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Grand Fromage posted:Bactria became independent from Seleucia in the 250s and ended around 100 BC, but there was also an Indian Greek kingdom that continued for another century or so. And we have mentions of culturally Greek populations out there for centuries after they stop having any political power. Some of the Kalash, who live in in the far north of Pakistan, claim to be descendants of the Greeks. No genetic link to Greece has ever been proved, although they're certainly ethnically distinct from all other Pakistanis. Also, apparently the mitochondrial DNA sequence that I share with about 0.8% of other Britons is most common among the Kalash.
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May 17, 2013 19:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:Do we have any records of the text of Cicero's speeches/oratory? His reputation for being such a great orator is making me curious. Yes. The main reason he still has that reputation is that the texts survived and were read afterwards by anyone who had to learn Latin (which was anyone who mattered) as part of their education.
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May 22, 2013 19:00
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:The chariot was pretty dead. Militarily, anyway. The Romans were still using them for chariot racing, much as we still race horses despite not using them for transport. The bottom line with the Roman army (of the Republican and early imperial period, anyway) is that the infantry were the key component and, as other people have said, this probably comes down to the fact that the Romans weren't a nomadic people and most of the men who made up their army hadn't spent their lives riding horses. That would have remained true even when they expanded the empire and started recruiting from its subject peoples. Having large cavalry forces also complicates things logistically because you have to make sure on campaigns that you have enough hay to feed the horses, when it's usually enough of a problem making sure you have enough food for the men. It's not the sort of thing you would do unless you felt there was a positive need to do it.
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May 29, 2013 20:06
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karl fungus posted:How did ancient education work? Was there a set curriculum? Did you receive a grade? Were there set classes that were required by others? Could you choose what you wanted to learn about? Or, are all of these modern concepts? With regards to the Roman system, there were both primary school teachers (litterators) and secondary school teachers (grammatici) : 1. There was a set curriculum, in the sense that once pupils could actually read and write, teachers concentrated heavily on (a) the art of rhetoric and (b) teaching Latin and Greek poetry and literature, partly because it was felt that without a good grasp of poetry you would never be an effective public speaker. Almost everything else was ancillary to the rhetoric i.e. if you learned some history, it was because your teacher wanted you to make a speech defending (insert famous Roman) against (insert charge) after he (insert famous action of well-known Roman). 2. I don't think they gave grades as such - there was no public exam system of any kind. 3. Choice?  It was Rome. You did what you got told or you got a beating, basically. The Romans didn't really go for progressive methods of child-rearing.4. Set classes - I think it would have been a case of having one teacher for everything. This was pretty much for boys from the upper classes, hence the obsession with rhetoric, since they would be expected to have a public career of some kind. Upper class girls sometimes got some schooling, enough so they were at least literate, but not usually as much as the boys, because they weren't going to go into politics or the law. In the really wealthy families, the boys might have been sent to finish their education at one of the universities in Greece or the Greek colonies, which mostly concentrated on Greek philosophy. With poorer Romans, it would have been pretty much a case of "boy learns father's trade, girl learns domestic stuff from mother," although there were some local initiatives to provide schools for poor children and some might have scraped the money together to pay a teacher to at least make sure their children were literate.
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Jun 3, 2013 20:48
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AdjectiveNoun posted:What made the Arab army so good? In the period of the early Arab conquests, I think it was probably similar to what made the Mongols and other nomadic peoples good. They were mobile, they were fast, they were used to operating in difficult terrain, they weren't bogged down with complicated logistic arrangements. Being representatives of a spreading religion would also have helped. If some tribe in a country they were aiming to conquer went over to Islam, that was more strength for them, although there were instances of Arab tribes that remained Christian but fought alongside the Muslim armies.
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Jun 14, 2013 18:51
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AdjectiveNoun posted:Were the Arabs nomadic? I thought they were based around oasis-cities, but still largely sedentary. Would explain a lot if that was the case, though. I have to admit, I can't give you a source on the nomadic v. sedentary point so I may be wrong there. The conversion point was really just another way of making Durokar's point that there were lots of Arab tribes in the area. None of them had any particular reason to be loyal to the Romans or Persians and if you're culturally similar to people who've adopted a new religion it makes it that much easier to adopt it yourself.
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Jun 15, 2013 09:27
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Libluini posted:That actually explains to me why it was such a big deal that King Lionheart conquered the city during the 3rd Crusade. The Third Crusade didn't conquer Antioch. They didn't need to, as it was already under Crusader control, having been conquered during the First Crusade. You may be thinking of Acre, which they did recapture and where Richard the Lionheart played a prominent role. Being the capital of a Crusader principality was basically Antioch's last moment of glory.
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Jun 17, 2013 20:17
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karl fungus posted:Wow. Some of these are extremely detailed. At the risk of being pedantic, it's clear from the linked Wikipedia page that whilst these people were all "Roman" in the sense of "inhabitants of the Roman Empire", most of them wouldn't have been Roman citizens or of ethnically Roman origin, but either Greek, Egyptian or some mixture of the two. And, yes, the Romans did go for neckbeards. There's a bust of Nero with one that gets posted quite a bit when this subject comes up. I don't think they looked any better two thousand years ago than now, but I suppose then at least you could assume that the wearers probably got out of their houses quite a lot and didn't also own fedoras.
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Jun 20, 2013 19:25
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