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I don't remember the name but in modern Rome there's a hill more or less made from discarded pottery. They'd throw out pots, especially broken ones, like we throw away packaging, bottles and so on.
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Feb 8, 2013 22:10
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Of course, the other risk of being super charitable, especially before the republican system begins to show its cracks, is that the nobility were terrified of being overthrown by popular support. So you get people who handed out too much bread in a drought year or whatever being executed or accused of demagoguery. They might not always have been wrong, either. I don't have the reference right now but one guy at least was found stockpiling weapons in his villa, or so they said after the fact.
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May 22, 2013 09:55
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gradenko_2000 posted:With Republican Rome's army and doctrine being what it was, what could they have done better at Carrhae? Even if Crassus' son didn't ride out and even if they had taken a rest, how could they have forced an engagement with the Cataphracts+Horse Archers? Surena, the Parthian general, was a genius. His army was perfectly designed to defeat legions. Running out of arrows was the usual problem, so he arranged a camel train of supplies to keep his troops shooting. One report mentions that the legionaries' armour was useless against Parthian arrows, which could be exaggeration or could suggest they'd adapted their weapons to kill Romans. You get a sense of how big a deal Surena's leadership was when, after his victory, he's killed for being too clever and a threat to the king. Without him to lead it, the Parthian retaliation is an incompetent failure where they're denied battle until they get bored and leave, then walk into a pretty standard ambush on the way out. No doubt Crassus wasn't the best general, but I don't think he's as terrible as the Romans make out. You get stuff about him defying the tribunes and getting cursed as he leaves the city (not mentioned in contemporary accounts) which boils down to  well he didn't really have Rome behind him so it wasn't a Roman invasion so it wasn't really a defeat we didn't want that army anyway man Crassus sucks
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May 30, 2013 14:40
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Also keep in mind how good people are at mental gymnastics. Misogynists make tons of exceptions and ifs and buts. A guy who rants about whores who just want to manipulate men probably doesn't think that way about his beloved daughter. It's just most women, like those other ones in the paper or whatever. I don't doubt that some Athenians thought that their hetaira was different (but seriously don't give the rest rights ugh they'll ruin the treehouse). There's Assemblywomen, another Athenian comedy, where women take control of the city and run a utopian communist-ish government. Some people try to read it as an ironic failure, but you have to to jump through quite a few hoops to get there. It's a comic fantasy, not a ten point plan for a new government, but it's a usually pretty conservative part of Athenian culture that goes far deeper than 'those crazy women, amirite?' (Also you get the impression that some academics really didn't take kindly to the superior Greeks portraying communism in a good light.)
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Sep 1, 2013 22:55
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And more recently, the US decided to stick a military base in Iraq right on top of the ruins of Babylon  Surely they could have done it a few miles away or something? But what do I know.
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Sep 8, 2013 16:58
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Ah, I was under the impression that historic parts of the site got damaged too, maybe ones incorporated into Saddam's legitimacy theme park? But Jesus Christ I had no idea he'd ruined quite it that badly. It's interesting to see eastern civilisation being ~inherited~, just as a change from the west and Rome/Greece. A documentary I saw mentioned a festival in Iran where they parade 'enemies' through the streets. Alexander the Great is still up there. Edit: Dear Leader shoots rainbows from his bow. That's some North Korea poo poo right there.
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Sep 9, 2013 00:37
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InspectorBloor posted:That makes me think of a passage in Cunlife's Book "The ancient Celts" where he quotes a poem of Lucan. Something about a terrible god who lives in the woods. I don't recall the exact words, it's really plastic and scary. The end is something like "Oh gently caress, he's here!" This probably isn't the quote but I came across it in what I'm reading and it gives an idea of how terrified they were: Lucan posted:A grove there was, untouched by men's hands from ancient times, whose interlacing boughs enclosed a space of darkness and cold shade, and banished the sunlight far above. No rural Pan dwelt there, no Silvanus, ruler of the woods, no Nymphs; but gods were worshipped there with savage rites, the altars were heaped with hideous offerings, and every tree was sprinkled with human gore. Water, also, fell there in abundance from dark springs. The images of the gods, grim and rude, were uncouth blocks formed of felled tree-trunks. Their mere antiquity and the ghastly hue of their rotten timber struck terror. Legend told that often the subterranean hollows quaked and bellowed, that yew trees fell down and rose again, that the glare of conflagration came from trees that were not on fire, and that serpents twined and glided around the stems. The people never resorted thither to worship at close quarters, but left the place to the gods... The grove was sentenced by Caesar to fall before the stroke of the axe.
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Sep 25, 2013 17:30
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Sleep of Bronze posted:For all their warring, conquests and empire building, the Romans were basically the antisocial neckbeards (yo Nero) of their era. I think that's what I'm trying to say. I love Nero's neckbeard. "They aren't plays mum, it's called (And then he had her killed.)
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Oct 10, 2013 23:57
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Big Beef City posted:In terms of how Byzantium was the New Rome, I'm just gonna leave this here: Did you know? Constantine is dead. 
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Jan 3, 2014 15:05
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Paxicon posted:Here's a question I've been thinking of for awhile. It's bound to be speculative, but I still find it interesting - How invested was the average roman in the republic? I mean the man on the street, who can vote but whose vote is controlled by his patron. Did he truly find the centralization of power under Augustus as onerous as all popular history and historical fiction likes to portray it - Or was pining for their lost pre-eminence the purvey of the oligarchs? It's only really the high aristocrats that resent Augustus, and even then it's often a long time after the fact. The actual people of Rome broke into rioting on several occasions, at one point threatening to burn down the senate with its members inside, demanding Augustus be made dictator or take up more honours. Most ordinary people were probably just happy to see stability and prosperity return. And before Augustus, there's just Caesar and then the triumvirate blatantly controlling everything. Before then, you have decades of powerful men playing fast and loose with the republic. The pretence that the republic was still ticking probably felt like an improvement. For those who did still care, it let them justify things and comfortably turn back to these sweet new baths. Arguably Augustus didn't so much bring down republican rule as bring all the semi-constitutional powers and dominance, which already had precedent, under one person.
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Feb 9, 2014 13:57
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Tao Jones posted:We don't really know. The average Romans of the Republic, sadly, don't have any representatives whose writing survived. I imagine there was a spectrum of opinion, but I have no idea what sort of arguments they'd have made, pro and con, the principate. Roman history writing was the domain of conservative figures who belonged to the Senatorial class, like Tacitus, and they obviously had an ax to grind with the Imperial system. Since they presumably couldn't write that the present emperor is terrible and this whole empire thing sucks poo poo, they wrote about how awesome the previous political system was -- with the obvious implication that it should be preferred to what was going on in their own times. Also, the centuries weren't the standardised bodies you might see in the army. The urban poor might be placed into a handful of huge centuries that still got only one vote each. The aristocrats had a ton of small centuries, and so a ton of votes. Augustus reformed the system later to give the equestrians and senators even centuries, I think. So in a way, it's just like Maryland and Alaska example.
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Feb 11, 2014 15:14
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You guys should lead a campaign to conquer the far east, further than Alexander even! This will never go wrong.
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Mar 1, 2014 00:52
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Rockopolis posted:Or worse, bitcoins! Reddit delenda est. 
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Mar 1, 2014 03:06
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WoodrowSkillson posted:This sentence sets my teeth on edge. Parthians hate it!
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May 19, 2014 18:06
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I think it would have depended a lot on the commander, the mood of the troops, whose city it was and so on. The Goths' sack of Rome (and the ~end of glorious Civilisation~) was actually relatively peaceful. Most of the destruction and looting was around the gates where the army entered or aimed at pagan monuments. Churches were designated sanctuaries. Like Angry Lobster said, loot was the real priority, and I think Alaric's instructions were basically along the lines of 'I know you guys want your loot and that's cool but don't be dicks about it, ok?'.
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Jun 19, 2014 11:38
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At least for the Roman Plebs, I remember reading that infant mortality was so high that they'd try avoid getting too attached to a baby. Might explain how they could be so casual about exposure. You could argue that they didn't get full 'personhood' until they had lived long enough to have a good chance of surviving. Meanwhile slavers/charity served as the unloaded gun in the firing squad.
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Sep 3, 2014 12:05
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The best comparison would probably how people raised in longstanding violent tribal or criminal environments adapt, though I don't really know anything about modern studies on that. Warzones too, though a lot of them would be on a much shorter timeframe and involve more conscious aspirations to Western-style legitimacy.Breaking Bad posted:For what it's worth, getting the poo poo kicked out of you, not to say you get used to it, but you do kinda get used to it.
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Sep 3, 2014 16:15
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Not to mention his love for Glorious
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Sep 3, 2014 18:26
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I vaguely remember the legions having small pay increases for literate soldiers (I think?). So the actual education was likely just getting a buddy to teach you, but it was incentivised.
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Sep 9, 2014 19:18
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At least for auxiliaries, lots of Western tribes had long traditions of Joe McGaul being a client-dependent of his local aristocrat. That would translate into a share of the harvest, but also into picking up a spear when it was time to go rough up the next tribe over. Mercenary service for the Greeks and Persians had also been a thing for centuries, so it wouldn't be out of the ordinary to see the local lord come by promising loot, pay and some new fangled citizenship stuff. He'd be their officer too in the legions (I think it was only later that Rome started insisting on all Roman leadership?), so it was easily adapted to peoples' usual social structure. I'd be interested to know how it went down in the East, though, with such a different culture. Lots of the cities there had small concessions of independence and alliance with Rome - so I guess it would be dressed up as ~free citizens~ helping their city's allies? Strategic Tea fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Oct 19, 2014 |
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Oct 18, 2014 22:52
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icantfindaname posted:edit: Okay, I think my question was answered, so I'll rework it: How exactly did land ownership work in the Empire? Were the landowners mostly the same as before those regions were integrated into the Empire, or were they replaced by Romans? Did the local aristocrats assimilate into the general Roman aristocracy? Did this vary by region? In Gaul there was a lot of land seizure during the first invasion/assimilation. Hillforts like Entremont were sacked, and by the time refugees made their way back they found a Roman town had been founded next door. You also get a lot of straight up kicking tribes off their land to give to veteran colonists. Once the empire set in though, the main things it brought to the table were formal laws on the sale of land etc. These let Romanising local aristocrats sell off their ancestral land and move in down the road from their new best friend, the Roman governor. The buyers were often wealthy Romans buying up new land to farm, who set up systems more like Italian villas and ran things in absentia. In turn, the client-farmers on the land lost their personal connection to its owner, who'd been replaced with an absentee landlord, making them kind-of-proto-peasants-but-not-really 
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Oct 21, 2014 16:52
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Sleep of Bronze posted:cunne superbe va So in the end, it's the Roman equivalent of 'im gay'. Truly the gibbis of the ancient world
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Oct 22, 2014 07:12
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It's worth keeping in mind that priesthoods etc were usually attached to local magistracies, and often totally inseparable from them. So refusal to sacrifice was more than impious and antisocial - it was thumbing your nose at the city's rulers. There was also the problem that, as it grew, Christianity became very popular among middlingly wealthy urban elites. These were the exact people you'd expect to become local oligarchs, who instead refused the office on religious grounds and preferred to climb up the secretive Church hierarchy. From an emperor's point of view, it starts to look a lot like political subversion.
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Oct 23, 2014 22:01
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I think age did also play a part. Judaism was ancient even to Rome, while the Epicureans had Greek philosophical tradition behind them. Early Christianity tended to be referred to as a superstition, rather than a religion. The Jews' religious place in the empire generally boiled down to keeping their god happy and his cult running. The Christians weren't even seen as having a valid god or cult. They were probably considered on par with weirdo Eastern fortune telling, but writ large and political.
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Oct 25, 2014 10:15
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Pffft it was obviously imported from Atlantis
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Jan 4, 2015 22:12
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The Serbian Empire, duh 
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Jan 25, 2015 22:13
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Tearing stuff down is part of the historical process, sure. But the Ottomans built wonders of their own in their place. I'm sure we can expect ISIS to build gently caress all of value and eventually burn out.
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Feb 28, 2015 14:09
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RZApublican posted:Syracuse, crappier than Rome and filled with corrupt Greeks. Also it's in Sicily which was the home of the ancestral Mafiae clans which were the heart of the corrupt Italian civilisation that strangled Rome.
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Mar 10, 2015 23:39
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Dunno, most people I know are pretty furious about it. Of course nothing happens, because politicians would rather crack down on durn pedo immigrants than other politicians, but both groups are getting the string em up response among the public.
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Mar 29, 2015 16:50
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I do always love in docudramas when the Bad Emperor loots the temples to fund whatever while the soldiers push around the horrified priests. The temple was half treasury for the very purpose of funding stuff and the priests were probably the same magistrates who drew up the plans
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Apr 7, 2015 22:07
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Kurtofan posted:What other people thought that was hosed up? The Persians? The Romans? and when did they stop doing this stuff? The Catholic Church preserved tons of Roman traditions and rituals. So, never
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Apr 24, 2015 22:58
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No but they were under the authority of Rome, including its Pontifex Maximus etc. And I'm sure that the early bishops of Rome exerted their authority there as in the rest of the empire. Half continuity, half dumb pedo jokes
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Apr 25, 2015 00:04
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I'd say societies before permanent settlement tend to be seen this way.The early (pre 600 BC, or more like 700-800 really) people of Gaul were semi nomadic and had only small, isolated settlements, before increasing social organisation created a chain reaction. For example the next warlord over has a central village with earthworks to protect it; you better build one or he'll come take your poo poo too. That stage of society tends to be treated as a prelude to 'real civilisation' with a central authority, urban-ish living and lots of dues with swords. Of course it doesn't help that before settlements, social units leave so little evidence to go on. Strategic Tea fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Apr 30, 2015 |
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Apr 30, 2015 22:08
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Can they not just turn it into a mosque like ever other loving society does with its ancient ruins? 
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May 15, 2015 12:02
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It was pretty much a social expectation that Romans would have their friends round for dinner pretty much all the time, to the point that there are jokes about creepy old Sextus trolling the baths for someone to go have dinner with. I'm just spitballing but I imagine people would go out drinking after and stick together for protection on the 90% lawless night time streets. Roman pre-drinks? E: The city is almost pitch black, there's no police, and no guards unless you're on the Palatine or something. There's definitely no shortage of desperate, hungry people, and unemployment is often high. Your average person's security would probably come from patronage, even if it was just Quintus getting everyone together to go teach those loving fucks a loving lesson. But a random guy in a dark alley probably isn't going to check who you make bricks for first... Strategic Tea fucked around with this message at 21:46 on May 31, 2015 |
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May 31, 2015 21:37
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I think it helped that Chrisianity could have been a good way of networking for provincial aristocrats. Like Mithraism, etc, you had a semi-secret group of local civil service/officer types meeting regularly outside the state-controlled fora of Imperial politics or religion. Plenty of time for bonding over philosophy and probably shared political goals too. That kind of influence is one of the main reasons the persecutor emperors considered Christianity a threat, and if history teaches us anything, it's that if you don't control the local nobility, you don't control anything.
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Jun 1, 2015 12:05
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Here now I'm sure Emperor Assad will undertake grand restoration works. Turns out all the ancient monarchs looked just like him!
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Nov 7, 2015 12:52
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Ferguson wrote a short article in the Times the other day comparing the current EU to the fall of Rome, and it was embarrassingly bad. Like, how is this man a professor bad. Highlights include thinking the sack of Rome was especially horrific because Gibbon said so, thinking Rome was a politically relevant city at that time, forgetting the Eastern Empire existed, and saying the Goths invaded because Rome didn't bother defending its borders or having a real army.
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Nov 21, 2015 14:54
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xthetenth posted:I'm going to guess he had a stupid argument to make about current events and worked from there. Am I right? Bang on
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Nov 21, 2015 19:04
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Common UNiversal Time 
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Nov 30, 2015 12:21
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