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What sort of law enforcement did ancient Rome have? I wouldn't expect there to be anything like "CSI: Rome", but there must've been some sort of professional, non-military force to pursue criminals and deter crime.
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Nov 5, 2012 19:33
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What did China get from its trade with the western world? I keep reading about how highly Rome valued silk, but I never see much of anything useful that the east got out of the deal.
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Nov 9, 2012 04:54
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How clearly defined were the separate domains of the roman gods? Was it as simple as one god for each individual aspect of life, or was there a lot of overlapping?
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Nov 12, 2012 17:12
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Xguard86 posted:Its very vague and complex. Alongside the big state deities you have gods of local rivers/fields/whatever, ancestor family spirits, various imports like Isis and Mithras plus maybe some hang over local gods that are semi-merged with the others brought from outside (so you worship "Jupiter" but to you hes also whatever local big sky god your great grandparents prayed to and has some small differences from the "Jupiter" worshiped on the other end of the Empire). If the Roman gods are too much of a melange of different cultures' religions, how about the greek gods? Are they any more clearly defined?
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Nov 13, 2012 00:44
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It's a little tempting to blame all societal collapses on nomadic invasions, since after firearms managed to neutralize the effectiveness of horse archers from the steppe it stops happening. Of course, that's probably a gross oversimplification.
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Nov 13, 2012 18:18
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Was Athens really the birthplace of democracy? As I understand it, the modern form of democracy that America has comes from German things through England and its aristocratic traditions. Ancient Rome always was around as one example to follow, as well as being the origins of the oldest legal traditions in Europe. All that goes back directly to Athens is the word. I also find it a little hard to believe that Athens was the only place in the ancient world to set up a system where a reasonably large group of people got to all have a say in what the state does.
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Nov 15, 2012 03:28
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How much of what Thucydides wrote was accurate, as opposed to being an old man complaining about the people who rejected him or an Athenian talking poo poo about Sparta?
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Nov 18, 2012 06:55
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Back in ancient times, each individual civilization would probably have a much smaller gene pool than any modern one, which would mean that each society's individuals would look more like each other than we do now, and by contrast, outsiders would look even more different to ancient peoples. Combine that with the hatred of foreigners that is about as old as humanity itself, and that's ancient racism in a nutshell.
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Nov 26, 2012 01:40
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How literate was the average Roman, and how complicated was Roman bureaucracy?
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Nov 28, 2012 06:58
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Grand Fromage posted:There were supply ships that shadowed the army when they marched near the sea. I'm not aware of any actual naval battles. The only one I can think of that involved naval power was the siege of Tyre, but there they said gently caress it to the ships after a couple of failed attempts and just built a peninsula out to the island to assault by land. Stories like that are so amazing that it's tempting to suspect it as just a folk origin of a piece of geography. That wasn't exactly an unheard of tactic though, was it? I vaguely remember something about the Romans once just building a hill to get over a wall.
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Nov 29, 2012 16:51
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The Balkans are a mess of nationalism, and I doubt you could clearly trace a line back from the current people there to whoever lived in the area 2,000 years ago. Even if you could, it wouldn't really matter. Especially when you consider how some of the largest nations today have had the bulk of their populations' makeup shifted around more than once in that time.Jazerus posted:Roman (and Macedonian, in the case of Tyre) military engineering was absolutely incredible - There were loads of crazy engineering feats in the Peloponnesian War too, from Athens's long walls to protect their escape passage to the sea, to the siege of Syracuse, where Athens started out by building walls around Syracuse's walls, so the Syracusans had to build walls to block the Athenians' walls around the walls. It's amazing how much of ancient siege tactics seemed to just vanish by the medieval era. I guess either people started to figure out how to get past walls or building poo poo in the middle of a battlefield just became too costly.
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Nov 29, 2012 22:38
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I don't know for certain, but I'd imagine that the increased usage of ranged weapons and fast cavalry probably made it almost a complete waste of time to build something on a battlefield. And of course, in western Europe men who were disciplined enough and skilled enough to build while under attack would be rare enough their talents would be more valuable elsewhere. Speaking of the Hittites, how much non-biblical evidence is there for the nation of Israel? According to their own book, they were a force to be reckoned with in the ancient world, but I never read about them in relation to other known civilizations.
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Nov 30, 2012 00:47
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Whenever I hear about the crazy terrible stuff the Spartans used to do, I get the impression that a great deal must be exaggerated. The Athenians were the ones who wrote down the historical accounts, and they were bound to do some talkin' poo poo about their greatest rivals.physeter posted:Yeah, they were pretty bad. They were also badass though. They had mountains, they didn't need walls. 
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Dec 1, 2012 16:46
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Did they have anything like restaurants in the ancient world?
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Dec 6, 2012 05:42
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Now I'm imagining Roman Ron Pauls railing against the monetary system. I suppose if anyone in the ancient world could make fiat currency work, it's Rome.
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Dec 6, 2012 15:26
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Before you philosophy people leave, could you talk some about non-greek philosophers? It seems like all the ancient philosophers I hear about are greek and probably athenian as well. The ancient world must've had some thinkers outside of Greece.
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Dec 9, 2012 06:34
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How exactly did the ancient Egyptians worship cats? Did cats have any special place in their mythology, or did they just really like cats?
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Dec 12, 2012 06:03
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I was just wonering how much documentation there was on how the Egyptians worshiped cats, because people say that a lot, but for all I know it could've been like the old archeological joke where if somebody sees a bunch of stuff that they can't quickly explain, they just assume it's religious imagery.Halloween Jack posted:Can you explain why "she-wolf" was a euphemism for a prostitute? Scortum I at least understand, vulgar as it is. I would assume that there may be some similarities in the origins of ancient and modern slang. Bitches be bitches man. 
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Dec 12, 2012 19:49
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What if anything did the Romans use for a year-numbering system?
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Jan 13, 2013 05:06
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The Spartans supposedly used iron as their currency, eschewing the weaker gold and silver and honoring their "true" source of strength. There were also various other precious things that we don't remember that much today, such as Lapis Lazuli.
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Jan 28, 2013 21:20
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How much of a Roman individual's wealth depended on owning land?
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Feb 1, 2013 17:08
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It sounds like such a more civilized way of fighting. Assuming that any side is willing to keep to the bargain and you're not fighting over something important enough that people would rather die than be subjected to what a loss represents.
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Feb 6, 2013 06:36
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Alchenar posted:Bricks are also relatively fireproof, but that doesn't stop houses burning down (these buildings are full of flammable objects). Modern houses rely on wood for support a lot more than ancient temples did. When the entire building is supported by stone walls, you're going to have to do some kind of significant structural damage before it'll fall down. The normal things that a temple would have in it just wouldn't be able to do much to the structure, no matter how much they burn. Unless the temple is packed with gunpowder.
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Feb 19, 2013 18:24
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How did ancient philosophers make a living? Were they actually just wealthy people living off of their pre-made fortunes like during the enlightenment?
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Feb 26, 2013 16:48
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According to the book Why the West Rules, the biggest reason is the big unifying empires in Europe and China broke up at around the same time, but in China the split just didn't take. The South split up into a bunch of little states, just like post-roman Italy, but up in the north, a warlord managed to unify the area and conquered the southern part of China, re-unifying the empire at the same point that Europe was splitting into the regions that we know today. Of course, I've often found that in many cases when China seems so thoroughly different from the west, it often turns out that you may just not have as much of an understanding of Chinese history. China's been split up into a bunch of different states at various points in its history, and it could be that the modern era that we find ourselves in China just happens to be mostly united right now, unlike 70 years ago.
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Mar 8, 2013 01:41
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Yeah, from the United States to Germany to Ethiopia, most modern nations tend to have subjugated other areas at some point in their past, unless they're some wacky new nation that either broke off or was established in a treaty. I'm looking at you, Belgium.
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Mar 8, 2013 18:36
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Hitler being absolutely insane is probably the largest factor of why he didn't win. A better comparison might be between Alexander and Napoleon.
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Apr 3, 2013 00:28
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I think at the end of the day, killing loads of people in a mad quest to rule the world is more morally acceptable than slaughtering loads of people to purify the human species.
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Apr 3, 2013 00:47
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Did they use real weapons for gladitorial combat?
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Apr 11, 2013 20:04
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The Pope did end up reigning over what was left of the western half of Rome, and he ended up giving away the title of emperor to a Frank, so you can foist some of the blame on him. Like gently caress is anybody going to acknowledge the eastern half of the empire at that point in time though. It's the enlightenment, not the age of crazy greek orthodox lovers.
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Apr 16, 2013 14:13
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This may be a bit off-topic, but what spurred the interest in the Roman empire and "Roman" aesthetics during the renaissance? Did they have to wait until the last vestiges of Rome proper died, or did Byzantine refugees have more Roman tastes?
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Apr 30, 2013 23:57
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The criticism I've heard of the Academie Francaise is just that they refuse to acknowledge new words that have become commonly used. Although I suppose any language would look stingy next to English, the bastard language to end all bastard languages. This year the Oxford English Dictionary has added a slew of words including "braggadocious," "burrata," "cruft," "friend zone," and "blootered." Anyways, are there any good books on ancient nomadic societies? I've been having a devil of a time finding anything on them.
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May 6, 2013 09:43
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Yeah, most of the ruins left by native americans are south of the Rio Grande at least. All we have in the U.S. are some big ol' piles of dirt. Not that it makes those ancient cultures any less valid or anything, it's just not as cool as an ancient temple. 
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Jul 1, 2013 14:27
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I've always felt that "consciousness" is one of those arbitrary subjective terms that is never clearly defined enough to really worry about. I've only ever heard the concept used to explain that animals don't think so it's okay to mess with them. I mean, who cares about whatever "consciousness" is supposed to be when you're busy figuring out basic irrigation and making progressively sharper rocks out of other rocks?
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Jul 4, 2013 16:59
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PittTheElder posted:Indeed. We should be talking about the crackpot theory that says that the European Dark Ages never happened, Ancient Rome/Greece/Egypt were made up by renaissance dudes, written history only began in the year we would call 800AD, the Jewish Kings of Israel were actually the Roman Emperors, Jesus was actually Andronikos Komnenos, and Tamerlane was a Russian guy all along. The theory I've heard was that Otto III and Pope Sylvester II invented most of the dark ages, including Charlemagne, in order to make themselves sound more impressive. I love how so many crackpot history theories boil down to, "the people in this region/era are so terrible and stupid, so we have to invent this weird theory to explain it." SlothfulCobra fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Jul 5, 2013 |
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Jul 5, 2013 05:19
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How did ancient cities deal with animal poo poo on the streets? Surely they wouldn't want it to just stay there and stink up the place.
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Jul 16, 2013 18:01
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I'm pretty sure that's mostly just an abstraction to describe how exactly patriarchal society works. Gonick's books are great. I read and understood (most) of the Cartoon History of the Universe when I was 10. I don't think most people learn what gametes are before they know what sex is.
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Jul 23, 2013 17:29
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It may be inaccurate, dated, and based upon a metric of complete nonsense, but that is still some drat nice looking graphwork. Even if it's hilariously wrong about its central premise, you can tell a lot of work went into it. As for actually getting some use out of it, I guess it could be useful as a giant timeline of historical events maybe? It also handily illustrates how the "traditional" view of history, the one that's taught in schools, tends to steadily shift westward from the fertile crescent as time goes on (although it does acknowledge the eastern roman empire, which is better than I would normally expect). It's also nice to know that in the 1930s, France was so much more powerful than Germany, and Russia was dwarfed by nearly every other power, so it would never be a threat.
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Aug 14, 2013 06:35
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Namarrgon posted:The issue is that there was no real 'Byzantine Empire' at the time. They called themselves the Roman Empire, other people called them Romans, they had Roman laws and customs (though they did speak Greek). Imagine if the entire East coast of the US is wiped out in a nuclear attack, does that mean the West coast suddenly isn't the US any more? Should it change their names to the Greater California Republic? Well, they should call it the New California Republic. 
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Aug 14, 2013 14:42
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I can never get over how weird it is that Rome's heavy infantry had swords as their primary weapon. Having a spear to jab at the enemy from a bit of a distance instead of stabbing right up close with a sword seems like such a better model, and both before the Roman Legions in ancient Greece and after Rome's decline, most armies tended to arm their infantry with spears as the primary weapon. Why did Rome rely more on the Gladius than on polearms?
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Aug 28, 2013 07:20
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