes sense. It's been a while since I learned about the war, I knew that Sparta wasn't sieging Athens the whole time (probably would be pointless, considering the port), but at the point in the game there's a Spartan camp right outside the walls and no apparent burnt fields. Cleon and Demosthenes give the player missions to go mess with them. I guess armies are usually immobile in open world games, since time won't pass until the player does something. Athens has a whole lot of famous people popping in. Socrates shows up annoying a bunch of people, some playwrights are arguing at a party, and the player even gets the father of lies himself hanging around on his ship commenting on islands.
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Mar 25, 2020 01:32
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Squalid posted:It's an interesting question, so I thought I'd do some quick calculations with the completely unsourced grab bag of statistics on wikipedia. According to the page on Roman agriculture, a family of six with work animals required 5 hectares to meet subsistence level provision in Roman North Africa. This dove tails nicely with the page on agriculture in classical Greece, which estimates most families of Hoplite rank in classical Athens owned about 5 hectares of land. It applies much more to Attica than it does to say Laconia, but I would expect fishing to be bringing in a substantial share of the calories required as well.
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Mar 25, 2020 01:39
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:It applies much more to Attica than it does to say Laconia, but I would expect fishing to be bringing in a substantial share of the calories required as well. Productive coast lines are basically cheating when it comes to population density.
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Mar 25, 2020 01:41
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cheetah7071 posted:I can't find it now, but I remember there's a quote from a classical era author who said that future generations, looking at Athens, would inevitably conclude it was more important than it was in reality, and, looking at Sparta, conclude it was less important than it really was. Because Athens used a larger than normal portion of its wealth on monuments, and Sparta used none of theirs on it. That's Thucy, right? Edit: found it. Thucydides 1.10.2 quote:For if the city of Lacedaemon were now desolate and nothing of it left but the temples and floors of the buildings, I think it would breed much unbelief in posterity long hence of their power in comparison of the fame. For although of five parts of Peloponnesus it possess two and hath the leading of the rest and also of many confederates without, yet the city being not close built and the temples and other edifices not costly, and because it is but scatteringly inhabited after the ancient manner of Greece, their power would seem inferior to the report. Again, the same things happening to Athens, one would conjecture by the sight of their city that their power were double to what it is. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=thuc.+1.10.2 Global Disorder fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Mar 25, 2020 |
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Mar 25, 2020 02:14
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I find it really cool and interesting that even in the earliest days of written history, people were already speculating about the possible misconceptions of the historians and archaeologists of future generations
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Mar 25, 2020 02:27
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Then you have the Third Reich were they deliberately tried to build things that would make impressive looking ruins.
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Mar 25, 2020 02:41
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