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Arglebargle III posted:Reme, didn't last long tho. lol
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Mar 30, 2020 03:33
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There's a story that Rome had a secret name. When Sulla was dictator, one of the Plebeian Tribunes, a guy named Quintus Valerius Soranus (friend of Cicero and Varro), was executed. Servius, in his Commentary on the Aeneid, says that it was because he spoke Rome's secret name, which was forbidden to say aloud. Pliny and Plutarch also mention it. It's possible, but he had also been an outspoken Marian, and he was killed during the Sullan proscriptions, so.... The Goddess who guaranteed Rome's secret name was Angerona, who was also a goddess of either relief from pain or of curing tonsillitis. Epicurius fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Mar 30, 2020 |
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Mar 30, 2020 04:04
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If Rome generally allowed conquered peoples to continue their religious practices, why were Druids in Gaul and Britain suppressed? Did it have to do with the Celtic beliefs, or was the the Druidic priesthood itself seen as a threat to Roman rule?
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Mar 30, 2020 05:24
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It's not clear, but my bet is the druids were seen as a political threat as well as their practice of human sacrifice, which the Romans did not tolerate (with a few notable exceptions).
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Mar 30, 2020 05:31
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Based on watching the historically accurate show Britannia, the suppression of the Druids was mostly based on that the Romans didn't want to deal with the ridiculous bullshit the Druids were up to. Also, general Aulus Platius was a demon.
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Mar 30, 2020 05:40
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Kevin DuBrow posted:If Rome generally allowed conquered peoples to continue their religious practices, why were Druids in Gaul and Britain suppressed? Did it have to do with the Celtic beliefs, or was the the Druidic priesthood itself seen as a threat to Roman rule? Caesar claimed the Druids practiced mass human sacrifice (the infamous wicker man ritual). They probably did practice human sacrifice at least occasionally, but the wicker man story has provoked some skepticism. Probably at least part of the reason the Druids were suppressed is for being traditional local elites who might provide a source of resistance to Roman rule. Either way, it had little to do with beliefs per se; mainstream Roman pagans didn't particularly care what people believed. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Mar 30, 2020 |
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Mar 30, 2020 05:50
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There's no evidence for the wicker man (though, to be fair, it's the sort of thing it'd be real hard to find evidence for) but there were definitely human sacrifices being done by Celts, it's not made up by the Romans. Whether or not those were druid-related is unanswerable with what we have.
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Mar 30, 2020 06:00
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Grand Fromage posted:It's not clear, but my bet is the druids were seen as a political threat as well as their practice of human sacrifice, which the Romans did not tolerate (with a few notable exceptions). notably, a druid gave up tribal affiliation when they became a druid (supposedly, at least), and served as general diplomats, go-betweens, and keepers of tradition for everyone. It stands to reason they were a high priority target
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Mar 30, 2020 06:36
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Grand Fromage posted:Yeah there were migrations, but the native population didn't really go anywhere. There's also the fact that for ancient Greek culture, Anatolia and Italy were in some respects more important and what we think of as Greece was kind of a backwater outside of a couple of major cities. Athens was a big deal, but we also pay far more attention to it than it probably deserves since our Greek sources are so heavily Athens-based. Generally in the ERE Post-Arab Invasions, the Greek peninsula is complicated and huge chunks of it were under control by various Slavic peoples outside of a few area's such as the Peloponnesus, Athens/Attica, Thessalonica and Dyrrachium. Of these the one city that was a huge concern of the Empire was Thessalonica as it the second biggest city of the Empire and behind Constantinople probably the second most populous city in Europe for most of the period (There were roughly 100,000 people living there around the time of the Komnenoi) or at the very least quite close to places like Paris, etc. Greece still was home to a lot of large to moderate sized port cities Athens probably had between 10-30k people depending on your sourcing which would be comparable to London in size until it ballooned in size in the late middle ages, but the countryside was fairly poor agriculturally in comparison to Anatolia. It seemed rather than fight with the Slavic tribes or Bulgarians over the peninsula, the ERE was mostly content to hold on to the cities and only really acted when they were threatened or an Emperor got ambitious. This is also why after 1204 you see all these kingdoms and duchies carved out of Greece, as mentioned Thessalonica was big enough on its own that it was made a full Kingdom by the Crusaders. Its a similar situation in the Greek parts of Southern Italy, the Romans were mostly concerned with controlling the major towns and the cities of the region, but were somewhat content to let Lombard Dukes etc. control most of the region and only really sent troops when they got "uppity" and tried to sack one of the ports. Or when the Arabs made attempts to expand their control. Roman control over these regions is nebulous and the maps you see in this period mostly lie. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 08:50 on Mar 30, 2020 |
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Mar 30, 2020 08:37
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Epicurius posted:
The romans really did have a god for everything, even the sewers and crying children had their own god.
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Mar 30, 2020 11:44
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Alhazred posted:The romans really did have a god for everything, even the sewers and crying children had their own god. Shits important yo.
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Mar 30, 2020 12:36
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“The west” has become a slogan for white supremacy too which kind of undermines any meaning it may have had. Imho
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Mar 30, 2020 12:40
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Jack2142 posted:Shits important yo.
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Mar 30, 2020 18:41
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euphronius posted:“The west” has become a slogan for white supremacy too which kind of undermines any meaning it may have had. Imho Technically Asia is west of the Americas. 
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Mar 30, 2020 19:09
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Is it safe to assume that during the imperial period of ancient rome, most of the slaves were caucasian, and many of them blonde haired blue eyed? Considering all the battles the romans had with the northern european tribes, and how slaves were one of the major spoils of war, it would make sense. I just don’t know how people would react if they showed white slaves in TV and film. People who arent familiar with history would probably misunderstand it and think it was a PC thing. Similar to how TV commercials for home security systems only have white burglars.
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Mar 31, 2020 00:24
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ChocNitty posted:Is it safe to assume that during the imperial period of ancient rome, most of the slaves were caucasian, and many of them blonde haired blue eyed? Considering all the battles the romans had with the northern european tribes, and how slaves were one of the major spoils of war, it would make sense. I just don’t know how people would react if they showed white slaves in TV and film. People who arent familiar with history would probably misunderstand it and think it was a PC thing. Similar to how TV commercials for home security systems only have white burglars. That's a rather  way of framing it, but yes, most slaves in the Roman Empire would have been Caucasian, at least in the broad sense of Europe + Middle East + North Africa. Though on the other hand, most sub-Saharan Africans in the Roman Empire would have been slaves; but there wouldn't have been very many of them, and their skin color certainly wouldn't have been associated with slavery the way it was in the Americas in more modern times. There's an interesting article about Roman "racial" attitudes here: https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ElAnt/V1N4/thompson.html
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Mar 31, 2020 00:52
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Were there more than like 10 people in Rome from sub Saharan Africa ?
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Mar 31, 2020 00:54
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euphronius posted:Were there more than like 10 people in Rome from sub Saharan Africa ? Depends where you were (the trade in them came through Egypt so there were more there and in the Levant than in say, France or Britain) but yes, there were more than ten. Probably never a very large number, but you would certainly be more likely to see a black man in Imperial Rome than you would be to see a Chinese man.
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Mar 31, 2020 01:00
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euphronius posted:Were there more than like 10 people in Rome from sub Saharan Africa ? Most likely. The Roman trade networks stretched down across the Sahara into the Niger River area and down east Africa to at least Zanzibar. Also you have black people from the Nubia/Ethiopia/Horn of Africa region who were well connected to the Mediterranean world. I don't think it would have been common, particularly out in the western empire, but it wouldn't have been that weird to encounter black people in the empire.
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Mar 31, 2020 01:01
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They wouldn’t be slaves tho. I can’t recall a Roman expedition through the Sahara besides the one down the NiLe that was relatively small
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Mar 31, 2020 01:01
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You can generally assume that the more international trade is going on, the more ethnicities you'll encounter in areas heavily involved in trade. Even after the collapse of the empire, it would not be completely unexpected to encounter someone not white in a place like renaissance Venice. There was also a famous case of Celtic warriors who settled in Ptolemaic Egypt after mercenary work and interbred with the locals.
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Mar 31, 2020 01:04
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Ok but I was taking about sub Saharan. Not “not white”
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Mar 31, 2020 01:05
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skasion posted:Depends where you were (the trade in them came through Egypt so there were more there and in the Levant than in say, France or Britain) but yes, there were more than ten. Probably never a very large number, but you would certainly be more likely to see a black man in Imperial Rome than you would be to see a Chinese man. Funny enough, Rome and China knew of each other. There was actually an attempted Chinese expedition west that could have reached Rome as early as 97 AD, but the sailors at an unknown sea (possibly the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, or Black Sea) and told him that it would be extremely treacherous to cross and he gave up. The Romans had vague knowledge of the existence of silk-producing peoples far east but hadn't ventured far enough to find them, while the Chinese had secondhand accounts of Rome's existence. It's believed that the first successful expedition of Romans to China arrived in 166.
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Mar 31, 2020 01:12
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euphronius posted:They wouldn’t be slaves tho. I can’t recall a Roman expedition through the Sahara besides the one down the NiLe that was relatively small There were several across the western Sahara looking for where all the gold was coming from, one of which reached what sure sounds like the Niger. But they evidently determined the desert was just way too much trouble to try to deal with. You're right there wouldn't have been very many. The Sahara was a formidable barrier, but it wasn't uncrossed. There's a reason the Romans put up walls and stationed forces along their edge of the Sahara.
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Mar 31, 2020 01:17
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Right so we all agree no subSaharan slaves ?
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Mar 31, 2020 01:21
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euphronius posted:Right so we all agree no subSaharan slaves ? The article I linked makes clear that they did exist.
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Mar 31, 2020 01:22
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euphronius posted:Right so we all agree no subSaharan slaves ? No. Small numbers compared to other sources, sure.
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Mar 31, 2020 01:29
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There will always be a market for exotic slaves.
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Mar 31, 2020 01:44
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Slavery was an old institution in Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia, long before the Romans got there. So there were already populations of slaves, sourced from surrounding area, and the Romans weren't exactly freeing slaves wherever they went. Also, you don't need to go to Lake Victoria or wherever that Roman expedition went to find people who look black. The Egyptians conceived of Nubia beginning at Aswan, and that's hardly a difficult trip. There was also the Red Sea, which was a big conduit for slave traders from the Horn of Africa to sell people in Egypt. Finally, the people who lived in the Sahara itself like the Garamantines are poorly recorded, but their modern counterparts in the Tuaregs don't define their people by "race", despite having sourced slaves from West Africa throughout their history. Rome traded extensively with all these areas, and warred with half them.
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Mar 31, 2020 02:13
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chitoryu12 posted:Funny enough, Rome and China knew of each other. There was actually an attempted Chinese expedition west that could have reached Rome as early as 97 AD, but the sailors at an unknown sea (possibly the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, or Black Sea) and told him that it would be extremely treacherous to cross and he gave up. The Romans had vague knowledge of the existence of silk-producing peoples far east but hadn't ventured far enough to find them, while the Chinese had secondhand accounts of Rome's existence. It's believed that the first successful expedition of Romans to China arrived in 166. It tickles me that the ancient Chinese name for the Roman Empire was Daqin, or “Great China”.
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Mar 31, 2020 04:49
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Kevin DuBrow posted:It tickles me that the ancient Chinese name for the Roman Empire was Daqin, or “Great China”. Probably because the Han dynasty wanted to derive legitimacy from the Romans! Seriously though, isn't the classical Chinese name for China Zhong Guo, not Qin?
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Mar 31, 2020 05:03
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sullat posted:Probably because the Han dynasty wanted to derive legitimacy from the Romans! Seriously though, isn't the classical Chinese name for China Zhong Guo, not Qin? My understanding is that the country’s name changed based on the ruling dynasty. It has been called Tangchao (Tang Dynasty), Daming (Great Ming), etc. As for why they chose to call the Roman lands they encountered “Great China”, it seems to me that they were simply trying to find a name for this large, organized “kingdom” and only the state of Qin served as a worthy analogue. This passage by the ambassador Gan Ying c.97 CE is the best kind of historical description, one that is highly idealized and based wholly on second-hand information: quote:
Kevin DuBrow fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Mar 31, 2020 |
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Mar 31, 2020 05:15
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Qin was a powerful western state as well as the origin of China's modern English name. So "Great Qin" might be associated with the first Chinese Imperial dynasty, but it also has connotations of strength, empire, and being in the west. I mean I dunno I'm spitballing as to what the etymology might mean to people who coined the word 1900 years ago.
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Mar 31, 2020 05:18
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sullat posted:Probably because the Han dynasty wanted to derive legitimacy from the Romans! Seriously though, isn't the classical Chinese name for China Zhong Guo, not Qin? The name of China is a hellaciously complicated topic that changes based on the era and who's talking. So yes, normally the name of the dynasty in charge was what they called themselves (唐朝， táng cháo for the Tang Dynasty, 明朝 míng cháo for the ming dynasty etc), but you also see Tianxia （天下,tīan xìa) used, which literally translates to "Under Heaven", as in "everything under heaven" because there is one emperor ruling one empire*. There's also 九州 (jiu zhōu, The 9 States), 中华 (zhōng hùa, used in the full name of the PRC and ROC can be translated to central beauty)， and 神州 (shén zhōu, the Divine State), among others. Zhong guo (中国zhōng gúo) technically does mean China and more literally means The Middle Kingdom, but it's meaning has changed a lot over the past few thousand years. Depending on the era it refers to the Central States, the Central plains of China, only the Capital City, or another amorphously defined region. In fact, among the literati Zhong Guo could also refer to a specific culture in central china as opposed to a region. It doesn't become associated with all of China until the Qing Dynasty, who as non-Han rulers had a vested interest in appearing to be a multicultural empire and felt that zhongguo was a neutral term that could refer to all 56 ethnicities within their empire**. *Fun fact this caused a diplomatic incident with Ancient Japan, because the ruler of Japan used to be known as the Great King of Yamato and was confirmed by the Chinese emperor, with the Chinese court seeing this as a tributary relationship, before the Japanese court just decided to call themselves emperor sometime in the 7th century. ** Phoneposting so it's super simplified
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Mar 31, 2020 09:31
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"China" (the name) is only ever an exonym that started being used in the 16th century. It's not bad or anything but when you start talking about Chinese states in 500 BC, it's just not very useful except to refer to the general region. They were as Chinese as the classical Greek city-states were European.
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Mar 31, 2020 10:48
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It's called Daqin because according to the Hou Hanshu, the people resemble the people of the Middle Kingdom. According to the Weilue, it's because the people who live there originally came from China.
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Mar 31, 2020 13:00
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Also, you don't need to go to Lake Victoria or wherever that Roman expedition went to find people who look black. The Egyptians conceived of Nubia beginning at Aswan, and that's hardly a difficult trip. There are ancient Egyptian paintings showing both people who are very obviously European (paler than the default light brown Egyptians) and very obviously what we would define as black. So yeah, they were around. They even formed one of the later Egyptian dynasties - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Dynasty_of_Egypt
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Mar 31, 2020 15:35
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Kevin DuBrow posted:This passage by the ambassador Gan Ying c.97 CE is the best kind of historical description, one that is highly idealized and based wholly on second-hand information: that bit about water sheep was curious, but it reminded me about this product which i bet was the fabric they referred to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_silk  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITzYSYi_rGE
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Mar 31, 2020 17:39
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Mar 31, 2020 19:48
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Grand Fromage posted:Yeah there were migrations, but the native population didn't really go anywhere. There's also the fact that for ancient Greek culture, Anatolia and Italy were in some respects more important and what we think of as Greece was kind of a backwater outside of a couple of major cities. Athens was a big deal, but we also pay far more attention to it than it probably deserves since our Greek sources are so heavily Athens-based. And medieval Greek culture even more so, and in my experience even modern Greek culture, which still seems to regard Istanbul/Constantinople as the premier city of Greekness. Even Thessaloniki seems to cause more fond feelings than Athens does.
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Mar 31, 2020 22:25
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