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How did the Romans produce the armor, swords, shields, uniforms and whatever other equipment they needed for their armies? Did they have factories of some kind? Or military contractors? Also, how standardized was their equipment really? In the movies it looks like the Romans have nearly identical (badass looking) uniforms like what you would see in a modern army. Did they really have standard uniforms? I'm also interested in how defeated generals were treated. I remember in high school learning about the general who lost against Hannibal (I think it was at Cannae) and the Senate was really impressed that he had the guts to show his face back in Rome after losing a whole army.
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May 28, 2012 21:40
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Isaac Asimov mentioned something interesting about the derivatives of the title "Caesar". common knowledge that a lot of other countries used derivatives of the name Caesar, e.g. the Russian Tsar or the German Kaiser. Well Julius Caesar was made dictator for life in 44 BC. The final ruler of a country named after Caesar was the Tsar of Bulgaria who was effectively deposed by the Russians in 1945 and officially in 1946 (I think), meaning that for almost exactly 2000 years there was a Caesar in charge somewhere. Obviously the Tsar of Bulgaria isn't really connected to Rome in any meaningful way, but I thought it was pretty interesting. It's
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Jun 23, 2012 03:51
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I just saw an exhibit on Pompeii in Cincinnati and it was pretty awesome. A lot of that stuff looks like it was made yesterday. The thing that struck me is that everything they had was so ornamented. For instance, they had a metal weight used on a scale to measure out grain or whatever, and it was cast in the shape of a head, very skillfully too. They had a gladiator's greaves and they were totally covered in scenes of animals and people and gods. It really must have been something to walk through a Roman city when it was all brand new. Also, based on the exhibit, were the Romans really short compared to us? The last part of the museum had the plaster casts made from the cavities where people were covered in volcanic ash, and most of them seemed pretty short by modern standards, but I couldn't be sure because they also tended to be curled up.
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Aug 8, 2012 05:12
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No but see, Mitt Romney is exactly like Caligula. Or something.
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Aug 21, 2012 04:27
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Amused to Death posted:I'm still pretty surprised there's yet to be a Hollywood movie on the stealing of silk from the Chinese. Romans? Massive spy operation? Evil Chinese we must steal secrets from? It has every aspect of a blockbuster. Speaking of which, has there ever been a movie set in the Eastern Roman Empire? It is so depressingly neglected. Though given how awesome the Rome HBO series was I would take some regular old Roman Empire movies, last big one I remember was Gladiator.
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Nov 12, 2012 04:25
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I see that there. posted:3. In Roman upper society, life was seemingly a lot like today, in as much as "Yep, some people are gay." There were still a lot of taboo's associated with it. Imagine that a politician of some importance were gay today. It's certainly a thing, but most people would deal with it accordingly. There's also a lot of states with sodomy laws and such on the books for whatever reason. Does that play into how they're perceived? Maybe, but chances that they'd be prosecuted or whatever on it are slim. Same then. I'm definitely just a layman here, but did the Romans really think about being "gay" like we would today? Today we think of a gay man as a man that is sexually attracted to other men and not women. When I think about Roman homosexuality I think more about something like Hadrian. Yeah he was probably boning Antinous but he was married and probably messed around with women too. And the sexual part, if any, of what he got up to with Antinous was kept on the dl from what I can tell. So yeah Hadrian probably slept with a dude, but I don't think that maps onto what we think of as "gay" very well .
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Apr 17, 2013 23:34
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Grand Fromage posted:The lack of seaworthiness of ancient ships is overstated sometimes, but there's no way they'd survive crossing the Atlantic. Eh, people have done it in rowboats and my understanding is that there are currents that will pretty much push you across even without a sail. If they got lucky and didn't hit a storm I could see it happening. Ok fine, it's a long shot. But the point is I (and everyone else) reaallllyy want it to have happened.
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Jul 14, 2013 06:03
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Rockopolis posted:Has anyone mentioned the heliograph yet? Rapid communication seems helpful. On the other hand, you also have to be in a position to be taken seriously before you can implement it. I had never heard of that before, it is really amazing. According to Wikipedia the record distance for sending a message with one of these was 240 miles, that's insane!
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Jul 1, 2014 00:46
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Squalid posted:Interesting... Can you share your sources for travel time in 1500? I'm always curious about questions of human geography, how interconnected different eras were. Do you know of any maps showing how road routing improved, or accounts of travel times indicating horses were traveling farther with larger loads? I know horses have increased a lot in size, just curious how we've measured it! The funny part is that a deer could kick the poo poo out of a person if it felt like it. Was he armed?
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Jul 10, 2014 00:07
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Obliterati posted:You could also try Terry Deary's Horrible Histories series, but they're written for a specifically UK audience and have a lot of UK-based in-jokes so they might not translate well? That being said he's done versions for pretty much every major Western historical culture so if your kid likes one there's a good twenty more of them. I'm from the US and liked those as a kid, I'd says it's fine.
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Oct 29, 2014 22:22
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Robo Reagan posted:I'm sure the answer is yes, but googling "greatest rulers" likes to list Hitler who wasn't really the type of great I'm looking for. Emperor Pedro II of Brazil was pretty awesome. Wikipedia posted:Inheriting an Empire on the verge of disintegration, Pedro II turned Portuguese-speaking Brazil into an emerging power in the international arena. The nation grew to be distinguished from its Hispanic neighbors on account of its political stability, zealously guarded freedom of speech, respect for civil rights, vibrant economic growth and especially for its form of government: a functional, representative parliamentary monarchy. He did eventually get tossed out by a coup though.
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Aug 2, 2015 15:46
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Tunicate posted:You'd think historians would be the people least likely to be scandalized by historical artifacts baked into our language and terminology. Plus our whole dating system already has explicitly religious roots. Should we change the name of January because it was named after Janus? Or Thursday because it was named after Thor?
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Nov 30, 2015 17:56
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TheLawinator posted:So, I'm thinking about taking a trip to Italy and I was wondering what alternate tourist spots there are to Pompeii for seeing cool roman era stuff without the millions of other tourists. What's off the beaten path a bit? Seeing off the beaten path stuff is great, but make sure you do see Pompeii too. It is huge, you can wander off the beaten path and not be surrounded by people. I walked around it for a day and found myself in side streets and alleys where I couldn't even hear another person. I even found some tombs (I think) on the outskirts that were really cool and there was nobody around. Stuff like the forum and the amphitheater get packed, but you can see a lot of Pompeii completely alone. I believe Heracleum is supposed to be less crowded if you really want to get away. I would also recommend the Villa of Tiberius on Capri if you get a chance to head south. I got there first thing in the morning after a 3 mile hike and there was literally not a single other person wandering around the ruins of this enormous palace.
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Jan 24, 2016 21:11
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Charlie Mopps posted:I kinda like that medieval POC blog thing. It showed me a lot of cool artworks that i didnt know existed. I have to admit that i havent read much blog posts that get posted there, but the few i've read didnt seem to horrible? The last few are about the fact that yes, some Romans of north-African descent went to Britain when they conquered the place, which apparently is a terrible thing for a lot of British people to accept because now brown people were there earlier than the anglo-saxons or so?? I don't think anyone really denies that though? Is this one of those blogs that says that Hannibal and Cleopatra were black because they were from Africa?
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Feb 27, 2016 15:47
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I'm looking for recommendations for some Greek or Roman books. I'm working my way through Plutarch's "Lives" right now and I'm surprised that it's actually pretty enjoyable. I prefer something where there isn't a whole lot of background knowledge to understand what's going on. I gave Caesar's De Bello Gallico a shot, but can't get through it. Do I just have a bad translation or is it actually that dense? It's hard to work through a book with sentences like: http://classics.mit.edu/Caesar/gallic.1.1.html posted:He, when Marcus Messala and Marcus Piso were consuls, incited by lust of sovereignty, formed a conspiracy among the nobility, and persuaded the people to go forth from their territories with all their possessions, [saying] that it would be very easy, since they excelled all in valor, to acquire the supremacy of the whole of Gaul. I just cannot focus on that. I realize that it's probably sticking very closely to the Latin word order, but this is just terrible English.
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May 28, 2016 04:45
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FreudianSlippers posted:Don't know why Turkish nationalists would care much about ancient Turkey since there weren't any Turks in Anatolia until much much later. Korea is an integral and indispensable part of the greater Turkish motherland.
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Jun 6, 2016 03:28
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Skiffard posted:What are some of the recommended ancient history podcasts? I'm looking for something to do with my summer holiday I really like the History of Rome by Mike Duncan.
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Jun 8, 2016 05:56
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Constantine managed to win his civil war from the western empire. If the west was a complete backwater then surely the eastern Augustus could have mustered enough men and money to win. Theodosius was the eastern Augustus and he won, but he also had a bunch of Goths on his side. It seems like the two halves were fairly evenly matched from a military perspective.
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Jul 28, 2016 05:31
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CommonShore posted:I remember learning about Byzantium when I was like 9 and being all blown away that nobody had told me about this other Roman Empire which was comparably large and actually lasted like a thousand years longer than the Rome that everyone thinks is cool. And then I excitedly told some other kids about it and they told me to shut up nerd and they went back to playing with their ninja turtles. I started listening to the History of Byzantium and I have to say I'm disappointed in them so far. They keep bending over and paying tribute to literally anyone who sends a few raiders over the border: the Goths, the Bulgarians, the Huns, the Sasanids. Justinian actually wins a battle against the Persians then manages to screw it up and still gives them thousands of pounds of gold. If you do that you're just telling them you're a giant punching bag full of free money. I want them to grow a spine and go kick some rear end, maybe the upcoming invasion of Italy will give me something.
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Mar 1, 2018 17:30
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When the Persians get tough, the Byzantines get
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Mar 27, 2018 03:56
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hailthefish posted:The sheer amount of bragging Canadians do about how polite and humble they are kinda undermines the message. The English do the same thing. They're constantly going on about how self deprecating they are and are clearly very proud of it. It's like the concept of humble bragging founded a culture.
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May 30, 2018 17:32
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Dalael posted:I like The History of Rome by Mike Duncan and someone recommended The Hellenistic Age podcast in this thread recently. The podcast started recently and is only at episode 6 atm. I liked The History of Rome as far as it went, but I think a more accurate title would be "The Military and Political History of Rome" since that's all he really touches on. You get a list of emperors, some court intrigue and a description of where the legions marched. But you get almost nothing about Roman literature, art, philosophy, science, economics or religion. I really liked Will Durant's Caesar and Christ which you can pick up pretty cheap as an audio book. I'm sure it won't be popular in this thread since it's kind of old and I'm sure some of his analysis is either outdated or no longer in vogue, but he spends a lot of time covering all of the stuff that the History of Rome podcast ignores completely.
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May 31, 2018 20:28
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euphronius posted:Duncan does tons of focused episodes on culture and the last 100 episodes deal (necessarily) with religion. It's been a couple years since I listened to it so maybe I'm being unfair, that's what I recall though. Looking through the episode list I see a handful of episodes about non-military/political stuff but not a lot. In terms of religion he does talk about it some but I don't remember much except in terms of how it relates to Constantine and Julian the Apostate, and maybe a little bit about the council of Nicea. Which is fine since it's not super exciting unless you are into theology and you can't cover everything. The History of Byzantium podcast in contrast spends tons of time explaining what the monophysites believed, he has a whole episode on iconoclasm and he interviews a Phd candidate who specializes in Byzantine religion. And that's only within the first 50 episodes or so. It just depends on what you're looking for. I would never steer somebody away from HOR but it has a limited scope.
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May 31, 2018 20:46
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I already made the ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ joke but nobody noticed >_< But then I can't run my hands all over a priceless work of art like I can in a real museum when nobody is looking.
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Jun 8, 2018 05:39
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CoolCab posted:putting aside boring stuff like spices are there many things today that are very inexpensive compared to in roman times? if i had a time machine and a tight budget and wanted to pass myself off as a rich foreigner what would i encrust myself with? I was going to say aluminum but then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aluminium posted:"One day a goldsmith in Rome was allowed to show the Emperor Tiberius a dinner plate of a new metal. The plate was very light, and almost as bright as silver. The goldsmith told the Emperor that he had made the metal from plain clay. He also assured the Emperor that only he, himself, and the Gods knew how to produce this metal from clay. The Emperor became very interested, and as a financial expert he was also a little concerned. The Emperor felt immediately, however, that all his treasures of gold and silver would decline in value if people started to produce this bright metal of clay. Therefore, instead of giving the goldsmith the regard expected, he ordered him to be beheaded." So, uh, maybe not. Tiberius was a dick. I bet some high quality optics would blow their minds. Give them a cheap telescope and a microscope and simultaneously advance astronomy and biology by 1000 years.
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Jun 21, 2018 03:38
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I think the Roman tendency to integrate people and hand out citizenship is overblown, at least during the Republic. The Social War was started by cities that had been under Roman control for centuries and they still didn't have citizenship. That would be like if Iowa still didn't have statehood and its residents weren't US citizens. Later on they do get more free with it obviously.
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Jun 26, 2018 13:57
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Isaac Asimov has a really good short story called The Dead Past where a guy tried to use a machine that can see the past to prove that the child sacrifices were Roman propaganda.
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Jul 3, 2018 19:13
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quote:According to Remondino, Spooner and several later sources, the Coptic priests sliced the penis and testicles off Nubian or Abyssinian slave boys around the age of eight. The boys were captured from Abyssinia and other areas in Sudan like Darfur and Kordofan, then brought into Sudan and Egypt. During the operation, the Coptic clergyman chained the boys to tables, then, after slicing off their sexual organs, stuck a piece of bamboo into the genital area, and then submerged them in neck-high sand to burn. The recovery rate was ten percent. The resulting eunuchs fetched large profits in contrast to eunuchs from other areas. holy poo poo
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Aug 10, 2018 18:23
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I thought Christianity was originally most popular with slaves and poor people. The rich didn't start converting until later. It seems like a religion that would have much more appeal for the poor.
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Aug 11, 2018 14:35
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Germany has no oil, few Roman roads and had basically no colonies and is still rich. I don't see how we could have enough data to draw a more detailed conclusion than "infrastructure is good".
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Sep 2, 2018 19:33
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The Byzantine empire definitely started to deurbanize later on. The Sasanids sacked Antioch and a bunch of other cities in the east, the Avars and Slavs hit the balkans and finally the Arabs swooped in. My understanding is that by 700s they didn't have any large cities besides Constantinople.
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Oct 4, 2018 17:45
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A lovely as the Fourth Crusade was, nobody ever talks about the massacre of the Latins. Also the Byzantines had been complete dicks to the crusaders for the past century.
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Oct 4, 2018 20:31
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I think a show set in Byzantium centered on Heraclius would be freking awesome. The man's life is a dramatic arc: coming to power in a civil war, getting his butt kicked by the Sasanids and finally winning with a crazy plan. I'm kind of surprised there hasn't been a Byzantium show yet: everybody is looking for the next Game of Thrones and Constantinople was basically King's Landing irl but with more castration.
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Oct 11, 2018 02:28
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cheetah7071 posted:He also lost everything late in life to the Arab invasions Perfect setup for season 2
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Oct 11, 2018 02:34
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Plutarch is a fun read (especially Caesar's life) though I guess that's not a primary source.
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Oct 12, 2018 01:11
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I love how nobody in medieval paintings ever seems to care that they're getting stabbed. Mild annoyance at most.
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Oct 14, 2018 18:03
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I thought Roman women had a fair amount of autonomy and it was the Greeks who kept them locked up.
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Nov 2, 2018 01:31
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When did Egypt go from being the extremely wealthy and productive province it was under the Roman/Byzantine empire to not being that important? I feel like I read somewhere that the irrigation systems needed to make the Nile valley productive broke down at some point and after that it wasn't as valuable. Was it still a breadbasket for the Ottoman empire for instance?
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Nov 2, 2018 05:04
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I wouldn't say there were no adventurers but I think the "land and money" hypothesis is overplayed. Crusading was insanely expensive and dangerous. Plenty of Crusaders had to sell property or borrow money. Godfrey de Bouillon sold all of Verdun to finance his part. Robert Curthose basically pawned Normandy to his brother to get cash. Lesser nobility would sell or pawn smaller pieces of land to their neighbors or the church and lots of them ended up getting foreclosed. When Pope Alexander called for Christians to help drive the Muslims out of Spain in the 1060s the response was small. If there was a huge glut of people ready to go Crusading for money then why wouldn't more have showed up for that? The Islamic states in Spain were weaker, closer and probably had richer land than the Turks in Anatolia or the Fatimids in the Levant or Palestine. After winning the First Crusade most of them didn't even stick around. One of the reasons the Crusader states had such a hard time was that, once they had completed their pilgrimage to Jerusalem, most just wandered home. The Crusader kingdoms were massive money sinks, requiring constant support and reinforcement from Europe. OctaviusBeaver fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Nov 2, 2018 |
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Nov 2, 2018 23:19
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I think it's a combination of protestantism (the Catholic Church is bad and probably not even Christian), enlightenment era anticlericalism like from Voltaire and a dash of post 1960s "every aspect of western civilization is evil".
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Nov 3, 2018 00:30
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